A very fine morning; a man, _eighty-two years of age_, just beginning to mow the short-grass, in the garden: I thought it, even when I was young, the _hardest work_ that man had to do. To _look on_, this work seems nothing; but it tries every sinew in your frame, if you go upright and do your work well. This old man never knew how to do it well, and he stoops, and he hangs his scythe wrong; but, with all this, it must be a surprising man to mow short-grass, as well as he does, at _eighty_. _I wish I_ may be able to mow short-grass at eighty! That's all I have to say of the matter. I am just setting off for the source of the Avon, which runs from near Marlborough to Salisbury, and thence to the sea; and I intend to pursue it as far as Salisbury. In the distance of thirty miles, here are, I see by the books, more than thirty churches. I wish to see, with my own eyes, what evidence there is that those thirty churches were built without hands, without money, and without a congregation; and thus to find matter, if I can, to justify the mad wretches, who, from Committee-Rooms and elsewhere, are bothering this half-distracted nation to death about a "surplus popalashon, mon." My horse is ready; and the rooks are just gone off to the stubble-fields. These rooks rob the pigs; but they have _a right_ to do it. I wonder (upon my soul I do) that there is no lawyer, Scotchman, or Parson-Justice, to propose a law to punish the rooks for _trespass_. RIDE DOWN THE VALLEY OF THE AVON IN WILTSHIRE. "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn; and, The labourer is worthy of his reward."--Deuteronomy, ch. xxv, ver. 4; 1 Cor. ix, 9; 1 Tim. v, 9. _Milton, Monday, 28th August._ I came off this morning on the Marlborough road about two miles, or three, and then turned off, over the downs, in a north-westerly direction, in search of the source of the Avon River, which goes down to Salisbury. I had once been at Netheravon, a village in this valley; but I had often heard this valley described as one of the finest pieces of land in all England; I knew that there were about thirty parish churches, standing in a length of about thirty miles, and in an average width of hardly a mile; and I was resolved to see a little into the _reasons_ that could have induced our fathers to build all these churches, especially if, as the Scotch would have us believe, there were but a mere handful of people in England _until of late years_.