Those were the days of the picturesque; if, indeed, Rowlandson and Morland and the other delightfully romantic artists of the period did not invent those roadside scenes. Here, for instance, is Rowlandson’s charming group of three old topers boozing outside the ‘Half Moon.’ I cannot tell you where this ‘Half Moon’ was. Probably the artist imagined it; but at anyrate the _kind_ of place, and scenes of this description, must have existed in his time. Here, you will observe, the landlord has come out with a mug of ‘humming ale’ or ‘nut-brown October’ for the thirsty driver of the curricle, who is apparently going to market, if we may judge by the basket of fowls tied on to the back of the conveyance. Scenes so picturesque as this are not to be observed in our own time, nor are the tramps who yet infest the road, singly or in families, of the engaging appearance of this family party. The human form divine was wondrously gnarled and twisted, or phenomenally fat, a hundred years ago, according to Rowlandson and Gillray. Legs like the trunks of contorted apple-trees, stomachs like terrestrial globes, mouths resembling the mouths of horses, and noses like geographical features on a large scale were the commonplaces of their practice, and this example forms no exception to the general rule. XVII [Sidenote: _TREE-PLANTING_] The ruin that descended upon Hartley Row in common with other coaching towns and villages, nearly sixty years ago, has long since been lived down, and the long street, although quiet, has much the same cheerful appearance as it must have worn in the heyday of its prosperity. It is a very wide street, fit for the evolutions of many coaches. Pleasant strips of grass now occupy, more or less continuously, one side, and at the western end forks the road to Odiham, through a pretty common with the unusual feature of being planted with oak trees. These oak glades do not look particularly old; but, as it happens, we can ascertain their exact age and at the same time note how slow-growing is the oak tree by a reference to Cobbett’s _Rural Rides_, where, in 1821, he notes their being planted: ‘I perceive that they are planting oaks on the “_wastes_,” as the _Agriculturasses_ call them, about _Hartley Row_; which is very good, because the herbage, after the first year, is rather increased than diminished by the operation; while, in time, the oaks arrive at a timber state, and add to the beauty and the _real wealth_, of the country, and to the real and solid wealth of the descendants of the planter who, in every such case, merits unequivocal praise, because he plants for his children’s children. The planter here is Lady Mildmay, who is, it seems, Lady of the Manors about here.’