Читать книгу Tom Brown at Rugby - Hughes Thomas - Страница 8

Passing along the Ridgeway to the east, we soon come to cultivated land. The downs, strictly so called, are no more; Lincolnshire farmers have been imported, and the long fresh slopes are sheep-walks63 no more, but grow famous turnips and barley. One of these improvers lives over there at the "Seven Barrows"64 farm, another mystery of the great downs. There are the barrows still, solemn and silent, like ships in the calm sea, the sepulchres of some sons of men. But of whom? It is three miles from the White Horse, too far for the slain of Ashdown to be buried there – who shall say what heroes are waiting there? But we must get down into the Vale again, and so away by the Great Western Railway to town, for time and the printer's devil press; and it is a terrible long and slippery descent, and a shocking bad road. At the bottom, however, there is a pleasant public,65 whereat we must really take a modest quencher, for the down air is provocative of thirst. So we pull up under an old oak which stands before the door.