As we pass onwards, many other country houses--Purley, Basildon, and
Hardwick--with their parks and clustering cottages, add their charm to
the view. There are the beautiful woods of Streatley: hanging copses
clothe the sides of the hills, and pretty villages nestle amid the
trees. But soon the scene changes: the glorious valley Father Thames has
scooped out for himself is left behind; we are crossing the chalk
uplands. On all sides are vast stretches of unfenced arable land, though
here and there a tiny village with its square-towered Norman church
peeps out from an oasis of green fields and stately elm trees. On the
right the Chiltern Hills are seen in the background, and Wittenham Clump
stands forth--a conspicuous object for miles. The country round Didcot
reminds one very much of the north of France: between Calais and Paris
one notices the same chalk soil, the same flat arable fields, and the
same old-fashioned farmhouses and gabled cottages.

But now we have entered the grand old Berkshire vale. "Fields and
hedges, hedges and fields; peace and plenty, plenty and peace. I should
like to take a foreigner down the vale of Berkshire in the end of May,
and ask him what he thought of old England." Thus wrote Charles Kingsley
forty years ago, when times were better for Berkshire farmers. But the
same old fields and the same old hedges still remain--only we do not
appreciate them as much as did the author of "Westward Ho!"

Steventon, that lovely village with its gables and thatched roofs, its
white cottage walls set with beams of blackest oak, its Norman church in
the midst of spreading chestnuts and leafy elms, appears from the
railway to be one of the most old-fashioned spots on earth. This vale is
full of fine old trees; but in many places the farmers have spoilt their
beauty by lopping off the lower branches because the grass will not grow
under their wide-spreading foliage. It is only in the parks and