Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
is most beautifully situated. The land is good, all about it. The trees
are luxuriant and prone to be lofty and large. I measured the yew-tree
in the churchyard, and found the trunk to be, according to my
measurement, twenty-three feet, eight inches, in circumference. The
trunk is very short, as is generally the case with yew-trees; but the
head spreads to a very great extent, and the whole tree, though probably
several centuries old, appears to be in perfect health. Here are several
hop-plantations in and about this village; but for this once the prayers
of the over-production men will be granted, and the devil of any hops
there will be. The bines are scarcely got up the poles; the bines and
the leaves are black, nearly, as soot; full as black as a sooty bag or
dingy coal-sack, and covered with lice. It is a pity that these
hop-planters could not have a parcel of Spaniards and Portuguese to
louse their hops for them. Pretty devils to have liberty, when a
favourite recreation of the Donna is to crack the lice in the head of
the Don! I really shrug up my shoulders thinking of the beasts. Very
different from such is my landlady here at Selborne, who, while I am
writing my notes, is getting me a rasher of bacon, and has already
covered the table with a nice clean cloth. I have never seen such
quantities of grapes upon any vines as I see upon the vines in this
village, badly pruned as all the vines have been. To be sure, this is a
year for grapes, such, I believe, as has been seldom known in England,
and the cause is the perfect ripening of the wood by the last beautiful
summer. I am afraid, however, that the grapes come in vain; for this
summer has been so cold, and is now so wet, that we can hardly expect
grapes which are not under glass to ripen. As I was coming into this
village, I observed to a farmer who was standing at his gateway, that
people ought to be happy here, for that God had done everything for
them. His answer was, that he did not believe there was a more unhappy
place in England: for that there were always quarrels of some sort or
other going on. This made me call to mind the King's proclamation,
relative to a reward for discovering the person who had recently _shot
at the parson of this village_. This parson's name is Cobbold, and it
really appears that there was a shot fired through his window. He has
had law-suits with the people; and I imagine that it was these to which
the farmer alluded. The hops are of considerable importance to the
village, and their failure must necessarily be attended with
consequences very inconvenient to the whole of a population so small as
this. Upon inquiry, I find that the hops are equally bad at Alton,
Froyle, Crondall, and even at Farnham. I saw them bad in Sussex; I hear
that they are bad in Kent; so that hop-planters, at any rate, will be,
for once, free from the dreadful evils of abundance. A correspondent
asks me what is meant by the statements which he sees in the _Register_,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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