46 ENGLISHSAGA

the English past that to-day only survive in the dress uniform of
the Guards and the huntsman's coat shone in front of the vivid
greenery of May or glowed through the mists of autumn. So,
too, long afterwards when England had grown drab and urban,
old men recalled with a thrill of pleasure the sight of the coaches,
thirty or forty a day in any fair-sized main-road town: "the
dashing steeds, the fanfaronades on the horn, the scarlet coats of
the coachmen and the guard."

. . • * • • • "" •

Down by the coasts the country looked out on the sea. In
white Jane Austen houses along the Solent one could see through
the vistas in the trees the great battleships with their bellying
sails and the stately West Indiamen "sailing between worlds
and worlds with steady wing." Here was the watery highway
from which the new England drew its ever expanding wealth,
with clippers bringing tribute from Pagoda Bay and the far ends
of the earth, and the rough, passionate sailors whom coastwise
England bred, singing as they pulled on the ropes how soon they
would

"be in London city,

Blow my bully boys blow!

And see the girls all dressed so pretty,

Blow! boys, blow!"

Such men, by modern standards, lived lives of almost indescrib-
able hardship, spending years afloat before they set foot on shore
and, cleaned out by a single gargantuan and open-handed
debauch, signing on again a few days later for another voyage.
They were ready, like their fathers who fought under Nelson, to
dare and do almost anything, and the safety and wealth of
England rested on their rude, unconscious shoulders. For them
the great shipbuilding yards on the Thames still turned out
wooden ships of a quality unmatched throughout the world, made
by men who had learnt their craft—part of England's hereditary
wealth—from their forebears. "His father's name before him
was Chips, and his father's name before him was Chips, and they
were all ellipses."

Pride in craftsmanship and skill handed down the generations
were the attributes that made the products of English manufac-
ture sought and honoured throughout the earth. Their hall-
mark was quality, and they bore the unmistakable stamp of a