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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Afoot in England, by W.H. Hudson
+#3 in our series by W.H. Hudson
+
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+Title: Afoot in England
+
+Author: W.H. Hudson
+
+Release Date: April, 2004 [EBook #5406]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 8, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AFOOT IN ENGLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+AFOOT IN ENGLAND
+
+BY W.H. HUDSON
+
+
+Contents
+
+     I. Guide Books: An Introduction,
+    II. On Going Back,
+   III. Walking and Cycling,
+    IV. Seeking a Shelter,
+     V. Wind, Wave, and Spirit,
+    VI. By Swallowfield,
+   VII. Roman Calleva,
+  VIII. A Cold Day at Silchester,
+    IX. Rural Rides,
+     X. The Last of his Name,
+    XI. Salisbury and its Doves,
+   XII. Whitesheet Hill,
+  XIII. Bath and Wells Revisited,
+   XIV. The Return of the Native,
+    XV. Summer Days on the Otter,
+   XVI. In Praise of the Cow,
+  XVII. An Old Road Leading Nowhere,
+ XVIII. Branscombe,
+   XIX. A Abbotsbury,
+    XX. Salisbury Revisited,
+   XXI. Stonehenge,
+  XXII. The Tillage and "The Stones,"
+ XXIII. Following a River,
+  XXIV. Troston,
+   XXV. My Friend Jack,
+
+
+
+
+Chapter One: Guide-Books: An Introduction
+
+Guide-books are so many that it seems probable we have more
+than any other country--possibly more than all the rest of the
+universe together.  Every county has a little library of its
+own--guides to its towns, churches, abbeys, castles, rivers,
+mountains; finally, to the county as a whole.  They are of all
+prices and all sizes, from the diminutive paper-covered
+booklet, worth a penny, to the stout cloth-bound octavo volume
+which costs eight or ten or twelve shillings, or to the
+gigantic folio county history, the huge repository from which
+the guide-book maker gets his materials.  For these great
+works are also guide-books, containing everything we want to
+learn, only made on so huge a scale as to be suited to the
+coat pockets of Brobdingnagians rather than of little ordinary
+men.  The wonder of it all comes in when we find that these
+books, however old and comparatively worthless they may be,
+are practically never wholly out of date.  When a new work is
+brought out (dozens appear annually) and, say, five thousand
+copies sold, it does not throw as many, or indeed any, copies
+of the old book out of circulation: it supersedes nothing.  If
+any man can indulge in the luxury of a new up-to-date guide to
+any place, and gets rid of his old one (a rare thing to do),
+this will be snapped up by poorer men, who will treasure it
+and hand it down or on to others.  Editions of 1860-50-40, and
+older, are still prized, not merely as keepsakes but for study
+or reference.  Any one can prove this by going the round of a
+dozen second-hand booksellers in his own district in London.
+There will be tons of literary rubbish, and good stuff old and
+new, but few guidebooks--in some cases not one.  If you ask
+your man at a venture for, say, a guide to Hampshire, he will
+most probably tell you that he has not one in stock; then, in
+his anxiety to do business, he will, perhaps, fish out a guide
+to Derbyshire, dated 1854--a shabby old book--and offer it
+for four or five shillings, the price of a Crabbe in eight
+volumes, or of Gibbon's Decline and Fall in six volumes, bound
+in calf.  Talk to this man, and to the other eleven, and they
+will tell you that there is always a sale for guide-books
+--that the supply does not keep pace with the demand.  It may be
+taken as a fact that most of the books of this kind published
+during the last half-century--many millions of copies in the
+aggregate--are still in existence and are valued possessions.
+
+There is nothing to quarrel with in all this.  As a people we
+run about a great deal; and having curious minds we naturally
+wish to know all there is to be known, or all that is
+interesting to know, about the places we visit.  Then, again,
+our time as a rule being limited, we want the whole matter
+--history, antiquities, places of interest in the neighbourhood,
+etc. in a nutshell.  The brief book serves its purpose well
+enough; but it is not thrown away like the newspaper and the
+magazines; however cheap and badly got up it may be, it is
+taken home to serve another purpose, to be a help to memory,
+and nobody can have it until its owner removes himself (but
+not his possessions) from this planet; or until the broker
+seizes his belongings, and guide-books, together with other
+books, are disposed of in packages by the auctioneer.
+
+In all this we see that guide-books are very important to us,
+and that there is little or no fault to be found with them,
+since even the worst give some guidance and enable us in
+after times mentally to revisit distant places.  It may then
+be said that there are really no bad guide-books, and that
+those that are good in the highest sense are beyond praise.  A
+reverential sentiment, which is almost religious in character,
+connects itself in our minds with the very name of Murray.  It
+is, however, possible to make an injudicious use of these
+books, and by so doing to miss the fine point of many a
+pleasure.  The very fact that these books are guides to us and
+invaluable, and that we readily acquire the habit of taking
+them about with us and consulting them at frequent intervals,
+comes between us and that rarest and most exquisite enjoyment
+to be experienced amidst novel scenes.  He that visits a place
+new to him for some special object rightly informs himself of
+all that the book can tell him.  The knowledge may be useful;
+pleasure is with him a secondary object.  But if pleasure be
+the main object, it will only be experienced in the highest
+degree by him who goes without book and discovers what old
+Fuller called the "observables" for himself.  There will
+be no mental pictures previously formed; consequently what is
+found will not disappoint.  When the mind has been permitted
+to dwell beforehand on any scene, then, however beautiful or
+grand it may be, the element of surprise is wanting and
+admiration is weak.  The delight has been discounted.
+
+My own plan, which may be recommended only to those who go out
+for pleasure--who value happiness above useless (otherwise
+useful) knowledge, and the pictures that live and glow in
+memory above albums and collections of photographs--is not to
+look at a guide-book until the place it treats of has been
+explored and left behind.
+
+The practical person, to whom this may come as a new idea
+and who wishes not to waste any time in experiments, would
+doubtless like to hear how the plan works.  He will say that
+he certainly wants all the happiness to be got out of his
+rambles, but it is clear that without the book in his pocket
+he would miss many interesting things:  Would the greater
+degree of pleasure experienced in the others be a sufficient
+compensation?  I should say that he would gain more than he
+would lose; that vivid interest and pleasure in a few things
+is preferable to that fainter, more diffused feeling
+experienced in the other case.  Again, we have to take into
+account the value to us of the mental pictures gathered in our
+wanderings.  For we know that only when a scene is viewed
+emotionally, when it produces in us a shock of pleasure, does
+it become a permanent possession of the mind; in other words,
+it registers an image which, when called up before the inner
+eye, is capable of reproducing a measure of the original
+delight.
+
+In recalling those scenes which have given me the greatest
+happiness, the images of which are most vivid and lasting, I
+find that most of them are of scenes or objects which were
+discovered, as it were, by chance, which I had not heard
+of, or else had heard of and forgotten, or which I had not
+expected to see.  They came as a surprise, and in the following
+instance one may see that it makes a vast difference whether
+we do or do not experience such a sensation.
+
+In the course of a ramble on foot in a remote district I came
+to a small ancient town, set in a cuplike depression amidst
+high wood-grown hills.  The woods were of oak in spring
+foliage, and against that vivid green I saw the many-gabled
+tiled roofs and tall chimneys of the old timbered houses,
+glowing red and warm brown in the brilliant sunshine--a scene
+of rare beauty, and yet it produced no shock of pleasure;
+never, in fact, had I looked on a lovely scene for the first
+time so unemotionally.  It seemed to be no new scene, but
+an old familiar one; and that it had certain degrading
+associations which took away all delight.
+
+The reason of this was that a great railway company had
+long been "booming" this romantic spot, and large photographs,
+plain and coloured, of the town and its quaint buildings had
+for years been staring at me in every station and every
+railway carriage which I had entered on that line.  Photography
+degrades most things, especially open-air things; and in this
+case, not only had its poor presentments made the scene too
+familiar, but something of the degradation in the advertising
+pictures seemed to attach itself to the very scene.  Yet even
+here, after some pleasureless days spent in vain endeavours to
+shake off these vulgar associations, I was to experience one
+of the sweetest surprises and delights of my life.
+
+The church of this village-like town is one of its chief
+attractions; it is a very old and stately building, and its
+perpendicular tower, nearly a hundred feet high, is one of the
+noblest in England.  It has a magnificent peal of bells, and
+on a Sunday afternoon they were ringing, filling and flooding
+that hollow in the hills, seeming to make the houses and trees
+and the very earth to tremble with the glorious storm of
+sound.  Walking past the church, I followed the streamlet that
+runs through the town and out by a cleft between the hills to
+a narrow marshy valley, on the other side of which are
+precipitous hills, clothed from base to summit in oak woods.
+As I walked through the cleft the musical roar of the bells
+followed, and was like a mighty current flowing through and
+over me; but as I came out the sound from behind ceased
+suddenly and was now in front, coming back from the hills
+before me.  A sound, but not the same--not a mere echo; and
+yet an echo it was, the most wonderful I had ever heard.
+For now that great tempest of musical noise, composed of a
+multitude of clanging notes with long vibrations, overlapping
+and mingling and clashing together, seemed at the same time
+one and many--that tempest from the tower which had
+mysteriously ceased to be audible came back in strokes or
+notes distinct and separate and multiplied many times.  The
+sound, the echo, was distributed over the whole face of the
+steep hill before me, and was changed in character, and it was
+as if every one of those thousands of oak trees had a peal of
+bells in it, and that they were raining that far-up bright
+spiritual tree music down into the valley below.  As I stood
+listening it seemed to me that I had never heard anything so
+beautiful, nor had any man--not the monk of Eynsham in that
+vision when he heard the Easter bells on the holy Saturday
+evening, and described the sound as "a ringing of a marvellous
+sweetness, as if all the bells in the world, or whatsoever is
+of sounding, had been rung together at once."
+
+Here, then, I had found and had become the possessor of
+something priceless, since in that moment of surprise and
+delight the mysterious beautiful sound, with the whole scene,
+had registered an impression which would outlast all others
+received at that place, where I had viewed all things with but
+languid interest.  Had it not come as a complete surprise, the
+emotion experienced and the resultant mental image would not
+have been so vivid; as it is, I can mentally stand in that
+valley when I will, seeing that green-wooded hill in front of
+me and listen to that unearthly music.
+
+Naturally, after quitting the spot, I looked at the first
+opportunity into a guide-book of the district, only to find
+that it contained not one word about those wonderful illusive
+sounds!  The book-makers had not done their work well, since
+it is a pleasure after having discovered something delightful
+for ourselves to know how others have been affected by it and
+how they describe it.
+
+Of many other incidents of the kind I will, in this chapter,
+relate one more, which has a historical or legendary interest.
+I was staying with the companion of my walks at a village in
+Southern England in a district new to us.  We arrived on a
+Saturday, and next morning after breakfast went out for a long
+walk.  Turning into the first path across the fields on
+leaving the village, we came eventually to an oak wood, which
+was like an open forest, very wild and solitary.  In half an
+hour's walk among the old oaks and underwood we saw no sign of
+human occupancy, and heard nothing but the woodland birds.  We
+heard, and then saw, the cuckoo for the first time that
+season, though it was but April the fourth.  But the cuckoo
+was early that spring and had been heard by some from the
+middle of March.  At length, about half-past ten o'clock, we
+caught sight of a number of people walking in a kind of
+straggling procession by a path which crossed ours at right
+angles, headed by a stout old man in a black smock frock and
+brown leggings, who carried a big book in one hand.  One of
+the processionists we spoke to told us they came from a hamlet
+a mile away on the borders of the wood and were on their way
+to church.  We elected to follow them, thinking that the
+church was at some neighbouring village; to our surprise we
+found it was in the wood, with no other building in sight
+--a small ancient-looking church built on a raised mound,
+surrounded by a wide shallow grass-grown trench, on the border
+of a marshy stream.  The people went in and took their seats,
+while we remained standing just by the door.  Then the priest
+came from the vestry, and seizing the rope vigorously, pulled
+at it for five minutes, after which he showed us where to sit
+and the service began.  It was very pleasant there, with the
+door open to the sunlit forest and the little green churchyard
+without, with a willow wren, the first I had heard, singing
+his delicate little strain at intervals.
+
+The service over, we rambled an hour longer in the wood, then
+returned to our village, which had a church of its own, and
+our landlady, hearing where we had been, told us the story, or
+tradition, of the little church in the wood.  Its origin goes
+very far back to early Norman times, when all the land in this
+part was owned by one of William's followers on whom it had
+been bestowed.  He built himself a house or castle on the edge
+of the forest, where he lived with his wife and two little
+daughters who were his chief delight.  It happened that one
+day when he was absent the two little girls with their female
+attendant went into the wood in search of flowers, and that
+meeting a wild boar they turned and fled, screaming for help.
+The savage beast pursued, and, quickly overtaking them,
+attacked the hindermost, the youngest of the two little girls,
+anal killed her, the others escaping in the meantime.  On the
+following day the father returned, and was mad with grief and
+rage on hearing of the tragedy, and in his madness resolved to
+go alone on foot to the forest and search for the beast and
+taste no food or drink until he had slain it.  Accordingly to
+the forest he went, and roamed through it by day and night,
+and towards the end of the following day he actually found and
+roused the dreadful animal, and although weakened by his long
+fast and fatigue, his fury gave him force to fight and conquer
+it, or else the powers above came to his aid; for when he
+stood spear in hand to wait the charge of the furious beast he
+vowed that if he overcame it on that spot he would build a
+chapel, where God would be worshipped for ever.  And there it
+was raised and has stood to this day, its doors open every
+Sunday to worshippers, with but one break, some time in the
+sixteenth century to the third year of Elizabeth, since when
+there has been no suspension of the weekly service.
+
+That the tradition is not true no one can say.  We know that
+the memory of an action or tragedy of a character to stir the
+feelings and impress the imagination may live unrecorded in
+any locality for long centuries.  And more, we know or
+suppose, from at least one quite familiar instance from
+Flintshire, that a tradition may even take us back to
+prehistoric times and find corroboration in our own day.
+
+But of this story what corroboration is there, and what do
+the books say?  I have consulted the county history, and no
+mention is made of such a tradition, and can only assume that
+the author had never heard it--that he had not the curious
+Aubrey mind.  He only says that it is a very early church
+--how early he does not know--and adds that it was built "for
+the convenience of the inhabitants of the place."  An odd
+statement, seeing that the place has every appearance of
+having always been what it is, a forest, and that the
+inhabitants thereof are weasels, foxes, jays and such-like,
+and doubtless in former days included wolves, boars, roe-deer
+and stags, beings which, as Walt Whitman truly remarks, do not
+worry themselves about their souls.
+
+With this question, however, we need not concern ourselves.
+To me, after stumbling by chance on the little church in that
+solitary woodland place, the story of its origin was accepted
+as true; no doubt it had come down unaltered from generation
+to generation through all those centuries, and it moved my
+pity yet was a delight to hear, as great perhaps as it had
+been to listen to the beautiful chimes many times multiplied
+from the wooded hill.  And if I have a purpose in this book,
+which is without a purpose, a message to deliver and a lesson
+to teach, it is only this--the charm of the unknown, and the
+infinitely greater pleasure in discovering the interesting
+things for ourselves than in informing ourselves of them by
+reading.  It is like the difference in flavour in wild fruits
+and all wild meats found and gathered by our own hands in wild
+places and that of the same prepared and put on the table for
+us.  The ever-varying aspects of nature, of earth and sea and
+cloud, are a perpetual joy to the artist, who waits and watches
+for their appearance, who knows that sun and atmosphere have
+for him revelations without end.  They come and go and mock
+his best efforts; he knows that his striving is in vain--that
+his weak hands and earthy pigments cannot reproduce these
+effects or express his feeling--that, as Leighton said, "every
+picture is a subject thrown away."  But he has his joy none
+the less; it is in the pursuit and in the dream of capturing
+something illusive, mysterious, and inexpressibly beautiful.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Two: On Going Back
+
+
+In looking over the preceding chapter it occurred to me that I
+had omitted something, or rather that it would have been well
+to drop a word of warning to those who have the desire to
+revisit a place where they have experienced a delightful
+surprise.  Alas! they cannot have that sensation a second
+time, and on this account alone the mental image must always
+be better than its reality.  Let the image--the first sharp
+impression--content us.  Many a beautiful picture is spoilt by
+the artist who cannot be satisfied that he has made the best
+of his subject, and retouching his canvas to bring out some
+subtle charm which made the work a success loses it
+altogether.  So in going back, the result of the inevitable
+disillusionment is that the early mental picture loses
+something of its original freshness.  The very fact that the
+delightful place or scene was discovered by us made it the
+shining place it is in memory.  And again, the charm we found
+in it may have been in a measure due to the mood we were in,
+or to the peculiar aspect in which it came before us at the
+first, due to the season, to atmospheric and sunlight effects,
+to some human interest, or to a conjunction of several
+favourable circumstances; we know we can never see it again
+in that aspect and with that precise feeling.
+
+On this account I am shy of revisiting the places where I have
+experienced the keenest delight.  For example, I have no
+desire to revisit that small ancient town among the hills,
+described in the last chapter; to go on a Sunday evening
+through that narrow gorge, filled with the musical roar of the
+church bells; to leave that great sound behind and stand again
+listening to the marvellous echo from the wooded hill on the
+other side of the valley.  Nor would I care to go again in
+search of that small ancient lost church in the forest.  It
+would not be early April with the clear sunbeams shining
+through the old leafless oaks on the floor of fallen yellow
+leaves with the cuckoo fluting before his time; nor would that
+straggling procession of villagers appear, headed by an old
+man in a smock frock with a big book in his hand; nor would I
+hear for the first time the strange history of the church
+which so enchanted me.
+
+I will here give an account of yet another of the many
+well-remembered delightful spots which I would not revisit,
+nor even look upon again if I could avoid doing so by going
+several miles out of my way.
+
+It was green open country in the west of England--very far
+west, although on the east side of the Tamar--in a beautiful
+spot remote from railroads and large towns, and the road by
+which I was travelling (on this occasion on a bicycle) ran or
+serpentined along the foot of a range of low round hills on my
+right hand, while on my left I had a green valley with other
+low round green hills beyond it.  The valley had a marshy
+stream with sedgy margins and occasional clumps of alder and
+willow trees.  It was the end of a hot midsummer day; the sun
+went down a vast globe of crimson fire in a crystal clear sky;
+and as I was going east I was obliged to dismount and stand
+still to watch its setting.  When the great red disc had gone
+down behind the green world I resumed my way but went slowly,
+then slower still, the better to enjoy the delicious coolness
+which came from the moist valley and the beauty of the evening
+in that solitary place which I had never looked on before.
+Nor was there any need to hurry; I had but three or four miles
+to go to the small old town where I intended passing the
+night.  By and by the winding road led me down close to the
+stream at a point where it broadened to a large still pool.
+This was the ford, and on the other side was a small rustic
+village, consisting of a church, two or three farm-houses with
+their barns and outbuildings, and a few ancient-looking stone
+cottages with thatched roofs.  But the church was the main
+thing; it was a noble building with a very fine tower, and
+from its size and beauty I concluded that it was an ancient
+church dating back to the time when there was a passion in the
+West Country and in many parts of England of building these
+great fanes even in the remotest and most thinly populated
+parishes.  In this I was mistaken through having seen it at a
+distance from the other side of the ford after the sun had
+set.
+
+Never, I thought, had I seen a lovelier village with its old
+picturesque cottages shaded by ancient oaks and elms, and the
+great church with its stately tower looking dark against the
+luminous western sky.  Dismounting again I stood for some time
+admiring the scene, wishing that I could make that village my
+home for the rest of my life, conscious at the same time that
+is was the mood, the season, the magical hour which made it
+seem so enchanting.  Presently a young man, the first human
+figure that presented itself to my sight, appeared, mounted on
+a big carthorse and leading a second horse by a halter, and
+rode down into the pool to bathe the animals' legs and give
+them a drink.  He was a sturdy-looking young fellow with a
+sun-browned face, in earth-coloured, working clothes, with a
+small cap stuck on the back of his round curly head; he
+probably imagined himself not a bad-looking young man, for
+while his horses were drinking he laid over on the broad bare
+backs and bending down studied his own reflection in the
+bright water.  Then an old woman came out of a cottage close
+by, and began talking to him in her West Country dialect in a
+thin high-pitched cracked voice.  Their talking was the only
+sound in the village; so silent was it that all the rest of
+its inhabitants might have been in bed and fast asleep; then,
+the conversation ended, the young man rode out with a great
+splashing and the old woman turned into her cottage again, and
+I was left in solitude.
+
+Still I lingered: I could not go just yet; the chances were
+that I should never again see that sweet village in that
+beautiful aspect at the twilight hour.
+
+For now it came into my mind that I could not very well settle
+there for the rest of my life; I could not, in fact, tie
+myself to any place without sacrificing certain other
+advantages I possessed; and the main thing was that by taking
+root I should deprive myself of the chance of looking on still
+other beautiful scenes and experiencing other sweet surprises.
+I was wishing that I had come a little earlier on the scene to
+have had time to borrow the key of the church and get a sight
+of the interior, when all at once I heard a shrill voice and a
+boy appeared running across the wide green space of the
+churchyard.  A second boy followed, then another, then still
+others, and I saw that they were going into the church by the
+side door.  They were choir-boys going to practice.  The
+church was open then, and late as it was I could have half an
+hour inside before it was dark!  The stream was spanned by an
+old stone bridge above the ford, and going over it I at once
+made my way to the great building, but even before entering it
+I discovered that it possessed an organ of extraordinary power
+and that someone was performing on it with a vengeance.
+Inside the noise was tremendous--a bigger noise from an organ,
+it seemed to me, than I had ever heard before, even at the
+Albert Hall and the Crystal Palace, but even more astonishing
+than the uproar was the sight that met my eyes.  The boys,
+nine or ten sturdy little rustics with round sunburnt West
+Country faces, were playing the roughest game ever witnessed
+in a church.  Some were engaged in a sort of flying fight,
+madly pursuing one another up and down the aisles and over the
+pews, and whenever one overtook another he would seize hold of
+him and they would struggle together until one was thrown and
+received a vigorous pommelling.  Those who were not fighting
+were dancing to the music.  It was great fun to them, and they
+were shouting and laughing their loudest only not a sound of
+it all could be heard on account of the thunderous roar of the
+organ which filled and seemed to make the whole building
+tremble.  The boys took no notice of me, and seeing that there
+was a singularly fine west window, I went to it and stood
+there some time with my back to the game which was going on at
+the other end of the building, admiring the beautiful colours
+and trying to make out the subjects depicted.  In the centre
+part, lit by the after-glow in the sky to a wonderful
+brilliance, was the figure of a saint, a lovely young woman in
+a blue robe with an abundance of loose golden-red hair and an
+aureole about her head.  Her pale face wore a sweet and placid
+expression, and her eyes of a pure forget-me-not blue were
+looking straight into mine.  As I stood there the music, or
+noise, ceased and a very profound silence followed--not a
+giggle, not a whisper from the outrageous young barbarians,
+and not a sound of the organist or of anyone speaking to them.
+Presently I became conscious of some person standing almost
+but not quite abreast of me, and turning sharply I found a
+clergyman at my side.  He was the vicar, the person who had
+been letting himself go on the organ; a slight man with a
+handsome, pale, ascetic face, clean-shaven, very dark-eyed,
+looking more like an Italian monk or priest than an English
+clergyman.  But although rigidly ecclesiastic in his
+appearance and dress, there was something curiously engaging
+in him, along with a subtle look which it was not easy to
+fathom.  There was a light in his dark eyes which reminded me
+of a flame seen through a smoked glass or a thin black veil,
+and a slight restless movement about the corners of his mouth
+as if a smile was just on the point of breaking out.  But it
+never quite came; he kept his gravity even when he said things
+which would have gone very well with a smile.
+
+"I see," he spoke, and his penetrating musical voice had, too,
+like his eyes and mouth, an expression of mystery in it, "that
+you are admiring our beautiful west window, especially the
+figure in the centre.  It is quite new--everything is new
+here--the church itself was only built a few years ago.  This
+window is its chief glory: it was done by a good artist--he
+has done some of the most admired windows of recent years; and
+the centre figure is supposed to be a portrait of our generous
+patroness.  At all events she sat for it to him.  You have
+probably heard of Lady Y--?"
+
+"What!" I exclaimed.  "Lady Y--: that funny old woman!"
+
+"No--middle-aged," he corrected, a little frigidly and perhaps
+a little mockingly at the same time.
+
+"Very well, middle-aged if you like; I don't know her
+personally.  One hears about her; but I did not know she had a
+place in these parts."
+
+"She owns most of this parish and has done so much for us that
+we can very well look leniently on a little weakness--her wish
+that the future inhabitants of the place shall not remember her
+as a middle-aged woman not remarkable for good looks--'funny,'
+as you just now said."
+
+He was wonderfully candid, I thought.  But what extraordinary
+benefits had she bestowed on them, I asked, to enable them to
+regard, or to say, that this picture of a very beautiful young
+female was her likeness!
+
+"Why," he said, "the church would not have been built but for
+her.  We were astonished at the sum she offered to contribute
+towards the work, and at once set about pulling the small old
+church down so as to rebuild on the exact site."
+
+"Do you know," I returned, "I can't help saying something you
+will not like to hear.  It is a very fine church, no doubt,
+but it always angers me to hear of a case like this where some
+ancient church is pulled down and a grand new one raised in
+its place to the honour and glory of some rich parvenu with or
+without a brand new title."
+
+"You are not hurting me in the least," he replied, with that
+change which came from time to time in his eyes as if the
+flame behind the screen had suddenly grown brighter.  "I agree
+with every word you say; the meanest church in the land should
+be cherished as long as it will hold together.  But
+unfortunately ours had to come down.  It was very old and
+decayed past mending.  The floor was six feet below the level
+of the surrounding ground and frightfully damp.  It had been
+examined over and over again by experts during the past forty
+or fifty years, and from the first they pronounced it a
+hopeless case, so that it was never restored.  The interior,
+right down to the time of demolition, was like that of most
+country churches of a century ago, with the old black worm-
+eaten pews, in which the worshippers shut themselves up as if
+in their own houses or castles.  On account of the damp we
+were haunted by toads.  You smile, sir, but it was no smiling
+matter for me during my first year as vicar, when I discovered
+that it was the custom here to keep pet toads in the church.
+It sounds strange and funny, no doubt, but it is a fact that
+all the best people in the parish had one of these creatures,
+and it was customary for the ladies to bring it a weekly
+supply of provisions--bits of meat, hard-boiled eggs chopped
+up, and earth-worms, and whatever else they fancied it would
+like--in their reticules.  The toads, I suppose, knew when it
+was Sunday--their feeding day; at all events they would crawl
+out of their holes in the floor under the pews to receive
+their rations--and caresses.  The toads got on my nerves with
+rather unpleasant consequences.  I preached in a way which my
+listeners did not appreciate or properly understand,
+particularly when I took for my subject our duty towards the
+lower animals, including reptiles."
+
+"Batrachians," I interposed, echoing as well as I could the
+tone in which he had rebuked me before.
+
+"Very well, batrachians--I am not a naturalist.  But the
+impression created on their minds appeared to be that I was
+rather an odd person in the pulpit.  When the time came to
+pull the old church down the toad-keepers were bidden to
+remove their pets, which they did with considerable
+reluctance.  What became of them I do not know--I never
+inquired.  I used to have a careful inspection made of the
+floor to make sure that these creatures were not put back
+in the new building, and I am happy to think it is not
+suited to their habits.  The floors are very well cemented,
+and are dry and clean."
+
+Having finished his story he invited me to go to the parsonage
+and get some refreshment.  "I daresay you are thirsty," he
+said.
+
+But it was getting late; it was almost dark in the church by
+now, although the figure of the golden-haired saint still
+glowed in the window and gazed at us out of her blue eyes.  "I
+must not waste more of your time," I added.  "There are your
+boys still patiently waiting to begin their practice--such
+nice quiet fellows!"
+
+"Yes, they are," he returned a little bitterly, a sudden
+accent of weariness in his voice and no trace now of what I
+had seen in his countenance a little while ago--the light that
+shone and brightened behind the dark eye and the little play
+about the corners of the mouth as of dimpling motions on the
+surface of a pool.
+
+And in that new guise, or disguise, I left him, the austere
+priest with nothing to suggest the whimsical or grotesque in
+his cold ascetic face.  Recrossing the bridge I stood a little
+time and looked once more at the noble church tower standing
+dark against the clear amber-coloured sky, and said to myself:
+"Why, this is one of the oddest incidents of my life!  Not
+that I have seen or heard anything very wonderful--just a
+small rustic village, one of a thousand in the land; a big new
+church in which some person was playing rather madly on the
+organ, a set of unruly choir-boys; a handsome stained-glass
+west window, and, finally, a nice little chat with the vicar."
+It was not in these things; it was a sense of something
+strange in the mind, of something in some way unlike all other
+places and people and experiences.  The sensation was like
+that of the reader who becomes absorbed in Henry Newbolt's
+romance of The Old Country, who identifies himself with the
+hero and unconsciously, or without quite knowing how, slips
+back out of this modern world into that of half a thousand
+years ago.  It is the same familiar green land in which he
+finds himself--the same old country and the same sort of
+people with feelings and habits of life and thought
+unchangeable as the colour of grass and flowers, the songs
+of birds and the smell of the earth, yet with a difference.
+I recognized it chiefly in the parish priest I had been
+conversing with; for one thing, his mediaeval mind evidently
+did not regard a sense of humour and of the grotesque as out
+of place in or on a sacred building.  If it had been lighter I
+should have looked at the roof for an effigy of a semi-human
+toad-like creature smiling down mockingly at the worshippers
+as they came and went.
+
+On departing it struck me that it would assuredly be a mistake
+to return to this village and look at it again by the common
+lights of day.  No, it was better to keep the impressions I
+had gathered unspoilt; even to believe, if I could, that no
+such place existed, but that it had existed exactly as I had
+found it, even to the unruly choir-boys, the ascetic-looking
+priest with a strange light in his eyes, and the worshippers
+who kept pet toads in the church.  They were not precisely
+like people of the twentieth century.  As for the eccentric
+middle-aged or elderly person whose portrait adorned the west
+window, she was not the lady I knew something about, but
+another older Lady Y--, who flourished some six or seven
+centuries ago.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Three: Walking and Cycling
+
+
+We know that there cannot be progression without
+retrogression, or gain with no corresponding loss; and often
+on my wheel, when flying along the roads at a reckless rate of
+very nearly nine miles an hour, I have regretted that time of
+limitations, galling to me then, when I was compelled to go on
+foot.  I am a walker still, but with other means of getting
+about I do not feel so native to the earth as formerly.  That
+is a loss.  Yet a poorer walker it would have been hard to
+find, and on even my most prolonged wanderings the end of each
+day usually brought extreme fatigue.  This, too, although my
+only companion was slow--slower than the poor proverbial snail
+or tortoise--and I would leave her half a mile or so behind to
+force my way through unkept hedges, climb hills, and explore
+woods and thickets to converse with every bird and shy little
+beast and scaly creature I could discover.  But mark what
+follows.  In the late afternoon I would be back in the road or
+footpath, satisfied to go slow, then slower still, until--the
+snail in woman shape would be obliged to slacken her pace to
+keep me company, and even to stand still at intervals to give
+me needful rest.
+
+But there were compensations, and one, perhaps the best of
+all, was that this method of seeing the country made us more
+intimate with the people we met and stayed with.  They were
+mostly poor people, cottagers in small remote villages; and
+we, too, were poor, often footsore, in need of their
+ministrations, and nearer to them on that account than if we
+had travelled in a more comfortable way.  I can recall a
+hundred little adventures we met with during those wanderings,
+when we walked day after day, without map or guide-book as our
+custom was, not knowing where the evening would find us, but
+always confident that the people to whom it would fall in the
+end to shelter us would prove interesting to know and would
+show us a kindness that money could not pay for.  Of these
+hundred little incidents let me relate one.
+
+It was near the end of a long summer day when we arrived at a
+small hamlet of about a dozen cottages on the edge of an
+extensive wood--a forest it is called; and, coming to it, we
+said that here we must stay, even if we had to spend the night
+sitting in a porch.  The men and women we talked to all
+assured us that they did not know of anyone who could take us
+in, but there was Mr. Brownjohn, who kept the shop, and was
+the right person to apply to.  Accordingly we went to the
+little general shop and heard that Mr. Brownjohn was not at
+home.  His housekeeper, a fat, dark, voluble woman with
+prominent black eyes, who minded the shop in the master's
+absence, told us that Mr. Brownjohn had gone to a neighbouring
+farm-house on important business, but was expected back
+shortly.  We waited, and by and by he returned, a shabbily
+dressed, weak-looking little old man, with pale blue eyes and
+thin yellowish white hair.  He could not put us up, he said,
+he had no room in his cottage; there was nothing for us but to
+go on to the next place, a village three miles distant, on the
+chance of finding a bed there.  We assured him that we could
+go no further, and after revolving the matter a while longer
+he again said that we could not stay, as there was not a room
+to be had in the place since poor Mrs. Flowerdew had her
+trouble.  She had a spare room and used to take in a lodger
+occasionally, and a good handy woman she was too; but now--no,
+Mrs. Flowerdew could not take us in.  We questioned him, and
+he said that no one had died there and there had been no
+illness.  They were all quite well at Mrs. Flowerdew's; the
+trouble was of another kind.  There was no more to be said
+about it.
+
+As nothing further could be got out of him we went in search
+of Mrs. Flowerdew herself, and found her in a pretty
+vine-clad cottage.  She was a young woman, very poorly
+dressed, with a pleasing but careworn face, and she had four
+small, bright, healthy, happy-faced children.  They were all
+grouped round her as she stood in the doorway to speak to us,
+and they too were poorly dressed and poorly shod.  When we
+told our tale she appeared ready to burst into tears.  Oh, how
+unfortunate it was that she could not take us in!  It would
+have made her so happy, and the few shillings would have been
+such a blessing!  But what could she do now--the landlord's
+agent had put in a distress and carried off and sold all her
+best things.  Every stick out of her nice spare room had been
+taken from them!  Oh, it was cruel!
+
+As we wished to hear more she told us the whole story.  They
+had got behindhand with the rent, but that had often been the
+case, only this time it happened that the agent wanted a
+cottage for a person he wished to befriend, and so gave them
+notice to quit.  But her husband was a high-spirited man and
+determined to stick to his rights, so he informed the agent
+that he refused to move until he received compensation for his
+improvements.
+
+Questioned about these improvements, she led us through to the
+back to show us the ground, about half an acre in extent, part
+of which was used as a paddock for the donkey, and on the
+other part there were about a dozen rather sickly-looking
+young fruit trees.  Her husband, she said, had planted the
+orchard and kept the fence of the paddock in order, and they
+refused to compensate him!  Then she took us up to the spare
+room, empty of furniture, the floor thick with dust.  The bed,
+table, chairs, washhandstand, toilet service--the things she
+had been so long struggling to get together, saving her money
+for months and months, and making so many journeys to the town
+to buy--all, all he had taken away and sold for almost
+nothing!
+
+Then, actually with tears in her eyes, she said that now we
+knew why she couldn't take us in--why she had to seem so
+unkind.
+
+But we are going to stay, we told her.  It was a very good
+room; she could surely get a few things to put in it, and in
+the meantime we would go and forage for provisions to last us
+till Monday.
+
+It is odd to find how easy it is to get what one wants by
+simply taking it!  At first she was amazed at our decision,
+then she was delighted and said she would go out to her
+neighbours and try to borrow all that was wanted in the way of
+furniture and bedding.  Then we returned to Mr. Brownjohn's to
+buy bread, bacon, and groceries, and he in turn sent us to Mr.
+Marling for vegetables.  Mr. Marling heard us, and soberly
+taking up a spade and other implements led us out to his
+garden and dug us a mess of potatoes while we waited.  In the
+meantime good Mrs. Flowerdew had not been idle, and we formed
+the idea that her neighbours must have been her debtors for
+unnumbered little kindnesses, so eager did they now appear to
+do her a good turn.  Out of one cottage a woman was seen
+coming burdened with a big roll of bedding; from others
+children issued bearing cane chairs, basin and ewer, and so
+on, and when we next looked into our room we found it swept
+and scrubbed, mats on the floor, and quite comfortably
+furnished.
+
+After our meal in the small parlour, which had been given up
+to us, the family having migrated into the kitchen, we sat for
+an hour by the open window looking out on the dim forest and
+saw the moon rise--a great golden globe above the trees--and
+listened to the reeling of the nightjars.  So many were the
+birds, reeling on all sides, at various distances, that the
+evening air seemed full of their sounds, far and near, like
+many low, tremulous, sustained notes blown on reeds, rising
+and falling, overlapping and mingling.  And presently from
+the bushes close by, just beyond the weedy, forlorn little
+"orchard," sounded the rich, full, throbbing prelude to the
+nightingale's song, and that powerful melody that in its
+purity and brilliance invariably strikes us with surprise
+seemed to shine out, as it were, against the background of
+that diffused, mysterious purring of the nightjars, even as
+the golden disc of the moon shone against and above the
+darkening skies and dusky woods.
+
+And as we sat there, gazing and listening, a human voice
+came out of the night--a call prolonged and modulated like
+the  coo-ee of the Australian bush, far off and faint; but
+the children in the kitchen heard it at the same time, for
+they too had been listening, and instantly went mad with
+excitement.
+
+"Father!" they all screamed together.  "Father's coming!" and
+out they rushed and away they fled down the darkening road,
+exerting their full voices in shrill answering cries.
+
+We were anxious to see this unfortunate man, who was yet happy
+in a loving family.  He had gone early in the morning in his
+donkey-cart to the little market town, fourteen miles away, to
+get the few necessaries they could afford to buy.  Doubtless
+they would be very few.  We had not long to wait, as the white
+donkey that drew the cart had put on a tremendous spurt at the
+end, notwithstanding that the four youngsters had climbed in
+to add to his burden.  But what was our surprise to behold in
+the charioteer a tall, gaunt, grey-faced old man with long
+white hair and beard!  He must have been seventy, that old man
+with a young wife and four happy bright-eyed little children!
+
+We could understand it better when he finally settled down in
+his corner in the kitchen and began to relate the events of
+the day, addressing his poor little wife, now busy darning
+or patching an old garment, while the children, clustered
+at his knee, listened as to a fairy tale.  Certainly this
+white-haired man had not grown old in mind; he was keenly
+interested in all he saw and heard, and he had seen and heard
+much in the little market town that day.  Cattle and pigs and
+sheep and shepherds and sheepdogs; farmers, shopkeepers,
+dealers, publicans, tramps, and gentlefolks in carriages and
+on horseback; shops, too, with beautiful new things in the
+windows; millinery, agricultural implements, flowers and fruit
+and vegetables; toys and books and sweeties of all colours.
+And the people he had met on the road and at market, and what
+they had said to him about the weather and their business and
+the prospects of the year, how their wives and children were,
+and the clever jokes they had made, and his own jokes, which
+were the cleverest of all.  If he had just returned from
+Central Africa or from Thibet he could not have had more to
+tell them nor told it with greater zest.
+
+We went to our room, but until the small hours the wind of the
+old traveller's talk could still be heard at intervals from
+the kitchen, mingled with occasional shrill explosions of
+laughter from the listening children.
+
+It happened that on the following day, spent in idling in the
+forest and about the hamlet, conversing with the cottagers, we
+were told that our old man was a bit of a humbug; that he was
+a great talker, with a hundred schemes for the improvement
+of his fortunes, and, incidently, for the benefit of his
+neighbours and the world at large; but nothing came of it all
+and he was now fast sinking into the lowest depths of poverty.
+Yet who would blame him?  'Tis the nature of the gorse to be
+"unprofitably gay."  All that, however, is a question for the
+moralist; the point now is that in walking, even in that poor
+way, when, on account of physical weakness, it was often a
+pain and weariness, there are alleviations which may be more
+to us than positive pleasures, and scenes to delight the eye
+that are missed by the wheelman in his haste, or but dimly
+seen or vaguely surmised in passing--green refreshing nooks
+and crystal streamlets, and shadowy woodland depths with
+glimpses of a blue sky beyond--all in the wilderness of the
+human heart.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Four: Seeking a Shelter
+
+
+The "walks" already spoken of, at a time when life had
+little or no other pleasure for us on account of poverty and
+ill-health, were taken at pretty regular intervals two or
+three times a year.  It all depended on our means; in very
+lean years there was but one outing.  It was impossible to
+escape altogether from the immense unfriendly wilderness of
+London simply because, albeit "unfriendly," it yet appeared to
+be the only place in the wide world where our poor little
+talents could earn us a few shillings a week to live on.
+Music and literature! but I fancy the nearest crossing-sweeper
+did better, and could afford to give himself a more generous
+dinner every day.  It occasionally happened that an article
+sent to some magazine was not returned, and always after so
+many rejections to have one accepted and paid for with a
+cheque worth several pounds was a cause of astonishment, and
+was as truly a miracle as if the angel of the sun had
+compassionately thrown us down a handful of gold.  And out of
+these little handfuls enough was sometimes saved for the
+country rambles at Easter and Whitsuntide and in the autumn.
+It was during one of these Easter walks, when seeking for a
+resting-place for the night, that we met with another
+adventure worth telling.
+
+We had got to that best part of Surrey not yet colonized by
+wealthy men from the City, but where all things are as they
+were of old, when, late in the day, we came to a pleasant
+straggling village with one street a mile long.  Here we
+resolved to stay, and walked the length of the street making
+inquiries, but were told by every person we spoke to that the
+only place we could stay at was the inn--the "White Hart."
+When we said we preferred to stay at a cottage they smiled a
+pitying smile.  No, there was no such place.  But we were
+determined not to go to the inn, although it had a very
+inviting look, and was well placed with no other house near
+it, looking on the wide village green with ancient trees
+shading the road on either side.
+
+Having passed it and got to the end of the village, we turned
+and walked back, still making vain inquiries, passing it
+again, and when once more at the starting-point we were in
+despair when we spied a man coming along the middle of the
+road and went out to meet him to ask the weary question for
+the last time.  His appearance was rather odd as he came
+towards us on that blowy March evening with dust and straws
+flying past and the level sun shining full on him.  He
+was tall and slim, with a large round smooth face and big
+pale-blue innocent-looking eyes, and he walked rapidly but in
+a peculiar jerky yet shambling manner, swinging and tossing
+his legs and arms about.  Moving along in this disjointed
+manner in his loose fluttering clothes he put one in mind of
+a big flimsy newspaper blown along the road by the wind.
+This unpromising-looking person at once told us that there was
+a place where we could stay; he knew it well, for it happened
+to be his father's house and his own home.  It was away at the
+other end of the village.  His people had given accommodation
+to strangers before, and would be glad to receive us and make
+us comfortable.
+
+Surprised, and a little doubtful of our good fortune, I asked
+my young man if he could explain the fact that so many of his
+neighbours had assured us that no accommodation was to be had
+in the village except at the inn.  He did not make a direct
+reply.  He said that the ways of the villagers were not the
+ways of his people.  He and all his house cherished only kind
+feelings towards their neighbours; whether those feelings were
+returned or not, it was not for him to say.  And there was
+something else.  A small appointment which would keep a man
+from want for the term of his natural life, without absorbing
+all his time, had become vacant in the village.  Several of
+the young men in the place were anxious to have it; then he,
+too, came forward as a candidate, and all the others jeered at
+him and tried to laugh him out of it.  He cared nothing for
+that, and when the examination came off he proved the best man
+and got the place.  He had fought his fight and had overcome
+all his enemies; if they did not like him any the better for
+his victory, and did and said little things to injure him, he
+did not mind much, he could afford to forgive them.
+
+Having finished his story, he said good-bye, and went his way,
+blown, as it were, along the road by the wind.
+
+We were now very curious to see the other members of his
+family; they would, we imagined, prove amusing, if nothing
+better.  They proved a good deal better.  The house we sought,
+for a house it was, stood a little way back from the street
+in a large garden.  It had in former times been an inn, or
+farm-house, possibly a manor-house, and was large, with
+many small rooms, and short, narrow, crooked staircases,
+half-landings and narrow passages, and a few large rooms,
+their low ceilings resting on old oak beams, black as ebony.
+Outside, it was the most picturesque and doubtless the oldest
+house in the village; many-gabled, with very tall ancient
+chimneys, the roofs of red tiles mottled grey and yellow with
+age and lichen.  It was a surprise to find a woodman--for that
+was what the man was--living in such a big place.  The woodman
+himself, his appearance and character, gave us a second and
+greater surprise.  He was a well-shaped man of medium height;
+although past middle life he looked young, and had no white
+thread in his raven-black hair and beard.  His teeth were
+white and even, and his features as perfect as I have seen in
+any man.  His eyes were pure dark blue, contrasting rather
+strangely with his pale olive skin and intense black hair.
+Only a woodman, but he might have come of one of the oldest
+and best families in the country, if there is any connection
+between good blood and fine features and a noble expression.
+Oddly enough, his surname was an uncommon and aristocratic
+one.  His wife, on the other hand, although a very good woman
+as we found, had a distinctly plebeian countenance.  One day
+she informed us that she came of a different and better class
+than her husband's.  She was the daughter of a small
+tradesman, and had begun life as a lady's-maid: her husband
+was nothing but a labourer; his people had been labourers for
+generations, consequently her marriage to him had involved a
+considerable descent in the social scale.  Hearing this, it
+was hard to repress a smile.
+
+The contrast between this man and the ordinary villager of his
+class was as great in manners and conversation as in features
+and expression.  His combined dignity and gentleness, and
+apparent unconsciousness of any caste difference between man
+and man, were astonishing in one who had been a simple toiler
+all his life.
+
+There were some grown-up children, others growing up, with
+others that were still quite small.  The boys, I noticed,
+favoured their mother, and had commonplace faces; the girls
+took after their father, and though their features were not so
+perfect they were exceptionally good-looking.  The eldest son
+--the disjointed, fly-away-looking young man who had conquered
+all his enemies--had a wife and child.  The eldest daughter
+was also married, and had one child.  Altogether the three
+families numbered about sixteen persons, each family having
+its separate set of rooms, but all dining at one table.
+How did they do it?  It seemed easy enough to them.  They were
+serious people in a sense, although always cheerful and
+sometimes hilarious when together of an evening, or at their
+meals.  But they regarded life as a serious matter, a state of
+probation; they were non-smokers, total abstainers, diligent
+at their work, united, profoundly religious.  A fresh wonder
+came to light when I found that this poor woodman, with so
+large a family to support, who spent ten or twelve hours every
+day at his outdoor work, had yet been able out of his small
+earnings to buy bricks and other materials, and, assisted by
+his sons, to build a chapel adjoining his house.  Here he held
+religious services on Sundays, and once or twice of an evening
+during the week.  These services consisted of extempore
+prayers, a short address, and hymns accompanied by a
+harmonium, which they all appeared able to play.
+
+What his particular doctrine was I did not inquire, nor did I
+wish for any information on that point.  Doubtless he was a
+Dissenter of some kind living in a village where there was no
+chapel; the services were for the family, but were also
+attended by a few of the villagers and some persons from
+neighbouring farms who preferred a simpler form of worship to
+that of the Church.
+
+It was not strange that this little community should have been
+regarded with something like disfavour by the other villagers.
+For these others, man for man, made just as much money, and
+paid less rent for their small cottages, and, furthermore,
+received doles from the vicar and his well-to-do parishioners,
+yet they could not better their position, much less afford the
+good clothing, books, music, and other pleasant things which
+the independent woodman bestowed on his family.  And they knew
+why.  The woodman's very presence in their midst was a
+continual reproach, a sermon on improvidence and intemperance,
+which they could not avoid hearing by thrusting their fingers
+into their ears.
+
+During my stay with these people something occurred to cause
+them a very deep disquiet.  The reader will probably smile
+when I tell them what it was.  Awaking one night after
+midnight I heard the unusual sound of voices in earnest
+conversation in the room below; this went on until I fell
+asleep again.  In the morning we noticed that our landlady had
+a somewhat haggard face, and that the daughters also had pale
+faces, with purple marks under the eyes, as if they had kept
+their mother company in some sorrowful vigil.  We were not
+left long in ignorance of the cause of this cloud.  The good
+woman asked if we had been much disturbed by the talking.  I
+answered that I had heard voices and had supposed that friends
+from a distance had arrived overnight and that they had sat up
+talking to a late hour.  No--that was not it, she said; but
+someone had arrived late, a son who was sixteen years old, and
+who had been absent for some days on a visit to relations in
+another county.  When they gathered round him to hear his news
+he confessed that while away he had learnt to smoke, and he
+now wished them to know that he had well considered the
+matter, and was convinced that it was not wrong nor harmful to
+smoke, and was determined not to give up his tobacco.  They
+had talked to him--father, mother, brothers, and sisters
+--using every argument they could find or invent to move him,
+until it was day and time for the woodman to go to his woods,
+and the others to their several occupations.  But their
+"all-night sitting" had been wasted; the stubborn youth had
+not been convinced nor shaken.  When, after morning prayers,
+they got up from their knees, the sunlight shining in upon
+them, they had made a last appeal with tears in their eyes,
+and he had refused to give the promise they asked.  The poor
+woman was greatly distressed.  This young fellow, I thought,
+favours his mother in features, but mentally he is perhaps
+more like his father.  Being a smoker myself I ventured to put
+in a word for him.  They were distressing themselves too much,
+I told her; smoking in moderation was not only harmless,
+especially to those who worked out of doors, but it was a
+well-nigh universal habit, and many leading men in the
+religious world, both churchmen and dissenters, were known to
+be smokers.
+
+Her answer, which came quickly enough, was that they did not
+regard the practice of smoking as in itself bad, but they knew
+that in some circumstances it was inexpedient; and in the case
+of her son they were troubled at the thought of what smoking
+would ultimately lead to.  People, she continued, did not care
+to smoke, any more than they did to eat and drink, in
+solitude.  It was a social habit, and it was inevitable that
+her boy should look for others to keep him company in smoking.
+There would be no harm in that in the summer-time when young
+people like to keep out of doors until bedtime; but during the
+long winter evenings he would have to look for his companions
+in the parlour of the public-house.  And it would not be easy,
+scarcely possible, to sit long among the others without
+drinking a little beer.  It is really no more wrong to drink
+a little beer than to smoke, he would say; and it would be
+true.  One pipe would lead to another.  and one glass of
+beer to another.  The habit would be formed and at last all
+his evenings and all his earnings would be spent in the
+public-house.
+
+She was right, and I had nothing more to say except to wish
+her success in her efforts.
+
+It is curious that the strongest protests against the evils of
+the village pubic, which one hears from village women, come
+from those who are not themselves sufferers.  Perhaps it is
+not curious.  Instinctively we hide our sores, bodily and
+mental, from the public gaze.
+
+Not long ago I was in a small rustic village in Wiltshire,
+perhaps the most charming village I have seen in that country.
+There was no inn or ale-house, and feeling very thirsty after
+my long walk I went to a cottage and asked the woman I saw
+there for a drink of milk.  She invited me in, and spreading a
+clean cloth on the table, placed a jug of new milk, a loaf,
+and butter before me.  For these good things she proudly
+refused to accept payment.  As she was a handsome young woman,
+with a clear, pleasant voice, I was glad to have her sit there
+and talk to me while I refreshed myself.  Besides, I was in
+search of information and got it from her during our talk.  My
+object in going to the village was to see a woman who, I had
+been told, was living there.  I now heard that her cottage was
+close by, but unfortunately, while anxious to see her, I had
+no excuse for calling.
+
+"Do you think," said I to my young hostess, "that it would do
+to tell her that I had heard something of her strange history
+and misfortunes, and wished to offer her a little help?  Is
+she very poor?"
+
+"Oh, no," she replied.  "Please do not offer her money, if you
+see her.  She would be offended.  There is no one in this
+village who would take a shilling as a gift from a stranger.
+We all have enough; there is not a poor person among us."
+
+"What a happy village!" I exclaimed.  "Perhaps you are all
+total abstainers."
+
+She laughed, and said that they all brewed their own beer
+--there was not a total abstainer among them.  Every cottager
+made from fifty to eighty gallons, or more, and they drank
+beer every day, but very moderately, while it lasted.  They
+were all very sober; their children would have to go to some
+neighbouring village to see a tipsy man.
+
+I remarked that at the next village, which had three
+public-houses, there were a good marry persons so poor that
+they would gladly at any time take a shilling from any one.
+
+It was the same everywhere in the district, she said, except
+in that village which had no public-house.  Not only were they
+better off, and independent of blanket societies and charity
+in all forms, but they were infinitely happier.  And after the
+day's work the men came home to spend the evening with their
+wives and children.
+
+At this stage I was surprised by a sudden burst of passion on
+her part.  She stood up, her face flushing red, and solemnly
+declared that if ever a public-house was opened in that
+village, and if the men took to spending their evenings in it,
+her husband with them, she would not endure such a condition
+of things--she wondered that so many women endured it--but
+would take her little ones and go away to earn her own living
+under some other roof!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Five: Wind, Wave, and Spirit
+
+
+The rambles I have described were mostly inland: when by
+chance they took us down to the sea our impressions and
+adventures appeared less interesting.  Looking back on the
+holiday, it would seem to us a somewhat vacant time compared
+to one spent in wandering from village to village.  I mean if
+we do not take into account that first impression which the
+sea invariably makes on us on returning to it after a long
+absence--the shock of recognition and wonder and joy as if we
+had been suffering from loss of memory and it had now suddenly
+come back to us.  That brief moving experience over, there is
+little the sea can give us to compare with the land.  How
+could it be otherwise in our case, seeing that we were by it
+in a crowd, our movements and way of life regulated for us in
+places which appear like overgrown and ill-organized
+convalescent homes?  There was always a secret intense dislike
+of all parasitic and holiday places, an uncomfortable feeling
+which made the pleasure seem poor and the remembrance of days
+so spent hardly worth dwelling on.  And as we are able to keep
+in or throw out of our minds whatever we please, being
+autocrats in our own little kingdom, I elected to cast away
+most of the memories of these comparatively insipid holidays.
+But not all, and of those I retain I will describe at least
+two, one in the present chapter on the East Anglian coast, the
+other later on.
+
+It was cold, though the month was August; it blew and the sky
+was grey and rain beginning to fall when we came down about
+noon to a small town on the Norfolk coast, where we hoped to
+find lodging and such comforts as could be purchased out of a
+slender purse.  It was a small modern pleasure town of an
+almost startling appearance owing to the material used in
+building its straight rows of cottages and its ugly square
+houses and villas.  This was an orange-brown stone found in
+the neighbourhood, the roofs being all of hard, black slate.
+I had never seen houses of such a colour, it was stronger,
+more glaring and aggressive than the reddest brick, and there
+was not a green thing to partially screen or soften it, nor
+did the darkness of the wet weather have any mitigating effect
+on it.  The town was built on high ground, with an open grassy
+space before it sloping down to the cliff in which steps had
+been cut to give access to the beach, and beyond the cliff we
+caught sight of the grey, desolate, wind-vexed sea.  But the
+rain was coming down more and more heavily, turning the
+streets into torrents, so that we began to envy those who had
+found a shelter even in so ugly a place.  No one would take us
+in.  House after house, street after street, we tried, and at
+every door with "Apartments to Let" over it where we knocked
+the same hateful landlady-face appeared with the same
+triumphant gleam in the fish-eyes and the same smile on the
+mouth that opened to tell us delightedly that she and the town
+were "full up"; that never had there been known such a rush of
+visitors; applicants were being turned away every hour from
+every door!
+
+After three miserable hours spent in this way we began
+inquiring at all the shops, and eventually at one were told of
+a poor woman in a small house in a street a good way back from
+the front who would perhaps be able to taken us in.  To this
+place we went and knocked at a low door in a long blank wall
+in a narrow street; it was opened to us by a pale thin
+sad-looking woman in a rusty black gown, who asked us into a
+shabby parlour, and agreed to take us in until we could find
+something better.  She had a gentle voice and was full of
+sympathy, and seeing our plight took us into the kitchen
+behind the parlour, which was living- and working-room as
+well, to dry ourselves by the fire.
+
+"The greatest pleasure in life," said once a magnificent young
+athlete, a great pedestrian, to me, "is to rest when you are
+tired."  And, I should add, to dry and warm yourself by a big
+fire when wet and cold, and to eat and drink when you are
+hungry and thirsty.  All these pleasures were now ours, for
+very soon tea and chops were ready for us; and so strangely
+human, so sister-like did this quiet helpful woman seem after
+our harsh experiences on that rough rainy day--that we
+congratulated ourselves on our good fortune in having found
+such a haven, and soon informed her that we wanted no "better
+place."
+
+She worked with her needle to support herself and her one
+child, a little boy of ten; and by and by when he came in
+pretty wet from some outdoor occupation we made his
+acquaintance and the discovery that he was a little boy of an
+original character.  He was so much to his mother, who, poor
+soul, had nobody else in the world to love, that she was
+always haunted by the fear of losing him.  He was her boy, the
+child of her body, exclusively her own, unlike all other boys,
+and her wise heart told her that if she put him in a school he
+would be changed so that she would no longer know him for her
+boy.  For it is true that our schools are factories, with a
+machinery to unmake and remake, or fabricate, the souls of
+children much in the way in which shoddy is manufactured.  You
+may see a thousand rags or garments of a thousand shapes and
+colours cast in to be boiled, bleached, pulled to pieces,
+combed and woven, and finally come out as a piece of cloth a
+thousand yards long of a uniform harmonious pattern, smooth,
+glossy, and respectable.  His individuality gone, he would in
+a sense be lost to her; and although by nature a weak timid
+woman, though poor, and a stranger in a strange place, this
+thought, or feeling, or "ridiculous delusion" as most people
+would call it, had made her strong, and she had succeeded in
+keeping her boy out of school.
+
+Hers was an interesting story.  Left alone in the world she
+had married one in her own class, very happily as she
+imagined.  He was in some business in a country town, well off
+enough to provide a comfortable home, and he was very good; in
+fact, his one fault was that he was too good, too open-hearted
+and fond of associating with other good fellows like himself,
+and of pledging them in the cup that cheers and at the same
+time inebriates.  Nevertheless, things went very well for a
+time, until the child was born, the business declined, and
+they began to be a little pinched.  Then it occurred to her
+that she, too, might be able to do something.  She started
+dressmaking, and as she had good taste and was clever and
+quick, her business soon prospered.  This pleased him; it
+relieved him from the necessity of providing for the home,
+and enabled him to follow his own inclination, which was to
+take things easily--to be an idle man, with a little ready
+money in his pocket for betting and other pleasures.  The
+money was now provided out of "our business."  This state of
+things continued without any change, except that process of
+degeneration which continued in him, until the child was about
+four years old, when all at once one day he told her they were
+not doing as well as they might.  She was giving far too much
+of her time and attention to domestic matters--to the child
+especially.  Business was business--a thing it was hard for a
+woman to understand--and it was impossible for her to give her
+mind properly to it with her thoughts occupied with the child.
+It couldn't be done.  Let the child be put away, he said, and
+the receipts would probably be doubled.  He had been making
+inquiries and found that for a modest annual payment the boy
+could be taken proper care of at a distance by good decent
+people he had heard of.
+
+She had never suspected such a thought in his mind, and this
+proposal had the effect of a stunning blow.  She answered not
+one word: he said his say and went out, and she knew she would
+not see him again for many hours, perhaps not for some days;
+she knew, too, that he would say no more to her on the
+subject, that it would all be arranged about the child with or
+without her consent.  His will was law, her wishes nothing.
+For she was his wife and humble obedient slave; never had she
+pleaded with or admonished him and never complained, even
+when, after her long day of hard work, he came in at ten or
+eleven o'clock at night with several of his pals, all excited
+with drink and noisy as himself, to call for supper.
+Nevertheless she had been happy--intensely happy, because of
+the child.  The love for the man she had married, wondering
+how one so bright and handsome and universally admired and
+liked could stoop to her, who had nothing but love and worship
+to give in return--that love was now gone and was not missed,
+so much greater and more satisfying was the love for her boy.
+And now she must lose him.  Two or three silent miserable days
+passed by while she waited for the dreadful separation, until
+the thought of it became unendurable and she resolved to keep
+her child and sacrifice everything else.  Secretly she
+prepared for flight, getting together the few necessary things
+she could carry; then, with the child in her arms, she stole
+out one evening and began her flight, which took her all
+across England at its widest part, and ended at this small
+coast town, the best hiding-place she could think of.
+
+The boy was a queer little fellow, healthy but colourless,
+with strangely beautiful grey eyes which, on first seeing
+them, almost startled one with their intelligence.  He was shy
+and almost obstinately silent, but when I talked to him on
+certain subjects the intense suppressed interest he felt would
+show itself in his face, and by and by it would burst out in
+speech--an impetuous torrent of words in a high shrill voice.
+He reminded me of a lark in a cage.  Watch it in its prison
+when the sun shines forth--when, like the captive falcon in
+Dante, it is "cheated by a gleam"--its wing-tremblings, and
+all its little tentative motions, how the excitement grows and
+grows in it, until, although shut up and flight denied it, the
+passion can no longer be contained and it bursts out in a
+torrent of shrill and guttural sounds, which, if it were free
+and soaring, would be its song.  His passion was all for
+nature, and his mother out of her small earnings had managed
+to get quite a number of volumes together for him.  These he
+read and re-read until he knew them by heart; and on Sundays,
+or any other day they could take, those two lonely ones would
+take a basket containing their luncheon, her work and a book
+or two, and set out on a long ramble along the coast to pass
+the day in some solitary spot among the sandhills.
+
+With these two, the gentle woman and her quiet boy over his
+book, and the kitchen fire to warm and dry us after each
+wetting, the bad weather became quite bearable although it
+lasted many days.  And it was amazingly bad.  The wind blew
+with a fury from the sea; it was hard to walk against it.  The
+people in hundreds waited in their dull apartments for a lull,
+and when it came they poured out like hungry sheep from the
+fold, or like children from a school, swarming over the green
+slope down to the beach, to scatter far and wide over the
+sands.  Then, in a little while; a new menacing blackness
+would come up out of the sea, and by and by a fresh storm of
+wind would send the people scuttling back into shelter.  So it
+went on day after day, and when night came the sound of the
+ever-troubled sea grew louder, so that, shut up in our little
+rooms in that back street, we had it in our ears, except at
+intervals, when the wind howled loud enough to drown its great
+voice, and hurled tempests of rain and hail against the roofs
+and windows.
+
+To me the most amazing thing was the spectacle of the swifts.
+It was late for them, near the end of August; they should now
+have been far away on their flight to Africa; yet here they
+were, delaying on that desolate east coast in wind and wet,
+more than a hundred of them.  It was strange to see so many at
+one spot, and I could only suppose that they had congregated
+previous to migration at that unsuitable place, and were being
+kept back by the late breeders, who had not yet been wrought
+up to the point of abandoning their broods.  They haunted a
+vast ruinous old barn-like building near the front, which was
+probably old a century before the town was built, and about
+fifteen to twenty pairs had their nests under the eaves.  Over
+this building they hung all day in a crowd, rising high to
+come down again at a frantic speed, and at each descent a few
+birds could be seen to enter the holes, while others rushed
+out to join the throng, and then all rose and came down again
+and swept round and round in a furious chase, shrieking as if
+mad.  At all hours they drew me to that spot, and standing
+there, marvelling at their swaying power and the fury that
+possessed them, they appeared to me like tormented beings, and
+were like those doomed wretches in the halls of Eblis whose
+hearts were in a blaze of unquenchable fire, and who, every
+one with hands pressed to his breast, went spinning round in
+an everlasting agonized dance.  They were tormented and crazed
+by the two most powerful instincts of birds pulling in
+opposite directions--the parental instinct and the passion of
+migration which called them to the south.
+
+In such weather, especially on that naked desolate coast,
+exposed to the fury of the winds, one marvels at our modern
+craze for the sea; not merely to come and gaze upon and listen
+to it, to renew our youth in its salt, exhilarating waters and
+to lie in delicious idleness on the warm shingle or mossy
+cliff; but to be always, for days and weeks and even for
+months, at all hours, in all weathers, close to it, with its
+murmur, "as of one in pain," for ever in our ears.
+
+Undoubtedly it is an unnatural, a diseased, want in us, the
+result of a life too confined and artificial in close dirty
+overcrowded cities.  It is to satisfy this craving that towns
+have sprung up everywhere on our coasts and extended their
+ugly fronts for miles and leagues, with their tens of
+thousands of windows from which the city-sickened wretches may
+gaze and gaze and listen and feed their sick souls with the
+ocean.  That is to say, during their indoor hours; at other
+times they walk or sit or lie as close as they can to it,
+following the water as it ebbs and reluctantly retiring before
+it when it returns.  It was not so formerly, before the
+discovery was made that the sea could cure us.  Probably our
+great-grandfathers didn't even know they were sick; at all
+events, those who had to live in the vicinity of the sea were
+satisfied to be a little distance from it, out of sight of its
+grey desolation and, if possible, out of hearing of its
+"accents disconsolate."  This may be seen anywhere on our
+coasts; excepting the seaports and fishing settlements, the
+towns and villages are almost always some distance from the
+sea, often in a hollow or at all events screened by rising
+ground and woods from it.  The modern seaside place has, in
+most cases, its old town or village not far away but quite as
+near as the healthy ancients wished to be.
+
+The old village nearest to our little naked and ugly modern
+town was discovered at a distance of about two miles, but it
+might have been two hundred, so great was the change to its
+sheltered atmosphere.  Loitering in its quiet streets among
+the old picturesque brick houses with tiled or thatched roofs
+and tall chimneys--ivy and rose and creeper-covered, with a
+background of old oaks and elms--I had the sensation of having
+come back to my own home.  In that still air you could hear
+men and women talking fifty or a hundred yards away, the cry
+or laugh of a child and the clear crowing of a cock, also the
+smaller aerial sounds of nature, the tinkling notes of tits
+and other birdlings in the trees, the twitter of swallows and
+martins, and the "lisp of leaves and ripple of rain."  It was
+sweet and restful in that home-like place, and hard to leave
+it to go back to the front to face the furious blasts once
+more.  Rut there were compensations.
+
+The little town, we have seen, was overcrowded with late
+summer visitors, all eager for the sea yet compelled to waste
+so much precious time shut up in apartments, and at every
+appearance of a slight improvement in the weather they would
+pour out of the houses and the green slope would be covered
+with a crowd of many hundreds, all hurrying down to the beach.
+The crowd was composed mostly of women--about three to every
+man, I should say--and their children; and it was one of the
+most interesting crowds I had ever come across on account of
+the large number of persons in it of a peculiarly fine type,
+which chance had brought together at that spot.  It was the
+large English blonde, and there were so many individuals of
+this type that they gave a character to the crowd so that
+those of a different physique and colour appeared to be fewer
+than they were and were almost overlooked.  They came from
+various places about the country, in the north and the
+Midlands, and appeared to be of the well-to-do classes; they,
+or many of them, were with their families but without their
+lords.  They were mostly tall and large in every way, very
+white-skinned, with light or golden hair and large light blue
+eyes.  A common character of these women was their quiet
+reposeful manner; they walked and talked and rose up and sat
+down and did everything, in fact, with an air of deliberation;
+they gazed in a slow steady way at you, and were dignified,
+some even majestic, and were like a herd of large beautiful
+white cows.  The children, too, especially the girls, some
+almost as tall as their large mothers, though still in short
+frocks, were very fine.  The one pastime of these was
+paddling, and it was a delight to see their bare feet and
+legs.  The legs of those who had been longest on the spot
+--probably several weeks in some instances--were of a deep
+nutty brown hue suffused with pink; after these a gradation of
+colour, light brown tinged with buff, pinkish buff and cream,
+like the Gloire de Dijon rose; and so on to the delicate
+tender pink of the clover blossom; and, finally, the purest
+ivory white of the latest arrivals whose skins had not yet
+been caressed and coloured by sun and wind.
+
+How beautiful are the feet of these girls by the sea who bring
+us glad tidings of a better time to come and the day of a
+nobler courage, a freer larger life when garments which have
+long oppressed and hindered shall have been cast away!
+It was, as I have said, mere chance which had brought so many
+persons of a particular type together on this occasion, and I
+thought I might go there year after year and never see the
+like again.  As a fact I did return when August came round and
+found a crowd of a different character.  The type was there
+but did not predominate: it was no longer the herd of
+beautiful white and strawberry cows with golden horns and
+large placid eyes.  Nothing in fact was the same, for when I
+looked for the swifts there were no more than about twenty
+birds instead of over a hundred, and although just on the eve
+of departure they were not behaving in the same excited
+manner.
+
+Probably I should not have thought so much about that
+particular crowd in that tempestuous August, and remembered it
+so vividly, but for the presence of three persons in it and
+the strange contrast they made to the large white type I have
+described.  These were a woman and her two little girls, aged
+about eight and ten respectively, but very small for their
+years.  She was a little black haired and black-eyed woman
+with a pale sad dark face, on which some great grief or
+tragedy had left its shadow; very quiet and subdued in her
+manner; she would sit on a chair on the beach when the weather
+permitted, a book on her knees, while her two little ones
+played about, chasing and flying from the waves, or with the
+aid of their long poles vaulting from rock to rock.  They were
+dressed in black frocks and scarlet blouses, which set off
+their beautiful small dark faces; their eyes sparkled like
+black diamonds, and their loose hair was a wonder to see, a
+black mist or cloud about their heads and necks composed of
+threads fine as gossamer, blacker than jet and shining like
+spun glass-hair that looked as if no comb or brush could ever
+tame its beautiful wildness.  And in spirit they were what
+they seemed: such a wild, joyous, frolicsome spirit with such
+grace and fleetness one does not look for in human beings, but
+only in birds or in some small bird-like volatile mammal--a
+squirrel or a marmoset of the tropical forest, or the
+chinchilla of the desolate mountain slopes, the swiftest,
+wildest, loveliest, most airy and most vocal of small
+beasties.  Occasionally to watch their wonderful motions more
+closely and have speech with them, I followed when they raced
+over the sands or flew about over the slippery rocks, and felt
+like a cochin-china fowl, or muscovy duck, or dodo, trying to
+keep pace with a humming-bird.  Their voices were well suited
+to their small brilliant forms; not loud, though high-pitched
+and singularly musical and penetrative, like the high clear
+notes of a skylark at a distance.  They also reminded me of
+certain notes, which have a human quality, in some of our
+songsters--the swallow, redstart, pied wagtail, whinchat, and
+two or three others.  Such pure and beautiful sounds are
+sometimes heard in human voices, chiefly in children, when
+they are talking and laughing in joyous excitement.  But for
+any sort of conversation they were too volatile; before I
+could get a dozen words from them they would be off again,
+flying and flitting along the margin, like sandpipers, and
+beating the clear-voiced sandpiper at his own aerial graceful
+game.
+
+By and by I was favoured with a fine exhibition of the spirit
+animating these two little things.  The weather had made it
+possible for the crowd of visitors to go down and scatter
+itself over the beach, when the usual black cloud sprang up
+and soon burst on us in a furious tempest of wind and rain,
+sending the people flying back to the shelter of a large
+structure erected for such purposes against the cliff.  It was
+a vast barn-like place, open to the front, the roof supported
+by wooden columns, and here in a few minutes some three or
+four hundred persons were gathered, mostly women and their
+girls, white and blue-eyed with long wet golden hair hanging
+down their backs.  Finding a vacant place on the bench, I sat
+down next to a large motherly-looking woman with a robust or
+dumpy blue-eyed girl about four or five years old on her lap.
+Most of the people were standing about in groups waiting
+for the storm to blow over, and presently I noticed my two
+wild-haired dark little girls moving about in the crowd.  It
+was impossible not to seen them, for they could not keep still
+a moment.  They were here, there, and everywhere, playing
+hide-and-seek and skipping and racing wherever they could
+find an opening, and by and by, taking hold of each other,
+they started dancing.  It was a pretty spectacle, but most
+interesting to see was the effect produced on the other
+children, the hundred girls, big and little, the little ones
+especially, who had been standing there tired and impatient to
+get out to the sea, and who were now becoming more and more
+excited as they gazed, until, like children when listening to
+lively music, they began moving feet and hands and soon their
+whole bodies in time to the swift movements of the little
+dancers.  At last, plucking up courage, first one, then
+another, joined them, and were caught as they came and whirled
+round and round in a manner quite new to them and which they
+appeared to find very delightful.  By and by I observed that
+the little rosy-faced dumpy girl on my neighbour's knees was
+taking the infection; she was staring, her blue eyes opened to
+their widest in wonder and delight.  Then suddenly she began
+pleading, "Oh, mummy, do let me go to the little girls--oh, do
+let me!"  And her mother said "No," because she was so little,
+and could never fly round like that, and so would fall and
+hurt herself and cry.  But she pleaded still, and was ready to
+cry if refused, until the good anxious mother was compelled to
+release her; and down she slipped, and after standing still
+with her little arms and closed hands held up as if to collect
+herself before plunging into the new tremendous adventure, she
+rushed out towards the dancers.  One of them saw her coming,
+and instantly quitting the child she was waltzing with flew to
+meet her, and catching her round the middle began spinning her
+about as if the solid little thing weighed no more than a
+feather.  But it proved too much for her; very soon she came
+down and broke into a loud cry, which brought her mother
+instantly to her, and she was picked up and taken back to the
+seat and held to the broad bosom and soothed with caresses and
+tender words until the sobs began to subside.  Then, even
+before the tears were dry, her eyes were once more gazing at
+the tireless little dancers, taking on child after child as
+they came timidly forward to have a share in the fun, and once
+more she began to plead with her "mummy," and would not be
+denied, for she was a most determined little Saxon, until
+getting her way she rushed out for a second trial.  Again the
+little dancer saw her coming and flew to her like a bird to
+its mate, and clasping her laughed her merry musical little
+laugh.  It was her "sudden glory," an expression of pure
+delight in her power to infuse her own fire and boundless
+gaiety of soul into all these little blue-eyed rosy phlegmatic
+lumps of humanity.
+
+What was it in these human mites, these fantastic Brownies,
+which, in that crowd of Rowenas and their children, made them
+seem like beings not only of another race, but of another
+species?  How came they alone to be distinguished among so
+many by that irresponsible gaiety, as of the most volatile of
+wild creatures, that quickness of sense and mind and sympathy,
+that variety and grace and swiftness--all these brilliant
+exotic qualities harmoniously housed in their small beautiful
+elastic and vigorous frames?  It was their genius, their
+character--something derived from their race.  But what
+race?  Looking at their mother watching her little ones at
+their frolics with dark shining eyes--the small oval-faced
+brown-skinned woman with blackest hair--I could but say that
+she was an Iberian, pure and simple, and that her children
+were like her.  In Southern Europe that type abounds; it is
+also to be met with throughout Britain, perhaps most common in
+the southern counties, and it is not uncommon in East Anglia.
+Indeed, I think it is in Norfolk where we may best see the two
+most marked sub-types in which it is divided--the two
+extremes.  The small stature, narrow head, dark skin, black
+hair and eyes are common to both, and in both these physical
+characters are correlated with certain mental traits, as, for
+instance, a peculiar vivacity and warmth of disposition; but
+they are high and low.  In the latter sub-division the skin is
+coarse in texture, brown or old parchment in colour, with
+little red in it; the black hair is also coarse, the forehead
+small, the nose projecting, and the facial angle indicative of
+a more primitive race.  One might imagine that these people
+had been interred, along with specimens of rude pottery and
+bone and flint implements, a long time back, about the
+beginning of the Bronze Age perhaps, and had now come out of
+their graves and put on modern clothes.  At all events I don't
+think a resident in Norfolk would have much difficulty in
+picking out the portraits of some of his fellow-villagers in
+Mr. Reed's Prehistoric Peeps.
+
+The mother and her little ones were of the higher sub-type:
+they had delicate skins, beautiful faces, clear musical
+voices.  They were Iberians in blood, but improved; purified
+and refined as by fire; gentleized and spiritualized, and to
+the lower types down to the aboriginals, as is the bright
+consummate flower to leaf and stem and root.
+
+Often and often we are teased and tantalized and mocked by
+that old question:
+
+                Oh!  so old--
+        Thousands of years, thousands of years,
+             If all were told--
+
+of black and blue eyes; blue versus black and black versus
+blue, to put it both ways.  And by black we mean black with
+orange-brown lights in it--the eye called tortoise-shell; and
+velvety browns with other browns, also hazels.  Blue includes
+all blues, from ultramarine, or violet, to the palest blue of
+a pale sky; and all greys down to the grey that is almost
+white.  Our preference for this or that colour is supposed
+to depend on nothing but individual taste, or fancy, and
+association.  I believe it is something more, but I do find
+that we are very apt to be swayed this way and that by the
+colour of the eyes of the people we meet in life, according as
+they (the people) attract or repel us.  The eyes of the two
+little girls were black as polished black diamonds until
+looked at closely, when they appeared a beautiful deep brown
+on which the black pupils were seen distinctly; they were so
+lovely that I, predisposed to prefer dark to light, felt that
+this question was now definitely settled for me--that black
+was best.  That irresistible charm, the flame-like spirit
+which raised these two so much above the others--how could it
+go with anything but the darkest eyes!
+
+But no sooner was the question thus settled definitely and for
+all time, to my very great satisfaction, than it was unsettled
+again.  I do not know how this came about; it may have been
+the sight of some small child's blue eyes looking up at me,
+like the arch blue eyes of a kitten, full of wonder at the
+world and everything in it;
+
+         "Where did you get those eyes so blue?"
+         "Out of the sky as I came through";
+
+or it may have been the sight of a harebell; and perhaps it
+came from nothing but the "waste shining of the sky."  At all
+events, there they were, remembered again, looking at me from
+the past, blue eyes that were beautiful and dear to me, whose
+blue colour was associated with every sweetness and charm in
+child and woman and with all that is best and highest in human
+souls; and I could not and had no wish to resist their appeal.
+
+Then came a new experience of the eye that is blue--a meeting
+with one who almost seemed to be less flesh than spirit.  A
+middle-aged lady, frail, very frail; exceedingly pale from
+long ill-health, prematurely white-haired, with beautiful grey
+eyes, gentle but wonderfully bright.  Altogether she was like
+a being compounded as to her grosser part of foam and mist and
+gossamer and thistledown, and was swayed by every breath of
+air, and who, should she venture abroad in rough weather,
+would be lifted and blown away by the gale and scattered like
+mist over the earth.  Yet she, so frail, so timid, was the one
+member of the community who had set herself to do the work of
+a giant--that of championing all ill-used and suffering
+creatures, wild or tame, holding a protecting shield over them
+against the innate brutality of the people.  She had been
+abused and mocked and jeered at by many, while others had
+regarded her action with an amused smile or else with a cold
+indifference.  But eventually some, for very shame, had been
+drawn to her side, and a change in the feeling of the people
+had resulted; domestic animals were treated better, and it was
+no longer universally believed that all wild animals,
+especially those with wings, existed only that men might amuse
+themselves by killing and wounding and trapping and caging and
+persecuting them in various other ways.
+
+The sight of that burning and shining spirit in its frail
+tenement--for did I not actually see her spirit and the very
+soul of her in those eyes?--was the last of the unforgotten
+experiences I had at that place which had startled and
+repelled me with its ugliness.
+
+But, no, there was one more, marvellous as any--the experience
+of a day of days, one of those rare days when nature appears
+to us spiritualized and is no longer nature, when that which
+had transfigured this visible world is in us too, and it
+becomes possible to believe--it is almost a conviction--that
+the burning and shining spirit seen and recognized in one
+among a thousand we have known is in all of us and in all
+things.  In such moments it is possible to go beyond even the
+most advanced of the modern physicists who hold that force
+alone exists, that matter is but a disguise, a shadow and
+delusion; for we may add that force itself--that which we call
+force or energy--is but a semblance and shadow of the
+universal soul.
+
+The change in the weather was not sudden; the furious winds
+dropped gradually; the clouds floated higher in the heavens,
+and were of a lighter grey; there were wider breaks in them,
+showing the lucid blue beyond; and the sea grew quieter.  It
+had raved and roared too long, beating against the iron walls
+that held it back, and was now spent and fallen into an uneasy
+sleep, but still moved uneasily and moaned a little.  Then all
+at once summer returned, coming like a thief in the night, for
+when it was morning the sun rose in splendour and power in a
+sky without a cloud on its vast azure expanse, on a calm sea
+with no motion but that scarcely perceptible rise and fall as
+of one that sleeps.  As the sun rose higher the air grew
+warmer until it was full summer heat, but although a "visible
+heat," it was never oppressive; for all that day we were
+abroad, and as the tide ebbed a new country that was neither
+earth nor sea was disclosed, an infinite expanse of pale
+yellow sand stretching away on either side, and further and
+further out until it mingled and melted into the sparkling
+water and faintly seen line of foam on the horizon.  And over
+all--the distant sea, the ridge of low dunes marking where the
+earth ended and the flat, yellow expanse between--there
+brooded a soft bluish silvery haze.  A haze that blotted
+nothing out, but blended and interfused them all until earth
+and air and sea and sands were scarcely distinguishable.  The
+effect, delicate, mysterious, unearthly, cannot be described.
+
+                            Ethereal gauze . . .
+            Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea,
+            Last conquest of the eye . . .
+
+                                        Sun dust,
+            Aerial surf upon the shores of earth,
+            Ethereal estuary, frith of light. . . .
+            Bird of the sun, transparent winged.
+
+Do we not see that words fail as pigments do--that the effect
+is too coarse, since in describing it we put it before the
+mental eye as something distinctly visible, a thing of itself
+and separate.  But it is not so in nature; the effect is of
+something almost invisible and is yet a part of all and makes
+all things--sky and sea and land--as unsubstantial as itself.
+Even living, moving things had that aspect.  Far out on the
+lowest further strip of sand, which appeared to be on a level
+with the sea, gulls were seen standing in twos and threes and
+small groups and in rows; but they did not look like gulls
+--familiar birds, gull-shaped with grey and white plumage.
+They appeared twice as big as gulls, and were of a dazzling
+whiteness and of no definite shape: though standing still they
+had motion, an effect of the quivering dancing air, the
+"visible heat"; at rest, they were seen now as separate
+objects; then as one with the silver sparkle on the
+sea; and when they rose and floated away they were no longer
+shining and white, but like pale shadows of winged forms
+faintly visible in the haze.
+
+They were not birds but spirits--beings that lived in or were
+passing through the world and now, like the heat, made
+visible; and I, standing far out on the sparkling sands, with
+the sparkling sea on one side and the line of dunes,
+indistinctly seen as land, on the other, was one of them; and
+if any person had looked at me from a distance he would have
+seen me as a formless shining white being standing by the sea,
+and then perhaps as a winged shadow floating in the haze.  It
+was only necessary to put out one's arms to float.  That was
+the effect on my mind: this natural world was changed to a
+supernatural, and there was no more matter nor force in sea or
+land nor in the heavens above, but only spirit.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Six: By Swallowfield
+
+
+One of the most attractive bits of green and wooded country
+near London I know lies between Reading and Basingstoke and
+includes Aldermaston with its immemorial oaks in Berkshire and
+Silchester with Pamber Forest in Hampshire.  It has long been
+one of my favourite haunts, summer and winter, and it is
+perhaps the only wooded place in England where I have a home
+feeling as strong as that which I experience in certain places
+among the South Wiltshire downs and in the absolutely flat
+country on the Severn, in Somerset, and the flat country in
+Cambridgeshire and East Anglia, especially at Lynn and about
+Ely.
+
+I am now going back to my first visit to this green retreat;
+it was in the course of one of those Easter walks I have
+spoken of, and the way was through Reading and by Three Mile
+Cross and Swallowfield.  On this occasion I conceived a
+dislike to Reading which I have never quite got over, for it
+seemed an unconscionably big place for two slow pedestrians to
+leave behind.  Worse still, when we did leave it we found that
+Reading would not leave us.  It was like a stupendous octopus
+in red brick which threw out red tentacles, miles and miles
+long in various directions--little rows and single and double
+cottages and villas, all in red, red brick and its weary
+accompaniment, the everlasting hard slate roof.  These square
+red brick boxes with sloping slate tops are built as close as
+possible to the public road, so that the passer-by looking in
+at the windows may see the whole interior--wall-papers,
+pictures, furniture, and oftentimes the dull expressionless
+face of the woman of the house, staring back at you out of her
+shallow blue eyes.  The weather too was against us; a grey
+hard sky, like the slate roofs, and a cold strong east wind to
+make the road dusty all day long.
+
+Arrived at Three Mile Cross, it was no surprise to find it no
+longer recognizable as the hamlet described in Our Village,
+but it was saddening to look at the cottage in which Mary
+Russell Mitford lived and was on the whole very happy with her
+flowers and work for thirty years of her life, in its present
+degraded state.  It has a sign now and calls itself the
+"Mitford Arms" and a "Temperance Hotel," and we were told that
+you could get tea and bread and butter there but nothing else.
+The cottage has been much altered since Miss Mitford's time,
+and the open space once occupied by the beloved garden is now
+filled with buildings, including a corrugated-iron dissenting
+chapel.
+
+From Three Mile Cross we walked on to Swallowfield, still by
+those never-ending roadside red-brick cottages and villas, for
+we were not yet properly out of the hated biscuit metropolis.
+It was a big village with the houses scattered far and wide
+over several square miles of country, but just where the
+church stands it is shady and pleasant.  The pretty church
+yard too is very deeply shaded and occupies a small hill with
+the Loddon flowing partly round it, then taking its swift way
+through the village.  Miss Mitford's monument is a plain,
+almost an ugly, granite cross, standing close to the wall,
+shaded by yew, elm, and beech trees, and one is grateful to
+think that if she never had her reward when living she has
+found at any rate a very peaceful resting-place.
+
+The sexton was there and told us that he was but ten years old
+when Miss Mitford died, but that he remembered her well and
+she was a very pleasant little woman.  Others in the place
+who remembered her said the same--that she was very pleasant
+and sweet.  We know that she was sweet and charming, but
+unfortunately the portraits we have of her do not give that
+impression.  They represent her as a fat common-place looking
+person, a little vulgar perhaps.  I fancy the artists were
+bunglers.  I possess a copy of a very small pencil sketch made
+of her face by a dear old lady friend of mine, now dead, about
+the year 1851 or 2.  My friend had a gift for portraiture in a
+peculiar way.  When she saw a face that greatly interested
+her, in a drawing-room, on a platform, in the street, anywhere,
+it remained very vividly in her mind and on going home she
+would sketch it, and some of these sketches of well known
+persons are wonderfully good.  She was staying in the country
+with a friend who drove with her to Swallowfield to call on
+Miss Mitford, and on her return to her friend's house she
+made the little sketch, and in this tiny portrait I can see
+the refinement, the sweetness, the animation and charm which
+she undoubtedly possessed.
+
+But let me now venture to step a little outside of my own
+province, my small plot--a poor pedestrian's unimportant
+impressions of places and faces; all these p's come by
+accident; and this I put in parenthetically just because an
+editor solemnly told me a while ago that he couldn't abide and
+wouldn't have alliteration's artful aid in his periodical.
+Let us leave the subject of what Miss Mitford was to those of
+her day who knew her; a thousand lovely personalities pass
+away every year and in a little while are no more remembered
+than the bright-plumaged bird that falls in the tropical
+forest, or the vanished orchid bloom of which some one has
+said that the angels in heaven can look on no more beautiful
+thing.  Leaving all that, let us ask what remains to us of
+another generation of all she was and did?
+
+She was a prolific writer, both prose and verse, and, as we
+know, had an extraordinary vogue in her own time.  Anything
+that came from her pen had an immediate success; indeed, so
+highly was she regarded that nothing she chose to write,
+however poor, could fail.  And she certainly did write a good
+deal of poor stuff: it was all in a sense poor, but books and
+books, poor soul, she had to write.  It was in a sense poor
+because it was mostly ambitious stuff, and, as the proverb
+says, "You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a
+wren."  She was driven to fly, and gave her little wings too
+much to do, and her flights were apt to be mere little weak
+flutterings over the surface of the ground.  A wren, and she
+had not a cuckoo but a devouring cormorant to sustain--that
+dear, beautiful father of hers, who was more to her than any
+reprobate son to his devoted mother, and who day after day,
+year after year, gobbled up her earnings, and then would
+hungrily go on squawking for more until he stumbled into the
+grave.  Alas! he was too long in dying; she was worn out by
+then, the little heart beating not so fast, and the bright
+little brain growing dim and very tired.
+
+Now all the ambitious stuff she wrote to keep the cormorant
+and, incidentally, to immortalize herself, has fallen
+deservedly into oblivion.  But we--some of us--do not forget
+and never want to forget Mary Russell Mitford.  Her letters
+remain--the little friendly letters which came from her pen
+like balls of silvery down from a sun-ripened plant, and were
+wafted far and wide over the land to those she loved.  There
+is a wonderful charm in them; they are so spontaneous, so
+natural, so perfectly reflect her humour and vivacity, her
+overflowing sweetness, her beautiful spirit.  And one book too
+remains--the series of sketches about the poor little hamlet,
+in which she lived so long and laboured so hard to support
+herself and her parents, the turtledove mated with a
+cormorant.  Driven to produce work and hard up for a subject,
+in a happy moment she took up this humble one lying at her own
+door and allowed her self to write naturally even as in her
+most intimate letters.  This is the reason of the vitality of
+Our Tillage; it was simple, natural, and reflected the author
+herself, her tender human heart, her impulsive nature, her
+bright playful humorous spirit.  There is no thought, no mind
+stuff in it, and it is a classic!  It is about the country,
+and she has so little observation that it might have been
+written in a town, out of a book, away from nature's sights
+and sounds.  Her rustic characters are not comparable to those
+of a score or perhaps two or three score of other writers who
+treat of such subjects.  The dialogue, when she makes them
+talk, is unnatural, and her invention so poor that when she
+puts in a little romance of her own making one regrets it.
+And so one might go on picking it all to pieces like a
+dandelion blossom.  Nevertheless it endures, outliving scores
+of in a way better books on the same themes, because her own
+delightful personality manifests itself and shines in all
+these little pictures.  This short passage describing how she
+took Lizzie, the little village child she loved, to gather
+cowslips in the meadows, will serve as an illustration.
+
+  They who know these feelings (and who is so happy as not to
+have known some of them) will understand why Alfieri became
+powerless, and Froissart dull; and why even needlework, the
+most effective sedative, that grand soother and composer of
+women's distress, fails to comfort me today.  I will go out
+into the air this cool, pleasant afternoon, and try what
+that will do. . . .  I will go to the meadows, the beautiful
+meadows and I will have my materials of happiness, Lizzie
+and May, and a basket for flowers, and we will make a
+cowslip ball.  "Did you ever see a cowslip ball, Lizzie?"
+"No."  "Come away then; make haste! run, Lizzie!"
+
+  And on we go, fast, fast! down the road, across the lea,
+past the workhouse, along by the great pond, till we slide
+into the deep narrow lane, whose hedges seem to meet over
+the water, and win our way to the little farmhouse at the
+end.  "Through the farmyard, Lizzie; over the gate; never
+mind the cows; they are quiet enough."  "I don't mind 'em,"
+said Miss Lizzie, boldly and' truly, and with a proud
+affronted air, displeased at being thought to mind anything,
+and showing by her attitude and manner some design of proving
+her courage by an attack on the largest of the herd, in the
+shape of a pull by the tail.  "I don't mind 'em."  "I know
+you don't, Lizzie; but let them, alone and don't chase
+the turkey-cock.  Come to me, my dear!" and, for wonder,
+Lizzie came.
+
+In the meantime my other pet, Mayflower, had also gotten
+into a scrape.  She had driven about a huge unwieldy sow,
+till the animal's grunting had disturbed the repose of a
+still more enormous Newfoundland dog, the guardian of the
+yard.
+
+The beautiful white greyhound's mocking treatment of the
+surly dog on the chain then follows, and other pretty
+scenes and adventures, until after some mishaps and much
+trouble the cowslip ball is at length completed.
+
+What a concentration of fragrance and beauty it was!
+Golden and sweet to satiety! rich in sight, and touch, and
+smell!  Lizzie was enchanted, and ran off with her prize,
+hiding amongst the trees in the very coyness of ecstasy, as
+if any human eye, even mine, would be a restraint on her
+innocent raptures.
+
+Here the very woman is revealed to us, her tender and lively
+disposition, her impulsiveness and childlike love of fun
+and delight in everything on earth.  We see in such a passage
+what her merit really is, the reason of our liking or
+"partiality" for her.  Her pleasure in everything makes
+everything interesting, and in displaying her feeling without
+art or disguise she succeeds in giving what we may call a
+literary expression to personal charm--that quality which is
+almost untranslatable into written words.  Many women possess
+it; it is in them and issues from them, and is like an essential
+oil in a flower, but too volatile to be captured and made use
+of.  Furthermore, women when they write are as a rule even more
+conventional than men, more artificial and out of and away
+from themselves.
+
+I do not know that any literary person will agree with me; I
+have gone aside to write about Miss Mitford mainly for my own
+satisfaction.  Frequently when I have wanted to waste half an
+hour pleasantly with a book I have found myself picking up
+"Our Village" from among many others, some waiting for a first
+perusal, and I wanted to know why this was so--to find out, if
+not to invent, some reason for my liking which would not make
+me ashamed.
+
+At Swallowfield we failed to find a place to stay at; there
+was no such place; and of the inns, named, I think, the
+"Crown," "Cricketers," "Bird-in-the-Hand," and "George and
+Dragon," only one, was said to provide accommodation for
+travellers as the law orders, but on going to the house we
+were informed that the landlord or his wife was just dead, or
+dangerously ill, I forget which, and they could take no one
+in.  Accordingly, we had to trudge back to Three Mile Cross
+and the old ramshackle, well-nigh ruinous inn there.  It was a
+wretched place, smelling of mould and dry-rot; however, it was
+not so bad after a fire had been lighted in the grate, but
+first the young girl who waited on us brought in a bundle of
+newspapers, which she proceeded to thrust up the chimney-flue
+and kindle, "to warm the flue and make the fire burn," she
+explained.
+
+On the following day, the weather being milder, we rambled on
+through woods and lanes, visiting several villages, and
+arrived in the afternoon at Silchester, where we had resolved
+to put up for the night.  By a happy chance we found a
+pleasant cottage on the common to stay at and pleasant people
+in it, so that we were glad to sit down for a week there, to
+loiter about the furzy waste, or prowl in the forest and haunt
+the old walls; but it was pleasant even indoors with that wide
+prospect before the window, the wooded country stretching many
+miles away to the hills of Kingsclere, blue in the distance
+and crowned with their beechen rings and groves.  Of Roman
+Calleva itself and the thoughts I had there I will write in
+the following chapter; here I will only relate how on Easter
+Sunday, two days after arriving, we went to morning service in
+the old church standing on a mound inside the walls, a mile
+from the village and common.
+
+It came to pass that during the service the sun began to shine
+very brightly after several days of cloud and misty windy wet
+weather, and that brilliance and the warmth in it served to
+bring a butterfly out of hiding; then another; then a third;
+red admirals all; and they were seen through all the prayers,
+and psalms, and hymns, and lessons, and the sermon preached by
+the white-haired Rector, fluttering against the translucent
+glass, wanting to be out in that splendour and renew their
+life after so long a period of suspension.  But the glass was
+between them and their world of blue heavens and woods and
+meadow flowers; then I thought that after the service I would
+make an attempt to get them out; but soon reflected that to
+release them it would be necessary to capture them first, and
+that that could not be done without a ladder and butterfly
+net.  Among the women (ladies) on either side of and before me
+there were no fewer than five wearing aigrettes of egret and
+bird-of-paradise plumes in their hats or bonnets, and these
+five all remained to take part in that ceremony of eating
+bread and drinking wine in remembrance of an event supposed to
+be of importance to their souls, here and hereafter.  It
+saddened me to leave my poor red admirals in their prison,
+beating their red wings against the coloured glass--to leave
+them too in such company, where the aigrette wearers were
+worshipping a little god of their own little imaginations, who
+did not create and does not regard the swallow and dove and
+white egret and bird-of-paradise, and who was therefore not my
+god and whose will as they understood it was nothing to me.
+
+It was a consolation when I went out, still thinking of the
+butterflies in their prison, and stood by the old ruined walls
+grown over with ivy and crowned with oak and holly trees, to
+think that in another two thousand years there will be no
+archaeologist and no soul in Silchester, or anywhere else in
+Britain, or in the world, who would take the trouble to dig up
+the remains of aigrette-wearers and their works, and who would
+care what had become of their pitiful little souls--their
+immortal part.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Seven: Roman Calleva
+
+
+An afternoon in the late November of 1903.  Frost, gales, and
+abundant rains have more than half stripped the oaks of their
+yellow leaves.  But the rain is over now, the sky once more a
+pure lucid blue above me--all around me, in fact, since I am
+standing high on the top of the ancient stupendous earthwork,
+grown over with oak wood and underwood of holly and thorn and
+hazel with tangle of ivy and bramble and briar.  It is
+marvellously still; no sound from the village reaches me; I
+only hear the faint rustle of the dead leaves as they fall,
+and the robin, for one spied me here and has come to keep me
+company.  At intervals he spurts out his brilliant little
+fountain of sound; and that sudden bright melody and the
+bright colour of the sunlit translucent leaves seem like one
+thing.  Nature is still, and I am still, standing concealed
+among trees, or moving cautiously through the dead russet
+bracken.  Not that I am expecting to get a glimpse of the
+badger who has his hermitage in this solitary place, but I am
+on forbidden ground, in the heart of a sacred pheasant
+preserve, where one must do one's prowling warily.  Hard by,
+almost within a stone's-throw of the wood-grown earthwork on
+which I stand, are the ruinous walls of Roman Calleva--the
+Silchester which the antiquarians have been occupied in
+uncovering these dozen years or longer.  The stone walls, too,
+like the more ancient earthwork, are overgrown with trees and
+brambles and ivy.  The trees have grown upon the wall, sending
+roots deep down between the stones, through the crumbling
+cement; and so fast are they anchored that never a tree falls
+but it brings down huge masses of masonry with it.  This slow
+levelling process has been going on for centuries, and it was
+doubtless in this way that the buildings within the walls were
+pulled down long ages ago.  Then the action of the earth-worms
+began, and floors and foundations, with fallen stones and
+tiles, were gradually buried in the soil, and what was once a
+city was a dense thicket of oak and holly and thorn.  Finally
+the wood was cleared, and the city was a walled wheat field
+--so far as we know, the ground has been cultivated since the
+days of King John.  But the entire history of this green
+walled space before me--less than twenty centuries in
+duration--does not seem so very long compared with that of
+the huge earthen wall I am standing on, which dates back to
+prehistoric times.
+
+Standing here, knee-deep in the dead ruddy bracken, in the
+"coloured shade" of the oaks, idly watching the leaves fall
+fluttering to the ground, thinking in an aimless way of the
+remains of the two ancient cities before me, the British and
+the Roman, and of their comparative antiquity, I am struck
+with the thought that the sweet sensations produced in me by
+the scene differ in character from the feeling I have had in
+other solitary places.  The peculiar sense of satisfaction, of
+restfulness, of peace, experienced here is very perfect; but
+in the wilderness, where man has never been, or has at all
+events left no trace of his former presence, there is ever a
+mysterious sense of loneliness, of desolation, underlying our
+pleasure in nature.  Here it seems good to know, or to
+imagine, that the men I occasionally meet in my solitary
+rambles, and those I see in the scattered rustic village hard
+by, are of the same race, and possibly the descendants, of the
+people who occupied this spot in the remote past--Iberian and
+Celt, and Roman and Saxon and Dane.  If that hard-featured and
+sour-visaged old gamekeeper, with the cold blue unfriendly
+eyes, should come upon me here in my hiding-place, and scowl
+as he is accustomed to do, standing silent before me, gun in
+hand, to hear my excuses for trespassing in his preserves, I
+should say (mentally):  This man is distinctly English, and
+his far-off progenitors, somewhere about sixteen hundred years
+ago, probably assisted at the massacre of the inhabitants of
+the pleasant little city at my feet.  By and by, leaving the
+ruins, I may meet with other villagers of different features
+and different colour in hair, skin, and eyes, and of a
+pleasanter expression; and in them I may see the remote
+descendants of other older races of men, some who were lords
+here before the Romans came, and of others before them, even
+back to Neolithic times.
+
+This, I take it, is a satisfaction, a sweetness and peace to
+the soul in nature, because it carries with it a sense of the
+continuity of the human race, its undying vigour, its
+everlastingness.  After all the tempests that have overcome
+it, through all mutations in such immense stretches of time,
+how stable it is!
+
+I recall the time when I lived on a vast vacant level green
+plain, an earth which to the eye, and to the mind which sees
+with the eye, appeared illimitable, like the ocean; where the
+house I was born in was the oldest in the district--a century
+old, it was said; where the people were the children's
+children of emigrants from Europe who had conquered and
+colonized the country, and had enjoyed but half a century of
+national life.  But the people who had possessed the land
+before these emigrants--what of them?  They, were but a
+memory, a tradition, a story told in books and hardly more
+to us than a fable; perhaps they had dwelt there for long
+centuries, or for thousands of years; perhaps they had come,
+a wandering horde, to pass quickly away like a flight of
+migrating locusts; for no memorial existed, no work of their
+hands, not the faintest trace of their occupancy.
+
+Walking one day at the side of a ditch, which had been newly
+cut through a meadow at the end of our plantation, I caught
+sight of a small black object protruding from the side of the
+cutting, which turned out to be a fragment of Indian pottery
+made of coarse clay, very black, and rudely ornamented on one
+side.  On searching further a few more pieces were found.  I
+took them home and preserved them carefully, experiencing a
+novel and keen sense of pleasure in their possession; for
+though worthless, they were man's handiwork, the only real
+evidence I had come upon of that vanished people who had been
+before us; and it was as if those bits of baked clay, with a
+pattern incised on them by a man's finger-nail, had in them
+some magical property which enabled me to realize the past,
+and to see that vacant plain repeopled with long dead and
+forgotten men.
+
+Doubtless we all possess the feeling in some degree--the sense
+of loneliness and desolation and dismay at the thought of an
+uninhabited world, and of long periods when man was not.  Is
+it not the absence of human life or remains rather than the
+illimitable wastes of thick-ribbed ice and snow which daunts
+us at the thought of Arctic and Antarctic regions?  Again, in
+the story of the earth, as told by geology, do we not also
+experience the same sense of dismay, and the soul shrinking
+back on itself, when we come in imagination to those deserts
+desolate in time when the continuity of the race was broken
+and the world dispeopled?  The doctrine of evolution has made
+us tolerant of the thought of human animals,--our progenitors
+as we must believe--who were of brutish aspect, and whose
+period on this planet was so long that, compared with it, the
+historic and prehistoric periods are but as the life of an
+individual.  A quarter of a million years has perhaps elapsed
+since the beginning of that cold period which, at all events
+in this part of the earth, killed Palaeolithic man; yet how
+small a part of his racial life even that time would seem if,
+as some believe, his remains may be traced as far back as the
+Eocene!  But after this rude man of the Quaternary and
+Tertiary epochs had passed away there is a void, a period
+which to the imagination seems measureless, when sun and moon
+and stars looked on a waste and mindless world.  When man once
+more reappears he seems to have been re-created on somewhat
+different lines.
+
+It is this break in the history of the human race which amazes
+and daunts us, which "shadows forth the heartless voids and
+immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind
+with the thought of annihilation."
+
+Here, in these words of Hermann Melville, we are let all at
+once into the true meaning of those disquieting and seemingly
+indefinable emotions so often experienced, even by the most
+ardent lovers of nature and of solitude, in uninhabited
+deserts, on great mountains, and on the sea.  We find here the
+origin of that horror of mountains which was so common until
+recent times.  A friend once confessed to me that he was
+always profoundly unhappy at sea during long voyages, and the
+reason was that his sustaining belief in a superintending
+Power and in immortality left him when he was on that waste of
+waters, which have no human associations.  The feeling, so
+intense in his case, is known to most if not all of us; but we
+feel it faintly as a disquieting element in nature of which we
+may be but vaguely conscious.
+
+Most travelled Englishmen who have seen much of the world and
+resided for long or short periods in many widely separated
+countries would probably agree that there is a vast difference
+in the feeling of strangeness, or want of harmony with our
+surroundings, experienced in old and in new countries.  It is
+a compound feeling and some of its elements are the same in
+both cases; but in one there is a disquieting element which
+the other is without.  Thus, in Southern Europe, Egypt, Syria,
+and in many countries of Asia, and some portions of Africa,
+the wanderer from home might experience dissatisfaction and be
+ill at ease and wish for old familiar sights and sounds; but
+in a colony like Tasmania, and in any new country where there
+were no remains of antiquity, no links with the past, the
+feeling would be very much more poignant, and in some scenes
+and moods would be like that sense of desolation which assails
+us at the thought of the heartless voids and immensities of
+the universe.
+
+He recognizes that he is in a world on which we have but
+recently entered, and in which our position is not yet
+assured.
+
+Here, standing on this mound, as on other occasions past
+counting, I recognize and appreciate the enormous difference
+which human associations make in the effect produced on us by
+visible nature.  In this silent solitary place, with the
+walled field which was once Calleva Atrebatum at my feet, I
+yet have a sense of satisfaction, of security, never felt in a
+land that had no historic past.  The knowledge that my
+individual life is but a span, a breath; that in a little
+while I too must wither and mingle like one of those fallen
+yellow leaves with the mould, does not grieve me.  I know it
+and yet disbelieve it; for am I not here alive, where men have
+inhabited for thousands of years, feeling what I now feel
+--their oneness with everlasting nature and the undying human
+family?  The very soil and wet carpet of moss on which their
+feet were set, the standing trees and leaves, green or yellow,
+the rain-drops, the air they breathed, the sunshine in their
+eyes and hearts, was part of them, not a garment, but of their
+very substance and spirit.  Feeling this, death becomes an
+illusion; and the illusion that the continuous life of the
+species (its immortality) and the individual life are one and
+the same is the reality and truth.  An illusion, but, as Mill
+says, deprive us of our illusions and life would be
+intolerable.  Happily we are not easily deprived of them,
+since they are of the nature of instincts and ineradicable.
+And this very one which our reason can prove to be the most
+childish, the absurdest of all, is yet the greatest, the most
+fruitful of good for the race.  To those who have discarded
+supernatural religion, it may be a religion, or at all events
+the foundation to build one on.  For there is no comfort to
+the healthy natural man in being told that the good he does
+will not be interred with his bones, since he does not wish to
+think, and in fact refuses to think, that his bones will ever
+be interred.  Joy in the "choir invisible" is to him a mere
+poetic fancy, or at best a rarefied transcendentalism, which
+fails to sustain him.  If altruism, or the religion of
+humanity, is a living vigorous plant, and as some believe
+flourishes more with the progress of the centuries, it must,
+like other "soul-growths," have a deeper, tougher woodier root
+in our soil.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eight: A Gold Day At Silchester
+
+
+It is little to a man's profit to go far afield if his chief
+pleasure be in wild life, his main object to get nearer to the
+creatures, to grow day by day more intimate with them, and to
+see each day some new thing.  Yet the distance has the same
+fascination for him as for another--the call is as sweet and
+persistent in his ears.  If he is on a green level country
+with blue hills on the horizon, then, especially in the early
+morning, is the call sweetest, most irresistible.  Come away
+--come away: this blue world has better things than any in
+that green, too familiar place.  The startling scream of the
+jay--you have heard it a thousand times.  It is pretty to
+watch the squirrel in his chestnut-red coat among the oaks in
+their fresh green foliage, full of fun as a bright child,
+eating his apple like a child, only it is an oak-apple,
+shining white or white and rosy-red, in his little paws; but
+you have seen it so many times--come away:
+
+It was not this voice alone which made me forsake the green
+oaks of Silchester and Pamber Forest, to ramble for a season
+hither and thither in Wiltshire, Dorset, and Somerset; there
+was something for me to do in those places, but the call
+made me glad to go.  And long weeks--months--went by in my
+wanderings, mostly in open downland country, too often under
+gloomy skies, chilled by cold winds and wetted by cold rains.
+Then, having accomplished my purpose and discovered
+incidentally that the call had mocked me again, as on so many
+previous occasions, I returned once more to the old familiar
+green place.
+
+Crossing the common, I found that where it had been dry in
+spring one might now sink to his knees in the bog; also that
+the snipe which had vanished for a season were back at the old
+spot where they used to breed.  It was a bitter day near the
+end of an unpleasant summer, with the wind back in the old
+hateful north-east quarter; but the sun shone, the sky was
+blue, and the flying clouds were of a dazzling whiteness.
+Shivering, I remembered the south wall, and went there, since
+to escape from the wind and bask like some half-frozen serpent
+or lizard in the heat was the highest good one could look for
+in such weather.  To see anything new in wild life was not to
+be hoped for.
+
+That old grey, crumbling wall of ancient Calleva, crowned with
+big oak and ash and thorn and holly, and draped with green
+bramble and trailing ivy and creepers--how good a shelter it
+is on a cold, rough day!  Moving softly, so as not to disturb
+any creature, I yet disturbed a ring snake lying close to the
+wall, into which it quickly vanished; and then from their old
+place among the stones a pair of blue stock-doves rushed out
+with clatter of wings.  The same blue doves which I had known
+for three years at that spot!  A few more steps and I came
+upon as pretty a little scene in bird life as one could wish
+for: twenty to twenty-five small birds of different species
+--tits, wrens, dunnocks, thrushes, blackbirds, chaffinches,
+yellowhammers--were congregated on the lower outside twigs of
+a bramble bush and on the bare ground beside it close to the
+foot of the wall.  The sun shone full on that spot, and they
+had met for warmth and for company.  The tits and wrens were
+moving quietly about in the bush; others were sitting idly or
+preening their feathers on the twigs or the ground.  Most of
+them were making some kind of small sound--little exclamatory
+chirps, and a variety of chirrupings, producing the effect of
+a pleasant conversation going on among them.  This was
+suddenly suspended on my appearance, but the alarm was soon
+over, and, seeing me seated on a fallen stone and, motionless,
+they took no further notice of me.  Two blackbirds were there,
+sitting a little way apart on the bare ground; these were
+silent, the raggedest, rustiest-looking members of that little
+company; for they were moulting, and their drooping wings and
+tails had many unsightly gaps in them where the old feathers
+had dropped out before the new ones had grown.  They were
+suffering from that annual sickness with temporary loss of
+their brightest faculties which all birds experience in some
+degree; the unseasonable rains and cold winds had been bad for
+them, and now they were having their sun-bath, their best
+medicine and cure.
+
+By and by a pert-looking, bright-feathered, dapper cock
+chaffinch dropped down from the bush, and, advancing to one of
+the two, the rustiest and most forlorn-looking, started
+running round and round him as if to make a close inspection
+of his figure, then began to tease him.  At first I thought it
+was all in fun--merely animal spirit which in birds often
+discharges itself in this way in little pretended attacks and
+fights.  But the blackbird had no play and no fight in him, no
+heart to defend himself; all he did was to try to avoid the
+strokes aimed at him, and he could not always escape them.
+His spiritlessness served to inspire the chaffinch with
+greater boldness, and then it appeared that the gay little
+creature was really and truly incensed, possibly because the
+rusty, draggled, and listless appearance of the larger bird
+was offensive to him.  Anyhow, the persecutions continued,
+increasing in fury until they could not be borne, and the
+blackbird tried to escape by hiding in the bramble.  But he
+was not permitted to rest there; out he was soon driven and
+away into another bush, and again into still another further
+away, and finally he was hunted over the sheltering wall into
+the bleak wind on the other side.  Then the persecutor came
+back and settled himself on his old perch on the bramble, well
+satisfied at his victory over a bird so much bigger than
+himself.  All was again peace and harmony in the little social
+gathering, and the pleasant talkee-talkee went on as before.
+About five minutes passed, then the hunted blackbird returned,
+and, going to the identical spot from which he had been
+driven, composed himself to rest; only now he sat facing his
+lively little enemy.
+
+I was astonished to see him back; so, apparently, was the
+chaffinch.  He started, craned his neck, and regarded his
+adversary first with one eye then with the other.  "What, rags
+and tatters, back again so soon!"  I seem to hear him say.
+"You miserable travesty of a bird, scarcely fit for a weasel
+to dine on!  Your presence is an insult to us, but I'll soon
+settle you.  You'll feel the cold on the other, side of the
+wall when I've knocked off a few more of your rusty rags."
+
+Down from his perch he came, but no sooner had he touched his
+feet to the ground than the blackbird went straight at him
+with extraordinary fury.  The chaffinch, taken by surprise,
+was buffeted and knocked over, then, recovering himself, fled
+in consternation, hotly pursued by the sick one.  Into the
+bush they went, but in a moment they were out again, darting
+this way and that, now high up in the trees, now down to the
+ground, the blackbird always close behind; and no little bird
+flying from a hawk could have exhibited a greater terror than
+that pert chaffinch--that vivacious and most pugnacious little
+cock bantam.  At last they went quite away, and were lost to
+sight.  By and by the blackbird returned alone, and, going
+once more to his place near the second bird, he settled down
+comfortably to finish his sunbath in peace and quiet.
+
+I had assuredly witnessed a new thing on that unpromising day,
+something quite different from anything witnessed in my wide
+rambles; and, though a little thing, it had been a most
+entertaining comedy in bird life with a very proper ending.
+It was clear that the sick blackbird had bitterly resented the
+treatment he had received; that, brooding on it out in the
+cold, his anger had made him strong, and that he came back
+determined to fight, with his plan of action matured.  He was
+not going to be made a fool every time!
+
+The birds all gone their several ways at last, I got up from
+my stone and wondered if the old Romans ever dreamed that this
+wall which they made to endure would after seventeen hundred
+years have no more important use than this--to afford shelter
+to a few little birds and to the solitary man that watched
+them--from the bleak wind.  Many a strange Roman curse on this
+ungenial climate must these same stones have heard.
+Looking through a gap in the wall  I saw, close by, on the
+other side, a dozen men at work with pick and shovel throwing
+up huge piles of earth.  They were uncovering a small portion
+of that ancient buried city and were finding the foundations
+and floors and hypocausts of Silchester's public baths; also
+some broken pottery and trifling ornaments of bronze and bone.
+The workmen in that bitter wind were decidedly better off than
+the gentlemen from Burlington House in charge of the
+excavations.  These stood with coats buttoned up and hands
+thrust deep down in their pockets.  It seemed to me that
+it was better to sit in the shelter of the wall and watch the
+birds than to burrow in the crumbling dust for that small
+harvest.  Yet I could understand and even appreciate their
+work, although it is probable that the glow I experienced was
+in part reflected.  Perhaps my mental attitude, when standing
+in that sheltered place, and when getting on to the windy wall
+I looked down on the workers and their work, was merely
+benevolent.  I had pleasure in their pleasure, and a vague
+desire for a better understanding, a closer alliance and
+harmony.  It was the desire that we might all see nature--the
+globe with all it contains--as one harmonious whole, not as
+groups of things, or phenomena, unrelated, cast there by
+chance or by careless or contemptuous gods.  This dust of past
+ages, dug out of a wheat-field, with its fragments of men's
+work--its pottery and tiles and stones--this is a part, too,
+even as the small birds, with their little motives and
+passions, so like man's, are a part.  I thought with self
+shame of my own sins in this connection; then, considering
+the lesser faults on the other side, I wished that Mr. St.
+John Hope would experience a like softening mood and regret
+that he had abused the ivy.  It grieves me to hear it called a
+"noxious weed."  That perished people, whose remains in this
+land so deeply interest him, were the mightiest "builders of
+ruins" the world has known; but who except the archaeologist
+would wish to see these piled stones in their naked harshness,
+striking the mind with dismay at the thought of Time and its
+perpetual desolations!  I like better the old Spanish poet who
+says, "What of Rome; its world-conquering power, and majesty
+and glory--what has it come to?"  The ivy on the wall, the
+yellow wallflower, tell it.  A "deadly parasite" quotha!  Is
+it not well that this plant, this evergreen tapestry of
+innumerable leaves, should cover and partly hide and partly
+reveal the "strange defeatures" the centuries have set on
+man's greatest works?  I would have no ruin nor no old and
+noble building without it; for not only does it beautify
+decay, but from long association it has come to be in the mind
+a very part of such scenes and so interwoven with the human
+tragedy, that, like the churchyard yew, it seems the most
+human of green things.
+
+Here in September great masses of the plant are already
+showing a greenish cream-colour of the opening blossoms, which
+will be at their perfection in October.  Then, when the sun
+shines, there will be no lingering red admiral, nor blue fly
+or fly of any colour, nor yellow wasp, nor any honey-eating or
+late honey-gathering insect that will not be here to feed on
+the ivy's sweetness.  And behind the blossoming curtain, alive
+with the minute, multitudinous, swift-moving, glittering
+forms, some nobler form will be hidden in a hole or fissure in
+the wall.  Here on many a night I have listened to the
+sibilant screech of the white owl and the brown owl's clear,
+long-drawn, quavering lamentation:
+
+              "Good Ivy, what byrdys hast thou?"
+              "Non but the Howlet, that How! How!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Nine: Rural Rides
+
+
+"A-birding on a Broncho" is the title of a charming little book
+published some years ago, and probably better known to readers
+on the other side of the Atlantic than in England.  I remember
+reading it with pleasure and pride on account of the author's
+name, Florence Merriam, seeing that, on my mother's side, I am
+partly a Merriam myself (of the branch on the other side of
+the Atlantic), and having been informed that all of that rare
+name are of one family, I took it that we were related, though
+perhaps very distantly.  "A-birding on a Broncho" suggested an
+equally alliterative title for this chapter--"Birding on a
+Bike"; but I will leave it to others, for those who go
+a-birding are now very many and are hard put to find fresh
+titles to their books.  For several reasons it will suit me
+better to borrow from Cobbett and name this chapter "Rural
+Rides."
+
+Sore of us do not go out on bicycles to observe the ways of
+birds.  Indeed, some of our common species have grown almost
+too familiar with the wheel: it has become a positive danger
+to them.  They not infrequently mistake its rate of speed and
+injure themselves in attempting to fly across it.  Recently I
+had a thrush knock himself senseless against the spokes of my
+forewheel, and cycling friends have told me of similar
+experiences they have had, in some instances the heedless
+birds getting killed.  Chaffinches are like the children in
+village streets--they will not get out of your way; by and by
+in rural places the merciful man will have to ring his bell
+almost incessantly to avoid running over them.  As I do not
+travel at a furious speed I manage to avoid most things, even
+the wandering loveless oil-beetle and the small rose-beetle
+and that slow-moving insect tortoise the tumbledung.  Two or
+three seasons ago I was so unfortunate as to run over a large
+and beautifully bright grass snake near Aldermaston, once a
+snake sanctuary.  He writhed and wriggled on the road as if I
+had broken his back, but on picking him up I was pleased to
+find that my wind-inflated rubber tyre had not, like the
+brazen chariot wheel, crushed his delicate vertebra; he
+quickly recovered, and when released glided swiftly and easily
+away into cover.  Twice only have I deliberately tried to run
+down, to tread on coat-tails so to speak, of any wild
+creature.  One was a weasel, the other a stoat, running along
+at a hedge-side before me.  In both instances, just as the
+front wheel was touching the tail, the little flat-headed
+rascal swerved quickly aside and escaped.
+
+Even some of the less common and less tame birds care as
+little for a man on a bicycle as they do for a cow.  Not long
+ago a peewit trotted leisurely across the road not more than
+ten yards from my front wheel; and on the same day I came upon
+a green woodpecker enjoying a dust-bath in the public road.
+He declined to stir until I stopped to watch him, then merely
+flew about a dozen yards away and attached himself to the
+trunk of a fir tree at the roadside and waited there for me to
+go.  Never in all my wanderings afoot had I seen a yaffingale
+dusting himself like a barn-door fowl!
+
+It is not seriously contended that birds can be observed
+narrowly in this easy way; but even for the most conscientious
+field naturalist the wheel has its advantages.  It carries him
+quickly over much barren ground and gives him a better view of
+the country he traverses; finally, it enables him to see more
+birds.  He will sometimes see thousands in a day where,
+walking, he would hardly have seen hundreds, and there is joy
+in mere numbers.  It was just to get this general rapid sight
+of the bird life of the neighbouring hilly district of
+Hampshire that I was at Newbury on the last day of October.
+The weather was bright though very cold and windy, and towards
+evening I was surprised to see about twenty swallows in
+Northbrook Street flying languidly to and fro in the shelter
+of the houses, often fluttering under the eaves and at
+intervals sitting on ledges and projections.  These belated
+birds looked as if they wished to hibernate, or find the most
+cosy holes to die in, rather than to emigrate.  On the
+following day at noon they came out again and flew up and down
+in the same feeble aimless manner.
+
+Undoubtedly a few swallows of all three species, but mostly
+house-martins, do "lie up" in England every winter, but
+probably very few survive to the following spring.  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.  The top is a
+league-long tableland, with stretches of green elastic turf,
+thickets of furze and bramble, and clumps of ancient noble
+beeches--a beautiful lonely wilderness with rabbits and birds
+for only inhabitants.  From the highest point where a famous
+gibbet stands for ever a thousand feet above the sea and where
+there is a dew-pond, the highest in England, which has never
+dried up although a large flock of sheep drink in it every
+summer day, one looks down into an immense hollow, a Devil's
+Punch Bowl very many times magnified,--and spies, far away and
+far below, a few lonely houses half hidden by trees at the
+bottom.  This is the romantic village of Coombe, and hither I
+went and found the vicar busy in the garden of the small old
+picturesque parsonage.  Here a very pretty little bird comedy
+was in progress: a pair of stock-doves which had been taken
+from a rabbit-hole in the hill and reared by hand had just
+escaped from the large cage where they had always lived, and
+all the family were excitedly engaged in trying to recapture
+them.  They were delightful to see--those two pretty blue
+birds with red legs running busily about on the green lawn,
+eagerly searching for something to eat and finding nothing.
+They were quite tame and willing to be fed, so that anyone
+could approach them and put as much salt on their tails as he
+liked, but they refused to be touched or taken; they were too
+happy in their new freedom, running and flying about in that
+brilliant sunshine, and when I left towards the evening they
+were still at large.
+
+But before quitting that small isolated village in its green
+basin--a human heart in a chalk hill, almost the highest in
+England--I wished the hours I spent in it had been days, so
+much was there to see and hear.  There was the gibbet on the
+hill, for example, far up on the rim of the green basin, four
+hundred feet above the village; why had that memorial, that
+symbol of a dreadful past, been preserved for so many years
+and generations? and why had it been raised so high--was it
+because the crime of the person put to death there was of so
+monstrous a nature that it was determined to suspend him, if
+not on a gibbet fifty cubits high, at all events higher above
+the earth than Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite?  The
+gruesome story is as follows.
+
+Once upon a time there lived a poor widow woman in Coombe,
+with two sons, aged fourteen and sixteen, who worked at a farm
+in the village.  She had a lover, a middle-aged man, living at
+Woodhay, a carrier who used to go on two or three days each
+week with his cart to deliver parcels at Coombe.  But he was a
+married man, and as he could not marry the widow while his
+wife remained alive, it came into his dull Berkshire brain
+that the only way out of the difficulty was to murder her, and
+to this course the widow probably consented.  Accordingly, one
+day, he invited or persuaded her to accompany him on his
+journey to the remote village, and on the way he got her out
+of the cart and led her into a close thicket to show her
+something he had discovered there.  What he wished to show her
+(according to one version of the story) was a populous
+hornets' nest, and having got her there he suddenly flung her
+against it and made off, leaving the cloud of infuriated
+hornets to sting her to death.  That night he slept at Coombe,
+or stayed till a very late hour at the widow's cottage and
+told her what he had done.  In telling her he had spoken in
+his ordinary voice, but by and by it occurred to him that the
+two boys, who were sleeping close by in the living-room, might
+have been awake and listening.  She assured him that they were
+both fast asleep, but he was not satisfied, and said that if
+they had heard him he would kill them both, as he had no wish
+to swing, and he could not trust them to hold their tongues.
+Thereupon they got up and examined the faces of the two boys,
+holding a candle over them, and saw that they were in a deep
+sleep, as was natural after their long day's hard work on the
+farm, and the murderer's fears were set at rest.  Yet one of
+the boys, the younger, had been wide awake all the time,
+listening, trembling with terror, with wide eyes to the
+dreadful tale, and only when they first became suspicious
+instinct came to his aid and closed his eyes and stilled his
+tremors and gave him the appearance of being asleep.  Early
+next morning, with his terror still on him, he told what he
+had heard to his brother, and by and by, unable to keep the
+dreadful secret, they related it to someone--a carter or
+ploughman on the farm.  He in turn told the farmer, who at
+once gave information, and in a short time the man and woman
+were arrested.  In due time they were tried, convicted, and
+sentenced to be hanged in the parish where the crime had been
+committed.
+
+Everybody was delighted, and Coombe most delighted of all, for
+it happened that some of their wise people had been diligently
+examining into the matter and had made the discovery that the
+woman had been murdered just outside their borders in the
+adjoining parish of Inkpen, so that they were going to enjoy
+seeing the wicked punished at somebody else's expense.  Inkpen
+was furious and swore that it would not be saddled with the
+cost of a great public double execution.  The line dividing
+the two parishes had always been a doubtful one; now they were
+going to take the benefit of the doubt and let Coombe hang its
+own miscreants!
+
+As neither side would yield, the higher authorities were
+compelled to settle the matter for them, and ordered the cost
+to be divided between the two parishes, the gibbet to be
+erected on the boundary line, as far as it could be
+ascertained.  This was accordingly done, the gibbet being
+erected at the highest point crossed by the line, on a stretch
+of beautiful smooth elastic turf, among prehistoric
+earthworks--a spot commanding one of the finest and most
+extensive views in Southern England.  The day appointed for
+the execution brought the greatest concourse of people ever
+witnessed at that lofty spot, at all events since prehistoric
+times.  If some of the ancient Britons had come out of their
+graves to look on, seated on their earthworks, they would have
+probably rubbed their ghostly hands together and remarked to
+each other that it reminded them of old times.  All classes
+were there, from the nobility and gentry, on horseback and in
+great coaches in which they carried their own provisions, to
+the meaner sort who had trudged from all the country round on
+foot, and those who had not brought their own food and beer
+were catered for by traders in carts.  The crowd was a
+hilarious one, and no doubt that grand picnic on the beacon
+was the talk of they country for a generation or longer.
+The two wretches having been hanged in chains on one gibbet
+were left to be eaten by ravens, crows, and magpipes, and
+dried by sun and winds, until, after long years, the swinging,
+creaking skeletons with their chains on fell to pieces and
+were covered with the turf, but the gibbet itself was never
+removed.
+
+Then a strange thing happened.  The sheep on a neighbouring
+farm became thin and sickly and yielded little wool and died
+before their time.  No remedies availed and the secret of
+their malady could not be discovered; but it went on so long
+that the farmer was threatened with utter ruin.  Then, by
+chance, it was discovered that the chains in which the
+murderers had been hanged had been thrown by some evil-minded
+person into a dew-pond on the farm.  This was taken to be the
+cause of the malady in the sheep; at all events, the chains
+having been taken out of the pond and buried deep in the
+earth, the flock recovered: it was supposed that the person
+who had thrown the chains in the water to poison it had done
+so to ruin the farmer in revenge for some injustice or grudge.
+But even now we are not quite done with the gibbet!  Many,
+many years had gone by when Inkpen discovered from old
+documents that their little dishonest neighbour, Coombe, had
+taken more land than she was entitled to, that not only a part
+but the whole of that noble hill-top belonged to her!  It was
+Inkpen's turn to chuckle now; but she chuckled too soon, and
+Coombe, running out to look, found the old rotten stump of the
+gibbet still in the ground.  Hands off! she cried.  Here
+stands a post, which you set up yourself, or which we put up
+together and agreed that this should be the boundary line for
+ever.  Inkpen sneaked off to hide herself in her village, and
+Coombe, determined to keep the subject in mind, set up a
+brand-new stout gibbet in the place of the old rotting one.
+That too decayed and fell to pieces in time, and the present
+gibbet is therefore the third, and nobody has ever been hanged
+on it.  Coombe is rather proud of it, but I am not sure that
+Inkpen is.
+
+That was one of three strange events in the life of the
+village which I heard: the other two must be passed by; they
+would take long to tell and require a good pen to do them
+justice.  To me the best thing in or of the village was the
+vicar himself, my put-upon host, a man of so blithe a nature,
+so human and companionable, that when I, a perfect stranger
+without an introduction or any excuse for such intrusion came
+down like a wolf on his luncheon-table, he received me as if I
+had been an old friend or one of his own kindred, and freely
+gave up his time to me for the rest of that day.  To count his
+years he was old: he had been vicar of Coombe for half a
+century, but he was a young man still and had never had a
+day's illness in his life--he did not know what a headache
+was.  He smoked with me, and to prove that he was not a total
+abstainer he drank my health in a glass of port wine--very
+good wine.  It was Coombe that did it--its peaceful life,
+isolated from a distracting world in that hollow hill, and the
+marvellous purity of its air.  "Sitting there on my lawn," he
+said, "you are six hundred feet above the sea, although in a
+hollow four hundred feet deep."  It was an ideal open-air
+room, round and green, with the sky for a roof.  In winter it
+was sometimes very cold, and after a heavy fall of snow the
+scene was strange and impressive from the tiny village set in
+its stupendous dazzling white bowl.  Not only on those rare
+arctic days, but at all times it was wonderfully quiet.  The
+shout of a child or the peaceful crow of a cock was the
+loudest sound you heard.  Once a gentleman from London town
+came down to spend a week at the parsonage.  Towards evening
+on the very first day he grew restless and complained of the
+abnormal stillness.  "I like a quiet place well enough," he
+exclaimed, "but this tingling silence I can't stand!"  And
+stand it he wouldn't and didn't, for on the very next morning
+he took himself off.  Many years had gone by, but the vicar
+could not forget the Londoner who had come down to invent a
+new way of describing the Coombe silence.  His tingling phrase
+was a joy for ever.
+
+He took me to the church--one of the tiniest churches in the
+country, just the right size for a church in a tiny village
+and assured me that he had never once locked the door in his
+fifty years--day and night it was open to any one to enter.
+It was a refuge and shelter from the storm and the Tempest,
+and many a poor homeless wretch had found a dry place to sleep
+in that church during the last half a century.  This man's
+feeling of pity and tenderness for the very poor, even the
+outcast and tramp, was a passion.  But how strange all this
+would sound in the ears of many country clergymen!  How many
+have told me when I have gone to the parsonage to "borrow the
+key" that it had been found necessary to keep the church door
+locked, to prevent damage, thefts, etc.  "Have you never had
+anything stolen?" I asked him.  Yes, once, a great many years
+ago, the church plate had been taken away in the night.  But
+it was recovered: the thief had taken it to the top of the
+hill and thrown it into the dewpond there, no doubt intending
+to take it out and dispose of it at some more convenient time.
+But it was found, and had ever since then been kept safe at
+the vicarage.  Nothing of value to tempt a man to steal was
+kept in the church.  He had never locked it, but once in his
+fifty years it had been locked against him by the
+churchwardens.  This happened in the days of the Joseph Arch
+agitation, when the agricultural labourer's condition was
+being hotly discussed throughout the country.  The vicar's
+heart was stirred, for he knew better than most how hard these
+conditions were at Coombe and in the surrounding parishes.  He
+took up the subject and preached on it in his own pulpit in a
+way that offended the landowners and alarmed the farmers in
+the district.  The church wardens, who were farmers, then
+locked him out of his church, and for two or three weeks there
+was no public worship in the parish of Coombe.  Doubtless
+their action was applauded by all the substantial men in the
+neighbourhood; the others who lived in the cottages and were
+unsubstantial didn't matter.  That storm blew over, but its
+consequences endured, one being that the inflammatory parson
+continued to be regarded with cold disapproval by the squires
+and their larger tenants.  But the vicar himself was
+unrepentant and unashamed; on the contrary, he gloried in what
+he had said and done, and was proud to be able to relate that
+a quarter of a century later one of the two men who had taken
+that extreme course said to him, "We locked you out of your
+own church, but years have brought me to another mind about
+that question.  I see it in a different light now and know
+that you were right and we were wrong."
+
+Towards evening I said good-bye to my kind friend and
+entertainer and continued my rural ride.  From Coombe it is
+five miles to Hurstbourne Tarrant, another charming "highland"
+village, and the road, sloping down the entire distance,
+struck me as one of the best to be on I had travelled in
+Hampshire, running along a narrow green valley, with oak and
+birch and bramble and thorn in their late autumn colours
+growing on the slopes on either hand.  Probably the beauty of
+the scene, or the swift succession of beautiful scenes, with
+the low sun flaming on the "coloured shades," served to keep
+out of my mind something that should have been in it.  At all
+events, it was odd that I had more than once promised myself a
+visit to the very village I was approaching solely because
+William Cobbett had described and often stayed in it, and now
+no thought of him and his ever-delightful Rural Rides was in
+my mind.
+
+Arrived at the village I went straight to the "George and
+Dragon," where a friend had assured me I could always find
+good accommodations.  But he was wrong: there was no room for
+me, I was told by a weird-looking, lean, white-haired old
+woman with whity-blue unfriendly eyes.  She appeared to resent
+it that any one should ask for accommodation at such a time,
+when the "shooting gents" from town required all the rooms
+available.  Well, I had to sleep somewhere, I told her:
+couldn't she direct me to a cottage where I could get a bed?
+No, she couldn't--it is always so; but after the third time of
+asking she unfroze so far as to say that perhaps they would
+take me in at a cottage close by.  So I went, and a poor kind
+widow who lived there with a son consented to put me up.  She
+made a nice fire in the sitting-room, and after warming myself
+before it, while watching the firelight and shadows playing on
+the dim walls and ceiling, it came to me that I was not in a
+cottage, but in a large room with an oak floor and
+wainscoting.  "Do you call this a cottage?" I said to the
+woman when she came in with tea.  "No, I have it as a cottage,
+but it is an old farm-house called the Rookery," she returned.
+Then, for the first time, I remembered Rural Rides.  "This
+then is the very house where William Cobbett used to stay
+seventy or eighty years ago," I said.  She had never heard of
+William Cobbett; she only knew that at that date it had been
+tenanted by a farmer named Blount, a Roman Catholic, who had
+some curious ideas about the land.
+
+That settled it.  Blount was the name of Cobbett's friend, and
+I had come to the very house where Cobbett was accustomed to
+stay.  But how odd that my first thought of the man should
+have come to me when sitting by the fire where Cobbett himself
+had sat on many a cold evening!  And this was November the
+second, the very day eighty-odd years ago when he paid his
+first visit to the Rookery; at all events, it is the first
+date he gives in Rural Rides.  And he too had been delighted
+with the place and the beauty of the surrounding country with
+the trees in their late autumn colours.  Writing on November
+2nd, 1821, he says: "The place is commonly called Uphusband,
+which is, I think, as decent a corruption of names as one
+could wish to meet with.  However, Uphusband the people will
+have it, and Uphusband it shall be for me."  That is indeed
+how he names it all through his book, after explaining that
+"husband" is a corruption of Hurstbourne, and that there are
+two Hurstbournes, this being the upper one.
+
+I congratulated myself on having been refused accommodation at
+the "George and Dragon," and was more than satisfied to pass
+an evening without a book, sitting there alone listening to an
+imaginary conversation between those two curious friends.
+"Lord Carnarvon," says Cobbett, "told a man, in 1820, that he
+did not like my politics.  But what did he mean by my
+politics?  I have no politics but such as he ought to like.
+To be sure I labour most assiduously to destroy a system of
+distress and misery; but is that any reason why a Lord should
+dislike my politics?  However, dislike them or like them, to
+them, to those very politics, the Lords themselves must come
+at last."
+
+Undoubtedly he talked like that, just as he wrote and as he
+spoke in public, his style, if style it can be called, being
+the most simple, direct, and colloquial ever written.  And for
+this reason, when we are aweary of the style of the stylist,
+where the living breathing body becomes of less consequence
+than its beautiful clothing, it is a relief, and refreshment,
+to turn from the precious and delicate expression, the
+implicit word, sought for high and low and at last found, the
+balance of every sentence and perfect harmony of the whole
+work--to go from it to the simple vigorous unadorned talk of
+Rural Rides.  A classic, and as incongruous among classics as
+a farmer in his smock-frock, leggings, and stout boots would
+appear in a company of fine gentlemen in fashionable dress.
+The powerful face is the main thing, and we think little of
+the frock and leggings and how the hair is parted or if parted
+at all.  Harsh and crabbed as his nature no doubt was, and
+bitter and spiteful at times, his conversation must yet have
+seemed like a perpetual feast of honeyed sweets to his farmer
+friend.  Doubtless there was plenty of variety in it: now he
+would expatiate on the beauty of the green downs over which he
+had just ridden, the wooded slopes in their glorious autumn
+colours, and the rich villages between; this would remind him
+of Malthus, that blasphemous monster who had dared to say that
+the increase in food production did not keep pace with
+increase of population; then a quieting down, a
+breathing-space, all about the turnip crop, the price of eggs
+at Weyhill Fair, and the delights of hare coursing, until
+politics would come round again and a fresh outburst from the
+glorious demagogue in his tantrums.
+
+At eight o'clock Cobbett would say good night and go to bed,
+and early next morning write down what he had said to his
+friend, or some of it, and send it off to be printed in his
+paper.  That, I take it, is how Rural Rides was written, and
+that is why it seems so fresh to us to this day, and that to
+take it up after other books is like going out from a
+luxurious room full of fine company into the open air to feel
+the wind and rain on one's face and see the green grass.
+But I very much regret that Cobbett tells us nothing of his
+farmer friend.  Blount, I imagine, must have been a man of a
+very fine character to have won the heart and influenced such
+a person.  Cobbett never loses an opportunity of vilifying the
+parsons and expressing his hatred of the Established Church;
+and yet, albeit a Protestant, he invariably softens down when
+he refers to the Roman Catholic faith and appears quite
+capable of seeing the good that is in it.
+
+It was Blount, I think, who had soothed the savage breast of
+the man in this matter.  The only thing I could hear about
+Blount and his "queer notions" regarding the land was his idea
+that the soil could be improved by taking the flints out.
+"The soil to look upon," Cobbett truly says, "appears to be
+more than half flint, but is a very good quality."  Blount
+thought to make it better, and for many years employed all the
+aged poor villagers and the children in picking the flints
+from the ploughed land and gathering them in vast heaps.  It
+does not appear that he made his land more productive, but his
+hobby was a good one for the poor of the village; the stones,
+too, proved useful afterwards to the road-makers, who have
+been using them these many years.  A few heaps almost clothed
+over with a turf which had formed on them in the course of
+eighty years were still to be seen on the land when I was
+there.
+
+The following day I took no ride.  The weather was so
+beautiful it seemed better to spend the time sitting or
+basking in the warmth and brightness or strolling about.
+At all events, it was a perfect day at Hurstbourne Tarrant,
+though not everywhere, for on that third of November the
+greatest portion of Southern England was drowned in a cold
+dense white fog.  In London it was dark, I heard.  Early in
+the morning I listened to a cirl-bunting singing merrily from
+a bush close to the George and Dragon Inn.  This charming bird
+is quite common in the neighbourhood, although, as elsewhere
+in England, the natives know it not by its book name, nor by
+any other, and do not distinguish it from its less engaging
+cousin, the yellowhammer.
+
+After breakfast I strolled about the common and in Doles Wood,
+on the down above the village, listening to the birds, and on
+my way back encountered a tramp whose singular appearance
+produced a deep impression on my mind.  We have heard of a
+work by some modest pressman entitled "Monarchs I have met",
+and I sometimes think that one equally interesting might be
+written on "Tramps I have met".  As I have neither time nor
+stomach for the task, I will make a present of the title to
+any one of my fellow-travellers, curious in tramps, who cares
+to use it.  This makes two good titles I have given away in
+this chapter with a borrowed one.
+
+But if it had been possible for me to write such a book, a
+prominent place would be given in it to the one tramp I have
+met who could be accurately described as gorgeous.  I did not
+cultivate his acquaintance; chance threw us together and we
+separated after exchanging a few polite commonplaces, but his
+big flamboyant image remains vividly impressed on my mind.
+
+At noon, in the brilliant sunshine, as I came loiteringly down
+the long slope from Doles Wood to the village, he overtook me.
+He was a huge man, over six feet high, nobly built, suggesting
+a Scandinavian origin, with a broad blond face, good features,
+and prominent blue eyes, and his hair was curly and shone like
+gold in the sunlight.  Had he been a mere labourer in a
+workman's rough clay-stained clothes, one would have stood
+still to look at and admire him, and say perhaps what a
+magnificent warrior he would have looked with sword and spear
+and plumed helmet, mounted on a big horse!  But alas! he had
+the stamp of the irreclaimable blackguard on his face; and
+that same handsome face was just then disfigured with several
+bruises in three colours--blue, black, and red.  Doubtless he
+had been in a drunken brawl on the previous evening and had
+perhaps been thrown out of some low public-house and properly
+punished.
+
+In his dress he was as remarkable as in his figure.  Bright
+blue trousers much too small for his stout legs, once the
+property, no doubt, of some sporting young gent of loud tastes
+in colours; a spotted fancy waistcoat, not long enough to meet
+the trousers, a dirty scarlet tie, long black frock-coat,
+shiny in places, and a small dirty grey cap which only covered
+the topmost part of his head of golden hair.
+
+Walking by the hedge-side he picked and devoured the late
+blackberries, which were still abundant.  It was a beautiful
+unkept hedge with scarlet and purple fruit among the
+many-coloured fading leaves and silver-grey down of old-man's-
+beard.
+
+I too picked and ate a few berries and made the remark that it
+was late to eat such fruit in November.  The Devil in these
+parts, I told him, flies abroad in October to spit on the
+bramble bushes and spoil the fruit.  It was even worse further
+north, in Norfolk and Suffolk, where they say the Devil goes
+out at Michaelmas and shakes his verminous trousers over the
+bushes.
+
+He didn't smile; he went on sternly eating blackberries, and
+then remarked in a bitter tone, "That Devil they talk about
+must have a busy time, to go messing about blackberry bushes
+in addition to all his other important work."
+
+I was silent, and presently, after swallowing a few more
+berries, he resumed in the same tone: "Very fine, very
+beautiful all this"--waving his hand to indicate the hedge,
+its rich tangle of purple-red stems and coloured leaves, and
+scarlet fruit and silvery oldman's-beard.  "An artist enjoys
+seeing this sort of thing, and it's nice for all those who go
+about just for the pleasure of seeing things.  But when it
+comes to a man tramping twenty or thirty miles a day on an
+empty belly, looking for work which he can't find, he doesn't
+see it quite in the same way."
+
+"True," I returned, with indifference.
+
+But he was not to be put off by my sudden coldness, and he
+proceeded to inform me that he had just returned from
+Salisbury Plain, that it had been noised abroad that ten
+thousand men were wanted by the War Office to work in forming
+new camps.  On arrival he found it was not so--it was all a
+lie--men were not wanted--and he was now on his way to
+Andover, penniless and hungry and--
+
+By the time he had got to that part of his story we were some
+distance apart, as I had remained standing still while he,
+thinking me still close behind, had gone on picking
+blackberries and talking.  He was soon out of sight.
+
+At noon the following day, the weather still being bright and
+genial, I went to Crux Easton, a hilltop village consisting of
+some low farm buildings, cottages, and a church not much
+bigger than a cottage.  A great house probably once existed
+here, as the hill has a noble avenue of limes, which it wears
+like a comb or crest.  On the lower slope of the hill, the old
+unkept hedges were richer in colour than in most places, owing
+to the abundance of the spindle-wood tree, laden with its
+loose clusters of flame-bright, purple-pink and orange
+berries.
+
+Here I saw a pretty thing: a cock cirl-bunting, his yellow
+breast towards me, sitting quietly on a large bush of these
+same brilliant berries, set amidst a mass of splendidly
+coloured hazel leaves, mixed with bramble and tangled with ivy
+and silver-grey traveller's-joy.  An artist's heart would have
+leaped with joy at the sight, but all his skill and oriental
+colours would have made nothing of it, for all visible nature
+was part of the picture, the wide wooded earth and the blue
+sky beyond and above the bird, and the sunshine that glorified
+all.
+
+On the other side of the hedge there were groups of fine old
+beech trees and, strange to see, just beyond the green slope
+and coloured trees, was the great whiteness of the fog which
+had advanced thus far and now appeared motionless.  I went
+down and walked by the side of the bank of mist, feeling its
+clammy coldness on one cheek while the other was fanned by the
+warm bright air.  Seen at a distance of a couple of hundred
+yards, the appearance was that of a beautiful pearly-white
+cloud resting upon the earth.  Many fogs had I seen, but never
+one like this, so substantial-looking, so sharply defined,
+standing like a vast white wall or flat-topped hill at the
+foot of the green sunlit slope!  I had the fancy that if I had
+been an artist in sculpture, and rapid modeller, by using the
+edge of my hand as a knife I could have roughly carved out a
+human figure, then drawing it gently out of the mass proceeded
+to press and work it to a better shape, the shape, let us say,
+of a beautiful woman.  Then, if it were done excellently, and
+some man-mocking deity, or power of the air, happened to be
+looking on, he would breathe life and intelligence into it,
+and send it, or her, abroad to mix with human kind and
+complicate their affairs.  For she would seem a woman and
+would be like some women we have known, beautiful with blue
+flower-like eyes, pale gold or honey-coloured hair; very white
+of skin, Leightonian, almost diaphanous, so delicate as to
+make all other skins appear coarse and made of clay.  And with
+her beauty and a mysterious sweetness not of the heart, since
+no heart there would be in that mist-cold body, she would draw
+all hearts, ever inspiring, but never satisfying passion, her
+beauty and alluring smiles being but the brightness of a cloud
+on which the sun is shining.
+
+Birds, driven by the fog to that sunlit spot, were all about
+me in incredible numbers.  Rooks and daws were congregating on
+the bushes, where their black figures served to intensify the
+red-gold tints of the foliage.  At intervals the entire vast
+cawing multitude simultaneously rose up with a sound as
+of many waters, and appeared now at last about to mount up
+into the blue heavens, to float circling there far above the
+world as they are accustomed to do on warm windless days in
+autumn.  But in a little while their brave note would change
+to one of trouble; the sight of that immeasurable whiteness
+covering so much of the earth would scare them, and led by
+hundreds of clamouring daws they would come down again to
+settle once more in black masses on the shining yellow trees.
+
+Close by a ploughed field of about forty acres was the
+camping-ground of an army of peewits; they were travellers
+from the north perhaps, and were quietly resting, sprinkled
+over the whole area.  More abundant were the small birds in
+mixed flocks or hordes--finches, buntings, and larks in
+thousands on thousands, with a sprinkling of pipits and pied
+and grey wagtails, all busily feeding on the stubble and fresh
+ploughed land.  Thickly and evenly distributed, they appeared
+to the vision ranging over the brown level expanse as minute
+animated and variously coloured clods--black and brown and
+grey and yellow and olive-green.
+
+It was a rare pleasure to be in this company, to revel in
+their astonishing numbers, to feast my soul on them as it
+were--little birds in such multitudes that ten thousand
+Frenchmen and Italians might have gorged to repletion on their
+small succulent bodies--and to reflect that they were safe
+from persecution so long as they remained here in England.
+This is something for an Englishman to be proud of.
+
+After spending two hours at Crux Easton, with that dense
+immovable fog close by, I at length took the plunge to get to
+Highclere.  What a change!  I was at once where all form and
+colour and melody had been blotted out.  My clothes were hoary
+with clinging mist, my fingers numb with cold, and Highclere,
+its scattered cottages appearing like dim smudges through the
+whiteness, was the dreariest village on earth.  I fled on to
+Newbury in quest of warmth and light, and found it indoors,
+but the town was deep in the fog.
+
+The next day I ventured out again to look for the sun, and
+found it not, but my ramble was not without its reward.  In a
+pine wood three miles from the town I stood awhile to listen
+to the sound as of copious rain of the moisture dropping from
+the trees, when a sudden tempest of loud, sharp metallic
+notes--a sound dear to the ornithologist's ears--made me jump;
+and down into the very tree before which I was standing
+dropped a flock of about twenty crossbills.  So excited and
+noisy when coming down, the instant they touched the tree they
+became perfectly silent and motionless.  Seven of their number
+had settled on the outside shoots, and sat there within forty
+feet of me, looking like painted wooden images of small green
+and greenish-yellow parrots; for a space of fifteen minutes
+not the slightest movement did they make, and at length,
+before going, I waved my arms about and shouted to frighten
+them, and still they refused to stir.
+
+Next morning that memorable fog lifted, to England's joy, and
+quitting my refuge I went out once more into the region of
+high sheep-walks, adorned with beechen woods and
+traveller's-joy in the hedges, rambling by Highclere,
+Burghclere, and Kingsclere.  The last--Hampshire's little
+Cuzco--is a small and village-like old red brick town,
+unapproached by a railroad and unimproved, therefore still
+beautiful, as were all places in other, better, less civilized
+days.  Here in the late afternoon a chilly grey haze crept
+over the country and set me wishing for a fireside and the
+sound of friendly voices, and I turned my face towards beloved
+Silchester.  Leaving the hills behind me I got away from the
+haze and went my devious way by serpentine roads through a
+beautiful, wooded, undulating country.  And I wish that for a
+hundred, nay, for a thousand years to come, I could on each
+recurring November have such an afternoon ride, with that
+autumnal glory in the trees.  Sometimes, seeing the road
+before me carpeted with pure yellow, I said to myself, now I
+am coming to elms; but when the road shone red and russet-gold
+before me I knew it was overhung by beeches.  But the oak is
+the common tree in this place, and from every high point on
+the road I saw far before me and on either hand the woods and
+copses all a tawny yellow gold--the hue of the dying oak leaf.
+The tall larches were lemon-yellow, and when growing among
+tall pines produced a singular effect.  Best of all was it
+where beeches grew among the firs, and the low sun on my left
+hand shining through the wood gave the coloured translucent
+leaves an unimaginable splendour.  This was the very effect
+which men, inspired by a sacred passion, had sought to
+reproduce in their noblest work--the Gothic cathedral and
+church, its dim interior lit by many-coloured stained glass.
+The only choristers in these natural fanes were the robins and
+the small lyrical wren; but on passing through the rustic
+village of Wolverton I stopped for a couple of minutes to
+listen to the lively strains of a cirl-bunting among some farm
+buildings.
+
+Then on to Silchester, its furzy common and scattered village
+and the vast ruinous walls, overgrown with ivy, bramble, and
+thorn, of ancient Roman Calleva.  Inside the walls, at one
+spot, a dozen men were still at work in the fading light; they
+were just finishing--shovelling earth in to obliterate all
+that had been opened out during the year.  The old flint
+foundations that had been revealed; the houses with porches
+and corridors and courtyards and pillared hypocausts; the
+winter room with its wide beautiful floor--red and black and
+white and grey and yellow, with geometric pattern and twist
+and scroll and flower and leaf and quaint figures of man and
+beast and bird--all to be covered up with earth so that the
+plough may be driven over it again, and the wheat grow and
+ripen again as it has grown and ripened there above the dead
+city for so many centuries.  The very earth within those walls
+had a reddish cast owing to the innumerable fragments of red
+tile and tessera mixed with it.  Larks and finches were busily
+searching for seeds in the reddish-brown soil.  They would
+soon be gone to their roosting-places and the tired men to
+their cottages, and the white owl coming from his hiding-place
+in the walls would have old Silchester to himself, as he has
+had it since the cries and moans of the conquered died into
+silence so long ago.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Ten: The Last of His Name
+
+
+I came by chance to the village--Norton, we will call it, just
+to call it something, but the county in which it is situated
+need not be named.  It happened that about noon that day I
+planned to pass the night at a village where, as I was
+informed at a small country town I had rested in, there was a
+nice inn--"The Fox and Grapes"--to put up at, but when I
+arrived, tired and hungry, I was told that I could not have a
+bed and that the only thing to do was to try Norton, which
+also boasted an inn.  It was hard to have to turn some two or
+three miles out of my road at that late hour on a chance of a
+shelter for the night, but there was nothing else to do, so on
+to Norton I went with heavy steps, and arrived a little after
+sunset, more tired and hungry than ever, only to be told at
+the inn that they had no accommodation for me, that their one
+spare room had been engaged!  "What am I to do, then?" I
+demanded of the landlord.  "Beyond this village I cannot go
+to-night--do you want me to go out and sleep under a hedge?"
+He called his spouse, and after some conversation they said
+the village baker might be able to put me up, as he had a
+spare bedroom in his house.  So to the baker's I went, and
+found it a queer, ramshackle old place, standing a little back
+from the village street in a garden and green plot with a few
+fruit trees growing on it.  To my knock the baker himself came
+out--a mild-looking, flabby-faced man, with his mouth full, in
+a very loose suit of pyjama-like garments of a bluish floury
+colour.  I told him my story, and he listened, swallowing his
+mouthful, then cast his eyes down and rubbed his chin, which
+had a small tuft of hairs growing on it, and finally said, "I
+don't know.  I must ask my wife.  But come in and have a cup
+of tea--we're just having a cup ourselves, and perhaps you'd
+like one."
+
+I could have told him that I should like a dozen cups and a
+great many slices of bread-and-butter, if there was nothing
+else more substantial to be had.  However, I only said, "Thank
+you," and followed him in to where his wife, a nice-looking
+woman, with black hair and olive face, was seated behind the
+teapot.  Imagine my surprise when I found that besides tea
+there was a big hot repast on the table--a ham, a roast fowl,
+potatoes and cabbage, a rice pudding, a dish of stewed fruit,
+bread-and-butter, and other things.
+
+"You call this a cup of tea!" I exclaimed delightedly.  The
+woman laughed, and he explained in an apologetic way that he
+had formerly suffered grievously from indigestion, so that for
+many years his life was a burden to him, until he discovered
+that if he took one big meal a day, after the work was over,
+he could keep perfectly well.
+
+I was never hungrier than on this evening, and never, I think,
+ate a bigger or more enjoyable meal; nor have I ever ceased to
+remember those two with gratitude, and if I were to tell here
+what they told me--the history of their two lives--I think it
+would be a more interesting story than the one I am about to
+relate.  I stayed a whole week in their hospitable house; a
+week which passed only too quickly, for never had I been in a
+sweeter haunt of peace than this village in a quiet, green
+country remote from towns and stations.  It was a small rustic
+place, a few old houses and thatched cottages, and the ancient
+church with square Norman tower hard to see amid the immense
+old oaks and elms that grew all about it.  At the end of the
+village were the park gates, and the park, a solitary, green
+place with noble trees, was my favourite haunt; for there was
+no one to forbid me, the squire being dead, the old red
+Elizabethan house empty, with only a caretaker in the
+gardener's lodge to mind it, and the estate for sale.  Three
+years it had been in that condition, but nobody seemed to want
+it; occasionally some important person came rushing down in a
+motor-car, but after running over the house he would come out
+and, remarking that it was a "rummy old place," remount his
+car and vanish in a cloud of dust to be seen no more.
+
+The dead owner, I found, was much in the village mind; and no
+wonder, since Norton had never been without a squire until he
+passed away, leaving no one to succeed him.  It was as if some
+ancient landmark, or an immemorial oak tree on the green in
+whose shade the villagers had been accustomed to sit for many
+generations, had been removed.  There was a sense of something
+wanting something gone out of their lives.  Moreover, he had
+been a man of a remarkable character, and though they never
+loved him they yet reverenced his memory.
+
+So much was he in their minds that I could not be in the
+village and not hear the story of his life--the story which, I
+said, interested me less than that of the good baker and his
+wife.  On his father's death at a very advanced age he came, a
+comparative stranger, to Norton, the first half of his life
+having been spent abroad.  He was then a middle-aged man,
+unmarried, and a bachelor he remained to the end.  He was of a
+reticent disposition and was said to be proud; formal, almost
+cold, in manner; furthermore, he did not share his neighbours'
+love of sport of any description, nor did he care for society,
+and because of all this he was regarded as peculiar, not to
+say eccentric.  But he was deeply interested in agriculture,
+especially in cattle and their improvement, and that object
+grew to be his master passion.  It was a period of great
+depression, and as his farms fell vacant he took them into his
+own hands, increased his stock and built model cowhouses, and
+came at last to be known throughout his own country, and
+eventually everywhere, as one of the biggest cattle-breeders
+in England.  But he was famous in a peculiar way.  Wise
+breeders and buyers shook their heads and even touched their
+foreheads significantly, and predicted that the squire of
+Norton would finish by ruining himself.  They were right, he
+ruined himself; not that he was mentally weaker than those who
+watched and cunningly exploited him; he was ruined because his
+object was a higher one than theirs.  He saw clearly that the
+prize system is a vicious one and that better results may be
+obtained without it.  He proved this at a heavy cost by
+breeding better beasts than his rivals, who were all
+exhibitors and prizewinners, and who by this means got their
+advertisements and secured the highest prices, while he, who
+disdained prizes and looked with disgust at the overfed and
+polished animals at shows, got no advertisements and was
+compelled to sell at unremunerative prices.  The buyers, it
+may be mentioned, were always the breeders for shows, and they
+made a splendid profit out of it.
+
+He carried on the fight for a good many years, becoming more
+and more involved, until his creditors took possession of the
+estate, sold off the stock, let the farms, and succeeded in
+finding a tenant for the furnished house.  He went to a
+cottage in the village and there passed his remaining years.
+To the world he appeared unmoved by his reverses.  The change
+from mansion and park to a small thatched cottage, with a
+labourer's wife for attendant, made no change in the man, nor
+did he resign his seat on the Bench of Magistrates or any
+other unpaid office he held.  To the last he was what he had
+always been, formal and ceremonious, more gracious to those
+beneath him than to equals; strict in the performance of his
+duties, living with extreme frugality and giving freely to
+those in want, and very regular in his attendance at church,
+where he would sit facing the tombs and memorials of his
+ancestors, among the people but not of them--a man alone and
+apart, respected by all but loved by none.
+
+Finally he died and was buried with the others, and one more
+memorial with the old name, which he bore last was placed on
+the wall.  That was the story as it was told me, and as it was
+all about a man who was without charm and had no love interest
+it did not greatly interest me, and I soon dismissed it from
+my thoughts.  Then one day coming through a grove in the park
+and finding myself standing before the ancient, empty,
+desolate house--for on the squire's death everything had been
+sold and taken away--I remembered that the caretaker had
+begged me to let him show me over the place.  I had not felt
+inclined to gratify him, as I had found him a young man of a
+too active mind whose only desire was to capture some person
+to talk to and unfold his original ideas and schemes, but now
+having come to the house I thought I would suffer him, and
+soon found him at work in the vast old walled garden.  He
+joyfully threw down his spade and let me in and then up to the
+top floor, determined that I should see everything.  By the
+time we got down to the ground floor I was pretty tired of
+empty rooms, oak panelled, and passages and oak staircases,
+and of talk, and impatient to get away.  But no, I had not
+seen the housekeeper's room--I must see that!--and so into
+another great vacant room I was dragged, and to keep me as
+long as possible in that last room he began unlocking and
+flinging open all the old oak cupboards and presses.  Glancing
+round at the long array of empty shelves, I noticed a small
+brown-paper parcel, thick with dust, in a corner, and as it
+was the only movable thing I had seen in that vacant house I
+asked him what the parcel contained.  Books, he replied--they
+had been left as of no value when the house was cleared of
+furniture.  As I wished to see the books he undid the parcel;
+it contained forty copies of a small quarto-shaped book of
+sonnets, with the late squire's name as author on the title
+page.  I read a sonnet, and told him I should like to read
+them all.  "You can have a copy, of course," he exclaimed.
+"Put it in your pocket and keep it."  When I asked him if he
+had any right to give one away he laughed and said that if any
+one had thought the whole parcel worth twopence it would not
+have been left behind.  He was quite right; a cracked dinner
+--plate or a saucepan with a hole in it or an earthenware
+teapot with a broken spout would not have been left, but the
+line was drawn at a book of sonnets by the late squire.
+Nobody wanted it, and so without more qualms I put it in my
+pocket, and have it before me now, opened at page 63, on which
+appears, without a headline, the sonnet I first read, and
+which I quote:--
+
+   How beautiful are birds, of God's sweet air
+     Free denizens; no ugly earthly spot
+     Their boundless happiness doth seem to blot.
+   The swallow, swiftly flying here and there,
+   Can it be true that dreary household care
+     Doth goad her to incessant flight?
+     If not How can it be that she doth cast her lot
+   Now there, now here, pursuing summer everywhere?
+     I sadly fear that shallow, tiny brain
+   Is not exempt from anxious cares and fears,
+     That mingled heritage of joy and pain
+   That for some reason everywhere appears;
+     And yet those birds, how beautiful they are!
+     Sure beauty is to happiness no bar.
+
+This has a fault that doth offend the reader of modern verse,
+and there are many of the eighty sonnets in the book which do
+not equal it in merit.  He was manifestly an amateur; he
+sometimes writes with labour, and he not infrequently ends
+with the unpardonable weak line.  Nevertheless he had rightly
+chosen this difficult form in which to express his inner self.
+It suited his grave, concentrated thought, and each little
+imperfect poem of fourteen lines gives us a glimpse into a
+wise, beneficent mind.  He had fought his fight and suffered
+defeat, and had then withdrawn himself silently from the field
+to die.  But if he had been embittered he could have relieved
+himself in this little book.  There is no trace of such a
+feeling.  He only asks, in one sonnet, where can a balm be
+found for the heart fretted and torn with eternal cares; when
+we have thought and striven for some great and good purpose,
+when all our striving has ended in disaster?  His plan, he
+concludes, is to go out in the quiet night-time and look at
+the stars.
+
+Here let me quote two more sonnets written in contemplative
+mood, just to give the reader a fuller idea not of the verse,
+as verse, but of the spirit in the old squire.  There is no
+title to these two:--
+
+   I like a fire of wood; there is a kind
+     Of artless poetry in all its ways:
+     When first 'tis lighted, how it roars and plays,
+   And sways to every breath its flames, refined
+   By fancy to some shape by life confined.
+     And then how touching are its latter days;
+     When, all its strength decayed, and spent the blaze
+   Of fiery youth, grey ash is all we find.
+     Perhaps we know the tree, of which the pile
+   Once formed a part, and oft beneath its shade
+     Have sported in our youth; or in quaint style
+      Have carved upon its rugged bark a name
+      Of which the memory doth alone remain
+   A memory doomed, alas! in turn to fade.
+
+Bad enough as verse, the critic will say; refined, confined,
+find--what poor rhymes are these! and he will think me wrong
+to draw these frailties from their forgotten abode.  But I
+like to think of the solitary old man sitting by his wood
+fire in the old house, not brooding bitterly on his frustrate
+life, but putting his quiet thoughts into the form of a
+sonnet.  The other is equally good--or bad, if the critic
+will have it so:--
+
+   The clock had just struck five, and all was still
+     Within my house, when straight I open threw
+     With eager hand the casement dim with dew.
+   Oh, what a glorious flush of light did fill
+   That old staircase!  and then and there did kill
+     All those black doubts that ever do renew
+     Their civil war with all that's good and true
+   Within our hearts, when body and mind are ill
+     From this slight incident I would infer
+     A cheerful truth, that men without demur,
+   In times of stress and doubt, throw open wide
+   The windows of their breast; nor stung by pride
+     In stifling darkness gloomily abide;
+     But bid the light flow in on either side.
+
+A "slight incident" and a beautiful thought.  But all I have
+so far said about the little book is preliminary to what I
+wish to say about another sonnet which must also be quoted.
+It is perhaps, as a sonnet, as ill done as the others, but the
+subject of it specially attracted me, as it happened to be one
+which was much in my mind during my week's stay at Norton.
+That remote little village without a squire or any person of
+means or education in or near it capable of feeling the
+slightest interest in the people, except the parson, an old
+infirm man who was never seen but once a week--how wanting in
+some essential thing it appeared!  It seemed to me that the
+one thing which might be done in these small centres of rural
+life to brighten and beautify existence is precisely the thing
+which is never done, also that what really is being done is of
+doubtful value and sometimes actually harmful.
+
+Leaving Norton one day I visited other small villages in the
+neighbourhood and found they were no better off.  I had heard
+of the rector of one of these villages as a rather original
+man, and went and discussed the subject with him.  "It is
+quite useless thinking about it," he said.  "The people here
+are clods, and will not respond to any effort you can make to
+introduce a little light and sweetness into their lives."
+There was no more to be said to him, but I knew he was wrong.
+I found the villagers in that part of the country the most
+intelligent and responsive people of their class I had ever
+encountered.  It was a delightful experience to go into their
+cottages, not to read them a homily or to present them with a
+book or a shilling, nor to inquire into their welfare,
+material and spiritual, but to converse intimately with a
+human interest in them, as would be the case in a country
+where there are no caste distinctions.  It was delightful,
+because they were so responsive, so sympathetic, so alive.
+Now it was just at this time, when the subject was in my mind,
+that the book of sonnets came into my hands--given to me by
+the generous caretaker--and I read in it this one on "Innocent
+Amusements":-
+
+   There lacks a something to complete the round
+     Of our fair England's homely happiness
+     A something, yet how oft do trifles bless
+   When greater gifts by far redound
+   To honours lone, but no responsive sound
+     Of joy or mirth awake, nay, oft oppress,
+     While gifts of which we scarce the moment guess
+   In never-failing joys abound.
+   No nation can be truly great
+     That hath not something childlike in its life
+     Of every day; it should its youth renew
+   With simple joys that sweetly recreate
+     The jaded mind, conjoined in friendly strife
+     The pleasures of its childhood days pursue.
+
+What wise and kindly thoughts he had--the old squire of
+Norton!  Surely, when telling me the story of his life, they
+had omitted something!  I questioned them on the point.  Did
+he not in all the years he was at Norton House, and later when
+he lived among them in a cottage in the village--did he not go
+into their homes and meet them as if he knew and felt that
+they were all of the same flesh, children of one universal
+Father, and did he not make them feel this about him--that
+the differences in fortune and position and education were
+mere accidents?  And the answer was: No, certainly not! as
+if I had asked a preposterous question.  He was the squire,
+a gentleman--any one might understand that he could not come
+among them like that!  That is what a parson can do because he
+is, so to speak, paid to keep an eye on them, and besides it's
+religion there and a different thing.  But the squire!--their
+squire, that dignified old gentleman, so upright in his
+saddle, so considerate and courteous to every one--but he
+never forgot his position--never in that way!  I also asked if
+he had never tried to establish, or advocated, or suggested to
+them any kind of reunions to take place from time to time, or
+an entertainment or festival to get them to come pleasantly
+together, making a brightness in their lives--something which
+would not be cricket or football, nor any form of sport for a
+few of the men, all the others being mere lookers-on and the
+women and children left out altogether; something which would
+be for and include everyone, from the oldest grey labourer no
+longer able to work to the toddling little ones; something of
+their own invention, peculiar to Norton, which would be their
+pride and make their village dearer to them?  And the answer
+was still no, and no, and no.  He had never attempted, never
+suggested, anything of the sort.  How could he--the squire!
+Yet he wrote those wise words:--
+
+   No nation can be truly great
+     That hath not something childlike in its life
+     Of every day.
+
+Why are we lacking in that which others undoubtedly have, a
+something to complete the round of homely happiness in our
+little rural centres; how is it that we do not properly
+encourage the things which, albeit childlike, are essential,
+which sweetly recreate?  It is not merely the selfishness of
+those who are well placed and prefer to live for themselves,
+or who have light but care not to shed it on those who are not
+of their class.  Selfishness is common enough everywhere, in
+men of all races.  It is not selfishness, nor the growth of
+towns or decay of agriculture, which as a fact does not decay,
+nor education, nor any of the other causes usually given for
+the dullness, the greyness of village life.  The chief cause,
+I take it, is that gulf, or barrier, which exists between men
+and men in different classes in our country, or a considerable
+portion of it--the caste feeling which is becoming increasingly
+rigid in the rural world, if my own observation, extending over
+a period of twenty-five years, is not all wrong.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eleven: Salisbury and Its Doves
+
+
+Never in my experience has there been a worse spring season
+than that of 1903 for the birds, more especially for the
+short-winged migrants.  In April I looked for the woodland
+warblers and found them not, or saw but a few of the commonest
+kinds.  It was only too easy to account for this rarity.  The
+bitter north-east wind had blown every day and all day long
+during those weeks when birds are coming, and when nearing the
+end of their journey, at its most perilous stage, the wind had
+been dead against them; its coldness and force was too much
+for these delicate travellers, and doubtless they were beaten
+down in thousands into the grey waters of a bitter sea.  The
+stronger-winged wheatear was more fortunate, since he comes in
+March, and before that spell of deadly weather he was already
+back in his breeding haunts on Salisbury Plain, and, in fact,
+everywhere on that open down country.  I was there to hear him
+sing his wild notes to the listening waste--singing them, as
+his pretty fashion is, up in the air, suspended on quickly
+vibrating wings like a great black and white moth.  But he was
+in no singing mood, and at last, in desperation, I fled to
+Salisbury to wait for loitering spring in that unattractive
+town.
+
+The streets were cold as the open plain, and there was no
+comfort indoors; to haunt the cathedral during those vacant
+days was the only occupation left to me.  There was some
+shelter to be had under the walls, and the empty, vast
+interior would seem almost cosy on coming in from the wind.
+At service my due feet never failed, while morning, noon, and
+evening I paced the smooth level green by the hour, standing
+at intervals to gaze up at the immense pile with its central
+soaring spire, asking myself why I had never greatly liked it
+in the past and did not like it much better now when grown
+familiar with it.  Undoubtedly it is one of the noblest
+structures of its kind in England--even my eyes that look
+coldly on most buildings could see it; and I could admire,
+even reverence, but could not love.  It suffers by comparison
+with other temples into which my soul has wandered.  It has
+not the majesty and appearance of immemorial age, the dim
+religious richness of the interior, with much else that goes
+to make up, without and within, the expression which is so
+marked in other mediaeval fanes--Winchester, Ely, York,
+Canterbury, Exeter, and Wells.  To the dry, mechanical mind of
+the architect these great cathedrals are in the highest degree
+imperfect, according to the rules of his art: to all others
+this imperfectness is their chief excellence and glory; for
+they are in a sense a growth, a flower of many minds and many
+periods, and are imperfect even as Nature is, in her rocks and
+trees; and, being in harmony with Nature and like Nature, they
+are inexpressibly beautiful and satisfying beyond all
+buildings to the aesthetic as well as to the religious sense.
+
+Occasionally I met and talked with an old man employed at the
+cathedral.  One day, closing one eye and shading the other
+with his hand, he gazed up at the building for some time, and
+then remarked: "I'll tell you what's wrong with Salisbury--it
+looks too noo."  He was near the mark; the fault is that to
+the professional eye it is faultless; the lack of expression
+is due to the fact that it came complete from its maker's
+brain, like a coin from the mint, and being all on one
+symmetrical plan it has the trim, neat appearance of a toy
+cathedral carved out of wood and set on a green-painted
+square.
+
+After all, my thoughts and criticisms on the cathedral, as a
+building, were merely incidental; my serious business was with
+the feathered people to be seen there.  Few in the woods and
+fewer on the windy downs, here birds were abundant, not only
+on the building, where they were like seafowl congregated on a
+precipitous rock, but they were all about me.  The level green
+was the hunting ground of many thrushes--a dozen or twenty
+could often be seen at one time--and it was easy to spot those
+that had young.  The worm they dragged out was not devoured;
+another was looked for, then another; then all were cut up in
+proper lengths and beaten and bruised, and finally packed into
+a bundle and carried off.  Rooks, too, were there, breeding on
+the cathedral elms, and had no time and spirit to wrangle, but
+could only caw-caw distressfully at the wind, which tossed
+them hither and thither in the air and lashed the tall trees,
+threatening at each fresh gust to blow their nests to pieces.
+Small birds of half a dozen kinds were also there, and one
+tinkle-tinkled his spring song quite merrily in spite of the
+cold that kept the others silent and made me blue.  One day I
+spied a big queen bumble-bee on the ground, looking extremely
+conspicuous in its black and chestnut coat on the fresh green
+sward; and thinking it numbed by the cold I picked it up.  It
+moved its legs feebly, but alas! its enemy had found and
+struck it down, and with its hard, sharp little beak had
+drilled a hole in one of the upper plates of its abdomen, and
+from that small opening had cunningly extracted all the meat.
+Though still alive it was empty as a blown eggshell.  Poor
+queen and mother, you survived the winter in vain, and went
+abroad in vain in the bitter weather in quest of bread to
+nourish your few first-born--the grubs that would help you by
+and by; now there will be no bread for them, and for you no
+populous city in the flowery earth and a great crowd of
+children to rise up each day, when days are long, to call you
+blessed!  And he who did this thing, the unspeakable oxeye
+with his black and yellow breast--"catanic black and amber"--
+even while I made my lamentation was tinkling his merry song
+overhead in the windy elms.
+
+The birds that lived on the huge cathedral itself had the
+greatest attraction for me; and here the daws, if not the most
+numerous, were the most noticeable, as they ever are on
+account of their conspicuousness in their black plumage, their
+loquacity and everlasting restlessness.  Far up on the ledge
+from which the spire rises a kestrel had found a cosy corner
+in which to establish himself, and one day when I was there a
+number of daws took it on themselves to eject him: they
+gathered near and flew this way and that, and cawed and cawed
+in anger, and swooped at him, until he could stand their
+insults no longer, and, suddenly dashing out, he struck and
+buffeted them right and left and sent them screaming with fear
+in all directions.  After this they left him in peace: they
+had forgotten that he was a hawk, and that even the gentle
+mousing wind-hover has a nobler spirit than any crow of them
+all.
+
+On first coming to the cathedral I noticed a few pigeons
+sitting on the roof and ledges very high up, and, not seeing
+them well, I assumed that they were of the common or domestic
+kind.  By and by one cooed, then another; and recognizing the
+stock-dove note I began to look carefully, and found that all
+the birds on the building--about thirty pairs--were of this
+species.  It was a great surprise, for though we occasionally
+find a pair of stock-doves breeding on the ivied wall of some
+inhabited mansion in the country, it was a new thing to find a
+considerable colony of this shy woodland species established
+on a building in a town.  They lived and bred there just as
+the common pigeon--the vari-coloured descendant of the blue
+rock--does on St. Paul's, the Law Courts, and the British
+Museum in London.  Only, unlike our metropolitan doves, both
+the domestic kind and the ringdove in the parks, the Salisbury
+doves though in the town are not of it.  They come not down to
+mix with the currents of human life in the streets and open
+spaces; they fly away to the country to feed, and dwell on the
+cathedral above the houses and people just as sea-birds
+--kittiwake and guillemot and gannet--dwell on the ledges of
+some vast ocean-fronting cliff.
+
+The old man mentioned above told me that the birds were called
+"rocks" by the townspeople, also that they had been there for
+as long as he could remember.  Six or seven years ago, he
+said, when the repairs to the roof and spire were started, the
+pigeons began to go away until there was not one left.  The
+work lasted three years, and immediately on its conclusion the
+doves began to return, and were now as numerous as formerly.
+How, I inquired, did these innocent birds get on with their
+black neighbours, seeing that the daw is a cunning creature
+much given to persecution--a crow, in fact, as black as any of
+his family?  They got on badly, he said; the doves were early
+breeders, beginning in March, and were allowed to have the use
+of the holes until the daws wanted them at the end of April,
+when they forcibly ejected the young doves.  He said that in
+spring he always picked up a good many young doves, often
+unfledged, thrown down by the dawn.  I did not doubt his
+story.  I had just found a young bird myself--a little
+blue-skinned, yellow-mouthed fledgling which had fallen sixty
+or seventy feet on to the gravel below.  But in June, he said,
+when the daws brought off their young, the doves entered into
+possession once more, and were then permitted to rear their
+young in peace.
+
+I returned to Salisbury about the middle of May in better
+weather, when there were days that were almost genial, and
+found the cathedral a greater "habitacle of birds" than ever:
+starlings, swifts, and swallows were there, the lively little
+martins in hundreds, and the doves and daws in their usual
+numbers.  All appeared to be breeding, and for some time I saw
+no quarreling.  At length I spied a pair of doves with a nest
+in a small cavity in the stone at the back of a narrow ledge
+about seventy feet from the ground, and by standing back some
+distance I could see the hen bird sitting on the nest, while
+the cock stood outside on the ledge keeping guard.  I watched
+this pair for some hours and saw a jackdaw sweep down on them
+a dozen or more times at long intervals.  Sometimes after
+swooping down he would alight on the ledge a yard or two away,
+and the male dove would then turn and face him, and if he then
+began sidling up the dove would dash at and buffet him with
+his wings with the greatest violence and throw him off.  When
+he swooped closer the dove would spring up and meet him in the
+air, striking him at the moment of meeting, and again the daw
+would be beaten.  When I left three days after witnessing this
+contest, the doves were still in possession of their nest, and
+I concluded that they were not so entirely at the mercy of the
+jackdaw as the old man had led me to believe.
+
+It was, on this occasion, a great pleasure to listen to the
+doves.  The stock-dove has no set song, like the ringdove, but
+like all the other species in the typical genus Columba it has
+the cooing or family note, one of the most human-like sounds
+which birds emit.  In the stock-dove this is a better, more
+musical, and a more varied sound than in any other Columba
+known to me.  The pleasing quality of the sound as well as the
+variety in it could be well noted here where the birds were
+many, scattered about on ledges and projections high above the
+earth, and when bird after bird uttered its plaint, each
+repeating his note half a dozen to a dozen times, one in slow
+measured time, and deep-voiced like the rock-dove, but more
+musical; another rapidly, with shorter, impetuous notes in a
+higher key, as if carried away by excitement.  There were not
+two birds that cooed in precisely the same way, and the same
+bird would often vary its manner of cooing.
+
+It was best to hear them during the afternoon service in the
+cathedral, when the singing of the choir and throbbing and
+pealing of the organ which filled the vast interior was heard
+outside, subdued by the walls through which it passed, and was
+like a beautiful mist or atmosphere of sound pervading and
+enveloping the great building; and when the plaining of the
+doves, owing to the rhythmic flow of the notes and their human
+characters, seemed to harmonize with and be a part of that
+sacred music.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twelve: Whitesheet Hill
+
+
+On Easter Saturday the roadsides and copses by the little
+river Nadder were full of children gathering primroses; they
+might have filled a thousand baskets without the flowers being
+missed, so abundant were they in that place.  Cold though it
+was the whole air was laden with the delicious fragrance.  It
+was pleasant to see and talk with the little people occupied
+with the task they loved so well, and I made up my mind to see
+the result of all this flower-gathering next day in some of
+the village churches in the neighbourhood--Fovant, Teffant
+Evias, Chilmark, Swallowcliffe, Tisbury, and Fonthill Bishop.
+I had counted on some improvement in the weather--some
+bright sunshine to light up the flower-decorated interiors;
+but Easter Sunday proved colder than ever, with the bitter
+north-east still blowing, the grey travelling cloud still
+covering the sky; and so to get the full benefit of the
+bitterness I went instead to spend my day on the top of the
+biggest down above the valley.  That was Whitesheet Hill, and
+forms the highest part of the long ridge dividing the valleys
+of the Ebble and Nadder.
+
+It was roughest and coldest up there, and suited my temper
+best, for when the weather seems spiteful one finds a grim
+sort of satisfaction in defying it.  On a genial day it would
+have been very pleasant on that lofty plain, for the flat top
+of the vast down is like a plain in appearance, and the
+earthworks on it show that it was once a populous habitation
+of man.  Now because of the wind and cloud its aspect was bare
+and bleak and desolate, and after roaming about for an hour,
+exploring the thickest furze patches, I began to think that my
+day would have to be spent in solitude, without a living
+creature to keep me company.  The birds had apparently all
+been blown away and the rabbits were staying at home in their
+burrows.  Not even an insect could I see, although the furze
+was in full blossom; the honey-suckers were out of sight
+and torpid, and the bloom itself could no longer look
+"unprofitably gay," as the poet says it does.  "Not even a
+wheatear!" I said, for I had counted on that bird in the
+intervals between the storms, although I knew I should not
+hear his wild delightful warble in such weather.
+
+Then, all at once, I beheld that very bird, a solitary female,
+flittering on over the flat ground before me, perching on the
+little green ant-mounds and flirting its tail and bobbing as
+if greatly excited at my presence in that lonely place.  I
+wondered where its mate was, following it from place to place
+as it flew, determined now I had found a bird to keep it in
+sight.  Presently a great blackness appeared low down in the
+cloudy sky, and rose and spread, travelling fast towards me,
+and the little wheatear fled in fear from it and vanished from
+sight over the rim of the down.  But I was there to defy the
+weather, and so instead of following the bird in search of
+shelter I sat down among some low furze bushes and waited and
+watched.  By and by I caught sight of three magpies, rising
+one by one at long intervals from the furze and flying
+laboriously towards a distant hill-top grove of pines.  Then I
+heard the wailing cry of a peewit, and caught sight of the
+bird at a distance, and soon afterwards a sound of another
+character--the harsh angry cry of a carrion crow, almost as
+deep as the raven's angry voice.  Before long I discovered the
+bird at a great height coming towards me in hot pursuit of a
+kestrel.  They passed directly over me so that I had them a
+long time in sight, the kestrel travelling quietly on in the
+face of the wind, the crow toiling after, and at intervals
+spurting till he got near enough to hurl himself at his enemy,
+emitting his croaks of rage.  For invariably the kestrel with
+one of his sudden swallow-like turns avoided the blow and went
+on as before.  I watched them until they were lost to sight in
+the coming blackness and wondered that so intelligent a
+creature as a crow should waste his energies in that vain
+chase.  Still one could understand it and even sympathize with
+him.  For the kestrel is a most insulting creature towards the
+bigger birds.  He knows that they are incapable of paying him
+out, and when he finds them off their guard he will drop down
+and inflict a blow just for the fun of the thing.  This
+outraged crow appeared determined to have his revenge.
+
+Then the storm broke on me, and so fiercely did the rain and
+sleet thrash me that, fearing a cold soaking, I fled before it
+to the rim of the plain, where the wheatear had vanished, and
+saw a couple of hundred yards down on the smooth steep slope a
+thicket of dwarf trees.  It was, the only shelter in sight,
+and to it I went, to discover much to my disgust that the
+trees were nothing but elders.  For there is no tree that
+affords so poor a shelter, especially on the high open downs,
+where the foliage is scantier than in other situations and
+lets in the wind and rain in full force upon you.
+
+But the elder affects me in two ways.  I like it on account of
+early associations, and because the birds delight in its
+fruit, though they wisely refuse to build in its branches; and
+I dislike it because its smell is offensive to me and its
+berries the least pleasant of all wild fruits to my taste.  I
+can eat ivy-berries in March, and yew in its season, poison or
+not; and hips and haws and holly-berries and harsh acorn, and
+the rowan, which some think acrid; but the elderberry I can't
+stomach.
+
+How comes it, I have asked more than once, that this poor tree
+is so often seen on the downs where it is so badly fitted to
+be and makes so sorry an appearance with its weak branches
+broken and its soft leaves torn by the winds?  How badly it
+contrasts with the other trees and bushes that flourish on the
+downs--furze, juniper, holly, blackthorn, and hawthorn!
+
+Two years ago, one day in the early spring, I was walking on
+an extensive down in another part of Wiltshire with the tenant
+of the land, who began there as a large sheep-farmer, but
+eventually finding that he could make more with rabbits than
+with sheep turned most of his land into a warren.  The higher
+part of this down was overgrown with furze, mixed with holly
+and other bushes, but the slopes were mostly very bare.  At
+one spot on a wide bare slope where the rabbits had formed a
+big group of burrows there was a close little thicket of young
+elder trees, looking exceedingly conspicuous in the bright
+green of early April.  Calling my companion's attention to
+this little thicket I said something about the elder growing
+on the open downs where it always appeared to be out of
+harmony with its surroundings.  "I don't suppose you planted
+elders here," I said.
+
+"No, but I know who did," he returned, and he then gave me
+this curious history of the trees.  Five years before, the
+rabbits, finding it a suitable spot to dig in, probably
+because of a softer chalk there, made a number of deep burrows
+at that spot.  When the wheatears, or "horse-maggers" as he
+called them, returned in spring two or three pairs attached
+themselves to this group of burrows and bred in them.  There
+was that season a solitary elder-bush higher up on the down
+among the furze which bore a heavy crop of berries; and when
+the fruit was ripe he watched the birds feeding on it, the
+wheatears among them.  The following spring seedlings came up
+out of the loose earth heaped about the rabbit burrows, and as
+they were not cut down by the rabbits, for they dislike the
+elder, they grew up, and now formed a clump of fifty or sixty
+little trees of six feet to eight feet in height.
+
+Who would have thought to find a tree-planter in the wheatear,
+the bird of the stony waste and open naked down, who does not
+even ask for a bush to perch on?
+
+It then occurred to me that in every case where I had observed
+a clump of elder bushes on the bare downside, it grew upon a
+village or collection of rabbit burrows, and it is probable
+that in every case the clump owed its existence to the
+wheatears who had dropped the seed about their nesting-place.
+The clump where I had sought a shelter from the storm was
+composed of large old dilapidated-looking half-dead elders;
+perhaps their age was not above thirty or forty years, but
+they looked older than hawthorns of one or two centuries; and
+under them the rabbits had their diggings--huge old mounds and
+burrows that looked like a badger's earth.  Here, too, the
+burrows had probably existed first and had attracted the
+wheatears, and the birds had brought the seed from some
+distant bush.
+
+Crouching down in one of the big burrows at the roots of an
+old elder I remained for half an hour, listening to the
+thump-thump of the alarmed rabbits about me, and the
+accompanying hiss and swish of the wind and sleet and rain in
+the ragged branches.
+
+The storm over I continued my rambles on Whitesheet Hill, and
+coming back an hour or two later to the very spot where I had
+seen and followed the wheatear, I all at once caught sight of
+a second bird, lying dead on the turf close to my feet!  The
+sudden sight gave me a shock of astonishment, mingled with
+admiration and grief.  For how pretty it looked, though dead,
+lying on its back, the little black legs stuck stiffly up, the
+long wings pressed against the sides, their black tips
+touching together like the clasped hands of a corpse; and the
+fan-like black and white tail, half open as in life, moved
+perpetually up and down by the wind, as if that tail-flirting
+action of the bird had continued after death.  It was very
+beautiful in its delicate shape and pale harmonious colouring,
+resting on the golden-green mossy turf.  And it was a male,
+undoubtedly the mate of the wheatear I had seen at the spot,
+and its little mate, not knowing what death is, had probably
+been keeping watch near it, wondering at its strange stillness
+and greatly fearing for its safety when I came that way, and
+passed by without seeing it.
+
+Poor little migrant, did you come back across half the world
+for this--back to your home on Whitesheet Hill to grow cold
+and fail in the cold April wind, and finally to look very
+pretty, lying stiff and cold, to the one pair of human eyes
+that were destined to see you!  The little birds that come
+and go and return to us over such vast distances, they perish
+like this in myriads annually; flying to and from us they
+are blown away by death like sere autumn leaves, "the
+pestilence-stricken multitudes" whirled away by the wind!
+They die in myriads: that is not strange; the strange, the
+astonishing thing is the fact of death; what can they tell
+us of it--the wise men who live or have ever lived on the
+earth--what can they say now of the bright intelligent spirit,
+the dear little emotional soul, that had so fit a tenement and
+so fitly expressed itself in motions of such exquisite grace,
+in melody so sweet!  Did it go out like the glow-worm's lamp,
+the life and sweetness of the flower?  Was its destiny not
+like that of the soul, specialized in a different direction,
+of the saint or poet or philosopher!  Alas, they can tell us
+nothing!
+
+I could not go away leaving it in that exposed place on the
+turf, to be found a little later by a magpie or carrion crow
+or fox, and devoured.  Close by there was a small round
+hillock, an old forsaken nest of the little brown ants, green
+and soft with moss and small creeping herbs--a suitable grave
+for a wheatear.  Cutting out a round piece of turf from the
+side, I made a hole with my stick and put the dead bird in and
+replacing the turf left it neatly buried.
+
+It was not that I had or have any quarrel with the creatures
+I have named, or would have them other than they are
+--carrion-eaters and scavengers, Nature's balance-keepers and
+purifiers.  The only creatures on earth I loathe and hate are
+the gourmets, the carrion-crows and foxes of the human kind
+who devour wheatears and skylarks at their tables.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirteen: Bath and Wells Revisited
+
+
+'Tis so easy to get from London to Bath, by merely stepping
+into a railway carriage which takes you smoothly without a
+stop in two short hours from Paddington, that I was amazed at
+myself in having allowed five full years to pass since my
+previous visit.  The question was much in my mind as I
+strolled about noting the old-remembered names of streets and
+squares and crescents.  Quiet Street was the name inscribed on
+one; it was, to me, the secret name of them all.  The old
+impressions were renewed, an old feeling partially recovered.
+The wide, clean ways; the solid, stone-built houses with their
+dignified aspect; the large distances, terrace beyond terrace;
+mansions and vast green lawns and parks and gardens; avenues
+and groups of stately trees, especially that unmatched clump
+of old planes in the Circus; the whole town, the design in the
+classic style of one master mind, set by the Avon, amid green
+hills, produced a sense of harmony and repose which cannot be
+equalled by any other town in the kingdom.
+
+This idle time was delightful so long as I gave my attention
+exclusively to houses from the outside, and to hills, rocks,
+trees, waters, and all visible nature, which here harmonizes
+with man's works.  To sit on some high hill and look down on
+Bath, sun-flushed or half veiled in mist; to lounge on Camden
+Crescent, or climb Sion Hill, or take my ease with the
+water-drinkers in the spacious, comfortable Pump Room; or,
+better still, to rest at noon in the ancient abbey--all this
+was pleasure pure and simple, a quiet drifting back until I
+found myself younger by five years than I had taken myself to
+be.
+
+I haunted the abbey, and the more I saw of it the more I loved
+it.  The impression it had made on me during my former visits
+had faded, or else I had never properly seen it, or had not
+seen it in the right emotional mood.  Now I began to think it
+the best of all the great abbey churches of England and the
+equal of the cathedrals in its effect on the mind.  How rich
+the interior is in its atmosphere of tempered light or tender
+gloom!  How tall and graceful the columns holding up the high
+roof of white stone with its marvellous palm-leaf sculpture!
+What a vast expanse of beautifully stained glass!  I certainly
+gave myself plenty of time to appreciate it on this occasion,
+as I visited it every day, sometimes two or three times, and
+not infrequently I sat there for an hour at a stretch.
+
+Sitting there one day, thinking of nothing, I was gradually
+awakened to a feeling almost of astonishment at the sight of
+the extraordinary number of memorial tablets of every
+imaginable shape and size which crowd the walls.  So numerous
+are they and so closely placed that you could not find space
+anywhere to put your hand against the wall.  We are accustomed
+to think that in cathedrals and other great ecclesiastical
+buildings the illustrious dead receive burial, and their names
+and claims on our gratitude and reverence are recorded, but in
+no fane in the land is there so numerous a gathering of the
+dead as in this place.  The inscription-covered walls were
+like the pages of an old black-letter volume without margins.
+Yet when I came to think of it I could not recall any Bath
+celebrity or great person associated with Bath except Beau
+Nash, who was not perhaps a very great person.  Probably
+Carlyle would have described him as a "meeserable creature."
+
+Leaving my seat I began to examine the inscriptions, and found
+that they had not been placed there in memory of men belonging
+to Bath or even Somerset.  These monuments were erected to
+persons from all counties in the three kingdoms, and from all
+the big towns, those to Londoners being most numerous.  Nor
+were they of persons distinguished in any way.  Here you
+find John or Henry or Thomas Smith, or Brown, or Jones, or
+Robinson, provision dealer, or merchant, of Clerkenwell, or
+Bermondsey, or Bishopsgate Street Within or Without; also many
+retired captains, majors, and colonels.  There were hundreds
+more whose professions or occupations in life were not stated.
+There were also hundreds of memorials to ladies--widows and
+spinsters.  They were all, in fact, to persons who had come to
+die in Bath after "taking the waters," and dying, they or
+their friends had purchased immortality on the walls of the
+abbey with a handful or two of gold.  Here is one of several
+inscriptions of the kind I took the trouble to copy: "His
+early virtues, his cultivated talents, his serious piety,
+inexpressibly endeared him to his friends and opened to them
+many bright prospects of excellence and happiness.  These
+prospects have all faded," and so on for several long lines in
+very big letters, occupying a good deal of space on the wall.
+But what and who was he, and what connection had he with Bath?
+He was a young man born in the West Indies who died in
+Scotland, and later his mother, coming to Bath for her health,
+"caused this inscription to be placed on the abbey walls"!
+If this policy or tradition is still followed by the abbey
+authorities, it will be necessary for them to build an annexe;
+if it be no longer followed, would it be going too far to
+suggest that these mural tablets to a thousand obscurities,
+which ought never to have been placed there, should now be
+removed and placed in some vault where the relations or
+descendants of the persons described could find, and if they
+wished it, have them removed?
+
+But it must be said that the abbey is not without a fair
+number of memorials with which no one can quarrel; the one I
+admire most, to Quin, the actor, has, I think, the best or the
+most appropriate epitaph ever written.  No, one, however
+familiar with the words, will find fault with me for quoting
+them here:
+
+   That tongue which set the table on a roar
+   And charmed the public ear is heard no more.
+   Closed are those eyes, the harbingers of wit,
+   Which spake before the tongue what Shakespeare writ.
+   Cold is that hand which living was stretched forth
+   At friendship's call to succor modest worth.
+   Here lies James Quin, deign readers to be taught
+   Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought,
+   In Nature's happiest mood however cast,
+   To this complexion thou must come at last.
+
+Quin's monument strikes one as the greatest there because of
+Garrick's living words, but there is another very much more
+beautiful.
+
+I first noticed this memorial on the wall at a distance of
+about three yards, too far to read anything in the inscription
+except the name of Sibthorpe, which was strange to me, but
+instead of going nearer to read it I remained standing to
+admire it at that distance.  The tablet was of white marble,
+and on it was sculptured the figure of a young man with curly
+head and classic profile.  He was wearing sandals and a loose
+mantle held to his breast with one hand, while in the other
+hand he carried a bunch of leaves and flowers.  He appeared in
+the act of stepping ashore from a boat of antique shape, and
+the artist had been singularly successful in producing the
+idea of free and vigorous motion in the figure as well as of
+some absorbing object in his mind.  The figure was undoubtedly
+symbolical, and I began to amuse myself by trying to guess its
+meaning.  Then a curious thing happened.  A person who had
+been moving slowly along near me, apparently looking with no
+great interest at the memorials, came past me and glanced
+first at the tablet I was looking at, then at me.  As our eyes
+met I remarked that I was admiring the best memorial I had
+found in the abbey, and then added, "I've been trying to make
+out its meaning.  You see the man is a traveller and is
+stepping ashore with a flowering spray in his hand.  It
+strikes me that it may have been erected to the memory of a
+person who introduced some valuable plant into England."
+
+"Yes, perhaps," he said.  "But who was he?"
+
+"I don't know yet," I returned.  "I can only see that his name
+was Sibthorpe."
+
+"Sibthorpe!" he exclaimed excitedly.  "Why, this is the very
+memorial I've been looking for all over the abbey and had
+pretty well given up all hopes of finding it."  With that he
+went to it and began studying the inscription, which was in
+Latin.  John Sibthorpe, I found, was a distinguished botanist,
+author of the Flora Graeca, who died over a century ago.
+
+I asked him why he was interested in Sibthorpe's memorial.
+
+"Well, you see, I'm a great botanist myself," he explained,
+"and have been familiar with his name and work all my life.
+Of course," he added, "I don't mean I'm great in the sense
+that Sibthorpe was.  I'm only a little local botanist, quite
+unknown outside my own circle; I only mean that I'm a great
+lover of botany."
+
+I left him there, and had the curiosity to look up the great
+man's life, and found some very curious things in it.  He was
+a son of Humphrey Sibthorpe, also a great botanist, who
+succeeded the still greater Dillenius as Sherardian Professor
+of Botany at Oxford, a post which he held for thirty-six
+years, and during that time he delivered one lecture, which
+was a failure.  John, if he did not suck in botany with his
+mother's milk, took it quite early from his father, and on
+leaving the University went abroad to continue his studies.
+Eventually he went to Greece, inflamed with the ambition to
+identify all the plants mentioned by Dioscorides.  Then he set
+about writing his Flora Graeca; but he had a rough time of it
+travelling about in that rude land, and falling ill he had to
+leave his work undone.  When nearing his end he came to Bath,
+like so many other afflicted ones, only to die, and he was
+very properly buried in the abbey.  In his will he left an
+estate the proceeds of which were to be devoted to the
+completion of his work, which was to be in ten folio volumes,
+with one hundred plates in each.  This was done and the work
+finished forty-four years after his death, when thirty copies
+were issued to the patient subscribers at two hundred and
+forty guineas a copy.  But the whole cost of the work was set
+down at 30,000 pounds!   A costlier work it would be hard to
+find; I wonder how many of us have seen it?
+
+But I must go back to my subject.  I was not in Bath just to
+die and lie there, like poor Sibthorpe, with all those strange
+bedfellows of his, nor was I in search of a vacant space the
+size of my hand on the walls to bespeak it for my own
+memorial.  On the contrary, I was there, as we have seen, to
+knock five years off my age.  And it was very pleasant, as I
+have said, so long as I confined my attention to Bath, the
+stone-built town of old memories and associations--so long as
+I was satisfied to loiter in the streets and wide green places
+and in the Pump Room and the abbey.  The bitter came in only
+when, going from places to faces, I began to seek out the
+friends and acquaintances of former days.  The familiar faces
+seemed not wholly familiar now.  A change had been wrought; in
+some cases a great change, as in that of some weedy girl who
+had blossomed into fair womanhood.  One could not grieve at
+that; but in the middle-aged and those who were verging on or
+past that period, it was impossible not to feel saddened at
+the difference.  "I see no change in you," is a lie ready to
+the lips which would speak some pleasing thing, but it does
+not quite convince.  Men are naturally brutal, and use no
+compliments to one another; on the contrary, they do not
+hesitate to make a joke of wrinkles and grey hairs--their own
+and yours.  "But, oh, the difference" when the familiar face,
+no longer familiar as of old, is a woman's!  This is no light
+thing to her, and her eyes, being preternaturally keen in such
+matters, see not only the change in you, but what is
+infinitely sadder, the changed reflection of herself.  Your
+eyes have revealed the shock you have experienced.  You cannot
+hide it; her heart is stabbed with a sudden pain, and she is
+filled with shame and confusion; and the pain is but greater
+if her life has glided smoothly--if she cannot appeal to your
+compassion, finding a melancholy relief in that saddest cry:--
+
+   O Grief has changed me since you saw me last!
+
+For not grief, nor sickness, nor want, nor care, nor any
+misery or calamity which men fear, is her chief enemy.  Time
+alone she hates and fears--insidious Time who has lulled her
+mind with pleasant flatteries all these years while subtly
+taking away her most valued possessions, the bloom and colour,
+the grace, the sparkle, the charm of other years.
+
+Here is a true and pretty little story, which may or may not
+exactly fit the theme, but is very well worth telling.  A lady
+of fashion, middle-aged or thereabouts, good-looking but pale
+and with the marks of care and disillusionment on her
+expressive face, accompanied by her pretty sixteen-years-old
+daughter, one day called on an artist and asked him to show
+her his studio.  He was a very great artist, the greatest
+portrait-painter we have ever had and he did not know who she
+was, but with the sweet courtesy which distinguished him
+through all his long life--he died recently at a very advanced
+age--he at once put his work away and took her round his
+studio to show her everything he thought would interest her.
+But she was restless and inattentive, and by and by leaving
+the artist talking to her young daughter she began going round
+by herself, moving constantly from picture to picture.
+Presently she made an exclamation, and turning they saw her
+standing before a picture, a portrait of a girl, staring
+fixedly at it.  "Oh," she cried, and it was a cry of pain,
+"was I once as beautiful as that?" and burst into tears.  She
+had found the picture she had been looking for, which she had
+come to see; it had been there twenty to twenty-five years,
+and the story of it was as follows.
+
+When she was a young girl her mother took her to the great
+artist to have her portrait painted, and when the work was at
+length finished she and her mother went to see it.  The artist
+put it before them and the mother looked at it, her face
+expressing displeasure, and said not one word.  Nor did the
+artist open his lips.  And at last the girl, to break the
+uncomfortable silence, said, "Where shall we hang it, mother?"
+and the lady replied, "Just where you like, my dear, so long
+as you hang it with the face to the wall."  It was an
+insolent, a cruel thing to say, but the artist did not answer
+her bitterly; he said gently that she need not take the
+portrait as it failed to please her, and that in any case he
+would decline to take the money she had agreed to pay him for
+the work.  She thanked him coldly and went her way, and he
+never saw her again.  And now Time, the humbler of proud
+beautiful women, had given him his revenge: the portrait,
+scorned and rejected when the colour and sparkle of life was
+in the face, had been looked on once more by its subject and
+had caused her to weep at the change in herself.
+
+To return.  One wishes in these moments of meeting, of
+surprise and sudden revealings, that it were permissible to
+speak from the heart, since then the very truth might have
+more balm than bitterness in it.  "Grieve not, dear friend of
+old days, that I have not escaped the illusion common to all
+--the idea that those we have not looked on this long time
+--full five years, let us say--have remained as they were
+while we ourselves have been moving onwards and downwards in
+that path in which our feet are set.  No one, however hardened
+he may be, can escape a shock of surprise and pain; but now
+the illusion I cherished has gone--now I have seen with my
+physical eyes, and a new image, with Time's writing on it, has
+taken the place of the old and brighter one, I would not have
+it otherwise.  No, not if I could would I call back the
+vanished lustre, since all these changes, above all that
+wistful look in the eyes, do but serve to make you dearer, my
+sister and friend and fellow-traveller in a land where we
+cannot find a permanent resting-place."
+
+Alas! it cannot be spoken, and we cannot comfort a sister if
+she cannot divine the thought; but to brood over these
+inevitable changes is as idle as it is to lament that we were
+born into this mutable world.  After all, it is because of the
+losses, the sadnesses, that the world is so infinitely sweet
+to us.  The thought is in Cory's Mimnernus in Church:
+
+   All beauteous things for which we live
+   By laws of time and space decay.
+   But oh, the very reason why
+   I clasp them is because they die.
+
+From this sadness in Bath I went to a greater in Wells, where
+I had not been for ten years, and timing my visit so as to
+have a Sunday service at the cathedral of beautiful memories,
+I went on a Saturday to Shepton Mallet.  A small, squalid
+town, a "manufacturing town" the guide-book calls it.  Well,
+yes; it manufactures Anglo-Bavarian beer in a gigantic
+brewery which looks bigger than all the other buildings
+together, the church and a dozen or twenty public-houses
+included.  To get some food I went to the only eating-house
+in the place, and saw a pleasant-looking woman, plump and
+high-coloured, with black hair, with an expression of good
+humour and goodness of every description in her comely
+countenance.  She promised to have a chop ready by the time I
+had finished looking at the church, and I said I would have it
+with a small Guinness.  She could not provide that, the house,
+she said, was strictly temperance.  "My doctor has ordered me
+to take it," said I, "and if you are religious, remember that
+St. Paul tells us to take a little stout when we find it
+beneficial."
+
+"Yes, I know that's what St. Paul says," she returned, with a
+heightened colour and a vicious emphasis on the saint's name,
+"but we go on a different principle."
+
+So I had to go for my lunch to one of the big public-houses,
+called hotels; but whether it called itself a cow, or horse,
+or stag, or angel, or a blue or green something, I cannot
+remember.  They gave me what they called a beefsteak pie--a
+tough crust and under it some blackish cubes carved out of the
+muscle of an antediluvian ox-and for this delicious fare and a
+glass of stout I paid three shillings and odd pence.
+
+As I came away Shepton Mallet was shaken to its foundations by
+a tremendous and most diabolical sound, a prolonged lupine
+yell or yowl, as if a stupendous wolf, as big, say, as the
+Anglo-Bavarian brewery, had howled his loudest and longest.
+This infernal row, which makes Shepton seem like a town or
+village gone raving mad, was merely to inform the men, and,
+incidentally, the universe, that it was time for them to knock
+off work.
+
+Turning my back on the place, I said to myself, "What a fool I
+am to be sure!  Why could I not have been satisfied for once
+with a cup of coffee with my lunch?  I should have saved a
+shilling, perhaps eighteen-pence, to rejoice the soul of some
+poor tramp; and, better still, I could have discussed some
+interesting questions with that charming rosy-faced woman.
+What, for instance, was the reason of her quarrel with the
+apostle; by the by, she never rebuked me for misquoting his
+words; and what is the moral effect (as seen through her clear
+brown eyes) of the Anglo-Bavarian brewery on the population of
+the small town and the neighbouring villages?"
+
+The road I followed from Shepton to Wells winds by the
+water-side, a tributary of the Brue, in a narrow valley with
+hills on either side.  It is a five-mile road through a
+beautiful country, where there is practically no cultivation,
+and the green hills, with brown woods in their hollows, and
+here and there huge masses of grey and reddish Bath stone
+cropping out on their sides, resembling gigantic castles and
+ramparts, long ruined and overgrown with ivy and bramble,
+produce the effect of a land dispeopled and gone back to a
+state of wildness.
+
+A thaw had come that morning, ending the severest frost
+experienced this winter anywhere in England, and the valley
+was alive with birds, happy and tuneful at the end of January
+as in April.  Looking down on the stream the sudden glory of a
+kingfisher passed before me; but the sooty-brown water-ouzel
+with his white bib, a haunter, too, of this water, I did not
+see.  Within a mile or so of Wells I overtook a small boy who
+belonged there, and had been to Shepton like me, noticing the
+birds.  "I saw a kingfisher," I said.  "So did I," he returned
+quickly, with pride.  He described it as a biggish bird with a
+long neck, but its colour was not blue--oh, no!  I suggested
+that it was a heron, a long-necked creature under six feet
+high, of no particular colour.  No, it was not a heron; and
+after taking thought, he said, "I think it was a wild duck."
+
+Bestowing a penny to encourage him in his promising researches
+into the feathered world, I went on by a footpath over a hill,
+and as I mounted to the higher ground there before me rose the
+noble tower of St. Cuthbert's Church, and a little to the
+right of it, girt with high trees, the magnificent pile of the
+cathedral, with green hills and the pale sky beyond.  O joy to
+look again on it, to add yet one more enduring image of it to
+the number I had long treasured!  For the others were not
+exactly like this one; the building was not looked at from the
+same point of view at the same season and late hour, with the
+green hills lit by the departing sun and the clear pale winter
+sky beyond.
+
+Coming in by the moated palace I stood once more on the Green
+before that west front, beautiful beyond all others, in spite
+of the strange defeatures Time has written on it.  I watched
+the daws, numerous as ever, still at their old mad games, now
+springing into the air to scatter abroad with ringing cries,
+only to return the next minute and fling themselves back on
+their old perches on a hundred weather-stained broken statues
+in the niches.  And while I stood watching them from the
+palace trees close by came the loud laugh of the green
+woodpecker.  The same wild, beautiful sound, uttered perhaps
+by the same bird, which I had often heard at that spot ten
+years ago!  "You will not hear that woodland sound in any
+other city in the kingdom," I wrote in a book of sketches
+entitled "Birds and Man", published in 1901.
+
+But of my soul's adventures in Wells on the two or three
+following days I will say very little.  That laugh of the
+woodpecker was an assurance that Nature had suffered no
+change, and the town too, like the hills and rocks and running
+waters, seemed unchanged; but how different and how sad when I
+looked for those I once knew, whose hands I had hoped to grasp
+again!  Yes, some were living still; and a dog too, one I used
+to take out for long walks and many a mad rabbit-hunt--a very
+handsome white-and-liver coloured spaniel.  I found him lying
+on a sofa, and down he got and wagged his tail vigorously,
+pretending, with a pretty human hypocrisy in his gentle yellow
+eyes, that he knew me perfectly well, that I was not a bit
+changed, and that he was delighted to see me.
+
+On my way back to Bath I had a day at Bristol.  It was
+cattle-market day, and what with the bellowings, barkings, and
+shoutings, added to the buzz and clang of innumerable electric
+tramcars and the usual din of street traffic, one got the idea
+that the Bristolians had adopted a sort of Salvation Army
+theory, and were endeavouring to conquer earth (it is not
+heaven in this case) by making a tremendous noise.  I amused
+myself strolling about and watching the people, and as train
+after train came in late in the day discharging loads of
+humanity, mostly young men and women from the surrounding
+country coming in for an evening's amusement, I noticed again
+the peculiarly Welsh character of the Somerset peasant--the
+shape of the face, the colour of the skin, and, above all, the
+expression.
+
+Freeman, when here below, proclaimed it his mission to prove
+that "Englishmen were Englishmen, and not somebody else."  It
+appeared to me that any person, unbiassed by theories on such
+a subject, looking at that crowd, would have come to the
+conclusion, sadly or gladly, according to his nature, that we
+are, in fact, "somebody else."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Fourteen: The Return of the Native
+
+
+That "going back" about which I wrote in the second chapter to
+a place where an unexpected beauty or charm has revealed
+itself, and has made its image a lasting and prized possession
+of the mind, is not the same thing as the revisiting a famous
+town or city, rich in many beauties and old memories, such as
+Bath or Wells, for instance.  Such centres have a permanent
+attraction, and one who is a rover in the land must return to
+them again and again, nor does he fail on each successive
+visit to find some fresh charm or interest.  The sadness of
+such returns, after a long interval, is only, as I have said,
+when we start "looking up" those with whom we had formed
+pleasant friendly relations.  And all because of the illusion
+that we shall see them as they were--that Time has stood still
+waiting for our return, and by and by, to our surprise and
+grief, we discover that it is not so; that the dear friends of
+other days, long unvisited but unforgotten, have become
+strangers.  This human loss is felt even more in the case of a
+return to some small centre, a village or hamlet where we knew
+every one, and our intimacy with the people has produced the
+sense of being one in blood with them.  It is greatest of all
+when we return to a childhood's or boyhood's home.  Many
+writers have occupied themselves with this mournful theme, and
+I imagine that a person of the proper Amiel-like tender and
+melancholy moralizing type of mind, by using his own and his
+friends' experiences, could write a charmingly sad and pretty
+book on the subject.
+
+The really happy returns of this kind must be exceedingly
+rare.  I am almost surprised to think that I am able to recall
+as many as two, but they hardly count, as in both instances
+the departure or exile from home happens at so early a time of
+life that no recollections of the people survived--nothing, in
+fact, but a vague mental picture of the place.  One was of a
+business man I knew in London, who lost his early home in a
+village in the Midlands, as a boy of eight or nine years of
+age, through the sale of the place by his father, who had
+become impoverished.  The boy was trained to business in
+London, and when a middle-aged man, wishing to retire and
+spend the rest of his life in the country, he revisited his
+native village for the first time, and dicovered to his joy
+that he could buy back the old home.  He was, when I last saw
+him, very happy in its possession.
+
+The other case I will relate more fully, as it is a very
+curious one, and came to my knowledge in a singular way.
+
+At a small station near Eastleigh a man wearing a highly
+pleased expression on his face entered the smoking-carriage in
+which I was travelling to London.  Putting his bag on the
+rack, he pulled out his pipe and threw himself back in his
+seat with a satisfied air; then, looking at me and catching my
+eye, he at once started talking.  I had my newspaper, but
+seeing him in that overflowing mood I responded readily
+enough, for I was curious to know why he appeared so happy and
+who and what he was.  Not a tradesman nor a bagman, and not a
+farmer, though he looked like an open-air man; nor could I
+form a guess from his speech and manner as to his native
+place.  A robust man of thirty-eight or forty, with blue eyes
+and a Saxon face, he looked a thorough Englishman, and yet he
+struck me as most un-English in his lively, almost eager
+manner, his freedom with a stranger, and something, too, in
+his speech.  From time to time his face lighted up, when,
+looking to the window, his eyes rested on some pretty scene--a
+glimpse of stately old elm trees in a field where cattle were
+grazing, of the vivid green valley of a chalk stream, the
+paler hills beyond, the grey church tower or spire of some
+tree-hidden village.  When he discovered that these hills and
+streams and rustic villages had as great a charm for me as for
+himself, that I knew and loved the two or three places he
+named in a questioning way, he opened his heart and the secret
+of his present happiness.
+
+He was a native of the district, born at a farmhouse of which
+his father in succession to his grandfather had been the
+tenant.  It was a small farm of only eighty-five acres, and as
+his father could make no more than a bare livelihood out of
+it, he eventually gave it up when my informant was but three
+years old, and selling all he had, emigrated to Australia.
+Nine years later he died, leaving a numerous family poorly
+provided for; the home was broken up and boys and girls had to
+go out and face the world.  They had somehow all got on very
+well, and his brothers and sisters were happy enough out
+there, Australians in mind, thoroughly persuaded that theirs
+was the better land, the best country in the world, and with
+no desire to visit England.  He had never felt like that;
+somehow his father's feeling about the old country had taken
+such a hold of him that he never outlived it--never felt at
+home in Australia, however successful he was in his affairs.
+The home feeling had been very strong in his father; his
+greatest delight was to sit of an evening with his children
+round him and tell them of the farm and the old farm-house
+where he was born and had lived so many years, and where some
+of them too had been born.  He was never tired of talking of
+it, of taking them by the hand, as it were, and leading them
+from place to place, to the stream, the village, the old stone
+church, the meadows and fields and hedges, the deep shady
+lanes, and, above all, to the dear old ivied house with its
+gables and tall chimneys.  So many times had his father
+described it that the old place was printed like a map on his
+mind, and was like a picture which kept its brightness even
+after the image of his boyhood's home in Australia had become
+faded and pale.  With that mental picture to guide him he
+believed that he could go to that angle by the porch where the
+flycatchers bred every year and find their nest; where in the
+hedge the blackberries were most abundant; where the elders
+grew by the stream from which he could watch the moorhens and
+watervoles; that he knew every fence, gate, and outhouse,
+every room and passage in the old house.  Through all his busy
+years that picture never grew less beautiful, never ceased its
+call, and at last, possessed of sufficient capital to yield
+him a modest income for the rest of his life, he came home.
+What he was going to do in England he did not consider.  He
+only knew that until he had satisfied the chief desire of his
+heart and had looked upon the original of the picture he had
+borne so long in his mind he could not rest nor make any plans
+for the future.
+
+He came first to London and found, on examining the map of
+Hampshire, that the village of Thorpe (I will call it), where
+he was born, is three miles from the nearest station, in the
+southern part of the county.  Undoubtedly it was Thorpe; that
+was one of the few names of places his father had mentioned
+which remained in his memory always associated with that vivid
+image of the farm in his mind.  To Thorpe he accordingly went
+--as pretty a rustic village as he had hoped to find it.  He
+took a room at the inn and went out for a long walk--"just to
+see the place," he said to the landlord.  He would make no
+inquiries; he would find his home for himself; how could he
+fail to recognize it?  But he walked for hours in a widening
+circle and saw no farm or other house, and no ground that
+corresponded to the picture in his brain.
+
+Troubled at his failure, he went back and questioned his
+landlord, and, naturally, was asked for the name of the farm
+he was seeking.  He had forgotten the name--he even doubted
+that he had ever heard it.  But there was his family name to
+go by--Dyson; did any one remember a farmer Dyson in the
+village?  He was told that it was not an uncommon name in that
+part of the country.  There were no Dysons now in Thorpe, but
+some fifteen or twenty years ago one of that name had been the
+tenant of Long Meadow Farm in the parish.  The name of the
+farm was unfamiliar, and when he visited the place he found it
+was not the one he sought.
+
+It was a grievous disappointment.  A new sense of loneliness
+oppressed him; for that bright image in his mind, with the
+feeling about his home, had been a secret source of comfort
+and happiness, and was like a companion, a dear human friend,
+and now he appeared to be on the point of losing it.  Could it
+be that all that mental picture, with the details that seemed
+so true to life, was purely imaginary?  He could not believe
+it; the old house had probably been pulled down, the big trees
+felled, orchard and hedges grabbed up--all the old features
+obliterated--and the land thrown into some larger neighbouring
+farm.  It was dreadful to think that such devastating changes
+had been made, but it had certainly existed as he saw it in
+his mind, and he would inquire of some of the old men in the
+place, who would perhaps be able to tell him where his home
+had stood thirty years ago.
+
+At once he set about interviewing all the old men he came upon
+in his rounds, describing to them the farm tenanted by a man
+named Dyson about forty years ago, and by and by he got hold
+of one who knew.  He listened for a few minutes to the
+oft-repeated story, then exclaimed, "Why, sir, 'tis surely
+Woodyates you be talking about!"
+
+"That's the name!  That's the name," he cried.  "Woodyyates-
+how did I ever forget it!  You knew it then--where was it?"
+
+"I'll just show you," said the old man, proud at having
+guessed rightly, and turning started slowly hobbling along
+till he got to the end of the lane.
+
+There was an opening there and a view of the valley with
+trees, blue in the distance, at the furthest visible point.
+"Do you see them trees?" he said.  "That's where Harping is;
+'tis two miles or, perhaps, a little more from Thorpe.
+There's a church tower among them trees, but you can't see it
+because 'tis hid.  You go by the road till you comes to the
+church, then you go on by the water, maybe a quarter of a
+mile, and you comes to Woodyates.  You won't see no difference
+in it; I've knowed it since I were a boy, but 'tis in Harping
+parish, not in Thorpe."
+
+Now he remembered the name--Harping, near Thorpe--only Thorpe
+was the more important village where the inn was and the
+shops.
+
+In less than an hour after leaving his informant he was at
+Woodyates, feasting his eyes on the old house of his dreams
+and of his exiled father's before him, inexpressibly glad to
+recognize it as the very house he had loved so long--that he
+had been deceived by no false image.
+
+For some days he haunted the spot, then became a lodger at the
+farm-house, and now after making some inquiries he had found
+that the owner was willing to sell the place for something
+more than its market value, and he was going up to London
+about it.
+
+At Waterloo I wished him happiness in his old home found again
+after so many years, then watched him as he walked briskly
+away--as commonplace-looking a man as could be seen on that
+busy crowded platform, in his suit of rough grey tweeds, thick
+boots, and bowler hat.  Yet one whose fortune might be envied
+by many even among the successful--one who had cherished a
+secret thought and feeling, which had been to him like the
+shadow of a rock and like a cool spring in a dry and thirsty
+land.
+
+And in that host of undistinguished Colonials and others of
+British race from all regions of the earth, who annually visit
+these shores on business or for pleasure or some other object,
+how many there must be who come with some such memory or dream
+or aspiration in their hearts!  A greater number probably than
+we imagine.  For most of them there is doubtless
+disappointment and disillusion: it is a matter of the heart, a
+sentiment about which some are not given to speak.  He too, my
+fellow-passenger, would no doubt have held his peace had his
+dream not met with so perfect a fulfilment.  As it was he had
+to tell his joy to some one, though it were to a stranger.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Fifteen: Summer Days on the Otter
+
+
+The most characteristic district of South Devon, the greenest,
+most luxuriant in its vegetation, and perhaps the hottest in
+England, is that bit of country between the Exe and the Axe
+which is watered by the Clyst, the Otter, and the Sid.  In any
+one of a dozen villages found beside these pretty little
+rivers a man might spend a month, a year, a lifetime, very
+agreeably, ceasing not to congratulate himself on the good
+fortune which first led him into such a garden.  Yet after a
+week or two in this luxurious land I began to be dissatisfied
+with my surroundings.  It was June; the weather was
+exceptionally dry and sultry.  Vague thoughts, or "visitings"
+of mountains and moors and coasts would intrude to make the
+confinement of deep lanes seem increasingly irksome.  Each day
+I wandered miles in some new direction, never knowing whither
+the devious path would lead me, never inquiring of any person,
+nor consulting map or guide, since to do that is to deprive
+oneself of the pleasure of discovery; always with a secret
+wish to find some exit as it were--some place beyond the
+everlasting wall of high hedges and green trees, where there
+would be a wide horizon and wind blowing unobstructed over
+leagues of open country to bring me back the sense of lost
+liberty.  I found only fresh woods and pastures new that were
+like the old; other lanes leading to other farm-houses, each
+in its familiar pretty setting of orchard and garden; and,
+finally, other ancient villages, each with its ivy-grown grey
+church tower looking down on a green graveyard and scattered
+cottages, mostly mud-built and thatched with straw.  Finding
+no outlook on any side I went back to the streams, oftenest to
+the Otter, where, lying by the hour on the bank, I watched the
+speckled trout below me and the dark-plumaged dipper with
+shining white breast standing solitary and curtseying on a,
+stone in the middle of the current.  Sometimes a kingfisher
+would flash by, and occasionally I came upon a lonely grey
+heron; but no mammal bigger than a watervole appeared,
+although I waited and watched for the much bigger beast that
+gives the river its name.  Still it was good to know that he
+was there, and had his den somewhere in the steep rocky bank
+under the rough tangle of ivy and bramble and roots of
+overhanging trees.  One was shot by a farmer during my stay,
+but my desire was for the living, not a dead otter.
+Consequently, when the otter-hunt came with blaze of scarlet
+coats and blowing of brass horns and noise of barking hounds
+and shouts of excited people, it had no sooner got half a mile
+above Ottery St. Mary, where I had joined the straggling
+procession, than, falling behind, the hunting fury died out of
+me and I was relieved to hear that no quarry had been found.
+The frightened moorhen stole back to her spotty eggs, the
+dipper returned to his dipping and curtseying to his own image
+in the stream, and I to my idle dreaming and watching.
+
+The watching was not wholly in vain, since there were here
+revealed to me things, or aspects of things, that were new.  A
+great deal depends on atmosphere and the angle of vision.  For
+instance, I have often looked at swans at the hour of sunset,
+on the water and off it, or flying, and have frequently had
+them between me and the level sun, yet never have I been
+favoured with the sight of the rose-coloured, the red, and the
+golden-yellow varieties of that majestic waterfowl, whose
+natural colour is white.  On the other hand, who ever saw a
+carrion-crow with crimson eyes?  Yet that was one of the
+strange things I witnessed on the Otter.
+
+Game is not everywhere strictly preserved in that part of
+Devon, and the result is that the crow is not so abhorred and
+persecuted a fowl as in many places, especially in the home
+counties, where the cult of the sacred bird is almost
+universal.  At one spot on the stream where my rambles took me
+on most days a pair of crows invariably greeted my approach
+with a loud harsh remonstrance, and would keep near me, flying
+from tree to tree repeating their angry girdings until I left
+the place.  Their nest was in a large elm, and after some days
+I was pleased to see that the young had been safely brought
+off.  The old birds screamed at me no more; then I came on one
+of their young in the meadow near the river.  His curious
+behaviour interested me so much that I stood and watched him
+for half an hour or longer.  It was a hot, windless day, and
+the bird was by himself among the tall flowering grasses and
+buttercups of the meadow--a queer gaunt unfinished
+hobbledehoy-looking fowl with a head much too big for his
+body, a beak that resembled a huge nose, and a very monstrous
+mouth.  When I first noticed him he was amusing himself by
+picking off the small insects from the flowers with his big
+beak, a most unsuitable instrument, one would imagine, for so
+delicate a task.  At the same time he was hungering for more
+substantial fare, and every time a rook flew by over him on
+its way to or from a neighbouring too populous rookery, the
+young crow would open wide his immense red mouth and emit his
+harsh, throaty hunger-call.  The rook gone, he would drop once
+more into his study of the buttercups, to pick from them
+whatever unconsidered trifle in the way of provender he could
+find.  Once a small bird, a pied wagtail, flew near him, and
+he begged from it just as he had done from the rooks: the
+little creature would have run the risk of being itself
+swallowed had it attempted to deliver a packet of flies into
+that cavernous mouth.  I went nearer, moving cautiously, until
+I was within about four yards of him, when, half turning, he
+opened his mouth and squawked, actually asking me to feed him;
+then, growing suspicious, he hopped awkwardly away in the
+grass.  Eventually he permitted a nearer approach, and slowly
+stooping I was just on the point of stroking his back when,
+suddenly becoming alarmed, he swung himself into the air and
+flapped laboriously off to a low hawthorn, twenty or thirty
+yards away, into which he tumbled pell-mell like a bundle of
+old black rags.
+
+Then I left him and thought no more about the crows except
+that their young have a good deal to learn upon first coming
+forth into an unfriendly world.  But there was a second nest
+and family close by all the time.  A day or two later I
+discovered it accidentally in a very curious way.
+
+There was one spot where I was accustomed to linger for a few
+minutes, sometimes for half an hour or so, during my daily
+walks.  Here at the foot of the low bank on the treeless side
+of the stream there was a scanty patch of sedges, a most
+exposed and unsuitable place for any bird to breed in, yet a
+venturesome moorhen had her nest there and was now sitting on
+seven eggs.  First I would take a peep at the eggs, for the
+bird always quitted the nest on my approach; then I would gaze
+into the dense tangle of tree, bramble, and ivy springing out
+of the mass 'of black rock and red clay of the opposite bank.
+In the centre of this rough tangle which overhung the stream
+there grew an old stunted and crooked fir tree with its tufted
+top so shut out from the light by the branches and foliage
+round it that it looked almost black.  One evening I sat down
+on the green bank opposite this tangle when the low sun behind
+me shone level into the mass of rock and rough boles and
+branches, and fixing my eyes on the black centre of the mass I
+encountered a pair of crimson eyes staring back into mine.  A
+level ray of light had lit up that spot which I had always
+seen in deep shadow, revealing its secret.  After gazing
+steadily for some time I made out a crow's nest in the dwarf
+pine top and the vague black forms of three young fully
+fledged crows sitting or standing in it.  The middle bird had
+the shining crimson eyes; but in a few moments the illusory
+colour was gone and the eyes were black.
+
+It was certainly an extraordinary thing: the ragged-looking
+black-plumaged bird on its ragged nest of sticks in the deep
+shade, with one ray of intense sunlight on its huge nose-like
+beak and blood-red eyes, a sight to be remembered for a
+lifetime!  It recalled Zurbaran's picture of the "Kneeling
+Monk," in which the man with everything about him is steeped
+in the deepest gloom except his nose, on which one ray of
+strong light has fallen.  The picture of the monk is gloomy
+and austere in a wonderful degree: the crow in his interior
+with sunlit big beak and crimson eyes looked nothing less than
+diabolical.
+
+I paid other visits to the spot at the same hour, and sat long
+and watched the crows while they watched me, occasionally
+tossing pebbles on to them to make them shift their positions,
+but the magical effect was not produced again.
+
+As to the cause of that extraordinary colour in the crow's
+eyes, one might say that it was merely the reflected red light
+of the level sun.  We are familiar with the effect when
+polished and wet surfaces, such as glass, stone, and water,
+shine crimson in the light of a setting sun; but there is also
+the fact, which is not well known, that the eye may show its
+own hidden red--the crimson colour which is at the back of the
+retina and which is commonly supposed to be seen only with the
+ophthalmoscope.  Nevertheless I find on inquiry among friends
+and acquaintances that there are instances of persons in which
+the iris when directly in front of the observer with the light
+behind him, always looks crimson, and in several of these
+cases.  the persons exhibiting this colour, or danger signal,
+as it may be called, were subject to brain trouble.  It is
+curious to find that the crimson colour or light has also been
+observed in dogs: one friend has told me of a pet King
+Charles, a lively good-tempered little dog with brown eyes
+like any other dog, which yet when they looked up, into yours
+in a room always shone ruby-red instead of hyaline blue, or
+green, as is usually the case.  From other friends I heard of
+many other cases: one was of a child, an infant in arms, whose
+eyes sometimes appeared crimson, another of a cat with yellow
+eyes which shone crimson-red in certain lights.  Of human
+adults, I heard of two men great in the world of science, both
+dead now, in whose eyes the red light had been seen just
+before and during attacks of nervous breakdown.  I heard also
+of four other persons, not distinguished in any way, two of
+them sisters, who showed the red light in the eyes: all of
+them suffered, from brain trouble and two of them ended their
+lives in asylums for the insane.
+
+Discussing these cases with my informants, we came to the
+conclusion that the red light in the human eye is probably
+always a pathological condition, a danger signal; but it is
+not perhaps safe to generalize on these few instances, and I
+must add that all the medical men I have spoken to on the
+subject shake their heads.  One great man, an eye specialist,
+went so far as to say that it is impossible, that the red
+light in the eye was not seen by my informants but only
+imagined.  The ophthalmoscope, he said, will show you the
+crimson at the back of the eye, but the colour is not and
+cannot be reflected on the surface of the iris.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Sixteen: In Praise of the Cow
+
+
+In spite of discontents I might have remained to this day by
+the Otter, in the daily and hourly expectation of seeing some
+new and wonderful thing in Nature in that place where a
+crimson-eyed carrion-crow had been revealed to me, had not a
+storm of thunder and rain broken over the country to shake me
+out of a growing disinclination to move.  We are, body and
+mind, very responsive to atmospheric changes; for every storm
+in Nature there is a storm in us--a change physical and
+mental.  We make our own conditions, it is true, and these
+react and have a deadening effect on us in the long run, but
+we are never wholly deadened by them--if we be not indeed
+dead, if the life we live can be called life.  We are told
+that there are rainless zones on the earth and regions of
+everlasting summer: it is hard to believe that the dwellers in
+such places can ever think a new thought or do a new thing.
+The morning rain did not last very long, and before it had
+quite ceased I took up my knapsack and set off towards the
+sea, determined on this occasion to make my escape.
+
+Three or four miles from Ottery St. Mary I overtook a cowman
+driving nine milch cows along a deep lane and inquired my way
+of him.  He gave me many and minute directions, after which we
+got into conversation, and I walked some distance with him.
+The cows he was driving were all pure Devons, perfect beauties
+in their bright red coats in that greenest place where every
+rain-wet leaf sparkled in the new sunlight.  Naturally we
+talked about the cows, and I soon found that they were his own
+and the pride and joy of his life.  We walked leisurely, and
+as the animals went on, first one, then another would stay for
+a mouthful of grass, or to pull down half a yard of green
+drapery from the hedge.  It was so lavishly decorated that the
+damage they did to it was not noticeable.  By and by we went
+on ahead of the cows, then, if one stayed too long or strayed
+into some inviting side-lane, he would turn and utter a long,
+soft call, whereupon the straggler would leave her browsing
+and hasten after the others.
+
+
+He was a big, strongly built man, a little past middle life
+and grey-haired, with rough-hewn face--unprepossessing one
+would have pronounced him until the intelligent, kindly
+expression of the eyes was seen and the agreeable voice was
+heard.  As our talk progressed and we found how much in
+sympathy we were on the subject, I was reminded of that
+Biblical expression about the shining of a man's face: "Wine
+that maketh glad the heart of man"--I hope the total
+abstainers will pardon me--"and oil that maketh his face to
+shine," we have in one passage.  This rather goes against our
+British ideas, since we rub no oil or unguents on our skin,
+but only soap which deprives it of its natural oil and too
+often imparts a dry and hard texture.  Yet in that, to us,
+disagreeable aspect of the skin caused by foreign fats, there
+is a resemblance to the sudden brightening and glory of the
+countenance in moments of blissful emotion or exaltation.  No
+doubt the effect is produced by the eyes, which are the
+mirrors of the mind, and as they are turned full upon us they
+produce an illusion, seeming to make the whole face shine.
+
+In our talk I told him of long rambles on the Mendips, along
+the valley of the Somerset Axe, where I had lately been, and
+where of all places, in this island, the cow should be most
+esteemed and loved by man.  Yet even there, where, standing on
+some elevation, cows beyond one's power to number could be
+seen scattered far and wide in the green vales beneath, it had
+saddened me to find them so silent.  It is not natural for
+them to be dumb; they have great emotions and mighty voices
+--the cattle on a thousand hills.  Their morning and evening
+lowing is more to me than any other natural sound--the melody
+of birds, the springs and dying gales of the pines, the wash
+of waves on the long shingled beach.  The hills and valleys of
+that pastoral country flowing with milk and honey should be
+vocal with it, echoing and re-echoing the long call made
+musical by distance.  The cattle are comparatively silent in
+that beautiful district, and indeed everywhere in England,
+because men have made them so.  They have, when deprived of
+their calves, no motive for the exercise of their voices.  For
+two or three days after their new-born calves have been taken
+from them they call loudly and incessantly, day and night,
+like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be
+comforted; grief and anxiety inspires that cry--they grow
+hoarse with crying; it is a powerful, harsh, discordant sound,
+unlike the long musical call of the cow that has a calf, and
+remembering it, and leaving the pasture, goes lowing to give
+it suck.
+
+I also told him of the cows of a distant country where I had
+lived, that had the maternal instinct so strong that they
+refused to yield their milk when deprived of their young.
+They "held it back," as the saying is, and were in a sullen
+rage, and in a few days their fountains dried up, and there
+was no more milk until calving-time came round once more.
+
+He replied that cows of that temper were not unknown in South
+Devon.  Very proudly he pointed to one of the small herd that
+followed us as an example.  In most cases, he said, the calf
+was left from two or three days to a week, or longer, with the
+mother to get strong, and then taken away.  This plan could
+not be always followed; some cows were so greatly distressed
+at losing the young they had once suckled that precautions had
+to be taken and the calf smuggled away as quietly as possible
+when dropped--if possible before the mother had seen it.  Then
+there were the extreme cases in which the cow refused to be
+cheated.  She knew that a calf had been born; she had felt it
+within her, and had suffered pangs in bringing it forth; if it
+appeared not on the grass or straw at her side then it must
+have been snatched away by the human creatures that hovered
+about her, like crows and ravens round a ewe in travail on
+some lonely mountain side.
+
+That was the character of the cow he had pointed out; even
+when she had not seen the calf of which she had been deprived
+she made so great an outcry and was thrown into such a rage
+and fever, refusing to be milked that, finally, to save her,
+it was thought necessary to give her back the calf.  Now, he
+concluded, it was not attempted to take it away: twice a day
+she was allowed to have it with her and suckle it, and she was
+a very happy animal.
+
+I was glad to think that there was at least one completely
+happy cow in Devonshire.
+
+After leaving the cowkeeper I had that feeling of revulsion
+very strongly which all who know and love cows occasionally
+experience at the very thought of beef.  I was for the moment
+more than tolerant of vegetarianism, and devoutly hoped that
+for many days to come I should not be sickened with the sight
+of a sirloin on some hateful board, cold, or smoking hot,
+bleeding its red juices into the dish when gashed with a
+knife, as if undergoing a second death.  We do not eat
+negroes, although their pigmented skins, flat feet, and woolly
+heads proclaim them a different species; even monkey's flesh
+is abhorrent to us, merely because we fancy that that creature
+in its ugliness resembles some old men and some women and
+children that we know.  But the gentle large-brained social
+cow that caresses our hands and faces with her rough blue
+tongue, and is more like man's sister than any other non-human
+being--the majestic, beautiful creature with the juno eyes,
+sweeter of breath than the rosiest virgin--we slaughter and
+feed on her flesh--monsters and cannibals that we are!
+
+But though cannibals, it is very pleasant to find that many
+cowmen love their cows.  Walking one afternoon by a high
+unkept hedge near Southampton Water, I heard loud shouts at
+intervals issuing from a point some distance ahead, and on
+arriving at the spot found an old man leaning idly over a
+gate, apparently concerned about nothing.  "What are you
+shouting about?" I demanded.  "Cows," he answered, with a
+glance across the wide green field dotted with a few big furze
+and bramble bushes.  On its far side half a dozen cows were,
+quietly grazing.  "They came fast enough when I was a-feeding
+of 'em," he presently added; "but now they has to find for
+theirselves they don't care how long they keeps me."  I was
+going to suggest that it would be a considerable saving of
+time if he went for them, but his air of lazy contentment as
+he leant on the gate showed that time was of no importance to
+him.  He was a curious-looking old man, in old frayed clothes,
+broken boots, and a cap too small for him.  He had short legs,
+broad chest, and long arms, and a very big head, long and
+horselike, with a large shapeless nose and grizzled beard and
+moustache.  His ears, too, were enormous, and stood out from
+the head like the handles of a rudely shaped terra-cotta vase
+or jar.  The colour of his face, the ears included, suggested
+burnt clay.  But though Nature had made him ugly, he had an
+agreeable expression, a sweet benign look in his large dark
+eyes, which attracted me, and I stayed to talk with him.
+
+It has frequently been said that those who are much with cows,
+and have an affection for them, appear to catch something of
+their expression--to look like cows; just as persons of
+sympathetic or responsive nature, and great mobility of face,
+grow to be like those they live and are in sympathy with.
+The cowman who looks like a cow may be more bovine than his
+fellows in his heavier motions and slower apprehensions, but
+he also exhibits some of the better qualities--the repose and
+placidity of the animal.
+
+He said that he was over seventy, and had spent the whole of
+his life in the neighbourhood, mostly with cows, and had never
+been more than a dozen miles from the spot where we were
+standing.  At intervals while we talked he paused to utter one
+of his long shouts, to which the cows paid no attention.  At
+length one of the beasts raised her head and had a long look,
+then slowly crossed the field to us, the others following at
+some distance.  They were shorthorns, all but the leader, a
+beautiful young Devon, of a uniform rich glossy red; but the
+silky hair on the distended udder was of an intense chestnut,
+and all the parts that were not clothed were red too--the
+teats, the skin round the eyes, the moist embossed nose; while
+the hoofs were like polished red pebbles, and even the shapely
+horns were tinged with that colour.  Walking straight up to
+the old man, she began deliberately licking one of his ears
+with her big rough tongue, and in doing so knocked off his old
+rakish cap.  Picking it up he laughed like a child, and
+remarked, "She knows me, this one does--and she loikes me."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Seventeen: An Old Road Leading Nowhere
+
+
+So many and minute were the directions I received about the
+way from the blessed cowkeeper, and so little attention did I
+give them, my mind being occupied with other things, that they
+were quickly forgotten.  Of half a hundred things I remembered
+only that I had to "bear to the left."  This I did, although
+it seemed useless, seeing that my way was by lanes, across
+fields, and through plantations.  At length I came to a road,
+and as it happened to be on my left hand I followed it.  It
+was narrow, worn deep by traffic and rains; and grew deeper,
+rougher, and more untrodden as I progressed, until it was
+like the dry bed of a mountain torrent, and I walked on
+boulder-stones between steep banks about fourteen feet high.
+Their sides were clothed with ferns, grass and rank moss;
+their summits were thickly wooded, and the interlacing
+branches of the trees above, mingled with long rope-like
+shoots of bramble and briar, formed so close a roof that I
+seemed to be walking in a dimly lighted tunnel.  At length,
+thinking that I had kept long enough to a road which had
+perhaps not been used for a century, also tired of the
+monotony of always bearing to the left, I scrambled out on the
+right-hand side.  For some time past I had been ascending a
+low, broad, flat-topped hill, and on forcing my way through
+the undergrowth into the open I found myself on the level
+plateau, an unenclosed spot overgrown with heather and
+scattered furze bushes, with clumps of fir and birch trees.
+Before me and on either hand at this elevation a vast extent
+of country was disclosed.  The surface was everywhere broken,
+but there was no break in the wonderful greenness, which the
+recent rain had intensified.  There is too much green, to my
+thinking, with too much uniformity in its soft, bright tone,
+in South Devon.  After gazing on such a landscape the brown,
+harsh, scanty vegetation of the hilltop seemed all the more
+grateful.  The heath was an oasis and a refuge; I rambled
+about in it until my feet and legs were wet; then I sat
+down to let them dry and altogether spent several agreeable
+hours at that spot, pleased at the thought that no human
+fellow-creature would intrude upon me.  Feathered companions
+were, however, not wanting.  The crowing of cock pheasants
+from the thicket beside the old road warned me that I was on
+preserved grounds.  Not too strictly preserved, however, for
+there was my old friend the carrion-crow out foraging for his
+young.  He dropped down over the trees, swept past me, and was
+gone.  At this season, in the early summer, he may be easily
+distinguished, when flying, from his relation the rook.  When
+on the prowl the crow glides smoothly and rapidly through the
+air, often changing his direction, now flying close to the
+surface, anon mounting high, but oftenest keeping nearly on a
+level with the tree tops.  His gliding and curving motions are
+somewhat like those of the herring-gull, but the wings in
+gliding are carried stiff and straight, the tips of the long
+flight-feathers showing a slight upward curve.  But the
+greatest difference is in the way the head is carried.  The
+rook, like the heron and stork, carries his beak pointing
+lance-like straight before him.  He knows his destination, and
+makes for it; he follows his nose, so to speak, turning
+neither to the right nor the left.  The foraging crow
+continually turns his head, gull-like and harrier-like, from
+side to side, as if to search the ground thoroughly or to
+concentrate his vision on some vaguely seen object.
+
+Not only the crow was there: a magpie chattered as I came from
+the brake, but refused to show himself; and a little later a
+jay screamed at me, as only a jay can.  There are times when I
+am intensely in sympathy with the feeling expressed in this
+ear-splitting sound, inarticulate but human.  It is at the
+same time warning and execration, the startled solitary's
+outburst of uncontrolled rage at the abhorred sight of a
+fellow-being in his woodland haunt.
+
+Small birds were numerous at that spot, as if for them also
+its wildness and infertility had an attraction.  Tits,
+warblers, pipits, finches, all were busy ranging from place to
+place, emitting their various notes now from the tree-tops,
+then from near the ground; now close at hand, then far off;
+each change in the height, distance, and position of the
+singer giving the sound a different character, so that the
+effect produced was one of infinite variety.  Only the
+yellow-hammer remained constant in one spot, in one position,
+and the song at each repetition was the same.  Nevertheless
+this bird is not so monotonous a singer as he is reputed.  A
+lover of open places, of commons and waste lands, with a bush
+or dwarf tree for tower to sit upon, he is yet one of the most
+common species in the thickly timbered country of the Otter,
+Clyst, and Sid, in which I had been rambling, hearing him
+every day and all day long.  Throughout that district, where
+the fields are small, and the trees big and near together, he
+has the cirl-bunting's habit of perching to sing on the tops
+of high hedgerow elms and oaks.
+
+By and by I had a better bird to listen to--a redstart.  A
+female flew down within fifteen yards of me; her mate followed
+and perched on a dry twig, where he remained a long time for
+so shy and restless a creature.  He was in perfect plumage,
+and sitting there, motionless in the strong sunlight, was
+wonderfully conspicuous, the gayest, most exotic-looking bird
+of his family in England.  Quitting his perch, he flew up into
+a tree close by and began singing; and for half an hour
+thereafter I continued intently listening to his brief strain,
+repeated at short intervals--a song which I think has never
+been perfectly described.  "Practice makes perfect" is an
+axiom that does not apply to the art of song in the bird
+world; since the redstart, a member of a highly melodious
+family, with a good voice to start with, has never attained to
+excellence in spite of much practising.  The song is
+interesting both on account of its exceptional inferiority and
+of its character.  A distinguished ornithologist has said that
+little birds have two ways of making themselves attractive--by
+melody and by bright plumage; and that most species excel in
+one or the other way; and that the acquisition of gay colours
+by a species of a sober-coloured melodious family will cause
+it to degenerate as a songster.  He is speaking of the
+redstart.  Unfortunately for the rule there are too many
+exceptions.  Thus confining ourselves to a single family--that
+of the finches--in our own islands, the most modest coloured
+have the least melody, while those that have the gayest
+plumage are the best singers--the goldfinch, chaffinch,
+siskin, and linnet.  Nevertheless it is impossible to listen
+for any length of time to the redstart, and to many redstarts,
+without feeling, almost with irritation, that its strain is
+only the prelude of a song--a promise never performed; that
+once upon a time in the remote past it was a sweet, copious,
+and varied singer, and that only a fragment of its melody now
+remains.  The opening rapidly warbled notes are so charming
+that the attention is instantly attracted by them.  They are
+composed of two sounds, both beautiful--the bright pure
+gushing robin-like note, and the more tender expressive
+swallow-like note.  And that is all; the song scarcely begins
+before it ends, or collapses; for in most cases the pure sweet
+opening strain is followed by a curious little farrago of
+gurgling and squeaking sounds, and little fragments of varied
+notes, often so low as to be audible only at a few yards'
+distance.  It is curious that these slight fragments of notes
+at the end vary in different individuals, in strength and
+character and in number, from a single faintest squeal to half
+a dozen or a dozen distinct sounds.  In all cases they are
+emitted with apparent effort, as if the bird strained its pipe
+in the vain attempt to continue the song.
+
+The statement that the redstart is a mimic is to be met with
+in many books about birds.  I rather think that in jerking out
+these various little broken notes which end its strain,
+whether he only squeaks or succeeds in producing a pure sound,
+he is striving to recover his own lost song rather than to
+imitate the songs of other birds.
+
+So much entertainment did I find at that spot, so grateful did
+it seem in its openness after long confinement in the lower
+thickly wooded country, that I practically spent the day
+there.  At all events the best time for walking was gone when
+I quitted it, and then I could think of no better plan than to
+climb down into the old long untrodden road, or channel, again
+just to see where it would lead me.  After all, I said, my
+time is my own, and to abandon the old way I have walked in so
+long without discovering the end would be a mistake.  So I
+went on in it once more, and in about twenty minutes it came
+to an end before a group of old farm buildings in a hollow in
+the woods.  The space occupied by the buildings was quite
+walled round and shut in by a dense growth of trees and
+bushes; and there was no soul there and no domestic animal.
+The place had apparently been vacant many years, and the
+buildings were in a ruinous condition, with the roofs falling
+in.
+
+Now when I look back on that walk I blame myself for having
+gone on my way without trying to find out something of the
+history of that forsaken home to which the lonely old road had
+led me.  Those ruinous buildings once inhabited, so wrapped
+round and hidden away by trees, have now a strange look in
+memory as if they had a story to tell, as if something
+intelligent had looked from the vacant windows as I stood
+staring at them and had said, We have waited these many years
+for you to come and listen to our story and you are come at
+last.
+
+Something perhaps stirred in me in response to that greeting
+and message, but I failed to understand it, and after standing
+there awhile, oppressed by a sense of loneliness, I turned
+aside, and creeping and pushing through a mass and tangle of
+vegetation went on my way towards the coast.
+
+Possibly that idea or fancy of a story to tell, a human
+tragedy, came to me only because of another singular
+experience I had that day when the afternoon sun had grown
+oppressively hot--another mystery of a desolate but not in
+this case uninhabited house.  The two places somehow became
+associated together in my mind.
+
+The place was a little farm-house standing some distance
+from the road, in a lonely spot out of sight of any other
+habitation, and I thought I would call and ask for a glass
+of milk, thinking that if things had a promising look on my
+arrival my modest glass of milk would perhaps expand to a
+sumptuous five-o'clock tea and my short rest to a long and
+pleasant one.
+
+The house I found on coming nearer was small and mean-looking
+and very old; the farm buildings in a dilapidated condition,
+the thatch rotten and riddled with holes in which many
+starlings and sparrows had their nests.  Gates and fences were
+broken down, and the ground was everywhere overgrown with
+weeds and encumbered with old broken and rusty implements, and
+littered with rubbish.  No person could I see about the place,
+but knew it was inhabited as there were some fowls walking
+about, and some calves shut in a pen in one of the numerous
+buildings were dolefully calling--calling to be fed.  Seeing a
+door half open at one end of the house I went to it and rapped
+on the warped paintless wood with my stick, and after about a
+minute a young woman came from an inner room and asked me what
+I wanted.  She was not disturbed or surprised at my sudden
+appearance there: her face was impassive, and her eyes when
+they met mine appeared to look not at me but at something
+distant, and her words were spoken mechanically.
+
+I said that I was hot and thirsty and tired and would be glad
+of a glass of milk.
+
+Without a word she turned and left me standing there, and
+presently returned with a tumbler of milk which she placed on
+a deal table standing near me.  To my remarks she replied in
+monosyllables, and stood impassively, her hands at her side,
+her eyes cast down, waiting for me to drink the milk and go.
+And when I had finished it and set the glass down and thanked
+her, she turned in silence and went back to that inner room
+from which she first came.  And hot and tired as I had felt a
+few moments before, and desirous of an interval of rest in the
+cool shade, I was glad to be out in the burning sun once more,
+for the sight of that young woman had chilled my blood and
+made the heat out-of-doors seem grateful to me.
+
+The sight of such a face in the midst of such surroundings had
+produced a shock of surprise, for it was noble in shape, the
+features all fine and the mouth most delicately chiselled, the
+eyes dark and beautiful, and the hair of a raven blackness.
+But it was a colourless face, and even the lips were pale.
+Strongest of all was the expression, which had frozen there,
+and was like the look of one on whom some unimaginable
+disaster or some hateful disillusionment had come, not to
+subdue nor soften, but to change all its sweet to sour, and
+its natural warmth to icy cold.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eighteen: Branscombe
+
+
+Health and pleasure resorts and all parasitic towns in fact,
+inland or on the sea, have no attractions for me and I was
+more than satisfied with a day or two of Sidmouth.  Then one
+evening I heard for the first time of a place called
+Branscomb--a village near the sea, over by Beer and Seaton,
+near the mouth of the Axe, and the account my old host gave me
+seemed so attractive that on the following day I set out to
+find it.  Further information about the unknown village came
+to me in a very agreeable way in the course of my tramp.  A
+hotter walk I never walked--no, not even when travelling
+across a flat sunburnt treeless plain, nearer than Devon by
+many degrees to the equator.  One wonders why that part of
+Devon which lies between the Exe and the Axe seems actually
+hotter than other regions which undoubtedly have a higher
+temperature.  After some hours of walking with not a little of
+uphill and downhill, I began to find the heat well-nigh
+intolerable.  I was on a hard dusty glaring road, shut in by
+dusty hedges on either side.  Not a breath of air was
+stirring; not a bird sang; on the vast sky not a cloud
+appeared.  If the vertical sun had poured down water instead
+of light and heat on me my clothing could not have clung to me
+more uncomfortably.  Coming at length to a group of two or
+three small cottages at the roadside, I went into one and
+asked for something to quench my thirst--cider or milk.  There
+was only water to be had, but it was good to drink, and the
+woman of the cottage was so pretty and pleasant that I was
+glad to rest an hour and talk with her in her cool kitchen.
+There are English counties where it would perhaps be said of
+such a woman that she was one in a thousand; but the Devonians
+are a comely race.  In that blessed county the prettiest
+peasants are not all diligently gathered with the dew on them
+and sent away to supply the London flower-market.  Among the
+best-looking women of the peasant class there are two distinct
+types--the rich in colour and the colourless.  A majority are
+perhaps intermediate, but the two extreme types may be found
+in any village or hamlet; and when seen side by side--the lily
+and the rose, not to say the peony--they offer a strange and
+beautiful contrast.
+
+This woman, in spite of the burning climate, was white as any
+pale town lady; and although she was the mother of several
+children, the face was extremely youthful in appearance; it
+seemed indeed almost girlish in its delicacy and innocent
+expression when she looked up at me with her blue eyes shaded
+by her white sun-bonnet.  The children were five or six in
+number, ranging from a boy of ten to a baby in her arms--all
+clean and healthy looking, with bright, fun-loving faces.
+
+I mentioned that I was on my way to Branscombe, and inquired
+the distance.
+
+"Branscomb--are you going there?  Oh, I wonder what you will
+think of Branscombe!" she exclaimed, her white cheeks
+flushing, her innocent eyes sparkling with excitement.
+
+What was Branscombe to her, I returned with indifference; and
+what did it matter what any stranger thought of it?
+
+"But it is my home!" she answered, looking hurt at my careless
+words.  "I was born there, and married there, and have always
+lived at Branscombe with my people until my husband got work
+in this place; then we had to leave home and come and live in
+this cottage."
+
+And as I began to show interest she went on to tell me that
+Branscombe was, oh, such a dear, queer, funny old place!  That
+she had been to other villages and towns--Axmouth, and Seaton,
+and Beer, and to Salcombe Regis and Sidmouth, and once to
+Exeter; but never, never had she seen a place like Branscombe
+--not one that she liked half so well.  How strange that I had
+never been there--had never even heard of it!  People that
+went there sometimes laughed at it at first, because it was
+such a funny, tumbledown old place; but they always said
+afterwards that there was no sweeter spot on the earth.
+
+Her enthusiasm was very delightful; and, when baby cried, in
+the excitement of talk she opened her breast and fed it before
+me.  A pretty sight!  But for the pure white, blue-veined skin
+she might have been taken for a woman of Spain--the most
+natural, perhaps the most lovable, of the daughters of earth.
+But all at once she remembered that I was a stranger, and with
+a blush turned aside and covered her fair skin.  Her shame,
+too, like her first simple unconscious action, was natural;
+for we live in a cooler climate, and are accustomed to more
+clothing than the Spanish; and our closer covering "has
+entered the soul," as the late Professor Kitchen Parker would
+have said; and that which was only becoming modesty in the
+English woman would in the Spanish seem rank prudishness.
+
+In the afternoon I came to a slender stream, clear and swift,
+running between the hills that rose, round and large and high,
+on either hand, like vast downs, some grassy, others wooded.
+This was the Branscombe, and, following it, I came to the
+village; then, for a short mile my way ran by a winding path
+with the babbling stream below me on one side, and on the
+other the widely separated groups and little rows of thatched
+cottages.
+
+Finally, I came to the last and largest group of all, the end
+of the village nearest to the sea, within ten minutes' walk of
+the shingly beach.  Here I was glad to rest.  Above, on the
+giant downs, were stony waste places, and heather and gorse,
+where the rabbits live, and had for neighbours the adder,
+linnet, and wheatear, and the small grey titlark that soared
+up and dropped back to earth all day to his tinkling little
+tune.  On the summit of the cliff I had everything I wanted
+and had come to seek--the wildness and freedom of untilled
+earth; an unobstructed prospect, hills beyond hills of
+malachite, stretching away along the coast into infinitude,
+long leagues of red sea-wall and the wide expanse and
+everlasting freshness of ocean.  And the village itself, the
+little old straggling place that had so grand a setting, I
+quickly found that the woman in the cottage had not succeeded
+in giving me a false impression of her dear home.  It was just
+such a quaint unimproved, old-world, restful place as she had
+painted.  It was surprising to find that there were many
+visitors, and one wondered where they could all stow
+themselves.  The explanation was that those who visited
+Branscombe knew it, and preferred its hovels to the palaces
+of the fashionable seaside town.  No cottage was too mean to
+have its guest.  I saw a lady push open the cracked and
+warped door of an old barn and go in, pulling the door to
+after her--it was her bed-sitting-room.  I watched a party of
+pretty merry girls marching, single file, down a narrow path
+past a pig-sty, then climb up a ladder to the window of a loft
+at the back of a stone cottage and disappear within.  It was
+their bedroom.  The relations between the villagers and their
+visitors were more intimate and kind than is usual.  They
+lived more together, and were more free and easy in company.
+The men were mostly farm labourers, and after their day's work
+they would sit out-of-doors on the ground to smoke their
+pipes; and where the narrow crooked little street was
+narrowest--at my end of the village--when two men would sit
+opposite each other, each at his own door, with legs stretched
+out before them, their boots would very nearly touch in the
+middle of the road.  When walking one had to step over their
+legs; or, if socially inclined, one could stand by and join in
+the conversation.  When daylight faded the village was very
+dark--no lamp for the visitors--and very silent, only the low
+murmur of the sea on the shingle was audible, and the gurgling
+sound of a swift streamlet flowing from the hill above and
+hurrying through the village to mingle with the Branscombe
+lower down in the meadows.  Such a profound darkness and quiet
+one expects in an inland agricultural village; here, where
+there were visitors from many distant towns, it was novel and
+infinitely refreshing.
+
+No sooner was it dark than all were in bed and asleep; not one
+square path of yellow light was visible.  To enjoy the
+sensation I went out and sat down, and listened alone to the
+liquid rippling, warbling sound of the swift-flowing
+streamlet--that sweet low music of running water to which the
+reed-warbler had listened thousands of years ago, striving to
+imitate it, until his running rippling song was perfect.
+
+A fresh surprise and pleasure awaited me when I explored the
+coast east of the village; it was bold and precipitous in
+places, and from the summit of the cliff a very fine view of
+the coast-line on either hand could be obtained.  Best of all,
+the face of the cliff itself was the breeding-place of some
+hundreds of herring-gulls.  The eggs at the period of my visit
+were not yet hatched, but highly incubated, and at that stage
+both parents are almost constantly at home, as if in a state
+of anxious suspense.  I had seen a good many colonies of this
+gull before at various breeding stations on the coast--south,
+west, and east--but never in conditions so singularly favourable
+as at this spot.  From the vale where the Branscombe pours its
+clear waters through rough masses of shingle into the sea the
+ground to the east rises steeply to a height of nearly five
+hundred feet; the cliff is thus not nearly so high as many
+another, but it has features of peculiar interest.  Here, in
+some former time, there has been a landslip, a large portion
+of the cliff at its highest part falling below and forming a
+sloping mass a chalky soil mingled with huge fragments of rock,
+which lies like a buttress against the vertical precipice and
+seems to lend it support.  The fall must have occurred a very
+long time back, as the vegetation that overspreads the rude
+slope--hawthorn, furze, and ivy--has an ancient look.  Here
+are huge masses of rock standing isolated, that resemble in
+their forms ruined castles, towers, and churches, some of them
+completely overgrown with ivy.  On this rough slope, under the
+shelter of the cliff, with the sea at its feet, the villagers
+have formed their cultivated patches.  The patches, wildly
+irregular in form, some on such steeply sloping ground as to
+suggest the idea that they must have been cultivated on all
+fours, are divided from each other by ridges and by masses of
+rock, deep fissures in the earth, strips of bramble and thorn
+and furze bushes.  Altogether the effect was very singular
+the huge rough mass of jumbled rock and soil, the ruin wrought
+by Nature in one of her Cromwellian moods, and, scattered
+irregularly about its surface, the plots or patches of
+cultivated smoothness--potato rows, green parallel lines
+ruled on a grey ground, and big, blue-green, equidistant
+cabbage-globes--each plot with its fringe of spike-like onion
+leaves, crinkled parsley, and other garden herbs.  Here the
+villagers came by a narrow, steep, and difficult path they had
+made, to dig in their plots; while, overhead, the gulls,
+careless of their presence, pass and repass wholly occupied
+with their own affairs.
+
+I spent hours of rare happiness at this spot in watching the
+birds.  I could not have seen and heard them to such advantage
+if their breeding-place had been shared with other species.
+Here the herring-gulls had the rock to themselves, and looked
+their best in their foam-white and pearl-grey plumage and
+yellow legs and beaks.  While I watched them they watched me;
+not gathered in groups, but singly or in pairs, scattered up
+and down all over the face of the precipice above me, perched
+on ledges and on jutting pieces of rock.  Standing motionless
+thus, beautiful in form and colour, they looked like
+sculptured figures of gulls, set up on the projections against
+the rough dark wall of rock, just as sculptured figures of
+angels and saintly men and women are placed in niches on a
+cathedral front.  At first they appeared quite indifferent to
+my presence, although in some instances near enough for their
+yellow irides to be visible.  While unalarmed they were very
+silent, standing in that clear sunshine that gave their
+whiteness something of a crystalline appearance; or flying to
+and fro along the face of the cliff, purely for the delight of
+bathing in the warm lucent air.  Gradually a change came over
+them.  One by one those that were on the wing dropped on to
+some projection, until they had all settled down, and, letting
+my eyes range up and down over the huge wall of rock, it was
+plain to see that all the birds were watching me.  They had
+made the discovery that I was a stranger.  In my rough old
+travel-stained clothes and tweed hat I might have passed for a
+Branscombe villager, but I did no hoeing and digging in one of
+the cultivated patches; and when I deliberately sat down on a
+rock to watch them, they noticed it and became suspicious; and
+as time went on and I still remained immovable, with my eyes
+fixed on them, the suspicion and anxiety increased and turned
+to fear; and those that were sitting on their nests got up and
+came close to the edge of the rock, to gaze with the others
+and join in the loud chorus of alarm.  It was a wonderful
+sound.  Not like the tempest of noise that may be heard at the
+breeding-season at Lundy Island, and at many other stations
+where birds of several species mix their various voices--the
+yammeris and the yowlis, and skrykking, screeking, skrymming
+scowlis, and meickle moyes and shoutes, of old Dunbar's
+wonderful onomatopoetic lines.  Here there was only one
+species, with a clear resonant cry, and as every bird uttered
+that one cry, and no other, a totally different effect was
+produced.  The herring-gull and lesser black-backed gull
+resemble each other in language as they do in general
+appearance; both have very powerful and clear voices unlike
+the guttural black-headed and common gull.  But the
+herring-gull has a shriller, more piercing voice, and
+resembles the black-backed species just as, in human voices, a
+boy's clear treble resembles a baritone.  Both birds have a
+variety of notes; and both, when the nest is threatened with
+danger, utter one powerful importunate cry, which is repeated
+incessantly until the danger is over.  And as the birds breed
+in communities, often very populous, and all clamour together,
+the effect of so many powerful and unisonant voices is very
+grand; but it differs in the two species, owing to the quality
+of their voices being different; the storm of sound produced
+by the black-backs is deep and solemn, while that of the
+herring-gulls has a ringing sharpness almost metallic.
+
+It is probable that in the case I am describing the effect of
+sharpness and resonance was heightened by the position of the
+birds, perched motionless, scattered about on the face of the
+perpendicular wall of rock, all with their beaks turned in
+my direction, raining their cries upon me.  It was not a
+monotonous storm of cries, but rose and fell; for after two or
+three minutes the excitement would abate somewhat and the
+cries grow fewer and fewer; then the infection would spread
+again, bird after bird joining the outcry; and after a while
+there would be another lull, and so on, wave following wave of
+sound.  I could have spent hours, and the hours would have
+seemed like minutes, listening to that strange chorus of
+ringing chiming cries, so novel was its effect, and unlike
+that of any other tempest of sound produced by birds which
+I had ever heard.  When by way of a parting caress and
+benediction (given and received) I dipped my hands in
+Branscombe's clear streamlet it was with a feeling of tender
+regret that was almost a pain.  For who does not make a little
+inward moan, an Eve's Lamentation, an unworded, "Must I leave
+thee, Paradise?" on quitting any such sweet restful spot,
+however brief his stay in it may have been?  But when I had
+climbed to the summit of the great down on the east side of
+the valley and looked on the wide land and wider sea flashed
+with the early sunlight I rejoiced full of glory at my
+freedom.  For invariably when the peculiar character and charm
+of a place steals over and takes possession of me I begin to
+fear it, knowing from long experience that it will be a
+painful wrench to get away and that get away sooner or later I
+must.  Now I was free once more, a wanderer with no ties, no
+business to transact in any town, no worries to make me
+miserable like others, nothing to gain and nothing to lose.
+
+Pausing on the summit to consider which way I should go,
+inland, towards Axminister, or along the coast by Beer, Seton,
+Axmouth, and so on to Lyme Regis, I turned to have a last look
+and say a last good-bye to Branscombe and could hardly help
+waving my hand to it.
+
+Why, I asked myself, am I not a poet, or verse-maker, so as to
+say my farewell in numbers?  My answer was, Because I am too
+much occupied in seeing.  There is no room and time for
+'tranquillity,' since I want to go on to see something else.
+As Blake has it:  "Natural objects always did and do, weaken,
+deaden and obliterate imagination in me."
+
+We know however that they didn't quite quench it in him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Nneteen: Abbotsbury
+
+
+Abbotsbury is an old unspoilt village, not on but near the
+sea, divided from it by half a mile of meadowland where all
+sorts of meadow and water plants flourish, and where there are
+extensive reed and osier beds, the roosting-place in autumn
+and winter of innumerable starlings.  I am always delighted to
+come on one of these places where starlings congregate, to
+watch them coming in at day's decline and listen to their
+marvellous hubbub, and finally to see their aerial evolutions
+when they rise and break up in great bodies and play at clouds
+in the sky.  When the people of the place, the squire and
+keepers and others who have an interest in the reeds and
+osiers, fall to abusing them on account of the damage they do,
+I put my fingers in my ears.  But at Abbotsbury I did not do
+so, but listened with keen pleasure to the curses they vented
+and the story they told.  This was that when the owner of
+Abbotsbury came down for the October shooting and found the
+starlings more numerous than ever, he put himself into a fine
+passion and reproached his keepers and other servants for not
+having got rid of the birds as he had desired them to do.
+Some of them ventured to say that it was easier said than
+done, whereupon the great man swore that he would do it
+himself without assistance from any one, and getting out a big
+duck-gun he proceeded to load it with the smallest shot and
+went down to the reed bed and concealed hiniself among the
+bushes at a suitable distance.  The birds were pouring in, and
+when it was growing dark and they had settled down for the
+night he fired his big piece into the thick of the crowd, and
+by and by when the birds after wheeling about for a minute or
+two settled down again in the same place he fired again.  Then
+he went home, and early next morning men and boys went into
+the reeds and gathered a bushel or so of dead starlings.  But
+the birds returned in their thousands that evening, and his
+heart being still hot against them he went out a second time
+to slaughter them wholesale with his big gun.  Then when he
+had blazed into the crowd once more, and the dead and wounded
+fell like rain into the water below, the revulsion came and he
+was mad with himself for having done such a thing, and on his
+return to the house, or palace, he angrily told his people to
+"let the starlings alone" for the future--never to molest them
+again!
+
+I thought it one of the loveliest stories I had ever heard;
+there is no hardness comparable to that of the sportsman, yet
+here was one, a very monarch among them, who turned sick at
+his own barbarity and repented.
+
+Beyond the flowery wet meadows, favored by starlings and a
+breeding-place of swans, is the famous Chesil Bank, one of the
+seven wonders of Britain.  And thanks to this great bank, a
+screen between sea and land extending about fourteen miles
+eastward from Portland, this part of the coast must remain
+inviolate from the speculative builder of seaside holiday
+resorts or towns of lodging-houses.
+
+Every one has heard of the Fleet in connection with the famous
+swannery of Abbotsbury, the largest in the land.  I had heard
+so much about the swannery that it had but little interest for
+me.  The only thing about it which specially attracted my
+attention was seeing a swan rise up and after passing over my
+head as I stood on the bank fly straight out over the sea.  I
+watched him until he had diminished to a small white spot
+above the horizon, and then still flying he faded from sight.
+Do these swans that fly away over the sea, and others which
+appear in small flocks or pairs at Poole Harbour and at other
+places on the coast, ever return to the Fleet?  Probably some
+do, but, I fancy some of these explorers must settle down in
+waters far from home, to return no more.
+
+The village itself, looked upon from this same elevation, is
+very attractive.  Life seems quieter, more peaceful there out
+of sight of the ocean's turbulence, out of hearing of its
+"accents disconsolate."  The cottages are seen ranged in a
+double line along the narrow crooked street, like a procession
+of cows with a few laggards scattered behind the main body.
+One is impressed by its ancient character.  The cottages are
+old, stone-built and thatched; older still is the church with
+its grey square tower, and all about are scattered the
+memorials of antiquity--the chantry on the hill, standing
+conspicuous alone, apart, above the world; the vast old abbey
+barn, and, rough thick stone walls, ivy-draped and crowned
+with beautiful valerian, and other fragments that were once
+parts of a great religious house.
+
+Looking back at the great round hill from the village it is
+impossible not to notice the intense red colour of the road
+that winds over its green slope.  One sometimes sees on a
+hillside a ploughed field of red earth which at a distance
+might easily be taken for a field of blossoming trifolium.
+Viewed nearer the crimson of the clover and red of the earth
+are very dissimilar; distance appears to intensify the red of
+the soil and to soften that of the flower until they are very
+nearly of the same hue.  The road at Abbotsbury was near and
+looked to me more intensely red than any ordinary red earth,
+and the sight was strangely pleasing.  These two complementary
+colours, red and green, delight us most when seen thus--a
+little red to a good deal of green, and the more luminous the
+red and vivid the green the better they please us.  We see
+this in flowers--in the red geranium, for example--where there
+is no brown soil below, but green of turf or herbage.  I
+sometimes think the red campions and ragged-robins are our
+most beautiful wild flowers when the sun shines level on the
+meadow and they are like crimson flowers among the tall
+translucent grasses.  I remember the joy it was in boyhood in
+early spring when the flowers were beginning to bloom, when in
+our gallops over the level grass pampas we came upon a patch
+of scarlet verbenas.  The first sight of the intense blooms
+scattered all about the turf would make us wild with delight,
+and throwing ourselves from our ponies we would go down among
+the flowers to feast on the sight.
+
+Green is universal, but the red earth which looks so pleasing
+amid the green is distributed very partially, and it may be
+the redness of the soil and the cliffs in Devon have given
+that county a more vivid personality, so to speak, than most
+others.  Think of Kent with its white cliffs, chalk downs, and
+dull-coloured clays in this connection!
+
+The humble subterraneous mole proves himself on occasions a
+good colourist when he finds a soil of the proper hue to
+burrow in, and the hillocks he throws up from numberless
+irregular splashes of bright red colour on a green sward.  The
+wild animals that strike us as most beautiful, when seen
+against a green background, are those which bear the reddest
+fur--fox, squirrel, and red deer.  One day, in a meadow a few
+miles from Abbotsbury, I came upon a herd of about fifty milch
+cows scattered over a considerable space of ground, some lying
+down, others standing ruminating, and still others moving
+about and cropping the long flowery grasses.  All were of that
+fine rich red colour frequently seen in Dorset and Devon
+cattle, which is brighter than the reds of other red animals
+in this country, wild and domestic, with the sole exception of
+a rare variety of the collie dog.  The Irish setter and red
+chouchou come near it.  So beautiful did these red cows look
+in the meadow that I stood still for half an hour feasting my
+eyes on the sight.
+
+No less was the pleasure I experienced when I caught sight of
+that road winding over the hill above the village.  On going
+to it I found that it had looked as red as rust simply because
+it was rust-earth made rich and beautiful in colour with iron,
+its red hue variegated with veins and streaks of deep purple
+or violet.  I was told that there were hundreds of acres of
+this earth all round the place--earth so rich in iron that
+many a man's mouth had watered at the sight of it; also that
+every effort had been made to induce the owner of Abbotsbury
+to allow this rich mine to be worked.  But, wonderful to
+relate, he had not been persuaded.
+
+A hard fragment of the red stuff, measuring a couple of inches
+across and weighing about three ounces avoirdupois, rust-red
+in colour with purple streaks and yellow mottlings, is now
+lying before me.  The mineralogist would tell me that its
+commercial value is naught, or something infinitesimal; which
+is doubtless true enough, as tens of thousands of tons of the
+same material lie close to the surface under the green turf
+and golden blossoming furze at the spot where I picked up my
+specimen.  The lapidary would not look at it; nevertheless, it
+is the only article of jewellery I possess, and I value it
+accordingly.  And I intend to keep this native ruby by me for
+as long as the lords of Abbotsbury continue in their present
+mind.  The time may come when I shall be obliged to throw it
+away.  That any millionaire should hesitate for a moment to
+blast and blacken any part of the earth's surface, howsoever
+green and refreshing to the heart it may be, when by so doing
+he might add to his income, seems like a fable, or a tale of
+fairyland.  It is as if one had accidentally discovered the
+existence of a little fantastic realm, a survival from a
+remote past, almost at one's doors; a small independent
+province, untouched by progress, asking to be conquered and
+its antediluvian constitution taken from it.
+
+From the summit of that commanding hill, over which the red
+path winds, a noble view presents itself of the Chesil Bank,
+or of about ten miles of it, running straight as any Roman
+road, to end beneath the rugged stupendous cliffs of Portland.
+The ocean itself, and not conquering Rome, raised this
+artificial-looking wall or rampart to stay its own proud
+waves.  Formed of polished stones and pebbles, about two
+hundred yards in width, flat-topped, with steeply sloping
+sides, at this distance it has the appearance of a narrow
+yellow road or causeway between the open sea on one hand and
+the waters of the Fleet, a narrow lake ten miles long, on the
+other.
+
+When the mackerel visit the coast, and come near enough to be
+taken in a draw-net, every villager who owns a share (usually
+a tenth) in a fishing-boat throws down his spade or whatever
+implement he happens to have in his hand at the moment, and
+hurries away to the beach to take his share in the fascinating
+task.  At four o'clock one morning a youth, who had been down
+to the sea to watch, came running into the village uttering
+loud cries which were like excited yells--a sound to rouse the
+deepest sleeper.  The mackerel had come!  For the rest of the
+day there was a pretty kind of straggling procession of those
+who went and came between the beach and the village--men in
+blue cotton shirts, blue jerseys, blue jackets, and women in
+grey gowns and big white sun-bonnets.  During the latter part
+of the day the proceedings were peculiarly interesting to me,
+a looker-on with no share in any one of the boats, owing to
+the catches being composed chiefly of jelly-fish.  Some
+sympathy was felt for the toilers who strained their muscles
+again and again only to be mocked in the end; still, a draught
+of jelly-fish was more to my taste than one of mackerel.  The
+great weight of a catch of this kind when the net was full was
+almost too much for the ten or twelve men engaged in drawing
+it up; then (to the sound of deep curses from those of the men
+who were not religious) the net would be opened and the great
+crystalline hemispheres, hyaline blue and delicate salmon-pink
+in colour, would slide back into the water.  Such rare and
+exquisite colours have these great glassy flowers of ocean
+that to see them was a feast; and every time a net was hauled
+up my prayer--which I was careful not to repeat aloud--was,
+Heaven send another big draught of jelly-fish!
+
+The sun, sinking over the hills towards Swyre and Bridport,
+turned crimson before it touched the horizon.  The sky became
+luminous; the yellow Chesil Bank, stretching long leagues
+away, and the hills behind it, changed their colours to
+violet.  The rough sea near the beach glittered like gold; the
+deep green water, flecked with foam, was mingled with fire;
+the one boat that remained on it, tossing up and down near the
+beach, was like a boat of ebony in a glittering fiery sea.  A
+dozen men were drawing up the last net; but when they gathered
+round to see what they had taken--mackerel or jelly-fish--I
+cared no longer to look with them.  That sudden, wonderful
+glory which had fallen on the earth and sea had smitten me as
+well and changed me; and I was like some needy homeless tramp
+who has found a shilling piece, and, even while he is
+gloating over it, all at once sees a great treasure before
+him--glittering gold in heaps, and all rarest sparkling gems,
+more than he can gather up.
+
+But it is a poor simile.  No treasures in gold and gems,
+though heaped waist-high all about, could produce in the
+greediest man, hungry for earthly pleasures, a delight, a
+rapture, equal to mine.  For this joy was of another and
+higher order and very rare, and was a sense of lightness and
+freedom from all trammels as if the body had become air,
+essence, energy, or soul, and of union with all visible
+nature, one with sea and land and the entire vast overarching
+sky.
+
+We read of certain saints who were subject to experiences of
+this kind that they were "snatched up" into some supramundane
+region, and that they stated on their return to earth that it
+was not lawful for them to speak of the things they had
+witnessed.  The humble naturalist and nature-worshipper can
+only witness the world glorified--transfigured; what he finds
+is the important thing.  I fancy the mystics would have been
+nearer the mark if they had said that their experiences during
+their period of exaltation could not be reported, or that it
+would be idle to report them, since their questioners lived on
+the ground and would be quite incapable on account of the
+mind's limitations of conceiving a state above it and outside
+of its own experience.
+
+The glory passed and with it the exaltation: the earth and sea
+turned grey; the last boat was drawn up on the slope and the
+men departed slowly: only one remained, a rough-looking youth,
+about fifteen years old.  Some important matter which he was
+revolving in his mind had detained him alone on the darkening
+beach.  He sat down, then stood up and gazed at the rolling
+wave after wave to roar and hiss on the shingle at his feet;
+then he moved restlessly about, crunching pebbles beneath his
+thick boots; finally, making up his mind, he took off his
+coat, threw it down, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves, with the
+resolute air of a man about to engage in a fight with an
+adversary nearly as big as himself.  Stepping back a little
+space, he made a rush at the sea, not to cast himself in it,
+but only, as it turned out, with the object of catching some
+water in the hollow of his hands from the top of an incoming
+wave.  He only succeeded in getting his legs wet, and in
+hastily retreating he fell on his back.  Nothing daunted, he
+got up and renewed the assault, and when he succeeded in
+catching water in his hands he dashed it on and vigorously
+rubbed it over his dirty face.  After repeating the operation
+about a dozen times, receiving meanwhile several falls and
+wettings, he appeared satisfied, put on his coat and marched
+away homewards with a composed air.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty: Salisbury Revisited
+
+
+Since that visit to Salisbury, described in a former chapter,
+when I watched and listened to the doves in those cold days in
+early spring, I have been there a good many times, but never
+at the time when the bird colony is most interesting to
+observe, just before and during the early part of the
+breeding-season.  At length, in the early days of June, 1908,
+the wished opportunity was mine--wished yet feared, seeing
+that it was possible some disaster had fallen upon that unique
+colony of stock-doves.  It is true they appeared to be long
+established and well able to maintain their foothold on the
+building in spite of malicious persecuting daws, but there was
+nothing to show that they had been long there, seeing that it
+had been observed by no person but myself that the cathedral
+doves were stock-doves and not the domestic pigeon found on
+other large buildings.  Great was my happiness to find them
+still there, as well as the daws and all the other feathered
+people who make this great building their home; even the
+kestrels were not wanting.  There were three there one
+morning, quarrelling with the daws in the old way in the old
+place, halfway up the soaring spire.  The doves were somewhat
+diminished in number, but there were a good many pairs still,
+and I found no dead young ones lying about, as they were now
+probably grown too large to be ejected, but several young
+daws, about a dozen I think, fell to the ground during my
+stay.  Undoubtedly they were dragged out of their nests and
+thrown down, perhaps by daws at enmity with their parents, or
+it may be by the doves, who are not meek-spirited, as we have
+seen, or they would not be where they are, and may on occasion
+retaliate by invading their black enemies' nesting-holes.
+
+Swallows, martins, and swifts were numerous, the martins
+especially, and it was beautiful to see them for ever wheeling
+about in a loose swarm about the building.  They reminded me
+of bees and flies, and sometimes with a strong light on them
+they were like those small polished black and silvery-white
+beetles (Gyrinus) which we see in companies on the surface of
+pools and streams, perpetually gliding and whirling about in a
+sort of complicated dance.  They looked very small at a height
+of a couple of hundred feet from the ground, and their
+smallness and numbers and lively and eccentric motions made
+them very insect-like.
+
+The starlings and sparrows were in a small minority among the
+breeders, but including these there were seven species in all,
+and as far as I could make out numbered about three hundred
+and fifty birds--probably the largest wild bird colony on any
+building in England.
+
+Nor could birds in all this land find a more beautiful
+building to nest on, unless I except Wells Cathedral solely on
+account of its west front, beloved of daws, and where their
+numerous black company have so fine an appearance.  Wells has
+its west front; Salisbury, so vast in size, is yet a marvel of
+beauty in its entirety; and seeing it as I now did every day
+and wanting nothing better, I wondered at my want of
+enthusiasm on a previous visit.  Still, to me, the bird
+company, the sight of their airy gambols and their various
+voices, from the deep human-like dove tone to the perpetual
+subdued rippling, running-water sound of the aerial martins,
+must always be a principal element in the beautiful effect.
+Nor do I know a building where Nature has done more in
+enhancing the loveliness of man's work with her added
+colouring.  The way too in which the colours are distributed
+is an example of Nature's most perfect artistry; on the lower,
+heavier buttressed parts, where the darkest hues should be, we
+find the browns and rust-reds of the minute aerial alga, mixed
+with the greys of lichen, these darker stainings extending
+upwards to a height of fifty or sixty feet, in places higher,
+then giving place to more delicate hues, the pale tender
+greens and greenish greys, in places tinged with yellow, the
+colours always appearing brightest on the smooth surface
+between the windows and sculptured parts.  The effect depends
+a good deal on atmosphere and weather: on a day of flying
+clouds and a blue sky, with a brillaint sunshine on the vast
+building after a shower, the colouring is most beautiful.  It
+varies more than in the case of colour in the material itself
+or of pigments, because it is a "living" colour, as Crabbe
+rightly says in his lumbering verse:
+
+   The living stains, which Nature's hand alone,
+   Profuse of life, pours out upon the stone.
+
+Greys, greens, yellows, and browns and rust-reds are but the
+colours of a variety of lowly vegetable forms, mostly lichens
+and the aerial alga called iolithus.
+
+Without this colouring, its "living stains," Salisbury would
+not have fascinated me as it did during this last visit.  It
+would have left me cold though all the architects and artists
+had assured me that it was the most perfectly beautiful
+building on earth.
+
+I also found an increasing charm in the interior, and made the
+discovery that I could go oftener and spend more hours in this
+cathedral without a sense of fatigue or depression than in any
+other one known to me, because it has less of that peculiar
+character which we look for and almost invariably find in our
+cathedrals.  It has not the rich sombre majesty, the dim
+religious light and heavy vault-like atmosphere of the other
+great fanes.  So airy and light is it that it is almost like
+being out of doors.  You do not experience that instantaneous
+change, as of a curtain being drawn excluding the light and
+air of day and of being shut in, which you have on entering
+other religious houses.  This is due, first, to the vast size
+of the interior, the immense length of the nave, and the
+unobstructed view one has inside owing to the removal by the
+"vandal" Wyatt of the old ponderous stone screen--an act for
+which I bless while all others curse his memory; secondly, to
+the comparatively small amount of stained glass there is to
+intercept the light.  So graceful and beautiful is the
+interior that it can bear the light, and light suits it best,
+just as a twilight best suits Exeter and Winchester and other
+cathedrals with heavy sculptured roofs.  One marvels at a
+building so vast in size which yet produces the effect of a
+palace in fairyland, or of a cathedral not built with hands
+but brought into existence by a miracle.
+
+I began to think it not safe to stay in that place too long
+lest it should compel me to stay there always or cause me to
+feel dissatisfied and homesick when away.
+
+But the interior of itself would never have won me, as I had
+not expected to be won by any building made by man; and from
+the inside I would pass out only to find a fresh charm in that
+part where Nature had come more to man's aid.
+
+Walking on the cathedral green one morning, glancing from time
+to time at the vast building and its various delicate shades
+of colour, I asked myself why I kept my eyes as if on purpose
+away from it most of the time, now on the trees, then on the
+turf, and again on some one walking there--why, in fact, I
+allowed myself only an occasional glance at the object I was
+there solely to look at.  I knew well enough, but had never
+put it into plain words for my own satisfaction.
+
+We are all pretty familiar from experience with the
+limitations of the sense of smell and the fact that agreeable
+odours please us only fitfully; the sensation comes as a
+pleasing shock, a surprise, and is quickly gone.  If we
+attempt to keep it for some time by deliberately smelling a
+fragrant flower or any perfume, we begin to have a sense of
+failure as if we had exhausted the sense, keen as it was a
+moment ago.
+
+There must be an interval of rest for the nerve before the
+sensation can be renewed in its first freshness.  Now it is
+the same, though in a less degree, with the more important
+sense of sight.  We look long and steadily at a thing to know
+it, and the longer and more fixedly we look the better, if it
+engages the reasoning faculties; but an aesthetic pleasure
+cannot be increased or retained in that way.  We must look,
+merely glancing as it were, and look again, and then again,
+with intervals, receiving the image in the brain even as we
+receive the "nimble emanation" of a flower, and the image is
+all the brighter for coming intermittently.  In a large
+prospect we are not conscious of this limitation because of
+the wideness of the field and the number and variety of
+objects or points of interest in it; the vision roams hither
+and thither over it and receives a continuous stream or series
+of pleasing impressions; but to gaze fixedly at the most
+beautiful object in nature or art does but diminish the
+pleasure.  Practically it ceases to be beautiful and only
+recovers the first effect after we have given the mind an
+interval of rest.
+
+Strolling about the green with this thought in my mind, I
+began to pay attention to the movements of a man who was
+manifestly there with the same object as myself--to look at
+the cathedral.  I had seen him there for quite half an hour,
+and now began to be amused at the emphatic manner in which he
+displayed his interest in the building.  He walked up and down
+the entire length and would then back away a distance of a
+hundred yards from the walls and stare up at the spire, then
+slowly approach, still gazing up, until coming to a stop when
+quite near the wall he would remain with his eyes still fixed
+aloft, the back of his head almost resting on his back between
+his shoulders.  His hat somehow kept on his head, but his
+attitude reminded me of a saying of the Arabs who, to give an
+idea of the height of a great rock or other tall object, say
+that to look up at it causes your turban to fall off.  The
+Americans, when they were chewers of tobacco, had a different
+expression; they said that to look up at so tall a thing
+caused the tobacco juice to run down your throat.
+
+His appearance when I approached him interested me too.  His
+skin was the color of old brown leather and he had a big
+arched nose, clear light blue very shrewd eyes, and a big
+fringe or hedge of ragged white beard under his chin; and he
+was dressed in a new suit of rough dark brown tweeds,
+evidently home-made.  When I spoke to him, saying something
+about the cathedral, he joyfully responded in broadest Scotch.
+It was, he said, the first English cathedral he had ever seen
+and he had never seen anything made by man to equal it in
+beauty.  He had come, he told me, straight from his home and
+birthplace, a small village in the north of Scotland, shut
+out from the world by great hills where the heather grew
+knee-deep.  He had never been in England before, and had come
+directly to Salisbury on a visit to a relation.
+
+"Well," I said, "now you have looked at it outside come in
+with me and see the interior."
+
+But he refused: it was enough for one day to see the outside
+of such a building: he wanted no more just then.  To-morrow
+would be soon enough to see it inside; it would be the Sabbath
+and he would go and worship there.
+
+"Are you an Anglican?" I asked.
+
+He replied that there were no Anglicans in his village.  They
+had two Churches--the Church of Scotland and the Free Church.
+
+"And what," said I, "will your minister say to your going to
+worship in a cathedral?  We have all denominations here in
+Salisbury, and you will perhaps find a Presbyterian place to
+worship in."
+
+"Now it's strange your saying that!" he returned, with a dry
+little laugh.  "I've just had a letter from him the morning
+and he writes on this varra subject.  'Let me advise you,' he
+tells me in the letter, 'to attend the service in Salisbury
+Cathedral.  Nae doot,' he says, 'there are many things in it
+you'll disapprove of, but not everything perhaps, and I'd like
+ye to go.'"
+
+I was a little sorry for him next day when we had an
+ordination service, very long, complicated, and, I should
+imagine, exceedingly difficult to follow by a wild
+Presbyterian from the hills.  He probably disapproved of most
+of it, but I greatly admired him for refusing to see anything
+more of the cathedral than the outside on the first day.  His
+method was better than that of an American (from Indiana, he
+told me) I met the following day at the hotel.  He gave two
+hours and a half, including attendance at the morning service,
+to the cathedral, inside and out, then rushed off for an hour
+at Stonehenge, fourteen miles away, on a hired bicycle.  I
+advised him to take another day--I did not want to frighten
+him by saying a week--and he replied that that would make him
+miss Winchester.  After cycling back from Stonehenge he would
+catch a train to Winchester and get there in time to have some
+minutes in the cathedral before the doors closed.  He was due
+in London next morning.  He had already missed Durham
+Cathedral in the north through getting interested in and
+wasting too much time over some place when he was going there.
+Again, he had missed Exeter Cathedral in the south, and it
+would be a little too bad to miss Winchester too!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-One: Stonehenge
+
+
+That American from Indiana!  As it was market day at Salisbury
+I asked him before we parted if he had seen the market, also
+if they had market days in the country towns in his State?  He
+said he had looked in at the market on his way back from the
+cathedral.  No, they had nothing of the kind in his State.
+Indiana was covered with a network of railroads and electric
+tram lines, and all country produce, down to the last new-laid
+egg, was collected and sent off and conveyed each morning to
+the towns, where it was always market day.
+
+How sad! thought I.  Poor Indiana, that once had wildness and
+romance and memories of a vanished race, and has now only its
+pretty meaningless name!
+
+"I suppose," he said, before getting on his bicycle, "there's
+nothing beside the cathedral and Stonehenge to see in
+Wiltshire?"
+
+"No, nothing," I returned, "and you'll think the time wasted
+in seeing Stonehenge."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Only a few old stones to see."
+
+But he went, and I have no doubt did think the time wasted,
+but it would be some consolation to him, on the other side, to
+be able to say that he had seen it with his own eyes.
+
+How did these same "few old stones" strike me on a first
+visit?  It was one of the greatest disillusionments I ever
+experienced.  Stonehenge looked small--pitiably small!  For it
+is a fact that mere size is very much to us, in spite of all
+the teachings of science.  We have heard of Stonehenge in our
+childhood or boyhood--that great building of unknown origin
+and antiquity, its circles of stones, some still standing,
+others lying prostrate, like the stupendous half-shattered
+skeleton of a giant or monster whose stature reached to the
+clouds.  It stands, we read or were told, on Salisbury Plain.
+To my uninformed, childish mind a plain anywhere was like the
+plain on which I was born--an absolutely level area stretching
+away on all sides into infinitude; and although the effect is
+of a great extent of earth, we know that we actually see very
+little of it, that standing on a level plain we have a very
+near horizon.  On this account any large object appearing on
+it, such as a horse or tree or a big animal, looks very much
+bigger than it would on land with a broken surface.
+
+Oddly enough, my impossible Stonehenge was derived from a
+sober description and an accompanying plate in a sober work
+--a gigantic folio in two volumes entitled "A New System of
+Geography", dated some time in the eighteenth century.  How
+this ponderous work ever came to be out on the pampas, over
+six thousand miles from the land of its origin, is a thing to
+wonder at.  I remember that the Stonehenge plate greatly
+impressed me and that I sacrilegiously cut it out of the book
+so as to have it!
+
+Now we know, our reason tells us continually, that the mental
+pictures formed in childhood are false because the child and
+man have different standards, and furthermore the child mind
+exaggerates everything; nevertheless, such pictures persist
+until the scene or object so visualized is actually looked
+upon and the old image shattered.  This refers to scenes
+visualized with the inner eye, but the disillusion is almost
+as great when we return to a home left in childhood or boyhood
+and look on it once more with the man's eyes.  How small it
+is!  How diminished the hills, and the trees that grew to such
+a vast height, whose tops once seemed "so close against the
+sky"--what poor little trees they now are!  And the house
+itself, how low it is; and the rooms that seemed so wide and
+lofty, where our footfalls and childish voices sounded as in
+some vast hall, how little and how mean they look!
+
+           Children, they are very little,
+
+the poet says, and they measure things by their size; but it
+seems odd that unless we grow up amid the scenes where our
+first impressions were received they should remain unaltered
+in the adult mind.  The most amusing instance of a false
+picture of something seen in childhood and continuing through
+life I have met was that of an Italian peasant I knew in South
+America.  He liked to talk to me about the cranes, those great
+and wonderful birds he had become acquainted with in childhood
+in his home on the plains of Lombardy.  The birds, of course,
+only appeared in autumn and spring when migrating, and passed
+over at a vast height above the earth.  These birds, he said,
+were so big and had such great wings that if they came down on
+the flat earth they would be incapable of rising, hence they
+only alighted on the tops of high mountains, and as there was
+nothing for them to eat in such places, it being naked rock
+and ice, they were compelled to subsist on each other's
+droppings.  Now it came to pass that one year during his
+childhood a crane, owing to some accident, came down to the
+ground near his home.  The whole population of the village
+turned out to see so wonderful a bird, and were amazed at its
+size; it was, he said, the strangest sight he had ever looked
+on.  How big was it?  I asked him; was it as big as an
+ostrich?  An ostrich, he said, was nothing to it; I might as
+well ask him how it compared with a lapwing.  He could give me
+no measurements: it happened when he was a child; he had
+forgotten the exact size, but he had seen it with his own eyes
+and he could see it now in his mind--the biggest bird in the
+world.  Very well, I said, if he could see it plainly in his
+mind he could give some rough idea of the wing-spread--how
+much would it measure from tip to tip?  He said it was perhaps
+fifty yards--perhaps a good deal more!
+
+A similar trick was played by my mind about Stonehenge.  As
+a child I had stood in imagination before it, gazing up
+awestruck on those stupendous stones or climbing and crawling
+like a small beetle on them.  And what at last did I see with
+my physical eyes?  Walking over the downs, miscalled a plain,
+anticipating something tremendous, I finally got away from the
+woods at Amesbury and spied the thing I sought before me far
+away on the slope of a green down, and stood still and then
+sat down in pure astonishment.  Was this Stonehenge--this
+cluster of poor little grey stones, looking in the distance
+like a small flock of sheep or goats grazing on that immense
+down!  How incredibly insignificant it appeared to me, dwarfed
+by its surroundings--woods and groves and farmhouses, and by
+the vast extent of rolling down country visible at that point.
+It was only when I had recovered from the first shock, when I
+had got to the very place and stood among the stones, that I
+began to experience something of the feeling appropriate to
+the occasion.
+
+The feeling, however, must have been very slight, since it
+permitted me to become interested in the appearance and
+actions of a few sparrows inhabiting the temple.  The common
+sparrow is parasitical on man, consequently but rarely found
+at any distance from human habitations, and it seemed a little
+strange to find them at home at Stonehenge on the open plain.
+They were very active carrying up straws and feathers to the
+crevices on the trioliths where the massive imposts rest on
+the upright stones.  I noticed the birds because of their
+bright appearance: they were lighter coloured than any
+sparrows I have ever seen, and one cock bird when flying to
+and fro in the sunlight looked almost white.  I formed the
+idea that this small colony of about a dozen birds had been
+long established at that place, and that the change in their
+colouring was a direct result of the unusual conditions in
+which they existed, where there was no shade and shelter of
+trees and bushes, and they were perpetually exposed for
+generations to the full light of the wide open sky.
+
+On revisiting Stonehenge after an interval of some years I
+looked for my sparrows and failed to find them.  It was at the
+breeding-season, when they would have been there had they
+still existed.  No doubt the little colony had been extirpated
+by a sparrow-hawk or by the human guardians of "The Stones,"
+as the temple is called by the natives.
+
+It remains to tell of my latest visit to "The Stones."  I had
+resolved to go once in my life with the current or crowd to
+see the sun rise on the morning of the longest day at that
+place.  This custom or fashion is a declining one: ten or
+twelve years ago, as many as one or two thousand persons would
+assemble during the night to wait the great event, but the
+watchers have now diminished to a few hundreds, and on some
+years to a few scores.  The fashion, no doubt, had its origin
+when Sir Norman Lockyer's theories, about Stonehenge as a Sun
+Temple placed so that the first rays of sun on the longest day
+of the year should fall on the centre of the so-called altar
+or sacrificial stone placed in the middle of the circle, began
+to be noised about the country, and accepted by every one as
+the true reading of an ancient riddle.  But I gather from
+natives in the district that it is an old custom for people to
+go and watch for sunrise on the morning of June 21.  A dozen
+or a score of natives, mostly old shepherds and labourers who
+lived near, would go and sit there for a few hours and after
+sunrise would trudge home, but whether or not there is any
+tradition or belief associated with the custom I have not
+ascertained.  "How long has the custom existed?" I asked a
+field labourer.  "From the time of the old people--the
+Druids," he answered, and I gave it up.
+
+To be near the spot I went to stay at Shrewton, a downland
+village four miles from "The Stones"; or rather a group of
+five pretty little villages, almost touching but distinct,
+like five flowers or five berries on a single stem, each with
+its own old church and individual or parish life.  It is a
+pretty tree-shaded place, full of the crooning sound of
+turtle-doves, hidden among the wide silent open downs and
+watered by a clear swift stream, or winter bourne, which dries
+up during the heats of late summer, and flows again after the
+autumn rains, "when the springs rise" in the chalk hills.
+While here, I rambled on the downs and haunted "The Stones."
+The road from Shrewton to Amesbury, a straight white band
+lying across a green country, passes within a few yards of
+Stonehenge: on the right side of this narrow line the land is
+all private property, but on the left side and as far as one
+can see it mostly belongs to the War Office and is dotted over
+with camps.  I roamed about freely enough on both sides,
+sometimes spending hours at a stretch, not only on Government
+land but "within bounds," for the pleasure of spying on the
+military from a hiding-place in some pine grove or furze
+patch.  I was seldom challenged, and the sentinels I came
+across were very mild-mannered men; they never ordered me
+away; they only said, or hinted, that the place I was in was
+not supposed to be free to the public.
+
+I come across many persons who lament the recent great change
+on Salisbury Plain.  It is hateful to them; the sight of the
+camp and troops marching and drilling, of men in khaki
+scattered about everywhere over a hundred square leagues of
+plain; the smoke of firing and everlasting booming of guns.
+It is a desecration; the wild ancient charm of the land has
+been destroyed in their case, and it saddens and angers them.
+I was pretty free from these uncomfortable feelings.
+
+It is said that one of the notions the Japanese have about the
+fox--a semi-sacred animal with them--is that, if you chance
+to see one crossing your path in the morning, all that comes
+before your vision on that day will be illusion.  As an
+illustration of this belief it is related that a Japanese who
+witnessed the eruption of Krakatoa, when the heavens were
+covered with blackness and kindled with intermitting flashes
+and the earth shaken by the detonations, and when all others,
+thinking the end of the world had come, were swooning with
+extreme fear, veiwed it without a tremor as a very sublime but
+illusory spectacle.  For on that very morning he had seen a
+fox cross his path.
+
+A somewhat similar effect is produced on our minds if we have
+what may be called a sense of historical time--a consciousness
+of the transitoriness of most things human--if we see
+institutions and works as the branches on a pine or larch,
+which fail and die and fall away successively while the tree
+itself lives for ever, and if we measure their duration not by
+our own few swift years, but by the life of nations and races
+of men.  It is, I imagine, a sense capable of cultivation, and
+enables us to look upon many of man's doings that would
+otherwise vex and pain us, and, as some say, destroy all the
+pleasure of our lives, not exactly as an illusion, as if we
+were Japanese and had seen a fox in the morning, but at all
+events in what we call a philosophic spirit.
+
+What troubled me most was the consideration of the effect of
+the new conditions on the wild life of the plain--or of a very
+large portion of it.  I knew of this before, but it was
+nevertheless exceedingly unpleasant when I came to witness it
+myself when I took to spying on the military as an amusement
+during my idle time.  Here we have tens of thousands of very
+young men, boys in mind, the best fed, healthiest, happiest
+crowd of boys in all the land, living in a pure bracing
+atmosphere, far removed from towns, and their amusements and
+temptations, all mad for pleasure and excitement of some kind
+to fill their vacant hours each day and their holidays.
+Naturally they take to birds'-nesting and to hunting every
+living thing they encounter during their walks on the downs.
+Every wild thing runs and flies from them, and is chased or
+stoned, the weak-winged young are captured, and the nests
+picked or kicked up out of the turf.  In this way the
+creatures are being extirpated, and one can foresee that when
+hares and rabbits are no more, and even the small birds of the
+plain, larks, pipits, wheatears, stonechats, and whincats,
+have vanished, the hunters in khaki will take to the chase
+of yet smaller creatures--crane-flies and butterflies and
+dragon-flies, and even the fantastic, elusive hover-flies
+which the hunters of little game will perhaps think the most
+entertaining fly of all.
+
+But it would be idle to grieve much at this small incidental
+and inevitable result of making use of the plain as a military
+camp and training-ground.  The old god of war is not yet dead
+and rotting on his iron hills; he is on the chalk hills with
+us just now, walking on the elastic turf, and one is glad to
+mark in his brown skin and sparkling eyes how thoroughly alive
+he is.
+
+A little after midnight on the morning of June 21, 1908, a
+Shrewton cock began to crow, and that trumpet sound, which I
+never hear without a stirring of the blood, on account of old
+associations, informed me that the late moon had risen or was
+about to rise, linking the midsummer evening and morning
+twilights, and I set off to Stonehenge.  It was a fine still
+night, without a cloud in the pale, dusky blue sky, thinly
+sprinkled with stars, and the crescent moon coming up above
+the horizon.  After the cock ceased crowing a tawny owl began
+to hoot, and the long tremulous mellow sound followed me for
+some distance from the village, and then there was perfect
+silence, broken occasionally by the tinkling bells of a little
+company of cyclists speeding past towards "The Stones." I was
+in no hurry: I only wished I had started sooner to enjoy
+Salisbury Plain at its best time, when all the things which
+offend the lover of nature are invisible and nonexistent.
+Later, when the first light began to appear in the east before
+two o'clock, it was no false dawn, but insensibly grew
+brighter and spread further, until touches of colour, very
+delicate, palest amber, then tender yellow and rose and
+purple, began to show.  I felt then as we invariably feel
+on such occasions, when some special motive has called us
+forth in time to witness this heavenly change, as of a new
+creation--
+
+          The miracle of diuturnity
+          Whose instancy unbeds the lark,
+
+that all the days of my life on which I had not witnessed it
+were wasted days!
+
+O that unbedding of the lark!  The world that was so still
+before now all at once had a sound; not a single song and not
+in one place, but a sound composed of a thousand individual
+sounds, rising out of the dark earth at a distance on my right
+hand and up into the dusky sky, spreading far and wide even as
+the light was spreading on the opposite side of the heavens--a
+sound as of multitudinous twanging, girding, and clashing
+instruments, mingled with shrill piercing voices that were not
+like the voices of earthly beings.  They were not human nor
+angelic, but passionless, and it was as if the whole visible
+world, the dim grassy plain and the vast pale sky sprinkled
+with paling stars, moonlit and dawnlit, had found a voice to
+express the mystery and glory of the morning.
+
+It was but eight minutes past two o'clock when this "unbedding
+of the lark" began, and the heavenly music lasted about
+fourteen minutes, then died down to silence, to recommence
+about half an hour later.  At first I wondered why the sound
+was at a distance from the road on my right hand and not on my
+left hand as well.  Then I remembered what I had seen on that
+side, how the "boys" at play on Sundays and in fact every day
+hunt the birds and pull their nests out, and I could only
+conclude that the lark has been pretty well wiped out from all
+that part of the plain over which the soldiers range.
+
+At Stonehenge I found a good number of watchers, about a
+couple of hundred, already assembled, but more were coming in
+continually, and a mile or so of the road to Amesbury visible
+from "The Stones" had at times the appearance of a ribbon of
+fire from the lamps of this continuous stream of coming
+cyclists.  Altogether about five to six hundred persons
+gathered at "The Stones," mostly young men on bicycles who
+came from all the Wiltshire towns within easy distance, from
+Salisbury to Bath.  I had a few good minutes at the ancient
+temple when the sight of the rude upright stones looking black
+against the moonlit and star-sprinkled sky produced an
+unexpected feeling in me: but the mood could not last; the
+crowd was too big and noisy, and the noises they made too
+suggestive of a Bank Holiday crowd at the Crystal Palace.
+
+At three o'clock a ribbon of slate-grey cloud appeared above
+the eastern horizon, and broadened by degrees, and pretty soon
+made it evident that the sun would be hidden at its rising at
+a quarter to four.  The crowd, however, was not down-hearted;
+it sang and shouted; and by and by, just outside the
+barbed-wire enclosure a rabbit was unearthed, and about three
+hundred young men with shrieks of excitement set about its
+capture.  It was a lively scene, a general scrimmage, in which
+everyone was trying to capture an elusive football with ears
+and legs to it, which went darting and spinning about hither
+and thither among the multitudinous legs, until earth
+compassionately opened and swallowed poor distracted bunny up.
+It was but little better inside the enclosure, where the big
+fallen stones behind the altar-stone, in the middle, on which
+the first rays of sun would fall, were taken possession of by
+a crowd of young men who sat and stood packed together like
+guillemots on a rock.  These too, cheated by that rising cloud
+of the spectacle they had come so far to see, wanted to have a
+little fun, and began to be very obstreperous.  By and by they
+found out an amusement very much to their taste.
+
+Motor-cars were now arriving every minute, bringing important-
+looking persons who had timed their journeys so as to come
+upon the scene a little before 3:45, when the sun would show
+on the horizon; and whenever one of these big gentlemen
+appeared within the circle of stones, especially if he was big
+physically and grotesque-looking in his motorist get-up, he
+was greeted with a tremendous shout.  In most cases he would
+start back and stand still, astonished at such an outburst,
+and then, concluding that the only way to save his dignity was
+to face the music, he would step hurriedly across the green
+space to hide himself behind the crowd.
+
+The most amusing case was that of a very tall person adorned
+with an exceedingly long, bright red beard, who had on a
+Glengarry cap and a great shawl over his overcoat.  The
+instant this unfortunate person stepped into the arena a
+general wild cry of "Scotland for ever!" was raised, followed
+by such cheers and yells that the poor man actually staggered
+back as if he had received a blow, then seeing there was no
+other way out of it, he too rushed across the open space to
+lose himself among the others.
+
+All this proved very entertaining, and I was glad to laugh
+with the crowd, thinking that after all we were taking a very
+mild revenge on our hated enemies, the tyrants of the roads.
+
+The fun over, I went soberly back to my village, and finding
+it impossible to get to sleep I went to Sunday-morning service
+at Shrewton Church.  It was strangely restful there after that
+noisy morning crowd at Stonehenge.  The church is white stone
+with Norman pillars and old oak beams laid over the roof
+painted or distempered blue--a quiet, peaceful blue.  There
+was also a good deal of pleasing blue colour in the glass of
+the east window.  The service was, as I almost invariably find
+it in a village church, beautiful and impressive.  Listening
+to the music of prayer and praise, with some natural outdoor
+sound to fill up the pauses--the distant crow of a cock or
+the song of some bird close by--a corn-bunting or wren or
+hedge-sparrow--and the bright sunlight filling the interior, I
+felt as much refreshed as if kind nature's sweet restorer,
+balmy sleep, had visited me that morning.  The sermon was
+nothing to me; I scarcely heard it, but understood that it was
+about the Incarnation and the perfection of the plan of
+salvation and the unreasonableness of the Higher Criticism and
+of all who doubt because they do not understand.  I remembered
+vaguely that on three successive Sundays in three village
+churches in the wilds of Wiltshire I had heard sermons
+preached on and against the Higher Criticism.  I thought it
+would have been better in this case if the priest had chosen
+to preach on Stonehenge and had said that he devoutly wished
+we were sun-worshippers, like the Persians, as well as
+Christians; also that we were Buddhists, and worshippers of
+our dead ancestors like the Chinese, and that we were pagans
+and idolaters who bow down to sticks and stones, if all these
+added cults would serve to make us more reverent.  And I wish
+he could have said that it was as irreligious to go to
+Stonehenge, that ancient temple which man raised to the
+unknown god thousands of years ago, to indulge in noise and
+horseplay at the hour of sunrise, as it would be to go to
+Salisbury Cathedral for such a purpose.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Two: The Village and "The Stones"
+
+
+My experiences at "The Stones" had left me with the idea that
+but for the distracting company the hours I spent there would
+have been very sweet and precious in spite of the cloud in the
+east.  Why then, I asked, not go back on another morning, when
+I would have the whole place to myself?  If a cloud did not
+matter much it would matter still less that it was not the day
+of the year when the red disc flames on the watcher's sight
+directly over that outstanding stone and casts first a shadow
+then a ray of light on the altar.  In the end I did not say
+good-bye to the village on that day, but settled down to
+listen to the tales of my landlady, or rather to another
+instalment of her life-story and to further chapters in the
+domestic history of those five small villages in one.  I had
+already been listening to her every evening, and at odd times
+during the day, for over a week, at first with interest, then
+a little impatiently.  I was impatient at being kept in, so to
+speak.  Out-of-doors the world was full of light and heat,
+full of sounds of wild birds and fragrance of flowers and
+new-mown hay; there were also delightful children and some
+that were anything but delightful--dirty, ragged little
+urchins of the slums.  For even these small rustic villages
+have their slums; and it was now the time when the young birds
+were fluttering out of their nests--their hunger cries could
+be heard everywhere; and the ragged little barbarians were
+wild with excitement, chasing and stoning the flutterers to
+slay them; or when they succeeded in capturing one without
+first having broken its wings or legs it was to put it in a
+dirty cage in a squalid cottage to see it perish miserably in
+a day or two.  Perhaps I succeeded in saving two or three
+threatened lives in the lanes and secret green places by the
+stream; perhaps I didn't; but in any case it was some
+satisfaction to have made the attempt.
+
+Now all this made me a somewhat impatient listener to the
+village tales--the old unhappy things, for they were mostly
+old and always unhappy; yet in the end I had to listen.  It
+was her eyes that did it.  At times they had an intensity in
+their gaze which made them almost uncanny, something like the
+luminous eyes of an animal hungrily fixed on its prey.  They
+held me, though not because they glittered: I could have gone
+away if I had thought proper, and remained to listen only
+because the meaning of that singular look in her grey-green
+eyes, which came into them whenever I grew restive, had dawned
+on my careless mind.
+
+She was an old woman with snow-white hair, which contrasted
+rather strangely with her hard red colour; but her skin was
+smooth, her face well shaped, with fine acquiline features.
+No doubt it had been a very handsome face though never
+beautiful, I imagine; it was too strong and firm and resolute;
+too like the face of some man we see, which, though we have
+but a momentary sight of it in a passing crowd, affects us
+like a sudden puff of icy-cold air--the revelation of a
+singular and powerful personality.  Yet she was only a poor
+old broken-down woman in a Wiltshire village, held fast in her
+chair by a hopeless infirmity.  With her legs paralysed she
+was like that prince in the Eastern tale on whom an evil spell
+had been cast, turning the lower half of his body into marble.
+But she did not, like the prince, shed incessant tears and
+lament her miserable destiny with a loud voice.  She was
+patient and cheerful always, resigned to the will of Heaven,
+and--a strange thing this to record of an old woman in a
+village!--she would never speak of her ailments.  But though
+powerless in body her mind was vigorous and active teeming
+with memories of all the vicissitudes of her exceedingly
+eventful, busy life, from the time when she left her village
+as a young girl to fight her way in the great world to her
+return to end her life in it, old and broken, her fight over,
+her children and grandchildren dead or grown up and scattered
+about the earth.
+
+Chance having now put me in her way, she concluded after a few
+preliminary or tentative talks that she had got hold of an
+ideal listener; but she feared to lose me--she wanted me to go
+on listening for ever.  That was the reason of that painfully
+intense hungry look in her eyes; it was because she discovered
+certain signs of lassitude or impatience in me, a desire to
+get up and go away and refresh myself in the sun and wind.
+Poor old woman, she could not spring upon and hold me fast
+when I attempted to move off, or pluck me back with her claws;
+she could only gaze with fiercely pleading eyes and say
+nothing; and so, without being fascinated, I very often sat on
+listening still when I would gladly have been out-of-doors.
+
+She was a good fluent talker; moreover, she studied her
+listener, and finding that my interest in her own interminable
+story was becoming exhausted she sought for other subjects,
+chiefly the strange events in the lives of men and women who
+had lived in the village and who had long been turned to dust.
+They were all more or less tragical in character, and it
+astonished me to think that I had stayed in a dozen or twenty,
+perhaps forty, villages in Wiltshire, and had heard stories
+equally strange and moving in pretty well every one of them.
+
+If each of these small centres possessed a scribe of genius,
+or at any rate one with a capacity for taking pains, who would
+collect and print in proper form these remembered events,
+every village would in time have its own little library of
+local history, the volumes labelled respectively, "A Village
+Tragedy", "The Fields of Dulditch", "Life's Little Ironies",
+"Children's Children", and various others whose titles every
+reader will be able to supply.
+
+The effect of a long spell of listening to these unwritten
+tragedies was sometimes strong enough to cloud my reason, for
+on going directly forth into the bright sunshine and listening
+to the glad sounds which filled the air, it would seem that
+this earth was a paradise and that all creation rejoiced in
+everlasting happiness excepting man alone who--mysterious
+being!--was born to trouble and disaster as the sparks fly
+upwards.  A pure delusion, due to our universal and
+ineradicable passion for romance and tragedy.  Tell a man of a
+hundred humdrum lives which run their quiet contented course
+in this village, and the monotonous unmoving story, or hundred
+stories, will go in at one ear and out at the other. Therefore
+such stories are not told and not remembered.  But that which
+stirs our pity and terror--the frustrate life, the glorious
+promise which was not fulfilled, the broken hearts and broken
+fortunes, and passion, crime, remorse, retribution--all this
+prints itself on the mind, and every such life is remembered
+for ever and passed on from generation to generation.  But it
+would really form only one brief chapter in the long, long
+history of the village life with its thousand chapters.
+
+The truth is, if we live in fairly natural healthy condition,
+we are just as happy as the lower animals.  Some philosopher
+has said that the chief pleasure in a man's life, as in that
+of a cow, consists in the processes of mastication,
+deglutition, and digestion, and I am very much inclined to
+agree with him.  The thought of death troubles us very little
+--we do not believe in it.  A familiar instance is that of the
+consumptive, whose doctor and friends have given him up and
+wait but to see the end, while he, deluded man, still sees
+life, an illimitable, green, sunlit prospect, stretching away
+to an infinite distance before him.
+
+Death is a reality only when it is very near, so close on us
+that we can actually hear its swift stoaty feet rustling over
+the dead leaves, and for a brief bitter space we actually know
+that his sharp teeth will presently be in our throat.
+
+Out in the blessed sunshine I listen to a blackcap warbling
+very beautifully in a thorn bush near the cottage; then to the
+great shout of excited joy of the children just released from
+school, as they rush pell-mell forth and scatter about the
+village, and it strikes me that the bird in the thorn is not
+more blithe-hearted than they.  An old rook--I fancy he is
+old, a many-wintered crow--is loudly caw-cawing from the elm
+tree top; he has been abroad all day in the fields and has
+seen his young able to feed themselves; and his own crop full,
+and now he is calling to the others to come and sit there to
+enjoy the sunshine with him.  I doubt if he is happier than
+the human inhabitants of the village, the field labourers and
+shepherds who have been out toiling since the early hours, and
+are now busy in their own gardens and allotments or placidly
+smoking their pipes at their cottage doors.
+
+But I could not stay longer in that village of old unhappy
+memories and of quiet, happy, uninteresting lives that leave
+no memory, so after waiting two more days I forced myself to
+say good-bye to my poor old landlady.  Or rather to say "Good
+night," as I had to start at one o'clock in the morning so as
+to have a couple, of hours before sunrise at "The Stones"
+on my way to Salisbury.  Her latest effort to detain me a day
+longer had been made and there was no more to say.
+
+"Do you know," she said in a low mysterious voice, "that it is
+not safe to be alone at midnight on this long lonely road--the
+loneliest place in all Salisbury Plain?"  "The safest," I
+said.  "Safe as the Tower of London--the protectors of all
+England are there."  "Ah, there's where the danger is!" she
+returned.  "If you meet some desperate man, a deserter with
+his rifle in his hand perhaps, do you think he would hesitate
+about knocking you over to save himself and at the same time
+get a little money to help him on his way?"
+
+I smiled at her simulated anxiety for my safety, and set forth
+when it was very dark but under a fine starry sky.  The
+silence, too, was very profound: there was no good-bye from
+crowing cock or hooting owl on this occasion, nor did any
+cyclist pass me on the road with a flash of light from his
+lamp and a tinkle from his bell.  The long straight road on
+the high down was a dim grey band visible but a few yards
+before me, lying across the intense blackness of the earth.
+By day I prefer as a rule walking on the turf, but this road
+had a rare and peculiar charm at this time.  It was now the
+season when the bird's-foot-trefoil, one of the commonest
+plants of the downland country, was in its fullest bloom, so
+that in many places the green or grey-green turf as far as one
+could see on every side was sprinkled and splashed with
+orange-yellow.  Now this creeping, spreading plant, like most
+plants that grow on the close-cropped sheep-walks, whose
+safety lies in their power to root themselves and live very
+close to the surface, yet must ever strive to lift its flowers
+into the unobstructed light and air and to overtop or get away
+from its crowding neighbours.  On one side of the road, where
+the turf had been cut by the spade in a sharp line, the plant
+had found a rare opportunity to get space and light and had
+thrust out such a multitude of bowering sprays, projecting
+them beyond the turf, as to form a close band or rope of
+orange-yellow, which divided the white road from the green
+turf, and at one spot extended unbroken for upwards of a mile.
+The effect was so singular and pretty that I had haunted this
+road for days for the pleasure of seeing that flower border
+made by nature.  Now all colour was extinguished: beneath and
+around me there was a dimness which at a few yards' distance
+deepened to blackness, and above me the pale dim blue sky
+sprinkled with stars; but as I walked I had the image of that
+brilliant band of yellow colour in my mind.
+
+By and by the late moon rose, and a little later the east
+began to grow lighter and the dark down to change
+imperceptibly to dim hoary green.  Then the exquisite colours
+of the dawn once more, and the larks rising in the dim
+distance--a beautiful unearthly sound--and so in the end I
+came to "The Stones," rejoicing, in spite of a cloud which now
+appeared on the eastern horizon to prevent the coming sun from
+being seen, that I had the place to myself.  The rejoicing
+came a little too soon; a very few minutes later other
+visitors on foot and on bicycles began to come in, and we all
+looked at each other a little blankly.  Then a motorcar
+arrived, and two gentlemen stepped out and stared at us, and
+one suddenly burst out laughing.
+
+"I see nothing to laugh at!" said his companion a little
+severely.
+
+The other in a low voice made some apology or explanation
+which I failed to catch.  It was, of course, not right; it was
+indecent to laugh on such an occasion, for we were not of the
+ebullient sort who go to "The Stones" at three o'clock in the
+morning "for a lark"; but it was very natural in the
+circumstances, and mentally I laughed myself at the absurdity
+of the situation.  However, the laugher had been rebuked for
+his levity, and this incident over, there was nothing further
+to disturb me or any one in our solemn little gathering.
+
+It was a very sweet experience, and I cannot say that my early
+morning outing would have been equally good at any other
+lonely spot on Salisbury Plain or anywhere else with a wide
+starry sky above me, the flush of dawn in the east, and the
+larks rising heavenward out of the dim misty earth.  Those
+rudely fashioned immemorial stones standing dark and large
+against the pale clear moonlit sky imparted something to the
+feeling.  I sat among them alone and had them all to myself,
+as the others, fearing to tear their clothes on the barbed
+wire, had not ventured to follow me when I got through the
+fence.  Outside the enclosure they were some distance from me,
+and as they talked in subdued tones, their voices reached me
+as a low murmur--a sound not out of harmony with the silent
+solitary spirit of the place; and there was now no other sound
+except that of a few larks singing fitfully a long way off.
+
+Just what the element was in that morning's feeling which
+Stonehenge contributed I cannot say.  It was too vague and
+uncertain, too closely interwoven with the more common feeling
+for nature.  No doubt it was partly due to many untraceable
+associations, and partly to a thought, scarcely definite
+enough to be called a thought, of man's life in this land from
+the time this hoary temple was raised down to the beginning of
+history.  A vast span, a period of ten or more, probably of
+twenty centuries, during which great things occurred and great
+tragedies were enacted, which seem all the darker and more
+tremendous to the mind because unwritten and unknown.  But
+with the mighty dead of these blank ages I could not commune.
+Doubtless they loved and hated and rose and fell, and there
+were broken hearts and broken lives; but as beings of flesh
+and blood we cannot visualize them, and are in doubt even as
+to their race.  And of their minds, or their philosophy of
+life, we know absolutely nothing.  We are able, as Clifford
+has said in his Cosmic Emotion, to shake hands with the
+ancient Greeks across the great desert of centuries which
+divides our day from theirs; but there is no shaking hands
+with these ancients of Britain--or Albion, seeing that we are
+on the chalk.  To our souls they are as strange as the
+builders of Tiuhuanaco, or Mitla and Itzana, and the cyclopean
+ruins of Zimbabwe and the Carolines.
+
+It is thought by some of our modern investigators of psychic
+phenomena that apparitions result from the coming out of
+impressions left in the surrounding matter, or perhaps in the
+ether pervading it, especially in moments of supreme agitation
+or agony.  The apparition is but a restored picture, and
+pictures of this sort are about us in millions; but for our
+peace they are rarely visible, as the ability to see them is
+the faculty of but a few persons in certain moods and certain
+circumstances.  Here, then, if anywhere in England, we, or the
+persons who are endowed with this unpleasant gift, might look
+for visions of the time when Stonehenge was the spiritual
+capital, the Mecca of the faithful (when all were that), the
+meeting-place of all the intellect, the hoary experience, the
+power and majesty of the land.
+
+But no visions have been recorded.  It is true that certain
+stories of alleged visions have been circulated during the
+last few years.  One, very pretty and touching, is of a child
+from the London slums who saw things invisible to others.
+This was one of the children of the very poor, who are taken
+in summer and planted all about England in cottages to have a
+week or a fortnight of country air and sunshine.  Taken to
+Stonehenge, she had a vision of a great gathering of people,
+and so real did they seem that she believed in the reality
+of it all, and so beautiful did they appear to her that she
+was reluctant to leave, and begged to be taken back to see
+it all again.  Unfortunately it is not true.  A full and
+careful inquiry has been made into the story, of which there
+are several versions, and its origin traced to a little
+story-telling Wiltshire boy who had read or heard of the
+white-robed priests of the ancient days at "The Stones," and
+who just to astonish other little boys naughtily pretended
+that he had seen it all himself!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Three: Following a River
+
+
+The stream invites us to follow: the impulse is so common that
+it might be set down as an instinct; and certainly there is no
+more fascinating pastime than to keep company with a river
+from its source to the sea.  Unfortunately this is not easy in
+a country where running waters have been enclosed, which
+should be as free as the rain and sunshine to all, and were
+once free, when England was England still, before landowners
+annexed them, even as they annexed or stole the commons and
+shut up the footpaths and made it an offence for a man to go
+aside from the road to feel God's grass under his feet.  Well,
+they have also got the road now, and cover and blind and choke
+us with its dust and insolently hoot-hoot at us.  Out of the
+way, miserable crawlers, if you don't want to be smashed!
+
+Sometimes the way is cut off by huge thorny hedges and fences
+of barbed wire--man's devilish improvement on the bramble
+--brought down to the water's edge.  The river-follower must
+force his way through these obstacles, in most cases greatly
+to the detriment of his clothes and temper; or, should they
+prove impassable, he must undress and go into the water.
+Worst of all is the thought that he is a trespasser.  The
+pheasants crow loudly lest he should forget it.  Occasionally,
+too, in these private places he encounters men in velveteens
+with guns under their arms, and other men in tweeds and
+knickerbockers, with or without guns, and they all stare at
+him with amazement in their eyes, like disturbed cattle in a
+pasture; and sometimes they challenge him.  But I must say
+that, although I have been sharply spoken to on several
+occasions, always, after a few words, I have been permitted to
+keep on my way.  And on that way I intend to keep until I have
+no more strength to climb over fences and force my way through
+hedges, but like a blind and worn-out old badger must take to
+my earth and die.
+
+I found the Exe easy to follow at first.  Further on
+exceedingly difficult in places; but I was determined to keep
+near it, to have it behind me and before me and at my side,
+following, leading, a beautiful silvery serpent that was my
+friend and companion.  For I was following not the Exe only,
+but a dream as well, and a memory.  Before I knew it the Exe
+was a beloved stream.  Many rivers had I seen in my
+wanderings, but never one to compare with this visionary
+river, which yet existed, and would be found and followed at
+last.  My forefathers had dwelt for generations beside it,
+listening all their lives long to its music, and when they
+left it they still loved it in exile, and died at last with
+its music in their ears.  Nor did the connection end there;
+their children and children's children doubtless had some
+inherited memory of it; or how came I to have this feeling,
+which made it sacred, and drew me to it?  We inherit not from
+our ancestors only, but, through them, something, too, from
+the earth and place that knew them.
+
+I sought for and found it where it takes its rise on open
+Exmoor; a simple moorland stream, not wild and foaming and
+leaping over rocks, but flowing gently between low peaty
+banks, where the little lambs leap over it from side to side
+in play.  Following the stream down, I come at length to
+Exford.  Here the aspect of the country begins to change; it
+is not all brown desolate heath; there are green flowery
+meadows by the river, and some wood.  A little further down
+and the Exe will be a woodland stream; but of all the rest of
+my long walk I shall only say that to see the real beauty of
+this stream one must go to Somerset.  From Exford to Dulverton
+it runs, singing aloud, foam-flecked, between high hills
+clothed to their summits in oak woods: after its union with
+the Barle it enters Devonshire as a majestic stream, and flows
+calmly through a rich green country; its wild romantic charm
+has been left behind.
+
+The uninformed traveller, whose principle it is never to look
+at a guide-book, is surprised to find that the small village
+of Exford contains no fewer than half a dozen inns.  He asks
+how they are kept going; and the natives, astonished at his
+ignorance, proceed to enlighten him.  Exford is the
+headquarters of the stag-hunt: thither the hunters flock in
+August, and spend so much money during thir brief season that
+the innkeepers grow rich and fat, and for the rest of the year
+can afford to doze peacefully behind their bars.  Here are the
+kennels, and when I visited them they contained forty or fifty
+couples of stag-hounds.  These are gigantic foxhounds,
+selected for their great size from packs all over the country.
+When out exercising these big vari-coloured dogs make a fine
+show.  It is curious to find that, although these individual
+variations are continually appearing--very large dogs born of
+dogs of medium size--others cannot be bred from them; the
+variety cannot be fixed.
+
+The village is not picturesque.  Its one perennial charm is
+the swift river that flows through it, making music on its
+wide sandy and pebbly floor.  Hither and thither flit the
+wagtails, finding little half-uncovered stones in the current
+to perch upon.  Both the pied and grey species are there; and,
+seeing them together, one naturally wishes to resettle for
+himself the old question as to which is the prettiest and most
+graceful.  Now this one looks best and now that; but the
+delicately coloured grey and yellow bird has the longest tail
+and can use it more prettily.  Her tail is as much to her,
+both as ornament and to express emotions, as a fan to any
+flirtatious Spanish senora.  One always thinks of these dainty
+feathered creatures as females.  It would seem quite natural
+to call the wagtail "lady-bird," if that name had not been
+registered by a diminutive podgy tortoise-shaped black and red
+beetle.
+
+So shallow is the wide stream in the village that a little
+girl of about seven came down from a cottage, and to cool her
+feet waded out into the middle, and there she stood for some
+minutes on a low flat stone, looking down on her own wavering
+image broken by a hundred hurrying wavelets and ripples.  This
+small maidie, holding up her short, shabby frock with her
+wee hands, her bright brown hair falling over her face as she
+bent her head down and laughed to see her bare little legs and
+their flickering reflection beneath, made a pretty picture.
+Like the wagtails, she looked in harmony with her
+surroundings.
+
+So many are the villages, towns, and places of interest seen,
+so many the adventures met with in this walk, starting with
+the baby streamlet beyond Simonsbath, and following it down to
+Exeter and Exmouth, that it would take half a volume to
+describe them, however briefly.  Yet at the end I found that
+Exford had left the most vivid and lasting impression, and was
+remembered with most pleasure.  It was more to me than
+Winsford, that fragrant, cool, grey and green village, the
+home of immemorial peace, second to no English village in
+beauty; with its hoary church tower, its great trees, its old
+stone, thatched cottages draped in ivy and vine, its soothing
+sound of running waters.  Exeter itself did not impress me so
+strongly, in spite of its cathedral.  The village of Exford
+printed itself thus sharply on my mind because I had there
+been filled with wonder and delight at the sight of a face
+exceeding in loveliness all the faces seen in that West
+Country--a rarest human gem, which had the power of imparting
+to its setting something of its own wonderful lustre.  The
+type was a common Somerset one, but with marked differences in
+some respects, else it could not have been so perfect.
+
+The type I speak of is a very distinct one: in a crowd in a
+London street you can easily spot a Somerset man who has this
+mark on his countenance, but it shows more clearly in the
+woman.  There are more types than one, but the variety is less
+than in other places; the women are more like each other, and
+differ more from those that are outside their borders than is
+the case in other English counties.  A woman of this prevalent
+type, to be met with anywhere from Bath and Bedminster to the
+wilds of Exmoor, is of a good height, and has a pleasant,
+often a pretty face; regular features, the nose straight,
+rather long, with thin nostrils; eyes grey-blue; hair brown,
+neither dark nor light, in many cases with a sandy or sunburnt
+tint.  Black, golden, reds, chestnuts are rarely seen.  There
+is always colour in the skin, but not deep; as a rule it is a
+light tender brown with a rosy or reddish tinge.  Altogether
+it is a winning face, with smiling eyes; there is more in it
+of that something we can call "refinement" than is seen in
+women of the same class in other counties.  The expression is
+somewhat infantile; a young woman, even a middle-aged woman,
+will frequently remind you of a little girl of seven or eight
+summers.  The innocent eyes and mobile mouth are singularly
+childlike.  This peculiarity is the more striking when we
+consider the figure.  This is not fully developed according to
+the accepted standards the hips are too small, the chest too
+narrow and flat, the arms too thin.  True or false, the idea
+is formed of a woman of a childlike, affectionate nature, but
+lacking in passion, one to be chosen for a sister rather than
+a wife.  Something in us--instinct or tradition--will have it
+that the well-developed woman is richest in the purely womanly
+qualities--the wifely and maternal feelings.  The luxuriant
+types that abound most in Devonshire are not common here.
+
+It will be understood that the women described are those that
+live in cottages.  Here, as elsewhere, as you go higher in the
+social scale--further from the soil as it were--the type
+becomes less and less distinct.  Those of the "higher class,"
+or "better class," are few, and always in a sense foreigners.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Four: Troston
+
+
+I doubt if the name of this small Suffolk village, remote from
+towns and railroads, will have any literary associations for
+the reader, unless he be a person of exceptionally good
+memory, who has taken a special interest in the minor poets of
+the last century; or that it would help him if I add the names
+of Honington and Sapiston, two other small villages a couple
+of miles from Troston, with the slow sedgy Little Ouse, or a
+branch of it, flowing between them.  Yet Honington was the
+birthplace of Robert Bloomfield, known as "the Suffolk poet"
+in the early part of the last century (although Crabbe was
+living then and was great, as he is becoming again after many
+years); while at Sapiston, the rustic village on the other
+side of the old stone bridge, he acquired that love of nature
+and intimate knowledge of farm life and work which came out
+later in his Farmer's Boy.  Finally, Troston, the little
+village in which I write, was the home of Capel Lofft, a
+person of importance in his day, who discovered Bloomfield,
+found a publisher for his poems, and boomed it with amazing
+success.
+
+I dare say it will only provoke a smile of amusement in
+readers of literary taste when I confess that Bloomfield's
+memory is dear to me; that only because of this feeling for
+the forgotten rustic who wrote rhymes I am now here, strolling
+about in the shade of the venerable trees in Troston Park-the
+selfsame trees which the somewhat fantastic Capel knew in his
+day as "Homer," "Sophocles," "Virgil," "Milton," and by other
+names, calling each old oak, elm, ash, and chestnut after one
+of the immortals.
+
+I can even imagine that the literary man, if he chanced to be
+a personal friend, would try to save me from myself by begging
+me not to put anything of this sort into print.  He would warn
+me that it matters nothing that Bloomfield's verse was
+exceedingly popular for a time, that twenty-five or thirty
+editions of his Farmer's Boy were issued within three years of
+its publication in 1800 that it continued to be read for half
+a century afterwards.  There are other better tests.  Is it
+alive to-day?  What do judges of literature say of it now?
+Nothing!  They smile and that's all.  The absurdity of his
+popularity was felt in his own day.  Byron laughed at it;
+Crabbe growled and Charles Lamb said he had looked at the
+Farmer's Boy and it made him sick.  Well, nobody wants to look
+at it now.
+
+Much more might be said very easily on this side; nevertheless,
+I think I shall go on with my plea for the small verse-maker
+who has long fallen out; and though I may be unable to make a
+case out, the kindly critic may find some circumstance to
+extenuate my folly--to say, in the end, that this appears to
+be one of the little foolishnesses which might be forgiven.
+
+I must confess at starting that the regard I have for one of
+his poems, the Farmer's Boy, is not wholly a matter of
+literary taste or the critical faculty; it is also, to some
+extent, a matter of association,--and as the story of how this
+comes about is rather curious, I will venture to give it.
+
+In the distant days of my boyhood and early youth my chief
+delight was in nature, and when I opened a book it was to find
+something about nature in it, especially some expression of
+the feeling produced in us by nature, which was, in my case,
+inseparable from seeing and hearing, and was, to me, the most
+important thing in life.  For who could look on earth, water,
+sky, on living or growing or inanimate things, without
+experiencing that mysterious uplifting gladness in him!  In
+due time I discovered that the thing I sought for in printed
+books was to be found chiefly in poetry, that half a dozen
+lines charged with poetic feeling about nature often gave me
+more satisfaction than a whole volume of prose on such
+subjects. Unfortunately this kind of literature was not
+obtainable in my early home on the then semi-wild pampas.
+There were a couple of hundred volumes on the shelves
+--theology, history, biography, philosophy, science, travels,
+essays, and some old forgotten fiction; but no verse was
+there, except Shenstone, in a small, shabby, coverless volume.
+This I read and re-read until I grew sick of bright Roxana
+tripping o'er the green, or of gentle Delia when a tear bedews
+her eye to think yon playful kid must die.  To my uncultivated
+mind--for I had never been at school, and lived in the open
+air with the birds and beasts--this seemed intolerably
+artificial; for I was like a hungry person who has nothing but
+kickshaws put before him, and eats because he is hungry until
+he loathes a food which in its taste confounds the appetite.
+Never since those distant days have I looked at a Shenstone or
+even seen his name in print or heard it spoken, without a
+slight return of that old sensation of nausea.  If Shenstone
+alone had come to me, the desire for poetry would doubtless
+have been outlived early in life; but there were many
+passages, some very long, from the poets in various books on
+the shelves, and these kept my appetite alive.  There was
+Brown's Philosophy, for example; and Brown loved to illustrate
+his point with endless poetic quotations, the only drawback in
+my case being that they were almost exclusively drawn from
+Akenside, who was not "rural."  But there were other books in
+which other poets were quoted, and of all these the passages
+which invariably pleased me most were the descriptions of
+rural sights and sounds.
+
+One day, during a visit to the city of Buenos Ayres, I
+discovered in a mean street, in the southern part of the town,
+a second-hand bookshop, kept by an old snuffy spectacled
+German in a long shabby black coat.  I remember him well
+because he was a very important person to me.  It was the
+first shop of the kind I had seen--I doubt if there was
+another in the town; and to be allowed to rummage by the hour
+among this mass of old books on the dusty shelves and heaped
+on the brick floor was a novel and delightful experience.  The
+books were mostly in Spanish, French, and German, but there
+were some in English, and among them I came upon Thomson's
+Seasons.  I remember the thrill of joy I experienced when I
+snatched up the small thin octavo in its smooth calf binding.
+It was the first book in English I ever bought, and to this
+day when I see a copy of the Seasons on a bookstall, which is
+often enough, I cannot keep my fingers off it and find it hard
+to resist the temptation to throw a couple of shillings away
+and take it home.  If shillings had not been wanted for bread
+and cheese I should have had a roomful of copies by now.
+
+Few books have given me more pleasure, and as I still return
+to it from time to time I do not suppose I shall ever outgrow
+the feeling, in spite of its having been borne in on me, when
+I first conversed with readers of poetry in England, that
+Thomson is no longer read--that he is unreadable.
+
+After such a find I naturally went back many times to burrow
+in that delightful rubbish heap, and was at length rewarded by
+the discovery of yet another poem of rural England--the
+Farmer's Boy.  I was prepared to like it, for although I did
+not know anything about the author's early life, the few
+passages I had come across in quotations in James Rennie's and
+other old natural history compilations had given me a strong
+desire to read the whole poem.  I certainly did like it--this
+quiet description in verse of a green spot in England, my
+spiritual country which so far as I knew I was never destined
+to see; and that I continue to like it is, as I have said, the
+reason of my being in this place.
+
+While thus freely admitting that the peculiar circumstances
+of the case caused me to value this poem, and, in fact, made
+it very much more to me than it could be to persons born in
+England with all its poetical literature to browse on, I am
+at the same time convinced that this is not the sole reason
+for my regard.
+
+I take it that the Farmer's Boy is poetry, not merely
+slightly poetized prose in the form of verse, although it is
+undoubtedly poetry of a very humble order.
+
+Mere descriptions of rural scenes do not demand the higher
+qualities of the poet--imagination and passion.  The lower
+kind of inspiration is, in fact, often better suited to such
+themes and shows nature by the common light of day, as it
+were, instead of revealing it as by a succession of lightning
+flashes.  Even among those who confine themselves to this
+lower plane, Bloomfield is not great: his small flame is
+constantly sinking and flickering out.  But at intervals it
+burns up again and redeems the work from being wholly
+commonplace and trivial.  He is, in fact, no better than many
+another small poet who has been devoured by Time since his
+day, and whose work no person would now attempt to bring back.
+It is probable, too, that many of these lesser singers whose
+fame was brief would in their day have deeply resented being
+placed on a level with the Suffolk peasant-poet.  In spite of
+all this, and of the impossibility of saving most of the verse
+which is only passably good from oblivion, I still think the
+Farmer's Boy worth preserving for more reasons than one, but
+chiefly because it is the only work of its kind.
+
+There is no lack of rural poetry--the Seasons to begin with
+and much Thomsonian poetry besides, treating of nature in a
+general way; then we have innumerable detached descriptions of
+actual scenes, such as we find scattered throughout Cowper's
+Task, and numberless other works.  Besides all this there are
+the countless shorter poems, each conveying an impression of
+some particular scene or aspect of nature; the poet of the
+open air, like the landscape painter, is ever on the look out
+for picturesque "bits" and atmospheric effects as a subject.
+In Bloomfield we get something altogether different--a simple,
+consistent, and fairly complete account of the country
+people's toilsome life in a remote agricultural district in
+England--a small rustic village set amid green and arable
+fields, woods and common lands.  We have it from the inside by
+one who had part in it, born and bred to the humble life he
+described; and, finally, it is not given as a full day-to-day
+record--photographed as we may say--with all the minute
+unessential details and repetitions, but as it appeared when
+looked back upon from a distance, reliving it in memory, the
+sights and sounds and events which had impressed the boy's
+mind standing vividly out.  Of this lowly poem it may be truly
+said that it is "emotion recollected in tranquillity," to use
+the phrase invented by Wordsworth when he attempted a
+definition of poetry generally and signally failed, as
+Coleridge demonstrated.
+
+It will be said that the facts of Bloomfield's life--that he
+was a farmer's boy whose daily tasks were to scare the crows,
+feed the pigs, and forty things besides, and that later, when
+learning the shoemaker's trade in a London garret, he put
+these memories together and made them into a poem--are wholly
+beside the question when we come to judge the work as
+literature.  A peasant poet may win a great reputation in his
+own day on account of the circumstances of the case, but in
+the end his work must be tried by the same standards applied
+in other and in all cases.
+
+There is no getting away from this, and all that remains is to
+endeavour to show that the poem, although poor as a whole, is
+not altogether bad, but contains many lines that glow with
+beautiful poetic feeling, and many descriptive passages which
+are admirable.  Furthermore, I will venture to say that
+despite the feebleness of a large part of the work (as poetry)
+it is yet worth preserving in its entirety on account of its
+unique character.  It may be that I am the only person in
+England able to appreciate it so fully owing to the way in
+which it first came to my notice, and the critical reader can,
+if he thinks proper, discount what I am now saying as mere
+personal feeling.  But the case is this: when, in a distant
+region of the world, I sought for and eagerly read anything I
+could find relating to country scenes and life in England
+--the land of my desire--I was never able to get an extended
+and congruous view of it, with a sense of the continuity in
+human and animal life in its relation to nature.  It was all
+broken up into pieces or "bits"; it was in detached scenes,
+vividly reproduced to the inner eye in many cases, but
+unrelated and unharmonized, like framed pictures of rural
+subjects hanging on the walls of a room.  Even the Seasons
+failed to supply this want, since Thomson in his great work is
+of no place and abides nowhere, but ranges on eagle's wings
+over the entire land, and, for the matter of that, over the
+whole globe.  But I did get it in the Farmer's Boy.  I
+visualized the whole scene, the entire harmonious life; I was
+with him from morn till eve always in that same green country
+with the same sky, cloudy or serene, above me; in the rustic
+village, at the small church with a thatched roof where the
+daws nested in the belfry, and the children played and shouted
+among the gravestones in the churchyard; in woods and green
+and ploughed fields and the deep lanes--with him and his
+fellow-toilers, and the animals, domestic and wild, regarding
+their life and actions from day to day through all the
+vicissitudes of the year.
+
+The poem, then, appears to fill a place in our poetic
+literature, or to fill a gap; at all events from the point of
+view of those who, born and living in distant parts of the
+earth, still dream of the Old Home.  This perhaps accounts for
+the fact, which I heard at Honington, that most of the
+pilgrims to Bloomfield's birthplace are Americans.
+
+Bloomfield followed his great example in dividing his poem
+into the four seasons, and he begins, Thomson-like, with an
+invitation to the Muse:--
+
+   O come, blest spirit, whatsoe'er thou art,
+   Thou kindling warmth that hov'rest round my heart.
+
+But happily he does not attempt to imitate the lofty diction
+of the Seasons or Windsor Forest, the noble poem from which, I
+imagine, Thomson derived his sonorous style.  He had a humble
+mind and knew his limitations, and though he adopted the
+artificial form of verse which prevailed down to his time he
+was still able to be simple and natural.
+
+"Spring" does not contain much of the best of his work, but
+the opening is graceful and is not without a touch of pathos
+in his apologetic description of himself, as Giles, the
+farmer's boy.
+
+   Nature's sublimer scenes ne'er charmed my eyes
+   Nor Science led me . . .
+   From meaner objects far my raptures flow . . .
+   Quick-springing sorrows, transient as the dew,
+   Delight from trifles, trifles ever new.
+   'Twas thus with Giles; meek, fatherless, and poor,
+   Labour his portion . . .
+   His life was cheerful, constant servitude . . .
+   Strange to the world, he wore a bashful look,
+   The fields his study, Nature was his book.
+
+The farm is described, the farmer, his kind, hospitable
+master; the animals, the sturdy team, the cows and the small
+flock of fore-score ewes. Ploughing, sowing, and harrowing are
+described, and the result left to the powers above:
+
+   Yet oft with anxious heart he looks around,
+   And marks the first green blade that breaks the ground;
+   In fancy sees his trembling oats uprun,
+   His tufted barley yellow with the sun.
+
+While his master dreams of what will be, Giles has enough to
+do protecting the buried grain from thieving rooks and crows;
+one of the multifarious tasks being to collect the birds that
+have been shot, for although--
+
+   Their danger well the wary plunderers know
+   And place a watch on some conspicuous bough,
+   Yet oft the skulking gunner by surprise
+   Will scatter death among them as they rise.
+
+'Tis useless, he tells us, to hang these slain robbers about
+the fields, since in a little while they are no more regarded
+than the men of rags and straw with sham rifles in their
+hands.  It was for him to shift the dead from place to place,
+to arrange them in dying attitudes with outstretched wings.
+Finally, there was the fox, the stealer of dead crows, to be
+guarded against; and again at eventide Giles must trudge round
+to gather up his dead and suspend them from twigs out of reach
+of hungry night-prowlers.  Called up at daybreak each morning,
+he would take his way through deep lanes overarched with oaks
+to "fields remote from home" to redistribute his dead birds,
+then to fetch the cows, and here we have an example of his
+close naturalist-like observation in his account of the
+leading cow, the one who coming and going on all occasions is
+allowed precedence, who maintains her station, "won by many a
+broil," with just pride.  A picture of the cool dairy and its
+work succeeds, and a lament on the effect of the greed and
+luxury of the over-populous capital which drains the whole
+country-side of all produce, which makes the Suffolk
+dairy-wives run mad for cream, leaving nothing but the
+"three-times skimmed sky-blue" to make cheese for local
+consumption.  What a cheese it is, that has the virtue of a
+post, which turns the stoutest blade, and is at last flung in
+despair into the hog-trough, where
+
+                 It rests in perfect spite,
+   Too big to swallow and too hard to bite!
+
+We then come to the sheep, "for Giles was shepherd too," and
+here there is more evidence of his observant eye when he
+describes the character of the animals, also in what follows
+about the young lambs, which forms the best passage in this
+part.  I remember that, when first reading it, being then
+little past boyhood myself, how much I was struck by the vivid
+beautiful description of a crowd of young lambs challenging
+each other to a game, especially at a spot where they have a
+mound or hillock for a playground which takes them with a sort
+of goatlike joyous madness.  For how often in those days I
+used to ride out to where the flock of one to two thousand
+sheep were scattered on the plain, to sit on my pony and watch
+the glad romps of the little lambs with keenest delight!  I
+cannot but think that Bloomfield's fidelity to nature in such
+pictures as these does or should count for something in
+considering his work.  He concludes:-
+
+   Adown the slope, then up the hillock climb,
+   Where every mole-hill is a bed of thyme,
+   Then panting stop; yet scarcely can refrain;
+   A bird, a leaf, will set them off again;
+   Or if a gale with strength unusual blow,
+   Scattering the wild-briar roses into snow,
+   Their little limbs increasing efforts try,
+   Like a torn rose the fair assemblage fly.
+
+This image of the wind-scattered petals of the wild rose reminds
+him bitterly of the destined end of these joyous young lives--his
+white-fleeced little fellow-mortals.  He sees the murdering
+butcher coming in his cart to demand the firstlings of the flock;
+he cannot suppress a cry of grief and indignation--he can only
+strive to shut out the shocking image from his soul!
+
+"Summer" opens with some reflections on the farmer's life in a
+prosy Crabbe-like manner; and here it may be noted that as a
+rule Bloomfield no sooner attempts to rise to a general view
+than he grows flat; and in like manner he usually fails when
+he attempts wide prospects and large effects.  He is at his
+best only when describing scenes and incidents at the farm in
+which he himself is a chief actor, as in this part when, after
+the sowing of the turnip seed, he is sent out to keep the
+small birds from the ripening corn:
+
+   There thousands in a flock, for ever gay,
+   Loud chirping sparrows welcome on the day,
+   And from the mazes of the leafy thorn
+   Drop one by one upon the bending corn.
+
+Giles trudging along the borders of the field scares them with
+his brushing-pole, until, overcome by fatigue and heat, he
+takes a rest by the brakes and lying, half in sun and half in
+shade, his attention is attracted to the minute insect life
+that swarms about him:
+
+   The small dust-coloured beetle climbs with pain
+   O'er the smooth plantain leaf, a spacious plain!
+   Then higher still by countless steps conveyed,
+   He gains the summit of a shivering blade,
+   And flirts his filmy wings and looks around,
+   Exulting in his distance from the ground.
+
+It is one of his little exquisite pictures.  Presently his
+vision is called to the springing lark:
+
+   Just starting from the corn, he cheerly sings,
+   And trusts with conscious pride his downy wings;
+   Still louder breathes, and in the face of day
+   Mounts up and calls on Giles to mark his way.
+   Close to his eye his hat he instant bends
+   And forms a friendly telescope that lends
+   Just aid enough to dull the glaring light
+   And place the wandering bird before his sight,
+   That oft beneath a light cloud sweeps along;
+   Lost for a while yet pours a varied song;
+   The eye still follows and the cloud moves by,
+   Again he stretches up the clear blue sky,
+   His form, his motions, undistinguished quite,
+   Save when he wheels direct from shade to light.
+
+In the end he falls asleep, and waking refreshed picks up his
+poles and starts again brushing round.
+
+Harvesting scenes succeed, with a picture of Mary, the village
+beauty, taking her share in the work, and how the labourers in
+their unwonted liveliness and new-found wit
+
+          Confess the presence of a pretty face.
+
+She is very rustic herself in her appearance:--
+
+   Her hat awry, divested of her gown,
+   Her creaking stays of leather, stout and brown:
+   Invidious barrier!  why art thou so high,
+   When the slight covering of her neck slips by,
+   Then half revealing to the eager sight
+   Her full, ripe bosom, exquisitely white?
+
+The leather stays have no doubt gone the way of many other
+dreadful things, even in the most rustic villages in the land;
+not so the barbarous practice of docking horses' tails,
+against which he protests in this place when describing the
+summer plague of flies and the excessive sufferings of the
+domestic animals, especially of the poor horses deprived of
+their only defence against such an enemy.  At his own little
+farm there was yet another plague in the form of an old
+broken-winged gander, "the pest and tryant of the yard," whose
+unpleasant habit it was to go for the beasts and seize them by
+the fetlocks.  The swine alone did not resent the attacks but
+welcomed them, receiving the assaults as caresses, and
+stretching themselves out and lying down and closing their
+pigs' eyes, they would emit grunts of satisfaction, while the
+triumphant bird, followed by the whole gabbling flock, would
+trample on the heads of their prostrate foes.
+
+"Autumn" opens bravely:
+
+   Again the year's decline, 'midst storms and floods,
+   The thund'ring chase, the yellow fading woods
+   Invite my song.
+
+It contains two of the best things in the poem, the first in
+the opening part, describing the swine in the acorn season, a
+delightful picture which must be given in full:--
+
+   No more the fields with scattered grain supply
+   The restless tenants of the sty;
+   From oak to oak they run with eager haste,
+   And wrangling share the first delicious taste
+   Of fallen acorns; yet but thinly found
+   Till a strong gale has shook them to the ground.
+   It comes; and roaring woods obedient wave:
+   Their home well pleased the joint adventurers leave;
+   The trudging sow leads forth her numerous young,
+   Playful, and white, and clean, the briars among,
+   Till briars and thorns increasing fence them round,
+   Where last year's mould'ring leaves bestrew the ground,
+   And o'er their heads, loud lashed by furious squalls,
+   Bright from their cups the rattling treasure falls;
+   Hot thirsty food; whence doubly sweet and cool
+   The welcome margin of some rush-grown pool,
+   The wild duck's lonely haunt, whose jealous eye
+   Guards every point; who sits prepared to fly,
+   On the calm bosom of her little lake,
+   Too closely screened for ruffian winds to shake;
+   And as the bold intruders press around,
+   At once she starts and rises with a bound;
+   With bristles raised the sudden noise they hear,
+   And ludicrously wild and winged with fear,
+   The herd decamp with more than swinish speed,
+   And snorting dash through sedge and rush and reed;
+   Through tangled thickets headlong on they go,
+   Then stop and listen for their fancied foe;
+   The hindmost still the growing panic spreads,
+   Repeated fright the first alarm succeeds,
+   Till Folly's wages, wounds and thorns, they reap;
+   Yet glorying in their fortunate escape,
+   Their groundless terrors by degrees soon cease,
+   And Night's dark reign restores their peace.
+   For now the gale subsides, and from each bough
+   The roosting pheasant's short but frequent crow
+   Invites to rest, and huddling side by side
+   The herd in closest ambush seek to hide;
+   Seek some warm slope with shagged moss o'erspread,
+   Dried leaves their copious covering and their bed.
+   In vain may Giles, through gathering glooms that fall,
+   And solemn silence, urge his piercing call;
+   Whole days and nights they tarry 'midst their store,
+   Nor quit the woods till oaks can yield no more.
+
+It is a delightful passage to one that knows a pig--the animal
+we respect for its intelligence, holding it in this respect
+higher, more human, than the horse, and at the same time laugh
+at on account of certain ludicrous points about it, as for
+example its liability to lose its head.  Thousands of years of
+comfortable domestic life have failed to rid it of this
+inconvenient heritage from the time when wild in woods it ran.
+Yet in this particular instance the terror of the swine does
+not seem wholly inexcusable, if we know a wild duck as well as
+a pig, especially the duck that takes to haunting a solitary
+woodland pool, who, when intruded on, springs up with such a
+sudden tremendous splash and flutter of wings and outrageous
+screams, that man himself, if not prepared for it, may be
+thrown off his balance.
+
+Passing over other scenes, about one hundred and fifty lines,
+we come to the second notable passage, when after the sowing
+of the winter wheat, poor Giles once more takes up his old
+occupation of rook-scaring.  It is now as in spring and
+summer--
+
+   Keen blows the blast and ceaseless rain descends;
+   The half-stripped hedge a sorry shelter lends,
+
+and he thinks it would be nice to have a hovel, no matter how
+small, to take refuge in, and at once sets about its
+construction.
+
+   In some sequestered nook, embanked around,
+   Sods for its walls and straw in burdens bound;
+   Dried fuel hoarded is his richest store,
+   And circling smoke obscures his little door;
+   Whence creeping forth to duty's call he yields,
+   And strolls the Crusoe of the lonely fields.
+   On whitehorn tow'ring, and the leafless rose,
+   A frost-nipped feast in bright vermilion glows;
+   Where clust'ring sloes in glossy order rise,
+   He crops the loaded branch, a cumbrous prize;
+   And on the flame the splutt'ring fruit he rests,
+   Placing green sods to seat the coming guests;
+   His guests by promise; playmates young and gay;
+   But ah! fresh pastures lure their steps away!
+   He sweeps his hearth, and homeward looks in vain,
+   Till feeling Disappointment's cruel pain
+   His fairy revels are exchanged for rage,
+   His banquet marred, grown dull his hermitage,
+   The field becomes his prison, till on high
+   Benighted birds to shades and coverts fly.
+
+"The field becomes his prison," and the thought of this trival
+restraint, which is yet felt so poignantly, brings to mind an
+infinitely greater one.  Look, he says--
+
+   From the poor bird-boy with his roasted sloes
+
+to the miserable state of those who are confined in dungeons,
+deprived of daylight and the sight of the green earth, whose
+minds perpetually travel back to happy scenes,
+
+   Trace and retrace the beaten worn-out way,
+
+whose chief bitterness it is to be forgotten and see no
+familiar friendly face.
+
+"Winter" is, I think, the best of the four parts it gives the
+idea that the poem was written as it stands, from "Spring"
+onwards, that by the time he got to the last part the writer
+had acquired a greater ease and assurance.  At all events it
+is less patchy and more equal.  It is also more sober in tone,
+as befits the subject, and opens with an account of the
+domestic animals on the farm, their increased dependence on
+man and the compassionate feelings they evoke in us.  He is,
+we feel, dealing with realities, always from the point of view
+of a boy of sensitive mina and tender heart--one taken in
+boyhood from this life before it had wrought any change in
+him.  For in due time the farm boy, however fine his spirit
+may be, must harden and grow patient and stolid in heat and
+cold and wet, like the horse that draws the plough or cart;
+and as he hardens he grows callous.  In his wretched London
+garret if any change came to him it was only to an increased
+love and pity for the beasts he had lived among, who looked
+and cried to him to be fed.  He describes it well, the frost
+and bitter cold, the hungry cattle following the cart to the
+fields, the load of turnips thrown out on the hard frozen
+ground; but the turnips too are frozen hard and they cannot
+eat them until Giles, following with his beetle, splits them
+up with vigorous blows, and the cows gather close round him,
+sending out a cloud of steam from their nostrils.
+
+The dim short winter day soon ends, but the sound of the
+flails continues in the barns till long after dark before the
+weary labourers end their task and trudge home.  Giles, too,
+is busy at this time taking hay to the housed cattle, many a
+sweet mouthful being snatched from the load as he staggers
+beneath it on his way to the racks.  Then follow the
+well-earned hours of "warmth and rest" by the fire in the big
+old kitchen which he describes:--
+
+   For the rude architect, unknown to fame,
+   (Nor symmetry nor elegance his aim),
+   Who spread his floors of solid oak on high,
+   On beams rough-hewn from age to age that lie,
+   Bade his wide fabric unimpaired sustain
+   The orchard's store, and cheese, and golden grain;
+   Bade from its central base, capacious laid,
+   The well-wrought chimney rear its lofty head
+   Where since hath many a savoury ham been stored,
+   And tempests howled and Christmas gambols roared.
+
+The tired ploughman, steeped in luxurious heat, by and by
+falls asleep and dreams sweetly until his chilblains or the
+snapping fire awakes him, and he pulls himself up and goes
+forth yawning to give his team their last feed, his lantern
+throwing a feeble gleam on the snow as he makes his way to the
+stable.  Having completed his task, he pats the sides of those
+he loves best by way of good-night, and leaves them to their
+fragrant meal.  And this kindly action on his part suggests
+one of the best passages of the poem.  Even old well-fed
+Dobbin occasionally rebels against his slavery, and released
+from his chains will lift his clumsy hoofs and kick,
+"disdainful of the dirty wheel."  Short-sighted Dobbin!
+
+   Thy chains were freedom, and thy toils repose,
+   Could the poor post-horse tell thee all his woes;
+   Show thee his bleeding shoulders, and unfold
+   The dreadful anguish he endures for gold;
+   Hired at each call of business, lust, or rage,
+   That prompts the traveller on from stage to stage.
+   Still on his strength depends their boasted speed;
+   For them his limbs grow weak, his bare ribs bleed;
+   And though he groaning quickens at command,
+   Their extra shilling in the rider's hand
+   Becomes his bitter scourge . . . .
+
+The description, too long to quote, which follows of the
+tortures inflicted on the post-horse a century ago, is almost
+incredible to us, and we flatter ourselves that such things
+would not be tolerated now.  But we must get over the ground
+somehow, and I take it that but for the invention of other
+more rapid means of transit the present generation would be as
+little concerned at the pains of the post-horse as they are at
+the horrors enacted behind the closed doors of the
+physiological laboratories, the atrocity of the steel trap,
+the continual murdering by our big game hunters of all the
+noblest animals left on the globe, and finally the annual
+massacre of millions of beautiful birds in their breeding time
+to provide ornaments for the hats of our women.
+
+"Come forth he must," says Bloomfield, when he describes how
+the flogged horse at length gains the end of the stage and,
+"trembling under complicated pains," when "every nerve a
+separate anguish knows," he is finally unharnessed and led to
+the stable door, but has scarcely tasted food and rest before
+he is called for again.
+
+                     Though limping, maimed and sore;
+   He hears the whip; the chaise is at the door . . .
+   The collar tightens and again he feels
+   His half-healed wounds inflamed; again the wheels
+   With tiresome sameness in his ears resound
+   O'er blinding dust or miles of flinty ground.
+
+This is over and done with simply because the post-horse is no
+longer wanted, and we have to remember that no form of cruelty
+inflicted, whether for sport or profit or from some other
+motive, on the lower animals has ever died out of itself in
+the land.  Its end has invariably been brought about by
+legislation through the devotion of men who were the "cranks,"
+the "faddists," the "sentimentalists," of their day, who were
+jeered and laughed at by their fellows, and who only succeeded
+by sheer tenacity and force of character after long fighting
+against public opinion and a reluctant Parliament, in finally
+getting their law.
+
+Bloomfield's was but a small voice crying in the wilderness,
+and he was indeed a small singer in the day of our greatest
+singers.  As a poet he was not worthy to unloose the buckles
+of their shoes; but he had one thing in common with the best
+and greatest, the feeling of tender love and compassion for
+the lower animals which was in Thomson and Cowper, but found
+its highest expression in his own great contemporaries,
+Coleridge, Shelley, and Wordsworth.  In virtue of this feeling
+he was of their illustrious brotherhood.
+
+In conclusion, I will quote one more passage.  From the
+subject of horses he passes to that of dogs and their
+occasional reversion to wildness, when the mastiff or cur, the
+"faithful" house-dog by day, takes to sheep-killing by night.
+As a rule he is exceedingly cunning, committing his
+depredations at a distance frown home, and after getting his
+fill of slaughter he sneaks home in the early hours to spend
+the day in his kennel "licking his guilty paws."  This is an
+anxious time for shepherds and farmers, and poor Giles is
+compelled to pay late evening visits to his small flock of
+heavy-sided ewes penned in their distant fold.  It is a
+comfort to him to have a full moon on these lonely
+expeditions, and despite his tremors he is able to appreciate
+the beauty of the scene.
+
+   With saunt'ring steps he climbs the distant stile,
+   Whilst all around him wears a placid smile;
+   There views the white-robed clouds in clusters driven
+   And all the glorious pageantry of heaven.
+   Low on the utmost bound'ry of the sight
+   The rising vapours catch the silver light;
+   Thence fancy measures as they parting fly
+   Which first will throw its shadow on the eye,
+   Passing the source of light; and thence away
+   Succeeded quick by brighter still than they.
+   For yet above the wafted clouds are seen
+   (In a remoter sky still more serene)
+   Others detached in ranges through the air,
+   Spotless as snow and countless as they're fair;
+   Scattered immensely wide from east to west
+   The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest.
+
+This is almost the only passage in the poem in which something
+of the vastness of visible nature is conveyed.  He saw the
+vastness only in the sky on nights with a full moon or when he
+made a telescope of his hat to watch the flight of the lark.
+It was not a hilly country about his native place, and his
+horizon was a very limited one, usually bounded by the
+hedgerow timber at the end of the level field.  The things he
+depicts were seen at short range, and the poetry, we see, was
+of a very modest kind.  It was a "humble note" which pleased
+me in the days of long ago when I was young and very ignorant,
+and as it pleases me still it may be supposed that mentally I
+have not progressed with the years.  Nevertheless, I am not
+incapable of appreciating the greater music; all that is said
+in its praise, even to the extremest expressions of admiration
+of those who are moved to a sense of wonder by it, find an
+echo in me.  But it is not only a delight to me to listen to
+the lark singing at heaven's gate and to the vesper
+nightingale in the oak copse--the singer of a golden throat
+and wondrous artistry; I also love the smaller vocalists--the
+modest shufewing and the lesser whitethroat and the
+yellowhammer with his simple chant.  These are very dear to
+me: their strains do not strike me as trivial; they have a
+lesser distinction of their own and I would not miss them from
+the choir.  The literary man will smile at this and say that
+my paper is naught but an idle exercise, but I fancy I shall
+sleep the better tonight for having discharged this ancient
+debt which has been long on my conscience.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Five: My Friend Jack
+
+
+My friend rack is a retriever--very black, very curly, perfect
+in shape, but just a retriever; and he is really not my
+friend, only he thinks he is, which comes to the same thing.
+So convinced is he that I am his guide, protector, and true
+master, that if I were to give him a downright scolding or
+even a thrashing he would think it was all right and go on
+just the same.  His way of going on is to make a companion of
+me whether I want him or not.  I do not want him, but his idea
+is that I want him very much.  I bitterly blame myself for
+having made the first advances, although nothing came of it
+except that he growled.  I met him in a Cornish village in a
+house where I stayed.  There was a nice kennel there, painted
+green, with a bed of clean straw and an empty plate which had
+contained his dinner, but on peeping in I saw no dog.  Next
+day it was the same, and the next, and the day after that;
+then I inquired about it--Was there a dog in that house or
+not?  Oh, yes, certainly there was: Jack, but a very
+independent sort of dog.  On most days he looked in, ate his
+dinner and had a nap on his straw, but he was not what you
+would call a home-keeping dog.
+
+One day I found him in, and after we had looked for about a
+minute at each other, I squatting before the kennel, he with
+chin on paws pretending to be looking through me at something
+beyond, I addressed a few kind words to him, which he received
+with the before-mentioned growl.  I pronounced him a surly
+brute and went away.  It was growl for growl.  Nevertheless I
+was well pleased at having escaped the consequences in
+speaking kindly to him.  I am not a "doggy" person nor even a
+canophilist.  The purely parasitic or degenerate pet dog moves
+me to compassion, but the natural vigorous outdoor dog I fear
+and avoid because we are not in harmony; consequently I suffer
+and am a loser when he forces his company on me.  The outdoor
+world I live in is not the one to which a man goes for a
+constitutional, with a dog to save him from feeling lonely,
+or, if he has a gun, with a dog to help him kill something.
+It is a world which has sound in it, distant cries and
+penetrative calls, and low mysterious notes, as of insects
+and corncrakes, and frogs chirping and of grasshopper
+warblers--sounds like wind in the dry sedges.  And there are
+also sweet and beautiful songs; but it is very quiet world
+where creatures move about subtly, on wings, on polished
+scales, on softly padded feet--rabbits, foxes, stoats,
+weasels, and voles and birds and lizards and adders and
+slow-worms, also beetles and dragon-flies.  Many are at enmity
+with each other, but on account of their quietude there is no
+disturbance, no outcry and rushing into hiding.  And having
+acquired this habit from them I am able to see and be with
+them.  The sitting bird, the frolicking rabbit, the basking
+adder--they are as little disturbed at my presence as the
+butterfly that drops down close to my feet to sun his wings on
+a leaf or frond and makes me hold my breath at the sight of
+his divine colour, as if he had just fluttered down from some
+brighter realm in the sky.  Think of a dog in this world,
+intoxicated with the odours of so many wild creatures, dashing
+and splashing through bogs and bushes!  It is ten times worse
+than a bull in a china-shop.  The bull can but smash a lot of
+objects made of baked clay; the dog introduces a mad panic in
+a world of living intelligent beings, a fairy realm of
+exquisite beauty.  They scuttle away and vanish into hiding as
+if a deadly wind had blown over the earth and swept them out
+of existence.  Only the birds remain--they can fly and do not
+fear for their own lives, but are in a state of intense
+anxiety about their eggs and young among the bushes which he
+is dashing through or exploring.
+
+I had good reason, then, to congratulate myself on Jack's
+surly behaviour on our first meeting.  Then, a few days later,
+a curious thing happened.  Jack was discovered one morning in
+his kennel, and when spoken to came or rather dragged himself
+out, a most pitiable object.  He was horribly bruised and sore
+all over; his bones appeared to be all broken; he was limp and
+could hardly get on his feet, and in that miserable condition
+he continued for some three days.
+
+At first we thought he had been in a big fight--he was
+inclined that way, his master said--but we could discover no
+tooth marks or lacerations, nothing but bruises.  Perhaps, we
+said, he had fallen into the hands of some cruel person in one
+of the distant moorland farms, who had tied him up, then
+thrashed him with a big stick, and finally turned him loose to
+die on the moor or crawl home if he could.  His master looked
+so black at this that we said no more about it.  But Jack was
+a wonderfully tough dog, all gristle I think, and after three
+days of lying there like a dead dog he quickly recovered,
+though I'm quite sure that if his injuries had been
+distributed among any half-dozen pampered or pet dogs it would
+have killed them all.  A morning came when the kennel was
+empty: Jack was not dead--he was well again, and, as usual,
+out.
+
+Just then I was absent for a week or ten days then, back
+again, I went out one fine morning for a long day's ramble
+along the coast.  A mile or so from home, happening to glance
+back I caught sight of a black dog's face among the bushes
+thirty or forty yards away gazing earnestly at me.  It was
+Jack, of course, nothing but his head visible in an opening
+among the bushes--a black head which looked as if carved in
+ebony, in a wonderful setting of shining yellow furze
+blossoms.  The beauty and singularity of the sight made it
+impossible for me to be angry with him, though there's nothing
+a man more resents than being shadowed, or secretly followed
+and spied upon, even by a dog, so, without considering what I
+was letting myself in for, I cried out "Jack" and instantly he
+bounded out and came to my side, then flew on ahead, well
+pleased to lead the way.
+
+"I must suffer him this time," I said resignedly, and went on,
+he always ahead acting as my scout and hunter--self-appointed,
+of course, but as I had not ordered him back in trumpet tones
+and hurled a rock at him to enforce the command, he took it
+that he was appointed by me.  He certainly made the most of
+his position; no one could say that he was lacking in zeal.
+He scoured the country to the right and left and far in
+advance of me, crashing through furze thickets and splashing
+across bogs and streams, spreading terror where he went and
+leaving nothing for me to look at.  So it went on until after
+one o'clock when, tired and hungry, I was glad to go down into
+a small fishing cove to get some dinner in a cottage I knew.
+Jack threw himself down on the floor and shared my meal, then
+made friends with the fisherman's wife and got a second meal
+of saffron cake which, being a Cornish dog, he thoroughly
+enjoyed.
+
+The second half of the day was very much like the first,
+altogether a blank day for me, although a very full one for
+Jack, who had filled a vast number of wild creatures with
+terror, furiously hunted a hundred or more, and succeeded in
+killing two or three.
+
+Jack was impossible, and would never be allowed to follow me
+again.  So I sternly said and so thought, but when the time
+came and I found him waiting for me his brown eyes bright with
+joyful anticipation, I could not scowl at him and thunder out
+No!  I could not help putting myself in his place.  For here
+he was, a dog of boundless energy who must exercise his powers
+or be miserable, with nothing in the village for him except to
+witness the not very exciting activities of others; and that,
+I dscovered, had been his life.  He was mad to do something,
+and because there was nothing for him to do his time was
+mostly spent in going about the village to keep an eye on
+the movements of the people, especially of those who did
+the work, always with the hope that his services might be
+required in some way by some one.  He was grateful for the
+smallest crumbs, so to speak.  House-work and work about the
+house--milking, feeding the pigs and so on--did not interest
+him, nor would he attend the labourers in the fields.  Harvest
+time would make a difference; now it was ploughing, sowing,
+and hoeing, with nothing for Jack.  But he was always down at
+the fishing cove to see the boats go out or come in and join
+in the excitement when there was a good catch.  It was still
+better when the boat went with provisions to the lighthouse,
+or to relieve the keeper, for then Jack would go too and if
+they would not have him he would plunge into the waves and
+swim after it until the sails were hoisted and it flew like a
+great gull from him and he was compelled to swim back to land.
+If there was nothing else to do he would go to the stone
+quarry and keep the quarrymen company, sharing their dinner
+and hunting away the cows and donkeys that came too near.
+Then at six o'clock he would turn up at the cricket-field,
+where a few young enthusiasts would always attend to practise
+after working hours.
+
+Living this way Jack was, of course, known to everybody--as
+well known as the burly parson, the tall policeman, and the
+lazy girl who acted as postman and strolled about the parish
+once a day delivering the letters.  When Jack trotted down the
+village street he received as many greetings as any human
+inhabitant--"Hullo, Jack!" or "Morning, Jack," or "Where be
+going, Jack?"
+
+But all this variety, and all he could do to fit himself into
+and be a part of the village life and fill up his time, did
+not satisfy him.  Happiness for Jack was out on the moor--its
+lonely wet thorny places, pregnant with fascinating scents,
+not of flowers and odorous herbs, but of alert, warm-blooded,
+and swift-footed creatures.  And I was going there--would I,
+could I, be so heartless as to refuse to take him?
+
+You see that Jack, being a dog, could not go there alone.  He
+was a social being by instinct as well as training, dependent
+on others, or on the one who was his head and master.  His
+human master, or the man who took him out and spoke to him in
+a tone of authority, represented the head of the pack--the
+leading dog for the time being, albeit a dog that walked on
+his hind legs and spoke a bow-wow dialect of his own.
+
+I thought of all this and of many things besides.  The dog, I
+remembered, was taken by man out of his own world and thrust
+into one where he can never adapt himself perfectly to the
+conditions, and it was consequently nothing more than simple
+justice on my part to do what I could to satisfy his desire
+even at some cost to myself.  But while I was revolving the
+matter in my mind, feeling rather unhappy about it, Jack was
+quite happy, since he had nothing to revolve.  For him it was
+all settled and done with.  Having taken him out once, I must
+go on taking him out always.  Our two lives, hitherto running
+apart--his in the village, where he occupied himself with
+uncongenial affairs, mine on the moor where, having but two
+legs to run on, I could catch no rabbits--were now united in
+one current to our mutual advantage.  His habits were altered
+to suit the new life.  He stayed in now so as not to lose me
+when I went for a walk, and when returning, instead of going
+back to his kennel, he followed me in and threw himself down,
+all wet, on the rug before the fire.  His master and mistress
+came in and stared in astonishment.  It was against the rules
+of the house!  They ordered him out and he looked at them
+without moving.  Then they spoke again very sharply indeed,
+and he growled a low buzzing growl without lifting his chin
+from his paws, and they had to leave him!  He had transferred
+his allegiance to a new master and head of the pack.  He was
+under my protection and felt quite safe: if I had taken any
+part in that scene it would have been to order those two
+persons who had once lorded it over him out of the room!
+
+I didn't really mind his throwing over his master and taking
+possession of the rug in my sitting-room, but I certainly did
+very keenly resent his behaviour towards the birds every
+morning at breakfast-time.  It was my chief pleasure to feed
+them during the bad weather, and it was often a difficult task
+even before Jack came on the scene to mix himself in my
+affairs.  The Land's End is, I believe, the windiest place in
+the world, and when I opened the window and threw the scraps
+out the wind would catch and whirl them away like so many
+feathers over the garden wall, and I could not see what became
+of them.  It was necessary to go out by the kitchen door at
+the back (the front door facing the sea being impossible) and
+scatter the food on the lawn, and then go into watch the
+result from behind the window.  The blackbirds and thrushes
+would wait for a lull to fly in over the wall, while the daws
+would hover overhead and sometimes succeed in dropping down
+and seizing a crust, but often enough when descending they
+would be caught and whirled away by the blast.  The poor
+magpies found their long tails very much against them in the
+scramble, and it was even worse with the pied wagtail.  He
+would go straight for the bread and get whirled and tossed
+about the smooth lawn like a toy bird made of feathers, his
+tail blown over his head.  It was bad enough, and then Jack,
+curious about these visits to the lawn, came to investigate
+and finding the scraps, proceeded to eat them all up.  I tried
+to make him understand better by feeding him before I fed the
+birds; then by scolding and even hitting him, but he would not
+see it; he knew better than I did; he wasn't hungry and he
+didn't want bread, but he would eat it all the same, every
+scrap of it, just to prevent it from being wasted.  Jack was
+doubtless both vexed and amused at my simplicity in thinking
+that all this food which I put on the lawn would remain there
+undevoured by those useless creatures the birds until it was
+wanted.
+
+Even this I forgave him, for I saw that he had not, that with
+his dog mind he could not, understand me.  I also remembered
+the words of a wise old Cornish writer with regard to the mind
+of the lower animals: "But their faculties of mind are no less
+proportioned to their state of subjection than the shape and
+properties of their bodies.  They have knowledge peculiar to
+their several spheres and sufficient for the under-part they
+have to act."
+
+Let me be free from the delusion that it is possible to raise
+them above this level, or in other words to add an inch to
+their mental stature.  I have nothing to forgive Jack after
+all.  And so in spite of everything Jack was suffered at home
+and accompanied me again and again in my walks abroad; and
+there were more blank days, or if not altogether blank, seeing
+that there was Jack himself to be observed and thought about,
+they were not the kind of days I had counted on having.  My
+only consolation was that Jack failed to capture more than
+one out of every hundred, or perhaps five hundred, of the
+creatures he hunted, and that I was even able to save a few of
+these.  But I could not help admiring his tremendous energy
+and courage, especially in cliff-climbing when we visited the
+headlands--those stupendous masses and lofty piles of granite
+which rise like castles built by giants of old.  He would
+almost make me tremble for his life when, after climbing on to
+some projecting rock, he would go to the extreme end and look
+down over it as if it pleased him to watch the big waves break
+in foam on the black rocks a couple of hundred feet below.
+But it was not the big green waves or any sight in nature that
+drew him--he sniffed and sniffed and wriggled and twisted his
+black nose, and raised and depressed his ears as he sniffed,
+and was excited solely because the upward currents of air
+brought him tidings of living creatures that lurked in the
+rocks below--badger and fox and rabbit.  One day when quitting
+one of these places, on looking up I spied Jack standing on
+the summit of a precipice about seventy-five feet high.  Jack
+saw me and waved his tail, and then started to come straight
+down to me!  From the top a faint rabbit track was, visible
+winding downwards to within twenty-four feet of the ground;
+the rest was a sheer wall of rock.  Down he dashed, faster and
+faster as he got to where the track ended, and then losing his
+footing he fell swiftly to the earth, but luckily dropped on a
+deep spongy turf and was not hurt.  After witnessing this
+reckless act I knew how he had come by those frightful bruises
+on a former occasion.  He had doubtless fallen a long way down
+a cliff and had been almost crushed on the stones.  But the
+lesson was lost on Jack; he would have it that where rabbits
+and foxes went he could go!
+
+After all, the chief pleasure those blank bad days had for me
+was the thought that Jack was as happy as he could well be.
+But it was not enough to satisfy me, and by and by it came
+into my mind that I had been long enough at that place.  It
+was hard to leave Jack, who had put himself so entirely in my
+hands, and trusted me so implicitly.  But--the weather was
+keeping very bad: was there ever known such a June as this of
+1907?  So wet and windy and cold!  Then, too, the bloom had
+gone from the furze.  It was, I remembered, to witness this
+chief loveliness that I came.  Looking on the wide moor and
+far-off boulder-strewn hills and seeing how rusty the bushes
+were, I quoted--
+
+   The bloom has gone, and with the bloom go I,
+
+and early in the morning, with all my belongings on my back, I
+stole softly forth, glancing apprehensively in the direction
+of the kennel, and out on to the windy road.  It was painful
+to me to have to decamp in this way; it made me think meanly
+of myself; but if Jack could read this and could speak his
+mind I think he would acknowledge that my way of bringing the
+connection to an end was best for both of us.  I was not the
+person, or dog on two legs, he had taken me for, one with a
+proper desire to kill things: I only acted according to my
+poor lights.  Nothing, then, remains to be said except that
+one word which it was not convenient to speak on the windy
+morning of my departure--Good-bye Jack.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Afoot in England, by W.H. Hudson
+
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