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 anyother 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 countyas a whole. They are of all prices and all sizes, from the diminutivepaper-covered booklet, worth a penny, to the stout cloth-bound octavovolume which costs eight or ten or twelve shillings, or to the giganticfolio county history, the huge repository from which the guide-bookmaker gets his materials. For these great works are also guide-books, containing everything we want to learn, only made on so huge a scaleas to be suited to the coat pockets of Brobdingnagians rather than oflittle ordinary men. The wonder of it all comes in when we find thatthese books, however old and comparatively worthless they may be, arepractically never wholly out of date. When a new work is brought out(dozens appear annually) and, say, five thousand copies sold, itdoes not throw as many, or indeed any, copies of the old book out ofcirculation: it supersedes nothing. If any man can indulge in the luxuryof 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 willtreasure 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 studyor reference. Any one can prove this by going the round of a dozensecond-hand booksellers in his own district in London. There willbe tons of literary rubbish, and good stuff old and new, but fewguidebooks--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 hasnot 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 offerit 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 tothis man, and to the other eleven, and they will tell you that there isalways a sale for guide-books--that the supply does not keep pace withthe demand. It may be taken as a fact that most of the books of thiskind published during the last half-century--many millions of copies inthe aggregate--are still in existence and are valued possessions. 

There is nothing to quarrel with in all this. As a people we run about agreat deal; and having curious minds we naturally wish to know all thereis to be known, or all that is interesting to know, about the places wevisit. Then, again, our time as a rule being limited, we want the wholematter--history, antiquities, places of interest in the neighbourhood, etc. In a nutshell. The brief book serves its purpose well enough; butit is not thrown away like the newspaper and the magazines; howevercheap and badly got up it may be, it is taken home to serve anotherpurpose, to be a help to memory, and nobody can have it until its ownerremoves himself (but not his possessions) from this planet; or untilthe broker seizes his belongings, and guide-books, together with otherbooks, are disposed of in packages by the auctioneer. 

In all this we see that guide-books are very important to us, and thatthere is little or no fault to be found with them, since even the worstgive some guidance and enable us in after times mentally to revisitdistant places. It may then be said that there are really no badguide-books, and that those that are good in the highest sense arebeyond praise. A reverential sentiment, which is almost religious incharacter, connects itself in our minds with the very name of Murray. Itis, however, possible to make an injudicious use of these books, and byso doing to miss the fine point of many a pleasure. The very fact thatthese books are guides to us and invaluable, and that we readily acquirethe habit of taking them about with us and consulting them at frequentintervals, comes between us and that rarest and most exquisite enjoymentto be experienced amidst novel scenes. He that visits a place new to himfor some special object rightly informs himself of all that the book cantell him. The knowledge may be useful; pleasure is with him a secondaryobject. But if pleasure be the main object, it will only be experiencedin the highest degree by him who goes without book and discovers whatold Fuller called the "observables" for himself. There will be nomental pictures previously formed; consequently what is found will notdisappoint. When the mind has been permitted to dwell beforehand onany scene, then, however beautiful or grand it may be, the elementof surprise is wanting and admiration is weak. The delight has beendiscounted. 

My own plan, which may be recommended only to those who go outfor pleasure--who value happiness above useless (otherwise useful)knowledge, and the pictures that live and glow in memory above albumsand collections of photographs--is not to look at a guide-book until theplace it treats of has been explored and left behind. 

The practical person, to whom this may come as a new idea and who wishesnot to waste any time in experiments, would doubtless like to hear howthe plan works. He will say that he certainly wants all the happiness tobe got out of his rambles, but it is clear that without the book in hispocket he would miss many interesting things: Would the greater degreeof pleasure experienced in the others be a sufficient compensation?I should say that he would gain more than he would lose; that vividinterest and pleasure in a few things is preferable to that fainter, more diffused feeling experienced in the other case. Again, we have totake into account the value to us of the mental pictures gathered in ourwanderings. For we know that only when a scene is viewed emotionally, when it produces in us a shock of pleasure, does it become a permanentpossession of the mind; in other words, it registers an image which, when called up before the inner eye, is capable of reproducing a measureof 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 themare 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 whichI had not expected to see. They came as a surprise, and in the followinginstance one may see that it makes a vast difference whether we do or donot experience such a sensation. 

In the course of a ramble on foot in a remote district I came to a smallancient town, set in a cuplike depression amidst high wood-grown hills. The woods were of oak in spring foliage, and against that vivid greenI saw the many-gabled tiled roofs and tall chimneys of the old timberedhouses, glowing red and warm brown in the brilliant sunshine--a scene ofrare 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 hadcertain 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 mein every station and every railway carriage which I had entered on thatline. Photography degrades most things, especially open-air things;and in this case, not only had its poor presentments made the scene toofamiliar, but something of the degradation in the advertising picturesseemed to attach itself to the very scene. Yet even here, after somepleasureless days spent in vain endeavours to shake off these vulgarassociations, I was to experience one of the sweetest surprises anddelights of my life. 

The church of this village-like town is one of its chief attractions; itis a very old and stately building, and its perpendicular tower, nearly a hundred feet high, is one of the noblest in England. It has amagnificent peal of bells, and on a Sunday afternoon they were ringing, filling and flooding that hollow in the hills, seeming to make thehouses and trees and the very earth to tremble with the glorious stormof sound. Walking past the church, I followed the streamlet that runsthrough the town and out by a cleft between the hills to a narrow marshyvalley, on the other side of which are precipitous hills, clothed frombase to summit in oak woods. As I walked through the cleft the musicalroar of the bells followed, and was like a mighty current flowingthrough and over me; but as I came out the sound from behind ceasedsuddenly and was now in front, coming back from the hills before me. Asound, but not the same--not a mere echo; and yet an echo it was, themost wonderful I had ever heard. For now that great tempest of musicalnoise, composed of a multitude of clanging notes with long vibrations, overlapping and mingling and clashing together, seemed at the same timeone and many--that tempest from the tower which had mysteriously ceasedto be audible came back in strokes or notes distinct and separate andmultiplied many times. The sound, the echo, was distributed over thewhole 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 pealof bells in it, and that they were raining that far-up bright spiritualtree music down into the valley below. As I stood listening it seemedto me that I had never heard anything so beautiful, nor had any man--notthe monk of Eynsham in that vision when he heard the Easter bells onthe holy Saturday evening, and described the sound as "a ringing of amarvellous sweetness, as if all the bells in the world, or whatsoever isof sounding, had been rung together at once. "

Here, then, I had found and had become the possessor of somethingpriceless, since in that moment of surprise and delight the mysteriousbeautiful sound, with the whole scene, had registered an impressionwhich would outlast all others received at that place, where I hadviewed all things with but languid interest. Had it not come as acomplete surprise, the emotion experienced and the resultant mentalimage would not have been so vivid; as it is, I can mentally stand inthat valley when I will, seeing that green-wooded hill in front of meand listen to that unearthly music. 

Naturally, after quitting the spot, I looked at the first opportunityinto a guide-book of the district, only to find that it contained notone word about those wonderful illusive sounds! The book-makers had notdone their work well, since it is a pleasure after having discoveredsomething delightful for ourselves to know how others have been affectedby it and how they describe it. 

Of many other incidents of the kind I will, in this chapter, relate onemore, which has a historical or legendary interest. I was staying withthe companion of my walks at a village in Southern England in a districtnew to us. We arrived on a Saturday, and next morning after breakfastwent out for a long walk. Turning into the first path across the fieldson leaving the village, we came eventually to an oak wood, which waslike an open forest, very wild and solitary. In half an hour's walkamong the old oaks and underwood we saw no sign of human occupancy, andheard nothing but the woodland birds. We heard, and then saw, the cuckoofor the first time that season, though it was but April the fourth. Butthe cuckoo was early that spring and had been heard by some from themiddle of March. At length, about half-past ten o'clock, we caught sightof a number of people walking in a kind of straggling procession by apath which crossed ours at right angles, headed by a stout old man ina black smock frock and brown leggings, who carried a big book in onehand. One of the processionists we spoke to told us they came from ahamlet a mile away on the borders of the wood and were on their way tochurch. We elected to follow them, thinking that the church was at someneighbouring village; to our surprise we found it was in the wood, withno other building in sight--a small ancient-looking church built on araised mound, surrounded by a wide shallow grass-grown trench, on theborder of a marshy stream. The people went in and took their seats, while we remained standing just by the door. Then the priest came fromthe vestry, and seizing the rope vigorously, pulled at it for fiveminutes, after which he showed us where to sit and the service began. Itwas very pleasant there, with the door open to the sunlit forest andthe little green churchyard without, with a willow wren, the first I hadheard, singing his delicate little strain at intervals. 

The service over, we rambled an hour longer in the wood, then returnedto our village, which had a church of its own, and our landlady, hearingwhere we had been, told us the story, or tradition, of the little churchin the wood. Its origin goes very far back to early Norman times, whenall the land in this part was owned by one of William's followers onwhom it had been bestowed. He built himself a house or castle onthe edge of the forest, where he lived with his wife and two littledaughters who were his chief delight. It happened that one day when hewas absent the two little girls with their female attendant went intothe wood in search of flowers, and that meeting a wild boar they turnedand fled, screaming for help. The savage beast pursued, and, quicklyovertaking them, attacked the hindermost, the youngest of the two littlegirls, anal killed her, the others escaping in the meantime. On thefollowing day the father returned, and was mad with grief and rage onhearing of the tragedy, and in his madness resolved to go alone on footto the forest and search for the beast and taste no food or drink untilhe had slain it. Accordingly to the forest he went, and roamed throughit by day and night, and towards the end of the following day heactually found and roused the dreadful animal, and although weakened byhis long fast and fatigue, his fury gave him force to fight and conquerit, or else the powers above came to his aid; for when he stood spearin hand to wait the charge of the furious beast he vowed that if heovercame it on that spot he would build a chapel, where God would beworshipped for ever. And there it was raised and has stood to this day, its doors open every Sunday to worshippers, with but one break, sometime in the sixteenth century to the third year of Elizabeth, since whenthere has been no suspension of the weekly service. 

That the tradition is not true no one can say. We know that the memoryof an action or tragedy of a character to stir the feelings and impressthe imagination may live unrecorded in any locality for long centuries. And more, we know or suppose, from at least one quite familiar instancefrom Flintshire, that a tradition may even take us back to prehistorictimes and find corroboration in our own day. 

But of this story what corroboration is there, and what do the bookssay? I have consulted the county history, and no mention is made ofsuch a tradition, and can only assume that the author had never heardit--that he had not the curious Aubrey mind. He only says that it isa very early church--how early he does not know--and adds that it wasbuilt "for the convenience of the inhabitants of the place. " An oddstatement, seeing that the place has every appearance of having alwaysbeen 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 woodlandplace, the story of its origin was accepted as true; no doubt it hadcome down unaltered from generation to generation through all thosecenturies, and it moved my pity yet was a delight to hear, as greatperhaps as it had been to listen to the beautiful chimes many timesmultiplied 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 greaterpleasure in discovering the interesting things for ourselves than ininforming ourselves of them by reading. It is like the difference inflavour in wild fruits and all wild meats found and gathered by our ownhands in wild places and that of the same prepared and put on the tablefor 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 theirappearance, who knows that sun and atmosphere have for him revelationswithout end. They come and go and mock his best efforts; he knows thathis striving is in vain--that his weak hands and earthy pigments cannotreproduce these effects or express his feeling--that, as Leighton said, "every picture is a subject thrown away. " But he has his joy none theless; it is in the pursuit and in the dream of capturing somethingillusive, mysterious, and inexpressibly beautiful. 

Chapter Two: On Going Back

In looking over the preceding chapter it occurred to me that I hadomitted something, or rather that it would have been well to drop a wordof warning to those who have the desire to revisit a place where theyhave experienced a delightful surprise. Alas! they cannot have thatsensation a second time, and on this account alone the mental imagemust always be better than its reality. Let the image--the first sharpimpression--content us. Many a beautiful picture is spoilt by the artistwho cannot be satisfied that he has made the best of his subject, andretouching his canvas to bring out some subtle charm which made thework a success loses it altogether. So in going back, the result ofthe inevitable disillusionment is that the early mental picture losessomething of its original freshness. The very fact that the delightfulplace or scene was discovered by us made it the shining place it is inmemory. And again, the charm we found in it may have been in a measuredue to the mood we were in, or to the peculiar aspect in which it camebefore us at the first, due to the season, to atmospheric and sunlighteffects, to some human interest, or to a conjunction of severalfavourable circumstances; we know we can never see it again in thataspect and with that precise feeling. 

On this account I am shy of revisiting the places where I haveexperienced the keenest delight. For example, I have no desire torevisit that small ancient town among the hills, described in the lastchapter; to go on a Sunday evening through that narrow gorge, filledwith the musical roar of the church bells; to leave that great soundbehind and stand again listening to the marvellous echo from the woodedhill on the other side of the valley. Nor would I care to go again insearch of that small ancient lost church in the forest. It would notbe early April with the clear sunbeams shining through the old leaflessoaks on the floor of fallen yellow leaves with the cuckoo fluting beforehis 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; norwould I hear for the first time the strange history of the church whichso enchanted me. 

I will here give an account of yet another of the many well-remembereddelightful spots which I would not revisit, nor even look upon again ifI 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 fromrailroads and large towns, and the road by which I was travelling (onthis occasion on a bicycle) ran or serpentined along the foot of a rangeof low round hills on my right hand, while on my left I had a greenvalley with other low round green hills beyond it. The valley had amarshy stream with sedgy margins and occasional clumps of alder andwillow trees. It was the end of a hot midsummer day; the sun went downa vast globe of crimson fire in a crystal clear sky; and as I was goingeast 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 resumedmy way but went slowly, then slower still, the better to enjoy thedelicious coolness which came from the moist valley and the beauty ofthe 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 goto the small old town where I intended passing the night. By and bythe winding road led me down close to the stream at a point where itbroadened to a large still pool. This was the ford, and on the otherside was a small rustic village, consisting of a church, two or threefarm-houses with their barns and outbuildings, and a few ancient-lookingstone 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 andbeauty I concluded that it was an ancient church dating back to thetime when there was a passion in the West Country and in many partsof England of building these great fanes even in the remotest and mostthinly populated parishes. In this I was mistaken through having seen itat 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 picturesquecottages shaded by ancient oaks and elms, and the great church with itsstately tower looking dark against the luminous western sky. Dismountingagain I stood for some time admiring the scene, wishing that I couldmake that village my home for the rest of my life, conscious at the sametime that is was the mood, the season, the magical hour which made itseem so enchanting. Presently a young man, the first human figure thatpresented itself to my sight, appeared, mounted on a big carthorse andleading a second horse by a halter, and rode down into the pool to bathethe animals' legs and give them a drink. He was a sturdy-looking youngfellow with a sun-browned face, in earth-coloured, working clothes, with a small cap stuck on the back of his round curly head; he probablyimagined himself not a bad-looking young man, for while his horses weredrinking he laid over on the broad bare backs and bending down studiedhis own reflection in the bright water. Then an old woman came out of acottage close by, and began talking to him in her West Country dialectin a thin high-pitched cracked voice. Their talking was the only soundin the village; so silent was it that all the rest of its inhabitantsmight have been in bed and fast asleep; then, the conversation ended, the young man rode out with a great splashing and the old woman turnedinto her cottage again, and I was left in solitude. 

Still I lingered: I could not go just yet; the chances were that Ishould never again see that sweet village in that beautiful aspect atthe twilight hour. 

For now it came into my mind that I could not very well settle therefor the rest of my life; I could not, in fact, tie myself to any placewithout sacrificing certain other advantages I possessed; and the mainthing was that by taking root I should deprive myself of the chance oflooking on still other beautiful scenes and experiencing other sweetsurprises. I was wishing that I had come a little earlier on the sceneto have had time to borrow the key of the church and get a sight of theinterior, when all at once I heard a shrill voice and a boy appearedrunning across the wide green space of the churchyard. A second boyfollowed, then another, then still others, and I saw that they weregoing into the church by the side door. They were choir-boys going topractice. The church was open then, and late as it was I could havehalf an hour inside before it was dark! The stream was spanned by an oldstone bridge above the ford, and going over it I at once made my wayto the great building, but even before entering it I discovered thatit possessed an organ of extraordinary power and that someone wasperforming on it with a vengeance. Inside the noise was tremendous--abigger noise from an organ, it seemed to me, than I had ever heardbefore, even at the Albert Hall and the Crystal Palace, but even moreastonishing than the uproar was the sight that met my eyes. The boys, nine or ten sturdy little rustics with round sunburnt West Countryfaces, were playing the roughest game ever witnessed in a church. Somewere engaged in a sort of flying fight, madly pursuing one another upand down the aisles and over the pews, and whenever one overtook anotherhe would seize hold of him and they would struggle together untilone was thrown and received a vigorous pommelling. Those who were notfighting were dancing to the music. It was great fun to them, and theywere shouting and laughing their loudest only not a sound of it allcould be heard on account of the thunderous roar of the organ whichfilled and seemed to make the whole building tremble. The boys took nonotice of me, and seeing that there was a singularly fine west window, Iwent to it and stood there some time with my back to the game whichwas going on at the other end of the building, admiring the beautifulcolours and trying to make out the subjects depicted. In the centrepart, lit by the after-glow in the sky to a wonderful brilliance, wasthe figure of a saint, a lovely young woman in a blue robe with anabundance of loose golden-red hair and an aureole about her head. Herpale face wore a sweet and placid expression, and her eyes of a pureforget-me-not blue were looking straight into mine. As I stood therethe music, or noise, ceased and a very profound silence followed--nota giggle, not a whisper from the outrageous young barbarians, and not asound of the organist or of anyone speaking to them. Presently I becameconscious 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 manwith 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 wassomething curiously engaging in him, along with a subtle look whichit was not easy to fathom. There was a light in his dark eyes whichreminded 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 asmile 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 verywell with a smile. 

"I see, " he spoke, and his penetrating musical voice had, too, like hiseyes and mouth, an expression of mystery in it, "that you are admiringour beautiful west window, especially the figure in the centre. It isquite new--everything is new here--the church itself was only built afew years ago. This window is its chief glory: it was done by a goodartist--he has done some of the most admired windows of recent years;and the centre figure is supposed to be a portrait of our generouspatroness. At all events she sat for it to him. You have probably heardof Lady Y--?"

"What!" I exclaimed. "Lady Y--: that funny old woman!"

"No--middle-aged, " he corrected, a little frigidly and perhaps a littlemockingly at the same time. 

"Very well, middle-aged if you like; I don't know her personally. Onehears 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 canvery well look leniently on a little weakness--her wish that the futureinhabitants of the place shall not remember her as a middle-aged womannot remarkable for good looks--'funny, ' as you just now said. "

He was wonderfully candid, I thought. But what extraordinary benefitshad 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. Wewere 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 rebuildon the exact site. "

"Do you know, " I returned, "I can't help saying something you will notlike to hear. It is a very fine church, no doubt, but it always angersme to hear of a case like this where some ancient church is pulled downand a grand new one raised in its place to the honour and glory of somerich parvenu with or without a brand new title. "

"You are not hurting me in the least, " he replied, with that changewhich came from time to time in his eyes as if the flame behind thescreen had suddenly grown brighter. "I agree with every word you say;the meanest church in the land should be cherished as long as it willhold together. But unfortunately ours had to come down. It was very oldand decayed past mending. The floor was six feet below the level of thesurrounding ground and frightfully damp. It had been examined over andover again by experts during the past forty or fifty years, and from thefirst they pronounced it a hopeless case, so that it was never restored. The interior, right down to the time of demolition, was like that ofmost country churches of a century ago, with the old black worm-eatenpews, in which the worshippers shut themselves up as if in their ownhouses or castles. On account of the damp we were haunted by toads. Yousmile, sir, but it was no smiling matter for me during my first year asvicar, when I discovered that it was the custom here to keep pet toadsin the church. It sounds strange and funny, no doubt, but it is a factthat 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 ofprovisions--bits of meat, hard-boiled eggs chopped up, and earth-worms, and whatever else they fancied it would like--in their reticules. Thetoads, I suppose, knew when it was Sunday--their feeding day; at allevents they would crawl out of their holes in the floor under the pewsto receive their rations--and caresses. The toads got on my nerves withrather unpleasant consequences. I preached in a way which my listenersdid not appreciate or properly understand, particularly when I took formy subject our duty towards the lower animals, including reptiles. "

"Batrachians, " I interposed, echoing as well as I could the tone inwhich he had rebuked me before. 

"Very well, batrachians--I am not a naturalist. But the impressioncreated on their minds appeared to be that I was rather an odd personin the pulpit. When the time came to pull the old church down thetoad-keepers were bidden to remove their pets, which they did withconsiderable reluctance. What became of them I do not know--I neverinquired. I used to have a careful inspection made of the floor to makesure that these creatures were not put back in the new building, and Iam happy to think it is not suited to their habits. The floors are verywell cemented, and are dry and clean. "

Having finished his story he invited me to go to the parsonage and getsome 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 thewindow and gazed at us out of her blue eyes. "I must not waste more ofyour time, " I added. "There are your boys still patiently waiting tobegin their practice--such nice quiet fellows!"

"Yes, they are, " he returned a little bitterly, a sudden accent ofweariness in his voice and no trace now of what I had seen in hiscountenance a little while ago--the light that shone and brightenedbehind the dark eye and the little play about the corners of the mouthas of dimpling motions on the surface of a pool. 

And in that new guise, or disguise, I left him, the austere priest withnothing to suggest the whimsical or grotesque in his cold ascetic face. Recrossing the bridge I stood a little time and looked once more at thenoble church tower standing dark against the clear amber-coloured sky, and said to myself: "Why, this is one of the oddest incidents of mylife! Not that I have seen or heard anything very wonderful--just asmall rustic village, one of a thousand in the land; a big new church inwhich some person was playing rather madly on the organ, a set of unrulychoir-boys; a handsome stained-glass west window, and, finally, a nicelittle chat with the vicar. " It was not in these things; it was a senseof something strange in the mind, of something in some way unlike allother places and people and experiences. The sensation was like that ofthe reader who becomes absorbed in Henry Newbolt's romance of The OldCountry, who identifies himself with the hero and unconsciously, orwithout quite knowing how, slips back out of this modern world intothat of half a thousand years ago. It is the same familiar green land inwhich he finds himself--the same old country and the same sort of peoplewith feelings and habits of life and thought unchangeable as the colourof grass and flowers, the songs of birds and the smell of the earth, yetwith a difference. I recognized it chiefly in the parish priest I hadbeen conversing with; for one thing, his mediaeval mind evidently didnot regard a sense of humour and of the grotesque as out of place in oron a sacred building. If it had been lighter I should have looked atthe roof for an effigy of a semi-human toad-like creature smiling downmockingly at the worshippers as they came and went. 

On departing it struck me that it would assuredly be a mistake to returnto 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 tobelieve, if I could, that no such place existed, but that it hadexisted exactly as I had found it, even to the unruly choir-boys, the ascetic-looking priest with a strange light in his eyes, and theworshippers who kept pet toads in the church. They were not preciselylike people of the twentieth century. As for the eccentric middle-agedor elderly person whose portrait adorned the west window, she wasnot the lady I knew something about, but another older Lady Y--, whoflourished some six or seven centuries ago. 

Chapter Three: Walking and Cycling

We know that there cannot be progression without retrogression, or gainwith no corresponding loss; and often on my wheel, when flying alongthe roads at a reckless rate of very nearly nine miles an hour, I haveregretted that time of limitations, galling to me then, when I wascompelled to go on foot. I am a walker still, but with other means ofgetting about I do not feel so native to the earth as formerly. That isa loss. Yet a poorer walker it would have been hard to find, and on evenmy most prolonged wanderings the end of each day usually brought extremefatigue. This, too, although my only companion was slow--slower than thepoor proverbial snail or tortoise--and I would leave her half a mileor so behind to force my way through unkept hedges, climb hills, andexplore woods and thickets to converse with every bird and shy littlebeast and scaly creature I could discover. But mark what follows. In thelate afternoon I would be back in the road or footpath, satisfied togo slow, then slower still, until--the snail in woman shape would beobliged to slacken her pace to keep me company, and even to stand stillat intervals to give me needful rest. 

But there were compensations, and one, perhaps the best of all, was thatthis method of seeing the country made us more intimate with the peoplewe met and stayed with. They were mostly poor people, cottagers in smallremote villages; and we, too, were poor, often footsore, in need oftheir ministrations, and nearer to them on that account than if wehad travelled in a more comfortable way. I can recall a hundred littleadventures we met with during those wanderings, when we walked day afterday, without map or guide-book as our custom was, not knowing where theevening would find us, but always confident that the people to whom itwould fall in the end to shelter us would prove interesting to know andwould show us a kindness that money could not pay for. Of these hundredlittle incidents let me relate one. 

It was near the end of a long summer day when we arrived at a smallhamlet of about a dozen cottages on the edge of an extensive wood--aforest 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 womenwe talked to all assured us that they did not know of anyone who couldtake us in, but there was Mr. Brownjohn, who kept the shop, and was theright person to apply to. Accordingly we went to the little general shopand heard that Mr. Brownjohn was not at home. His housekeeper, a fat, dark, voluble woman with prominent black eyes, who minded the shopin the master's absence, told us that Mr. Brownjohn had gone to aneighbouring farm-house on important business, but was expected backshortly. We waited, and by and by he returned, a shabbily dressed, weak-looking little old man, with pale blue eyes and thin yellowishwhite hair. He could not put us up, he said, he had no room in hiscottage; there was nothing for us but to go on to the next place, avillage three miles distant, on the chance of finding a bed there. Weassured him that we could go no further, and after revolving the mattera while longer he again said that we could not stay, as there was not aroom 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 agood handy woman she was too; but now--no, Mrs. Flowerdew could not takeus in. We questioned him, and he said that no one had died there andthere 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 wasa young woman, very poorly dressed, with a pleasing but careworn face, and she had four small, bright, healthy, happy-faced children. They wereall grouped round her as she stood in the doorway to speak to us, andthey too were poorly dressed and poorly shod. When we told our tale sheappeared ready to burst into tears. Oh, how unfortunate it was thatshe could not take us in! It would have made her so happy, and thefew shillings would have been such a blessing! But what could she donow--the landlord's agent had put in a distress and carried off and soldall her best things. Every stick out of her nice spare room had beentaken from them! Oh, it was cruel!

As we wished to hear more she told us the whole story. They had gotbehindhand with the rent, but that had often been the case, only thistime it happened that the agent wanted a cottage for a person he wishedto befriend, and so gave them notice to quit. But her husband was ahigh-spirited man and determined to stick to his rights, so he informedthe agent that he refused to move until he received compensation for hisimprovements. 

Questioned about these improvements, she led us through to the back toshow us the ground, about half an acre in extent, part of which was usedas a paddock for the donkey, and on the other part there were about adozen rather sickly-looking young fruit trees. Her husband, she said, had planted the orchard and kept the fence of the paddock in order, andthey 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 longstruggling to get together, saving her money for months and months, andmaking so many journeys to the town to buy--all, all he had taken awayand sold for almost nothing!

Then, actually with tears in her eyes, she said that now we knew why shecouldn'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; shecould surely get a few things to put in it, and in the meantime we wouldgo 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 takingit! At first she was amazed at our decision, then she was delighted andsaid she would go out to her neighbours and try to borrow all that waswanted 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 usto Mr. Marling for vegetables. Mr. Marling heard us, and soberly takingup a spade and other implements led us out to his garden and dug us amess of potatoes while we waited. In the meantime good Mrs. Flowerdewhad not been idle, and we formed the idea that her neighbours must havebeen her debtors for unnumbered little kindnesses, so eager did they nowappear to do her a good turn. Out of one cottage a woman was seen comingburdened with a big roll of bedding; from others children issued bearingcane chairs, basin and ewer, and so on, and when we next looked intoour room we found it swept and scrubbed, mats on the floor, and quitecomfortably furnished. 

After our meal in the small parlour, which had been given up to us, thefamily having migrated into the kitchen, we sat for an hour by the openwindow looking out on the dim forest and saw the moon rise--a greatgolden globe above the trees--and listened to the reeling of thenightjars. So many were the birds, reeling on all sides, at variousdistances, that the evening air seemed full of their sounds, far andnear, like many low, tremulous, sustained notes blown on reeds, risingand falling, overlapping and mingling. And presently from the bushesclose by, just beyond the weedy, forlorn little "orchard, " soundedthe rich, full, throbbing prelude to the nightingale's song, and thatpowerful melody that in its purity and brilliance invariably strikes uswith surprise seemed to shine out, as it were, against the background ofthat diffused, mysterious purring of the nightjars, even as the goldendisc of the moon shone against and above the darkening skies and duskywoods. 

And as we sat there, gazing and listening, a human voice came out of thenight--a call prolonged and modulated like the coo-ee of the Australianbush, far off and faint; but the children in the kitchen heard it at thesame time, for they too had been listening, and instantly went mad withexcitement. 

"Father!" they all screamed together. "Father's coming!" and out theyrushed and away they fled down the darkening road, exerting their fullvoices in shrill answering cries. 

We were anxious to see this unfortunate man, who was yet happy in aloving family. He had gone early in the morning in his donkey-cart tothe little market town, fourteen miles away, to get the few necessariesthey could afford to buy. Doubtless they would be very few. We hadnot long to wait, as the white donkey that drew the cart had put on atremendous spurt at the end, notwithstanding that the four youngstershad climbed in to add to his burden. But what was our surprise to beholdin the charioteer a tall, gaunt, grey-faced old man with long white hairand beard! He must have been seventy, that old man with a young wife andfour happy bright-eyed little children!

We could understand it better when he finally settled down in his cornerin the kitchen and began to relate the events of the day, addressing hispoor little wife, now busy darning or patching an old garment, while thechildren, clustered at his knee, listened as to a fairy tale. Certainlythis white-haired man had not grown old in mind; he was keenlyinterested in all he saw and heard, and he had seen and heard much inthe little market town that day. Cattle and pigs and sheep and shepherdsand sheepdogs; farmers, shopkeepers, dealers, publicans, tramps, andgentlefolks in carriages and on horseback; shops, too, with beautifulnew things in the windows; millinery, agricultural implements, flowersand 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 hadsaid to him about the weather and their business and the prospects ofthe year, how their wives and children were, and the clever jokes theyhad made, and his own jokes, which were the cleverest of all. If he hadjust returned from Central Africa or from Thibet he could not have hadmore to tell them nor told it with greater zest. 

We went to our room, but until the small hours the wind of the oldtraveller's talk could still be heard at intervals from the kitchen, mingled with occasional shrill explosions of laughter from the listeningchildren. 

It happened that on the following day, spent in idling in the forest andabout the hamlet, conversing with the cottagers, we were told thatour old man was a bit of a humbug; that he was a great talker, with ahundred schemes for the improvement of his fortunes, and, incidently, for the benefit of his neighbours and the world at large; but nothingcame of it all and he was now fast sinking into the lowest depths ofpoverty. 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, onaccount of physical weakness, it was often a pain and weariness, thereare alleviations which may be more to us than positive pleasures, andscenes to delight the eye that are missed by the wheelman in his haste, or but dimly seen or vaguely surmised in passing--green refreshing nooksand crystal streamlets, and shadowy woodland depths with glimpses of ablue 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 noother pleasure for us on account of poverty and ill-health, were takenat pretty regular intervals two or three times a year. It all dependedon our means; in very lean years there was but one outing. It wasimpossible to escape altogether from the immense unfriendly wildernessof London simply because, albeit "unfriendly, " it yet appeared to be theonly place in the wide world where our poor little talents could earn usa few shillings a week to live on. Music and literature! but I fancy thenearest crossing-sweeper did better, and could afford to give himself amore generous dinner every day. It occasionally happened that anarticle sent to some magazine was not returned, and always after so manyrejections to have one accepted and paid for with a cheque worth severalpounds was a cause of astonishment, and was as truly a miracle as if theangel of the sun had compassionately thrown us down a handful of gold. And out of these little handfuls enough was sometimes saved for thecountry rambles at Easter and Whitsuntide and in the autumn. It wasduring one of these Easter walks, when seeking for a resting-place forthe night, that we met with another adventure worth telling. 

We had got to that best part of Surrey not yet colonized by wealthy menfrom the City, but where all things are as they were of old, when, latein the day, we came to a pleasant straggling village with one street amile long. Here we resolved to stay, and walked the length of the streetmaking inquiries, but were told by every person we spoke to that theonly place we could stay at was the inn--the "White Hart. " When we saidwe preferred to stay at a cottage they smiled a pitying smile. No, therewas no such place. But we were determined not to go to the inn, althoughit had a very inviting look, and was well placed with no other housenear it, looking on the wide village green with ancient trees shadingthe road on either side. 

Having passed it and got to the end of the village, we turned and walkedback, still making vain inquiries, passing it again, and when once moreat the starting-point we were in despair when we spied a man comingalong the middle of the road and went out to meet him to ask the wearyquestion for the last time. His appearance was rather odd as he cametowards us on that blowy March evening with dust and straws flying pastand the level sun shining full on him. He was tall and slim, with alarge round smooth face and big pale-blue innocent-looking eyes, and hewalked rapidly but in a peculiar jerky yet shambling manner, swingingand tossing his legs and arms about. Moving along in this disjointedmanner in his loose fluttering clothes he put one in mind of abig flimsy newspaper blown along the road by the wind. Thisunpromising-looking person at once told us that there was a place wherewe could stay; he knew it well, for it happened to be his father'shouse and his own home. It was away at the other end of the village. Hispeople had given accommodation to strangers before, and would be glad toreceive us and make us comfortable. 

Surprised, and a little doubtful of our good fortune, I asked my youngman if he could explain the fact that so many of his neighbours hadassured us that no accommodation was to be had in the village except atthe inn. He did not make a direct reply. He said that the ways ofthe villagers were not the ways of his people. He and all his housecherished only kind feelings towards their neighbours; whether thosefeelings were returned or not, it was not for him to say. And there wassomething else. A small appointment which would keep a man from want forthe term of his natural life, without absorbing all his time, hadbecome vacant in the village. Several of the young men in the place wereanxious to have it; then he, too, came forward as a candidate, and allthe others jeered at him and tried to laugh him out of it. He carednothing for that, and when the examination came off he proved the bestman and got the place. He had fought his fight and had overcome all hisenemies; if they did not like him any the better for his victory, anddid and said little things to injure him, he did not mind much, he couldafford to forgive them. 

Having finished his story, he said good-bye, and went his way, blown, asit were, along the road by the wind. 

We were now very curious to see the other members of his family; theywould, we imagined, prove amusing, if nothing better. They proved a gooddeal better. The house we sought, for a house it was, stood a little wayback from the street in a large garden. It had in former times been aninn, or farm-house, possibly a manor-house, and was large, with manysmall rooms, and short, narrow, crooked staircases, half-landings andnarrow passages, and a few large rooms, their low ceilings resting onold oak beams, black as ebony. Outside, it was the most picturesque anddoubtless the oldest house in the village; many-gabled, with very tallancient chimneys, the roofs of red tiles mottled grey and yellow withage and lichen. It was a surprise to find a woodman--for that waswhat the man was--living in such a big place. The woodman himself, hisappearance and character, gave us a second and greater surprise. He wasa well-shaped man of medium height; although past middle life he lookedyoung, and had no white thread in his raven-black hair and beard. Histeeth were white and even, and his features as perfect as I have seen inany man. His eyes were pure dark blue, contrasting rather strangely withhis pale olive skin and intense black hair. Only a woodman, but he mighthave come of one of the oldest and best families in the country, ifthere is any connection between good blood and fine features and a nobleexpression. Oddly enough, his surname was an uncommon and aristocraticone. His wife, on the other hand, although a very good woman as wefound, had a distinctly plebeian countenance. One day she informed usthat 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 alady's-maid: her husband was nothing but a labourer; his people had beenlabourers for generations, consequently her marriage to him had involveda considerable descent in the social scale. Hearing this, it was hard torepress a smile. 

The contrast between this man and the ordinary villager of his class wasas great in manners and conversation as in features and expression. Hiscombined dignity and gentleness, and apparent unconsciousness of anycaste difference between man and man, were astonishing in one who hadbeen a simple toiler all his life. 

There were some grown-up children, others growing up, with others thatwere still quite small. The boys, I noticed, favoured their mother, andhad commonplace faces; the girls took after their father, and thoughtheir features were not so perfect they were exceptionally good-looking. The eldest son--the disjointed, fly-away-looking young man who hadconquered all his enemies--had a wife and child. The eldest daughter wasalso married, and had one child. Altogether the three families numberedabout sixteen persons, each family having its separate set of rooms, butall dining at one table. How did they do it? It seemed easy enough tothem. They were serious people in a sense, although always cheerful andsometimes hilarious when together of an evening, or at their meals. Butthey regarded life as a serious matter, a state of probation; theywere non-smokers, total abstainers, diligent at their work, united, profoundly religious. A fresh wonder came to light when I found thatthis poor woodman, with so large a family to support, who spent ten ortwelve hours every day at his outdoor work, had yet been able out of hissmall earnings to buy bricks and other materials, and, assisted by hissons, to build a chapel adjoining his house. Here he held religiousservices on Sundays, and once or twice of an evening during the week. These services consisted of extempore prayers, a short address, andhymns accompanied by a harmonium, which they all appeared able to play. 

What his particular doctrine was I did not inquire, nor did I wish forany information on that point. Doubtless he was a Dissenter of some kindliving in a village where there was no chapel; the services were forthe family, but were also attended by a few of the villagers and somepersons from neighbouring farms who preferred a simpler form of worshipto that of the Church. 

It was not strange that this little community should have been regardedwith something like disfavour by the other villagers. For these others, man for man, made just as much money, and paid less rent for theirsmall cottages, and, furthermore, received doles from the vicar and hiswell-to-do parishioners, yet they could not better their position, muchless afford the good clothing, books, music, and other pleasant thingswhich 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 avoidhearing by thrusting their fingers into their ears. 

During my stay with these people something occurred to cause them a verydeep disquiet. The reader will probably smile when I tell them whatit was. Awaking one night after midnight I heard the unusual sound ofvoices in earnest conversation in the room below; this went on untilI fell asleep again. In the morning we noticed that our landlady had asomewhat haggard face, and that the daughters also had pale faces, withpurple marks under the eyes, as if they had kept their mother company insome sorrowful vigil. We were not left long in ignorance of the causeof this cloud. The good woman asked if we had been much disturbed bythe talking. I answered that I had heard voices and had supposed thatfriends from a distance had arrived overnight and that they had sat uptalking to a late hour. No--that was not it, she said; but someone hadarrived late, a son who was sixteen years old, and who had been absentfor some days on a visit to relations in another county. When theygathered round him to hear his news he confessed that while away hehad learnt to smoke, and he now wished them to know that he had wellconsidered the matter, and was convinced that it was not wrong norharmful to smoke, and was determined not to give up his tobacco. Theyhad talked to him--father, mother, brothers, and sisters--using everyargument they could find or invent to move him, until it was day andtime for the woodman to go to his woods, and the others to their severaloccupations. But their "all-night sitting" had been wasted; the stubbornyouth had not been convinced nor shaken. When, after morning prayers, they got up from their knees, the sunlight shining in upon them, theyhad made a last appeal with tears in their eyes, and he had refused togive the promise they asked. The poor woman was greatly distressed. Thisyoung fellow, I thought, favours his mother in features, but mentally heis perhaps more like his father. Being a smoker myself I ventured toput in a word for him. They were distressing themselves too much, I toldher; smoking in moderation was not only harmless, especially to thosewho worked out of doors, but it was a well-nigh universal habit, andmany 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 regardthe practice of smoking as in itself bad, but they knew that in somecircumstances it was inexpedient; and in the case of her son theywere troubled at the thought of what smoking would ultimately lead to. People, she continued, did not care to smoke, any more than they did toeat and drink, in solitude. It was a social habit, and it was inevitablethat 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 liketo keep out of doors until bedtime; but during the long winterevenings he would have to look for his companions in the parlour of thepublic-house. And it would not be easy, scarcely possible, to sit longamong the others without drinking a little beer. It is really no morewrong to drink a little beer than to smoke, he would say; and it wouldbe true. One pipe would lead to another and one glass of beer toanother. The habit would be formed and at last all his evenings and allhis earnings would be spent in the public-house. 

She was right, and I had nothing more to say except to wish her successin her efforts. 

It is curious that the strongest protests against the evils of thevillage pubic, which one hears from village women, come from those whoare not themselves sufferers. Perhaps it is not curious. Instinctivelywe hide our sores, bodily and mental, from the public gaze. 

Not long ago I was in a small rustic village in Wiltshire, perhaps themost charming village I have seen in that country. There was no innor ale-house, and feeling very thirsty after my long walk I went to acottage and asked the woman I saw there for a drink of milk. She invitedme in, and spreading a clean cloth on the table, placed a jug of newmilk, a loaf, and butter before me. For these good things she proudlyrefused to accept payment. As she was a handsome young woman, with aclear, pleasant voice, I was glad to have her sit there and talk to mewhile I refreshed myself. Besides, I was in search of information andgot it from her during our talk. My object in going to the village wasto see a woman who, I had been told, was living there. I now heard thather cottage was close by, but unfortunately, while anxious to see her, Ihad no excuse for calling. 

"Do you think, " said I to my young hostess, "that it would do to tellher 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 ashilling as a gift from a stranger. We all have enough; there is not apoor person among us. "

"What a happy village!" I exclaimed. "Perhaps you are all totalabstainers. "

She laughed, and said that they all brewed their own beer--there was nota total abstainer among them. Every cottager made from fifty to eightygallons, or more, and they drank beer every day, but very moderately, while it lasted. They were all very sober; their children would have togo 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 anytime take a shilling from any one. 

It was the same everywhere in the district, she said, except in thatvillage which had no public-house. Not only were they better off, andindependent of blanket societies and charity in all forms, but they wereinfinitely happier. And after the day's work the men came home to spendthe 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 ifever a public-house was opened in that village, and if the men tookto spending their evenings in it, her husband with them, she wouldnot endure such a condition of things--she wondered that so many womenendured it--but would take her little ones and go away to earn her ownliving under some other roof!

Chapter Five: Wind, Wave, and Spirit

The rambles I have described were mostly inland: when by chance theytook us down to the sea our impressions and adventures appeared lessinteresting. Looking back on the holiday, it would seem to us a somewhatvacant time compared to one spent in wandering from village to village. I mean if we do not take into account that first impression which thesea invariably makes on us on returning to it after a long absence--theshock of recognition and wonder and joy as if we had been sufferingfrom loss of memory and it had now suddenly come back to us. That briefmoving experience over, there is little the sea can give us to comparewith the land. How could it be otherwise in our case, seeing that wewere by it in a crowd, our movements and way of life regulated for us inplaces which appear like overgrown and ill-organized convalescent homes?There was always a secret intense dislike of all parasitic and holidayplaces, an uncomfortable feeling which made the pleasure seem poor andthe remembrance of days so spent hardly worth dwelling on. And as weare able to keep in or throw out of our minds whatever we please, beingautocrats in our own little kingdom, I elected to cast away most of thememories of these comparatively insipid holidays. But not all, and ofthose I retain I will describe at least two, one in the present chapteron the East Anglian coast, the other later on. 

It was cold, though the month was August; it blew and the sky was greyand rain beginning to fall when we came down about noon to a small townon the Norfolk coast, where we hoped to find lodging and such comfortsas could be purchased out of a slender purse. It was a small modernpleasure town of an almost startling appearance owing to the materialused in building its straight rows of cottages and its ugly squarehouses and villas. This was an orange-brown stone found in theneighbourhood, the roofs being all of hard, black slate. I had neverseen houses of such a colour, it was stronger, more glaring andaggressive than the reddest brick, and there was not a green thing topartially screen or soften it, nor did the darkness of the wet weatherhave 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 whichsteps had been cut to give access to the beach, and beyond the cliffwe caught sight of the grey, desolate, wind-vexed sea. But the rain wascoming 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 aplace. 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 weknocked the same hateful landlady-face appeared with the same triumphantgleam in the fish-eyes and the same smile on the mouth that opened totell us delightedly that she and the town were "full up"; that never hadthere been known such a rush of visitors; applicants were being turnedaway every hour from every door!

After three miserable hours spent in this way we began inquiring at allthe shops, and eventually at one were told of a poor woman in a smallhouse in a street a good way back from the front who would perhaps beable to taken us in. To this place we went and knocked at a low door ina long blank wall in a narrow street; it was opened to us by a palethin sad-looking woman in a rusty black gown, who asked us into a shabbyparlour, 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 plighttook us into the kitchen behind the parlour, which was living- andworking-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, Ishould add, to dry and warm yourself by a big fire when wet andcold, and to eat and drink when you are hungry and thirsty. All thesepleasures were now ours, for very soon tea and chops were ready for us;and so strangely human, so sister-like did this quiet helpful womanseem after our harsh experiences on that rough rainy day--that wecongratulated ourselves on our good fortune in having found such ahaven, and soon informed her that we wanted no "better place. "

She worked with her needle to support herself and her one child, alittle boy of ten; and by and by when he came in pretty wet from someoutdoor occupation we made his acquaintance and the discovery that hewas 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 wasalways haunted by the fear of losing him. He was her boy, the child ofher body, exclusively her own, unlike all other boys, and her wise hearttold her that if she put him in a school he would be changed so that shewould no longer know him for her boy. For it is true that our schoolsare factories, with a machinery to unmake and remake, or fabricate, thesouls of children much in the way in which shoddy is manufactured. Youmay see a thousand rags or garments of a thousand shapes and colourscast in to be boiled, bleached, pulled to pieces, combed and woven, andfinally come out as a piece of cloth a thousand yards long of a uniformharmonious pattern, smooth, glossy, and respectable. His individualitygone, he would in a sense be lost to her; and although by nature aweak timid woman, though poor, and a stranger in a strange place, thisthought, or feeling, or "ridiculous delusion" as most people would callit, had made her strong, and she had succeeded in keeping her boy out ofschool. 

Hers was an interesting story. Left alone in the world she had marriedone in her own class, very happily as she imagined. He was in somebusiness in a country town, well off enough to provide a comfortablehome, and he was very good; in fact, his one fault was that he was toogood, too open-hearted and fond of associating with other good fellowslike himself, and of pledging them in the cup that cheers and at thesame time inebriates. Nevertheless, things went very well for a time, until the child was born, the business declined, and they began to be alittle pinched. Then it occurred to her that she, too, might be able todo something. She started dressmaking, and as she had good taste andwas clever and quick, her business soon prospered. This pleased him; itrelieved him from the necessity of providing for the home, and enabledhim to follow his own inclination, which was to take things easily--tobe an idle man, with a little ready money in his pocket for betting andother pleasures. The money was now provided out of "our business. " Thisstate of things continued without any change, except that process ofdegeneration which continued in him, until the child was about fouryears old, when all at once one day he told her they were not doingas well as they might. She was giving far too much of her time andattention to domestic matters--to the child especially. Business wasbusiness--a thing it was hard for a woman to understand--and it wasimpossible for her to give her mind properly to it with her thoughtsoccupied 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 makinginquiries and found that for a modest annual payment the boy could betaken proper care of at a distance by good decent people he had heardof. 

She had never suspected such a thought in his mind, and this proposalhad the effect of a stunning blow. She answered not one word: he saidhis say and went out, and she knew she would not see him again for manyhours, perhaps not for some days; she knew, too, that he would say nomore to her on the subject, that it would all be arranged about thechild with or without her consent. His will was law, her wishes nothing. For she was his wife and humble obedient slave; never had she pleadedwith or admonished him and never complained, even when, after her longday of hard work, he came in at ten or eleven o'clock at night withseveral of his pals, all excited with drink and noisy as himself, tocall for supper. Nevertheless she had been happy--intensely happy, because of the child. The love for the man she had married, wonderinghow one so bright and handsome and universally admired and likedcould stoop to her, who had nothing but love and worship to give inreturn--that love was now gone and was not missed, so much greater andmore 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 thedreadful separation, until the thought of it became unendurable and sheresolved to keep her child and sacrifice everything else. Secretly sheprepared for flight, getting together the few necessary things she couldcarry; then, with the child in her arms, she stole out one evening andbegan her flight, which took her all across England at its widest part, and ended at this small coast town, the best hiding-place she couldthink of. 

The boy was a queer little fellow, healthy but colourless, withstrangely beautiful grey eyes which, on first seeing them, almoststartled one with their intelligence. He was shy and almost obstinatelysilent, but when I talked to him on certain subjects the intensesuppressed interest he felt would show itself in his face, and by andby it would burst out in speech--an impetuous torrent of words in a highshrill voice. He reminded me of a lark in a cage. Watch it in its prisonwhen the sun shines forth--when, like the captive falcon in Dante, it is"cheated by a gleam"--its wing-tremblings, and all its little tentativemotions, how the excitement grows and grows in it, until, although shutup and flight denied it, the passion can no longer be contained and itbursts out in a torrent of shrill and guttural sounds, which, if it werefree and soaring, would be its song. His passion was all for nature, andhis mother out of her small earnings had managed to get quite a numberof volumes together for him. These he read and re-read until he knewthem by heart; and on Sundays, or any other day they could take, thosetwo lonely ones would take a basket containing their luncheon, her workand a book or two, and set out on a long ramble along the coast to passthe day in some solitary spot among the sandhills. 

With these two, the gentle woman and her quiet boy over his book, andthe kitchen fire to warm and dry us after each wetting, the bad weatherbecame quite bearable although it lasted many days. And it was amazinglybad. The wind blew with a fury from the sea; it was hard to walk againstit. 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, orlike children from a school, swarming over the green slope down to thebeach, 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 afresh 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 theever-troubled sea grew louder, so that, shut up in our little rooms inthat back street, we had it in our ears, except at intervals, when thewind howled loud enough to drown its great voice, and hurled tempests ofrain and hail against the roofs and windows. 

To me the most amazing thing was the spectacle of the swifts. It waslate for them, near the end of August; they should now have been faraway on their flight to Africa; yet here they were, delaying on thatdesolate east coast in wind and wet, more than a hundred of them. It wasstrange to see so many at one spot, and I could only suppose that theyhad congregated previous to migration at that unsuitable place, and werebeing kept back by the late breeders, who had not yet been wrought upto the point of abandoning their broods. They haunted a vast ruinousold barn-like building near the front, which was probably old a centurybefore the town was built, and about fifteen to twenty pairs had theirnests 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 descenta few birds could be seen to enter the holes, while others rushed out tojoin the throng, and then all rose and came down again and swept roundand round in a furious chase, shrieking as if mad. At all hours theydrew me to that spot, and standing there, marvelling at their swayingpower and the fury that possessed them, they appeared to me liketormented beings, and were like those doomed wretches in the halls ofEblis whose hearts were in a blaze of unquenchable fire, and who, every one with hands pressed to his breast, went spinning round in aneverlasting agonized dance. They were tormented and crazed by the twomost powerful instincts of birds pulling in opposite directions--theparental instinct and the passion of migration which called them to thesouth. 

In such weather, especially on that naked desolate coast, exposed tothe fury of the winds, one marvels at our modern craze for the sea; notmerely to come and gaze upon and listen to it, to renew our youth in itssalt, exhilarating waters and to lie in delicious idleness on the warmshingle or mossy cliff; but to be always, for days and weeks and evenfor 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 alife too confined and artificial in close dirty overcrowded cities. Itis to satisfy this craving that towns have sprung up everywhere on ourcoasts and extended their ugly fronts for miles and leagues, with theirtens of thousands of windows from which the city-sickened wretches maygaze and gaze and listen and feed their sick souls with the ocean. Thatis to say, during their indoor hours; at other times they walk or sitor lie as close as they can to it, following the water as it ebbs andreluctantly retiring before it when it returns. It was not so formerly, before the discovery was made that the sea could cure us. Probably ourgreat-grandfathers didn't even know they were sick; at all events, thosewho had to live in the vicinity of the sea were satisfied to be a littledistance from it, out of sight of its grey desolation and, if possible, out of hearing of its "accents disconsolate. " This may be seen anywhereon our coasts; excepting the seaports and fishing settlements, the townsand villages are almost always some distance from the sea, often in ahollow or at all events screened by rising ground and woods from it. Themodern seaside place has, in most cases, its old town or village not faraway but quite as near as the healthy ancients wished to be. 

The old village nearest to our little naked and ugly modern town wasdiscovered at a distance of about two miles, but it might have been twohundred, so great was the change to its sheltered atmosphere. Loiteringin its quiet streets among the old picturesque brick houses with tiledor thatched roofs and tall chimneys--ivy and rose and creeper-covered, with a background of old oaks and elms--I had the sensation of havingcome back to my own home. In that still air you could hear men and womentalking fifty or a hundred yards away, the cry or laugh of a child andthe clear crowing of a cock, also the smaller aerial sounds of nature, the tinkling notes of tits and other birdlings in the trees, the twitterof swallows and martins, and the "lisp of leaves and ripple of rain. " Itwas sweet and restful in that home-like place, and hard to leave it togo back to the front to face the furious blasts once more. Rut therewere compensations. 

The little town, we have seen, was overcrowded with late summervisitors, all eager for the sea yet compelled to waste so much precioustime shut up in apartments, and at every appearance of a slightimprovement in the weather they would pour out of the houses and thegreen slope would be covered with a crowd of many hundreds, all hurryingdown to the beach. The crowd was composed mostly of women--about threeto every man, I should say--and their children; and it was one of themost interesting crowds I had ever come across on account of the largenumber of persons in it of a peculiarly fine type, which chance hadbrought together at that spot. It was the large English blonde, andthere were so many individuals of this type that they gave a characterto the crowd so that those of a different physique and colour appearedto be fewer than they were and were almost overlooked. They came fromvarious places about the country, in the north and the Midlands, andappeared to be of the well-to-do classes; they, or many of them, werewith their families but without their lords. They were mostly tall andlarge in every way, very white-skinned, with light or golden hair andlarge light blue eyes. A common character of these women was their quietreposeful manner; they walked and talked and rose up and sat down anddid everything, in fact, with an air of deliberation; they gazed in aslow steady way at you, and were dignified, some even majestic, and werelike a herd of large beautiful white cows. The children, too, especiallythe girls, some almost as tall as their large mothers, though still inshort frocks, were very fine. The one pastime of these was paddling, andit was a delight to see their bare feet and legs. The legs of thosewho had been longest on the spot--probably several weeks in someinstances--were of a deep nutty brown hue suffused with pink; afterthese a gradation of colour, light brown tinged with buff, pinkish buffand cream, like the Gloire de Dijon rose; and so on to the delicatetender pink of the clover blossom; and, finally, the purest ivorywhite of the latest arrivals whose skins had not yet been caressed andcoloured by sun and wind. 

How beautiful are the feet of these girls by the sea who bring us gladtidings of a better time to come and the day of a nobler courage, afreer larger life when garments which have long oppressed and hinderedshall have been cast away! It was, as I have said, mere chance which hadbrought 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 likeagain. As a fact I did return when August came round and found a crowdof a different character. The type was there but did not predominate:it was no longer the herd of beautiful white and strawberry cows withgolden horns and large placid eyes. Nothing in fact was the same, forwhen I looked for the swifts there were no more than about twenty birdsinstead of over a hundred, and although just on the eve of departurethey were not behaving in the same excited manner. 

Probably I should not have thought so much about that particular crowdin that tempestuous August, and remembered it so vividly, but for thepresence of three persons in it and the strange contrast they made tothe large white type I have described. These were a woman and her twolittle girls, aged about eight and ten respectively, but very small fortheir years. She was a little black haired and black-eyed woman with apale sad dark face, on which some great grief or tragedy had left itsshadow; very quiet and subdued in her manner; she would sit on a chairon the beach when the weather permitted, a book on her knees, while hertwo little ones played about, chasing and flying from the waves, orwith the aid of their long poles vaulting from rock to rock. Theywere dressed in black frocks and scarlet blouses, which set off theirbeautiful small dark faces; their eyes sparkled like black diamonds, andtheir loose hair was a wonder to see, a black mist or cloud about theirheads and necks composed of threads fine as gossamer, blacker than jetand shining like spun glass-hair that looked as if no comb or brushcould ever tame its beautiful wildness. And in spirit they were whatthey seemed: such a wild, joyous, frolicsome spirit with such grace andfleetness one does not look for in human beings, but only in birds orin some small bird-like volatile mammal--a squirrel or a marmoset of thetropical forest, or the chinchilla of the desolate mountain slopes, the swiftest, wildest, loveliest, most airy and most vocal of smallbeasties. Occasionally to watch their wonderful motions more closely andhave speech with them, I followed when they raced over the sands or flewabout over the slippery rocks, and felt like a cochin-china fowl, ormuscovy duck, or dodo, trying to keep pace with a humming-bird. Theirvoices were well suited to their small brilliant forms; not loud, thoughhigh-pitched and singularly musical and penetrative, like the highclear notes of a skylark at a distance. They also reminded me ofcertain notes, which have a human quality, in some of our songsters--theswallow, redstart, pied wagtail, whinchat, and two or three others. Suchpure and beautiful sounds are sometimes heard in human voices, chieflyin children, when they are talking and laughing in joyous excitement. But for any sort of conversation they were too volatile; before I couldget a dozen words from them they would be off again, flying andflitting along the margin, like sandpipers, and beating the clear-voicedsandpiper at his own aerial graceful game. 

By and by I was favoured with a fine exhibition of the spirit animatingthese two little things. The weather had made it possible for the crowdof visitors to go down and scatter itself over the beach, when the usualblack cloud sprang up and soon burst on us in a furious tempest ofwind and rain, sending the people flying back to the shelter of a largestructure erected for such purposes against the cliff. It was a vastbarn-like place, open to the front, the roof supported by woodencolumns, and here in a few minutes some three or four hundred personswere gathered, mostly women and their girls, white and blue-eyed withlong wet golden hair hanging down their backs. Finding a vacant placeon the bench, I sat down next to a large motherly-looking woman with arobust 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 stormto blow over, and presently I noticed my two wild-haired dark littlegirls moving about in the crowd. It was impossible not to seen them, for they could not keep still a moment. They were here, there, andeverywhere, playing hide-and-seek and skipping and racing wherever theycould find an opening, and by and by, taking hold of each other, theystarted dancing. It was a pretty spectacle, but most interesting to seewas the effect produced on the other children, the hundred girls, bigand little, the little ones especially, who had been standing theretired and impatient to get out to the sea, and who were now becomingmore and more excited as they gazed, until, like children when listeningto lively music, they began moving feet and hands and soon their wholebodies in time to the swift movements of the little dancers. At last, plucking up courage, first one, then another, joined them, and werecaught as they came and whirled round and round in a manner quite newto them and which they appeared to find very delightful. By and by Iobserved that the little rosy-faced dumpy girl on my neighbour's kneeswas taking the infection; she was staring, her blue eyes opened to theirwidest 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 mothersaid "No, " because she was so little, and could never fly round likethat, 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 wascompelled to release her; and down she slipped, and after standing stillwith her little arms and closed hands held up as if to collect herselfbefore plunging into the new tremendous adventure, she rushed outtowards the dancers. One of them saw her coming, and instantly quittingthe child she was waltzing with flew to meet her, and catching her roundthe middle began spinning her about as if the solid little thing weighedno more than a feather. But it proved too much for her; very soon shecame down and broke into a loud cry, which brought her mother instantlyto her, and she was picked up and taken back to the seat and held to thebroad bosom and soothed with caresses and tender words until the sobsbegan to subside. Then, even before the tears were dry, her eyes wereonce more gazing at the tireless little dancers, taking on child afterchild as they came timidly forward to have a share in the fun, and oncemore she began to plead with her "mummy, " and would not be denied, forshe was a most determined little Saxon, until getting her way she rushedout for a second trial. Again the little dancer saw her coming andflew to her like a bird to its mate, and clasping her laughed her merrymusical little laugh. It was her "sudden glory, " an expression of puredelight in her power to infuse her own fire and boundless gaiety of soulinto all these little blue-eyed rosy phlegmatic lumps of humanity. 

What was it in these human mites, these fantastic Brownies, which, inthat crowd of Rowenas and their children, made them seem like beings notonly of another race, but of another species? How came they alone to bedistinguished among so many by that irresponsible gaiety, as of themost volatile of wild creatures, that quickness of sense and mind andsympathy, that variety and grace and swiftness--all these brilliantexotic qualities harmoniously housed in their small beautiful elasticand vigorous frames? It was their genius, their character--somethingderived from their race. But what race? Looking at their mother watchingher little ones at their frolics with dark shining eyes--the smalloval-faced brown-skinned woman with blackest hair--I could but say thatshe was an Iberian, pure and simple, and that her children were likeher. In Southern Europe that type abounds; it is also to be met withthroughout Britain, perhaps most common in the southern counties, and itis not uncommon in East Anglia. Indeed, I think it is in Norfolkwhere we may best see the two most marked sub-types in which it isdivided--the two extremes. The small stature, narrow head, dark skin, black hair and eyes are common to both, and in both these physicalcharacters are correlated with certain mental traits, as, for instance, a peculiar vivacity and warmth of disposition; but they are high andlow. In the latter sub-division the skin is coarse in texture, brown orold parchment in colour, with little red in it; the black hair is alsocoarse, the forehead small, the nose projecting, and the facial angleindicative of a more primitive race. One might imagine that these peoplehad been interred, along with specimens of rude pottery and bone andflint implements, a long time back, about the beginning of the BronzeAge perhaps, and had now come out of their graves and put on modernclothes. At all events I don't think a resident in Norfolk wouldhave much difficulty in picking out the portraits of some of hisfellow-villagers in Mr. Reed's Prehistoric Peeps. 

The mother and her little ones were of the higher sub-type: theyhad delicate skins, beautiful faces, clear musical voices. They wereIberians in blood, but improved; purified and refined as by fire;gentleized and spiritualized, and to the lower types down to theaboriginals, as is the bright consummate flower to leaf and stem androot. 

Often and often we are teased and tantalized and mocked by that oldquestion:

 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 putit both ways. And by black we mean black with orange-brown lights init--the eye called tortoise-shell; and velvety browns with other browns, also hazels. Blue includes all blues, from ultramarine, or violet, tothe palest blue of a pale sky; and all greys down to the grey that isalmost white. Our preference for this or that colour is supposed todepend on nothing but individual taste, or fancy, and association. Ibelieve it is something more, but I do find that we are very apt to beswayed this way and that by the colour of the eyes of the people we meetin life, according as they (the people) attract or repel us. The eyes ofthe two little girls were black as polished black diamonds until lookedat closely, when they appeared a beautiful deep brown on which the blackpupils were seen distinctly; they were so lovely that I, predisposed toprefer dark to light, felt that this question was now definitely settledfor me--that black was best. That irresistible charm, the flame-likespirit which raised these two so much above the others--how could it gowith 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 notknow how this came about; it may have been the sight of some smallchild'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 fromnothing but the "waste shining of the sky. " At all events, there theywere, remembered again, looking at me from the past, blue eyes that werebeautiful and dear to me, whose blue colour was associated with everysweetness and charm in child and woman and with all that is best andhighest in human souls; and I could not and had no wish to resist theirappeal. 

Then came a new experience of the eye that is blue--a meeting with onewho almost seemed to be less flesh than spirit. A middle-aged lady, frail, very frail; exceedingly pale from long ill-health, prematurelywhite-haired, with beautiful grey eyes, gentle but wonderfully bright. Altogether she was like a being compounded as to her grosser part offoam and mist and gossamer and thistledown, and was swayed by everybreath of air, and who, should she venture abroad in rough weather, would be lifted and blown away by the gale and scattered like mistover the earth. Yet she, so frail, so timid, was the one member ofthe community who had set herself to do the work of a giant--that ofchampioning all ill-used and suffering creatures, wild or tame, holdinga protecting shield over them against the innate brutality of thepeople. She had been abused and mocked and jeered at by many, whileothers had regarded her action with an amused smile or else with a coldindifference. But eventually some, for very shame, had been drawn to herside, and a change in the feeling of the people had resulted; domesticanimals were treated better, and it was no longer universally believedthat all wild animals, especially those with wings, existed only thatmen might amuse themselves by killing and wounding and trapping andcaging and persecuting them in various other ways. 

The sight of that burning and shining spirit in its frail tenement--fordid I not actually see her spirit and the very soul of her in thoseeyes?--was the last of the unforgotten experiences I had at that placewhich had startled and repelled me with its ugliness. 

But, no, there was one more, marvellous as any--the experience of a dayof days, one of those rare days when nature appears to us spiritualizedand is no longer nature, when that which had transfigured this visibleworld is in us too, and it becomes possible to believe--it is almost aconviction--that the burning and shining spirit seen and recognized inone among a thousand we have known is in all of us and in all things. Insuch moments it is possible to go beyond even the most advanced of themodern physicists who hold that force alone exists, that matter is but adisguise, a shadow and delusion; for we may add that force itself--thatwhich we call force or energy--is but a semblance and shadow of theuniversal soul. 

The change in the weather was not sudden; the furious winds droppedgradually; the clouds floated higher in the heavens, and were of alighter grey; there were wider breaks in them, showing the lucid bluebeyond; and the sea grew quieter. It had raved and roared too long, beating against the iron walls that held it back, and was now spentand fallen into an uneasy sleep, but still moved uneasily and moaneda little. Then all at once summer returned, coming like a thief in thenight, for when it was morning the sun rose in splendour and power ina sky without a cloud on its vast azure expanse, on a calm sea withno motion but that scarcely perceptible rise and fall as of one thatsleeps. As the sun rose higher the air grew warmer until it was fullsummer heat, but although a "visible heat, " it was never oppressive; forall that day we were abroad, and as the tide ebbed a new country thatwas neither earth nor sea was disclosed, an infinite expanse of paleyellow sand stretching away on either side, and further and further outuntil it mingled and melted into the sparkling water and faintly seenline of foam on the horizon. And over all--the distant sea, the ridgeof low dunes marking where the earth ended and the flat, yellow expansebetween--there brooded a soft bluish silvery haze. A haze that blottednothing out, but blended and interfused them all until earth and airand 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 toocoarse, since in describing it we put it before the mental eye assomething distinctly visible, a thing of itself and separate. But it isnot so in nature; the effect is of something almost invisible and isyet a part of all and makes all things--sky and sea and land--asunsubstantial as itself. Even living, moving things had that aspect. Farout on the lowest further strip of sand, which appeared to be on a levelwith the sea, gulls were seen standing in twos and threes and smallgroups and in rows; but they did not look like gulls--familiar birds, gull-shaped with grey and white plumage. They appeared twice as big asgulls, and were of a dazzling whiteness and of no definite shape: thoughstanding 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 roseand floated away they were no longer shining and white, but like paleshadows of winged forms faintly visible in the haze. 

They were not birds but spirits--beings that lived in or were passingthrough the world and now, like the heat, made visible; and I, standingfar out on the sparkling sands, with the sparkling sea on one side andthe line of dunes, indistinctly seen as land, on the other, was one ofthem; and if any person had looked at me from a distance he would haveseen me as a formless shining white being standing by the sea, and thenperhaps as a winged shadow floating in the haze. It was only necessaryto put out one's arms to float. That was the effect on my mind: thisnatural world was changed to a supernatural, and there was no morematter nor force in sea or land nor in the heavens above, but onlyspirit. 

Chapter Six: By Swallowfield

One of the most attractive bits of green and wooded country near LondonI know lies between Reading and Basingstoke and includes Aldermastonwith its immemorial oaks in Berkshire and Silchester with Pamber Forestin Hampshire. It has long been one of my favourite haunts, summer andwinter, and it is perhaps the only wooded place in England where I havea home feeling as strong as that which I experience in certain placesamong the South Wiltshire downs and in the absolutely flat country onthe Severn, in Somerset, and the flat country in Cambridgeshire and EastAnglia, especially at Lynn and about Ely. 

I am now going back to my first visit to this green retreat; it was inthe course of one of those Easter walks I have spoken of, and the waywas through Reading and by Three Mile Cross and Swallowfield. On thisoccasion I conceived a dislike to Reading which I have never quite gotover, for it seemed an unconscionably big place for two slow pedestriansto leave behind. Worse still, when we did leave it we found that Readingwould not leave us. It was like a stupendous octopus in red brickwhich threw out red tentacles, miles and miles long in variousdirections--little rows and single and double cottages and villas, allin red, red brick and its weary accompaniment, the everlasting hardslate roof. These square red brick boxes with sloping slate tops arebuilt as close as possible to the public road, so that the passer-bylooking in at the windows may see the whole interior--wall-papers, pictures, furniture, and oftentimes the dull expressionless face of thewoman 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 longerrecognizable as the hamlet described in Our Village, but it wassaddening to look at the cottage in which Mary Russell Mitford lived andwas on the whole very happy with her flowers and work for thirty yearsof her life, in its present degraded state. It has a sign now and callsitself the "Mitford Arms" and a "Temperance Hotel, " and we were toldthat you could get tea and bread and butter there but nothing else. Thecottage has been much altered since Miss Mitford's time, and the openspace 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 thosenever-ending roadside red-brick cottages and villas, for we were not yetproperly out of the hated biscuit metropolis. It was a big village withthe houses scattered far and wide over several square miles of country, but just where the church stands it is shady and pleasant. The prettychurch yard too is very deeply shaded and occupies a small hill with theLoddon flowing partly round it, then taking its swift way through thevillage. Miss Mitford's monument is a plain, almost an ugly, granitecross, 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 whenliving 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 whenMiss Mitford died, but that he remembered her well and she was a verypleasant little woman. Others in the place who remembered her said thesame--that she was very pleasant and sweet. We know that she was sweetand charming, but unfortunately the portraits we have of her do notgive that impression. They represent her as a fat common-place lookingperson, a little vulgar perhaps. I fancy the artists were bunglers. Ipossess a copy of a very small pencil sketch made of her face by a dearold lady friend of mine, now dead, about the year 1851 or 2. My friendhad a gift for portraiture in a peculiar way. When she saw a face thatgreatly interested her, in a drawing-room, on a platform, in the street, anywhere, it remained very vividly in her mind and on going home shewould sketch it, and some of these sketches of well known persons arewonderfully good. She was staying in the country with a friend who drovewith her to Swallowfield to call on Miss Mitford, and on her return toher friend's house she made the little sketch, and in this tiny portraitI can see the refinement, the sweetness, the animation and charm whichshe undoubtedly possessed. 

But let me now venture to step a little outside of my own province, mysmall plot--a poor pedestrian's unimportant impressions of places andfaces; all these p's come by accident; and this I put in parentheticallyjust because an editor solemnly told me a while ago that he couldn'tabide and wouldn't have alliteration's artful aid in his periodical. Letus leave the subject of what Miss Mitford was to those of her day whoknew her; a thousand lovely personalities pass away every year and in alittle while are no more remembered than the bright-plumaged bird thatfalls in the tropical forest, or the vanished orchid bloom of which someone has said that the angels in heaven can look on no more beautifulthing. Leaving all that, let us ask what remains to us of anothergeneration of all she was and did?

She was a prolific writer, both prose and verse, and, as we know, had anextraordinary vogue in her own time. Anything that came from her pen hadan immediate success; indeed, so highly was she regarded that nothingshe chose to write, however poor, could fail. And she certainly didwrite a good deal of poor stuff: it was all in a sense poor, but booksand books, poor soul, she had to write. It was in a sense poor becauseit was mostly ambitious stuff, and, as the proverb says, "You cannot flylike an eagle with the wings of a wren. " She was driven to fly, and gaveher little wings too much to do, and her flights were apt to be merelittle weak flutterings over the surface of the ground. A wren, andshe 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 tohis devoted mother, and who day after day, year after year, gobbled upher earnings, and then would hungrily go on squawking for more until hestumbled into the grave. Alas! he was too long in dying; she was wornout by then, the little heart beating not so fast, and the bright littlebrain growing dim and very tired. 

Now all the ambitious stuff she wrote to keep the cormorant and, incidentally, to immortalize herself, has fallen deservedly intooblivion. But we--some of us--do not forget and never want to forgetMary Russell Mitford. Her letters remain--the little friendly letterswhich came from her pen like balls of silvery down from a sun-ripenedplant, 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 sketchesabout the poor little hamlet, in which she lived so long and labouredso hard to support herself and her parents, the turtledove mated with acormorant. Driven to produce work and hard up for a subject, in a happymoment she took up this humble one lying at her own door and allowed herself to write naturally even as in her most intimate letters. This isthe reason of the vitality of Our Tillage; it was simple, natural, andreflected the author herself, her tender human heart, her impulsivenature, her bright playful humorous spirit. There is no thought, no mindstuff in it, and it is a classic! It is about the country, and she hasso little observation that it might have been written in a town, out ofa book, away from nature's sights and sounds. Her rustic charactersare not comparable to those of a score or perhaps two or three score ofother writers who treat of such subjects. The dialogue, when she makesthem talk, is unnatural, and her invention so poor that when she puts ina little romance of her own making one regrets it. And so one might goon picking it all to pieces like a dandelion blossom. Nevertheless itendures, outliving scores of in a way better books on the same themes, because her own delightful personality manifests itself and shines inall these little pictures. This short passage describing how she tookLizzie, the little village child she loved, to gather cowslips in themeadows, will serve as an illustration. 

 They who know these feelings (and who is so happy as not tohave known some of them) will understand why Alfieri became powerless, and Froissart dull; and why even needlework, the most effectivesedative, that grand soother and composer of women's distress, failsto comfort me today. I will go out into the air this cool, pleasantafternoon, and try what that will do. .. . I will go to the meadows, thebeautiful meadows and I will have my materials of happiness, Lizzie andMay, and a basket for flowers, and we will make a cowslip ball. "Didyou 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 deepnarrow lane, whose hedges seem to meet over the water, and win our wayto the little farmhouse at the end. "Through the farmyard, Lizzie; overthe gate; never mind the cows; they are quiet enough. " "I don't mind'em, " said Miss Lizzie, boldly and' truly, and with a proud affrontedair, displeased at being thought to mind anything, and showing by herattitude and manner some design of proving her courage by an attack onthe largest of the herd, in the shape of a pull by the tail. "I don'tmind 'em. " "I know you don't, Lizzie; but let them, alone and don'tchase the turkey-cock. Come to me, my dear!" and, for wonder, Lizziecame. 

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 gruntinghad disturbed the repose of a still more enormous Newfoundland dog, theguardian of the yard. 

The beautiful white greyhound's mocking treatment of the surly dog onthe chain then follows, and other pretty scenes and adventures, untilafter some mishaps and much trouble the cowslip ball is at lengthcompleted. 

What a concentration of fragrance and beauty it was! Golden and sweet tosatiety! rich in sight, and touch, and smell! Lizzie was enchanted, andran off with her prize, hiding amongst the trees in the very coynessof ecstasy, as if any human eye, even mine, would be a restraint on herinnocent raptures. 

Here the very woman is revealed to us, her tender and livelydisposition, her impulsiveness and childlike love of fun and delight ineverything on earth. We see in such a passage what her merit reallyis, the reason of our liking or "partiality" for her. Her pleasure ineverything makes everything interesting, and in displaying her feelingwithout art or disguise she succeeds in giving what we may call aliterary expression to personal charm--that quality which is almostuntranslatable into written words. Many women possess it; it is in themand issues from them, and is like an essential oil in a flower, but toovolatile to be captured and made use of. Furthermore, women when theywrite are as a rule even more conventional than men, more artificial andout of and away from themselves. 

I do not know that any literary person will agree with me; I havegone aside to write about Miss Mitford mainly for my own satisfaction. Frequently when I have wanted to waste half an hour pleasantly witha book I have found myself picking up "Our Village" from among manyothers, some waiting for a first perusal, and I wanted to know why thiswas so--to find out, if not to invent, some reason for my liking whichwould not make me ashamed. 

At Swallowfield we failed to find a place to stay at; there was nosuch place; and of the inns, named, I think, the "Crown, " "Cricketers, ""Bird-in-the-Hand, " and "George and Dragon, " only one, was said toprovide accommodation for travellers as the law orders, but on going tothe 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 oldramshackle, well-nigh ruinous inn there. It was a wretched place, smelling of mould and dry-rot; however, it was not so bad after a firehad been lighted in the grate, but first the young girl who waited on usbrought in a bundle of newspapers, which she proceeded to thrust up thechimney-flue and kindle, "to warm the flue and make the fire burn, " sheexplained. 

On the following day, the weather being milder, we rambled on throughwoods and lanes, visiting several villages, and arrived in the afternoonat Silchester, where we had resolved to put up for the night. By a happychance we found a pleasant cottage on the common to stay at and pleasantpeople in it, so that we were glad to sit down for a week there, toloiter about the furzy waste, or prowl in the forest and haunt the oldwalls; but it was pleasant even indoors with that wide prospect beforethe window, the wooded country stretching many miles away to the hillsof Kingsclere, blue in the distance and crowned with their beechen ringsand groves. Of Roman Calleva itself and the thoughts I had there I willwrite in the following chapter; here I will only relate how on EasterSunday, two days after arriving, we went to morning service in the oldchurch standing on a mound inside the walls, a mile from the village andcommon. 

It came to pass that during the service the sun began to shine verybrightly after several days of cloud and misty windy wet weather, andthat brilliance and the warmth in it served to bring a butterfly out ofhiding; then another; then a third; red admirals all; and they were seenthrough all the prayers, and psalms, and hymns, and lessons, and thesermon preached by the white-haired Rector, fluttering against thetranslucent glass, wanting to be out in that splendour and renew theirlife after so long a period of suspension. But the glass was betweenthem and their world of blue heavens and woods and meadow flowers; thenI thought that after the service I would make an attempt to get themout; but soon reflected that to release them it would be necessary tocapture them first, and that that could not be done without a ladder andbutterfly net. Among the women (ladies) on either side of and beforeme there were no fewer than five wearing aigrettes of egret andbird-of-paradise plumes in their hats or bonnets, and these five allremained to take part in that ceremony of eating bread and drinking winein remembrance of an event supposed to be of importance to their souls, here and hereafter. It saddened me to leave my poor red admirals intheir prison, beating their red wings against the coloured glass--toleave them too in such company, where the aigrette wearers wereworshipping a little god of their own little imaginations, who did notcreate and does not regard the swallow and dove and white egret andbird-of-paradise, and who was therefore not my god and whose will asthey understood it was nothing to me. 

It was a consolation when I went out, still thinking of the butterfliesin their prison, and stood by the old ruined walls grown over withivy and crowned with oak and holly trees, to think that in another twothousand years there will be no archaeologist and no soul in Silchester, or anywhere else in Britain, or in the world, who would take the troubleto dig up the remains of aigrette-wearers and their works, and who wouldcare 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 abundantrains have more than half stripped the oaks of their yellow leaves. Butthe rain is over now, the sky once more a pure lucid blue above me--allaround me, in fact, since I am standing high on the top of the ancientstupendous earthwork, grown over with oak wood and underwood of hollyand thorn and hazel with tangle of ivy and bramble and briar. It ismarvellously still; no sound from the village reaches me; I only hearthe faint rustle of the dead leaves as they fall, and the robin, for onespied me here and has come to keep me company. At intervals he spurtsout his brilliant little fountain of sound; and that sudden brightmelody and the bright colour of the sunlit translucent leaves seem likeone thing. Nature is still, and I am still, standing concealed amongtrees, or moving cautiously through the dead russet bracken. Not thatI am expecting to get a glimpse of the badger who has his hermitage inthis solitary place, but I am on forbidden ground, in the heart of asacred pheasant preserve, where one must do one's prowling warily. Hardby, almost within a stone's-throw of the wood-grown earthwork on which Istand, are the ruinous walls of Roman Calleva--the Silchester whichthe antiquarians have been occupied in uncovering these dozen yearsor longer. The stone walls, too, like the more ancient earthwork, areovergrown with trees and brambles and ivy. The trees have grown upon thewall, sending roots deep down between the stones, through the crumblingcement; and so fast are they anchored that never a tree falls but itbrings down huge masses of masonry with it. This slow levelling processhas been going on for centuries, and it was doubtless in this way thatthe buildings within the walls were pulled down long ages ago. Then theaction of the earth-worms began, and floors and foundations, with fallenstones and tiles, were gradually buried in the soil, and what was oncea city was a dense thicket of oak and holly and thorn. Finally the woodwas 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 theentire history of this green walled space before me--less than twentycenturies in duration--does not seem so very long compared with that ofthe huge earthen wall I am standing on, which dates back to prehistorictimes. 

Standing here, knee-deep in the dead ruddy bracken, in the "colouredshade" of the oaks, idly watching the leaves fall fluttering to theground, thinking in an aimless way of the remains of the two ancientcities before me, the British and the Roman, and of their comparativeantiquity, I am struck with the thought that the sweet sensationsproduced in me by the scene differ in character from the feeling I havehad in other solitary places. The peculiar sense of satisfaction, ofrestfulness, of peace, experienced here is very perfect; but in thewilderness, where man has never been, or has at all events left no traceof his former presence, there is ever a mysterious sense of loneliness, of desolation, underlying our pleasure in nature. Here it seems goodto know, or to imagine, that the men I occasionally meet in my solitaryrambles, and those I see in the scattered rustic village hard by, are ofthe same race, and possibly the descendants, of the people who occupiedthis spot in the remote past--Iberian and Celt, and Roman and Saxon andDane. If that hard-featured and sour-visaged old gamekeeper, with thecold 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 inhand, 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 themassacre of the inhabitants of the pleasant little city at my feet. Byand by, leaving the ruins, I may meet with other villagers of differentfeatures and different colour in hair, skin, and eyes, and of apleasanter expression; and in them I may see the remote descendants ofother older races of men, some who were lords here before the Romanscame, and of others before them, even back to Neolithic times. 

This, I take it, is a satisfaction, a sweetness and peace to the soulin nature, because it carries with it a sense of the continuity ofthe human race, its undying vigour, its everlastingness. After all thetempests that have overcome it, through all mutations in such immensestretches 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 wasthe oldest in the district--a century old, it was said; where the peoplewere the children's children of emigrants from Europe who had conqueredand colonized the country, and had enjoyed but half a century ofnational life. But the people who had possessed the land before theseemigrants--what of them? They, were but a memory, a tradition, a storytold in books and hardly more to us than a fable; perhaps they had dweltthere for long centuries, or for thousands of years; perhaps they hadcome, a wandering horde, to pass quickly away like a flight of migratinglocusts; for no memorial existed, no work of their hands, not thefaintest trace of their occupancy. 

Walking one day at the side of a ditch, which had been newly cut througha meadow at the end of our plantation, I caught sight of a small blackobject protruding from the side of the cutting, which turned out to bea fragment of Indian pottery made of coarse clay, very black, and rudelyornamented on one side. On searching further a few more pieces werefound. I took them home and preserved them carefully, experiencinga novel and keen sense of pleasure in their possession; for thoughworthless, they were man's handiwork, the only real evidence I had comeupon of that vanished people who had been before us; and it was as ifthose bits of baked clay, with a pattern incised on them by a man'sfinger-nail, had in them some magical property which enabled me torealize the past, and to see that vacant plain repeopled with long deadand forgotten men. 

Doubtless we all possess the feeling in some degree--the sense ofloneliness and desolation and dismay at the thought of an uninhabitedworld, and of long periods when man was not. Is it not the absence ofhuman life or remains rather than the illimitable wastes of thick-ribbedice and snow which daunts us at the thought of Arctic and Antarcticregions? Again, in the story of the earth, as told by geology, do we notalso experience the same sense of dismay, and the soul shrinking backon itself, when we come in imagination to those deserts desolate in timewhen the continuity of the race was broken and the world dispeopled?The doctrine of evolution has made us tolerant of the thought of humananimals, --our progenitors as we must believe--who were of brutishaspect, and whose period on this planet was so long that, comparedwith it, the historic and prehistoric periods are but as the life of anindividual. A quarter of a million years has perhaps elapsed since thebeginning of that cold period which, at all events in this part of theearth, killed Palaeolithic man; yet how small a part of his racial lifeeven that time would seem if, as some believe, his remains may be tracedas far back as the Eocene! But after this rude man of the Quaternary andTertiary epochs had passed away there is a void, a period which to theimagination seems measureless, when sun and moon and stars looked on awaste and mindless world. When man once more reappears he seems to havebeen re-created on somewhat different lines. 

It is this break in the history of the human race which amazes anddaunts us, which "shadows forth the heartless voids and immensitiesof the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought ofannihilation. "

Here, in these words of Hermann Melville, we are let all at once intothe true meaning of those disquieting and seemingly indefinable emotionsso often experienced, even by the most ardent lovers of nature and ofsolitude, in uninhabited deserts, on great mountains, and on the sea. We find here the origin of that horror of mountains which was so commonuntil recent times. A friend once confessed to me that he was alwaysprofoundly unhappy at sea during long voyages, and the reason was thathis sustaining belief in a superintending Power and in immortalityleft him when he was on that waste of waters, which have no humanassociations. The feeling, so intense in his case, is known to most ifnot all of us; but we feel it faintly as a disquieting element in natureof which we may be but vaguely conscious. 

Most travelled Englishmen who have seen much of the world and residedfor long or short periods in many widely separated countries wouldprobably agree that there is a vast difference in the feeling ofstrangeness, or want of harmony with our surroundings, experiencedin old and in new countries. It is a compound feeling and some of itselements are the same in both cases; but in one there is a disquietingelement which the other is without. Thus, in Southern Europe, Egypt, Syria, and in many countries of Asia, and some portions of Africa, thewanderer from home might experience dissatisfaction and be ill atease and wish for old familiar sights and sounds; but in a colonylike Tasmania, and in any new country where there were no remains ofantiquity, no links with the past, the feeling would be very much morepoignant, and in some scenes and moods would be like that sense ofdesolation which assails us at the thought of the heartless voids andimmensities of the universe. 

He recognizes that he is in a world on which we have but recentlyentered, 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 humanassociations make in the effect produced on us by visible nature. Inthis silent solitary place, with the walled field which was once CallevaAtrebatum 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 myindividual life is but a span, a breath; that in a little while I toomust wither and mingle like one of those fallen yellow leaves with themould, does not grieve me. I know it and yet disbelieve it; for am Inot here alive, where men have inhabited for thousands of years, feelingwhat I now feel--their oneness with everlasting nature and the undyinghuman family? The very soil and wet carpet of moss on which theirfeet were set, the standing trees and leaves, green or yellow, therain-drops, the air they breathed, the sunshine in their eyes andhearts, was part of them, not a garment, but of their very substance andspirit. Feeling this, death becomes an illusion; and the illusion thatthe continuous life of the species (its immortality) and the individuallife 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 natureof instincts and ineradicable. And this very one which our reasoncan prove to be the most childish, the absurdest of all, is yet thegreatest, the most fruitful of good for the race. To those who havediscarded supernatural religion, it may be a religion, or at all eventsthe foundation to build one on. For there is no comfort to the healthynatural man in being told that the good he does will not be interredwith his bones, since he does not wish to think, and in fact refusesto think, that his bones will ever be interred. Joy in the "choirinvisible" is to him a mere poetic fancy, or at best a rarefiedtranscendentalism, which fails to sustain him. If altruism, or thereligion of humanity, is a living vigorous plant, and as some believeflourishes 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 pleasurebe in wild life, his main object to get nearer to the creatures, to growday 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--thecall is as sweet and persistent in his ears. If he is on a green levelcountry with blue hills on the horizon, then, especially in the earlymorning, is the call sweetest, most irresistible. Come away--come away:this blue world has better things than any in that green, too familiarplace. The startling scream of the jay--you have heard it a thousandtimes. It is pretty to watch the squirrel in his chestnut-red coat amongthe 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 whiteor white and rosy-red, in his little paws; but you have seen it so manytimes--come away:

It was not this voice alone which made me forsake the green oaks ofSilchester and Pamber Forest, to ramble for a season hither and thitherin Wiltshire, Dorset, and Somerset; there was something for me to doin those places, but the call made me glad to go. And longweeks--months--went by in my wanderings, mostly in open downlandcountry, too often under gloomy skies, chilled by cold winds and wettedby cold rains. Then, having accomplished my purpose and discoveredincidentally that the call had mocked me again, as on so many previousoccasions, I returned once more to the old familiar green place. 

Crossing the common, I found that where it had been dry in spring onemight now sink to his knees in the bog; also that the snipe which hadvanished for a season were back at the old spot where they used tobreed. It was a bitter day near the end of an unpleasant summer, withthe 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 escapefrom the wind and bask like some half-frozen serpent or lizard in theheat was the highest good one could look for in such weather. To seeanything new in wild life was not to be hoped for. 

That old grey, crumbling wall of ancient Calleva, crowned with big oakand ash and thorn and holly, and draped with green bramble and trailingivy and creepers--how good a shelter it is on a cold, rough day! Movingsoftly, so as not to disturb any creature, I yet disturbed a ring snakelying close to the wall, into which it quickly vanished; and then fromtheir old place among the stones a pair of blue stock-doves rushed outwith clatter of wings. The same blue doves which I had known for threeyears at that spot! A few more steps and I came upon as pretty a littlescene in bird life as one could wish for: twenty to twenty-five smallbirds of different species--tits, wrens, dunnocks, thrushes, blackbirds, chaffinches, yellowhammers--were congregated on the lower outside twigsof a bramble bush and on the bare ground beside it close to the foot ofthe wall. The sun shone full on that spot, and they had met for warmthand for company. The tits and wrens were moving quietly about in thebush; others were sitting idly or preening their feathers on the twigsor the ground. Most of them were making some kind of small sound--littleexclamatory chirps, and a variety of chirrupings, producing the effectof a pleasant conversation going on among them. This was suddenlysuspended on my appearance, but the alarm was soon over, and, seeing meseated on a fallen stone and, motionless, they took no further noticeof me. Two blackbirds were there, sitting a little way apart on the bareground; these were silent, the raggedest, rustiest-looking members ofthat little company; for they were moulting, and their drooping wingsand tails had many unsightly gaps in them where the old feathers haddropped out before the new ones had grown. They were suffering from thatannual sickness with temporary loss of their brightest faculties whichall birds experience in some degree; the unseasonable rains and coldwinds 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 chaffinchdropped down from the bush, and, advancing to one of the two, therustiest and most forlorn-looking, started running round and round himas if to make a close inspection of his figure, then began to teasehim. At first I thought it was all in fun--merely animal spirit whichin birds often discharges itself in this way in little pretended attacksand fights. But the blackbird had no play and no fight in him, no heartto defend himself; all he did was to try to avoid the strokes aimed athim, and he could not always escape them. His spiritlessness served toinspire the chaffinch with greater boldness, and then it appeared thatthe gay little creature was really and truly incensed, possibly becausethe rusty, draggled, and listless appearance of the larger bird wasoffensive to him. Anyhow, the persecutions continued, increasing infury until they could not be borne, and the blackbird tried to escapeby hiding in the bramble. But he was not permitted to rest there; out hewas soon driven and away into another bush, and again into still anotherfurther away, and finally he was hunted over the sheltering wall intothe bleak wind on the other side. Then the persecutor came back andsettled himself on his old perch on the bramble, well satisfied at hisvictory over a bird so much bigger than himself. All was again peace andharmony in the little social gathering, and the pleasant talkee-talkeewent on as before. About five minutes passed, then the hunted blackbirdreturned, and, going to the identical spot from which he had beendriven, composed himself to rest; only now he sat facing his livelylittle enemy. 

I was astonished to see him back; so, apparently, was the chaffinch. Hestarted, craned his neck, and regarded his adversary first with one eyethen with the other. "What, rags and tatters, back again so soon!" Iseem to hear him say. "You miserable travesty of a bird, scarcely fitfor a weasel to dine on! Your presence is an insult to us, but I'll soonsettle you. You'll feel the cold on the other, side of the wall whenI've knocked off a few more of your rusty rags. "

Down from his perch he came, but no sooner had he touched his feet tothe ground than the blackbird went straight at him with extraordinaryfury. The chaffinch, taken by surprise, was buffeted and knocked over, then, recovering himself, fled in consternation, hotly pursued by thesick 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 theground, the blackbird always close behind; and no little bird flyingfrom a hawk could have exhibited a greater terror than that pertchaffinch--that vivacious and most pugnacious little cock bantam. At last they went quite away, and were lost to sight. By and by theblackbird returned alone, and, going once more to his place near thesecond bird, he settled down comfortably to finish his sunbath in peaceand quiet. 

I had assuredly witnessed a new thing on that unpromising day, somethingquite different from anything witnessed in my wide rambles; and, thougha little thing, it had been a most entertaining comedy in bird life witha very proper ending. It was clear that the sick blackbird had bitterlyresented the treatment he had received; that, brooding on it out in thecold, his anger had made him strong, and that he came back determinedto fight, with his plan of action matured. He was not going to be made afool every time!

The birds all gone their several ways at last, I got up from my stoneand wondered if the old Romans ever dreamed that this wall whichthey made to endure would after seventeen hundred years have no moreimportant use than this--to afford shelter to a few little birds and tothe solitary man that watched them--from the bleak wind. Many a strangeRoman 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, adozen men at work with pick and shovel throwing up huge piles of earth. They were uncovering a small portion of that ancient buried city andwere finding the foundations and floors and hypocausts of Silchester'spublic baths; also some broken pottery and trifling ornaments of bronzeand bone. The workmen in that bitter wind were decidedly better off thanthe gentlemen from Burlington House in charge of the excavations. These stood with coats buttoned up and hands thrust deep down in theirpockets. It seemed to me that it was better to sit in the shelter of thewall and watch the birds than to burrow in the crumbling dust for thatsmall harvest. Yet I could understand and even appreciate theirwork, although it is probable that the glow I experienced was in partreflected. Perhaps my mental attitude, when standing in that shelteredplace, and when getting on to the windy wall I looked down on theworkers and their work, was merely benevolent. I had pleasure in theirpleasure, and a vague desire for a better understanding, a closeralliance and harmony. It was the desire that we might all seenature--the globe with all it contains--as one harmonious whole, not asgroups of things, or phenomena, unrelated, cast there by chance or bycareless or contemptuous gods. This dust of past ages, dug out of awheat-field, with its fragments of men's work--its pottery and tiles andstones--this is a part, too, even as the small birds, with their littlemotives and passions, so like man's, are a part. I thought with selfshame of my own sins in this connection; then, considering the lesserfaults on the other side, I wished that Mr. St. John Hope wouldexperience 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 themightiest "builders of ruins" the world has known; but who exceptthe archaeologist would wish to see these piled stones in their nakedharshness, striking the mind with dismay at the thought of Time andits perpetual desolations! I like better the old Spanish poet who says, "What of Rome; its world-conquering power, and majesty and glory--whathas 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 evergreentapestry of innumerable leaves, should cover and partly hide and partlyreveal the "strange defeatures" the centuries have set on man's greatestworks? 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 hascome to be in the mind a very part of such scenes and so interwovenwith the human tragedy, that, like the churchyard yew, it seems the mosthuman of green things. 

Here in September great masses of the plant are already showing agreenish cream-colour of the opening blossoms, which will be at theirperfection in October. Then, when the sun shines, there will be nolingering red admiral, nor blue fly or fly of any colour, nor yellowwasp, nor any honey-eating or late honey-gathering insect that willnot be here to feed on the ivy's sweetness. And behind the blossomingcurtain, alive with the minute, multitudinous, swift-moving, glitteringforms, 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 thewhite 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 bookpublished some years ago, and probably better known to readers on theother side of the Atlantic than in England. I remember reading it withpleasure 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 thebranch on the other side of the Atlantic), and having been informed thatall 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 anequally alliterative title for this chapter--"Birding on a Bike"; butI will leave it to others, for those who go a-birding are now verymany and are hard put to find fresh titles to their books. For severalreasons it will suit me better to borrow from Cobbett and name thischapter "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 familiarwith the wheel: it has become a positive danger to them. They notinfrequently mistake its rate of speed and injure themselves inattempting to fly across it. Recently I had a thrush knock himselfsenseless against the spokes of my forewheel, and cycling friends havetold me of similar experiences they have had, in some instances theheedless birds getting killed. Chaffinches are like the children invillage streets--they will not get out of your way; by and by in ruralplaces the merciful man will have to ring his bell almost incessantly toavoid running over them. As I do not travel at a furious speed I manageto avoid most things, even the wandering loveless oil-beetle and thesmall 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 andbeautifully bright grass snake near Aldermaston, once a snake sanctuary. He writhed and wriggled on the road as if I had broken his back, but onpicking him up I was pleased to find that my wind-inflated rubber tyrehad not, like the brazen chariot wheel, crushed his delicate vertebra;he quickly recovered, and when released glided swiftly and easily awayinto cover. Twice only have I deliberately tried to run down, to treadon 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 bothinstances, just as the front wheel was touching the tail, the littleflat-headed rascal swerved quickly aside and escaped. 

Even some of the less common and less tame birds care as little for aman on a bicycle as they do for a cow. Not long ago a peewit trottedleisurely 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-bathin 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 thetrunk of a fir tree at the roadside and waited there for me to go. Neverin all my wanderings afoot had I seen a yaffingale dusting himself likea barn-door fowl!

It is not seriously contended that birds can be observed narrowly inthis easy way; but even for the most conscientious field naturalist thewheel has its advantages. It carries him quickly over much barren groundand gives him a better view of the country he traverses; finally, itenables him to see more birds. He will sometimes see thousands in a daywhere, walking, he would hardly have seen hundreds, and there is joy inmere numbers. It was just to get this general rapid sight of the birdlife of the neighbouring hilly district of Hampshire that I was atNewbury on the last day of October. The weather was bright though verycold and windy, and towards evening I was surprised to see about twentyswallows in Northbrook Street flying languidly to and fro in the shelterof the houses, often fluttering under the eaves and at intervals sittingon ledges and projections. These belated birds looked as if they wishedto hibernate, or find the most cosy holes to die in, rather than toemigrate. On the following day at noon they came out again and flew upand down in the same feeble aimless manner. 

Undoubtedly a few swallows of all three species, but mostlyhouse-martins, do "lie up" in England every winter, but probably veryfew survive to the following spring. We should have said that it wasimpossible that any should survive but for one authentic instance inrecent years, in which a barn-swallow lived through the winter in asemi-torpid state in an outhouse at a country vicarage. What came ofthe Newbury birds I do not know, as I left on the 2nd of November--toremyself away, I may say, for, besides meeting with people I didn't knowwho treated a stranger with sweet friendliness, it is a town whichquickly wins one's affections. It is built of bricks of a good deep richred--not the painfully bright red so much in use now--and no person hashad the bad taste to spoil the harmony by introducing stone and stucco. Moreover, Newbury has, in Shaw House, an Elizabethan mansion of therarest beauty. Let him that is weary of the ugliness and discords in ourtown buildings go and stand by the ancient cedar at the gate and lookacross the wide green lawn at this restful house, subdued by time toa 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 maybe seen, looking like the South Down range at its highest point viewedfrom the Sussex Weald. I made for Coombe Hill, the highest hill inHampshire, and found it a considerable labour to push my machine up fromthe pretty tree-hidden village of East Woodhay at its foot. The top is aleague-long tableland, with stretches of green elastic turf, thicketsof furze and bramble, and clumps of ancient noble beeches--a beautifullonely wilderness with rabbits and birds for only inhabitants. Fromthe highest point where a famous gibbet stands for ever a thousand feetabove 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 itevery summer day, one looks down into an immense hollow, a Devil's PunchBowl very many times magnified, --and spies, far away and far below, a few lonely houses half hidden by trees at the bottom. This is theromantic village of Coombe, and hither I went and found the vicar busyin the garden of the small old picturesque parsonage. Here a very prettylittle bird comedy was in progress: a pair of stock-doves which had beentaken from a rabbit-hole in the hill and reared by hand had just escapedfrom the large cage where they had always lived, and all the family wereexcitedly engaged in trying to recapture them. They were delightful tosee--those two pretty blue birds with red legs running busily abouton the green lawn, eagerly searching for something to eat and findingnothing. They were quite tame and willing to be fed, so that anyonecould approach them and put as much salt on their tails as he liked, butthey refused to be touched or taken; they were too happy in their newfreedom, running and flying about in that brilliant sunshine, and when Ileft towards the evening they were still at large. 

But before quitting that small isolated village in its green basin--ahuman heart in a chalk hill, almost the highest in England--I wished thehours 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 thegreen basin, four hundred feet above the village; why had that memorial, that symbol of a dreadful past, been preserved for so many years andgenerations? and why had it been raised so high--was it because thecrime of the person put to death there was of so monstrous a nature thatit 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 Hammedathathe Agagite? The gruesome story is as follows. 

Once upon a time there lived a poor widow woman in Coombe, with twosons, 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 whoused to go on two or three days each week with his cart to deliverparcels at Coombe. But he was a married man, and as he could not marrythe widow while his wife remained alive, it came into his dull Berkshirebrain that the only way out of the difficulty was to murder her, andto this course the widow probably consented. Accordingly, one day, heinvited or persuaded her to accompany him on his journey to the remotevillage, and on the way he got her out of the cart and led her into aclose thicket to show her something he had discovered there. Whathe wished to show her (according to one version of the story) was apopulous hornets' nest, and having got her there he suddenly flung heragainst it and made off, leaving the cloud of infuriated hornets tosting her to death. That night he slept at Coombe, or stayed till avery 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 itoccurred to him that the two boys, who were sleeping close by in theliving-room, might have been awake and listening. She assured him thatthey were both fast asleep, but he was not satisfied, and said that ifthey 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 upand 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 longday'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 andclosed his eyes and stilled his tremors and gave him the appearance ofbeing asleep. Early next morning, with his terror still on him, he toldwhat he had heard to his brother, and by and by, unable to keep thedreadful secret, they related it to someone--a carter or ploughman onthe farm. He in turn told the farmer, who at once gave information, andin a short time the man and woman were arrested. In due time they weretried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged in the parish where thecrime had been committed. 

Everybody was delighted, and Coombe most delighted of all, for ithappened that some of their wise people had been diligently examininginto the matter and had made the discovery that the woman had beenmurdered just outside their borders in the adjoining parish of Inkpen, so that they were going to enjoy seeing the wicked punished at somebodyelse's expense. Inkpen was furious and swore that it would not besaddled with the cost of a great public double execution. The linedividing the two parishes had always been a doubtful one; now theywere going to take the benefit of the doubt and let Coombe hang its ownmiscreants!

As neither side would yield, the higher authorities were compelled tosettle the matter for them, and ordered the cost to be divided betweenthe two parishes, the gibbet to be erected on the boundary line, as faras it could be ascertained. This was accordingly done, the gibbetbeing erected at the highest point crossed by the line, on a stretchof beautiful smooth elastic turf, among prehistoric earthworks--aspot commanding one of the finest and most extensive views in SouthernEngland. The day appointed for the execution brought the greatestconcourse of people ever witnessed at that lofty spot, at all eventssince prehistoric times. If some of the ancient Britons had come outof their graves to look on, seated on their earthworks, they would haveprobably rubbed their ghostly hands together and remarked to each otherthat it reminded them of old times. All classes were there, from thenobility and gentry, on horseback and in great coaches in which theycarried their own provisions, to the meaner sort who had trudged fromall the country round on foot, and those who had not brought their ownfood and beer were catered for by traders in carts. The crowd was ahilarious one, and no doubt that grand picnic on the beacon was the talkof they country for a generation or longer. The two wretches having beenhanged 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, theswinging, creaking skeletons with their chains on fell to pieces andwere covered with the turf, but the gibbet itself was never removed. 

Then a strange thing happened. The sheep on a neighbouring farm becamethin and sickly and yielded little wool and died before their time. Noremedies availed and the secret of their malady could not be discovered;but it went on so long that the farmer was threatened with utterruin. Then, by chance, it was discovered that the chains in which themurderers had been hanged had been thrown by some evil-minded personinto a dew-pond on the farm. This was taken to be the cause of themalady in the sheep; at all events, the chains having been taken outof the pond and buried deep in the earth, the flock recovered: it wassupposed that the person who had thrown the chains in the water topoison it had done so to ruin the farmer in revenge for some injusticeor grudge. But even now we are not quite done with the gibbet! Many, many years had gone by when Inkpen discovered from old documents thattheir little dishonest neighbour, Coombe, had taken more land thanshe was entitled to, that not only a part but the whole of that noblehill-top belonged to her! It was Inkpen's turn to chuckle now; but shechuckled too soon, and Coombe, running out to look, found the old rottenstump of the gibbet still in the ground. Hands off! she cried. Herestands a post, which you set up yourself, or which we put up togetherand agreed that this should be the boundary line for ever. Inkpensneaked off to hide herself in her village, and Coombe, determined tokeep the subject in mind, set up a brand-new stout gibbet in the placeof the old rotting one. That too decayed and fell to pieces in time, and the present gibbet is therefore the third, and nobody has everbeen hanged on it. Coombe is rather proud of it, but I am not sure thatInkpen is. 

That was one of three strange events in the life of the village which Iheard: the other two must be passed by; they would take long to tell andrequire a good pen to do them justice. To me the best thing in or of thevillage was the vicar himself, my put-upon host, a man of so blithea nature, so human and companionable, that when I, a perfect strangerwithout an introduction or any excuse for such intrusion came down likea wolf on his luncheon-table, he received me as if I had been an oldfriend or one of his own kindred, and freely gave up his time to me forthe rest of that day. To count his years he was old: he had been vicarof Coombe for half a century, but he was a young man still and had neverhad a day's illness in his life--he did not know what a headache was. Hesmoked with me, and to prove that he was not a total abstainer he drankmy health in a glass of port wine--very good wine. It was Coombe thatdid it--its peaceful life, isolated from a distracting world in thathollow hill, and the marvellous purity of its air. "Sitting there on mylawn, " he said, "you are six hundred feet above the sea, although in ahollow four hundred feet deep. " It was an ideal open-air room, round andgreen, 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 fromthe tiny village set in its stupendous dazzling white bowl. Not only onthose rare arctic days, but at all times it was wonderfully quiet. Theshout of a child or the peaceful crow of a cock was the loudest soundyou heard. Once a gentleman from London town came down to spend a weekat the parsonage. Towards evening on the very first day he grew restlessand complained of the abnormal stillness. "I like a quiet place wellenough, " he exclaimed, "but this tingling silence I can't stand!" Andstand it he wouldn't and didn't, for on the very next morning he tookhimself off. Many years had gone by, but the vicar could not forget theLondoner who had come down to invent a new way of describing the Coombesilence. 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 thathe had never once locked the door in his fifty years--day and night itwas open to any one to enter. It was a refuge and shelter from the stormand the Tempest, and many a poor homeless wretch had found a dry placeto sleep in that church during the last half a century. This man'sfeeling of pity and tenderness for the very poor, even the outcast andtramp, was a passion. But how strange all this would sound in the earsof many country clergymen! How many have told me when I have gone to theparsonage to "borrow the key" that it had been found necessary to keepthe church door locked, to prevent damage, thefts, etc. "Have you neverhad 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 thedewpond there, no doubt intending to take it out and dispose of it atsome more convenient time. But it was found, and had ever since thenbeen kept safe at the vicarage. Nothing of value to tempt a man to stealwas kept in the church. He had never locked it, but once in his fiftyyears it had been locked against him by the churchwardens. Thishappened in the days of the Joseph Arch agitation, when the agriculturallabourer's condition was being hotly discussed throughout the country. The vicar's heart was stirred, for he knew better than most how hardthese conditions were at Coombe and in the surrounding parishes. Hetook up the subject and preached on it in his own pulpit in a way thatoffended the landowners and alarmed the farmers in the district. Thechurch 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 ofCoombe. Doubtless their action was applauded by all the substantialmen in the neighbourhood; the others who lived in the cottages and wereunsubstantial didn't matter. That storm blew over, but its consequencesendured, one being that the inflammatory parson continued to be regardedwith cold disapproval by the squires and their larger tenants. But thevicar himself was unrepentant and unashamed; on the contrary, he gloriedin what he had said and done, and was proud to be able to relate that aquarter of a century later one of the two men who had taken that extremecourse said to him, "We locked you out of your own church, but yearshave brought me to another mind about that question. I see it in adifferent light now and know that you were right and we were wrong. "

Towards evening I said good-bye to my kind friend and entertainer andcontinued my rural ride. From Coombe it is five miles to HurstbourneTarrant, another charming "highland" village, and the road, slopingdown the entire distance, struck me as one of the best to be on I hadtravelled in Hampshire, running along a narrow green valley, with oakand birch and bramble and thorn in their late autumn colours growingon the slopes on either hand. Probably the beauty of the scene, or theswift succession of beautiful scenes, with the low sun flaming on the"coloured shades, " served to keep out of my mind something that shouldhave been in it. At all events, it was odd that I had more than oncepromised myself a visit to the very village I was approaching solelybecause William Cobbett had described and often stayed in it, and now nothought of him and his ever-delightful Rural Rides was in my mind. 

Arrived at the village I went straight to the "George and Dragon, " wherea friend had assured me I could always find good accommodations. Buthe 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. Sheappeared to resent it that any one should ask for accommodation atsuch a time, when the "shooting gents" from town required all the roomsavailable. Well, I had to sleep somewhere, I told her: couldn't shedirect me to a cottage where I could get a bed? No, she couldn't--it isalways so; but after the third time of asking she unfroze so far as tosay 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 meup. She made a nice fire in the sitting-room, and after warming myselfbefore it, while watching the firelight and shadows playing on the dimwalls and ceiling, it came to me that I was not in a cottage, but ina large room with an oak floor and wainscoting. "Do you call this acottage?" I said to the woman when she came in with tea. "No, I haveit as a cottage, but it is an old farm-house called the Rookery, " shereturned. Then, for the first time, I remembered Rural Rides. "This thenis the very house where William Cobbett used to stay seventy or eightyyears ago, " I said. She had never heard of William Cobbett; she onlyknew that at that date it had been tenanted by a farmer named Blount, aRoman Catholic, who had some curious ideas about the land. 

That settled it. Blount was the name of Cobbett's friend, and I had cometo the very house where Cobbett was accustomed to stay. But how odd thatmy first thought of the man should have come to me when sitting by thefire where Cobbett himself had sat on many a cold evening! And this wasNovember the second, the very day eighty-odd years ago when he paid hisfirst visit to the Rookery; at all events, it is the first date he givesin Rural Rides. And he too had been delighted with the place and thebeauty of the surrounding country with the trees in their late autumncolours. Writing on November 2nd, 1821, he says: "The place is commonlycalled Uphusband, which is, I think, as decent a corruption of names asone 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 allthrough his book, after explaining that "husband" is a corruption ofHurstbourne, and that there are two Hurstbournes, this being the upperone. 

I congratulated myself on having been refused accommodation at the"George and Dragon, " and was more than satisfied to pass an eveningwithout a book, sitting there alone listening to an imaginaryconversation between those two curious friends. "Lord Carnarvon, " saysCobbett, "told a man, in 1820, that he did not like my politics. Butwhat did he mean by my politics? I have no politics but such as he oughtto like. To be sure I labour most assiduously to destroy a system ofdistress and misery; but is that any reason why a Lord should dislikemy politics? However, dislike them or like them, to them, to those verypolitics, the Lords themselves must come at last. "

Undoubtedly he talked like that, just as he wrote and as he spoke inpublic, his style, if style it can be called, being the most simple, direct, and colloquial ever written. And for this reason, when we areaweary of the style of the stylist, where the living breathing bodybecomes of less consequence than its beautiful clothing, it is a relief, and refreshment, to turn from the precious and delicate expression, theimplicit word, sought for high and low and at last found, the balance ofevery sentence and perfect harmony of the whole work--to go from it tothe simple vigorous unadorned talk of Rural Rides. A classic, and asincongruous among classics as a farmer in his smock-frock, leggings, andstout boots would appear in a company of fine gentlemen in fashionabledress. The powerful face is the main thing, and we think little of thefrock 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 attimes, his conversation must yet have seemed like a perpetual feastof honeyed sweets to his farmer friend. Doubtless there was plenty ofvariety in it: now he would expatiate on the beauty of the green downsover which he had just ridden, the wooded slopes in their gloriousautumn colours, and the rich villages between; this would remind him ofMalthus, that blasphemous monster who had dared to say that the increasein food production did not keep pace with increase of population; thena quieting down, a breathing-space, all about the turnip crop, theprice of eggs at Weyhill Fair, and the delights of hare coursing, untilpolitics would come round again and a fresh outburst from the gloriousdemagogue in his tantrums. 

At eight o'clock Cobbett would say good night and go to bed, and earlynext 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 howRural Rides was written, and that is why it seems so fresh to us to thisday, and that to take it up after other books is like going out from aluxurious room full of fine company into the open air to feel the windand rain on one's face and see the green grass. But I very much regretthat 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 heartand influenced such a person. Cobbett never loses an opportunity ofvilifying the parsons and expressing his hatred of the EstablishedChurch; and yet, albeit a Protestant, he invariably softens down when herefers to the Roman Catholic faith and appears quite capable of seeingthe good that is in it. 

It was Blount, I think, who had soothed the savage breast of the manin this matter. The only thing I could hear about Blount and his "queernotions" regarding the land was his idea that the soil could be improvedby 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. " Blountthought to make it better, and for many years employed all the aged poorvillagers and the children in picking the flints from the ploughed landand gathering them in vast heaps. It does not appear that he made hisland more productive, but his hobby was a good one for the poor of thevillage; the stones, too, proved useful afterwards to the road-makers, who have been using them these many years. A few heaps almost clothedover with a turf which had formed on them in the course of eighty yearswere still to be seen on the land when I was there. 

The following day I took no ride. The weather was so beautiful it seemedbetter to spend the time sitting or basking in the warmth and brightnessor strolling about. At all events, it was a perfect day at HurstbourneTarrant, though not everywhere, for on that third of November thegreatest portion of Southern England was drowned in a cold dense whitefog. In London it was dark, I heard. Early in the morning I listenedto a cirl-bunting singing merrily from a bush close to the George andDragon Inn. This charming bird is quite common in the neighbourhood, although, as elsewhere in England, the natives know it not by its bookname, nor by any other, and do not distinguish it from its less engagingcousin, the yellowhammer. 

After breakfast I strolled about the common and in Doles Wood, on thedown above the village, listening to the birds, and on my way backencountered a tramp whose singular appearance produced a deep impressionon my mind. We have heard of a work by some modest pressman entitled"Monarchs I have met", and I sometimes think that one equallyinteresting might be written on "Tramps I have met". As I have neithertime nor stomach for the task, I will make a present of the title toany one of my fellow-travellers, curious in tramps, who cares to useit. This makes two good titles I have given away in this chapter with aborrowed one. 

But if it had been possible for me to write such a book, a prominentplace would be given in it to the one tramp I have met who could beaccurately described as gorgeous. I did not cultivate his acquaintance;chance threw us together and we separated after exchanging a few politecommonplaces, but his big flamboyant image remains vividly impressed onmy mind. 

At noon, in the brilliant sunshine, as I came loiteringly down the longslope from Doles Wood to the village, he overtook me. He was a huge man, over six feet high, nobly built, suggesting a Scandinavian origin, witha broad blond face, good features, and prominent blue eyes, and hishair was curly and shone like gold in the sunlight. Had he been a merelabourer in a workman's rough clay-stained clothes, one would have stoodstill to look at and admire him, and say perhaps what a magnificentwarrior he would have looked with sword and spear and plumed helmet, mounted on a big horse! But alas! he had the stamp of the irreclaimableblackguard on his face; and that same handsome face was just thendisfigured with several bruises in three colours--blue, black, and red. Doubtless he had been in a drunken brawl on the previous evening and hadperhaps been thrown out of some low public-house and properly punished. 

In his dress he was as remarkable as in his figure. Bright blue trousersmuch too small for his stout legs, once the property, no doubt, ofsome sporting young gent of loud tastes in colours; a spotted fancywaistcoat, not long enough to meet the trousers, a dirty scarlet tie, long black frock-coat, shiny in places, and a small dirty grey cap whichonly 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 scarletand purple fruit among the many-coloured fading leaves and silver-greydown of old-man's-beard. 

I too picked and ate a few berries and made the remark that it was lateto 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 thefruit. It was even worse further north, in Norfolk and Suffolk, wherethey say the Devil goes out at Michaelmas and shakes his verminoustrousers over the bushes. 

He didn't smile; he went on sternly eating blackberries, and thenremarked in a bitter tone, "That Devil they talk about must have a busytime, to go messing about blackberry bushes in addition to all his otherimportant work. "

I was silent, and presently, after swallowing a few more berries, heresumed in the same tone: "Very fine, very beautiful all this"--wavinghis hand to indicate the hedge, its rich tangle of purple-red stemsand coloured leaves, and scarlet fruit and silvery oldman's-beard. "Anartist enjoys seeing this sort of thing, and it's nice for all those whogo about just for the pleasure of seeing things. But when it comes to aman tramping twenty or thirty miles a day on an empty belly, looking forwork 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 toinform me that he had just returned from Salisbury Plain, that it hadbeen noised abroad that ten thousand men were wanted by the War Officeto work in forming new camps. On arrival he found it was not so--it wasall 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 distanceapart, as I had remained standing still while he, thinking me stillclose behind, had gone on picking blackberries and talking. He was soonout 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 farmbuildings, cottages, and a church not much bigger than a cottage. Agreat house probably once existed here, as the hill has a noble avenueof limes, which it wears like a comb or crest. On the lower slope of thehill, the old unkept hedges were richer in colour than in most places, owing to the abundance of the spindle-wood tree, laden with its looseclusters of flame-bright, purple-pink and orange berries. 

Here I saw a pretty thing: a cock cirl-bunting, his yellow breasttowards me, sitting quietly on a large bush of these same brilliantberries, set amidst a mass of splendidly coloured hazel leaves, mixedwith bramble and tangled with ivy and silver-grey traveller's-joy. Anartist's heart would have leaped with joy at the sight, but all hisskill and oriental colours would have made nothing of it, for allvisible nature was part of the picture, the wide wooded earth and theblue 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 treesand, strange to see, just beyond the green slope and coloured trees, was the great whiteness of the fog which had advanced thus far and nowappeared motionless. I went down and walked by the side of the bankof mist, feeling its clammy coldness on one cheek while the other wasfanned by the warm bright air. Seen at a distance of a couple of hundredyards, the appearance was that of a beautiful pearly-white cloud restingupon the earth. Many fogs had I seen, but never one like this, sosubstantial-looking, so sharply defined, standing like a vast white wallor flat-topped hill at the foot of the green sunlit slope! I had thefancy that if I had been an artist in sculpture, and rapid modeller, byusing the edge of my hand as a knife I could have roughly carved out ahuman figure, then drawing it gently out of the mass proceeded to pressand work it to a better shape, the shape, let us say, of a beautifulwoman. Then, if it were done excellently, and some man-mocking deity, orpower of the air, happened to be looking on, he would breathe life andintelligence into it, and send it, or her, abroad to mix with human kindand complicate their affairs. For she would seem a woman and would belike 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 coarseand made of clay. And with her beauty and a mysterious sweetness notof the heart, since no heart there would be in that mist-cold body, shewould draw all hearts, ever inspiring, but never satisfying passion, herbeauty and alluring smiles being but the brightness of a cloud on whichthe sun is shining. 

Birds, driven by the fog to that sunlit spot, were all about me inincredible numbers. Rooks and daws were congregating on the bushes, where their black figures served to intensify the red-gold tints of thefoliage. At intervals the entire vast cawing multitude simultaneouslyrose up with a sound as of many waters, and appeared now at last aboutto mount up into the blue heavens, to float circling there far above theworld as they are accustomed to do on warm windless days in autumn. Butin a little while their brave note would change to one of trouble; thesight of that immeasurable whiteness covering so much of the earth wouldscare them, and led by hundreds of clamouring daws they would come downagain to settle once more in black masses on the shining yellow trees. 

Close by a ploughed field of about forty acres was the camping-groundof an army of peewits; they were travellers from the north perhaps, andwere quietly resting, sprinkled over the whole area. More abundant werethe small birds in mixed flocks or hordes--finches, buntings, and larksin thousands on thousands, with a sprinkling of pipits and pied and greywagtails, all busily feeding on the stubble and fresh ploughed land. Thickly and evenly distributed, they appeared to the vision rangingover the brown level expanse as minute animated and variously colouredclods--black and brown and grey and yellow and olive-green. 

It was a rare pleasure to be in this company, to revel in theirastonishing numbers, to feast my soul on them as it were--little birdsin such multitudes that ten thousand Frenchmen and Italians might havegorged to repletion on their small succulent bodies--and to reflectthat they were safe from persecution so long as they remained here inEngland. This is something for an Englishman to be proud of. 

After spending two hours at Crux Easton, with that dense immovablefog close by, I at length took the plunge to get to Highclere. Whata change! I was at once where all form and colour and melody had beenblotted out. My clothes were hoary with clinging mist, my fingers numbwith cold, and Highclere, its scattered cottages appearing like dimsmudges through the whiteness, was the dreariest village on earth. Ifled 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 milesfrom the town I stood awhile to listen to the sound as of copious rainof the moisture dropping from the trees, when a sudden tempest of loud, sharp metallic notes--a sound dear to the ornithologist's ears--made mejump; and down into the very tree before which I was standing dropped aflock of about twenty crossbills. So excited and noisy when comingdown, the instant they touched the tree they became perfectly silent andmotionless. Seven of their number had settled on the outside shoots, andsat there within forty feet of me, looking like painted wooden images ofsmall green and greenish-yellow parrots; for a space of fifteen minutesnot the slightest movement did they make, and at length, before going, Iwaved my arms about and shouted to frighten them, and still they refusedto stir. 

Next morning that memorable fog lifted, to England's joy, and quittingmy refuge I went out once more into the region of high sheep-walks, adorned with beechen woods and traveller's-joy in the hedges, ramblingby Highclere, Burghclere, and Kingsclere. The last--Hampshire's littleCuzco--is a small and village-like old red brick town, unapproached bya railroad and unimproved, therefore still beautiful, as were all placesin other, better, less civilized days. Here in the late afternoona chilly grey haze crept over the country and set me wishing for afireside and the sound of friendly voices, and I turned my face towardsbeloved Silchester. Leaving the hills behind me I got away from the hazeand went my devious way by serpentine roads through a beautiful, wooded, undulating country. And I wish that for a hundred, nay, for a thousandyears to come, I could on each recurring November have such an afternoonride, with that autumnal glory in the trees. Sometimes, seeing the roadbefore me carpeted with pure yellow, I said to myself, now I am comingto elms; but when the road shone red and russet-gold before me I knew itwas 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 eitherhand the woods and copses all a tawny yellow gold--the hue of the dyingoak leaf. The tall larches were lemon-yellow, and when growing amongtall pines produced a singular effect. Best of all was it where beechesgrew among the firs, and the low sun on my left hand shining throughthe wood gave the coloured translucent leaves an unimaginable splendour. This was the very effect which men, inspired by a sacred passion, hadsought to reproduce in their noblest work--the Gothic cathedral andchurch, its dim interior lit by many-coloured stained glass. The onlychoristers in these natural fanes were the robins and the small lyricalwren; but on passing through the rustic village of Wolverton Istopped for a couple of minutes to listen to the lively strains of acirl-bunting among some farm buildings. 

Then on to Silchester, its furzy common and scattered village and thevast ruinous walls, overgrown with ivy, bramble, and thorn, of ancientRoman Calleva. Inside the walls, at one spot, a dozen men were still atwork in the fading light; they were just finishing--shovelling earthin to obliterate all that had been opened out during the year. The oldflint foundations that had been revealed; the houses with porches andcorridors and courtyards and pillared hypocausts; the winter room withits wide beautiful floor--red and black and white and grey and yellow, with geometric pattern and twist and scroll and flower and leaf andquaint figures of man and beast and bird--all to be covered up withearth so that the plough may be driven over it again, and the wheat growand ripen again as it has grown and ripened there above the dead cityfor so many centuries. The very earth within those walls had a reddishcast owing to the innumerable fragments of red tile and tessera mixedwith it. Larks and finches were busily searching for seeds in thereddish-brown soil. They would soon be gone to their roosting-placesand the tired men to their cottages, and the white owl coming from hishiding-place in the walls would have old Silchester to himself, as hehas had it since the cries and moans of the conquered died into silenceso long ago. 

Chapter Ten: The Last of His Name

I came by chance to the village--Norton, we will call it, just to callit 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 avillage where, as I was informed at a small country town I had restedin, there was a nice inn--"The Fox and Grapes"--to put up at, but whenI arrived, tired and hungry, I was told that I could not have a bed andthat 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 atthat late hour on a chance of a shelter for the night, but there wasnothing else to do, so on to Norton I went with heavy steps, and arriveda little after sunset, more tired and hungry than ever, only to be toldat the inn that they had no accommodation for me, that their one spareroom had been engaged! "What am I to do, then?" I demanded of thelandlord. "Beyond this village I cannot go to-night--do you want me togo out and sleep under a hedge?" He called his spouse, and after someconversation they said the village baker might be able to put me up, ashe had a spare bedroom in his house. So to the baker's I went, andfound it a queer, ramshackle old place, standing a little back from thevillage street in a garden and green plot with a few fruit treesgrowing 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 ofpyjama-like garments of a bluish floury colour. I told him my story, andhe listened, swallowing his mouthful, then cast his eyes down and rubbedhis chin, which had a small tuft of hairs growing on it, and finallysaid, "I don't know. I must ask my wife. But come in and have a cup oftea--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 manyslices of bread-and-butter, if there was nothing else more substantialto be had. However, I only said, "Thank you, " and followed him in towhere his wife, a nice-looking woman, with black hair and olive face, was seated behind the teapot. Imagine my surprise when I found thatbesides tea there was a big hot repast on the table--a ham, a roastfowl, 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 womanlaughed, and he explained in an apologetic way that he had formerlysuffered grievously from indigestion, so that for many years his lifewas a burden to him, until he discovered that if he took one big meal aday, after the work was over, he could keep perfectly well. 

I was never hungrier than on this evening, and never, I think, ate abigger or more enjoyable meal; nor have I ever ceased to remember thosetwo with gratitude, and if I were to tell here what they told me--thehistory of their two lives--I think it would be a more interestingstory than the one I am about to relate. I stayed a whole week in theirhospitable house; a week which passed only too quickly, for never hadI been in a sweeter haunt of peace than this village in a quiet, greencountry remote from towns and stations. It was a small rustic place, afew old houses and thatched cottages, and the ancient church with squareNorman tower hard to see amid the immense old oaks and elms that grewall about it. At the end of the village were the park gates, and thepark, 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 redElizabethan house empty, with only a caretaker in the gardener's lodgeto mind it, and the estate for sale. Three years it had been in thatcondition, but nobody seemed to want it; occasionally some importantperson came rushing down in a motor-car, but after running over thehouse 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 animmemorial oak tree on the green in whose shade the villagers had beenaccustomed to sit for many generations, had been removed. There was asense of something wanting something gone out of their lives. Moreover, he had been a man of a remarkable character, and though they never lovedhim they yet reverenced his memory. 

So much was he in their minds that I could not be in the village and nothear the story of his life--the story which, I said, interested me lessthan that of the good baker and his wife. On his father's death at avery advanced age he came, a comparative stranger, to Norton, the firsthalf of his life having been spent abroad. He was then a middle-agedman, unmarried, and a bachelor he remained to the end. He was of areticent disposition and was said to be proud; formal, almost cold, inmanner; furthermore, he did not share his neighbours' love of sport ofany description, nor did he care for society, and because of all thishe was regarded as peculiar, not to say eccentric. But he was deeplyinterested in agriculture, especially in cattle and their improvement, and that object grew to be his master passion. It was a period of greatdepression, and as his farms fell vacant he took them into his ownhands, increased his stock and built model cowhouses, and came at lastto be known throughout his own country, and eventually everywhere, asone of the biggest cattle-breeders in England. But he was famous ina peculiar way. Wise breeders and buyers shook their heads and eventouched their foreheads significantly, and predicted that the squireof Norton would finish by ruining himself. They were right, he ruinedhimself; not that he was mentally weaker than those who watched andcunningly exploited him; he was ruined because his object was a higherone than theirs. He saw clearly that the prize system is a vicious oneand that better results may be obtained without it. He proved this ata heavy cost by breeding better beasts than his rivals, who wereall exhibitors and prizewinners, and who by this means got theiradvertisements and secured the highest prices, while he, who disdainedprizes and looked with disgust at the overfed and polished animals atshows, got no advertisements and was compelled to sell at unremunerativeprices. The buyers, it may be mentioned, were always the breeders forshows, and they made a splendid profit out of it. 

He carried on the fight for a good many years, becoming more and moreinvolved, until his creditors took possession of the estate, sold offthe stock, let the farms, and succeeded in finding a tenant for thefurnished house. He went to a cottage in the village and there passedhis remaining years. To the world he appeared unmoved by his reverses. The change from mansion and park to a small thatched cottage, with alabourer's wife for attendant, made no change in the man, nor did heresign his seat on the Bench of Magistrates or any other unpaidoffice he held. To the last he was what he had always been, formal andceremonious, more gracious to those beneath him than to equals; strictin the performance of his duties, living with extreme frugality andgiving freely to those in want, and very regular in his attendanceat church, where he would sit facing the tombs and memorials of hisancestors, 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 memorialwith the old name, which he bore last was placed on the wall. Thatwas the story as it was told me, and as it was all about a man who waswithout 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 agrove in the park and finding myself standing before the ancient, empty, desolate house--for on the squire's death everything had been sold andtaken away--I remembered that the caretaker had begged me to let himshow me over the place. I had not felt inclined to gratify him, as Ihad found him a young man of a too active mind whose only desire wasto capture some person to talk to and unfold his original ideas andschemes, 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 joyfullythrew 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 tothe ground floor I was pretty tired of empty rooms, oak panelled, andpassages and oak staircases, and of talk, and impatient to get away. Butno, I had not seen the housekeeper's room--I must see that!--and sointo another great vacant room I was dragged, and to keep me as long aspossible in that last room he began unlocking and flinging open all theold oak cupboards and presses. Glancing round at the long array of emptyshelves, I noticed a small brown-paper parcel, thick with dust, in acorner, and as it was the only movable thing I had seen in that vacanthouse I asked him what the parcel contained. Books, he replied--they hadbeen left as of no value when the house was cleared of furniture. As Iwished to see the books he undid the parcel; it contained forty copiesof a small quarto-shaped book of sonnets, with the late squire's name asauthor on the title page. I read a sonnet, and told him I should like toread them all. "You can have a copy, of course, " he exclaimed. "Put itin your pocket and keep it. " When I asked him if he had any right togive one away he laughed and said that if any one had thought the wholeparcel worth twopence it would not have been left behind. He was quiteright; a cracked dinner--plate or a saucepan with a hole in it or anearthenware teapot with a broken spout would not have been left, but theline was drawn at a book of sonnets by the late squire. Nobody wantedit, and so without more qualms I put it in my pocket, and have it beforeme now, opened at page 63, on which appears, without a headline, thesonnet 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 thereare many of the eighty sonnets in the book which do not equal it inmerit. He was manifestly an amateur; he sometimes writes withlabour, and he not infrequently ends with the unpardonable weak line. Nevertheless he had rightly chosen this difficult form in which toexpress his inner self. It suited his grave, concentrated thought, andeach little imperfect poem of fourteen lines gives us a glimpse into awise, beneficent mind. He had fought his fight and suffered defeat, andhad then withdrawn himself silently from the field to die. But if hehad 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, wherecan 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, whenall our striving has ended in disaster? His plan, he concludes, is to goout in the quiet night-time and look at the stars. 

Here let me quote two more sonnets written in contemplative mood, justto give the reader a fuller idea not of the verse, as verse, but of thespirit 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--whatpoor rhymes are these! and he will think me wrong to draw thesefrailties from their forgotten abode. But I like to think of thesolitary old man sitting by his wood fire in the old house, not broodingbitterly on his frustrate life, but putting his quiet thoughts into theform of a sonnet. The other is equally good--or bad, if the critic willhave 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 saidabout the little book is preliminary to what I wish to say about anothersonnet which must also be quoted. It is perhaps, as a sonnet, as illdone as the others, but the subject of it specially attracted me, as ithappened to be one which was much in my mind during my week's stay atNorton. That remote little village without a squire or any personof means or education in or near it capable of feeling the slightestinterest in the people, except the parson, an old infirm man who wasnever seen but once a week--how wanting in some essential thing itappeared! It seemed to me that the one thing which might be done inthese small centres of rural life to brighten and beautify existence isprecisely the thing which is never done, also that what really is beingdone is of doubtful value and sometimes actually harmful. 

Leaving Norton one day I visited other small villages in theneighbourhood and found they were no better off. I had heard of therector of one of these villages as a rather original man, and went anddiscussed the subject with him. "It is quite useless thinking about it, "he said. "The people here are clods, and will not respond to any effortyou can make to introduce a little light and sweetness into theirlives. " There was no more to be said to him, but I knew he was wrong. Ifound the villagers in that part of the country the most intelligentand responsive people of their class I had ever encountered. It wasa delightful experience to go into their cottages, not to read them ahomily or to present them with a book or a shilling, nor to inquire intotheir welfare, material and spiritual, but to converse intimately witha human interest in them, as would be the case in a country where thereare no caste distinctions. It was delightful, because they were soresponsive, 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 myhands--given to me by the generous caretaker--and I read in it this oneon "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! Iquestioned them on the point. Did he not in all the years he was atNorton House, and later when he lived among them in a cottage in thevillage--did he not go into their homes and meet them as if he knew andfelt that they were all of the same flesh, children of one universalFather, and did he not make them feel this about him--that thedifferences in fortune and position and education were mere accidents?And the answer was: No, certainly not! as if I had asked a preposterousquestion. He was the squire, a gentleman--any one might understand thathe could not come among them like that! That is what a parson can dobecause he is, so to speak, paid to keep an eye on them, and besidesit's religion there and a different thing. But the squire!--theirsquire, that dignified old gentleman, so upright in his saddle, so considerate and courteous to every one--but he never forgot hisposition--never in that way! I also asked if he had never tried toestablish, or advocated, or suggested to them any kind of reunions totake place from time to time, or an entertainment or festival toget them to come pleasantly together, making a brightness in theirlives--something which would not be cricket or football, nor any form ofsport for a few of the men, all the others being mere lookers-on and thewomen and children left out altogether; something which would be for andinclude everyone, from the oldest grey labourer no longer able to workto the toddling little ones; something of their own invention, peculiarto Norton, which would be their pride and make their village dearerto them? And the answer was still no, and no, and no. He had neverattempted, never suggested, anything of the sort. How could he--thesquire! 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 tocomplete the round of homely happiness in our little rural centres;how is it that we do not properly encourage the things which, albeitchildlike, are essential, which sweetly recreate? It is not merelythe selfishness of those who are well placed and prefer to live forthemselves, or who have light but care not to shed it on those who arenot of their class. Selfishness is common enough everywhere, in men ofall races. It is not selfishness, nor the growth of towns or decay ofagriculture, which as a fact does not decay, nor education, nor any ofthe other causes usually given for the dullness, the greyness of villagelife. The chief cause, I take it, is that gulf, or barrier, whichexists between men and men in different classes in our country, ora considerable portion of it--the caste feeling which is becomingincreasingly rigid in the rural world, if my own observation, extendingover 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 thatof 1903 for the birds, more especially for the short-winged migrants. InApril I looked for the woodland warblers and found them not, or saw buta few of the commonest kinds. It was only too easy to account for thisrarity. The bitter north-east wind had blown every day and all day longduring those weeks when birds are coming, and when nearing the endof their journey, at its most perilous stage, the wind had been deadagainst them; its coldness and force was too much for these delicatetravellers, and doubtless they were beaten down in thousands into thegrey waters of a bitter sea. The stronger-winged wheatear was morefortunate, since he comes in March, and before that spell of deadlyweather he was already back in his breeding haunts on Salisbury Plain, and, in fact, everywhere on that open down country. I was there to hearhim sing his wild notes to the listening waste--singing them, as hispretty fashion is, up in the air, suspended on quickly vibrating wingslike a great black and white moth. But he was in no singing mood, and atlast, in desperation, I fled to Salisbury to wait for loitering springin that unattractive town. 

The streets were cold as the open plain, and there was no comfortindoors; to haunt the cathedral during those vacant days was the onlyoccupation 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 fromthe wind. At service my due feet never failed, while morning, noon, and evening I paced the smooth level green by the hour, standing atintervals 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 notlike it much better now when grown familiar with it. Undoubtedly it isone of the noblest structures of its kind in England--even my eyes thatlook coldly on most buildings could see it; and I could admire, evenreverence, but could not love. It suffers by comparison with othertemples into which my soul has wandered. It has not the majestyand appearance of immemorial age, the dim religious richness of theinterior, with much else that goes to make up, without and within, theexpression which is so marked in other mediaeval fanes--Winchester, Ely, York, Canterbury, Exeter, and Wells. To the dry, mechanical mind of thearchitect these great cathedrals are in the highest degree imperfect, according to the rules of his art: to all others this imperfectness istheir chief excellence and glory; for they are in a sense a growth, aflower of many minds and many periods, and are imperfect even as Natureis, in her rocks and trees; and, being in harmony with Nature and likeNature, they are inexpressibly beautiful and satisfying beyond allbuildings 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 gazedup at the building for some time, and then remarked: "I'll tell youwhat'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 ofexpression is due to the fact that it came complete from its maker'sbrain, like a coin from the mint, and being all on one symmetrical planit has the trim, neat appearance of a toy cathedral carved out of woodand 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 featheredpeople 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 likeseafowl congregated on a precipitous rock, but they were all about me. The level green was the hunting ground of many thrushes--a dozen ortwenty could often be seen at one time--and it was easy to spot thosethat had young. The worm they dragged out was not devoured; another waslooked for, then another; then all were cut up in proper lengths andbeaten and bruised, and finally packed into a bundle and carried off. Rooks, too, were there, breeding on the cathedral elms, and had no timeand spirit to wrangle, but could only caw-caw distressfully at the wind, which tossed them hither and thither in the air and lashed the talltrees, threatening at each fresh gust to blow their nests topieces. Small birds of half a dozen kinds were also there, and onetinkle-tinkled his spring song quite merrily in spite of the cold thatkept the others silent and made me blue. One day I spied a big queenbumble-bee on the ground, looking extremely conspicuous in its black andchestnut coat on the fresh green sward; and thinking it numbed by thecold I picked it up. It moved its legs feebly, but alas! its enemyhad found and struck it down, and with its hard, sharp little beak haddrilled a hole in one of the upper plates of its abdomen, and from thatsmall opening had cunningly extracted all the meat. Though still aliveit was empty as a blown eggshell. Poor queen and mother, you survivedthe winter in vain, and went abroad in vain in the bitter weather inquest of bread to nourish your few first-born--the grubs that wouldhelp you by and by; now there will be no bread for them, and for you nopopulous city in the flowery earth and a great crowd of children to riseup each day, when days are long, to call you blessed! And he whodid this thing, the unspeakable oxeye with his black and yellowbreast--"catanic black and amber"--even while I made my lamentation wastinkling his merry song overhead in the windy elms. 

The birds that lived on the huge cathedral itself had the greatestattraction for me; and here the daws, if not the most numerous, were themost noticeable, as they ever are on account of their conspicuousness intheir black plumage, their loquacity and everlasting restlessness. Farup on the ledge from which the spire rises a kestrel had found a cosycorner in which to establish himself, and one day when I was there anumber of daws took it on themselves to eject him: they gathered nearand flew this way and that, and cawed and cawed in anger, and swooped athim, until he could stand their insults no longer, and, suddenly dashingout, he struck and buffeted them right and left and sent them screamingwith fear in all directions. After this they left him in peace: theyhad forgotten that he was a hawk, and that even the gentle mousingwind-hover has a nobler spirit than any crow of them all. 

On first coming to the cathedral I noticed a few pigeons sitting on theroof and ledges very high up, and, not seeing them well, I assumed thatthey were of the common or domestic kind. By and by one cooed, thenanother; and recognizing the stock-dove note I began to look carefully, and found that all the birds on the building--about thirty pairs--wereof this species. It was a great surprise, for though we occasionallyfind a pair of stock-doves breeding on the ivied wall of some inhabitedmansion in the country, it was a new thing to find a considerable colonyof this shy woodland species established on a building in a town. They lived and bred there just as the common pigeon--the vari-coloureddescendant of the blue rock--does on St. Paul's, the Law Courts, and theBritish Museum in London. Only, unlike our metropolitan doves, both thedomestic kind and the ringdove in the parks, the Salisbury doves thoughin the town are not of it. They come not down to mix with the currentsof human life in the streets and open spaces; they fly away to thecountry to feed, and dwell on the cathedral above the houses and peoplejust as sea-birds--kittiwake and guillemot and gannet--dwell on theledges 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 hecould remember. Six or seven years ago, he said, when the repairs to theroof and spire were started, the pigeons began to go away until therewas not one left. The work lasted three years, and immediately onits conclusion the doves began to return, and were now as numerous asformerly. How, I inquired, did these innocent birds get on with theirblack neighbours, seeing that the daw is a cunning creature much givento persecution--a crow, in fact, as black as any of his family? They goton 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 themat the end of April, when they forcibly ejected the young doves. Hesaid that in spring he always picked up a good many young doves, oftenunfledged, thrown down by the dawn. I did not doubt his story. I hadjust found a young bird myself--a little blue-skinned, yellow-mouthedfledgling 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 dovesentered into possession once more, and were then permitted to rear theiryoung 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 agreater "habitacle of birds" than ever: starlings, swifts, and swallowswere there, the lively little martins in hundreds, and the doves anddaws in their usual numbers. All appeared to be breeding, and for sometime I saw no quarreling. At length I spied a pair of doves with anest in a small cavity in the stone at the back of a narrow ledge aboutseventy feet from the ground, and by standing back some distance I couldsee the hen bird sitting on the nest, while the cock stood outside onthe ledge keeping guard. I watched this pair for some hours and sawa 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 ortwo away, and the male dove would then turn and face him, and if he thenbegan sidling up the dove would dash at and buffet him with his wingswith the greatest violence and throw him off. When he swooped closer thedove would spring up and meet him in the air, striking him at the momentof meeting, and again the daw would be beaten. When I left three daysafter witnessing this contest, the doves were still in possession oftheir nest, and I concluded that they were not so entirely at the mercyof the jackdaw as the old man had led me to believe. 

It was, on this occasion, a great pleasure to listen to the doves. Thestock-dove has no set song, like the ringdove, but like all the otherspecies 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-dovethis is a better, more musical, and a more varied sound than in anyother Columba known to me. The pleasing quality of the sound as well asthe variety in it could be well noted here where the birds were many, scattered about on ledges and projections high above the earth, and whenbird after bird uttered its plaint, each repeating his note half a dozento a dozen times, one in slow measured time, and deep-voiced like therock-dove, but more musical; another rapidly, with shorter, impetuousnotes in a higher key, as if carried away by excitement. There were nottwo birds that cooed in precisely the same way, and the same bird wouldoften 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 organwhich filled the vast interior was heard outside, subdued by the wallsthrough which it passed, and was like a beautiful mist or atmosphere ofsound pervading and enveloping the great building; and when the plainingof the doves, owing to the rhythmic flow of the notes and their humancharacters, 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 Nadderwere full of children gathering primroses; they might have filled athousand baskets without the flowers being missed, so abundant werethey in that place. Cold though it was the whole air was laden with thedelicious fragrance. It was pleasant to see and talk with the littlepeople occupied with the task they loved so well, and I made up my mindto see the result of all this flower-gathering next day in some of thevillage churches in the neighbourhood--Fovant, Teffant Evias, Chilmark, Swallowcliffe, Tisbury, and Fonthill Bishop. I had counted on someimprovement in the weather--some bright sunshine to light up theflower-decorated interiors; but Easter Sunday proved colder than ever, with the bitter north-east still blowing, the grey travelling cloudstill covering the sky; and so to get the full benefit of the bitternessI went instead to spend my day on the top of the biggest down above thevalley. That was Whitesheet Hill, and forms the highest part of the longridge dividing the valleys of the Ebble and Nadder. 

It was roughest and coldest up there, and suited my temper best, forwhen the weather seems spiteful one finds a grim sort of satisfactionin defying it. On a genial day it would have been very pleasant onthat lofty plain, for the flat top of the vast down is like a plain inappearance, and the earthworks on it show that it was once a populoushabitation of man. Now because of the wind and cloud its aspect was bareand bleak and desolate, and after roaming about for an hour, exploringthe thickest furze patches, I began to think that my day would have tobe spent in solitude, without a living creature to keep me company. Thebirds had apparently all been blown away and the rabbits were stayingat home in their burrows. Not even an insect could I see, althoughthe furze was in full blossom; the honey-suckers were out of sight andtorpid, and the bloom itself could no longer look "unprofitably gay, " asthe poet says it does. "Not even a wheatear!" I said, for I had countedon that bird in the intervals between the storms, although I knew Ishould 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 littlegreen ant-mounds and flirting its tail and bobbing as if greatly excitedat 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 founda bird to keep it in sight. Presently a great blackness appeared lowdown in the cloudy sky, and rose and spread, travelling fast towardsme, and the little wheatear fled in fear from it and vanished from sightover the rim of the down. But I was there to defy the weather, and soinstead of following the bird in search of shelter I sat down among somelow furze bushes and waited and watched. By and by I caught sight ofthree magpies, rising one by one at long intervals from the furze andflying laboriously towards a distant hill-top grove of pines. Then Iheard the wailing cry of a peewit, and caught sight of the bird at adistance, and soon afterwards a sound of another character--the harshangry 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 mein hot pursuit of a kestrel. They passed directly over me so that I hadthem a long time in sight, the kestrel travelling quietly on in the faceof the wind, the crow toiling after, and at intervals spurting till hegot near enough to hurl himself at his enemy, emitting his croaks ofrage. For invariably the kestrel with one of his sudden swallow-liketurns avoided the blow and went on as before. I watched them untilthey were lost to sight in the coming blackness and wondered that sointelligent a creature as a crow should waste his energies in that vainchase. Still one could understand it and even sympathize with him. Forthe kestrel is a most insulting creature towards the bigger birds. Heknows that they are incapable of paying him out, and when he finds themoff their guard he will drop down and inflict a blow just for the fun ofthe thing. This outraged crow appeared determined to have his revenge. 

Then the storm broke on me, and so fiercely did the rain and sleetthrash me that, fearing a cold soaking, I fled before it to the rim ofthe plain, where the wheatear had vanished, and saw a couple of hundredyards 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 mydisgust that the trees were nothing but elders. For there is no treethat affords so poor a shelter, especially on the high open downs, wherethe foliage is scantier than in other situations and lets in the windand rain in full force upon you. 

But the elder affects me in two ways. I like it on account of earlyassociations, and because the birds delight in its fruit, though theywisely refuse to build in its branches; and I dislike it because itssmell is offensive to me and its berries the least pleasant of allwild fruits to my taste. I can eat ivy-berries in March, and yew in itsseason, poison or not; and hips and haws and holly-berries and harshacorn, and the rowan, which some think acrid; but the elderberry I can'tstomach. 

How comes it, I have asked more than once, that this poor tree is sooften seen on the downs where it is so badly fitted to be and makes sosorry an appearance with its weak branches broken and its soft leavestorn by the winds? How badly it contrasts with the other trees andbushes that flourish on the downs--furze, juniper, holly, blackthorn, and hawthorn!

Two years ago, one day in the early spring, I was walking on anextensive down in another part of Wiltshire with the tenant of the land, who began there as a large sheep-farmer, but eventually finding thathe could make more with rabbits than with sheep turned most of his landinto 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 biggroup 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 somethingabout the elder growing on the open downs where it always appeared tobe out of harmony with its surroundings. "I don't suppose you plantedelders here, " I said. 

"No, but I know who did, " he returned, and he then gave me this curioushistory of the trees. Five years before, the rabbits, finding it asuitable 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 pairsattached themselves to this group of burrows and bred in them. There wasthat season a solitary elder-bush higher up on the down among the furzewhich bore a heavy crop of berries; and when the fruit was ripe hewatched the birds feeding on it, the wheatears among them. The followingspring seedlings came up out of the loose earth heaped about the rabbitburrows, and as they were not cut down by the rabbits, for they dislikethe elder, they grew up, and now formed a clump of fifty or sixty littletrees of six feet to eight feet in height. 

Who would have thought to find a tree-planter in the wheatear, the birdof the stony waste and open naked down, who does not even ask for a bushto perch on?

It then occurred to me that in every case where I had observed aclump of elder bushes on the bare downside, it grew upon a village orcollection of rabbit burrows, and it is probable that in every case theclump owed its existence to the wheatears who had dropped the seed abouttheir nesting-place. The clump where I had sought a shelter from thestorm was composed of large old dilapidated-looking half-dead elders;perhaps their age was not above thirty or forty years, but they lookedolder than hawthorns of one or two centuries; and under them the rabbitshad their diggings--huge old mounds and burrows that looked like abadger's earth. Here, too, the burrows had probably existed first andhad attracted the wheatears, and the birds had brought the seed fromsome distant bush. 

Crouching down in one of the big burrows at the roots of an old elder Iremained for half an hour, listening to the thump-thump of the alarmedrabbits about me, and the accompanying hiss and swish of the wind andsleet and rain in the ragged branches. 

The storm over I continued my rambles on Whitesheet Hill, and comingback an hour or two later to the very spot where I had seen and followedthe wheatear, I all at once caught sight of a second bird, lying deadon the turf close to my feet! The sudden sight gave me a shock ofastonishment, mingled with admiration and grief. For how pretty itlooked, though dead, lying on its back, the little black legs stuckstiffly up, the long wings pressed against the sides, their black tipstouching together like the clasped hands of a corpse; and the fan-likeblack and white tail, half open as in life, moved perpetually up anddown by the wind, as if that tail-flirting action of the bird hadcontinued after death. It was very beautiful in its delicate shape andpale harmonious colouring, resting on the golden-green mossy turf. Andit was a male, undoubtedly the mate of the wheatear I had seen at thespot, and its little mate, not knowing what death is, had probably beenkeeping watch near it, wondering at its strange stillness and greatlyfearing for its safety when I came that way, and passed by withoutseeing it. 

Poor little migrant, did you come back across half the world forthis--back to your home on Whitesheet Hill to grow cold and fail in thecold 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 littlebirds that come and go and return to us over such vast distances, theyperish like this in myriads annually; flying to and from us they areblown away by death like sere autumn leaves, "the pestilence-strickenmultitudes" whirled away by the wind! They die in myriads: that is notstrange; the strange, the astonishing thing is the fact of death; whatcan they tell us of it--the wise men who live or have ever lived on theearth--what can they say now of the bright intelligent spirit, the dearlittle emotional soul, that had so fit a tenement and so fitly expresseditself in motions of such exquisite grace, in melody so sweet! Did it goout 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 differentdirection, of the saint or poet or philosopher! Alas, they can tell usnothing!

I could not go away leaving it in that exposed place on the turf, to befound 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 thelittle brown ants, green and soft with moss and small creeping herbs--asuitable grave for a wheatear. Cutting out a round piece of turf fromthe side, I made a hole with my stick and put the dead bird in andreplacing the turf left it neatly buried. 

It was not that I had or have any quarrel with the creatures I havenamed, or would have them other than they are--carrion-eaters andscavengers, Nature's balance-keepers and purifiers. The only creatureson earth I loathe and hate are the gourmets, the carrion-crows and foxesof 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 arailway carriage which takes you smoothly without a stop in two shorthours from Paddington, that I was amazed at myself in having allowedfive full years to pass since my previous visit. The question wasmuch in my mind as I strolled about noting the old-remembered names ofstreets and squares and crescents. Quiet Street was the name inscribedon one; it was, to me, the secret name of them all. The old impressionswere renewed, an old feeling partially recovered. The wide, clean ways;the solid, stone-built houses with their dignified aspect; the largedistances, terrace beyond terrace; mansions and vast green lawns andparks and gardens; avenues and groups of stately trees, especially thatunmatched clump of old planes in the Circus; the whole town, the designin the classic style of one master mind, set by the Avon, amid greenhills, produced a sense of harmony and repose which cannot be equalledby any other town in the kingdom. 

This idle time was delightful so long as I gave my attention exclusivelyto houses from the outside, and to hills, rocks, trees, waters, and allvisible nature, which here harmonizes with man's works. To sit on somehigh hill and look down on Bath, sun-flushed or half veiled in mist; tolounge on Camden Crescent, or climb Sion Hill, or take my ease with thewater-drinkers in the spacious, comfortable Pump Room; or, better still, to rest at noon in the ancient abbey--all this was pleasure pure andsimple, a quiet drifting back until I found myself younger by five yearsthan I had taken myself to be. 

I haunted the abbey, and the more I saw of it the more I loved it. Theimpression it had made on me during my former visits had faded, or elseI had never properly seen it, or had not seen it in the right emotionalmood. Now I began to think it the best of all the great abbey churchesof 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 tendergloom! How tall and graceful the columns holding up the high roof ofwhite stone with its marvellous palm-leaf sculpture! What a vast expanseof beautifully stained glass! I certainly gave myself plenty of time toappreciate it on this occasion, as I visited it every day, sometimestwo or three times, and not infrequently I sat there for an hour at astretch. 

Sitting there one day, thinking of nothing, I was gradually awakenedto a feeling almost of astonishment at the sight of the extraordinarynumber of memorial tablets of every imaginable shape and size whichcrowd the walls. So numerous are they and so closely placed that youcould not find space anywhere to put your hand against the wall. We areaccustomed to think that in cathedrals and other great ecclesiasticalbuildings the illustrious dead receive burial, and their names andclaims on our gratitude and reverence are recorded, but in no fane inthe 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-lettervolume without margins. Yet when I came to think of it I could notrecall any Bath celebrity or great person associated with Bath exceptBeau Nash, who was not perhaps a very great person. Probably Carlylewould have described him as a "meeserable creature. "

Leaving my seat I began to examine the inscriptions, and found that theyhad not been placed there in memory of men belonging to Bath or evenSomerset. These monuments were erected to persons from all counties inthe three kingdoms, and from all the big towns, those to Londoners beingmost numerous. Nor were they of persons distinguished in any way. Hereyou find John or Henry or Thomas Smith, or Brown, or Jones, or Robinson, provision dealer, or merchant, of Clerkenwell, or Bermondsey, orBishopsgate Street Within or Without; also many retired captains, majors, and colonels. There were hundreds more whose professionsor occupations in life were not stated. There were also hundreds ofmemorials to ladies--widows and spinsters. They were all, in fact, to persons who had come to die in Bath after "taking the waters, " anddying, they or their friends had purchased immortality on the wallsof the abbey with a handful or two of gold. Here is one of severalinscriptions of the kind I took the trouble to copy: "His early virtues, his cultivated talents, his serious piety, inexpressibly endeared him tohis friends and opened to them many bright prospects of excellence andhappiness. These prospects have all faded, " and so on for several longlines 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 wasa young man born in the West Indies who died in Scotland, and later hismother, coming to Bath for her health, "caused this inscription tobe placed on the abbey walls"! If this policy or tradition is stillfollowed by the abbey authorities, it will be necessary for them tobuild an annexe; if it be no longer followed, would it be going too farto suggest that these mural tablets to a thousand obscurities, whichought never to have been placed there, should now be removed andplaced in some vault where the relations or descendants of the personsdescribed could find, and if they wished it, have them removed?

But it must be said that the abbey is not without a fair number ofmemorials 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 everwritten. No, one, however familiar with the words, will find fault withme 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'sliving words, but there is another very much more beautiful. 

I first noticed this memorial on the wall at a distance of about threeyards, too far to read anything in the inscription except the name ofSibthorpe, which was strange to me, but instead of going nearer to readit I remained standing to admire it at that distance. The tablet was ofwhite marble, and on it was sculptured the figure of a young man withcurly head and classic profile. He was wearing sandals and a loosemantle held to his breast with one hand, while in the other handhe carried a bunch of leaves and flowers. He appeared in the act ofstepping ashore from a boat of antique shape, and the artist had beensingularly successful in producing the idea of free and vigorous motionin the figure as well as of some absorbing object in his mind. Thefigure was undoubtedly symbolical, and I began to amuse myself by tryingto guess its meaning. Then a curious thing happened. A person who hadbeen moving slowly along near me, apparently looking with no greatinterest at the memorials, came past me and glanced first at the tabletI was looking at, then at me. As our eyes met I remarked that I wasadmiring 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 atraveller and is stepping ashore with a flowering spray in his hand. Itstrikes me that it may have been erected to the memory of a person whointroduced 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 wasSibthorpe. "

"Sibthorpe!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Why, this is the very memorialI've been looking for all over the abbey and had pretty well given upall hopes of finding it. " With that he went to it and began studyingthe inscription, which was in Latin. John Sibthorpe, I found, was adistinguished botanist, author of the Flora Graeca, who died over acentury ago. 

I asked him why he was interested in Sibthorpe's memorial. 

"Well, you see, I'm a great botanist myself, " he explained, "and havebeen 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 alittle local botanist, quite unknown outside my own circle; I only meanthat I'm a great lover of botany. "

I left him there, and had the curiosity to look up the great man'slife, and found some very curious things in it. He was a son of HumphreySibthorpe, also a great botanist, who succeeded the still greaterDillenius as Sherardian Professor of Botany at Oxford, a post whichhe held for thirty-six years, and during that time he delivered onelecture, which was a failure. John, if he did not suck in botany withhis mother's milk, took it quite early from his father, and on leavingthe University went abroad to continue his studies. Eventually hewent to Greece, inflamed with the ambition to identify all the plantsmentioned by Dioscorides. Then he set about writing his Flora Graeca;but he had a rough time of it travelling about in that rude land, andfalling ill he had to leave his work undone. When nearing his end hecame to Bath, like so many other afflicted ones, only to die, and hewas very properly buried in the abbey. In his will he left an estatethe 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 hundredand forty guineas a copy. But the whole cost of the work was set downat 30, 000 pounds! A costlier work it would be hard to find; I wonder howmany of us have seen it?

But I must go back to my subject. I was not in Bath just to die and liethere, 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 wallsto bespeak it for my own memorial. On the contrary, I was there, as wehave seen, to knock five years off my age. And it was very pleasant, asI have said, so long as I confined my attention to Bath, the stone-builttown of old memories and associations--so long as I was satisfied toloiter in the streets and wide green places and in the Pump Room and theabbey. The bitter came in only when, going from places to faces, I beganto seek out the friends and acquaintances of former days. The familiarfaces seemed not wholly familiar now. A change had been wrought; in somecases a great change, as in that of some weedy girl who had blossomedinto fair womanhood. One could not grieve at that; but in themiddle-aged and those who were verging on or past that period, it wasimpossible not to feel saddened at the difference. "I see no change inyou, " 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 nocompliments to one another; on the contrary, they do not hesitate tomake 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, beingpreternaturally keen in such matters, see not only the change in you, but what is infinitely sadder, the changed reflection of herself. Youreyes have revealed the shock you have experienced. You cannot hide it;her heart is stabbed with a sudden pain, and she is filled with shameand confusion; and the pain is but greater if her life has glidedsmoothly--if she cannot appeal to your compassion, finding a melancholyrelief 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 orcalamity which men fear, is her chief enemy. Time alone she hates andfears--insidious Time who has lulled her mind with pleasant flatteriesall 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 exactlyfit the theme, but is very well worth telling. A lady of fashion, middle-aged or thereabouts, good-looking but pale and with the marksof care and disillusionment on her expressive face, accompanied by herpretty sixteen-years-old daughter, one day called on an artist and askedhim to show her his studio. He was a very great artist, the greatestportrait-painter we have ever had and he did not know who she was, butwith the sweet courtesy which distinguished him through all his longlife--he died recently at a very advanced age--he at once put his workaway and took her round his studio to show her everything he thoughtwould interest her. But she was restless and inattentive, and by and byleaving the artist talking to her young daughter she began going roundby herself, moving constantly from picture to picture. Presently shemade 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 wasa 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 cometo see; it had been there twenty to twenty-five years, and the story ofit was as follows. 

When she was a young girl her mother took her to the great artist tohave her portrait painted, and when the work was at length finished sheand her mother went to see it. The artist put it before them and themother looked at it, her face expressing displeasure, and said not oneword. Nor did the artist open his lips. And at last the girl, to breakthe uncomfortable silence, said, "Where shall we hang it, mother?" andthe lady replied, "Just where you like, my dear, so long as you hang itwith 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 neednot take the portrait as it failed to please her, and that in any casehe would decline to take the money she had agreed to pay him for thework. She thanked him coldly and went her way, and he never saw heragain. And now Time, the humbler of proud beautiful women, had givenhim his revenge: the portrait, scorned and rejected when the colour andsparkle of life was in the face, had been looked on once more by itssubject and had caused her to weep at the change in herself. 

To return. One wishes in these moments of meeting, of surprise andsudden revealings, that it were permissible to speak from the heart, since then the very truth might have more balm than bitterness init. "Grieve not, dear friend of old days, that I have not escaped theillusion common to all--the idea that those we have not looked on thislong time--full five years, let us say--have remained as they were whilewe ourselves have been moving onwards and downwards in that path inwhich our feet are set. No one, however hardened he may be, can escapea shock of surprise and pain; but now the illusion I cherished hasgone--now I have seen with my physical eyes, and a new image, withTime'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 thevanished lustre, since all these changes, above all that wistful lookin the eyes, do but serve to make you dearer, my sister and friendand fellow-traveller in a land where we cannot find a permanentresting-place. "

Alas! it cannot be spoken, and we cannot comfort a sister if she cannotdivine the thought; but to brood over these inevitable changes is asidle as it is to lament that we were born into this mutable world. Afterall, it is because of the losses, the sadnesses, that the world is soinfinitely 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 notbeen for ten years, and timing my visit so as to have a Sunday serviceat the cathedral of beautiful memories, I went on a Saturday to SheptonMallet. A small, squalid town, a "manufacturing town" the guide-bookcalls it. Well, yes; it manufactures Anglo-Bavarian beer in a giganticbrewery which looks bigger than all the other buildings together, thechurch and a dozen or twenty public-houses included. To get some food Iwent to the only eating-house in the place, and saw a pleasant-lookingwoman, plump and high-coloured, with black hair, with an expression ofgood humour and goodness of every description in her comely countenance. She promised to have a chop ready by the time I had finished looking atthe church, and I said I would have it with a small Guinness. She couldnot provide that, the house, she said, was strictly temperance. "Mydoctor 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 itbeneficial. "

"Yes, I know that's what St. Paul says, " she returned, with a heightenedcolour and a vicious emphasis on the saint's name, "but we go on adifferent principle. "

So I had to go for my lunch to one of the big public-houses, calledhotels; 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 theycalled a beefsteak pie--a tough crust and under it some blackish cubescarved out of the muscle of an antediluvian ox-and for this deliciousfare and a glass of stout I paid three shillings and odd pence. 

As I came away Shepton Mallet was shaken to its foundations by atremendous and most diabolical sound, a prolonged lupine yell or yowl, as if a stupendous wolf, as big, say, as the Anglo-Bavarian brewery, hadhowled his loudest and longest. This infernal row, which makes Sheptonseem like a town or village gone raving mad, was merely to inform themen, and, incidentally, the universe, that it was time for them to knockoff work. 

Turning my back on the place, I said to myself, "What a fool I am to besure! Why could I not have been satisfied for once with a cup of coffeewith my lunch? I should have saved a shilling, perhaps eighteen-pence, to rejoice the soul of some poor tramp; and, better still, I couldhave discussed some interesting questions with that charming rosy-facedwoman. What, for instance, was the reason of her quarrel with theapostle; by the by, she never rebuked me for misquoting his words; andwhat is the moral effect (as seen through her clear brown eyes) ofthe Anglo-Bavarian brewery on the population of the small town and theneighbouring villages?"

The road I followed from Shepton to Wells winds by the water-side, atributary of the Brue, in a narrow valley with hills on either side. It is a five-mile road through a beautiful country, where there ispractically no cultivation, and the green hills, with brown woods intheir hollows, and here and there huge masses of grey and reddish Bathstone cropping out on their sides, resembling gigantic castles andramparts, long ruined and overgrown with ivy and bramble, produce theeffect of a land dispeopled and gone back to a state of wildness. 

A thaw had come that morning, ending the severest frost experienced thiswinter anywhere in England, and the valley was alive with birds, happyand tuneful at the end of January as in April. Looking down on thestream the sudden glory of a kingfisher passed before me; but thesooty-brown water-ouzel with his white bib, a haunter, too, of thiswater, I did not see. Within a mile or so of Wells I overtook a smallboy who belonged there, and had been to Shepton like me, noticing thebirds. "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, butits colour was not blue--oh, no! I suggested that it was a heron, along-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 awild duck. "

Bestowing a penny to encourage him in his promising researches into thefeathered world, I went on by a footpath over a hill, and as I mountedto 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 hightrees, the magnificent pile of the cathedral, with green hills and thepale sky beyond. O joy to look again on it, to add yet one more enduringimage of it to the number I had long treasured! For the others werenot exactly like this one; the building was not looked at from the samepoint of view at the same season and late hour, with the green hills litby the departing sun and the clear pale winter sky beyond. 

Coming in by the moated palace I stood once more on the Green beforethat west front, beautiful beyond all others, in spite of the strangedefeatures Time has written on it. I watched the daws, numerous as ever, still at their old mad games, now springing into the air to scatterabroad with ringing cries, only to return the next minute and flingthemselves back on their old perches on a hundred weather-stained brokenstatues in the niches. And while I stood watching them from the palacetrees close by came the loud laugh of the green woodpecker. The samewild, beautiful sound, uttered perhaps by the same bird, which I hadoften heard at that spot ten years ago! "You will not hear that woodlandsound in any other city in the kingdom, " I wrote in a book of sketchesentitled "Birds and Man", published in 1901. 

But of my soul's adventures in Wells on the two or three following daysI will say very little. That laugh of the woodpecker was an assurancethat Nature had suffered no change, and the town too, like the hills androcks and running waters, seemed unchanged; but how different and howsad when I looked for those I once knew, whose hands I had hoped tograsp again! Yes, some were living still; and a dog too, one I usedto take out for long walks and many a mad rabbit-hunt--a very handsomewhite-and-liver coloured spaniel. I found him lying on a sofa, and downhe got and wagged his tail vigorously, pretending, with a pretty humanhypocrisy 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 buzzand clang of innumerable electric tramcars and the usual din of streettraffic, one got the idea that the Bristolians had adopted a sort ofSalvation Army theory, and were endeavouring to conquer earth (it isnot heaven in this case) by making a tremendous noise. I amused myselfstrolling about and watching the people, and as train after train camein late in the day discharging loads of humanity, mostly young men andwomen from the surrounding country coming in for an evening's amusement, I noticed again the peculiarly Welsh character of the Somersetpeasant--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 methat any person, unbiassed by theories on such a subject, lookingat 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 placewhere an unexpected beauty or charm has revealed itself, and has madeits image a lasting and prized possession of the mind, is not the samething as the revisiting a famous town or city, rich in many beauties andold memories, such as Bath or Wells, for instance. Such centres have apermanent attraction, and one who is a rover in the land must return tothem again and again, nor does he fail on each successive visit to findsome fresh charm or interest. The sadness of such returns, after a longinterval, is only, as I have said, when we start "looking up" those withwhom we had formed pleasant friendly relations. And all because of theillusion that we shall see them as they were--that Time has stood stillwaiting for our return, and by and by, to our surprise and grief, wediscover that it is not so; that the dear friends of other days, longunvisited but unforgotten, have become strangers. This human loss isfelt even more in the case of a return to some small centre, a villageor hamlet where we knew every one, and our intimacy with the people hasproduced the sense of being one in blood with them. It is greatest ofall when we return to a childhood's or boyhood's home. Many writershave occupied themselves with this mournful theme, and I imagine that aperson of the proper Amiel-like tender and melancholy moralizing typeof mind, by using his own and his friends' experiences, could write acharmingly sad and pretty book on the subject. 

The really happy returns of this kind must be exceedingly rare. I amalmost surprised to think that I am able to recall as many as two, butthey hardly count, as in both instances the departure or exile from homehappens at so early a time of life that no recollections of the peoplesurvived--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 avillage in the Midlands, as a boy of eight or nine years of age, throughthe sale of the place by his father, who had become impoverished. Theboy 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, herevisited his native village for the first time, and discovered to hisjoy 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 pleasedexpression on his face entered the smoking-carriage in which I wastravelling to London. Putting his bag on the rack, he pulled out hispipe 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 mynewspaper, but seeing him in that overflowing mood I responded readilyenough, for I was curious to know why he appeared so happy and who andwhat he was. Not a tradesman nor a bagman, and not a farmer, though helooked like an open-air man; nor could I form a guess from his speechand manner as to his native place. A robust man of thirty-eight orforty, 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 eagermanner, his freedom with a stranger, and something, too, in his speech. From time to time his face lighted up, when, looking to the window, hiseyes rested on some pretty scene--a glimpse of stately old elm trees ina field where cattle were grazing, of the vivid green valley of a chalkstream, the paler hills beyond, the grey church tower or spire of sometree-hidden village. When he discovered that these hills and streams andrustic villages had as great a charm for me as for himself, that I knewand loved the two or three places he named in a questioning way, heopened his heart and the secret of his present happiness. 

He was a native of the district, born at a farmhouse of which his fatherin succession to his grandfather had been the tenant. It was a smallfarm of only eighty-five acres, and as his father could make no morethan a bare livelihood out of it, he eventually gave it up when myinformant was but three years old, and selling all he had, emigrated toAustralia. Nine years later he died, leaving a numerous family poorlyprovided for; the home was broken up and boys and girls had to go outand face the world. They had somehow all got on very well, and hisbrothers and sisters were happy enough out there, Australians in mind, thoroughly persuaded that theirs was the better land, the best countryin the world, and with no desire to visit England. He had never feltlike that; somehow his father's feeling about the old country had takensuch a hold of him that he never outlived it--never felt at home inAustralia, however successful he was in his affairs. The home feelinghad been very strong in his father; his greatest delight was to sit ofan evening with his children round him and tell them of the farm and theold farm-house where he was born and had lived so many years, and wheresome 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 toplace, to the stream, the village, the old stone church, the meadows andfields and hedges, the deep shady lanes, and, above all, to the dearold ivied house with its gables and tall chimneys. So many times hadhis father described it that the old place was printed like a map on hismind, and was like a picture which kept its brightness even after theimage of his boyhood's home in Australia had become faded and pale. Withthat mental picture to guide him he believed that he could go to thatangle by the porch where the flycatchers bred every year and find theirnest; where in the hedge the blackberries were most abundant; where theelders grew by the stream from which he could watch the moorhens andwatervoles; that he knew every fence, gate, and outhouse, every room andpassage in the old house. Through all his busy years that picture nevergrew less beautiful, never ceased its call, and at last, possessed ofsufficient capital to yield him a modest income for the rest of hislife, he came home. What he was going to do in England he did notconsider. He only knew that until he had satisfied the chief desire ofhis heart and had looked upon the original of the picture he had borneso 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 threemiles from the nearest station, in the southern part of the county. Undoubtedly it was Thorpe; that was one of the few names of places hisfather had mentioned which remained in his memory always associatedwith that vivid image of the farm in his mind. To Thorpe he accordinglywent--as pretty a rustic village as he had hoped to find it. He took aroom 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 hishome for himself; how could he fail to recognize it? But he walked forhours in a widening circle and saw no farm or other house, and no groundthat 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 hadforgotten the name--he even doubted that he had ever heard it. But therewas his family name to go by--Dyson; did any one remember a farmer Dysonin the village? He was told that it was not an uncommon name in thatpart of the country. There were no Dysons now in Thorpe, but somefifteen or twenty years ago one of that name had been the tenant of LongMeadow Farm in the parish. The name of the farm was unfamiliar, and whenhe visited the place he found it was not the one he sought. 

It was a grievous disappointment. A new sense of loneliness oppressedhim; for that bright image in his mind, with the feeling about hishome, had been a secret source of comfort and happiness, and was like acompanion, a dear human friend, and now he appeared to be on the pointof losing it. Could it be that all that mental picture, with the detailsthat seemed so true to life, was purely imaginary? He could not believeit; the old house had probably been pulled down, the big trees felled, orchard and hedges grabbed up--all the old features obliterated--and theland thrown into some larger neighbouring farm. It was dreadful tothink that such devastating changes had been made, but it had certainlyexisted as he saw it in his mind, and he would inquire of some of theold men in the place, who would perhaps be able to tell him where hishome had stood thirty years ago. 

At once he set about interviewing all the old men he came upon in hisrounds, describing to them the farm tenanted by a man named Dyson aboutforty years ago, and by and by he got hold of one who knew. He listenedfor 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 everforget 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 thelane. 

There was an opening there and a view of the valley with trees, blue inthe distance, at the furthest visible point. "Do you see them trees?"he said. "That's where Harping is; 'tis two miles or, perhaps, a littlemore from Thorpe. There's a church tower among them trees, but youcan't see it because 'tis hid. You go by the road till you comes to thechurch, then you go on by the water, maybe a quarter of a mile, and youcomes to Woodyates. You won't see no difference in it; I've knowed itsince I were a boy, but 'tis in Harping parish, not in Thorpe. "

Now he remembered the name--Harping, near Thorpe--only Thorpe was themore 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 exiledfather's before him, inexpressibly glad to recognize it as the veryhouse 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 thefarm-house, and now after making some inquiries he had found that theowner was willing to sell the place for something more than its marketvalue, and he was going up to London about it. 

At Waterloo I wished him happiness in his old home found again afterso many years, then watched him as he walked briskly away--ascommonplace-looking a man as could be seen on that busy crowdedplatform, in his suit of rough grey tweeds, thick boots, and bowlerhat. Yet one whose fortune might be envied by many even among thesuccessful--one who had cherished a secret thought and feeling, whichhad been to him like the shadow of a rock and like a cool spring in adry and thirsty land. 

And in that host of undistinguished Colonials and others of Britishrace from all regions of the earth, who annually visit these shores onbusiness or for pleasure or some other object, how many there must bewho come with some such memory or dream or aspiration in their hearts!A greater number probably than we imagine. For most of them there isdoubtless disappointment and disillusion: it is a matter of the heart, a sentiment about which some are not given to speak. He too, myfellow-passenger, would no doubt have held his peace had his dream notmet with so perfect a fulfilment. As it was he had to tell his joy tosome one, though it were to a stranger. 

Chapter Fifteen: Summer Days on the Otter

The most characteristic district of South Devon, the greenest, mostluxuriant in its vegetation, and perhaps the hottest in England, isthat bit of country between the Exe and the Axe which is watered bythe Clyst, the Otter, and the Sid. In any one of a dozen villages foundbeside these pretty little rivers a man might spend a month, a year, a lifetime, very agreeably, ceasing not to congratulate himself on thegood fortune which first led him into such a garden. Yet after a weekor two in this luxurious land I began to be dissatisfied with mysurroundings. It was June; the weather was exceptionally dry and sultry. Vague thoughts, or "visitings" of mountains and moors and coasts wouldintrude to make the confinement of deep lanes seem increasingly irksome. Each day I wandered miles in some new direction, never knowing whitherthe devious path would lead me, never inquiring of any person, norconsulting map or guide, since to do that is to deprive oneself of thepleasure of discovery; always with a secret wish to find some exit asit were--some place beyond the everlasting wall of high hedges and greentrees, where there would be a wide horizon and wind blowing unobstructedover 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; otherlanes leading to other farm-houses, each in its familiar pretty settingof orchard and garden; and, finally, other ancient villages, each withits ivy-grown grey church tower looking down on a green graveyard andscattered cottages, mostly mud-built and thatched with straw. Finding nooutlook 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 troutbelow me and the dark-plumaged dipper with shining white breast standingsolitary and curtseying on a stone in the middle of the current. Sometimes a kingfisher would flash by, and occasionally I came upona lonely grey heron; but no mammal bigger than a watervole appeared, although I waited and watched for the much bigger beast that gives theriver its name. Still it was good to know that he was there, and had hisden somewhere in the steep rocky bank under the rough tangle of ivy andbramble and roots of overhanging trees. One was shot by a farmerduring my stay, but my desire was for the living, not a dead otter. Consequently, when the otter-hunt came with blaze of scarlet coats andblowing of brass horns and noise of barking hounds and shouts of excitedpeople, it had no sooner got half a mile above Ottery St. Mary, where Ihad joined the straggling procession, than, falling behind, the huntingfury died out of me and I was relieved to hear that no quarry had beenfound. The frightened moorhen stole back to her spotty eggs, the dipperreturned 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 tome things, or aspects of things, that were new. A great deal depends onatmosphere and the angle of vision. For instance, I have often lookedat swans at the hour of sunset, on the water and off it, or flying, andhave frequently had them between me and the level sun, yet never haveI been favoured with the sight of the rose-coloured, the red, and thegolden-yellow varieties of that majestic waterfowl, whose natural colouris white. On the other hand, who ever saw a carrion-crow with crimsoneyes? 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 theresult is that the crow is not so abhorred and persecuted a fowl asin many places, especially in the home counties, where the cult of thesacred bird is almost universal. At one spot on the stream where myrambles took me on most days a pair of crows invariably greeted myapproach with a loud harsh remonstrance, and would keep near me, flyingfrom 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 seethat the young had been safely brought off. The old birds screamed at meno 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 himfor half an hour or longer. It was a hot, windless day, and the birdwas by himself among the tall flowering grasses and buttercups of themeadow--a queer gaunt unfinished hobbledehoy-looking fowl with a headmuch too big for his body, a beak that resembled a huge nose, and avery monstrous mouth. When I first noticed him he was amusing himself bypicking off the small insects from the flowers with his big beak, a mostunsuitable instrument, one would imagine, for so delicate a task. At thesame time he was hungering for more substantial fare, and every time arook flew by over him on its way to or from a neighbouring too populousrookery, the young crow would open wide his immense red mouth and emithis harsh, throaty hunger-call. The rook gone, he would drop oncemore into his study of the buttercups, to pick from them whateverunconsidered trifle in the way of provender he could find. Once a smallbird, a pied wagtail, flew near him, and he begged from it just as hehad done from the rooks: the little creature would have run the riskof being itself swallowed had it attempted to deliver a packet of fliesinto that cavernous mouth. I went nearer, moving cautiously, until I waswithin about four yards of him, when, half turning, he opened his mouthand squawked, actually asking me to feed him; then, growing suspicious, he hopped awkwardly away in the grass. Eventually he permitted a nearerapproach, and slowly stooping I was just on the point of stroking hisback when, suddenly becoming alarmed, he swung himself into the air andflapped 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 thattheir young have a good deal to learn upon first coming forth into anunfriendly world. But there was a second nest and family close by allthe time. A day or two later I discovered it accidentally in a verycurious 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 thefoot of the low bank on the treeless side of the stream there was ascanty patch of sedges, a most exposed and unsuitable place for any birdto breed in, yet a venturesome moorhen had her nest there and was nowsitting on seven eggs. First I would take a peep at the eggs, for thebird always quitted the nest on my approach; then I would gaze into thedense tangle of tree, bramble, and ivy springing out of the mass 'ofblack rock and red clay of the opposite bank. In the centre of thisrough tangle which overhung the stream there grew an old stunted andcrooked fir tree with its tufted top so shut out from the light by thebranches and foliage round it that it looked almost black. One evening Isat down on the green bank opposite this tangle when the low sun behindme shone level into the mass of rock and rough boles and branches, andfixing my eyes on the black centre of the mass I encountered a pair ofcrimson eyes staring back into mine. A level ray of light had lit upthat 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 thedwarf pine top and the vague black forms of three young fully fledgedcrows sitting or standing in it. The middle bird had the shining crimsoneyes; but in a few moments the illusory colour was gone and the eyeswere black. 

It was certainly an extraordinary thing: the ragged-lookingblack-plumaged bird on its ragged nest of sticks in the deep shade, withone ray of intense sunlight on its huge nose-like beak and blood-redeyes, a sight to be remembered for a lifetime! It recalled Zurbaran'spicture of the "Kneeling Monk, " in which the man with everything abouthim is steeped in the deepest gloom except his nose, on which one ray ofstrong light has fallen. The picture of the monk is gloomy and austerein a wonderful degree: the crow in his interior with sunlit big beak andcrimson eyes looked nothing less than diabolical. 

I paid other visits to the spot at the same hour, and sat long andwatched the crows while they watched me, occasionally tossing pebbles onto them to make them shift their positions, but the magical effect wasnot produced again. 

As to the cause of that extraordinary colour in the crow's eyes, onemight 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 asglass, 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 mayshow its own hidden red--the crimson colour which is at the back ofthe retina and which is commonly supposed to be seen only with theophthalmoscope. Nevertheless I find on inquiry among friends andacquaintances that there are instances of persons in which the iriswhen directly in front of the observer with the light behind him, alwayslooks crimson, and in several of these cases the persons exhibitingthis colour, or danger signal, as it may be called, were subject tobrain trouble. It is curious to find that the crimson colour or lighthas also been observed in dogs: one friend has told me of a pet KingCharles, a lively good-tempered little dog with brown eyes like anyother dog, which yet when they looked up, into yours in a room alwaysshone ruby-red instead of hyaline blue, or green, as is usually thecase. From other friends I heard of many other cases: one was of achild, an infant in arms, whose eyes sometimes appeared crimson, anotherof 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, bothdead now, in whose eyes the red light had been seen just before andduring attacks of nervous breakdown. I heard also of four other persons, not distinguished in any way, two of them sisters, who showed the redlight in the eyes: all of them suffered, from brain trouble and two ofthem ended their lives in asylums for the insane. 

Discussing these cases with my informants, we came to the conclusionthat the red light in the human eye is probably always a pathologicalcondition, a danger signal; but it is not perhaps safe to generalizeon these few instances, and I must add that all the medical men Ihave spoken to on the subject shake their heads. One great man, an eyespecialist, went so far as to say that it is impossible, that the redlight in the eye was not seen by my informants but only imagined. Theophthalmoscope, he said, will show you the crimson at the back of theeye, but the colour is not and cannot be reflected on the surface of theiris. 

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 wonderfulthing in Nature in that place where a crimson-eyed carrion-crow hadbeen revealed to me, had not a storm of thunder and rain broken overthe country to shake me out of a growing disinclination to move. We are, body and mind, very responsive to atmospheric changes; for every stormin Nature there is a storm in us--a change physical and mental. We makeour own conditions, it is true, and these react and have a deadeningeffect on us in the long run, but we are never wholly deadened bythem--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 ofeverlasting summer: it is hard to believe that the dwellers in suchplaces can ever think a new thought or do a new thing. The morning raindid not last very long, and before it had quite ceased I took up myknapsack and set off towards the sea, determined on this occasion tomake my escape. 

Three or four miles from Ottery St. Mary I overtook a cowman drivingnine milch cows along a deep lane and inquired my way of him. He gave memany and minute directions, after which we got into conversation, andI walked some distance with him. The cows he was driving were all pureDevons, perfect beauties in their bright red coats in that greenestplace where every rain-wet leaf sparkled in the new sunlight. Naturallywe talked about the cows, and I soon found that they were his own andthe pride and joy of his life. We walked leisurely, and as the animalswent 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 solavishly 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 orstrayed into some inviting side-lane, he would turn and utter a long, soft call, whereupon the straggler would leave her browsing and hastenafter the others. 

He was a big, strongly built man, a little past middle life andgrey-haired, with rough-hewn face--unprepossessing one would havepronounced him until the intelligent, kindly expression of the eyes wasseen and the agreeable voice was heard. As our talk progressed and wefound how much in sympathy we were on the subject, I was reminded ofthat Biblical expression about the shining of a man's face: "Wine thatmaketh glad the heart of man"--I hope the total abstainers will pardonme--"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 orunguents on our skin, but only soap which deprives it of its naturaloil 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 aresemblance to the sudden brightening and glory of the countenancein moments of blissful emotion or exaltation. No doubt the effect isproduced by the eyes, which are the mirrors of the mind, and as they areturned full upon us they produce an illusion, seeming to make the wholeface shine. 

In our talk I told him of long rambles on the Mendips, along the valleyof 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. Yeteven there, where, standing on some elevation, cows beyond one's powerto number could be seen scattered far and wide in the green valesbeneath, it had saddened me to find them so silent. It is not naturalfor them to be dumb; they have great emotions and mighty voices--thecattle on a thousand hills. Their morning and evening lowing is more tome than any other natural sound--the melody of birds, the springs anddying gales of the pines, the wash of waves on the long shingled beach. The hills and valleys of that pastoral country flowing with milk andhoney should be vocal with it, echoing and re-echoing the long callmade musical by distance. The cattle are comparatively silent in thatbeautiful district, and indeed everywhere in England, because men havemade them so. They have, when deprived of their calves, no motive forthe exercise of their voices. For two or three days after their new-borncalves have been taken from them they call loudly and incessantly, day and night, like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to becomforted; grief and anxiety inspires that cry--they grow hoarse withcrying; it is a powerful, harsh, discordant sound, unlike the longmusical call of the cow that has a calf, and remembering it, and leavingthe pasture, goes lowing to give it suck. 

I also told him of the cows of a distant country where I had lived, thathad the maternal instinct so strong that they refused to yield theirmilk when deprived of their young. They "held it back, " as the sayingis, and were in a sullen rage, and in a few days their fountains driedup, 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 asan example. In most cases, he said, the calf was left from two or threedays to a week, or longer, with the mother to get strong, and then takenaway. This plan could not be always followed; some cows were so greatlydistressed at losing the young they had once suckled that precautionshad to be taken and the calf smuggled away as quietly as possible whendropped--if possible before the mother had seen it. Then there were theextreme cases in which the cow refused to be cheated. She knew that acalf had been born; she had felt it within her, and had suffered pangsin bringing it forth; if it appeared not on the grass or straw at herside then it must have been snatched away by the human creatures thathovered about her, like crows and ravens round a ewe in travail on somelonely mountain side. 

That was the character of the cow he had pointed out; even when she hadnot seen the calf of which she had been deprived she made so great anoutcry and was thrown into such a rage and fever, refusing to be milkedthat, finally, to save her, it was thought necessary to give her backthe calf. Now, he concluded, it was not attempted to take it away: twicea day she was allowed to have it with her and suckle it, and she was avery happy animal. 

I was glad to think that there was at least one completely happy cow inDevonshire. 

After leaving the cowkeeper I had that feeling of revulsion verystrongly which all who know and love cows occasionally experience atthe very thought of beef. I was for the moment more than tolerant ofvegetarianism, and devoutly hoped that for many days to come I shouldnot 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 aknife, as if undergoing a second death. We do not eat negroes, althoughtheir pigmented skins, flat feet, and woolly heads proclaim them adifferent species; even monkey's flesh is abhorrent to us, merelybecause we fancy that that creature in its ugliness resembles someold men and some women and children that we know. But the gentlelarge-brained social cow that caresses our hands and faces withher rough blue tongue, and is more like man's sister than any othernon-human being--the majestic, beautiful creature with the juno eyes, sweeter of breath than the rosiest virgin--we slaughter and feed on herflesh--monsters and cannibals that we are!

But though cannibals, it is very pleasant to find that many cowmenlove their cows. Walking one afternoon by a high unkept hedge nearSouthampton Water, I heard loud shouts at intervals issuing from apoint some distance ahead, and on arriving at the spot found an old manleaning idly over a gate, apparently concerned about nothing. "Whatare you shouting about?" I demanded. "Cows, " he answered, with a glanceacross the wide green field dotted with a few big furze and bramblebushes. On its far side half a dozen cows were, quietly grazing. "Theycame fast enough when I was a-feeding of 'em, " he presently added; "butnow they has to find for theirselves they don't care how long they keepsme. " I was going to suggest that it would be a considerable saving oftime if he went for them, but his air of lazy contentment as he leanton the gate showed that time was of no importance to him. He was acurious-looking old man, in old frayed clothes, broken boots, and a captoo small for him. He had short legs, broad chest, and long arms, anda very big head, long and horselike, with a large shapeless nose andgrizzled beard and moustache. His ears, too, were enormous, and stoodout from the head like the handles of a rudely shaped terra-cotta vaseor 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 Istayed to talk with him. 

It has frequently been said that those who are much with cows, and havean affection for them, appear to catch something of their expression--tolook like cows; just as persons of sympathetic or responsive nature, and great mobility of face, grow to be like those they live and are insympathy with. The cowman who looks like a cow may be more bovine thanhis fellows in his heavier motions and slower apprehensions, but he alsoexhibits some of the better qualities--the repose and placidity of theanimal. 

He said that he was over seventy, and had spent the whole of his lifein the neighbourhood, mostly with cows, and had never been more than adozen miles from the spot where we were standing. At intervals while wetalked he paused to utter one of his long shouts, to which the cows paidno attention. At length one of the beasts raised her head and had a longlook, then slowly crossed the field to us, the others following at somedistance. They were shorthorns, all but the leader, a beautiful youngDevon, of a uniform rich glossy red; but the silky hair on the distendedudder was of an intense chestnut, and all the parts that were notclothed were red too--the teats, the skin round the eyes, the moistembossed nose; while the hoofs were like polished red pebbles, and eventhe shapely horns were tinged with that colour. Walking straight up tothe old man, she began deliberately licking one of his ears with her bigrough tongue, and in doing so knocked off his old rakish cap. Pickingit up he laughed like a child, and remarked, "She knows me, this onedoes--and she loikes me. "

Chapter Seventeen: An Old Road Leading Nowhere

So many and minute were the directions I received about the way fromthe blessed cowkeeper, and so little attention did I give them, my mindbeing occupied with other things, that they were quickly forgotten. Of half a hundred things I remembered only that I had to "bear to theleft. " This I did, although it seemed useless, seeing that my way wasby lanes, across fields, and through plantations. At length I came toa road, and as it happened to be on my left hand I followed it. It wasnarrow, worn deep by traffic and rains; and grew deeper, rougher, andmore untrodden as I progressed, until it was like the dry bed of amountain torrent, and I walked on boulder-stones between steep banksabout fourteen feet high. Their sides were clothed with ferns, grassand rank moss; their summits were thickly wooded, and the interlacingbranches of the trees above, mingled with long rope-like shoots ofbramble and briar, formed so close a roof that I seemed to be walking ina dimly lighted tunnel. At length, thinking that I had kept long enoughto a road which had perhaps not been used for a century, also tiredof the monotony of always bearing to the left, I scrambled out on theright-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 theopen I found myself on the level plateau, an unenclosed spot overgrownwith heather and scattered furze bushes, with clumps of fir and birchtrees. Before me and on either hand at this elevation a vast extent ofcountry was disclosed. The surface was everywhere broken, but therewas no break in the wonderful greenness, which the recent rain hadintensified. There is too much green, to my thinking, with too muchuniformity in its soft, bright tone, in South Devon. After gazing onsuch a landscape the brown, harsh, scanty vegetation of the hilltopseemed all the more grateful. The heath was an oasis and a refuge; Irambled about in it until my feet and legs were wet; then I sat down tolet them dry and altogether spent several agreeable hours at that spot, pleased at the thought that no human fellow-creature would intrude uponme. Feathered companions were, however, not wanting. The crowing of cockpheasants from the thicket beside the old road warned me that I was onpreserved grounds. Not too strictly preserved, however, for there was myold friend the carrion-crow out foraging for his young. He dropped downover the trees, swept past me, and was gone. At this season, in theearly summer, he may be easily distinguished, when flying, from hisrelation the rook. When on the prowl the crow glides smoothly andrapidly through the air, often changing his direction, now flying closeto the surface, anon mounting high, but oftenest keeping nearly on alevel with the tree tops. His gliding and curving motions are somewhatlike those of the herring-gull, but the wings in gliding are carriedstiff and straight, the tips of the long flight-feathers showing aslight upward curve. But the greatest difference is in the way thehead is carried. The rook, like the heron and stork, carries his beakpointing lance-like straight before him. He knows his destination, andmakes for it; he follows his nose, so to speak, turning neither tothe right nor the left. The foraging crow continually turns his head, gull-like and harrier-like, from side to side, as if to search theground thoroughly or to concentrate his vision on some vaguely seenobject. 

Not only the crow was there: a magpie chattered as I came from thebrake, but refused to show himself; and a little later a jay screamed atme, as only a jay can. There are times when I am intensely in sympathywith the feeling expressed in this ear-splitting sound, inarticulatebut human. It is at the same time warning and execration, the startledsolitary's outburst of uncontrolled rage at the abhorred sight of afellow-being in his woodland haunt. 

Small birds were numerous at that spot, as if for them also its wildnessand infertility had an attraction. Tits, warblers, pipits, finches, allwere busy ranging from place to place, emitting their various notes nowfrom the tree-tops, then from near the ground; now close at hand, thenfar off; each change in the height, distance, and position of the singergiving the sound a different character, so that the effect produced wasone of infinite variety. Only the yellow-hammer remained constant inone 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 dwarftree for tower to sit upon, he is yet one of the most common species inthe thickly timbered country of the Otter, Clyst, and Sid, in which Ihad been rambling, hearing him every day and all day long. Throughoutthat district, where the fields are small, and the trees big and neartogether, he has the cirl-bunting's habit of perching to sing on thetops of high hedgerow elms and oaks. 

By and by I had a better bird to listen to--a redstart. A female flewdown within fifteen yards of me; her mate followed and perched on a drytwig, where he remained a long time for so shy and restless a creature. He was in perfect plumage, and sitting there, motionless in the strongsunlight, was wonderfully conspicuous, the gayest, most exotic-lookingbird of his family in England. Quitting his perch, he flew up intoa tree close by and began singing; and for half an hour thereafter Icontinued intently listening to his brief strain, repeated at shortintervals--a song which I think has never been perfectly described. "Practice makes perfect" is an axiom that does not apply to the artof song in the bird world; since the redstart, a member of a highlymelodious family, with a good voice to start with, has never attained toexcellence in spite of much practising. The song is interesting bothon account of its exceptional inferiority and of its character. Adistinguished ornithologist has said that little birds have two ways ofmaking themselves attractive--by melody and by bright plumage; and thatmost species excel in one or the other way; and that the acquisition ofgay colours by a species of a sober-coloured melodious family willcause it to degenerate as a songster. He is speaking of the redstart. Unfortunately for the rule there are too many exceptions. Thus confiningourselves to a single family--that of the finches--in our own islands, the most modest coloured have the least melody, while those that havethe gayest plumage are the best singers--the goldfinch, chaffinch, siskin, and linnet. Nevertheless it is impossible to listen for anylength of time to the redstart, and to many redstarts, without feeling, almost with irritation, that its strain is only the prelude of a song--apromise never performed; that once upon a time in the remote past itwas a sweet, copious, and varied singer, and that only a fragment of itsmelody now remains. The opening rapidly warbled notes are so charmingthat the attention is instantly attracted by them. They are composed oftwo sounds, both beautiful--the bright pure gushing robin-like note, andthe more tender expressive swallow-like note. And that is all; the songscarcely begins before it ends, or collapses; for in most cases the puresweet opening strain is followed by a curious little farrago of gurglingand squeaking sounds, and little fragments of varied notes, often so lowas to be audible only at a few yards' distance. It is curious that theseslight fragments of notes at the end vary in different individuals, instrength and character and in number, from a single faintest squeal tohalf a dozen or a dozen distinct sounds. In all cases they are emittedwith apparent effort, as if the bird strained its pipe in the vainattempt to continue the song. 

The statement that the redstart is a mimic is to be met with in manybooks about birds. I rather think that in jerking out these variouslittle broken notes which end its strain, whether he only squeaks orsucceeds in producing a pure sound, he is striving to recover his ownlost song rather than to imitate the songs of other birds. 

So much entertainment did I find at that spot, so grateful did it seemin its openness after long confinement in the lower thickly woodedcountry, that I practically spent the day there. At all events the besttime for walking was gone when I quitted it, and then I could think ofno better plan than to climb down into the old long untrodden road, orchannel, 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 longwithout discovering the end would be a mistake. So I went on in it oncemore, and in about twenty minutes it came to an end before a group ofold farm buildings in a hollow in the woods. The space occupied by thebuildings was quite walled round and shut in by a dense growth of treesand bushes; and there was no soul there and no domestic animal. Theplace had apparently been vacant many years, and the buildings were in aruinous condition, with the roofs falling in. 

Now when I look back on that walk I blame myself for having gone on myway without trying to find out something of the history of that forsakenhome to which the lonely old road had led me. Those ruinous buildingsonce inhabited, so wrapped round and hidden away by trees, have now astrange look in memory as if they had a story to tell, as if somethingintelligent had looked from the vacant windows as I stood staring atthem and had said, We have waited these many years for you to come andlisten to our story and you are come at last. 

Something perhaps stirred in me in response to that greeting andmessage, but I failed to understand it, and after standing there awhile, oppressed by a sense of loneliness, I turned aside, and creeping andpushing through a mass and tangle of vegetation went on my way towardsthe coast. 

Possibly that idea or fancy of a story to tell, a human tragedy, came tome only because of another singular experience I had that day when theafternoon sun had grown oppressively hot--another mystery of a desolatebut not in this case uninhabited house. The two places somehow becameassociated 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 Iwould call and ask for a glass of milk, thinking that if things hada promising look on my arrival my modest glass of milk would perhapsexpand to a sumptuous five-o'clock tea and my short rest to a long andpleasant one. 

The house I found on coming nearer was small and mean-looking and veryold; the farm buildings in a dilapidated condition, the thatch rottenand riddled with holes in which many starlings and sparrows had theirnests. Gates and fences were broken down, and the ground was everywhereovergrown with weeds and encumbered with old broken and rustyimplements, and littered with rubbish. No person could I see about theplace, 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 weredolefully calling--calling to be fed. Seeing a door half open at one endof the house I went to it and rapped on the warped paintless wood withmy stick, and after about a minute a young woman came from an inner roomand asked me what I wanted. She was not disturbed or surprised at mysudden appearance there: her face was impassive, and her eyes when theymet mine appeared to look not at me but at something distant, and herwords were spoken mechanically. 

I said that I was hot and thirsty and tired and would be glad of a glassof milk. 

Without a word she turned and left me standing there, and presentlyreturned with a tumbler of milk which she placed on a deal tablestanding near me. To my remarks she replied in monosyllables, and stoodimpassively, her hands at her side, her eyes cast down, waiting for meto drink the milk and go. And when I had finished it and set the glassdown and thanked her, she turned in silence and went back to that innerroom from which she first came. And hot and tired as I had felt a fewmoments 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 thatyoung woman had chilled my blood and made the heat out-of-doors seemgrateful to me. 

The sight of such a face in the midst of such surroundings had produceda shock of surprise, for it was noble in shape, the features all fineand the mouth most delicately chiselled, the eyes dark and beautiful, and the hair of a raven blackness. But it was a colourless face, andeven the lips were pale. Strongest of all was the expression, which hadfrozen there, and was like the look of one on whom some unimaginabledisaster or some hateful disillusionment had come, not to subdue norsoften, but to change all its sweet to sour, and its natural warmth toicy cold. 

Chapter Eighteen: Branscombe

Health and pleasure resorts and all parasitic towns in fact, inland oron the sea, have no attractions for me and I was more than satisfiedwith a day or two of Sidmouth. Then one evening I heard for the firsttime of a place called Branscomb--a village near the sea, over by Beerand Seaton, near the mouth of the Axe, and the account my old host gaveme seemed so attractive that on the following day I set out to findit. Further information about the unknown village came to me in avery agreeable way in the course of my tramp. A hotter walk I neverwalked--no, not even when travelling across a flat sunburnt treelessplain, nearer than Devon by many degrees to the equator. One wonders whythat part of Devon which lies between the Exe and the Axe seems actuallyhotter 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 dustyglaring road, shut in by dusty hedges on either side. Not a breath ofair 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 onme my clothing could not have clung to me more uncomfortably. Coming atlength to a group of two or three small cottages at the roadside, I wentinto 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 womanof the cottage was so pretty and pleasant that I was glad to rest anhour and talk with her in her cool kitchen. There are English countieswhere it would perhaps be said of such a woman that she was one in athousand; but the Devonians are a comely race. In that blessed countythe prettiest peasants are not all diligently gathered with the dewon them and sent away to supply the London flower-market. Amongthe best-looking women of the peasant class there are two distincttypes--the rich in colour and the colourless. A majority are perhapsintermediate, but the two extreme types may be found in any village orhamlet; and when seen side by side--the lily and the rose, not to saythe peony--they offer a strange and beautiful contrast. 

This woman, in spite of the burning climate, was white as any pale townlady; and although she was the mother of several children, the face wasextremely youthful in appearance; it seemed indeed almost girlish in itsdelicacy and innocent expression when she looked up at me with her blueeyes shaded by her white sun-bonnet. The children were five or six innumber, ranging from a boy of ten to a baby in her arms--all clean andhealthy looking, with bright, fun-loving faces. 

I mentioned that I was on my way to Branscombe, and inquired thedistance. 

"Branscomb--are you going there? Oh, I wonder what you will think ofBranscombe!" she exclaimed, her white cheeks flushing, her innocent eyessparkling with excitement. 

What was Branscombe to her, I returned with indifference; and what didit matter what any stranger thought of it?

"But it is my home!" she answered, looking hurt at my careless words. "Iwas born there, and married there, and have always lived at Branscombewith my people until my husband got work in this place; then we had toleave home and come and live in this cottage. "

And as I began to show interest she went on to tell me that Branscombewas, oh, such a dear, queer, funny old place! That she had been to othervillages and towns--Axmouth, and Seaton, and Beer, and to Salcombe Regisand Sidmouth, and once to Exeter; but never, never had she seen a placelike Branscombe--not one that she liked half so well. How strange that Ihad never been there--had never even heard of it! People that wentthere sometimes laughed at it at first, because it was such a funny, tumbledown old place; but they always said afterwards that there was nosweeter spot on the earth. 

Her enthusiasm was very delightful; and, when baby cried, in theexcitement of talk she opened her breast and fed it before me. A prettysight! But for the pure white, blue-veined skin she might have beentaken 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 astranger, and with a blush turned aside and covered her fair skin. Hershame, too, like her first simple unconscious action, was natural; forwe live in a cooler climate, and are accustomed to more clothing thanthe Spanish; and our closer covering "has entered the soul, " as thelate Professor Kitchen Parker would have said; and that which was onlybecoming modesty in the English woman would in the Spanish seem rankprudishness. 

In the afternoon I came to a slender stream, clear and swift, runningbetween 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 wayran 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 thatchedcottages. 

Finally, I came to the last and largest group of all, the end of thevillage nearest to the sea, within ten minutes' walk of the shinglybeach. Here I was glad to rest. Above, on the giant downs, were stonywaste places, and heather and gorse, where the rabbits live, and had forneighbours the adder, linnet, and wheatear, and the small grey titlarkthat soared up and dropped back to earth all day to his tinkling littletune. On the summit of the cliff I had everything I wanted and had cometo seek--the wildness and freedom of untilled earth; an unobstructedprospect, hills beyond hills of malachite, stretching away along thecoast into infinitude, long leagues of red sea-wall and the wide expanseand everlasting freshness of ocean. And the village itself, the littleold straggling place that had so grand a setting, I quickly foundthat the woman in the cottage had not succeeded in giving me a falseimpression of her dear home. It was just such a quaint unimproved, old-world, restful place as she had painted. It was surprising to findthat there were many visitors, and one wondered where they could allstow themselves. The explanation was that those who visited Branscombeknew it, and preferred its hovels to the palaces of the fashionableseaside town. No cottage was too mean to have its guest. I saw a ladypush open the cracked and warped door of an old barn and go in, pullingthe door to after her--it was her bed-sitting-room. I watched a partyof pretty merry girls marching, single file, down a narrow path past apig-sty, then climb up a ladder to the window of a loft at the back of astone cottage and disappear within. It was their bedroom. The relationsbetween the villagers and their visitors were more intimate and kindthan is usual. They lived more together, and were more free and easy incompany. The men were mostly farm labourers, and after their day's workthey would sit out-of-doors on the ground to smoke their pipes; andwhere the narrow crooked little street was narrowest--at my end of thevillage--when two men would sit opposite each other, each at his owndoor, with legs stretched out before them, their boots would very nearlytouch in the middle of the road. When walking one had to step overtheir legs; or, if socially inclined, one could stand by and join in theconversation. When daylight faded the village was very dark--no lampfor the visitors--and very silent, only the low murmur of the sea on theshingle was audible, and the gurgling sound of a swift streamlet flowingfrom the hill above and hurrying through the village to mingle with theBranscombe lower down in the meadows. Such a profound darkness and quietone expects in an inland agricultural village; here, where therewere visitors from many distant towns, it was novel and infinitelyrefreshing. 

No sooner was it dark than all were in bed and asleep; not one squarepath of yellow light was visible. To enjoy the sensation I went out andsat down, and listened alone to the liquid rippling, warbling sound ofthe swift-flowing streamlet--that sweet low music of running water towhich the reed-warbler had listened thousands of years ago, striving toimitate it, until his running rippling song was perfect. 

A fresh surprise and pleasure awaited me when I explored the coast eastof the village; it was bold and precipitous in places, and from thesummit of the cliff a very fine view of the coast-line on either handcould be obtained. Best of all, the face of the cliff itself was thebreeding-place of some hundreds of herring-gulls. The eggs at the periodof my visit were not yet hatched, but highly incubated, and at thatstage both parents are almost constantly at home, as if in a state ofanxious suspense. I had seen a good many colonies of this gull before atvarious breeding stations on the coast--south, west, and east--but neverin conditions so singularly favourable as at this spot. From the valewhere the Branscombe pours its clear waters through rough masses ofshingle into the sea the ground to the east rises steeply to a height ofnearly five hundred feet; the cliff is thus not nearly so high as manyanother, but it has features of peculiar interest. Here, in some formertime, there has been a landslip, a large portion of the cliff at itshighest part falling below and forming a sloping mass a chalky soilmingled with huge fragments of rock, which lies like a buttress againstthe vertical precipice and seems to lend it support. The fall must haveoccurred a very long time back, as the vegetation that overspreads therude slope--hawthorn, furze, and ivy--has an ancient look. Here are hugemasses of rock standing isolated, that resemble in their forms ruinedcastles, towers, and churches, some of them completely overgrown withivy. On this rough slope, under the shelter of the cliff, with the seaat its feet, the villagers have formed their cultivated patches. Thepatches, wildly irregular in form, some on such steeply sloping groundas to suggest the idea that they must have been cultivated on allfours, are divided from each other by ridges and by masses of rock, deepfissures in the earth, strips of bramble and thorn and furze bushes. Altogether the effect was very singular the huge rough mass of jumbledrock and soil, the ruin wrought by Nature in one of her Cromwellianmoods, and, scattered irregularly about its surface, the plots orpatches of cultivated smoothness--potato rows, green parallellines ruled on a grey ground, and big, blue-green, equidistantcabbage-globes--each plot with its fringe of spike-like onion leaves, crinkled parsley, and other garden herbs. Here the villagers came by anarrow, steep, and difficult path they had made, to dig in their plots;while, overhead, the gulls, careless of their presence, pass and repasswholly 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 theirbreeding-place had been shared with other species. Here theherring-gulls had the rock to themselves, and looked their best in theirfoam-white and pearl-grey plumage and yellow legs and beaks. While Iwatched them they watched me; not gathered in groups, but singly or inpairs, scattered up and down all over the face of the precipice aboveme, perched on ledges and on jutting pieces of rock. Standing motionlessthus, beautiful in form and colour, they looked like sculptured figuresof gulls, set up on the projections against the rough dark wall ofrock, just as sculptured figures of angels and saintly men and womenare placed in niches on a cathedral front. At first they appeared quiteindifferent to my presence, although in some instances near enoughfor their yellow irides to be visible. While unalarmed they were verysilent, standing in that clear sunshine that gave their whitenesssomething of a crystalline appearance; or flying to and fro along theface of the cliff, purely for the delight of bathing in the warm lucentair. Gradually a change came over them. One by one those that were onthe 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, itwas plain to see that all the birds were watching me. They had made thediscovery that I was a stranger. In my rough old travel-stained clothesand tweed hat I might have passed for a Branscombe villager, but Idid no hoeing and digging in one of the cultivated patches; and whenI deliberately sat down on a rock to watch them, they noticed it andbecame suspicious; and as time went on and I still remained immovable, with my eyes fixed on them, the suspicion and anxiety increased andturned to fear; and those that were sitting on their nests got up andcame close to the edge of the rock, to gaze with the others and join inthe loud chorus of alarm. It was a wonderful sound. Not like the tempestof noise that may be heard at the breeding-season at Lundy Island, andat many other stations where birds of several species mix their variousvoices--the yammeris and the yowlis, and skrykking, screeking, skrymmingscowlis, and meickle moyes and shoutes, of old Dunbar's wonderfulonomatopoetic lines. Here there was only one species, with a clearresonant cry, and as every bird uttered that one cry, and no other, a totally different effect was produced. The herring-gull and lesserblack-backed gull resemble each other in language as they do in generalappearance; both have very powerful and clear voices unlike the gutturalblack-headed and common gull. But the herring-gull has a shriller, morepiercing voice, and resembles the black-backed species just as, in humanvoices, a boy's clear treble resembles a baritone. Both birds have avariety of notes; and both, when the nest is threatened with danger, utter one powerful importunate cry, which is repeated incessantly untilthe danger is over. And as the birds breed in communities, often verypopulous, and all clamour together, the effect of so many powerful andunisonant voices is very grand; but it differs in the two species, owing to the quality of their voices being different; the storm ofsound produced by the black-backs is deep and solemn, while that of theherring-gulls has a ringing sharpness almost metallic. 

It is probable that in the case I am describing the effect of sharpnessand resonance was heightened by the position of the birds, perchedmotionless, scattered about on the face of the perpendicular wall ofrock, all with their beaks turned in my direction, raining their criesupon me. It was not a monotonous storm of cries, but rose and fell; forafter two or three minutes the excitement would abate somewhat and thecries grow fewer and fewer; then the infection would spread again, birdafter bird joining the outcry; and after a while there would be anotherlull, and so on, wave following wave of sound. I could have spent hours, and the hours would have seemed like minutes, listening to that strangechorus of ringing chiming cries, so novel was its effect, and unlikethat of any other tempest of sound produced by birds which I had everheard. When by way of a parting caress and benediction (given andreceived) I dipped my hands in Branscombe's clear streamlet it was witha feeling of tender regret that was almost a pain. For who does not makea little inward moan, an Eve's Lamentation, an unworded, "Must I leavethee, Paradise?" on quitting any such sweet restful spot, however briefhis stay in it may have been? But when I had climbed to the summit ofthe great down on the east side of the valley and looked on the wideland and wider sea flashed with the early sunlight I rejoiced full ofglory at my freedom. For invariably when the peculiar character andcharm of a place steals over and takes possession of me I begin to fearit, knowing from long experience that it will be a painful wrench to getaway 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 worriesto make me miserable like others, nothing to gain and nothing to lose. 

Pausing on the summit to consider which way I should go, inland, towardsAxminister, or along the coast by Beer, Seton, Axmouth, and so on toLyme Regis, I turned to have a last look and say a last good-bye toBranscombe 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 myfarewell in numbers? My answer was, Because I am too much occupied inseeing. There is no room and time for 'tranquillity, ' since I want to goon to see something else. As Blake has it: "Natural objects always didand do, weaken, deaden and obliterate imagination in me. "

We know however that they didn't quite quench it in him. 

Chapter Nineteen: Abbotsbury

Abbotsbury is an old unspoilt village, not on but near the sea, dividedfrom it by half a mile of meadowland where all sorts of meadow and waterplants flourish, and where there are extensive reed and osier beds, the roosting-place in autumn and winter of innumerable starlings. Iam always delighted to come on one of these places where starlingscongregate, to watch them coming in at day's decline and listen to theirmarvellous hubbub, and finally to see their aerial evolutions when theyrise and break up in great bodies and play at clouds in the sky. Whenthe people of the place, the squire and keepers and others who have aninterest in the reeds and osiers, fall to abusing them on account of thedamage they do, I put my fingers in my ears. But at Abbotsbury I did notdo so, but listened with keen pleasure to the curses they vented and thestory they told. This was that when the owner of Abbotsbury came downfor the October shooting and found the starlings more numerous thanever, he put himself into a fine passion and reproached his keepers andother servants for not having got rid of the birds as he had desiredthem to do. Some of them ventured to say that it was easier said thandone, whereupon the great man swore that he would do it himself withoutassistance from any one, and getting out a big duck-gun he proceededto load it with the smallest shot and went down to the reed bed andconcealed himself among the bushes at a suitable distance. The birdswere pouring in, and when it was growing dark and they had settled downfor the night he fired his big piece into the thick of the crowd, and byand by when the birds after wheeling about for a minute or two settleddown again in the same place he fired again. Then he went home, andearly next morning men and boys went into the reeds and gathereda bushel or so of dead starlings. But the birds returned in theirthousands that evening, and his heart being still hot against them hewent 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 andwounded fell like rain into the water below, the revulsion came and hewas mad with himself for having done such a thing, and on his return tothe house, or palace, he angrily told his people to "let the starlingsalone" for the future--never to molest them again!

I thought it one of the loveliest stories I had ever heard; there is nohardness comparable to that of the sportsman, yet here was one, a verymonarch among them, who turned sick at his own barbarity and repented. 

Beyond the flowery wet meadows, favored by starlings and abreeding-place of swans, is the famous Chesil Bank, one of the sevenwonders of Britain. And thanks to this great bank, a screen between seaand land extending about fourteen miles eastward from Portland, thispart of the coast must remain inviolate from the speculative builder ofseaside holiday resorts or towns of lodging-houses. 

Every one has heard of the Fleet in connection with the famous swanneryof Abbotsbury, the largest in the land. I had heard so much about theswannery that it had but little interest for me. The only thing aboutit which specially attracted my attention was seeing a swan rise up andafter passing over my head as I stood on the bank fly straight out overthe sea. I watched him until he had diminished to a small white spotabove the horizon, and then still flying he faded from sight. Do theseswans that fly away over the sea, and others which appear in smallflocks 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 theseexplorers must settle down in waters far from home, to return no more. 

The village itself, looked upon from this same elevation, is veryattractive. Life seems quieter, more peaceful there out of sight of theocean's turbulence, out of hearing of its "accents disconsolate. " Thecottages are seen ranged in a double line along the narrow crookedstreet, like a procession of cows with a few laggards scattered behindthe main body. One is impressed by its ancient character. The cottagesare old, stone-built and thatched; older still is the church withits grey square tower, and all about are scattered the memorials ofantiquity--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 thatwere once parts of a great religious house. 

Looking back at the great round hill from the village it is impossiblenot to notice the intense red colour of the road that winds over itsgreen slope. One sometimes sees on a hillside a ploughed field ofred earth which at a distance might easily be taken for a field ofblossoming trifolium. Viewed nearer the crimson of the clover and red ofthe earth are very dissimilar; distance appears to intensify the red ofthe soil and to soften that of the flower until they are very nearlyof the same hue. The road at Abbotsbury was near and looked to me moreintensely red than any ordinary red earth, and the sight was strangelypleasing. These two complementary colours, red and green, delight usmost when seen thus--a little red to a good deal of green, and the moreluminous the red and vivid the green the better they please us. We seethis in flowers--in the red geranium, for example--where there is nobrown soil below, but green of turf or herbage. I sometimes think thered campions and ragged-robins are our most beautiful wild flowers whenthe sun shines level on the meadow and they are like crimson flowersamong the tall translucent grasses. I remember the joy it was in boyhoodin early spring when the flowers were beginning to bloom, when in ourgallops over the level grass pampas we came upon a patch of scarletverbenas. The first sight of the intense blooms scattered all about theturf would make us wild with delight, and throwing ourselves from ourponies we would go down among the flowers to feast on the sight. 

Green is universal, but the red earth which looks so pleasing amid thegreen is distributed very partially, and it may be the redness ofthe soil and the cliffs in Devon have given that county a more vividpersonality, so to speak, than most others. Think of Kent with its whitecliffs, chalk downs, and dull-coloured clays in this connection!

The humble subterraneous mole proves himself on occasions a goodcolourist when he finds a soil of the proper hue to burrow in, and thehillocks he throws up from numberless irregular splashes of brightred colour on a green sward. The wild animals that strike us as mostbeautiful, when seen against a green background, are those which bearthe reddest fur--fox, squirrel, and red deer. One day, in a meadow afew miles from Abbotsbury, I came upon a herd of about fifty milch cowsscattered over a considerable space of ground, some lying down, othersstanding ruminating, and still others moving about and cropping the longflowery grasses. All were of that fine rich red colour frequently seenin Dorset and Devon cattle, which is brighter than the reds of other redanimals in this country, wild and domestic, with the sole exception ofa rare variety of the collie dog. The Irish setter and red chouchou comenear it. So beautiful did these red cows look in the meadow that I stoodstill for half an hour feasting my eyes on the sight. 

No less was the pleasure I experienced when I caught sight of that roadwinding over the hill above the village. On going to it I found that ithad looked as red as rust simply because it was rust-earth made richand beautiful in colour with iron, its red hue variegated with veins andstreaks of deep purple or violet. I was told that there were hundreds ofacres of this earth all round the place--earth so rich in iron that manya man's mouth had watered at the sight of it; also that every effort hadbeen made to induce the owner of Abbotsbury to allow this rich mine tobe worked. But, wonderful to relate, he had not been persuaded. 

A hard fragment of the red stuff, measuring a couple of inches acrossand weighing about three ounces avoirdupois, rust-red in colour withpurple streaks and yellow mottlings, is now lying before me. Themineralogist would tell me that its commercial value is naught, orsomething infinitesimal; which is doubtless true enough, as tens ofthousands of tons of the same material lie close to the surface underthe green turf and golden blossoming furze at the spot where I picked upmy specimen. The lapidary would not look at it; nevertheless, it is theonly article of jewellery I possess, and I value it accordingly. AndI intend to keep this native ruby by me for as long as the lords ofAbbotsbury continue in their present mind. The time may come when Ishall be obliged to throw it away. That any millionaire should hesitatefor 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 doinghe 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 littlefantastic realm, a survival from a remote past, almost at one's doors;a small independent province, untouched by progress, asking to beconquered 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 milesof it, running straight as any Roman road, to end beneath the ruggedstupendous cliffs of Portland. The ocean itself, and not conqueringRome, raised this artificial-looking wall or rampart to stay its ownproud waves. Formed of polished stones and pebbles, about two hundredyards in width, flat-topped, with steeply sloping sides, at thisdistance it has the appearance of a narrow yellow road or causewaybetween the open sea on one hand and the waters of the Fleet, a narrowlake ten miles long, on the other. 

When the mackerel visit the coast, and come near enough to be taken ina draw-net, every villager who owns a share (usually a tenth) in afishing-boat throws down his spade or whatever implement he happens tohave in his hand at the moment, and hurries away to the beach to takehis 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 villageuttering loud cries which were like excited yells--a sound to rouse thedeepest sleeper. The mackerel had come! For the rest of the day therewas a pretty kind of straggling procession of those who went and camebetween the beach and the village--men in blue cotton shirts, blue jerseys, blue jackets, and women in grey gowns and big whitesun-bonnets. During the latter part of the day the proceedings werepeculiarly interesting to me, a looker-on with no share in any one ofthe boats, owing to the catches being composed chiefly of jelly-fish. Some sympathy was felt for the toilers who strained their muscles againand again only to be mocked in the end; still, a draught of jelly-fishwas more to my taste than one of mackerel. The great weight of a catchof this kind when the net was full was almost too much for the ten ortwelve men engaged in drawing it up; then (to the sound of deep cursesfrom those of the men who were not religious) the net would be openedand the great crystalline hemispheres, hyaline blue and delicatesalmon-pink in colour, would slide back into the water. Such rare andexquisite colours have these great glassy flowers of ocean that to seethem was a feast; and every time a net was hauled up my prayer--which Iwas careful not to repeat aloud--was, Heaven send another big draught ofjelly-fish!

The sun, sinking over the hills towards Swyre and Bridport, turnedcrimson before it touched the horizon. The sky became luminous; theyellow Chesil Bank, stretching long leagues away, and the hills behindit, changed their colours to violet. The rough sea near the beachglittered like gold; the deep green water, flecked with foam, wasmingled with fire; the one boat that remained on it, tossing up and downnear the beach, was like a boat of ebony in a glittering fiery sea. Adozen men were drawing up the last net; but when they gathered round tosee what they had taken--mackerel or jelly-fish--I cared no longer tolook with them. That sudden, wonderful glory which had fallen on theearth and sea had smitten me as well and changed me; and I was like someneedy homeless tramp who has found a shilling piece, and, even whilehe is gloating over it, all at once sees a great treasure beforehim--glittering gold in heaps, and all rarest sparkling gems, more thanhe can gather up. 

But it is a poor simile. No treasures in gold and gems, though heapedwaist-high all about, could produce in the greediest man, hungry forearthly pleasures, a delight, a rapture, equal to mine. For this joy wasof another and higher order and very rare, and was a sense of lightnessand 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 andland and the entire vast overarching sky. 

We read of certain saints who were subject to experiences of this kindthat they were "snatched up" into some supramundane region, and thatthey stated on their return to earth that it was not lawful for themto speak of the things they had witnessed. The humble naturalist andnature-worshipper can only witness the world glorified--transfigured;what he finds is the important thing. I fancy the mystics would havebeen nearer the mark if they had said that their experiences duringtheir period of exaltation could not be reported, or that it would beidle to report them, since their questioners lived on the groundand would be quite incapable on account of the mind's limitations ofconceiving a state above it and outside of its own experience. 

The glory passed and with it the exaltation: the earth and sea turnedgrey; the last boat was drawn up on the slope and the men departedslowly: only one remained, a rough-looking youth, about fifteen yearsold. Some important matter which he was revolving in his mind haddetained him alone on the darkening beach. He sat down, then stood upand gazed at the rolling wave after wave to roar and hiss on the shingleat his feet; then he moved restlessly about, crunching pebbles beneathhis thick boots; finally, making up his mind, he took off his coat, threw it down, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves, with the resolute airof a man about to engage in a fight with an adversary nearly as big ashimself. Stepping back a little space, he made a rush at the sea, notto cast himself in it, but only, as it turned out, with the objectof catching some water in the hollow of his hands from the top of anincoming wave. He only succeeded in getting his legs wet, and in hastilyretreating he fell on his back. Nothing daunted, he got up and renewedthe assault, and when he succeeded in catching water in his handshe dashed it on and vigorously rubbed it over his dirty face. Afterrepeating the operation about a dozen times, receiving meanwhile severalfalls and wettings, he appeared satisfied, put on his coat and marchedaway homewards with a composed air. 

Chapter Twenty: Salisbury Revisited

Since that visit to Salisbury, described in a former chapter, when Iwatched and listened to the doves in those cold days in early spring, Ihave been there a good many times, but never at the time when the birdcolony is most interesting to observe, just before and during the earlypart of the breeding-season. At length, in the early days of June, 1908, the wished opportunity was mine--wished yet feared, seeing that itwas possible some disaster had fallen upon that unique colony ofstock-doves. It is true they appeared to be long established and wellable to maintain their foothold on the building in spite of maliciouspersecuting daws, but there was nothing to show that they had been longthere, seeing that it had been observed by no person but myself that thecathedral doves were stock-doves and not the domestic pigeon found onother large buildings. Great was my happiness to find them still there, as well as the daws and all the other feathered people who make thisgreat building their home; even the kestrels were not wanting. Therewere three there one morning, quarrelling with the daws in the old wayin the old place, halfway up the soaring spire. The doves were somewhatdiminished in number, but there were a good many pairs still, and Ifound no dead young ones lying about, as they were now probably growntoo large to be ejected, but several young daws, about a dozen I think, fell to the ground during my stay. Undoubtedly they were dragged outof their nests and thrown down, perhaps by daws at enmity with theirparents, or it may be by the doves, who are not meek-spirited, as wehave seen, or they would not be where they are, and may on occasionretaliate by invading their black enemies' nesting-holes. 

Swallows, martins, and swifts were numerous, the martins especially, andit was beautiful to see them for ever wheeling about in a loose swarmabout the building. They reminded me of bees and flies, and sometimeswith a strong light on them they were like those small polished blackand silvery-white beetles (Gyrinus) which we see in companies on thesurface of pools and streams, perpetually gliding and whirling aboutin a sort of complicated dance. They looked very small at a height of acouple of hundred feet from the ground, and their smallness and numbersand 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 Icould make out numbered about three hundred and fifty birds--probablythe largest wild bird colony on any building in England. 

Nor could birds in all this land find a more beautiful building to neston, unless I except Wells Cathedral solely on account of its west front, beloved of daws, and where their numerous black company have so fine anappearance. Wells has its west front; Salisbury, so vast in size, is yeta marvel of beauty in its entirety; and seeing it as I now did everyday and wanting nothing better, I wondered at my want of enthusiasm on aprevious visit. Still, to me, the bird company, the sight of their airygambols and their various voices, from the deep human-like dove toneto the perpetual subdued rippling, running-water sound of the aerialmartins, must always be a principal element in the beautiful effect. Nor do I know a building where Nature has done more in enhancing theloveliness of man's work with her added colouring. The way too in whichthe colours are distributed is an example of Nature's most perfectartistry; on the lower, heavier buttressed parts, where the darkest huesshould be, we find the browns and rust-reds of the minute aerial alga, mixed with the greys of lichen, these darker stainings extending upwardsto a height of fifty or sixty feet, in places higher, then giving placeto more delicate hues, the pale tender greens and greenish greys, inplaces tinged with yellow, the colours always appearing brightest onthe smooth surface between the windows and sculptured parts. The effectdepends a good deal on atmosphere and weather: on a day of flying cloudsand a blue sky, with a brilliant sunshine on the vast building after ashower, the colouring is most beautiful. It varies more than in thecase 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 ofa variety of lowly vegetable forms, mostly lichens and the aerial algacalled iolithus. 

Without this colouring, its "living stains, " Salisbury would not havefascinated me as it did during this last visit. It would have left mecold though all the architects and artists had assured me that it wasthe most perfectly beautiful building on earth. 

I also found an increasing charm in the interior, and made the discoverythat I could go oftener and spend more hours in this cathedral withouta 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 andalmost invariably find in our cathedrals. It has not the rich sombremajesty, the dim religious light and heavy vault-like atmosphere of theother great fanes. So airy and light is it that it is almost like beingout of doors. You do not experience that instantaneous change, as of acurtain being drawn excluding the light and air of day and of beingshut 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 Ibless while all others curse his memory; secondly, to the comparativelysmall amount of stained glass there is to intercept the light. Sograceful and beautiful is the interior that it can bear the light, andlight suits it best, just as a twilight best suits Exeter and Winchesterand other cathedrals with heavy sculptured roofs. One marvels at abuilding so vast in size which yet produces the effect of a palacein fairyland, or of a cathedral not built with hands but brought intoexistence by a miracle. 

I began to think it not safe to stay in that place too long lest itshould compel me to stay there always or cause me to feel dissatisfiedand homesick when away. 

But the interior of itself would never have won me, as I had notexpected to be won by any building made by man; and from the inside Iwould pass out only to find a fresh charm in that part where Nature hadcome more to man's aid. 

Walking on the cathedral green one morning, glancing from time to timeat the vast building and its various delicate shades of colour, I askedmyself why I kept my eyes as if on purpose away from it most of thetime, now on the trees, then on the turf, and again on some one walkingthere--why, in fact, I allowed myself only an occasional glance at theobject I was there solely to look at. I knew well enough, but had neverput it into plain words for my own satisfaction. 

We are all pretty familiar from experience with the limitations ofthe sense of smell and the fact that agreeable odours please us onlyfitfully; the sensation comes as a pleasing shock, a surprise, and isquickly gone. If we attempt to keep it for some time by deliberatelysmelling a fragrant flower or any perfume, we begin to have a sense offailure 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 canbe renewed in its first freshness. Now it is the same, though in aless degree, with the more important sense of sight. We look long andsteadily at a thing to know it, and the longer and more fixedly we lookthe better, if it engages the reasoning faculties; but an aestheticpleasure cannot be increased or retained in that way. We must look, merely glancing as it were, and look again, and then again, withintervals, receiving the image in the brain even as we receive the"nimble emanation" of a flower, and the image is all the brighter forcoming intermittently. In a large prospect we are not conscious ofthis limitation because of the wideness of the field and the number andvariety of objects or points of interest in it; the vision roams hitherand thither over it and receives a continuous stream or series ofpleasing impressions; but to gaze fixedly at the most beautiful objectin nature or art does but diminish the pleasure. Practically it ceasesto be beautiful and only recovers the first effect after we have giventhe mind an interval of rest. 

Strolling about the green with this thought in my mind, I began to payattention to the movements of a man who was manifestly there with thesame object as myself--to look at the cathedral. I had seen him therefor quite half an hour, and now began to be amused at the emphaticmanner in which he displayed his interest in the building. He walkedup and down the entire length and would then back away a distance ofa hundred yards from the walls and stare up at the spire, then slowlyapproach, still gazing up, until coming to a stop when quite near thewall he would remain with his eyes still fixed aloft, the back of hishead almost resting on his back between his shoulders. His hat somehowkept on his head, but his attitude reminded me of a saying of the Arabswho, 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 saidthat to look up at so tall a thing caused the tobacco juice to run downyour throat. 

His appearance when I approached him interested me too. His skin wasthe color of old brown leather and he had a big arched nose, clear lightblue very shrewd eyes, and a big fringe or hedge of ragged white beardunder his chin; and he was dressed in a new suit of rough dark browntweeds, evidently home-made. When I spoke to him, saying something aboutthe cathedral, he joyfully responded in broadest Scotch. It was, hesaid, the first English cathedral he had ever seen and he had never seenanything 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 ofScotland, shut out from the world by great hills where the heather grewknee-deep. He had never been in England before, and had come directly toSalisbury on a visit to a relation. 

"Well, " I said, "now you have looked at it outside come in with me andsee the interior. "

But he refused: it was enough for one day to see the outside of such abuilding: he wanted no more just then. To-morrow would be soon enoughto see it inside; it would be the Sabbath and he would go and worshipthere. 

"Are you an Anglican?" I asked. 

He replied that there were no Anglicans in his village. They had twoChurches--the Church of Scotland and the Free Church. 

"And what, " said I, "will your minister say to your going to worship ina cathedral? We have all denominations here in Salisbury, and you willperhaps find a Presbyterian place to worship in. "

"Now it's strange your saying that!" he returned, with a dry littlelaugh. "I've just had a letter from him the morning and he writes onthis varra subject. 'Let me advise you, ' he tells me in the letter, 'toattend the service in Salisbury Cathedral. Nae doot, ' he says, 'thereare 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 tofollow by a wild Presbyterian from the hills. He probably disapproved ofmost of it, but I greatly admired him for refusing to see anythingmore of the cathedral than the outside on the first day. His method wasbetter than that of an American (from Indiana, he told me) I met thefollowing day at the hotel. He gave two hours and a half, includingattendance at the morning service, to the cathedral, inside and out, then rushed off for an hour at Stonehenge, fourteen miles away, on ahired bicycle. I advised him to take another day--I did not want tofrighten him by saying a week--and he replied that that would make himmiss Winchester. After cycling back from Stonehenge he would catch atrain to Winchester and get there in time to have some minutes in thecathedral before the doors closed. He was due in London next morning. He had already missed Durham Cathedral in the north through gettinginterested in and wasting too much time over some place when he wasgoing there. Again, he had missed Exeter Cathedral in the south, and itwould 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 askedhim before we parted if he had seen the market, also if they had marketdays in the country towns in his State? He said he had looked in at themarket on his way back from the cathedral. No, they had nothing of thekind in his State. Indiana was covered with a network of railroads andelectric tram lines, and all country produce, down to the last new-laidegg, 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 romanceand memories of a vanished race, and has now only its pretty meaninglessname!

"I suppose, " he said, before getting on his bicycle, "there's nothingbeside the cathedral and Stonehenge to see in Wiltshire?"

"No, nothing, " I returned, "and you'll think the time wasted in seeingStonehenge. "

"Why?"

"Only a few old stones to see. "

But he went, and I have no doubt did think the time wasted, but it wouldbe some consolation to him, on the other side, to be able to say that hehad seen it with his own eyes. 

How did these same "few old stones" strike me on a first visit? It wasone of the greatest disillusionments I ever experienced. Stonehengelooked small--pitiably small! For it is a fact that mere size is verymuch to us, in spite of all the teachings of science. We have heard ofStonehenge in our childhood or boyhood--that great building of unknownorigin and antiquity, its circles of stones, some still standing, otherslying prostrate, like the stupendous half-shattered skeleton of a giantor monster whose stature reached to the clouds. It stands, we read orwere told, on Salisbury Plain. To my uninformed, childish mind a plainanywhere was like the plain on which I was born--an absolutely levelarea stretching away on all sides into infinitude; and although theeffect is of a great extent of earth, we know that we actually seevery little of it, that standing on a level plain we have a very nearhorizon. On this account any large object appearing on it, such as ahorse or tree or a big animal, looks very much bigger than it would onland with a broken surface. 

Oddly enough, my impossible Stonehenge was derived from a soberdescription and an accompanying plate in a sober work--a gigantic folioin two volumes entitled "A New System of Geography", dated some time inthe eighteenth century. How this ponderous work ever came to be out onthe pampas, over six thousand miles from the land of its origin, isa thing to wonder at. I remember that the Stonehenge plate greatlyimpressed me and that I sacrilegiously cut it out of the book so as tohave it!

Now we know, our reason tells us continually, that the mental picturesformed in childhood are false because the child and man have differentstandards, and furthermore the child mind exaggerates everything;nevertheless, such pictures persist until the scene or object sovisualized is actually looked upon and the old image shattered. Thisrefers to scenes visualized with the inner eye, but the disillusion isalmost as great when we return to a home left in childhood or boyhoodand look on it once more with the man's eyes. How small it is! Howdiminished the hills, and the trees that grew to such a vast height, whose tops once seemed "so close against the sky"--what poor littletrees they now are! And the house itself, how low it is; and the roomsthat seemed so wide and lofty, where our footfalls and childish voicessounded 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 oddthat unless we grow up amid the scenes where our first impressionswere received they should remain unaltered in the adult mind. The mostamusing instance of a false picture of something seen in childhood andcontinuing through life I have met was that of an Italian peasant I knewin South America. He liked to talk to me about the cranes, those greatand wonderful birds he had become acquainted with in childhood in hishome on the plains of Lombardy. The birds, of course, only appeared inautumn and spring when migrating, and passed over at a vast height abovethe earth. These birds, he said, were so big and had such great wingsthat if they came down on the flat earth they would be incapable ofrising, hence they only alighted on the tops of high mountains, and asthere was nothing for them to eat in such places, it being naked rockand ice, they were compelled to subsist on each other's droppings. Nowit came to pass that one year during his childhood a crane, owingto some accident, came down to the ground near his home. The wholepopulation of the village turned out to see so wonderful a bird, andwere amazed at its size; it was, he said, the strangest sight hehad ever looked on. How big was it? I asked him; was it as big as anostrich? An ostrich, he said, was nothing to it; I might as well askhim 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 hehad seen it with his own eyes and he could see it now in his mind--thebiggest bird in the world. Very well, I said, if he could see it plainlyin his mind he could give some rough idea of the wing-spread--howmuch would it measure from tip to tip? He said it was perhaps fiftyyards--perhaps a good deal more!

A similar trick was played by my mind about Stonehenge. As a child I hadstood in imagination before it, gazing up awestruck on those stupendousstones or climbing and crawling like a small beetle on them. And what atlast did I see with my physical eyes? Walking over the downs, miscalleda plain, anticipating something tremendous, I finally got away from thewoods at Amesbury and spied the thing I sought before me far away onthe slope of a green down, and stood still and then sat down in pureastonishment. Was this Stonehenge--this cluster of poor little greystones, looking in the distance like a small flock of sheep or goatsgrazing on that immense down! How incredibly insignificant it appearedto me, dwarfed by its surroundings--woods and groves and farmhouses, andby the vast extent of rolling down country visible at that point. It wasonly when I had recovered from the first shock, when I had got tothe very place and stood among the stones, that I began to experiencesomething of the feeling appropriate to the occasion. 

The feeling, however, must have been very slight, since it permittedme to become interested in the appearance and actions of a few sparrowsinhabiting 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 theopen plain. They were very active carrying up straws and feathers to thecrevices on the trioliths where the massive imposts rest on the uprightstones. I noticed the birds because of their bright appearance: theywere lighter coloured than any sparrows I have ever seen, and one cockbird when flying to and fro in the sunlight looked almost white. Iformed the idea that this small colony of about a dozen birds had beenlong established at that place, and that the change in their colouringwas a direct result of the unusual conditions in which they existed, where there was no shade and shelter of trees and bushes, and they wereperpetually exposed for generations to the full light of the wide opensky. 

On revisiting Stonehenge after an interval of some years I looked formy sparrows and failed to find them. It was at the breeding-season, whenthey would have been there had they still existed. No doubt the littlecolony had been extirpated by a sparrow-hawk or by the human guardiansof "The Stones, " as the temple is called by the natives. 

It remains to tell of my latest visit to "The Stones. " I had resolved togo once in my life with the current or crowd to see the sun rise on themorning of the longest day at that place. This custom or fashion is adeclining one: ten or twelve years ago, as many as one or two thousandpersons would assemble during the night to wait the great event, but thewatchers have now diminished to a few hundreds, and on some years toa few scores. The fashion, no doubt, had its origin when Sir NormanLockyer's theories, about Stonehenge as a Sun Temple placed so thatthe first rays of sun on the longest day of the year should fall on thecentre of the so-called altar or sacrificial stone placed in the middleof the circle, began to be noised about the country, and accepted byevery one as the true reading of an ancient riddle. But I gather fromnatives in the district that it is an old custom for people to go andwatch for sunrise on the morning of June 21. A dozen or a score ofnatives, mostly old shepherds and labourers who lived near, would goand sit there for a few hours and after sunrise would trudge home, butwhether or not there is any tradition or belief associated with thecustom I have not ascertained. "How long has the custom existed?" Iasked 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 villagefour miles from "The Stones"; or rather a group of five pretty littlevillages, almost touching but distinct, like five flowers or fiveberries on a single stem, each with its own old church and individualor parish life. It is a pretty tree-shaded place, full of the crooningsound of turtle-doves, hidden among the wide silent open downs andwatered by a clear swift stream, or winter bourne, which dries up duringthe heats of late summer, and flows again after the autumn rains, "whenthe springs rise" in the chalk hills. While here, I rambled on the downsand haunted "The Stones. " The road from Shrewton to Amesbury, a straightwhite band lying across a green country, passes within a few yardsof Stonehenge: on the right side of this narrow line the land is allprivate property, but on the left side and as far as one can see itmostly belongs to the War Office and is dotted over with camps. Iroamed about freely enough on both sides, sometimes spending hours ata stretch, not only on Government land but "within bounds, " for thepleasure of spying on the military from a hiding-place in some pinegrove or furze patch. I was seldom challenged, and the sentinels I cameacross were very mild-mannered men; they never ordered me away; theyonly said, or hinted, that the place I was in was not supposed to befree to the public. 

I come across many persons who lament the recent great change onSalisbury Plain. It is hateful to them; the sight of the camp and troopsmarching and drilling, of men in khaki scattered about everywhere overa hundred square leagues of plain; the smoke of firing and everlastingbooming of guns. It is a desecration; the wild ancient charm of the landhas been destroyed in their case, and it saddens and angers them. I waspretty free from these uncomfortable feelings. 

It is said that one of the notions the Japanese have about the fox--asemi-sacred animal with them--is that, if you chance to see one crossingyour path in the morning, all that comes before your vision on that daywill be illusion. As an illustration of this belief it is related thata Japanese who witnessed the eruption of Krakatoa, when the heavens werecovered with blackness and kindled with intermitting flashes and theearth shaken by the detonations, and when all others, thinking theend of the world had come, were swooning with extreme fear, viewed itwithout a tremor as a very sublime but illusory spectacle. For on thatvery morning he had seen a fox cross his path. 

A somewhat similar effect is produced on our minds if we have whatmay be called a sense of historical time--a consciousness of thetransitoriness of most things human--if we see institutions and worksas the branches on a pine or larch, which fail and die and fall awaysuccessively while the tree itself lives for ever, and if we measuretheir duration not by our own few swift years, but by the lifeof nations and races of men. It is, I imagine, a sense capable ofcultivation, and enables us to look upon many of man's doings that wouldotherwise vex and pain us, and, as some say, destroy all the pleasureof our lives, not exactly as an illusion, as if we were Japanese andhad seen a fox in the morning, but at all events in what we call aphilosophic spirit. 

What troubled me most was the consideration of the effect of the newconditions on the wild life of the plain--or of a very large portionof it. I knew of this before, but it was nevertheless exceedinglyunpleasant when I came to witness it myself when I took to spying onthe military as an amusement during my idle time. Here we have tens ofthousands of very young men, boys in mind, the best fed, healthiest, happiest crowd of boys in all the land, living in a pure bracingatmosphere, far removed from towns, and their amusements andtemptations, all mad for pleasure and excitement of some kind to filltheir vacant hours each day and their holidays. Naturally they take tobirds'-nesting and to hunting every living thing they encounter duringtheir walks on the downs. Every wild thing runs and flies from them, andis chased or stoned, the weak-winged young are captured, and the nestspicked or kicked up out of the turf. In this way the creatures are beingextirpated, and one can foresee that when hares and rabbits are nomore, and even the small birds of the plain, larks, pipits, wheatears, stonechats, and whincats, have vanished, the hunters in khaki will taketo the chase of yet smaller creatures--crane-flies and butterflies anddragon-flies, and even the fantastic, elusive hover-flies which thehunters of little game will perhaps think the most entertaining fly ofall. 

But it would be idle to grieve much at this small incidental andinevitable result of making use of the plain as a military camp andtraining-ground. The old god of war is not yet dead and rotting on hisiron hills; he is on the chalk hills with us just now, walking on theelastic turf, and one is glad to mark in his brown skin and sparklingeyes how thoroughly alive he is. 

A little after midnight on the morning of June 21, 1908, a Shrewtoncock began to crow, and that trumpet sound, which I never hear without astirring of the blood, on account of old associations, informed me thatthe late moon had risen or was about to rise, linking the midsummerevening and morning twilights, and I set off to Stonehenge. It was afine still night, without a cloud in the pale, dusky blue sky, thinlysprinkled with stars, and the crescent moon coming up above the horizon. After the cock ceased crowing a tawny owl began to hoot, and the longtremulous mellow sound followed me for some distance from the village, and then there was perfect silence, broken occasionally by the tinklingbells of a little company of cyclists speeding past towards "TheStones. " I was in no hurry: I only wished I had started sooner to enjoySalisbury Plain at its best time, when all the things which offend thelover of nature are invisible and nonexistent. Later, when the firstlight began to appear in the east before two o'clock, it was no falsedawn, but insensibly grew brighter and spread further, until touchesof colour, very delicate, palest amber, then tender yellow and roseand purple, began to show. I felt then as we invariably feel on suchoccasions, when some special motive has called us forth in time towitness 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 wasteddays!

O that unbedding of the lark! The world that was so still before now allat once had a sound; not a single song and not in one place, but a soundcomposed of a thousand individual sounds, rising out of the dark earthat a distance on my right hand and up into the dusky sky, spreading farand wide even as the light was spreading on the opposite side of theheavens--a sound as of multitudinous twanging, girding, and clashinginstruments, mingled with shrill piercing voices that were not likethe voices of earthly beings. They were not human nor angelic, butpassionless, and it was as if the whole visible world, the dim grassyplain and the vast pale sky sprinkled with paling stars, moonlit anddawnlit, had found a voice to express the mystery and glory of themorning. 

It was but eight minutes past two o'clock when this "unbedding of thelark" began, and the heavenly music lasted about fourteen minutes, thendied down to silence, to recommence about half an hour later. At first Iwondered why the sound was at a distance from the road on my right handand not on my left hand as well. Then I remembered what I had seen onthat side, how the "boys" at play on Sundays and in fact every day huntthe birds and pull their nests out, and I could only conclude that thelark has been pretty well wiped out from all that part of the plain overwhich the soldiers range. 

At Stonehenge I found a good number of watchers, about a couple ofhundred, already assembled, but more were coming in continually, anda mile or so of the road to Amesbury visible from "The Stones" hadat times the appearance of a ribbon of fire from the lamps of thiscontinuous stream of coming cyclists. Altogether about five to sixhundred persons gathered at "The Stones, " mostly young men on bicycleswho came from all the Wiltshire towns within easy distance, fromSalisbury to Bath. I had a few good minutes at the ancient temple whenthe sight of the rude upright stones looking black against the moonlitand star-sprinkled sky produced an unexpected feeling in me: but themood could not last; the crowd was too big and noisy, and the noisesthey 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 easternhorizon, and broadened by degrees, and pretty soon made it evident thatthe 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, justoutside the barbed-wire enclosure a rabbit was unearthed, and aboutthree hundred young men with shrieks of excitement set about itscapture. It was a lively scene, a general scrimmage, in which everyonewas trying to capture an elusive football with ears and legs to it, which went darting and spinning about hither and thither among themultitudinous legs, until earth compassionately opened and swallowedpoor distracted bunny up. It was but little better inside the enclosure, where the big fallen stones behind the altar-stone, in the middle, onwhich the first rays of sun would fall, were taken possession of by acrowd of young men who sat and stood packed together like guillemots ona rock. These too, cheated by that rising cloud of the spectacle theyhad come so far to see, wanted to have a little fun, and began to bevery obstreperous. By and by they found out an amusement very much totheir taste. 

Motor-cars were now arriving every minute, bringing important-lookingpersons who had timed their journeys so as to come upon the scene alittle before 3:45, when the sun would show on the horizon; and wheneverone of these big gentlemen appeared within the circle of stones, especially if he was big physically and grotesque-looking in hismotorist get-up, he was greeted with a tremendous shout. In most caseshe would start back and stand still, astonished at such an outburst, andthen, concluding that the only way to save his dignity was to face themusic, he would step hurriedly across the green space to hide himselfbehind the crowd. 

The most amusing case was that of a very tall person adorned with anexceedingly long, bright red beard, who had on a Glengarry cap anda great shawl over his overcoat. The instant this unfortunate personstepped into the arena a general wild cry of "Scotland for ever!" wasraised, followed by such cheers and yells that the poor man actuallystaggered back as if he had received a blow, then seeing there was noother way out of it, he too rushed across the open space to lose himselfamong the others. 

All this proved very entertaining, and I was glad to laugh with thecrowd, thinking that after all we were taking a very mild revenge on ourhated enemies, the tyrants of the roads. 

The fun over, I went soberly back to my village, and finding itimpossible to get to sleep I went to Sunday-morning service at ShrewtonChurch. It was strangely restful there after that noisy morning crowdat Stonehenge. The church is white stone with Norman pillars and old oakbeams laid over the roof painted or distempered blue--a quiet, peacefulblue. There was also a good deal of pleasing blue colour in the glassof the east window. The service was, as I almost invariably find it ina village church, beautiful and impressive. Listening to the musicof prayer and praise, with some natural outdoor sound to fill up thepauses--the distant crow of a cock or the song of some bird close by--acorn-bunting or wren or hedge-sparrow--and the bright sunlight fillingthe interior, I felt as much refreshed as if kind nature's sweetrestorer, balmy sleep, had visited me that morning. The sermon wasnothing to me; I scarcely heard it, but understood that it was aboutthe Incarnation and the perfection of the plan of salvation and theunreasonableness of the Higher Criticism and of all who doubt becausethey do not understand. I remembered vaguely that on three successiveSundays in three village churches in the wilds of Wiltshire I had heardsermons preached on and against the Higher Criticism. I thought it wouldhave been better in this case if the priest had chosen to preach onStonehenge 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 werepagans and idolaters who bow down to sticks and stones, if all theseadded cults would serve to make us more reverent. And I wish he couldhave said that it was as irreligious to go to Stonehenge, that ancienttemple which man raised to the unknown god thousands of years ago, toindulge in noise and horseplay at the hour of sunrise, as it would be togo 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 forthe distracting company the hours I spent there would have been verysweet 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 tomyself? If a cloud did not matter much it would matter still less thatit was not the day of the year when the red disc flames on the watcher'ssight directly over that outstanding stone and casts first a shadow thena ray of light on the altar. In the end I did not say good-bye to thevillage on that day, but settled down to listen to the tales of mylandlady, or rather to another instalment of her life-story and tofurther chapters in the domestic history of those five small villages inone. I had already been listening to her every evening, and at odd timesduring the day, for over a week, at first with interest, then a littleimpatiently. I was impatient at being kept in, so to speak. Out-of-doorsthe world was full of light and heat, full of sounds of wild birdsand fragrance of flowers and new-mown hay; there were also delightfulchildren and some that were anything but delightful--dirty, raggedlittle urchins of the slums. For even these small rustic villageshave their slums; and it was now the time when the young birds werefluttering out of their nests--their hunger cries could be heardeverywhere; and the ragged little barbarians were wild with excitement, chasing and stoning the flutterers to slay them; or when they succeededin capturing one without first having broken its wings or legs it was toput it in a dirty cage in a squalid cottage to see it perish miserablyin a day or two. Perhaps I succeeded in saving two or three threatenedlives in the lanes and secret green places by the stream; perhapsI didn't; but in any case it was some satisfaction to have made theattempt. 

Now all this made me a somewhat impatient listener to the villagetales--the old unhappy things, for they were mostly old and alwaysunhappy; 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 almostuncanny, something like the luminous eyes of an animal hungrily fixed onits prey. They held me, though not because they glittered: I could havegone away if I had thought proper, and remained to listen only becausethe meaning of that singular look in her grey-green eyes, which cameinto them whenever I grew restive, had dawned on my careless mind. 

She was an old woman with snow-white hair, which contrasted ratherstrangely with her hard red colour; but her skin was smooth, her facewell shaped, with fine acquiline features. No doubt it had been a veryhandsome face though never beautiful, I imagine; it was too strong andfirm and resolute; too like the face of some man we see, which, thoughwe have but a momentary sight of it in a passing crowd, affects us likea sudden puff of icy-cold air--the revelation of a singular andpowerful personality. Yet she was only a poor old broken-down woman in aWiltshire village, held fast in her chair by a hopeless infirmity. Withher legs paralysed she was like that prince in the Eastern tale on whoman evil spell had been cast, turning the lower half of his body intomarble. But she did not, like the prince, shed incessant tears andlament her miserable destiny with a loud voice. She was patient andcheerful always, resigned to the will of Heaven, and--a strange thingthis to record of an old woman in a village!--she would never speak ofher ailments. But though powerless in body her mind was vigorous andactive teeming with memories of all the vicissitudes of her exceedinglyeventful, busy life, from the time when she left her village as a younggirl to fight her way in the great world to her return to end her lifein it, old and broken, her fight over, her children and grandchildrendead or grown up and scattered about the earth. 

Chance having now put me in her way, she concluded after a fewpreliminary or tentative talks that she had got hold of an ideallistener; but she feared to lose me--she wanted me to go on listeningfor ever. That was the reason of that painfully intense hungry look inher eyes; it was because she discovered certain signs of lassitude orimpatience in me, a desire to get up and go away and refresh myself inthe sun and wind. Poor old woman, she could not spring upon and hold mefast when I attempted to move off, or pluck me back with her claws; shecould only gaze with fiercely pleading eyes and say nothing; and so, without being fascinated, I very often sat on listening still when Iwould gladly have been out-of-doors. 

She was a good fluent talker; moreover, she studied her listener, andfinding that my interest in her own interminable story was becomingexhausted she sought for other subjects, chiefly the strange events inthe lives of men and women who had lived in the village and who had longbeen 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 equallystrange and moving in pretty well every one of them. 

If each of these small centres possessed a scribe of genius, or at anyrate one with a capacity for taking pains, who would collect and printin proper form these remembered events, every village would in timehave its own little library of local history, the volumes labelledrespectively, "A Village Tragedy", "The Fields of Dulditch", "Life'sLittle Ironies", "Children's Children", and various others whose titlesevery reader will be able to supply. 

The effect of a long spell of listening to these unwritten tragedies wassometimes strong enough to cloud my reason, for on going directly forthinto the bright sunshine and listening to the glad sounds which filledthe air, it would seem that this earth was a paradise and thatall creation rejoiced in everlasting happiness excepting man alonewho--mysterious being!--was born to trouble and disaster as the sparksfly upwards. A pure delusion, due to our universal and ineradicablepassion for romance and tragedy. Tell a man of a hundred humdrumlives which run their quiet contented course in this village, and themonotonous unmoving story, or hundred stories, will go in at one earand out at the other. Therefore such stories are not told and notremembered. But that which stirs our pity and terror--the frustratelife, the glorious promise which was not fulfilled, the broken heartsand broken fortunes, and passion, crime, remorse, retribution--all thisprints itself on the mind, and every such life is remembered for everand passed on from generation to generation. But it would really formonly one brief chapter in the long, long history of the village lifewith its thousand chapters. 

The truth is, if we live in fairly natural healthy condition, we arejust as happy as the lower animals. Some philosopher has said that thechief pleasure in a man's life, as in that of a cow, consists in theprocesses of mastication, deglutition, and digestion, and I am verymuch inclined to agree with him. The thought of death troubles us verylittle--we do not believe in it. A familiar instance is that of theconsumptive, whose doctor and friends have given him up and wait butto see the end, while he, deluded man, still sees life, an illimitable, green, sunlit prospect, stretching away to an infinite distance beforehim. 

Death is a reality only when it is very near, so close on us that we canactually hear its swift stoaty feet rustling over the dead leaves, andfor a brief bitter space we actually know that his sharp teeth willpresently be in our throat. 

Out in the blessed sunshine I listen to a blackcap warbling verybeautifully in a thorn bush near the cottage; then to the great shoutof excited joy of the children just released from school, as they rushpell-mell forth and scatter about the village, and it strikes me thatthe bird in the thorn is not more blithe-hearted than they. An oldrook--I fancy he is old, a many-wintered crow--is loudly caw-cawing fromthe elm tree top; he has been abroad all day in the fields and has seenhis young able to feed themselves; and his own crop full, and now he iscalling to the others to come and sit there to enjoy the sunshine withhim. I doubt if he is happier than the human inhabitants of the village, the field labourers and shepherds who have been out toiling since theearly hours, and are now busy in their own gardens and allotments orplacidly smoking their pipes at their cottage doors. 

But I could not stay longer in that village of old unhappy memoriesand of quiet, happy, uninteresting lives that leave no memory, so afterwaiting two more days I forced myself to say good-bye to my poor oldlandlady. Or rather to say "Good night, " as I had to start at oneo'clock in the morning so as to have a couple, of hours before sunriseat "The Stones" on my way to Salisbury. Her latest effort to detain me aday 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 safeto be alone at midnight on this long lonely road--the loneliest placein all Salisbury Plain?" "The safest, " I said. "Safe as the Tower ofLondon--the protectors of all England are there. " "Ah, there's where thedanger is!" she returned. "If you meet some desperate man, a deserterwith his rifle in his hand perhaps, do you think he would hesitate aboutknocking you over to save himself and at the same time get a littlemoney to help him on his way?"

I smiled at her simulated anxiety for my safety, and set forth when itwas very dark but under a fine starry sky. The silence, too, was veryprofound: there was no good-bye from crowing cock or hooting owl on thisoccasion, nor did any cyclist pass me on the road with a flash of lightfrom his lamp and a tinkle from his bell. The long straight road on thehigh down was a dim grey band visible but a few yards before me, lyingacross the intense blackness of the earth. By day I prefer as a rulewalking on the turf, but this road had a rare and peculiar charm at thistime. It was now the season when the bird's-foot-trefoil, one of thecommonest plants of the downland country, was in its fullest bloom, sothat in many places the green or grey-green turf as far as one could seeon every side was sprinkled and splashed with orange-yellow. Nowthis creeping, spreading plant, like most plants that grow on theclose-cropped sheep-walks, whose safety lies in their power to rootthemselves and live very close to the surface, yet must ever strive tolift its flowers into the unobstructed light and air and to overtop orget away from its crowding neighbours. On one side of the road, wherethe turf had been cut by the spade in a sharp line, the plant had founda rare opportunity to get space and light and had thrust out such amultitude of bowering sprays, projecting them beyond the turf, as toform a close band or rope of orange-yellow, which divided the white roadfrom the green turf, and at one spot extended unbroken for upwards of amile. The effect was so singular and pretty that I had haunted this roadfor days for the pleasure of seeing that flower border made by nature. Now all colour was extinguished: beneath and around me there was adimness which at a few yards' distance deepened to blackness, and aboveme the pale dim blue sky sprinkled with stars; but as I walked I had theimage 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 growlighter and the dark down to change imperceptibly to dim hoary green. Then the exquisite colours of the dawn once more, and the larks risingin the dim distance--a beautiful unearthly sound--and so in the end Icame to "The Stones, " rejoicing, in spite of a cloud which now appearedon the eastern horizon to prevent the coming sun from being seen, thatI had the place to myself. The rejoicing came a little too soon; a veryfew minutes later other visitors on foot and on bicycles began to comein, and we all looked at each other a little blankly. Then a motorcararrived, and two gentlemen stepped out and stared at us, and onesuddenly 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 failedto catch. It was, of course, not right; it was indecent to laugh onsuch an occasion, for we were not of the ebullient sort who go to "TheStones" at three o'clock in the morning "for a lark"; but it was verynatural in the circumstances, and mentally I laughed myself at theabsurdity of the situation. However, the laugher had been rebuked forhis levity, and this incident over, there was nothing further to disturbme or any one in our solemn little gathering. 

It was a very sweet experience, and I cannot say that my early morningouting would have been equally good at any other lonely spot onSalisbury Plain or anywhere else with a wide starry sky above me, theflush of dawn in the east, and the larks rising heavenward out of thedim misty earth. Those rudely fashioned immemorial stones standing darkand large against the pale clear moonlit sky imparted something tothe feeling. I sat among them alone and had them all to myself, asthe others, fearing to tear their clothes on the barbed wire, hadnot ventured to follow me when I got through the fence. Outside theenclosure they were some distance from me, and as they talked in subduedtones, their voices reached me as a low murmur--a sound not out ofharmony with the silent solitary spirit of the place; and there was nowno other sound except that of a few larks singing fitfully a long wayoff. 

Just what the element was in that morning's feeling which Stonehengecontributed I cannot say. It was too vague and uncertain, too closelyinterwoven with the more common feeling for nature. No doubt it waspartly due to many untraceable associations, and partly to a thought, scarcely definite enough to be called a thought, of man's life in thisland from the time this hoary temple was raised down to the beginningof history. A vast span, a period of ten or more, probably of twentycenturies, during which great things occurred and great tragedies wereenacted, which seem all the darker and more tremendous to the mindbecause unwritten and unknown. But with the mighty dead of these blankages I could not commune. Doubtless they loved and hated and rose andfell, and there were broken hearts and broken lives; but as beings offlesh and blood we cannot visualize them, and are in doubt even as totheir race. And of their minds, or their philosophy of life, we knowabsolutely nothing. We are able, as Clifford has said in his CosmicEmotion, to shake hands with the ancient Greeks across the great desertof centuries which divides our day from theirs; but there is no shakinghands with these ancients of Britain--or Albion, seeing that we areon the chalk. To our souls they are as strange as the builders ofTiuhuanaco, or Mitla and Itzana, and the cyclopean ruins of Zimbabwe andthe Carolines. 

It is thought by some of our modern investigators of psychic phenomenathat apparitions result from the coming out of impressions left in thesurrounding matter, or perhaps in the ether pervading it, especially inmoments of supreme agitation or agony. The apparition is but a restoredpicture, and pictures of this sort are about us in millions; but for ourpeace they are rarely visible, as the ability to see them is the facultyof but a few persons in certain moods and certain circumstances. Here, then, if anywhere in England, we, or the persons who are endowed withthis unpleasant gift, might look for visions of the time when Stonehengewas the spiritual capital, the Mecca of the faithful (when all werethat), the meeting-place of all the intellect, the hoary experience, thepower and majesty of the land. 

But no visions have been recorded. It is true that certain stories ofalleged visions have been circulated during the last few years. One, very pretty and touching, is of a child from the London slums who sawthings invisible to others. This was one of the children of the verypoor, who are taken in summer and planted all about England in cottagesto have a week or a fortnight of country air and sunshine. Taken toStonehenge, she had a vision of a great gathering of people, and soreal did they seem that she believed in the reality of it all, and sobeautiful did they appear to her that she was reluctant to leave, andbegged to be taken back to see it all again. Unfortunately it is nottrue. A full and careful inquiry has been made into the story, ofwhich there are several versions, and its origin traced to a littlestory-telling Wiltshire boy who had read or heard of the white-robedpriests of the ancient days at "The Stones, " and who just to astonishother 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 mightbe set down as an instinct; and certainly there is no more fascinatingpastime than to keep company with a river from its source to the sea. Unfortunately this is not easy in a country where running waters havebeen enclosed, which should be as free as the rain and sunshine to all, and were once free, when England was England still, before landownersannexed them, even as they annexed or stole the commons and shut up thefootpaths and made it an offence for a man to go aside from the road tofeel 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-hootat us. Out of the way, miserable crawlers, if you don't want to besmashed!

Sometimes the way is cut off by huge thorny hedges and fences of barbedwire--man's devilish improvement on the bramble--brought down to thewater's edge. The river-follower must force his way through theseobstacles, in most cases greatly to the detriment of his clothes andtemper; or, should they prove impassable, he must undress and go intothe water. Worst of all is the thought that he is a trespasser. Thepheasants crow loudly lest he should forget it. Occasionally, too, inthese private places he encounters men in velveteens with guns undertheir arms, and other men in tweeds and knickerbockers, with or withoutguns, and they all stare at him with amazement in their eyes, likedisturbed cattle in a pasture; and sometimes they challenge him. ButI must say that, although I have been sharply spoken to on severaloccasions, always, after a few words, I have been permitted to keep onmy way. And on that way I intend to keep until I have no more strengthto climb over fences and force my way through hedges, but like a blindand worn-out old badger must take to my earth and die. 

I found the Exe easy to follow at first. Further on exceedinglydifficult in places; but I was determined to keep near it, to have itbehind me and before me and at my side, following, leading, a beautifulsilvery serpent that was my friend and companion. For I was followingnot the Exe only, but a dream as well, and a memory. Before I knew itthe 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 forgenerations beside it, listening all their lives long to its music, andwhen they left it they still loved it in exile, and died at lastwith its music in their ears. Nor did the connection end there; theirchildren and children's children doubtless had some inherited memory ofit; or how came I to have this feeling, which made it sacred, and drewme 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; asimple moorland stream, not wild and foaming and leaping over rocks, butflowing gently between low peaty banks, where the little lambs leapover it from side to side in play. Following the stream down, I come atlength to Exford. Here the aspect of the country begins to change; itis not all brown desolate heath; there are green flowery meadows bythe river, and some wood. A little further down and the Exe will be awoodland stream; but of all the rest of my long walk I shall only saythat to see the real beauty of this stream one must go to Somerset. FromExford to Dulverton it runs, singing aloud, foam-flecked, between highhills clothed to their summits in oak woods: after its union withthe Barle it enters Devonshire as a majestic stream, and flows calmlythrough a rich green country; its wild romantic charm has been leftbehind. 

The uninformed traveller, whose principle it is never to look at aguide-book, is surprised to find that the small village of Exfordcontains no fewer than half a dozen inns. He asks how they are keptgoing; and the natives, astonished at his ignorance, proceed toenlighten him. Exford is the headquarters of the stag-hunt: thitherthe hunters flock in August, and spend so much money during thir briefseason that the innkeepers grow rich and fat, and for the rest of theyear can afford to doze peacefully behind their bars. Here are thekennels, and when I visited them they contained forty or fifty couplesof stag-hounds. These are gigantic foxhounds, selected for their greatsize from packs all over the country. When out exercising these bigvari-coloured dogs make a fine show. It is curious to find that, although these individual variations are continually appearing--verylarge 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 swiftriver that flows through it, making music on its wide sandy andpebbly floor. Hither and thither flit the wagtails, finding littlehalf-uncovered stones in the current to perch upon. Both the pied andgrey species are there; and, seeing them together, one naturally wishesto resettle for himself the old question as to which is the prettiestand most graceful. Now this one looks best and now that; but thedelicately coloured grey and yellow bird has the longest tail and canuse it more prettily. Her tail is as much to her, both as ornament andto express emotions, as a fan to any flirtatious Spanish senora. Onealways thinks of these dainty feathered creatures as females. It wouldseem quite natural to call the wagtail "lady-bird, " if that name hadnot been registered by a diminutive podgy tortoise-shaped black and redbeetle. 

So shallow is the wide stream in the village that a little girl of aboutseven came down from a cottage, and to cool her feet waded out intothe middle, and there she stood for some minutes on a low flat stone, looking down on her own wavering image broken by a hundred hurryingwavelets and ripples. This small maidie, holding up her short, shabbyfrock with her wee hands, her bright brown hair falling over her face asshe bent her head down and laughed to see her bare little legs and theirflickering 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 manythe adventures met with in this walk, starting with the baby streamletbeyond Simonsbath, and following it down to Exeter and Exmouth, that itwould take half a volume to describe them, however briefly. Yet at theend 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 immemorialpeace, second to no English village in beauty; with its hoary churchtower, its great trees, its old stone, thatched cottages draped in ivyand vine, its soothing sound of running waters. Exeter itself did notimpress me so strongly, in spite of its cathedral. The village of Exfordprinted itself thus sharply on my mind because I had there been filledwith wonder and delight at the sight of a face exceeding in lovelinessall the faces seen in that West Country--a rarest human gem, which hadthe power of imparting to its setting something of its own wonderfullustre. The type was a common Somerset one, but with marked differencesin 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 Londonstreet you can easily spot a Somerset man who has this mark on hiscountenance, but it shows more clearly in the woman. There are moretypes than one, but the variety is less than in other places; the womenare more like each other, and differ more from those that are outsidetheir borders than is the case in other English counties. A woman ofthis prevalent type, to be met with anywhere from Bath and Bedminsterto the wilds of Exmoor, is of a good height, and has a pleasant, often apretty face; regular features, the nose straight, rather long, with thinnostrils; eyes grey-blue; hair brown, neither dark nor light, in manycases with a sandy or sunburnt tint. Black, golden, reds, chestnuts arerarely seen. There is always colour in the skin, but not deep; as a ruleit is a light tender brown with a rosy or reddish tinge. Altogetherit is a winning face, with smiling eyes; there is more in it of thatsomething we can call "refinement" than is seen in women of the sameclass in other counties. The expression is somewhat infantile; a youngwoman, even a middle-aged woman, will frequently remind you of a littlegirl of seven or eight summers. The innocent eyes and mobile mouth aresingularly childlike. This peculiarity is the more striking when weconsider the figure. This is not fully developed according to theaccepted standards the hips are too small, the chest too narrow andflat, the arms too thin. True or false, the idea is formed of a womanof a childlike, affectionate nature, but lacking in passion, one to bechosen for a sister rather than a wife. Something in us--instinct ortradition--will have it that the well-developed woman is richest inthe purely womanly qualities--the wifely and maternal feelings. Theluxuriant types that abound most in Devonshire are not common here. 

It will be understood that the women described are those that livein cottages. Here, as elsewhere, as you go higher in the socialscale--further from the soil as it were--the type becomes less and lessdistinct. Those of the "higher class, " or "better class, " are few, andalways in a sense foreigners. 

Chapter Twenty-Four: Troston

I doubt if the name of this small Suffolk village, remote from towns andrailroads, will have any literary associations for the reader, unlesshe be a person of exceptionally good memory, who has taken a specialinterest in the minor poets of the last century; or that it wouldhelp him if I add the names of Honington and Sapiston, two other smallvillages a couple of miles from Troston, with the slow sedgy LittleOuse, or a branch of it, flowing between them. Yet Honington was thebirthplace of Robert Bloomfield, known as "the Suffolk poet" in theearly part of the last century (although Crabbe was living then and wasgreat, as he is becoming again after many years); while at Sapiston, therustic village on the other side of the old stone bridge, he acquiredthat love of nature and intimate knowledge of farm life and work whichcame out later in his Farmer's Boy. Finally, Troston, the little villagein which I write, was the home of Capel Lofft, a person of importance inhis day, who discovered Bloomfield, found a publisher for his poems, andboomed it with amazing success. 

I dare say it will only provoke a smile of amusement in readers ofliterary taste when I confess that Bloomfield's memory is dear to me;that only because of this feeling for the forgotten rustic who wroterhymes I am now here, strolling about in the shade of the venerabletrees in Troston Park-the selfsame trees which the somewhat fantasticCapel knew in his day as "Homer, " "Sophocles, " "Virgil, " "Milton, " andby other names, calling each old oak, elm, ash, and chestnut after oneof the immortals. 

I can even imagine that the literary man, if he chanced to be a personalfriend, would try to save me from myself by begging me not to putanything of this sort into print. He would warn me that it mattersnothing that Bloomfield's verse was exceedingly popular for a time, thattwenty-five or thirty editions of his Farmer's Boy were issued withinthree years of its publication in 1800 that it continued to be read forhalf a century afterwards. There are other better tests. Is it aliveto-day? What do judges of literature say of it now? Nothing! They smileand 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 lookedat the Farmer's Boy and it made him sick. Well, nobody wants to look atit now. 

Much more might be said very easily on this side; nevertheless, I thinkI shall go on with my plea for the small verse-maker who has long fallenout; and though I may be unable to make a case out, the kindly criticmay find some circumstance to extenuate my folly--to say, in the end, that this appears to be one of the little foolishnesses which might beforgiven. 

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 orthe critical faculty; it is also, to some extent, a matter ofassociation, --and as the story of how this comes about is rathercurious, I will venture to give it. 

In the distant days of my boyhood and early youth my chief delightwas in nature, and when I opened a book it was to find something aboutnature in it, especially some expression of the feeling produced in usby nature, which was, in my case, inseparable from seeing and hearing, and was, to me, the most important thing in life. For who could lookon earth, water, sky, on living or growing or inanimate things, withoutexperiencing that mysterious uplifting gladness in him! In due time Idiscovered that the thing I sought for in printed books was to be foundchiefly in poetry, that half a dozen lines charged with poetic feelingabout nature often gave me more satisfaction than a whole volume ofprose on such subjects. Unfortunately this kind of literature was notobtainable in my early home on the then semi-wild pampas. There were acouple 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, coverlessvolume. This I read and re-read until I grew sick of bright Roxanatripping o'er the green, or of gentle Delia when a tear bedews her eyeto think yon playful kid must die. To my uncultivated mind--for I hadnever been at school, and lived in the open air with the birds andbeasts--this seemed intolerably artificial; for I was like a hungryperson who has nothing but kickshaws put before him, and eats becausehe is hungry until he loathes a food which in its taste confounds theappetite. Never since those distant days have I looked at a Shenstone oreven seen his name in print or heard it spoken, without a slight returnof that old sensation of nausea. If Shenstone alone had come to me, thedesire for poetry would doubtless have been outlived early in life;but there were many passages, some very long, from the poets in variousbooks on the shelves, and these kept my appetite alive. There wasBrown's Philosophy, for example; and Brown loved to illustrate his pointwith endless poetic quotations, the only drawback in my case being thatthey were almost exclusively drawn from Akenside, who was not "rural. "But there were other books in which other poets were quoted, and ofall these the passages which invariably pleased me most were thedescriptions of rural sights and sounds. 

One day, during a visit to the city of Buenos Ayres, I discovered in amean 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. Iremember him well because he was a very important person to me. It wasthe first shop of the kind I had seen--I doubt if there was another inthe town; and to be allowed to rummage by the hour among this mass ofold books on the dusty shelves and heaped on the brick floor was a noveland delightful experience. The books were mostly in Spanish, French, and German, but there were some in English, and among them I came uponThomson's Seasons. I remember the thrill of joy I experienced when Isnatched up the small thin octavo in its smooth calf binding. It was thefirst book in English I ever bought, and to this day when I see a copyof the Seasons on a bookstall, which is often enough, I cannot keepmy fingers off it and find it hard to resist the temptation to throwa couple of shillings away and take it home. If shillings had not beenwanted for bread and cheese I should have had a roomful of copies bynow. 

Few books have given me more pleasure, and as I still return to it fromtime to time I do not suppose I shall ever outgrow the feeling, in spiteof its having been borne in on me, when I first conversed with readersof poetry in England, that Thomson is no longer read--that he isunreadable. 

After such a find I naturally went back many times to burrow in thatdelightful rubbish heap, and was at length rewarded by the discovery ofyet another poem of rural England--the Farmer's Boy. I was prepared tolike it, for although I did not know anything about the author's earlylife, the few passages I had come across in quotations in James Rennie'sand other old natural history compilations had given me a strong desireto read the whole poem. I certainly did like it--this quiet descriptionin verse of a green spot in England, my spiritual country which so faras I knew I was never destined to see; and that I continue to like itis, as I have said, the reason of my being in this place. 

While thus freely admitting that the peculiar circumstances of the casecaused me to value this poem, and, in fact, made it very much more tome than it could be to persons born in England with all its poeticalliterature to browse on, I am at the same time convinced that this isnot the sole reason for my regard. 

I take it that the Farmer's Boy is poetry, not merely slightly poetizedprose in the form of verse, although it is undoubtedly poetry of a veryhumble order. 

Mere descriptions of rural scenes do not demand the higher qualities ofthe poet--imagination and passion. The lower kind of inspiration is, infact, often better suited to such themes and shows nature by the commonlight of day, as it were, instead of revealing it as by a succession oflightning flashes. Even among those who confine themselves to this lowerplane, Bloomfield is not great: his small flame is constantly sinkingand flickering out. But at intervals it burns up again and redeemsthe work from being wholly commonplace and trivial. He is, in fact, nobetter than many another small poet who has been devoured by Time sincehis day, and whose work no person would now attempt to bring back. Itis probable, too, that many of these lesser singers whose fame was briefwould in their day have deeply resented being placed on a level with theSuffolk peasant-poet. In spite of all this, and of the impossibility ofsaving most of the verse which is only passably good from oblivion, Istill 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 muchThomsonian poetry besides, treating of nature in a general way; then wehave innumerable detached descriptions of actual scenes, such as we findscattered throughout Cowper's Task, and numberless other works. Besidesall this there are the countless shorter poems, each conveying animpression of some particular scene or aspect of nature; the poet ofthe open air, like the landscape painter, is ever on the look out forpicturesque "bits" and atmospheric effects as a subject. In Bloomfieldwe get something altogether different--a simple, consistent, and fairlycomplete account of the country people's toilsome life in a remoteagricultural district in England--a small rustic village set amid greenand arable fields, woods and common lands. We have it from the inside byone 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--photographedas we may say--with all the minute unessential details and repetitions, but as it appeared when looked back upon from a distance, reliving it inmemory, the sights and sounds and events which had impressed the boy'smind standing vividly out. Of this lowly poem it may be truly said thatit is "emotion recollected in tranquillity, " to use the phrase inventedby Wordsworth when he attempted a definition of poetry generally andsignally failed, as Coleridge demonstrated. 

It will be said that the facts of Bloomfield's life--that he was afarmer's boy whose daily tasks were to scare the crows, feed the pigs, and forty things besides, and that later, when learning the shoemaker'strade in a London garret, he put these memories together and made theminto a poem--are wholly beside the question when we come to judge thework as literature. A peasant poet may win a great reputation in his ownday on account of the circumstances of the case, but in the end his workmust 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 endeavourto show that the poem, although poor as a whole, is not altogether bad, but contains many lines that glow with beautiful poetic feeling, andmany descriptive passages which are admirable. Furthermore, I willventure 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 itsunique character. It may be that I am the only person in England ableto appreciate it so fully owing to the way in which it first came to mynotice, and the critical reader can, if he thinks proper, discount whatI am now saying as mere personal feeling. But the case is this: when, ina distant region of the world, I sought for and eagerly read anything Icould find relating to country scenes and life in England--the land ofmy 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 relationto nature. It was all broken up into pieces or "bits"; it was indetached scenes, vividly reproduced to the inner eye in many cases, but unrelated and unharmonized, like framed pictures of rural subjectshanging on the walls of a room. Even the Seasons failed to supply thiswant, 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 matterof that, over the whole globe. But I did get it in the Farmer's Boy. Ivisualized the whole scene, the entire harmonious life; I was with himfrom 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 churchwith a thatched roof where the daws nested in the belfry, and thechildren played and shouted among the gravestones in the churchyard; inwoods and green and ploughed fields and the deep lanes--with him and hisfellow-toilers, and the animals, domestic and wild, regarding their lifeand 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 tofill a gap; at all events from the point of view of those who, born andliving in distant parts of the earth, still dream of the Old Home. Thisperhaps accounts for the fact, which I heard at Honington, that most ofthe pilgrims to Bloomfield's birthplace are Americans. 

Bloomfield followed his great example in dividing his poem into the fourseasons, 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 theSeasons or Windsor Forest, the noble poem from which, I imagine, Thomson derived his sonorous style. He had a humble mind and knew hislimitations, and though he adopted the artificial form of verse whichprevailed 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 openingis graceful and is not without a touch of pathos in his apologeticdescription 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; theanimals, the sturdy team, the cows and the small flock of fore-scoreewes. Ploughing, sowing, and harrowing are described, and the resultleft 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 doprotecting the buried grain from thieving rooks and crows; one of themultifarious tasks being to collect the birds that have been shot, foralthough--

 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 ragsand straw with sham rifles in their hands. It was for him to shiftthe dead from place to place, to arrange them in dying attitudes withoutstretched wings. Finally, there was the fox, the stealer of deadcrows, to be guarded against; and again at eventide Giles must trudgeround to gather up his dead and suspend them from twigs out of reach ofhungry night-prowlers. Called up at daybreak each morning, he would takehis way through deep lanes overarched with oaks to "fields remote fromhome" to redistribute his dead birds, then to fetch the cows, and herewe have an example of his close naturalist-like observation in hisaccount of the leading cow, the one who coming and going on alloccasions is allowed precedence, who maintains her station, "won bymany a broil, " with just pride. A picture of the cool dairy and itswork succeeds, and a lament on the effect of the greed and luxury ofthe over-populous capital which drains the whole country-side of allproduce, which makes the Suffolk dairy-wives run mad for cream, leavingnothing but the "three-times skimmed sky-blue" to make cheese for localconsumption. What a cheese it is, that has the virtue of a post, whichturns the stoutest blade, and is at last flung in despair into thehog-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 thereis more evidence of his observant eye when he describes the character ofthe animals, also in what follows about the young lambs, which forms thebest passage in this part. I remember that, when first reading it, beingthen little past boyhood myself, how much I was struck by the vividbeautiful description of a crowd of young lambs challenging each otherto a game, especially at a spot where they have a mound or hillock for aplayground which takes them with a sort of goatlike joyous madness. Forhow often in those days I used to ride out to where the flock of one totwo thousand sheep were scattered on the plain, to sit on my pony andwatch the glad romps of the little lambs with keenest delight! I cannotbut think that Bloomfield's fidelity to nature in such pictures asthese does or should count for something in considering his work. Heconcludes:--

 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 remindshim bitterly of the destined end of these joyous young lives--hiswhite-fleeced little fellow-mortals. He sees the murdering butchercoming in his cart to demand the firstlings of the flock; he cannotsuppress a cry of grief and indignation--he can only strive to shut outthe shocking image from his soul!

"Summer" opens with some reflections on the farmer's life in a prosyCrabbe-like manner; and here it may be noted that as a rule Bloomfieldno sooner attempts to rise to a general view than he grows flat; and inlike manner he usually fails when he attempts wide prospects and largeeffects. He is at his best only when describing scenes and incidentsat 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 smallbirds 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 hisbrushing-pole, until, overcome by fatigue and heat, he takes a rest bythe brakes and lying, half in sun and half in shade, his attention isattracted 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 iscalled 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 andstarts 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 unwontedliveliness 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 dreadfulthings, even in the most rustic villages in the land; not so thebarbarous practice of docking horses' tails, against which he protestsin this place when describing the summer plague of flies and theexcessive sufferings of the domestic animals, especially of the poorhorses deprived of their only defence against such an enemy. At hisown little farm there was yet another plague in the form of anold broken-winged gander, "the pest and tryant of the yard, " whoseunpleasant habit it was to go for the beasts and seize them by thefetlocks. The swine alone did not resent the attacks but welcomed them, receiving the assaults as caresses, and stretching themselves out andlying down and closing their pigs' eyes, they would emit grunts ofsatisfaction, while the triumphant bird, followed by the whole gabblingflock, 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 openingpart, describing the swine in the acorn season, a delightful picturewhich 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 werespect for its intelligence, holding it in this respect higher, morehuman, than the horse, and at the same time laugh at on account ofcertain ludicrous points about it, as for example its liability to loseits head. Thousands of years of comfortable domestic life have failed torid it of this inconvenient heritage from the time when wild in woodsit ran. Yet in this particular instance the terror of the swine doesnot 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 splashand flutter of wings and outrageous screams, that man himself, if notprepared for it, may be thrown off his balance. 

Passing over other scenes, about one hundred and fifty lines, we come tothe second notable passage, when after the sowing of the winter wheat, poor Giles once more takes up his old occupation of rook-scaring. It isnow 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, totake 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 trivialrestraint, which is yet felt so poignantly, brings to mind an infinitelygreater one. Look, he says--

 From the poor bird-boy with his roasted sloes

to the miserable state of those who are confined in dungeons, deprivedof daylight and the sight of the green earth, whose minds perpetuallytravel back to happy scenes, Trace and retrace the beaten worn-out way, whose chief bitterness it is to be forgotten and see no familiarfriendly face. 

"Winter" is, I think, the best of the four parts it gives the idea thatthe poem was written as it stands, from "Spring" onwards, that by thetime he got to the last part the writer had acquired a greater ease andassurance. At all events it is less patchy and more equal. It is alsomore sober in tone, as befits the subject, and opens with an account ofthe domestic animals on the farm, their increased dependence on man andthe compassionate feelings they evoke in us. He is, we feel, dealingwith realities, always from the point of view of a boy of sensitivemina and tender heart--one taken in boyhood from this life before it hadwrought any change in him. For in due time the farm boy, however finehis spirit may be, must harden and grow patient and stolid in heat andcold and wet, like the horse that draws the plough or cart; and as hehardens he grows callous. In his wretched London garret if any changecame to him it was only to an increased love and pity for the beasts hehad lived among, who looked and cried to him to be fed. He describes itwell, the frost and bitter cold, the hungry cattle following the cartto 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 untilGiles, following with his beetle, splits them up with vigorous blows, and the cows gather close round him, sending out a cloud of steam fromtheir nostrils. 

The dim short winter day soon ends, but the sound of the flailscontinues in the barns till long after dark before the weary labourersend their task and trudge home. Giles, too, is busy at this time takinghay to the housed cattle, many a sweet mouthful being snatched from theload as he staggers beneath it on his way to the racks. Then followthe well-earned hours of "warmth and rest" by the fire in the big oldkitchen 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 asleepand dreams sweetly until his chilblains or the snapping fire awakes him, and he pulls himself up and goes forth yawning to give his team theirlast feed, his lantern throwing a feeble gleam on the snow as he makeshis way to the stable. Having completed his task, he pats the sidesof those he loves best by way of good-night, and leaves them to theirfragrant meal. And this kindly action on his part suggests one of thebest passages of the poem. Even old well-fed Dobbin occasionally rebelsagainst his slavery, and released from his chains will lift his clumsyhoofs 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 torturesinflicted 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 theinvention of other more rapid means of transit the present generationwould be as little concerned at the pains of the post-horse as theyare at the horrors enacted behind the closed doors of the physiologicallaboratories, the atrocity of the steel trap, the continual murdering byour big game hunters of all the noblest animals left on the globe, andfinally the annual massacre of millions of beautiful birds in theirbreeding time to provide ornaments for the hats of our women. 

"Come forth he must, " says Bloomfield, when he describes how theflogged horse at length gains the end of the stage and, "trembling undercomplicated pains, " when "every nerve a separate anguish knows, " he isfinally unharnessed and led to the stable door, but has scarcely tastedfood 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 longerwanted, and we have to remember that no form of cruelty inflicted, whether for sport or profit or from some other motive, on the loweranimals has ever died out of itself in the land. Its end has invariablybeen brought about by legislation through the devotion of men who werethe "cranks, " the "faddists, " the "sentimentalists, " of their day, whowere jeered and laughed at by their fellows, and who only succeeded bysheer tenacity and force of character after long fighting against publicopinion and a reluctant Parliament, in finally getting their law. 

Bloomfield's was but a small voice crying in the wilderness, and he wasindeed a small singer in the day of our greatest singers. As a poet hewas not worthy to unloose the buckles of their shoes; but he had onething in common with the best and greatest, the feeling of tender loveand 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 oftheir illustrious brotherhood. 

In conclusion, I will quote one more passage. From the subject of horseshe passes to that of dogs and their occasional reversion to wildness, when the mastiff or cur, the "faithful" house-dog by day, takes tosheep-killing by night. As a rule he is exceedingly cunning, committinghis depredations at a distance frown home, and after getting his fillof slaughter he sneaks home in the early hours to spend the day in hiskennel "licking his guilty paws. " This is an anxious time for shepherdsand farmers, and poor Giles is compelled to pay late evening visits tohis small flock of heavy-sided ewes penned in their distant fold. It isa comfort to him to have a full moon on these lonely expeditions, anddespite 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 thevastness of visible nature is conveyed. He saw the vastness only in thesky on nights with a full moon or when he made a telescope of his hatto watch the flight of the lark. It was not a hilly country about hisnative place, and his horizon was a very limited one, usually bounded bythe hedgerow timber at the end of the level field. The things he depictswere seen at short range, and the poetry, we see, was of a very modestkind. It was a "humble note" which pleased me in the days of long agowhen I was young and very ignorant, and as it pleases me still it maybe 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 ofadmiration of those who are moved to a sense of wonder by it, find anecho in me. But it is not only a delight to me to listen to the larksinging at heaven's gate and to the vesper nightingale in the oakcopse--the singer of a golden throat and wondrous artistry; I also lovethe smaller vocalists--the modest shufewing and the lesser whitethroatand the yellowhammer with his simple chant. These are very dear tome: their strains do not strike me as trivial; they have a lesserdistinction of their own and I would not miss them from the choir. Theliterary man will smile at this and say that my paper is naught but anidle exercise, but I fancy I shall sleep the better tonight for havingdischarged 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 thinkshe is, which comes to the same thing. So convinced is he that I amhis guide, protector, and true master, that if I were to give him adownright scolding or even a thrashing he would think it was all rightand go on just the same. His way of going on is to make a companion ofme whether I want him or not. I do not want him, but his idea is thatI want him very much. I bitterly blame myself for having made the firstadvances, although nothing came of it except that he growled. I met himin a Cornish village in a house where I stayed. There was a nice kennelthere, painted green, with a bed of clean straw and an empty plate whichhad contained his dinner, but on peeping in I saw no dog. Next day itwas the same, and the next, and the day after that; then I inquiredabout it--Was there a dog in that house or not? Oh, yes, certainly therewas: Jack, but a very independent sort of dog. On most days he lookedin, ate his dinner and had a nap on his straw, but he was not what youwould call a home-keeping dog. 

One day I found him in, and after we had looked for about a minuteat each other, I squatting before the kennel, he with chin on pawspretending to be looking through me at something beyond, I addresseda few kind words to him, which he received with the before-mentionedgrowl. I pronounced him a surly brute and went away. It was growlfor growl. Nevertheless I was well pleased at having escaped theconsequences in speaking kindly to him. I am not a "doggy" person noreven a canophilist. The purely parasitic or degenerate pet dog movesme to compassion, but the natural vigorous outdoor dog I fear and avoidbecause we are not in harmony; consequently I suffer and am a loser whenhe forces his company on me. The outdoor world I live in is not the oneto which a man goes for a constitutional, with a dog to save himfrom feeling lonely, or, if he has a gun, with a dog to help him killsomething. It is a world which has sound in it, distant cries andpenetrative calls, and low mysterious notes, as of insects andcorncrakes, and frogs chirping and of grasshopper warblers--sounds likewind 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, alsobeetles and dragon-flies. Many are at enmity with each other, but onaccount of their quietude there is no disturbance, no outcry and rushinginto hiding. And having acquired this habit from them I am able to seeand be with them. The sitting bird, the frolicking rabbit, the baskingadder--they are as little disturbed at my presence as the butterflythat drops down close to my feet to sun his wings on a leaf or frond andmakes me hold my breath at the sight of his divine colour, as if he hadjust fluttered down from some brighter realm in the sky. Think of a dogin this world, intoxicated with the odours of so many wild creatures, dashing and splashing through bogs and bushes! It is ten times worsethan a bull in a china-shop. The bull can but smash a lot of objectsmade of baked clay; the dog introduces a mad panic in a world of livingintelligent beings, a fairy realm of exquisite beauty. They scuttle awayand vanish into hiding as if a deadly wind had blown over the earth andswept them out of existence. Only the birds remain--they can fly anddo not fear for their own lives, but are in a state of intense anxietyabout their eggs and young among the bushes which he is dashing throughor exploring. 

I had good reason, then, to congratulate myself on Jack's surlybehaviour on our first meeting. Then, a few days later, a curious thinghappened. Jack was discovered one morning in his kennel, and when spokento came or rather dragged himself out, a most pitiable object. He washorribly 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 miserablecondition he continued for some three days. 

At first we thought he had been in a big fight--he was inclinedthat way, his master said--but we could discover no tooth marks orlacerations, nothing but bruises. Perhaps, we said, he had fallen intothe hands of some cruel person in one of the distant moorland farms, whohad tied him up, then thrashed him with a big stick, and finally turnedhim loose to die on the moor or crawl home if he could. His masterlooked so black at this that we said no more about it. But Jack wasa wonderfully tough dog, all gristle I think, and after three days oflying there like a dead dog he quickly recovered, though I'm quite surethat if his injuries had been distributed among any half-dozen pamperedor pet dogs it would have killed them all. A morning came when thekennel 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 wentout one fine morning for a long day's ramble along the coast. A mile orso from home, happening to glance back I caught sight of a black dog'sface among the bushes thirty or forty yards away gazing earnestly at me. It was Jack, of course, nothing but his head visible in an openingamong the bushes--a black head which looked as if carved in ebony, ina wonderful setting of shining yellow furze blossoms. The beauty andsingularity of the sight made it impossible for me to be angry withhim, though there's nothing a man more resents than being shadowed, orsecretly followed and spied upon, even by a dog, so, without consideringwhat I was letting myself in for, I cried out "Jack" and instantly hebounded out and came to my side, then flew on ahead, well pleased tolead the way. 

"I must suffer him this time, " I said resignedly, and went on, he alwaysahead acting as my scout and hunter--self-appointed, of course, but asI had not ordered him back in trumpet tones and hurled a rock at himto enforce the command, he took it that he was appointed by me. Hecertainly made the most of his position; no one could say that he waslacking in zeal. He scoured the country to the right and left and far inadvance of me, crashing through furze thickets and splashing across bogsand streams, spreading terror where he went and leaving nothing forme to look at. So it went on until after one o'clock when, tired andhungry, I was glad to go down into a small fishing cove to get somedinner in a cottage I knew. Jack threw himself down on the floor andshared my meal, then made friends with the fisherman's wife and got asecond meal of saffron cake which, being a Cornish dog, he thoroughlyenjoyed. 

The second half of the day was very much like the first, altogether ablank day for me, although a very full one for Jack, who had filled avast number of wild creatures with terror, furiously hunted a hundred ormore, and succeeded in killing two or three. 

Jack was impossible, and would never be allowed to follow me again. SoI sternly said and so thought, but when the time came and I found himwaiting for me his brown eyes bright with joyful anticipation, I couldnot scowl at him and thunder out No! I could not help putting myself inhis place. For here he was, a dog of boundless energy who must exercisehis powers or be miserable, with nothing in the village for him exceptto witness the not very exciting activities of others; and that, Idiscovered, had been his life. He was mad to do something, and becausethere was nothing for him to do his time was mostly spent in going aboutthe village to keep an eye on the movements of the people, especially ofthose who did the work, always with the hope that his services mightbe required in some way by some one. He was grateful for the smallestcrumbs, so to speak. House-work and work about the house--milking, feeding the pigs and so on--did not interest him, nor would he attendthe labourers in the fields. Harvest time would make a difference; nowit was ploughing, sowing, and hoeing, with nothing for Jack. But he wasalways down at the fishing cove to see the boats go out or come in andjoin in the excitement when there was a good catch. It was still betterwhen the boat went with provisions to the lighthouse, or to relieve thekeeper, for then Jack would go too and if they would not have him hewould plunge into the waves and swim after it until the sails werehoisted and it flew like a great gull from him and he was compelled toswim back to land. If there was nothing else to do he would go to thestone quarry and keep the quarrymen company, sharing their dinnerand hunting away the cows and donkeys that came too near. Then atsix o'clock he would turn up at the cricket-field, where a few youngenthusiasts would always attend to practise after working hours. 

Living this way Jack was, of course, known to everybody--as well knownas the burly parson, the tall policeman, and the lazy girl who acted aspostman and strolled about the parish once a day delivering the letters. When Jack trotted down the village street he received as many greetingsas any human inhabitant--"Hullo, Jack!" or "Morning, Jack, " or "Where begoing, Jack?"

But all this variety, and all he could do to fit himself into and bea 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 goingthere--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 asocial being by instinct as well as training, dependent on others, oron the one who was his head and master. His human master, or the man whotook him out and spoke to him in a tone of authority, represented thehead of the pack--the leading dog for the time being, albeit a dog thatwalked 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 cannever adapt himself perfectly to the conditions, and it was consequentlynothing more than simple justice on my part to do what I could tosatisfy his desire even at some cost to myself. But while I wasrevolving the matter in my mind, feeling rather unhappy about it, Jackwas quite happy, since he had nothing to revolve. For him it was allsettled and done with. Having taken him out once, I must go on takinghim out always. Our two lives, hitherto running apart--his in thevillage, where he occupied himself with uncongenial affairs, mine onthe moor where, having but two legs to run on, I could catch norabbits--were now united in one current to our mutual advantage. Hishabits were altered to suit the new life. He stayed in now so as notto lose me when I went for a walk, and when returning, instead of goingback 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 staredin astonishment. It was against the rules of the house! They orderedhim out and he looked at them without moving. Then they spoke again verysharply indeed, and he growled a low buzzing growl without lifting hischin from his paws, and they had to leave him! He had transferredhis allegiance to a new master and head of the pack. He was under myprotection and felt quite safe: if I had taken any part in that scene itwould have been to order those two persons who had once lorded it overhim out of the room!

I didn't really mind his throwing over his master and taking possessionof the rug in my sitting-room, but I certainly did very keenly resenthis behaviour towards the birds every morning at breakfast-time. It wasmy chief pleasure to feed them during the bad weather, and it was oftena difficult task even before Jack came on the scene to mix himself in myaffairs. 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 wouldcatch 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 outby the kitchen door at the back (the front door facing the sea beingimpossible) and scatter the food on the lawn, and then go into watch theresult from behind the window. The blackbirds and thrushes would waitfor a lull to fly in over the wall, while the daws would hover overheadand sometimes succeed in dropping down and seizing a crust, but oftenenough when descending they would be caught and whirled away by theblast. The poor magpies found their long tails very much against them inthe scramble, and it was even worse with the pied wagtail. He would gostraight for the bread and get whirled and tossed about the smooth lawnlike a toy bird made of feathers, his tail blown over his head. It wasbad enough, and then Jack, curious about these visits to the lawn, cameto investigate and finding the scraps, proceeded to eat them all up. I tried to make him understand better by feeding him before I fed thebirds; 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 preventit from being wasted. Jack was doubtless both vexed and amused at mysimplicity in thinking that all this food which I put on the lawn wouldremain there undevoured by those useless creatures the birds until itwas wanted. 

Even this I forgave him, for I saw that he had not, that with his dogmind he could not, understand me. I also remembered the words of a wiseold Cornish writer with regard to the mind of the lower animals: "Buttheir faculties of mind are no less proportioned to their state ofsubjection than the shape and properties of their bodies. They haveknowledge peculiar to their several spheres and sufficient for theunder-part they have to act. "

Let me be free from the delusion that it is possible to raise them abovethis 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 everythingJack was suffered at home and accompanied me again and again in my walksabroad; 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 onlyconsolation was that Jack failed to capture more than one out of everyhundred, or perhaps five hundred, of the creatures he hunted, and that Iwas even able to save a few of these. But I could not help admiringhis tremendous energy and courage, especially in cliff-climbing whenwe visited the headlands--those stupendous masses and lofty piles ofgranite which rise like castles built by giants of old. He would almostmake me tremble for his life when, after climbing on to some projectingrock, he would go to the extreme end and look down over it as if itpleased him to watch the big waves break in foam on the black rocks acouple of hundred feet below. But it was not the big green waves or anysight in nature that drew him--he sniffed and sniffed and wriggled andtwisted his black nose, and raised and depressed his ears as he sniffed, and was excited solely because the upward currents of air brought himtidings of living creatures that lurked in the rocks below--badger andfox and rabbit. One day when quitting one of these places, on lookingup I spied Jack standing on the summit of a precipice about seventy-fivefeet high. Jack saw me and waved his tail, and then started to comestraight down to me! From the top a faint rabbit track was, visiblewinding downwards to within twenty-four feet of the ground; the restwas a sheer wall of rock. Down he dashed, faster and faster as he gotto where the track ended, and then losing his footing he fell swiftly tothe 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 thosefrightful bruises on a former occasion. He had doubtless fallen a longway down a cliff and had been almost crushed on the stones. But thelesson was lost on Jack; he would have it that where rabbits and foxeswent he could go!

After all, the chief pleasure those blank bad days had for me was thethought that Jack was as happy as he could well be. But it was notenough to satisfy me, and by and by it came into my mind that I hadbeen long enough at that place. It was hard to leave Jack, who had puthimself so entirely in my hands, and trusted me so implicitly. But--theweather was keeping very bad: was there ever known such a June as thisof 1907? So wet and windy and cold! Then, too, the bloom had gone fromthe furze. It was, I remembered, to witness this chief loveliness thatI came. Looking on the wide moor and far-off boulder-strewn hills andseeing 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 stolesoftly 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 inthis way; it made me think meanly of myself; but if Jack could read thisand could speak his mind I think he would acknowledge that my way ofbringing the connection to an end was best for both of us. I was notthe person, or dog on two legs, he had taken me for, one with a properdesire to kill things: I only acted according to my poor lights. Nothing, then, remains to be said except that one word which it was notconvenient to speak on the windy morning of my departure--Good-bye Jack.