“I once overheard two shepherds,” Richard continued, “who were sitting on a March morning under a sunny hedge, conversing in a somewhat disconsolate tone concerning the prosperity of bygone days. One was telling the other how he had known the time when, in a single year, from forty to fifty thousand sheep had been washed near the spot where they were sitting, and ‘Now,’ he exclaimed, ‘there be none!’ The wash had been removed to another locality and this seemed to him almost a national calamity. ‘As to birding,’ he continued, in a still more doleful tone, ‘birding is now all auver; why, I used to make quite a harvest of my birds; and one year I made fourteen pounds eight shillings. We sent ‘em, ye see, to Burthemson (Brighthelmstone – Brighton) and otherwhile we catched somany that theBurthemsoners couldn’t take ‘em all, and I myself have sent some to Tunbridge Wells. That was the time of dee, Old Boy, for shepherds.’”

“For laziness, the shepherd in his everyday habits had no equal. Wrapped in his thick great-coat, impervious to rain, snow or hail, he would throw himself backwards into a hawth-bush, and snugly repose as on a bed of down for hours together. If a traveller, chancing to stray to the spot where he lay, enquired his road over those trackless, lonely hills, the shepherd, too lazy to rise to give the required information, would stretch out his leg, pointing with his foot, and say – ‘Over dat yander hill – by be burg – down dat ‘ere bottom- and so up de bostle’ as the case might be, and drop again into his doze as snug as a dormouse.”

“Wandering one day at the foot of the Downs, I came suddenly with a run into a deep, hollow road, at a spot which two rams had selected for a duel. They close with a tremendous shock within a yard of me, but providentially I was enabled to step back unhurt. Those persons who have never witnessed a ram-fight can have no idea of the fury with which they engage. I once knew a battle between eleven rams, ten of which were in couples, and only four survived the contest!’

These descriptions were the recollections of an old man. Exploring the Downs on foot was acceptable in a boy, even if once it nearly killed him, but as manhood approached there were matters of greater importance for a serious-minded youth. There were books to be read, philosophical points to be earnestly discussed and, above all, the great issues of religion to be resolved in his mind. Their resolution determined the rest of Richard’s life.