107. Portrait of Mrs. Robinson--J. Roberts.--At some distance the effect nearly the same as the preceding number; but on closer inspection, the colour not quite so thickly laid on. We must do justice to the Exhibiting Artists by saying that there are no worse _of their size_ in the room than these Dulcineas. 129. Brace of Pheasants--S. Elmer, A.--No artist can come nearer to the object he attempts. His fish, his birds, and fruit are as exquisitely fine as any of the Flemish masters." The National Gallery lacks an Elmer: private collectors may be luckier. Mr. J.E. Harting, to whom all Surrey naturalists owe a debt, reminds me that many of Elmer's best pictures were engraved to illustrate Daniel's _Rural Sports_, and that it was Elmer who painted the picture of the hybrid between a blackcock and a pheasant which readers of _Selborne_ will remember was sent by Lord Stawell to Gilbert White. "It had been found by the spaniels of one of his keepers in a coppice, and shot on the wing." [Illustration: _Frensham Pond._] CHAPTER III FRENSHAM AND TILFORD A Surrey Labourer.--The Witch's Caldron.--Frensham Ponds.--The Last of the Blackcock.--Herons and Waterlilies.--The Tilford Oak.--Cobbett's Mistake.--Silver Billy.--The heroic age of Cricketers. Farnham has expanded to the south-east, and not prettily. But it is the key to the great stretch of pine wood, heather and bogland which lies to the south about Frensham, Tilford and Crooksbury Hill; and it is the best centre from which to visit Waverley Abbey and Moor Park, and to take long walks over some of the wildest country in the county. A week would not be long enough to explore the dozen square miles south of the town. Wrecclesham lies to the south-west, almost on the Hampshire border, and still makes green pottery of patterns which were favourites in the sixteenth century. Further south runs the tiny Bourne, the stream by which Cobbett and his brothers had so good an education, as we have just seen, in the sand. The Bourne, which runs dry in summer, has few associations as a stream; one, perhaps, will remain with it. Readers of _The Bettesworth Book_ and _Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer_ will perhaps not be very wrong if they fix on this sandy valley as the Surrey which Bettesworth knew best. Than the _Memoirs_, I think, no more discerning study of an old labourer's fight to keep on his own legs, out of the workhouse, earning his own money with his spade and hoe, belongs to any Surrey village. [Illustration: _Pierrepont House and Bridge._]