THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. INTRODUCTION.* 1. TWENTY YEARS ago, there was no lovelier piece of lowland scenery in South England, nor any more pathetic, in the world, by its expression of sweet human character and life, than that immediately bordering on the sources of the Wandle, and including the low moors of Addington, and the villages of Beddington and Carshalton, with all their pools and streams. No clearer or diviner waters ever sang with constant lips of the hand which giveth rain * Called the 'Preface' in former editions; it is one of my bad habits to put half my books into preface. Of this one, the only prefatory thing I have to say is that most of the contents are stated more fully in my other volumes; but here, are put in what, at least, I meant to be a more popular form, all but this introduction, which was written very carefully to be read, not spoken, and the last lecture on the Future of England, with which, and the following notes on it, I have taken extreme pains. : from heaven;' no pastures ever lightened in springtime with more passionate blossoming; no sweeter homes ever hallowed the heart of the passer-by with their pride of peaceful gladness,—fain-hidden—yet full-confessed. The place remains (1870) nearly unchanged in its larger features; but, with deliberate mind I say, that I have never seen anything so ghastly in its inner tragic meaning,—not in Pisan Maremma,-not by Campagna tomb,— not by the sand-isles of the Torcellan shore,-as the slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of that English scene nor is any blasphemy or impiety, any frantic saying, or godless thought, more appalling to me, using the best power of judgment I have to discern its sense and scope, than the insolent defiling of those springs by the human herds that drink of them. Just where the welling of stainless water, trembling and pure, like a body of light, enters the pool of Carshalton, cutting itself a radiant channel down to the gravel, through warp of feathery weeds, all waving, which it traverses with its deep threads of clearness, like the chalcedony in moss-agate, starred here and there with the white grenouillette; just in the very rush and murmur of the first spreading currents, the human wretches of the place cast their street and house foulness; heaps of dust and slime, |