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THE GOLDEN AGE of dismembered humanity. This man seemed to see the strangest things in our dull, familiar surroundings.

'Ah!' he broke out again, as we jogged on between hedgerows: 'and that field now—backed by the downs—with the rain-cloud brooding over it,—that's all David Cox—every bit of it!'

'That field belongs to Farmer Larkin,' I explained politely; for of course he could not be expected to know. 'I'll take you over to Farmer Cox's to-morrow, if he's a friend of yours; but there's nothing to see there.'

Edward, who was hanging sullenly behind, made a face at me, as if to say, 'What sort of lunatic have we got here?'

'It has the true pastoral character, this country of yours,' went on our enthusiast: 'with just that added touch in cottage and farmstead, relics of a bygone art, which makes our English landscape so divine, so unique!'

Really this grasshopper was becoming a burden! These familiar fields and farms, of which we knew every blade and stick, had done 208