In Praise of Berkshire
The late Mr. Tanner, a farming. genius, discovered here the suitability of a derelict farm (taken over by Mr. Strauss) for hops ; but Berkshire is more famous for its charm than its farms, of which many are in a pitiable state of neglect. Of all inland counties it is, I should say, the favourite of writers. Book after book appears and the latest is one of the best (On Foot in Berkshire, Maclehose, 58.). Mr. Hockin really knows. In Berkshire, the glory of the downs and commons and villages and woods and avenues and rivers, and especially its by-ways. The shire is, to my thinking, unsurpassed in kindly variety : the surviving edge of old Windsor Forest at Aldermaston, the oak avenues by Buckle- bury Common, the 'source of the Pang and its course to the Thames, and a succession of small places with delightfully Saxon names, such as the Fair Mile, "Dark Entry" and Juniper Hollow. In different moods one could quote or any of them :
ills terrarum mihi praeter °flutes Angtdus ridet.
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