cottages of white stone also. Southward, a belt of wood, with a
gentle rise beyond, redeems it from absolute flatness. Entering the
town by the road from the east you come to a cross, standing in the
midst of four ways. Before you, and to the left, stretches the town,
consisting of wide streets or roadways, with irregular buildings on
either side, interspersed with gardens now lovely with profuse blooms
of laburnum and lilac."

The cottage in which John Clare was born is in the main street
running south. The views of it which illustrate his poems are not
very accurate. They represent it as standing alone, when it is in
fact, and evidently always has been, a cluster of two if not of three
tenements. There are three occupations now. It is on the west side of
the street, and is thatched. In the illustration to the second volume
of "The Village Minstrel" (1821), an open stream runs before the door
which is crossed by a plank. Modern sanitary regulations have done
away with this, if it ever existed and was not a fancy of the artist.




LOCAL ATTACHMENTS

Clare, whose local attachments were intense, bewails in indignant
verse the demolition of the Green:--

Ye injur'd fields, ye once were gay,
When Nature's hand displayed
Long waving rows of willows grey
And clumps of hawthorn shade;