We should have said that it was impossible that any should survive but for one authentic instance in recent years, in which a barn-swallow lived through the winter in a semi-torpid state in an outhouse at a country vicarage.

What came of the Newbury birds I do not know, as I left on the 2nd of November--tore myself away, I may say, for, besides meeting with people I didn't know who treated a stranger with sweet friendliness, it is a town which quickly wins one's affections.

It is built of bricks of a good deep rich red--not the painfully bright red so much in use now--and no person has had the bad taste to spoil the harmony by introducing stone and stucco.
Moreover, Newbury has, in Shaw House, an Elizabethan mansion of the rarest beauty.

Let him that is weary of the ugliness and discords in our town buildings go and stand by the ancient cedar at the gate and look across the wide green lawn at this restful house, subdued by time to a tender rosy-red colour on its walls and a deep dark red on its roof, clouded with grey of lichen.
From Newbury and the green meadows of the Kennet the Hampshire hills may be seen, looking like the South Down range at its highest point viewed from the Sussex Weald.

I made for Coombe Hill, the highest hill in Hampshire, and found it a considerable labour to push my machine up from the pretty tree-hidden village of East Woodhay at its foot.