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English memory there are few lovelier scenes than that famous pitch on the Hampshire down. When " Silver Billy " Beldham—the first bat of the age—was in or runs were hard to get and the finish close, Sir Horace Mann, that stalwart patron of the game, would pace about outside the ground cutting down the daisies with his stick in his agitation and the old farmers under the trees would lean forward upon their tall staves, silent. " Oh! it was a heart-stirring sight to witness the multitude forming a complete and dense circle round that noble green. Half the county would be present, and all t heir hearts with us.—Little Ham bledon, pitted against All England, was a proud thought for the Hampshire men. Defeat was glory in such a struggle—Victory, indeed, made us only ' a little lower than angels.' How those fine brawn-faced fellows of farmers would drink to our success! And then what stuff they had to drink! Punch!—not your new Ponche a la Romaine, or Ponche a la Groseille, or your modern cat-lap milk punch—punch be-deviled; but good, unsophisticated, John Bull stuff—stark! that would stand on end—punch that would make a cat speak! . . . Ale that would flare like turpentine—genuine Boniface! "
    " There would this company, consisting most likely of some thousands, remain patiently and anxiously watching every turn of fate in the game, as if the event had been the meeting of two armies to decide their liberty. And whenever a Hambledon man made a good hit, worth four or five runs, you would hear the deep mouths of the whole multitude baying away in pure Hampshire— ‘ Go hard! —Go hard!— Tick and turn!— tick and turn! ' To the honour of my countrymen ... I cannot call to recollection an instance of their wilfully stopping a ball that had been hit out among them by one of our opponents. Like true Englishmen, they would give an enemy fair play. How strongly are all those scenes, of fifty years by-gone,, painted in my memory !—and the smell of that ale comes upon me as freshly as the new May flowers."
    The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. From the high hill which rose out of the woods beyond the pitch one could see on clear days half southern England—valley and down and forest. Over that wide countryside the sea winds never ceased to blow from every point of the compass, free as the hearts of oak the land bred. Waving trees and smoke fluttering like a ragged banner, feathery heath, lonely cottages at the edge of moor and forest, ragged cows and geese and ponies pasturing in the wild by ancient prescribed rights. Tidal rivers flowing through marshes to the ocean with black cattle grazing at their salt edges and wooden cobles and crab-boats tossing on their silver bosom, land of semi-nomads, gatherers of shellfish, fowlers, longshore fishermen and armed smugglers—of Slip-jibbet and Moonshine Buck tip-trotting by in the dark with tubs of Geneva for the parson and " baccy for the Clerk." Sometimes travellers and shepherds near the coast would see the fleet of England riding at Spithead in one of the broad bays of the Channel shore; " pleasant and wonderful was the sight as seen from Ridgeway Hill, with the West Bay and the Isle of Portland and Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, all lying in the calm sunshine," wrote Elizabeth Ham in after years, " I see it now." 1
    Further inland were the familiar objects of the country scene: the reapers in the golden field, the cottages of wattle and timber with their massive brick chimneys and deep-abiding th atch, the mill with its weather- boarded walls and throbbing wheel amid willows and alders, the saw pit with sweating craftsmen and stacked timber, the leafy lane with the great hairy-footed horses drawing home the wain laden with hay and laughing children. Along the high roads bright liveried postilions glinted like jewels before swaying post-chaises, and postmen riding or mounted high on coaches passed in the scarlet livery of England. With infinite