Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but
little modified by the lapse of centuries may be reckoned the high, grassy, and
furzy downs, coombs, or eweleases, as they are indifferently called, that fill a
large area of certain counties in the south and southwest. If any mark of human
occupation is met with hereon it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of
some shepherd.
Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may possibly be
standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however, the spot, by actual
measurement, was not more than five miles from a county town. Yet what of
that? Five miles of irregular upland, during the long, imnimical seasons, with their
sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a
Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less
repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who "conceive and
meditate of pleasant things."
Some old earthen camp or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some starved
fragment of ancient hedge, is usually taken advantage of in the execution of
these forlorn dwellings; but in the present case such a kind of shelter had been
disregarded. Higher Crowstairs, as the house was called, stood quite detached
and undefended. The only reason for its precise situation seemed to be the
crossing of two foot-paths at right angles hard by, which may have crossed there
and thus for a good five hundred years. The house was thus exposed to the
elements on all sides. But, though the wind up here blew unmistakably when it
did blow, and the rain hit hard whenever it fell, the various weathers of the winter
season were not quite so formidable on the coomb as they were imagined to be
by dwellers on low ground. The raw rimes were not so pernicious as in the
hollows, and the frosts were scarcely so severe. When the shepherd and his
family who tenanted the house were pitied for their sufferings from the exposure,
they said that upon the whole they were less inconvenienced by "wuzzes and
flames" (hoarses and phlegms) than when they had lived by the stream of a snug
neighbouring valley.
The night of March 28, 182-, was precisely one of the nights that were wont to
call forth these expressions of commiseration. The level rain-storm smote walls,
slopes, and hedges like the cloth-yard shafts of Senlac and Crecy. Such sheep
and outdoor animals as had no shelter stood with their buttocks to the wind, while
the tails of little birds trying to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown inside out
like umbrellas. The gable end of the cottage was stained with wet, and the
