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If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: The South Country - -Author: Edward Thomas - -Release Date: November 22, 2019 [EBook #60760] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUTH COUNTRY *** - - - - -Produced by Henry Flower and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - -THE SOUTH COUNTRY - - - - -THE HEART OF ENGLAND SERIES - - -This Series opens with a new work by Mr. EDWARD THOMAS, that curious -and enthusiastic explorer of the English Countryside, whose prose -style gives him a claim to be regarded as the successor, as he is the -biographer, of Richard Jefferies. The Series includes a new edition -of Mr. THOMAS’S other work, “The Heart of England,” and Mr. HILAIRE -BELLOC’S “The Historic Thames.” These two volumes were originally -issued in limited editions at one Guinea net per volume. - - - THE SOUTH COUNTRY. By EDWARD THOMAS. Small crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. - -Mr. Thomas in this new book gives his impressions of a year’s -wanderings afoot as the seasons change through Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, -Wiltshire and Cornwall. It is a prose-poem of the most beautiful -counties in England. - - - THE HEART OF ENGLAND. By EDWARD THOMAS. Small crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. - - - THE HISTORIC THAMES. By HILAIRE BELLOC, M.P. 3s. 6d. net. - -_Prospectus of above Books sent post free on application._ - -J. M. DENT & CO. - -29-30, BEDFORD STREET, LONDON, W.C. - - - - -[Illustration] - - - - - THE SOUTH - COUNTRY - - [Illustration] - - _by Edward Thomas_ - - [Illustration] - - LONDON - _J. M. DENT & CO._ - _1909_ - - - - - RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, - BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND - BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. - - - - - “As I can’t leap from cloud to cloud, I want to wander from road to - road. That little path there by the clipped hedge goes up to the high - road. I want to go up that path and to walk along the high road, and - so on and on and on, and to know all kinds of people. Did you ever - think that the roads are the only things that are endless; that one - can walk on and on, and never be stopped by a gate or a wall? They are - the serpent of eternity. I wonder they have never been worshipped. - What are the stars beside them? They never meet one another. The roads - are the only things that are infinite. They are all endless.” - - PAUL RUTTLEDGE in - _Where there is Nothing_, - by W. B. YEATS. - - - - - TO - - EDWARD GARNETT - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAP. PAGE - I. THE SOUTH COUNTRY 1 - II. THE END OF WINTER--SUFFOLK--HAMPSHIRE 15 - III. SPRING--HAMPSHIRE--KENT--SURREY 40 - IV. AN ADVENTURER 61 - V. SUSSEX 68 - VI. A RETURN TO NATURE 73 - VII. A RAILWAY CARRIAGE--SURREY--SUSSEX 95 - VIII. JUNE--HAMPSHIRE--THE GOLDEN AGE--TRAHERNE 121 - IX. HISTORY AND THE PARISH--HAMPSHIRE--CORNWALL 147 - X. SUMMER--SUSSEX 180 - XI. HAMPSHIRE--AN UMBRELLA MAN 186 - XII. CHILDREN OF EARTH--HAMPSHIRE AND SUSSEX 196 - XIII. AUGUST--GOING WESTWARD--HAMPSHIRE AND WILTSHIRE 210 - XIV. AN OLD HOUSE AND A BOOK--WILTSHIRE 235 - XV. AN OUTCAST--WILTSHIRE 245 - XVI. THE END OF SUMMER--KENT--BERKSHIRE--HAMPSHIRE--SUSSEX--THE - FAIR 255 - - - - -Several short passages from this book have been printed in “The -Saturday Review,” “The Nation,” “The New Age,” “The Daily Chronicle,” -and “The Daily News,” and are reprinted by permission. - - - - -THE SOUTH COUNTRY - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE SOUTH COUNTRY - - -The name of “South Country” is taken from a poem by Mr. Hilaire Belloc, -beginning-- - - “When I am living in the Midlands, - They are sodden and unkind, - I light my lamp in the evening, - My work is left behind; - And the great hills of the South Country - Come back into my mind.” - -The name is given to the south of England as distinguished from the -Midlands, “North England”, and “West England” by the Severn. The poet -is thinking particularly of Sussex and of the South Downs. In using -the term I am thinking of all that country which is dominated by the -Downs or by the English Channel, or by both; Cornwall and East Anglia -have been admitted only for the sake of contrast. Roughly speaking, -it is the country south of the Thames and Severn and east of Exmoor, -and it includes, therefore, the counties of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, -Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, and part of Somerset. East and -west across it go ranges of chalk hills, their sides smoothly hollowed -by Nature and the marl-burner, or sharply scored by old roads. On -their lower slopes they carry the chief woods of the south country, -their coombes are often fully fledged with trees, and sometimes their -high places are crowned with beech or fir; but they are most admirably -themselves when they are bare of all but grass and a few bushes of -gorse and juniper and some yew, and their ridges make flowing but -infinitely variable clear lines against the sky. Sometimes they support -a plateau of flint and clay, which slopes gradually to the level of -the streams. Sometimes they fall away to the vales in well-defined -ledges--first a long curving slope, then a plain of cornland, and -below that a steep but lesser slope covered with wood, and then again -grassland or sandy heaths and rivers. Except on the plateau, the -summits have few houses and very small hamlets; the first terrace -has larger villages and even a town or two; but most of the towns -are beneath on the banks of the rivers, and chiefly where they are -broadest near the sea, or on the coast itself. The rivers flow mainly -north and south, and can have but a short course before they enter the -sea on the south or the Thames on the north. Those I remember best -are the Stours, the two Rothers, but especially the one which joins -the Arun, the Medway, the Len, the Eden, the Holling, the Teise, the -Ouse, the Itchen, the Meon, the Wey, the Mole, the Kennet, the Ray, -the Winterbournes, the Wiltshire Avon, the Wylye, the Ebble, and many -little waters running gold over New Forest gravel or crystal over the -chalk of Hampshire, and not least of all that unlucky rivulet, the -Wandle, once a nymph that walked among her sisters-- - - So amiable, fair, so pure, so delicate, - So plump, so full, so fresh, her eyes so wondrous clear: - And first unto her lord, at _Wandsworth_ doth appear, - That in the goodly court, of their great sovereign _Tames_, - There might no other speech be had amongst the streams, - But only of this Nymph, sweet Wandel, what she wore; - Of her complexion, grace, and how herself she bore. - -Nor can I omit the Wiltshire and Berkshire canal, as it was fifteen -years ago, between Swindon and Dauntsey, an unfrequented by-way through -a quiet dairy country, and full of pike and tench among the weeds and -under the tall water docks and willow herbs which even then threatened -to subdue it as they now have done. - -The chief roads make south, south-east, south-west and west from -London; almost the only road going east and west and not touching -London is the old road known between Winchester and Canterbury as the -Pilgrims’ Way. - -Most of the towns are small market towns, manufacturing chiefly beer; -or they are swollen, especially in the neighbourhood of London, as -residential quarters on lines of railway or as health and pleasure -resorts on the sea. But any man used to maps will be wiser on these -matters in an hour than I am. For what I have sought is quiet and as -complete a remoteness as possible from towns, whether of manufactures, -of markets or of cathedrals. I have used a good many maps in my -time, largely to avoid the towns; but I confess that I prefer to do -without them and to go, if I have some days before me, guided by the -hills or the sun or a stream--or, if I have one day only, in a rough -circle, trusting, by taking a series of turnings to the left or a -series to the right, to take much beauty by surprise and to return -at last to my starting-point. On a dull day or cloudy night I have -often no knowledge of the points of the compass. I never go out to -see anything. The signboards thus often astonish me. I wish, by the -way, that I had noted down more of the names on the signboards at the -cross-roads. There is a wealth of poetry in them, as in that which -points--by a ford, too--first, to Poulner and Ringwood; second, to -Gorley and Fordingbridge; third, to Linwood and Broomy: and another -pointing to Fordingbridge, to Ringwood, and to Cuckoo Hill and Furze -Hill: and another in the parish of Pentlow, pointing to Foxearth and -Sudbury, to Cavendish and Clare, and to Belchamps and Yeldham. Castles, -churches, old houses, of extraordinary beauty or interest, have never -worn out any of my shoe leather except by accident. I like to come -upon them--usually without knowing their names and legends--but do -not lament when chance takes me a hundred times out of their way. Nor -have I ever been to Marlow to think about Shelley, or to Winterslow -for Hazlitt’s sake; and I enter Buriton many times without remembering -Gibbon. They would move me no more than the statue of a man and a fat -horse (with beribboned tail), which a grateful countryside erected to -William III in the market square at Petersfield. I prefer any country -church or chapel to Winchester or Chichester or Canterbury Cathedral, -just as I prefer “All round my hat,” or “Somer is icumen in,” to -Beethoven. Not that I dislike the cathedrals, or that I do not find -many pleasures amongst them. But they are incomprehensible and not -restful. I feel when I am within them that I know why a dog bays at -the moon. They are much more difficult or, rather, I am more conscious -in them of my lack of comprehension, than the hills or the sea; and I -do not like the showmen, the smell and look of the museum, the feeling -that it is admiration or nothing, and all the well-dressed and flyblown -people round about. I sometimes think that religious architecture -is a dead language, majestic but dead, that it never was a popular -language. Have some of these buildings lived too long, been too well -preserved, so as to oppress our little days with too permanent an -expression of the passing things? The truth is that, though the past -allures me, and to discover a cathedral for myself would be an immense -pleasure, I have no historic sense and no curiosity. I mention these -trivial things because they may be important to those who read what I -am paid for writing. I have read a great deal of history--in fact, a -university gave me a degree out of respect for my apparent knowledge -of history--but I have forgotten it all, or it has got into my blood -and is present in me in a form which defies evocation or analysis. But -as far as I can tell I am pure of history. Consequently I prefer the -old brick houses round the cathedral, and that avenue of archaic bossy -limes to the cathedral itself with all its turbulent quiet and vague -antiquity. The old school also close at hand! I was there after the end -of the term once, and two boys were kicking a football in a half-walled -court; it was a bright, cold, windy April afternoon; and the ancient -brick was penetrated with their voices and the sound of the ball, and -I thought there could be nothing lovelier than that court, the pleasant -walls, and the broad playing fields in sight of a smooth noble hill and -a temple of dark firs on top. I was not thinking of Winchester or of -any one older than the fondest son of that “mother, more than mother,” -and little of him; but was merely caught up by and with the harmony of -man and his work, of two children playing, and of the green downs and -windy sky. - -And so I travel, armed only with myself, an avaricious and often -libertine and fickle eye and ear, in pursuit, not of knowledge, not -of wisdom, but of one whom to pursue is never to capture. Politics, -the drama, science, racing, reforms and preservations, divorces, book -clubs--nearly everything which the average (oh! mysterious average man, -always to be met but never met) and the superior and the intelligent -man is thinking of, I cannot grasp; my mind refuses to deal with -them; and when they are discussed I am given to making answers like, -“In Kilve there is no weathercock.” I expect there are others as -unfortunate, superfluous men such as the sanitation, improved housing, -police, charities, medicine of our wonderful civilization saves from -the fate of the cuckoo’s foster-brothers. They will perhaps follow -my meanders and understand. The critics also will help. They will -misunderstand--it is their trade. How well they know what I ought, or -at least ought not, to do. I must, they have said, avoid “the manner -of the worst oleographs”; must not be “affected,” though the recipe is -not to be had; must beware of “over-excitation of the colour sense.” -In slow course of years we acquire a way of expression, hopelessly -inadequate, as we plainly see when looking at the methods of great -poets, of beautiful women, of athletes, of politicians, but still -gradually as fitted to the mind as an old walking-stick to the hand -that has worn and been worn by it, full of our weakness as of our -strength, of our blindness as of our vision--the man himself, the poor -man it may be. And I live by writing, since it is impossible to live by -not writing in an age not of gold but of brass. - -Unlearned, incurious, but finding deepest ease and joy out of doors, -I have gone about the South Country these twenty years and more on -foot, especially in Kent between Maidstone and Ashford and round -Penshurst, in Surrey between London, Guildford and Horley, in Hampshire -round Petersfield, in Wiltshire between Wootton Bassett, Swindon and -Savernake. The people are almost foreign to me, the more so because -country people have not yet been thrown into quite the same confusion -as townspeople, and therefore look awkwardly upon those who are not in -trade--writing is an unskilled labour and not a trade--not on the land, -and not idle. But I have known something of two or three men and women, -and have met a few dozen more. Yet is this country, though I am mainly -Welsh, a kind of home, as I think it is more than any other to those -modern people who belong nowhere. Here they prefer to retire, here they -take their holidays in multitudes. For it is a good foster-mother, -ample-bosomed, mild and homely. The lands of wild coast, of mountains, -of myriad chimneys, offer no such welcome. They have their race, their -speech and ways, and are jealous. You must be a man of the sea or of -the hills to dwell there at ease. But the South is tender and will -harbour any one; her quiet people resent intrusion quietly, so that -many do not notice the resentment. These are the “home” counties. A man -can hide away in them. The people are not hospitable, but the land is. - -Yet there are days and places which send us in search of another kind -of felicity than that which dwells under the Downs, when, for example, -the dark wild of Ashdown or of Woolmer, some parcel of heathery land, -with tufted pines and pale wandering roads, rises all dark and stormy -out of the gentle vale, or on such an evening as when the sky is solemn -blue save at the horizon where it is faint gold, and between the blue -and the gold, across the north-west, lies an ashen waste of level -cloud. This sky and its new moon and evening star below, is barred -by the boles of beeches; through them the undulations of deserted -ploughland are all but white with dewy grass and weed. Underfoot winds -a disused path amid almost overlapping dog’s mercury. The earth is like -an exhausted cinder, cold, silent, dead, compared with the great act in -the sky. Suddenly a dog-fox barks--with melancholy and malice in the -repeated hoarse yells--a sound that awakens the wildest past out of the -wood and the old path. He passes by me at a trot, pausing a little to -bark. He vanishes, but not his voice, into the wood, and he returns, -still barking, and passes me again, filling the wood and the coombe -below with a sound that has nothing to match it except that ashen waste -in the beech-barred, cold blue and golden sky, against which the fox -is carved in moving ebony. Or again, when a rude dark headland rises -out of the mist of the plain into the evening sky. The woods seem but -just freed from the horror of primeval sea, if that is not primeval -sea washing their bases. Capella hangs low, pale, large, moist and -trembling, almost engulfed between two horns of the wood upon the -headland, the frailest beacon of hope, still fluttering from the storm -out of which the land is emerging. Then, or at home looking at a map of -Britain, the West calls, out of Wiltshire and out of Cornwall and Devon -beyond, out of Monmouth and Glamorgan and Gower and Caermarthen, with -a voice of dead Townsends, Eastaways, Thomases, Phillipses, Treharnes, -Marendaz, sea men and mountain men. - -Westward, for men of this island, lies the sea; westward are the great -hills. In a mere map the west of Britain is fascinating. The great -features of that map, which make it something more than a picture -to be imperfectly copied by laborious childish pens, are the great -promontories of Caernarvon, of Pembroke, of Gower and of Cornwall, -jutting out into the western sea, like the features of a grim large -face, such a face as is carved on a ship’s prow. These protruding -features, even on a small-scale map, thrill the mind with a sense of -purpose and spirit. They yearn, they peer out ever to the sea, as -if using eyes and nostrils to savour the utmost scent of it, as if -themselves calling back to the call of the waves. To the eyes of a -child they stand for adventure. They are lean and worn and scarred with -the strife and watching. Then gradually into the mind of the child -comes the story that justifies and, still more, inspires and seems -to explain those westward-pointing promontories. For, out towards -them continually have the conquered races of the world retreated, -and their settlements give those corners a strangeness and a charm to -our fantastic sympathies. Out from them conquerors in their turn have -gone to found a legend like the Welsh Madoc, an empire like the men -of Devon. The blood of conquered and conqueror is in our veins, and -it flushes the cheek at the sight or thought of the west. Each man of -us is as ancient and complicated, as lofty-spired and as deep-vaulted -as cathedrals and castles old, and in those lands our crypts and -dark foundations are dimly remembered. We look out towards them from -the high camps at Battlesbury and Barbury: the lines of the Downs -go trooping along to them at night. Even in the bosom of the South -Country, when the tranquil bells are calling over the corn at twilight, -the westward-going hills, where the sun has fallen, draw the heart -away and fill us with a desire to go on and on for ever, that same -way. When, in the clear windy dawn, thin clouds like traveller’s joy -are upon the high air, it seems that up there also, in those placid -spaces, they travel and know the joy of the road, and the sun--feeding -on the blue, as a child said yesterday, as Lucretius said before--goes -the desired way. London also calls, making the needle whirl in the -compass. For in London also a man may live as up “a great river wide -as any sea”; and over some of the fairest of the South Country hangs -the all-night glimmer of the city, warning, threatening, beckoning -anon. Some of this country has already perished, or is so ramparted -about that there is no stranger country in the world unless it be those -perpendicular valleys cloven among the Blue Mountains, their floors -level and of the purest grass, but accessible only at the end nearest -the plain, where the cleft is sometimes so narrow that not even a dog -can enter. - -This, then, is my South Country. It covers the North Downs and -the South Downs, the Icknield Way and the Pilgrims’ Way, and the -cross-roads between them and the Thames and the sea, a land of hops, -fruit, corn, high pasture, meadow, woodland, heath and shore. But there -is no man of whose powers I stand more in awe than the topographical -writer, from Mr. A. G. Bradley or Mr. E. V. Lucas downwards. I shall -not attempt to compete with them. I should only be showing my ignorance -and carelessness were I to label every piece of country which I -chance to mention or describe. Any one can point out my omissions, my -blindness, my exaggeration. Nor can I bring myself to mention the names -of the places where I walked or sat down. In a sense this country is -all “carved out of the carver’s brain” and has not a name. This is not -the South Country which measures about two hundred miles from east to -west and fifty from north to south. In some ways it is incomparably -larger than any country that was ever mapped, since upon nothing less -than the infinite can the spirit disport itself. In other ways it is -far smaller--as when a mountain with tracts of sky and cloud and the -full moon glass themselves in a pond, a little pond. - -It would need a more intellectual eye than mine to distinguish county -from county by its physical character, its architecture, its people, -its unique combination of common elements, and I shall not attempt -it. As often as not I have no doubt mingled parts of Kent with my -Wiltshire, and so on. And positively I cannot say to which belongs one -picture that occurs to me as characteristic of the South Country-- - -A crossing of roads encloses a waste place of no man’s land, of dwarf -oaks, hawthorn, bramble and fern, and the flowers of knapweed and -harebell, and golden tormentil embroidering the heather and the minute -seedling oaks. Follow one of these roads past straight avenues of elms -leading up to a farm (built square of stone, under a roof of thatch or -stone slate, and lying well back from the road across a level meadow -with some willows in the midst, elms round about, willow herb waving -rosy by the stream at the border), or merely to a cluster of ricks; and -presently the hedges open wide apart and the level white road cools -itself under the many trees of a green, wych elms, sycamores, limes -and horse-chestnuts, by a pool, and, on the other side, the sign of -the “White Hart,” its horns held back upon its haunches. A stone-built -farm and its barns and sheds lie close to the green on either side, -and another of more stateliness where the hedges once more run close -together alongside the road. This farmhouse has three dormers, two rows -of five shadowy windows below, and an ivied porch not quite in the -centre; a modest lawn divided by a straight path; dense, well-watered -borders of grey lavender, rosemary, ladslove, halberds of crimson -hollyhock, infinite blending stars of Michaelmas daisy; old apple -trees seeming to be pulled down almost to the grass by glossy-rinded -fruit: and, behind, the bended line of hills a league away, wedding the -lowly meadows, the house and the trees to the large heavens and their -white procession of clouds out of the south and the sea. The utmost -kindliness of earth is expressed in these three houses, the trees on -the flat green, the slightly curving road across it, the uneven posts -and rails leaning this way and that at the edge of the pond. The trees -are so arranged about the road that they weave a harmony of welcome, -of blessing, a viaticum for whosoever passes by and only for a moment -tastes their shade, acknowledges unconsciously their attitudes, hears -their dry summer murmuring, sees the house behind them. The wayfarer -knows nothing of those who built them and those who live therein, of -those who planted the trees just so and not otherwise, of the causes -that shaped the green, any more than of those who reaped and threshed -the barley, and picked and dried and packed the hops that made the -ale at the “White Hart.” He only knows that centuries of peace and -hard work and planning for the undreaded future have made it possible. -The spirit of the place, all this council of time and Nature and men, -enriches the air with a bloom deeper than summer’s blue of distance; it -drowses while it delights the responding mind with a magic such as once -upon a time men thought to express by gods of the hearth, by Faunus and -the flying nymphs, by fairies, angels, saints, a magic which none of -these things is too strange and “supernatural” to represent. For after -the longest inventory of what is here visible and open to analysis, -much remains over, imponderable but mighty. Often when the lark is -high he seems to be singing in some keyless chamber of the brain; so -here the house is built in shadowy replica. If only we could make a -graven image of this spirit instead of a muddy untruthful reflection of -words! I have sometimes thought that a statue, the statue of a human -or heroic or divine figure, might more fitly than in many another stand -in such a place. A figure, it should be, like that benign proud Demeter -in marble now banished to a recess in a cold gallery, before which a -man of any religion, or class, or race, or time might bow and lay down -something of his burden and take away what makes him other than he was. -She would be at home and blithe again, enshrined in the rain or in this -flowery sunlight of an English green, near the wych elm and sycamore -and the walls of stone, the mortar mixed, as in all true buildings, -with human blood. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -THE END OF WINTER--SUFFOLK--HAMPSHIRE - - -SUFFOLK. - -There are three sounds in the wood this morning--the sound of the waves -that has not died away since the sea carried off church and cottage and -cliff and the other half of what was once an inland wood; the sound -of trees, a multitudinous frenzied sound, of rustling dead oak-leaves -still on the bough, of others tripping along the path like mice, or -winding up in sudden spirals and falling again, of dead boughs grating -and grinding, of pliant young branches lashing, of finest twigs and -fir needles sighing, of leaf and branch and trunk booming like one; -and through these sounds, the song of a thrush. Rain falls and, for -a moment only, the dyked marshland below and beyond the wood is pale -and luminous with its flooded pools, the sails of windmills climb -and plunge, the pale sea is barred with swathes of foam, and on the -whistling sands the tall white waves vaunt, lean forward, topple and -lie quivering. But the rain increases: the sound and the mist of it -make a wall about the world, except the world in the brain and except -the thrush’s song which, so bright and clear, has a kind of humanity in -it by contrast with the huge bulk of the noises of sea and wood. - -Rain and wind cease together, and here on the short grass at the -cliff’s edge is a strange birth--a gently convex fungus about two -inches broad, the central boss of it faintly indented, the surface -not perfectly regular but dimpled so as to break the light, and the -edge wavering away from the pure circular form; in hue a pale chestnut -paling to a transparent edge of honey colour; and the whole surface so -smooth and polished by rain as to seem coated in ice. What a thought -for the great earth on such a day! Out of the wood on to this grass the -thrushes steal, running with heads down and stopping with heads prouder -than stags’; out also into the short corn; and so glad are they that -they quarrel and sing on the ground without troubling to find a perch. - -It is perfectly still; the sun splutters out of the thick grey and -white sky, the white sails shine on a sea of steel, and it is warm. -And now in the luxury of the first humid warmth and quiet of the year -the blackbird sings. The rain sets in at nightfall, but the wind does -not blow, and still the blackbird sings and the thrushes will hardly -leave the corn. That one song alone sweetens the wide vague country of -evening, the cloudy oak woods, the brown mixen under the elms and the -little white farm behind the unpruned limes, with its oblong windows -irregularly placed and of unequal size, its white door almost at a -corner, and the lawn coming right to the walls. - -Day breaks and sun and wind dance together in the clouds and trees, -but without rain. Larks sing over the dark heavy cornland in which the -watery furrows shine. The dead drab grasses wave at the feet of the -hedgerows. Little pools at meadow corners bring down the sky to the -dark earth. Horses nod before the plough. A slight haze exhales from -the innumerable rich spongy clods, between the hedges of oak and ash. -Now and then shapeless rags of white or snow-grey clouds wander up from -the west and for a little while obscure the white mountains of cloud, -the blue sky, the silver sun; or the sweet smoke from the fires of -hedgers and ditchers rises up against the edge of a copse. The white -linen flaps and glows in cottage gardens; the dung cars go by crunching -the flints into the mud; and the boots and bells of pony traps make -a music forgotten since last February. It is only the twenty-second -day of February, yet these delights of the soul through the eyes and -ears are of spring. The children have begun to look for violets, and -the youngest, being the nearest to them in stature and in nature, has -found one. There she stands, four years old, with straight brown legs, -her face clear and soft but brown as a new hazel nut, her hair almost -of the same colour and paler where the sun has bleached it round her -temples and falling over her cheeks and neck; and through it shine -eyes of a deeper brown, the hue of the most exquisite flints. The eyes -shine, the teeth shine through the ever parted long red lips, the chin -shines, the brow shines most of all with a lustre that seems to come -from the joyous brain behind. - -She is beautiful and straight as the July corn, as the ash tree -standing alone by the stream. She is fearless as fire, bold and -restless as wind, clear-hearted, simple, bright and gay as a mountain -water, in all her actions a daughter of the sun, the wind and the -earth. She has loving looks for all. From her fair broad naked foot to -her gleaming hair she is, to many, the dearest thing that lives. - -Beside her plays a dog, with lifted ears, head on one side, rosy -tongue bright against his yellow fur, waiting upon her fancies. His -rest and his motion, like hers, are careless and beautiful, gifts of -the sun, the wind and the earth. As I look at them I think of such a -child and such a playmate that lived two thousand years ago in the sun, -and once as they played each set a foot upon the soft clay of a tile -that the tile maker had not yet burned hard and red. The tile fell in -the ruin of a Roman city in Britain, was buried hundreds of years in -ashes and flowering mould, and yesterday I saw the footprints in the -dark red tile, two thousand years old. - -A day follows of rain and wind, and it is the robin that is most heard -among the dripping thorns, the robin and his autumnal voice. But the -sky clears for sunset and the blackbird’s hour, and, as twilight ends, -only the rear of the disappearing procession of day cloud is visible on -the western horizon, while the procession of night has but sent up two -or three dark forerunners. The sky is of palest blue, and Jupiter and -Sirius are bright over the sea, Venus over the land and Mercury just -over the far oaks. The sea is very dark except at the horizon which is -pale with the dissolving remnant of sunset gold in it; but two ranks of -breakers throw up a waving vapour of fairy foam against the dark waves -behind. - -Again there are roaring wet mornings and sunlit mornings, but in them -all the pewits wheel over the marsh and their wild cries mingle with -the sweet whimper of dunlins, the songs of larks, the glitter of the -dykes, the wall of rain. All day the sky over heathery moorland is -like a reduplication of the moorland, except that at the horizon the -sky clears at intervals and fleets of pure white cloud sail over the -dark ploughland and green pines; and the gentle sea is white only where -the waves break on the sand like a line of children in white frocks -advancing with wavers in the game of “Here we come gathering nuts and -may.” Or the west is angry, thick and grey, the snow is horizontal -and fierce, and yet the south has a bay of blue sky and in it a vast -sunlit precipice of white cloud, and the missel thrushes roll out their -songs again and again at the edges of many woods. Or a sun appears -that brings out the songs of thrush and chaffinch and lark, and leaves -a chequer of snow on pine and ploughland and on the mole hills of the -meadows. Again the sun disappears and the swift heavy hail rebounds -on the grass with a dancing as of sand-hoppers, and there is no other -sound except a sudden hedgesparrow’s song to break in upon the beating -of the pellets on hard ivy and holly and tender grass. In the frosty -evening the first moth comes to the lamp. - -Now the rain falls rejoicing in its power, and then the sky is sunny -and the white clouds are bubble-shaped in the blue, the wet roads are -azure with reflected sky, the trees are all of crystal, and the songs -of thrushes can be heard even through the snorting and rumbling of a -train. - - -HAMPSHIRE. - -The beeches on the beech-covered hills roar and strain as if they -would fly off with the hill, and anon they are as meek as a great -horse leaning his head over a gate. If there is a misty day there is -one willow in a coombe lifting up a thousand silver catkins like a -thousand lamps, when there is no light elsewhere. Another day, a wide -and windy day, is the jackdaw’s, and he goes straight and swift and -high like a joyous rider crying aloud on an endless savannah, and, -underneath, the rippled pond is as bright as a peacock, and millions -of beech leaves drive across the open glades of the woods, rushing to -their Acheron. The bush harrow stripes the moist and shining grass; -the plough changes the pale stubble into a ridgy chocolate; they are -peeling the young ash sticks for hop poles and dipping them in tar. At -the dying of that windy day the wind is still; there is a bright pale -half-moon tangled in the pink whirl of after-sunset cloud, a sound of -blackbirds from pollard oaks against the silver sky, a sound of bells -from hamlets hidden among beeches. - -Towards the end of March there are six nights of frost giving birth to -still mornings of weak sunlight, of an opaque yet not definitely misty -air. The sky is of a milky, uncertain pale blue without one cloud. -Eastward the hooded sun is warming the slope fields and melting the -sparkling frost. In many trees the woodpeckers laugh so often that -their cry is a song. A grassy ancient orchard has taken possession of -the visible sunbeams, and the green and gold of the mistletoe glows -on the silvered and mossy branches of apple trees. The pale stubble -is yellow and tenderly lit, and gives the low hills a hollow light -appearance as if they might presently dissolve. In a hundred tiers on -the steep hill, the uncounted perpendicular straight stems of beech, -and yet not all quite perpendicular or quite straight, are silver-grey -in the midst of a haze, here brown, there rosy, of branches and -swelling buds. Though but a quarter of a mile away in this faintly -clouded air they are very small, aërial in substance, infinitely remote -from the road on which I stand, and more like reflections in calm water -than real things. - -At the lower margin of the wood the overhanging branches form blue -caves, and out of these emerge the songs of many hidden birds. I know -that there are bland melodious blackbirds of easy musing voices, robins -whose earnest song, though full of passion, is but a fragment that -has burst through a more passionate silence, hedgesparrows of liquid -confiding monotone, brisk acid wrens, chaffinches and yellowhammers -saying always the same thing (a dear but courtly praise of the coming -season), larks building spires above spires into the sky, thrushes -of infinite variety that talk and talk of a thousand things, never -thinking, always talking of the moment, exclaiming, scolding, cheering, -flattering, coaxing, challenging, with merry-hearted, bold voices that -must have been the same in the morning of the world when the forest -trees lay, or leaned, or hung, where they fell. Yet I can distinguish -neither blackbird, nor robin, nor hedgesparrow, nor any one voice. All -are blent into one seething stream of song. It is one song, not many. -It is one spirit that sings. Mixed with them is the myriad stir of -unborn things, of leaf and blade and flower, many silences at heart and -root of tree, voices of hope and growth, of love that will be satisfied -though it leap upon the swords of life. Yet not during all the day does -the earth truly awaken. Even in town and city the dream prevails, and -only dimly lighted their chalky towers and spires rise out of the sweet -mist and sing together beside the waters. - -The earth lies blinking, turning over languidly and talking like a -half-awakened child that now and then lies still and sleeps though -with eyes wide open. The air is still full of the dreams of a night -which this mild sun cannot dispel. The dreams are prophetic as well as -reminiscent, and are visiting the woods, and that is why they will not -cast aside the veil. Who would rise if he could continue to dream? - -It is not spring yet. Spring is being dreamed, and the dream is more -wonderful and more blessed than ever was spring. What the hour of -waking will bring forth is not known. Catch at the dreams as they hover -in the warm thick air. Up against the grey tiers of beech stems and -the mist of the buds and fallen leaves rise two columns of blue smoke -from two white cottages among trees; they rise perfectly straight and -then expand into a balanced cloud, and thus make and unmake continually -two trees of smoke. No sound comes from the cottages. The dreams are -over them, over the brows of the children and the babes, of the men and -the women, bringing great gifts, suggestions, shadowy satisfactions, -consolations, hopes. With inward voices of persuasion those dreams -hover and say that all is to be made new, that all is yet before us, -and the lots are not yet drawn out of the urn. - -We shall presently set out and sail into the undiscovered seas and find -new islands of the free, the beautiful, the young. As is the dimly -glimmering changeless brook twittering over the pebbles, so is life. It -is but just leaving the fount. All things are possible in the windings -between fount and sea. - -Never again shall we demand the cuckoo’s song from the August silence. -Never will July nip the spring and lengthen the lambs’ faces and -take away their piquancy, or June shut a gate between us and the -nightingale, or May deny the promise of April. Hark! before the end of -afternoon the owls hoot in their sleep in the ivied beeches. A dream -has flitted past them, more silent of wing than themselves. Now it is -between the wings of the first white butterfly, and it plants a smile -in the face of the infant that cannot speak: and again it is with the -brimstone butterfly, and the child who is gathering celandine and -cuckoo flower and violet starts back almost in fear at the dream. - -The grandmother sitting in her daughter’s house, left all alone in -silence, her hands clasped upon her knees, forgets the courage without -hope that has carried her through eighty years, opens her eyes, -unclasps her hands from the knot as of stiff rope, distends them and -feels the air, and the dream is between her fingers and she too smiles, -she knows not why. A girl of sixteen, ill-dressed, not pretty, has seen -it also. She has tied up her black hair in a new crimson ribbon. She -laughs aloud with a companion at something they know in common and in -secret, and as she does so lifts her neck and is glad from the sole -of her foot to the crown of her head. She is lost in her laughter and -oblivious of its cause. She walks away, and her step is as firm as -that of a ewe defending her lamb. She was a poor and misused child, -and I can see her as a woman of fifty, sitting on a London bench, -grey-complexioned, in old black hat, black clothes, crouching over -a paper bag of fragments, in the beautiful August rain after heat. -But this is her hour. That future is not among the dreams in the air -to-day. She is at one with the world, and a deep music grows between -her and the stars. Her smile is one of those magical things, great and -small and all divine, that have the power to wield universal harmonies. -At sight or sound of them the infinite variety of appearances in -the world is made fairer than before, because it is shown to be a -many-coloured raiment of the one. The raiment trembles, and under leaf -and cloud and air a window is thrown open upon the unfathomable deep, -and at the window we are sitting, watching the flight of our souls -away, away to where they must be gathered into the music that is being -built. Often upon the vast and silent twilight, as now, is the soul -poured out as a rivulet into the sea and lost, not able even to stain -the boundless crystal of the air; and the body stands empty, waiting -for its return, and, poor thing, knows not what it receives back into -itself when the night is dark and it moves away. For we stand ever at -the edge of Eternity and fall in many times before we die. Yet even -such thoughts live not long this day. All shall be healed, says the -dream. All shall be made new. The day is a fairy birth, a foundling not -fathered nor mothered by any grey yesterdays. It has inherited nothing. -It makes of winter and of the old springs that wrought nothing fair a -stale creed, a senseless tale: they are naught: I do not wonder any -longer if the lark’s song has grown old with the ears that hear it or -if it be still unchanged. - -What dreams are there for that aged child who goes tottering and -reeling up the lane at mid-day? He carries a basket of watercress on -his back. He has sold two-pennyworth, and he is tipsy, grinning through -the bruises of a tipsy fall, and shifting his cold pipe from one side -of his mouth to the other. Though hardly sixty he is very old, worn and -thin and wrinkled, and bent sideways and forward at the waist and the -shoulders. Yet he is very young. He is just what he was forty years -ago when the thatcher found him lying on his back in the sun instead -of combing out the straw and sprinkling it with water for his use. He -laid no plans as a youth; he had only a few transparent tricks and easy -lies. Never has he thought of the day after to-morrow. For a few years -in his prime he worked almost regularly for one or two masters, leaving -them only now and then upon long errands of his own and known only to -himself. It was then perhaps that he earned or received as a gift, -along with a broken nose, his one name, which is Jackalone. For years -he was the irresponsible jester to a smug townlet which was privately -amused and publicly scandalized, and rewarded him in a gaol, where, -unlike Tasso, he never complained. Since then he has lived by the sale -of a chance rabbit or two, of watercress, of greens gathered when the -frost is on them and nobody looking, by gifts of broken victuals, -by driving a few bullocks to a fair, by casual shelter in barns, in -roofless cottages, or under hedges. - -He has never had father or mother or brother or sister or wife or -child. No dead leaf in autumn wind or branch in flooded brook seems -more helpless. He can deceive nobody. He is in prison two or three -times a year for little things: it seems a charity to put a roof over -his head and clip his hair. He has no wisdom; by nothing has he soiled -what gifts were given to him at his birth. The dreams will not pass him -by. They come to give him that confidence by which he lives in spite of -men’s and children’s contumely. - -How little do we know of the business of the earth, not to speak of -the universe; of time, not to speak of eternity. It was not by taking -thought that man survived the mastodon. The acts and thoughts that will -serve the race, that will profit this commonwealth of things that live -in the sun, the air, the earth, the sea, now and through all time, -are not known and never will be known. The rumour of much toil and -scheming and triumph may never reach the stars, and what we value not -at all, are not conscious of, may break the surface of eternity with -endless ripples of good. We know not by what we survive. There is much -philosophy in that Irish tale of the poor blind woman who recovered -her sight at St. Brigit’s well. “Did I say more prayers than the rest? -Not a prayer. I was young in those days. I suppose she took a liking -to me, maybe because of my name being Brigit the same as her own.”[1] -Others went unrelieved away that day. We are as ignorant still. Hence -the batlike fears about immortality. We wish to prolong what we can see -and touch and talk of, and knowing that clothes and flesh and other -perishing things may not pass over the borders of death with us, we -give up all, as if forsooth the undertaker and the gravedigger had -archangelic functions. Along with the undertaker and the gravedigger -ranks the historian and others who seem to bestow immortality. Each -is like a child planting flowers severed from their stalks and roots, -expecting them to grow. I never heard that the butterfly loved the -chrysalis; but I am sure that the caterpillar looks forward to an -endless day of eating green leaves and of continually swelling until -it would despise a consummation of the size of a railway train. We can -do the work of the universe though we shed friends and country and -house and clothes and flesh, and become invisible to mortal eyes and -microscopes. We do it now invisibly, and it is not these things which -are us at all. That maid walking so proudly is about the business of -eternity. - -[1] _A Book of Saints and Wonders_, by Lady Gregory. - -And yet it would be vain to pretend not to care about the visible -many-coloured raiment of which our houses, our ships, our gardens, our -books are part, since they also have their immortal selves and their -everlasting place, else should we not love them with more than sight -and hearing and touch. For flesh loves flesh and soul loves soul. -Yet on this March day the supreme felicity is born of the two loves, -so closely interwoven that it is permitted to forget the boundaries -of the two, and for soul to love flesh and flesh to love soul. And -this ancient child is rid of his dishonours and flits through the -land floating on a thin reed of the immortal laughter. This is “not -altogether fool.” He is perchance playing some large necessary part -in the pattern woven by earth that draws the gods to lean forward out -of the heavens to watch the play and say of him, as of other men, of -birds, of flowers: “They also are of our company.”... - -In the warm rain of the next day the chiffchaff sings among the rosy -blossoms of the leafless larches, a small voice that yet reaches from -the valley to the high hill. It is a double, many times repeated note -that foretells the cuckoo’s. In the evening the songs are bold and -full, but the stems of the beeches are faint as soft columns of smoke -and the columns of smoke from the cottages are like them in the still -air. - -Yet another frost follows, and in the dim golden light just after -sunrise the shadows of all the beeches lie on the slopes, dark and more -tangible than the trees, as if they were the real and those standing -upright were the returned spirits above the dead. - -Now rain falls and relents and falls again all day, and the earth is -hidden under it, and as from a land submerged the songs mount through -the veil. The mists waver out of the beeches like puffs of smoke or -hang upon them or in them like fleeces caught in thorns: in the just -penetrating sunlight the long boles of the beeches shine, and the -chaffinch, the yellowhammer and the cirl bunting sing songs of blissful -drowsiness. The Downs, not yet green, rise far off and look, through -the rain, like old thatched houses. - -When a hot sun has dried the woods the wind beats a cloud of pollen -like grey smoke from the yews on the beechen coombes which are -characteristic of Hampshire. They are steep-sided bays, running and -narrowing far into and up the sides of the chalk hills, and especially -of those hills with which the high flinty plateau breaks down to the -greensand and the plain. These steep sides are clothed with beeches, -thousands of beeches interrupted by the black yews that resemble -caverns among the paler trees, or, in the spring, by the green haze of -a few larches and the white flames of the beam tree buds. Sometimes a -stream rises at the head of the coombe, and before its crystal is a -yard wide and ankle deep over the crumbling chalk it is full of trout; -the sunny ripples are meshed like honeycomb. If there is not a stream -there is a hop garden, or there is a grassy floor approached by neither -road nor path and crossed only by huntsman and hounds. All the year -round the coombes, dripping, green and still, are cauldrons for the -making and unmaking of mists, mists that lie like solid level snow or -float diaphanous and horizontal of airiest silk across the moon or the -morning sun. The coombes breed whole families, long genealogical trees, -of echoes which the child delights to call up from their light sleep; -so, too, do fox and owl at night, and the cow on a calm evening; and -as to the horn and the cry of hounds, the hangers entangle and repeat -them as if they would imprison them for ever, so that the phantom -exceeds the true. This is the home of the orchises and of the daintiest -snails. In spring, yellow and white and yellowish green flowers are -before all the rest under the beeches--the flowers of the golden green -saxifrage and delicate moschatel, the spurge and the spurge laurel, the -hellebore, the white violet and wood sorrel, and the saffron-hearted -primrose which becomes greenish in the light of its own leaves; to -these must be added the yellow green of young foliage and of moss. -Fairest of all the white flowers is the frost flower that grows about -some rotten fallen branch day after day in curls that are beyond silk, -or a child’s hair, or wool when it is first exposed to the sun by the -shearer’s hand. Most conspicuous of the early green is that of the -pale swords of sedge that bear purple brown feathers of flower at the -end of March. The crystal wavering water, the pale green stems and -ever so slightly curving blades, and the dark bloom, make the sense -smart with joy. Never was ivy more luxuriant under the beeches, nor -moss so powerful as where it arrays them from crown to pedestal. The -lichens, fine grey-green bushy lichens on the thorns, are as dense as -if a tide full of them had swept through the coombe. From the topmost -branches hangs the cordage of ivy and honeysuckle and clematis. The -missel thrush rolls out his clear song. The woodpecker laughs his loud -shaking laughter as he bounds in his flight. Among the golden green -mistletoe in the old shaggy apple tree at the entrance of the coombe -the blackbird sings, composing phrases all the sweeter for being -strangely like some in the songs that countrymen used to sing. Earth -has no dearer voice than his when it is among the chilly rain at the -end of the light. All day there have been blue skies and parading white -clouds, and no wind, with sudden invasions of violent wind and hail or -rain, followed by perfected calm and warmer sun--sun which lures the -earliest tortoise-shell butterfly to alight on the footworn flints in -the path up the coombe. At last the sky seems securely blue above the -hangers and a clear small star or two pricks through it. But, emerging -from the coombe, whose sides shut out half the heavens, you see that -the west has wonderfully ordered and dressed itself with pale sky and -precipitous, dark, modelled clouds and vague woods, and above them the -new moon. The blackbirds sing, the dim Downs proceed, and the last -shower’s drops glitter on the black boughs and pallid primroses. Why -should this ever change? At the time it seems that it can never change. -A wide harmony of the brain and the earth and the sky has begun, when -suddenly darker clouds are felt to have ascended out of the north-west -and to have covered the world. The beeches roar with rain. Moon and -Downs are lost. The road bubbles and glows underfoot. A distant -blackbird still sings hidden in the bosom of the rain like an enchanter -hidden by his spells.... - -It is April now, and when it is still dark in the woods and hedges the -birds all sing together and the maze of song is dominated by the owl’s -hoot--like a full moon of sound above myriad rippling noises. Every day -a new invader takes possession of the land. The wryneck is loud and -persistent, never in harmony with other birds, a complete foreigner, -and yet the ear is glad of his coming. He is heard first, not in the -early morning, along a grove of oaks; and the whole day is his. - -Then on every hand the gentle willow wrens flit and sing in the purple -ash blossoms. The martins, the swallows, have each a day. One day, -too, is the magpie’s: for he sits low near his mate in a thicket and -chatters not aloud but low and tenderly, almost like the sedgewarbler, -adding a faint plaintive note like the bullfinch’s, and fragments as -of the linnet’s song, and chirrupings; disturbed, he flies away with -chatter as hoarse as ever. - -The rooks reign several days. They have a colony in a compact small -oval beech wood that stands in a hollow amidst dry grey ploughland; -and from the foxy-red summits of the trees, in the most genial hot day, -their cawings are loud and mellow and warm as if they were the earth’s -own voice; and all the while the dew is sliding along the branches, -dropping into other drops or to the ground as the birds flutter at -their nests, and from time to time one triple drop catches the sun and -throbs where it hangs like Hesperus among the small stars. - -And every tender eve is the blackbird’s. He sings out at the end of -the long bare ash bough. Beneath him the gloomy crystal water stirs -the bronze cresses, and on the banks the white anemones float above -the dark misty earth and under the hazel leaves yet drooping in their -infancy. The dark hollies catch the last light and shine like water. -Behind all, the Downs are clear and so near that I feel as well as see -the carving on their smooth and already green flanks. The blackbird -gathers up all the low-lit beauty into one carol. - -The flowers also have days to themselves, as the minute green moschatel -when it is first found among the hedgerow roots, or the violets when, -white and pale purple, they are smelt and then seen bowed with dew in -the weedy sainfoin field which the chain harrow passed over but a few -days before. Another notable day is when the junipers are perfectly -coloured by their sloe-blue, or palest green, but chiefly grey, small -berries. Another, a very great day, belongs to the willows, when their -crowded fragrant catkins are yellow against the burning blue and all -murmurous with bees. And the briers have their day when their green is -a vivid flame in a gloomy air, against a dark immense wood and sepia -sky. There is, too, a solitary maimed sycamore in one of the coombes -that has a glorious hour when it stands yellow-green in separate -masses of half-opened leaf, motionless and languid in the first joy of -commerce with the blue air, yet glowing. - -One morning, very early, when the moon has not set and all the fields -are cold and dewy and the woods are still massed and harbouring the -night, though a few thorns stand out from their edge in affrighted -virgin green, and dim starry thickets sigh a moment and are still, -suddenly the silence of the chalky lane is riven and changed into -a song. First, it is a fierce impetuous downfall of one clear note -repeated rapidly and ending wilfully in mid-burst. Then it is a -full-brimmed expectant silence passing into a long ascendant wail, -and almost without intervals another and another, which has hardly -ceased when it is dashed out of the memory by the downpour of those -rapidly repeated notes, their abrupt end and the succeeding silence. -The swift notes are each as rounded and as full of liquid sweetness -as a grape, and they are clustered like the grape. But they are wild -and pure as mountain water in the dawn. They are also like steel for -coldness and penetration. And their onset is like nothing else: it -is the nightingale’s. The long wail is like a shooting star: even as -that grows out of the darkness and draws a silver line and is no more, -so this glides out of the silence and curves and is no more. And yet -it does not die, nor does that liquid onset. They and their ghosts -people each hanging leaf in the hazel thicket so that the silence is -closely stored. Other notes are shut in the pink anemone, in the white -stitchwort under and about the hazels, and in the drops of dew that -begin to glitter in the dawn. - -Beautiful as the notes are for their quality and order, it is their -inhumanity that gives them their utmost fascination, the mysterious -sense which they bear to us that earth is something more than a human -estate, that there are things not human yet of great honour and power -in the world. The very first rush and the following wail empty the -brain of what is merely human and leave only what is related to the -height and depth of the whole world. Here for this hour we are remote -from the parochialism of humanity. The bird has admitted a larger air. -We breathe deeply of it and are made free citizens of eternity. We hear -voices that were not dreamed of before, the voices of those spirits -that live in minute forms of life, the spirits that weave the frost -flower on the fallen branch, the gnomes of underground, those who care -for the fungus on the beech root, the lichen on the trunk, the algæ -on the gravestone. This hazel lane is a palace of strange pomp in an -empire of which we suddenly find ourselves guests, not wholly alien nor -ill at ease, though the language is new. Drink but a little draught of -this air and no need is there to fear the ways of men, their mockery, -their cruelty, their foreignness. - -The song rules the cloudy dawn, the waiting ranges of hills and their -woods full of shadows yet crested with gold, their lawns of light, -the soft distended grey clouds all over the sky through which the -white sun looks on the world and is glad. But it has ceased when the -perpendicular shafts of rain divide the mists over the hillside woods -and the pewits tangle their flight through the air that is now alive -with the moist gleaming of myriads of leaves on bramble, thorn and -elder. Presently the rain is only a glittering of needles in the sun. -For the sky is all one pale grey cloud, darker at the lowest edge -where it trails upon the downs and veils their summits, except in the -south-east. There the edge is lifted up over a narrow pane of silver -across which fleet the long slender fringes of the clouds. Through -this pane the sun sends a broad cascade of light, and up into this the -fields and the Down beyond rise and are transfigured, the fields into -a lake of emerald, the Down--here crowned by trees in a cluster--into -a castle of pearl set upon the borders of the earth. Slowly this pane -is broadened; the clouds are plumped into shape, are illumined, are -distinguished from one another by blue vales of sky, until at length -the land is all one gleam of river and pool and grass and leaf and -polished bough, whether swollen into hills or folded into valleys or -smoothed into plain. The sky seems to belong to this land, the sky of -purest blue and clouds that are moulded like the Downs themselves but -of snow and sun. - -In the clear air each flower stands out with separate and perfect -beauty, moist, soft and bright, a beauty than which I know nothing more -nearly capable of transferring the soul to the days and the pleasures -of infancy. The crust of half a lifetime falls away, and we can feel -what Blake expressed when he wrote those lines in _Milton_-- - - Thou perceivest the flowers put forth their precious odours, - And none can tell how from so small a centre comes such sweet, - Forgetting that within that centre Eternity expands - Its ever-during doors, that Og and Anax fiercely guard. - First, ere the morning breaks, joy opens in the flowery bosoms, - Joy even to tears, which the Sun rising dries; first the Wild Thyme - And Meadow-sweet, downy and soft, waving among the reeds, - Light springing in the air, lead the sweet Dance; they wake - The Honeysuckle sleeping in the Oak, the flaunting beauty - Revels along upon the wind; the white-thorn lovely May - Opens her many lovely eyes; listening the Rose still sleeps. - None dare to wake her. Soon she bursts her crimson-curtained bed - And comes forth in the majesty of beauty; every Flower-- - The Pink, the Jessamine, the Wallflower, the Carnation, - The Jonquil, the mild Lily opes her heavens; every Tree - And Flower and Herb soon fill the air with an innumerable Dance, - Yet all in order sweet and lovely.... - -Those words or such a morning--when the soul steps back many years; -or is it many centuries?--might have moved M. Maeterlinck to his -descriptions of certain great moments in the lives of plants. The terms -of these descriptions are so chosen as to imply an intelligence and -discriminating vital energy in plants. They prove and explain nothing, -but they take one step towards the truth by disturbing the conventional -scientific view and substituting that of a man who, passionately -looking at many forms of life, finds them to be of one family. After -this, it should be more and more difficult for men to think of -flowers as if they were fragile toys from an exceptionally brilliant -manufacturer. - -And now there is a day of sun and high blue sky alternating with low, -grey-yellow sky and driving snow that chequers the northern sides of -the furrows and the beech boles. The sun melts the snow and all is -clear, bright and cold, and the sky blue again with white and lofty -clouds; many thrushes are singing; the broad vale is all one blue -moorland that has buried its houses, and the Downs at the far side are -close at hand. Towards evening the wind falls, and it is a glimpse of -another world that is given as the sun is warm for a moment on a low -curving slope of wet grass, with tall rookery beeches glowing on one -hand and on the other bulging white clouds just emerging from behind -the green edge into the blue, while very far away the Downs, both grass -and wood, are deep blue under a broad pane of yellowish light. - -The north wind makes walking weather, and the earth is stretched out -below us and before us to be conquered. Just a little, perhaps, of -the warrior’s joy at seeing an enemy’s fair land from the hill-top -is mingled with the joy in the unfolding landscape. The ploughlands -brighten over twenty miles of country, pale and dry, among dark woods -and wooded hills; for the wind has crumbled the soil almost white, so -that a sudden local sunlight will make one field seem actually of snow. -The old road following a terrace of the hillside curves under yews -away from the flinty arable and the grey, dry desolation round about -the poultry-farmer’s iron house, to the side of a rich valley of oak -and ash and deepening pastures traversed by water in a glitter. The -green fire of the larch woods is yellow at the crest. There and in oak -and ash the missel thrush is an embodiment of the north wind, summing -it up in the boldness of his form and singing, as a coat of arms sums -up a history. Mounted on the plume of the top of the tall fir, and -waving with it, he sings of adventure, and puts a spirit into those -who pass under and adds a mile to their pace. The gorse is in flower. -In the hedges the goose-grass has already set its ladders against the -thorns, ladders that will soon have risen to the top of every hedge -like scaling ladders of an infinite army. Down from tall yew and ash -hang the abandoned ropes of last year’s traveller’s joy that have leapt -that height--who has caught them in the leap?--but the new are on their -way, and even the old show what can be done as they sway from the -topmost branches. At sunset an immense and bountiful land lies at our -feet and the wine-red sun is pouring out large cups of conquest. The -undulating ploughland is warm in the red light, and it is broken up by -some squares of old brown stubble and of misty young wheat, and lesser -green squares full of bleating and tinkling sheep. Out of these fields -the dense beech copses rise sheer. Beyond, in the west, are ridges of -many woods in misty conflagration; in the south-west, the line of the -Downs under the level white clouds of a spacious and luminous sky. -In the south, woods upon the hills are dissolving into a deep blue -smoke, without form except at their upper edges. And in the north and -north-west the high lands of Berkshire and Wiltshire are prostrate and -violet through thirty miles of witching air. That also is a call to go -on and on and over St. Catherine’s Hill and through Winchester until -the brain is drowsed with the colours of night and day. - -The colour of the dawn is lead and white--white snow falling out of a -leaden sky to the white earth. The rose branches bend in sharper and -sharper curves to the ground, the loaded yew sprays sweep the snow -with white plumes. On the sedges the snow is in fleeces; the light -strands of clematis are without motion, and have gathered it in clots. -One thrush sings, but cannot long endure the sound of his unchallenged -note; the sparrows chirrup in the ricks; the blackbird is waiting for -the end of that low tingling noise of the snow falling straight in -windless air. - -At mid-day the snow is finer and almost rain, and it begins to pour -down from its hives among the branches in short showers or in heavy -hovering lumps. The leaves of ivy and holly are gradually exposed in -all their gloomy polish, and out bursts the purple of the ash buds and -the yellow of new foliage. The beech stems seem in their wetness to be -made of a dark agate. Out from their tops blow rags of mist, and not -far above them clouds like old spiders’ webs go rapidly by. - -The snow falls again and the voices of the little summer birds are -buried in the silence of the flakes that whirl this way and that -aimlessly, rising and falling and crossing or darting horizontally, -making the trees sway wearily and their light tops toss and their -numbers roar continually in the legions of the wind that whine and moan -and shriek their hearts out in the solitary house roofs and doors and -round about. The silence of snow co-exists with this roar. One wren -pierces it with a needle of song and is gone. The earth and sky are -drowning in night and snow. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -SPRING--HAMPSHIRE--KENT--SURREY - - -Next day the wind has flown and the snow is again almost rain: there -is ever a hint of pale sky above, but it is not as luminous as the -earth. The trees over the road have a beauty of darkness and moistness. -Beyond them the earth is a sainted corpse, with a blue light over it -that is fast annihilating all matter and turning the landscape to -a spirit only. Night and the snow descend upon it, and at dawn the -nests are full of snow. The yews and junipers on a league of Downs -are chequered white upon white slopes, and the green larches support -cirrus clouds of snow. In the garden the daffodils bend criss-cross -under snow that cannot quite conceal the yellow flowers. But the snow -has ceased. The sky is at first pale without a cloud and tender as from -a long imprisonment; it deepens in hue as the sun climbs and gathers -force. The crooked paths up the Downs begin to glitter like streaks of -lightning. The thrushes sing. From the straight dark beeches the snow -cannot fall fast enough in great drops, in showers, in masses that -release the boughs with a quiver and a gleam. The green leaves close -to the ground creep out, and against them the snow is blue. A little -sighing wind rustles ivy and juniper and yew. The sun mounts, and from -his highest battlement of cloud blows a long blast of light over the -pure land. Once more the larch is wholly green, the beech rosy brown -with buds. A cart goes by all a-gleam with a load of crimson-sprouting -swedes and yellow-sprouting mangolds that seem to be burning through -the net of snow above them. Down each side of every white road runs -a stream that sings and glitters in ripples like innumerable crystal -flowers. Water drips and trickles and leaps and gushes and oozes -everywhere, and extracts the fragrance of earth and green and flowers -under the heat that hastens to undo the work of the snow. The air is -hot and wet. The snow is impatient to be water again. It still makes -a cape over the briers and brambles, and there is a constant drip and -steam and song of drops from the crossing branches in the cave below. -Loud sounds the voice of leaf and branch and imprisoned water in the -languor and joy of their escape. On every hand there is a drip and gush -and ooze of water, a crackle and rustle and moan of plants and trees -unfolding and unbending and greeting air and light; a close, humid, -many-perfumed host; wet gloom and a multitudinous glitter; a movement -of water and of the shadows like puffs of smoke that fleet over the -white fields under the clouds. - -And over and through it a cuckoo is crying and crying, first overhead, -then afar, and gradually near and retreating again. He is soon gone, -but the ears are long afterwards able to extract the spirit of the -song, the exact interval of it, from among all the lasting sounds, -until we hear it as clearly as before, out of the blue sky, out of -the white cloud, out of the shining grey water. It is a word of -power--cuckoo! The melting of the snow is faster than ever, and at the -end of the day there is none left except in some hollows of the Downs -on the slopes behind the topmost of the beeches that darkly fringe the -violet sky. In the misty shutting of the light there are a thousand -songs laced by cuckoos’ cries and the first hooting of owls, and the -beeches have become merely straight lines of pearl in a mist of their -own boughs. Below them, in the high woods, goes on the fall of the -melting snow through the gloomy air, and the splash on the dead leaves. -This gloom and monotonous sound make an exquisite cloister, visited but -not disturbed by the sound of the blackbirds singing in the mist of the -vale underneath. Slowly the mist has deepened from the woods to the -vale and now the eye cannot see from tree to tree. Then the straight -heavy rain descends upon the songs and the clatterings of blackbirds, -and when they are silenced the moorhen’s watery hoot announces that the -world belongs to the beasts and the rainy dark until to-morrow. - -Beautiful upon the waters, beautiful upon the mountains, is the -cuckoo’s song, and most rare over the snow. But of all places and hours -I should choose the crags of Land’s End in a dawn of June; and let it -be the end of that month and the wind be grey and cold, so that the -ships stagger in the foam and crag-like waves as they catch the early -light tenderly upon their sails. The cold beams, the high precipices -yet full of shadow and of the giddy calling of daw and gull, the black -but white-lipped water and the blacker cormorant flying straight across -it just over the foam, the sky golden yet still pallid and trembling -from the dungeon of night--through it floats that beloved voice -breaking, breaking, and the strong year at the summit of its career -has begun to decline. The song is memorable and fair also when the -drenched gardens toss and spread their petals in the grass. Many a one -hears it who will not hear it again, and many that once expected it -impatiently hears it no more because he is old and deaf or because his -heart is closed. There is not a broad and perfect day of heat and wind -and sunshine that is not haunted by that voice seeming to say the earth -is hollow under our feet and the sky hollow over our heads. - -There are whole nights when the cuckoo will not sleep, and the woods -on either side of a road twenty miles long emit the cry of these -conquerors under the full moon and the white stars of love. If you -pause it will appear that it is not a silence that this song rules -over; for what was a silence was full of sounds, as many sounds as -there are leaves, sounds of creeping, gliding, pattering, rustling, -slow wormlike continuous noises and sudden sounds. And strangely at -length is the glorious day reared high upon the ruins of this night, of -which the survivors slink away into the old forgotten roads, the dense -woods, the chimneys of deserted houses. - -It is a jolly note only when the bird is visible close at hand and -the power of his throat is felt. Often two or three will answer one -another, or for half a day will loiter about a coombe for the sake -of an echo. It is one of the richest sounds in nature when two sing -together, the second note of one being almost blended with the first -of the other; and so they continue as if themselves entranced by the -harmony, and the navvy leans upon his pick to listen. - - * * * * * - -On the day after the great melting of the snow the white beam tree, -at the edges of high woods and in the midst of the beeches, has its -hour, when its thousands of large white buds point upward like a -multitudinous candelabrum. For me the white beam is always associated -with wayfaring. Its white buds are the traveller’s joy of spring. The -buds like blossoms or flames bewitch from afar off. They are always -upon sloping ground and usually upon hillsides in the chalk land. In -the autumn their leaves often shrivel before falling, and turn to a -colour that looks like pink almond blossom by contrast with juniper and -yew. When they have fallen, they are as much to be noticed. They lie -commonly with their white undersides uppermost, and though rain soaks -them and wind scatters them and they are trodden down, they preserve -their whiteness until the winter or the following spring. It is a -tree that belongs, above all others except the yew, to the Pilgrims’ -Way, and it is impossible to forget these leaves lying white on the -untouched wayside sward, among the dewy purple and crimson and gold of -other leaves, sparkling in the sun and entering into all the thoughts -and fancies and recollections that come to one who goes in solitude -along that old road when the scent of the dying year is pungent as -smoke and sweet as flowers. - - -KENT, SURREY AND HAMPSHIRE. - -The beam tree is bright on the soft hills all through the days of -rain following upon the snow and sun. There are days when earth is -absorbed in her delights of growth and multiplication. The rain is -a veil which she wraps about her that she may toil and sing low at -her myriad divine domesticities untroubled. Delicate snails climb the -young stalks of grass and flower, and their houses, pearly, chocolate, -tawny, pure or ringed or chequered, slide after them. The leaves, -with their indescribable charm of infinitely varied division, of wild -clematis, maple, brier, hawthorn, and many more, come forth into the -rain which hangs on their drooping points and on the thorns. The lichen -enjoys the enduring mist of the woods; the blackthorns are crusted -and bearded with lichens of fleshy green-silver and ochre which grow -even on the thorns themselves and round the new leaves and flowers. -The birch is now an arrested shower of green, but not enough to hide -the white limbs of the nymph in the midst of it. The beech trunk is -now most exquisitely coloured: it is stained and spotted and blotched -with grey and rough silver and yellow-green lichen, palest green -mould, all the greens of moss, and an elusive dappling and graining of -greys, of neutral tints and almost blacks in the wood itself, still -more diversified by the trickling rain and the changing night. The yew -bark is plated and scaled and stained with greens and reds and greys, -powdered with green mould, and polished in places to the colour of -mahogany. Even the long-deserted thistly cornfields are dim purple with -ground-ivy flowers and violets. The marsh, the pasture, the wood, the -hedge, has each its abundance of bloom and of scent; so, too, has the -still water and the running water. But this is the perfect hour of the -green of grass, so intense that it has an earthly light of its own in -the sunless mist. It is best seen in meadows bounded on two or three -sides by the sheer dark edges of woods; for in that contrast the grass -seems a new element, neither earth, nor water, nor sky--under our feet -like the earth, gleaming and even as water, remote and celestial as the -sky. And the voices of the green growing in the rain are innumerable. -The very ground has now one voice of its own, the gurgle of its soaking -hollow places. - - -HAMPSHIRE. - -The fields where the green is now greenest, those bounded on two or -more sides by woods, are of a kind not peculiar to Hampshire. They are -usually on the greensand and lie in smooth, often winding, hollows -like the beds of rivers. Sometimes the banks of these beds are steep, -and they are clothed in woods or in hedges of hornbeam, hazel, ash and -thorn that have grown almost to woods. The meadows are green broad -rivers running up between the dark trees that bathe their roots in -primroses. Sometimes there is a stream of water running down the midst -of such a field, but as the stream, being a boundary, is often lined -with bushes, the particular charm is lost. In the perfect examples -there is the smoothness of the long hollowed meadow, the green, the -river-like form, the look of being a court or cloister between the -trees. Another kind of field of great charm is made by the convexity of -the land rising up from one side or both of such a hollow meadow. These -heaving fields, some of a regular domed shape, are favourites of the -sunset light, in spring when they are grassy, in August when they bear -corn: at noon when there are cattle grazing on the steep slope, their -shadows are an exact inversion of themselves, as in water. - - * * * * * - -Out of the rain and mist spring has now risen full-grown, tender and -lusty, fragrant, many-coloured, many-voiced, fair to see, so that it -is beyond a lover’s power to make even an inventory of her lovely -ways. She is tall, she is fresh and bold, sweet in her motion and in -her tranquillity; and there is a soft down upon her lip as there is a -silken edge to the young leaves of the beeches. - - -KENT. - -Even the motor road is pleasant now when the nightingales sing out of -the bluebell thickets under oak and sweet chestnut and hornbeam and -hazel. Presently it crosses a common, too small ever to draw a crowd, a -rough up-and-down expanse of gorse and thorn, pierced by grassy paths -and surrounded by turf that is rushy and mounded by old ant heaps; and -here, too, there are nightingales singing alone, the sweeter for the -contrast between their tangled silent bowers and the sharp, straight -white road. The common is typical of the lesser commons of the south. -Crouch’s Croft in Sussex is another, in sight of the three dusk -moorland breasts of Crowborough; gorse-grown, flat, possessing a pond, -and walled by tall hollies in a hedge. Piet Down, close by, is a fellow -to it--grass and gorse and irregular pine--a pond, too--rough, like -a fragment of Ashdown or Woolmer, and bringing a wild sharp flavour -into the mellow cultivated land. Yet another is at Stone Street, very -small, a few oaks up to their knees in blackthorn, gorse and bramble, -with dusty edge and the hum of the telegraph wire for a song. - -After the little common and long meadows, oak and ash, an old stone -house with seven hundred years of history quiet within its walls -and dark tiles--its cedar and yew and pine, its daisied grass, its -dark water and swans--the four oast cones opposite, all taste more -exquisitely. How goodly are the names hereabout!--Dinas Dene, the -coombe in which the old house stands; Balk Shaw, Cream Crox, Dicky -May’s Field, Ivy Hatch, Lady Lands, Lady’s Wood, Upper and Lower -Robsacks, Obram Wood, Ruffats, Styant’s Mead, the Shode, and, of -course, a Starvecrow. Almost due west goes one of the best of footpaths -past hop garden, corn, currant plantations, rough copses, with glimpses -of the immense Weald to the east, its trees massed like thirty miles -of wood, having sky and cloud over its horizon as if over sea, and -southward the wild ridge of Ashdown. Then the path enters tall woods of -ash and oak, boulder-strewn among their anemone and primrose, bluebell -and dog’s mercury, and emerges in a steep lane at the top of which are -five cowled oast houses among cherry blossom and under black firs. -Beyond there is a hollow winding vale of meadow and corn, its sides -clothed in oak, hazel and thorn, revealing primroses between. Woods -shut it away from the road and from all houses but the farm above one -end. A few cattle graze there, and the sun comes through the sloping -woods and makes the grass golden or pale. - -Then the North Downs come in sight, above a church tower amid -stateliest pale-foliaged beeches and vast undulations of meadow. They -are suffused in late sunshine, their trees misty and massed, under a -happy sky. Those beeches lie below the road, lining the edge of one -long meadow. The opposite sun pours almost horizontal beams down upon -the perfectly new leaves so as to give each one a yellow-green glow -and to some a silver shimmer about the shadowy boles. For the moment -the trees lose their anchor in the solid earth. They are floating, -wavering, shimmering, more aërial and pure and wild than birds or any -visible things, than aught except music and the fantasies of the brain. -The mind takes flight and hovers among the leaves with whatsoever -powers it has akin to dew and trembling lark’s song and rippling water; -it is throbbed away not only above the ponderous earth but below the -firmament in the middle world of footless fancies and half thoughts -that drift hither and thither and know neither a heaven nor a home. -It is a loss of a name and not of a belief that forbids us to say -to-day that sprites flutter and tempt there among the new leaves of the -beeches in the late May light. - -Almost every group of oast houses here, seen either amongst autumn -fruit or spring blossom, is equal in its effect to a temple, though -different far, even when ivy-mantled as they occasionally are, from -the grey towered or spired churches standing near. The low round -brick tower of the oast house, surmounted by a tiled cone of about -equal height, and that again crested with a white cowl and vane, is a -pleasant form. There are groups of three which, in their age, mellow -hue, roundness, and rustic dignity, have suggested the triple mother -goddesses of old religions who were depicted as matrons, carrying -babes or fruit or flowers, to whom the peasant brought thank-offerings -when sun and rain had been kind. Those at Kemsing, for example, stand -worthily beside the perfect grey-shingled spire, among elm and damson, -against the bare cloudy Down. And there are many others near the -Pilgrims’ Way of the same charm. - -That road, in its winding course from Winchester to Canterbury, through -Hampshire, Surrey and Kent, sums up all qualities of roads except -those of the straight highway. It is a cart-way from farm to farm; or -a footpath only, or a sheaf of half-a-dozen footpaths worn side by -side; or, no longer needed except by the curious, it is buried under -nettle and burdock and barricaded by thorns and traveller’s joy and -bryony bines; it has been converted into a white country road for a -few miles of its length, until an ascent over the Downs or a descent -into the valley has to be made, and then once more it is left to -footsteps upon grass and bird’s foot trefoil or to rude wheels over -flints. Sometimes it is hidden among untended hazels or among chalk -banks topped with beech and yew, and the kestrel plucks the chaffinch -there undisturbed. Or it goes free and hedgeless like a long balcony -half-way up the Downs, and unespied it beholds half the South Country -between ash tree boles. Church and inn and farm and cottage and tramp’s -fire it passes like a wandering wraith of road. Some one of the little -gods of the earth has kept it safe--one of those little and less than -omnipotent gods who, neglecting all but their own realms, enjoy the -earth in narrow ways, delighting to make small things fair, such as -a group of trees, a single field, a pure pool of sedge and bright -water, an arm of sea, a train of clouds, a road. I see their hands -in many a by-way of space and moment of time. One of them assuredly -harbours in a rude wet field I know of that lies neglected between two -large estates: three acres at most of roughly sloping pasture, bounded -above by the brambly edge of a wood and below by a wild stream. Here a -company of meadow-sweet invades the grass, there willow herb tall with -rosy summits of flowers, hoary lilac mint, dull golden fleabane, spiry -coltstails. The snake creeps careless through these thickets of bloom. -The sedge-warbler sings there. One old white horse is content with the -field, summer and winter, and has made a plot of it silver with his -hairs where he lies at night. The image of the god is in the grey riven -willow that leans leafless over the stream like a peasant sculpture -of old time. There is another of these godkins in a bare chalk hollow -where the dead thistles stick out through a yard of snow and give -strange thoughts of the sailless beautiful sea that once rippled over -the Downs: one also in the smell of hay and mixen and cow’s breath at -the first farm out of London where the country is unsoiled. There is -one in many a worthless waste by the roadside, such as that between -two roads that go almost parallel for a while--a long steep piece, -only a few feet broad, impenetrably overgrown by blackthorn and -blackberry, but unenclosed: and one in each of the wayside chalk-pits -with overhanging beech roots above and bramble below. One, too, perhaps -many, were abroad one August night on a high hillside when the hedge -crickets sang high up in the dogwood and clematis like small but -deafening sewing machines, and the glowworms shone in the thyme, and -the owl’s crying did not rend the breathless silence under the full -moon, and in the confused moonlit chequer of the wood, where tree -and shadow were equals, I walked on a grating of shadows with lights -between as if from under the earth; the hill was given over to a light -happiness through which I passed an unwilling but unfeared intruder. - -In places these gods preside over some harmony of the earth with the -works of men. There is one such upon the Pilgrims’ Way, where I join -it, after passing the dark boughs and lightsome flowers of cherry -orchards, grass full of dandelions, a dark cluster of pines, elms in -groups and cavalcades, and wet willowy meadows that feed the Medway. -Just at the approach there is a two-storied farm with dormers in the -darkly mellowed roof, protected by sycamores and chestnuts, and before -it a weather-boarded barn with thatched roof, and then, but not at -right angles, another with ochre tiles, and other outbuildings of old -brick and tile, a waggon lodge of flint and thatch beside a pond, at -the edge of a broad unhedged field where random oaks shadow the grass. -Behind runs the Pilgrims’ Way, invisible but easily guessed under that -line of white beam and yew, with here and there an ash up which the -stout plaited stems of ivy are sculptured, for they seem of the same -material as the tree, and both of stone. Under the yew and white beam -the clematis clambers over dogwood and wayfaring trees. Corn grows up -to the road and sometimes hops; beyond, a league of orchard is a-froth -round farmhouses or islands of oak; and east and west sweeps the -crescent of the North Downs. - -With the crescent goes the road, half-way up the sides of the hills but -nearly always at the foot of the steepest slopes where the chalk-pits -are carved white, like the concave of a scallop shell, out of the green -turf. Luxuriant hedges bar the view except at gateways and stiles. At -one place the upper hedge gives way to scattered thickets scrambling up -the hill, with chalky ruts and rabbit workings between. Neither sheep -nor crops cover the hill, nor yet is it common. Any one can possess -it--for an hour. It is given up to the rabbits until Londoners can be -persuaded to build houses on it. At intervals a road as old as the Way -itself descends precipitously in a deep chalk groove, overhung by yew -and beech, or hornbeam, or oak, and white clouds drifting in a river -of blue sky between the trees; and joins farther south the main road -which winds, parallel with the Pilgrims’ Way and usually south of it, -from Winchester, through Guildford, Dorking, Westerham, Maidstone, -Ashford, and Canterbury to Dover Strait. Not only chalk-pits and deep -roads hollow the hills. For miles there is a succession of small -smooth coombes, some grown with white thorn, some grassy, above the -road, alternating with corresponding smooth breasts of turf. Towers -and spires, but chiefly towers, lie beneath, and in the mile or so -between one and the next there are red farms or, very rarely, a greater -house at the end of a long wave of grass among trees. Above, the white -full-bosomed clouds lean upon the green rampart of the hills and look -across to the orchards, the woods beyond, the oaken Weald and its -lesser ridges still farther, and then the South Downs and a dream of -the south sea. - -Rain falls, and in upright grey sheaves passes slowly before the -fresh beech leaves like ghosts in shadowy procession; and once again -the white clouds roll over the tops of the trees, and the green is -virginal, and out of the drip and glimmer of the miles of blissful -country rises the blackbird’s song and the cuckoo’s shout. The rain -seems not only to have brightened what is to be seen but the eye that -sees and the mind that knows, and suddenly we are aware of all the joy -in the grandeur and mastery of an oak’s balance, in those immobile -clouds revealed on the farthest horizon shaped like the mountains -which a child imagines, in the white candles of the beam tree, in the -black-eyed bird sitting in her nest in the hawthorn with uplifted -beak, and in the myriad luxuriant variety of shape and texture and -bright colour in the divided leaves of wood sanicle and moschatel and -parsley and cranesbill, in the pure outline of twayblade and violet -and garlic. Newly dressed in the crystal of the rain the landscape -recalls the earlier spring; the flowers of white wood-sorrel, the pink -and white anemone and cuckoo flower, the thick-clustered, long-stalked -primroses and darker cowslips with their scentless sweetness pure as an -infant’s breath; the solitary wild cherry trees flowering among still -leafless beech; the blackbirds of twilight and the flower-faced owls; -the pewits wheeling after dusk; the jonquil and daffodil and arabis and -leopard’s bane of cottage gardens; the white clouds plunged in blue -floating over the brown woods of the hills; the delicate thrushes with -speckled breasts paler than their backs, motionless on dewy turf; and -all the joys of life that come through the nostrils from the dark, not -understood world which is unbolted for us by the delicate and savage -fragrances of leaf and flower and grass and clod, of the plumage of -birds and fur of animals and breath and hair of women and children. - -How can our thoughts, the movements of our bodies, our human -kindnesses, ever fit themselves with this blithe world? Is it but vain -remorse at what is lost, or is it not rather a token of what may yet -be achieved, that makes these images blind us as does the sight of -children dressed for a play, some solemn-thoughtful, some wholly gay, -suddenly revealed to us in brilliant light after the night wind and -rain? - -But at morning twilight I see the moon low in the west like a broken -and dinted shield of silver hanging long forgotten outside the tent of -a great knight in a wood, and inside are the knight’s bones clean and -white about his rusted sword. In the east the sun rises, a red-faced -drover and a million sheep going before him silent over the blue -downs of the dawn: and I am ill-content and must watch for a while -the fraying, changeful edges of the lesser clouds drift past and into -the great white ones above, or hear rebellious music that puts for -one brief hour into our hands the reins of the world that we may sit -mightily behind the horses and drive to the goal of our dreams. - -A footpath leads from the Pilgrims’ Way past the divine undulations and -beech glades of a park--a broad piece of the earth that flows hither -and thither in curves, sudden or slow but flawless and continuous, and -everywhere clothed in a seamless garment of grass. The path crosses -the white main road into a lesser one that traverses a common of -beech and oak and birch. The leaves make an unbroken roof over the -common: except the roads there is not a path in it. For it is a small -and narrow strip of but a few acres, without any open space, gloomy, -much overgrown by thickets. Last year’s leaves lie undisturbed and of -the colour of red deer under the silky green new foliage and round -the huge mossy pedestals of beech and in caves behind the serpentine -locked roots. No child’s shout is heard. No lover walks there. The -motor-car hurries the undesirable through and down into the Weald. And -so it is alone and for themselves that the beeches rise up in carven -living stone and expand in a green heaven for the song of the woodwren, -pouring out pearls like wine. - -Southward, on either side of the steep road, the slope is, below -the beeches, given to corn and hops; at the foot are all the oaks -and pasture of the Weald, diversified by hop gardens on many of -the slanting fields that break up its surface. Looking back from -here the hills above are less finely modelled than the downs still -farther behind us in the north. But they also have their shallow -coombes, sometimes two tiers of them, and they are indented by deep, -wide-mouthed bays. One of them begins in copses of oak and hazel and -sallow, a little arable, a farm, three oast cones, and a little steep -orchard in a hollow of their own, which give way to hops, followed by -grass and then a tortuous ploughland among the oaks and firs of the -great woods that cover the more precipitous sides of the upper end of -the bay. Exquisitely cultivated, this bay is yet a possession of cuckoo -and nightingale, singing under the yellow-green and black-branched oaks -and above the floor of bluebell and dark dog’s mercury. - -Out of the coombe a deep lane ascends through beech, hazel and beam to -another common of heather, and whinberry bathing the feet of scattered -birch, and squat oak and pine, interrupted by yellow gravel pits. - -Beyond is a little town and a low grey spire, neighboured by sycamores -that stretch out horizontal boughs of broad leaves and new yellow-green -flower tassels over long grass. Past the town--rapidly and continually -resuming its sleep after the hooting of motor-cars--begins a wide and -stately domain. At its edge are cottages doddering with age, but trim -and flowery, and assuredly wearing the livery of the ripe, grave house -of brick that stands on the grassy ascent above them, among new-leaved -beech masses and isolated thorns dreaming over their shadows. That -grove of limes, fair and decorous, leading up to the house is the work -of Nature and the squire. His chestnut and pine plantations succeed. -And now a pollard beech, bossy-rooted on a mound of moss and crumbling -earth, its grotesque torso decorated as by childish hands with new -leaves hanging among mighty boughs that are themselves a mansion for -squirrel and jay and willow wren and many shadows, looks grimly down -at the edge of a wood and asks for the wayfarer’s passport--has he -lived well, does he love this world, is he bold and free and kind?--and -if he have it not seals him with melancholy as he enters among the -innumerable leaves of innumerable beeches beginning to respond to the -straight, still, after-sunset rain, while the last cuckoos cry and the -last footsteps and wheels of the world die away behind. The foliage -has a pale, almost white, light of its own among the darkly dripping -boughs, and when that is gone the rain and leaf under a spongy grey -sky have a myriad voices of contentedness. Below, invisible in the dark -rain but not unfelt, is the deep hollow land of the Weald. The owls -whimper and mew and croon and hoot and shriek their triumphs. - - -SURREY. - -In the morning a storm comes up on bellying blue clouds above the pale -levels of young corn and round-topped trees black as night but gold -at their crests. The solid rain does away with all the hills, and -shows only the solitary thorns at the edge of an oak wood, or a row of -beeches above a hazel hedgerow and, beneath that, stars of stitchwort -in the drenched grass. But a little while and the sky is emptied and -in its infant blue there are white clouds with silver gloom in their -folds; and the light falls upon round hills, yew and beech thick upon -their humps, the coombes scalloped in their sides tenanted by oaks -beneath. By a grassy chalk pit and clustering black yew, white beam -and rampant clematis, is the Pilgrims’ Way. Once more the sky empties -heavy and dark rain upon the bright trees so that they pant and quiver -while they take it joyfully into their deep hearts. Before the eye -has done with watching the dance and glitter of rain and the sway of -branches, the blue is again clear and like a meadow sprinkled over with -blossoming cherry trees. - -The decent vale consists of square green fields and park-like slopes, -dark pine and light beech: but beyond that the trees gather together in -low ridge after ridge so that the South Country seems a dense forest -from east to west. On one side of the hill road is a common of level -ash and oak woods, holly and thorn at their edges, and between them -and the dust a grassy tract, sometimes furzy; on the other, oaks and -beeches sacred to the pheasant but exposing countless cuckoo flowers -among the hazels of their underwood. Please trespass. The English game -preserve is a citadel of woodland charm, and however precious, it has -only one or two defenders easily eluded and, when met, most courteous -to all but children and not very well dressed women. The burglar’s -must be a bewitching trade if we may judge by the pleasures of the -trespasser’s unskilled labour. - -In the middle of the wood is a four-went way, and the grassy or white -roads lead where you please among tall beeches or broad, crisp-leaved -shining thorns and brief open spaces given over to the mounds of ant -and mole, to gravel pits and heather. Is this the Pilgrims’ Way, in the -valley now, a frail path chiefly through oak and hazel, sometimes over -whin and whinberry and heather and sand, but looking up at the yews and -beeches of the chalk hills? It passes a village pierced by straight -clear waters--a woodland church--woods of the willow wren--and then, -upon a promontory, alone, within the greenest mead rippled up to its -walls by but few graves, another church, dark, squat, small-windowed, -old, and from its position above the world having the characters of -church and beacon and fortress, calling for all men’s reverence. Up -here in the rain it utters the pathos of the old roads behind, wiped -out as if writ in water, or worn deep and then deserted and surviving -only as tunnels under the hazels. I wish they could always be as -accessible as churches are, and not handed over to land-owners--like -Sandsbury Lane near Petersfield--because straight new roads have taken -their places for the purposes of tradesmen and carriage people, or -boarded up like that discarded fragment, deep-sunken and overgrown, -below Colman’s Hatch in Surrey. For centuries these roads seemed to -hundreds so necessary, and men set out upon them at dawn with hope -and followed after joy and were fain of their whiteness at evening: -few turned this way or that out of them except into others as well -worn (those who have turned aside for wantonness have left no trace at -all), and most have been well content to see the same things as those -who went before and as they themselves have seen a hundred times. And -now they, as the sound of their feet and the echoes, are dead, and the -roads are but pleasant folds in the grassy chalk. Stay, traveller, says -the dark tower on the hill, and tread softly because your way is over -men’s dreams; but not too long; and now descend to the west as fast as -feet can carry you, and follow your own dream, and that also shall in -course of time lie under men’s feet; for there is no going so sweet as -upon the old dreams of men. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -AN ADVENTURER - - -In one of the new cottages at the edge of the town beyond lives, or -tries to live, a man who fought for many years in one of the suburbs a -losing battle against London. His father had farmed land now covered by -streets. He himself was persuaded to sell all but his house and garden -to raise money for a business which promised his sons great wealth. -He retained barely enough to live upon; the business, an honest one, -failed; and in a short time misfortunes compelled him to open a shop. -He converted the house--that was once a farmhouse--into a shop, and not -five years ago it could still be seen at the end of a row of gaudy, -glittering windows, itself a village shop, having but a common house -window for the display of wares, the interior gloomy and approached -through a strip of garden where a lime-tree put on and shed its leaves -with the air of a princess of old romance. The back garden, half an -orchard, was bordered along a side street by a high wall, and over that -a broad cherry used to lean a gnarled branch and shower its blossoms -upon the asphalte; the foot-passengers complained of the tree which -had grown without foreknowledge of the fact that men would pass below -in silk hats, and the branch was lopped. In the shop itself everything -was for sale, everything that officious travellers could foist -upon the little weak-eyed half-farmer, half-gardener who kept the -shop--hosiery, leather bags, purses, cheap jewellery, fishing-tackle, -cricket-bats, umbrellas, walking-sticks. A staircase led out of the -shop to the bedrooms, just as it had done when the window on the narrow -landing looked over hay-fields to Banstead Downs. When the cat was -not lying upon the socks in the window, she had, very likely, been -kept away by a litter of kittens somewhere among the seldom disturbed -bundles of unfashionable ties, or she lay in the sun beneath the lime -and watched her kittens pursuing the spiral flight of the yellow leaves. - -The owner made no concessions except such as he was forced to, as when -he bought the stock of jewellery because the traveller praised his cat; -or allowed the cherry tree to be mutilated because the new Borough -Council commanded. He dressed in breeches, gaiters and heavy boots, and -never wore a coat or took his pipe out of his mouth (except to play -with puss). Seldom did he leave the house, unless it was to go into -the garden or to take a walk down the emptied busy street at night, -when the only sound was the crickets’ song from the bakers’ shops. The -little old house rippled over by creeper was beautiful then--the lime -tree and the creeper trembling in the gusty moonlight, and the windows -and doorway hollow and dark and romantic as if a poet had made them to -sting men’s hearts with beauty and with regret. - -No one can ever say what the old man thought as he slammed the door -after one of these walks and was alone with himself. Certainly he -regretted the big decorous high-gated houses that used to stand -opposite his, veiled by wistaria, passion flower and clematis; the -limes that used to run the whole length of his father’s land, but now -all gone, save this one (how lovely its fallen leaves looked in the as -yet untrodden streets in autumn mornings, lying flat and moistly golden -under the fog!); the balsam growing through the railings; the dark yew -tree that looked among bright lilac and laburnum like a negro among the -women in the _Arabian Nights_; the pathway through the churchyard, in -the days before they had to rail it in to preserve the decent turf--in -vain, for it was now littered with newspapers and tram-tickets among -the tombs of ---- Esquire, ---- Esquire, for they were all esquires. He -regretted the houses and gardens, but less than their people, the men -and women of some ease and state, of speech whose kindliness was thrice -kind through its careful dignity, so he thought. And then the children, -there were no such children now; and the young men and women, the men -a little alarming, the women strong and lovely and gentle enough to -supply him with incarnations at once of all those whom he read of in -the novels of Scott. They had gone long ago, except those who survived -vaguely in the novels. He remembered their houses better, for it was -not until after some years that they were pulled down, their orchards -grubbed up, and their rich mould carried away in sacks to the trumpery -villas round about--dragged along the road and spilt in a long black -trail. It was wonderful dark mould, and the thought of the apples, the -plums, the nectarines, the roses which had grown out of it made him -furious when it was taken to their gardens by people who would be gone -in a year or less, and would grow in it nothing but nasturtiums and -sunflowers. - -There followed a period when, the old attitudes, the things that had -been handed down from the last revolution, having been broken up, the -gardens became a possession of nettles and docks, and fewer and fewer -were the crown-imperials and hollyhocks to survive the fall of the -houses. The scaffold-poles, the harsh blocks of stone, the rasping -piles of bricks, the scores of cold earthenware and iron articles -belonging to the rows of villas about to replace the old houses, looked -more like ruin than preparation as they lay stark and hideous among -the misty grass and still blue elms. There were days when the thrushes -still sang well among the rioting undisturbed shrubberies. But soon -men felled the elms and drove away their shadows for ever, and all -that dwelled or could be imagined therein. No more would the trees be -enchanted by the drunken early songs of blackbirds. The heavenly beauty -of earthly things went away upon the timber carriages and was stamped -with mud. The butts of the trees were used to decorate the gardens of -the new houses. Two, indeed, were spared by some one’s folly, and a -main bough fell in the night and crushed through a whole fortnight’s -brickwork. - -Those elms had come unconsciously to be part of the real religion -of men in that neighbourhood, and certainly of that old man. Their -cool green voices as they swayed, their masses motionless against -the evening or the summer storms, created a sense of pomp and awe. -They gave mystic invitations that stirred his blood if not his slowly -working humble brain, and helped to build and to keep firm that -sanctuary of beauty to which we must be able to retire if we are to be -more than eaters and drinkers and newspaper readers. When they were -gone he wondered, still humbly, what would do their work in the minds -of the newcomers. Looking at the features of the younger people, held -in a vice of reserve or pallidly leering, and hearing the snarl of -their voices, he was not surprised. They had not been given a chance. -How could they have the ease, the state, the kindliness of the old -inhabitants? They had no gods, only a brand-new Gothic church. Often -they supported this or that new movement, or bought a brave new book, -but they continued to sneer timidly or brutally at everything else. -They were satisfied with a little safe departure from the common way, -some mental or spiritual equivalent to the door-knocker of imitation -hammered copper. They did not care very much for trees though they -planted them in every street, where the grammar-school boys and -errand-boys mutilated them one by one in the dark; they cut off the -heads of a score of tall poplars, lest perchance the west wind should -one day do the same thing when one of the million was passing below. - -The new people were a mysterious, black-liveried host, the -grandchildren of peers, thieves, gutter-snipes, agricultural labourers, -artisans, shopkeepers, professional men, farmers, foreign financiers, -an unrelated multitude. They were an endless riddle to the old man. He -used to stare at their houses as one might stare at a corpse in the -hope of discovering that there was something alive there. They were as -impenetrable as their houses, when at night the blinds of the lighted -rooms were drawn and figures or parts of figures shot fantastically by. -He read of their bankruptcies, their appointments, their crimes, their -successes, unwittingly, in the newspapers. He could never take it as a -matter of course to pass, to be continually surrounded by, thousands of -whom he knew nothing, to whom he was nothing. Well did they keep their -secrets, this blank or shamefaced crowd of discreetly dressed people -who might be anywhere to-morrow. - -He turned from them to his garden and cherry-tree, and thinking of -those who had walked there, and in the long garden on the other side -of the fence, he felt at home again, with his cat and her long line -of descendants. That long garden had survived the big house to which -it had belonged. A merchant had lived there with his family of four -daughters, dark, tall women, whose pride and tender speech the old -trees in their garden often recalled. All were beautiful, and they were -most beautiful together. They walked, they rode, they played and read -in the garden, and the old man could see them there. They were said -to be clever and their father was wealthy. They were nearly always -together, and as often as possible with him. They were a tribe apart, -of extraordinary perfection of strength and grace, holding their own -against the world. And yet, as the old man thought to himself, looking -at their garden in the rain, not one of them was ever married. They had -moved right into London after selling their house and land. They had -come to his shop once or twice after and made an excuse for going into -the garden: they looked into their own as if they had lost something -there. Thinking of them he went into his shop and opened a book. A -minute black insect, disturbed from among the leaves, crawled over -and over the white page as he pretended to read; it went in zigzags -half-an-inch long, lost in the black and white desert, sometimes -turning the sharp edge and going to the other side of the page; but as -a rule the edge alarmed it and it retreated; it was never still. It -reminded him of himself. They were both lost upon the vast surface of -the earth. - -But, of course, that was not why he left. Nobody knew why he left. In -his seventieth year he ran away, bursting out of the crowd as one sheep -no braver than the rest will do sometimes, inexplicably. He has brought -his cats with him, and he has money enough to last until he is dead. -Being considered by his niece as of unsound mind, he is free to do as -he will and is happy when he is alone. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -SUSSEX - - -A few miles south of that great presiding pollard beech is the boundary -line between Surrey and Kent on the north and Sussex on the south. A -few miles over the line the moorland organ roll of heather and birch -and pine succeeds the grassy undulations and the well-grown beech and -oak. The yellow roving lines of the paths cut through the heather -into the sand add to the wildness of the waste, by their suggestion -of mountain torrents and of channels worn in the soft rock or clay -by the sea. The same likeness in little is often to be seen upon a -high-pitched roof of thatch when the straw is earth-coloured and -tunnelled by birds and seamed by rain. Here the houses are of stone, -unadorned, heather-thatched. The maker of birch-heath brooms plies his -trade. There are stacks of heath and gorse in the yard. All the more -fair are the grooves in the moorland, below the region of pines, where -the tiled white-boarded mill stands by the sheen of a ford, and the -gorse is bright and white clothes are blowing over neat gardens and -the first rose. On a day of rain and gloom the answer of the gorse to -sudden lights and heats is delicious; all those dull grey and glaucous -and brown dry spines bursting into cool and fragrant fire is as great a -miracle as the turning of flames to roses round a martyr’s feet. - -It is only too easy for the pheasant lords to plant larch in -parallelograms: to escape from them it is necessary to go in -amongst them. Yet there are parts of the forest large and dark and -primeval in look, with a few poor isolated houses and a thin file -of telegraph posts crossing it among the high gloomy pines and down -to the marshy hollows, to the strewn gold of dwarf willows, and up -again to the deserted wooden windmill, the empty boarded cottage, -the heather-thatched sheds at the southern edge of the moor. Looking -at this tract of wild land the mind seems to shed many centuries of -civilization and to taste something of the early man’s alarm in the -presence of the uncultured hills--an alarm which is in us tempered -so as to aid an impression of the sublime. Its influence lingers in -the small strips of roadside gorse beyond its proper boundary. Then, -southward, there are softly dipping meadows, fields of young corn, -and oaks thrown among the cowslips. The small farmhouses are neat and -good--one has a long stone wall in front, and, over the road, tall -Scotch firs above a green pond dappled by the water crowfoot’s white -blossoms and bordered by sallow and rush. Narrow copses of oak or wide -hedges of hazel and sallow line the road; and they are making cask -hoops under lodges of boughs at the woodsides. Bluebells and primroses -and cuckoo flowers are not to be counted under the trees. The long -moist meadows flow among the woods up and down from farm to farm and -spire to tower. Each farmhouse group is new--this one is roofed and -walled with tiles; and opposite is a tangle of grass and gorse, with -fowls and hen-coops amongst it, a sallowy pond, a pile of faggots, some -crooked knees of oak, some fresh-peeled timber: old grey hop poles lean -in a sheaf all round a great oak. The gates are of good unpainted -oak, and some few are of a kind not often seen elsewhere, lower than -a hurdle and composed of two stout parallel bars united by twenty -uprights and by two pieces meeting to form a V across these. The gates -deserve and would fill a book by themselves. - -Green lucent calipers of flags shadow one another in little wayside -ponds, white-railed; for this is the Weald, the land of small clay -ponds. The hazels are the nightingale’s. In many of the oak woods the -timber carriages have carved a way through primroses and bluebells deep -into the brown clay. The larger views are of cloudy, oak woods, ridge -behind ridge, and green corn or grass and grey ploughland between; and -of the sun pouring a molten cataract out of dark machicolated clouds -on to one green field that glows a moment and is insignificant again: -the lesser are of little brambly precipitous sandpits by the road, of -a white mill at a crossing, of carved yews before black-timbered inns, -of a starling that has learned the curlew’s call perched on a cottage -roof, of abeles all rough silver with opening leaf shivering along -the grass-bordered evening road, of two or three big oaks in a meadow -corner and in their shadow unblemished parsley and grasses bowed as -if rushing in the wind. At an inn door stands a young labourer, tall -and straight but loosely made, his nose even and small, his eyes blue -and deep set, his lips like those of Antinous, his face ruddy and -rough-grained, his hair short and brown and crisp upon his fair round -head; his neck bound by a voluminous scarf (with alternate lozenges of -crimson and deep green divided by white lines) that is gathered beneath -his chin by a brass ring and thence flows down under his blue coat; -his trousers of grey cord, dirty and patched with drab to a weathered -stone colour, fitting almost tightly to his large thighs and calves and -reaching not too near to his small but heavily-shod feet. A prince--a -slave. He is twenty, unmarried, sober, honest, a noble animal. He goes -into a cottage that stands worn and old and without a right angle in -its timbers or its thatch any more than in its apple trees and solitary -quince which all but hide the lilac and massed honesty of the little -garden. This is a house--I had almost said this is a man--that looked -upon England when it could move men to such songs as, “Come, live with -me and be my love,” or-- - - “Hey, down a down!” did Dian sing, - Amongst her virgins sitting; - “Than love there is no vainer thing, - For maidens most unfitting.” - And so think I, with a down, down derry. - -For a moment or less as he goes under the porch I seem to see that -England, that swan’s nest, that island which a man’s heart was not -too big to love utterly. But now what with Great Britain, the British -Empire, Britons, Britishers, and the English-speaking world, the choice -offered to whomsoever would be patriotic is embarrassing, and he is -fortunate who can find an ideal England of the past, the present, and -the future to worship, and embody it in his native fields and waters or -his garden, as in a graven image. - -The round unending Downs are close ahead, and upon the nearest hill -a windmill beside a huge scoop in the chalk, a troop of elms below, -and then low-hedged fields of grass and wheat. The farms are those of -the downland. One stands at the end of the elm troop that swerves -and clusters about its tiled roof, grey cliff of chimney-stack, and -many gables; the stables with newer tiles; the huge slope of the -barn; the low mossy cart-lodge and its wheels and grounded shafts; -the pale straw stacks and the dark hay ricks with leaning ladders. A -hundred sheep-bells rush by with a music of the hills in the wind. -The larks are singing as if they never could have done by nightfall. -It is now the hour of sunset, and windy. All the sky is soft and -dark-grey-clouded except where the sun, just visible and throbbing in -its own light, looks through a bright window in the west with a glow. -Exactly under the sun the grass and wheat is full both of the pure -effulgence and of the south-west wind, rippling and glittering: there -is no sun for anything else save the water. North of the sun and out of -its power lies a lush meadow, beyond it a flat marshland cut by several -curves of bright water, above that a dark church on a wooded mound, and -then three shadowy swoops of Down ending at a spire among trees. - -South-west, the jagged ridgy cluster of a hillside town, a mill and a -castle, stand dark and lucid, and behind them the mere lines of still -more distant downs. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -A RETURN TO NATURE - - -I turn into my next inn with unusual hopes. For it was here some years -ago that I met for the first time a remarkable man. It was nine o’clock -on a late July evening, and the haymakers, only just set free, came -stamping into the bar. The last waggon-load stopped at the door while -the red-whiskered carter stood, one hand on the latch, and drank his -pint before leading his horses into the stall. After the haymakers, -in their pale corduroys and dirty white slops, came a tall, spare, -shock-headed man, not recently shaved, dressed in grey--grey coat, grey -breeches and stockings, and a tall, hard felt hat that was old and -grey. He called for sixpenny ale, and wiping the hay dust from his neck -sat down beside me. - -No, he is not here to-day. Perhaps he will never get out of London -again. - -I asked him the way to the nearest village, and whether a bed was to -be had there. He answered that it was some way off--paused, looked at -me, drank from his tankard--and added in a lower voice that he would be -glad if I would come and share his place. Such an unusual invitation -enforced assent. - -A quarter of a mile down the next by-way he opened a little oaken gate -that slammed after us, and there, in a corner of a small, flat field, -was his sleeping place, under an oak. Would I care to join him in fried -bacon and broad beans and tea at six the next morning? - -He lit a wisp of hay and soon had a fire burning, and brought over some -hay and sacks for the second bed. The lights of the farmhouse shone on -the other side of the little field behind lilac bushes. The farmhouse -pump gave out a cry like a guinea fowl for a few minutes. Then the -lights went out. I asked the name of the farm and he told me. - -“I come here almost every summer for the haymaking,” he said, and -detecting my surprise that it was not his first year of haymaking, he -continued-- - -“It is my tenth summer, to be exact.” - -He was a man of hardly over thirty, and I noticed that his hands, -though small and fine, were rough and warty and dark. Thoughtlessly I -remarked that he must find the winter hard if he travelled like this -all the year round. - -“Yes,” he said, with a sigh, “it is, and that is why I go back in the -winter; at least partly why.” - -“Go back----?” - -“Yes, to London.” - -I was still perplexed. He had the air of a town-bred man of the clerkly -class, but no accent, and I could not think what he did in London that -was compatible with his present life. - -“Are you a Londoner, then?” - -“Yes, and no. I was born at the village of ---- in Caermarthenshire. -My father was a clerk in a coal merchant’s office of the neighbouring -town. But he thought to better himself, worked hard in the evenings -and came to London, when I was seven, for a better-paid post. We lived -in Wandsworth in a small street newly built. I went to a middle-class -school close by until I was sixteen, and then I went into a silk -merchant’s office. My father died soon after. He had never been strong, -and from the first year’s work in the city, I have heard my mother say, -he was a doomed man. He made no friends. While I was young he gave up -all his spare time to me and was happy, wheeling me, my mother walking -alongside, out into the country on every Sunday that was not soaking -wet, and nearly every Saturday afternoon, too. - -“It was on one of these excursions, when they had left me to myself a -little while to talk more gravely than they usually did when we were -out like that, that there was suddenly opened before me--like a yawning -pit, yet not only beneath me but on every side--infinity, endless time, -endless space; it was thrust upon me, I could not grasp it, I only -closed my eyes and shuddered and knew that not even my father could -save me from it, then in a minute it was gone. To a more blessed child -some fair or imposing vision might have risen up out of the deep and -given him a profounder if a sadder eye for life and the world. How -unlike it was to the mystic’s trance, feeling out with infinite soul -to earth and stars and sea and remote time and recognizing his oneness -with them. To me, but later than that, this occasionally recurring -experience was as an intimation of the endless pale road, before and -behind, which the soul has to travel: it was a terror that enrolled me -as one of the helpless, superfluous ones of the earth. - -“I was their only child that lived, and my father’s joy in me was very -great, equalled only by his misery at the life which he had to lead -and which he foresaw for me. He used to read to me, waking me up for -the purpose sometimes when he reached home late, or if he did not do -that rousing me an hour before breakfast. His favourite books were -_The Compleat Angler_ and _Lavengro_, the poems of Wordsworth, the -diaries of Thoreau and the _Natural History of Selborne_. I remember -crying--when I was twelve--with despair of human nature’s fickleness to -think that White, even though he was an old man, could have it in his -heart to write that farewell to natural history at the end of his last -letter to Barrington. My father read these books to me several times in -a sad, hoarse voice--as it seemed to me, though when he paused he was -happy enough--which I had often great trouble to endure as I got older -and able and willing to read for myself. So full was I of a sense of -the real wild country which I had never seen--the Black Mountains of -Caermarthen I hardly recalled--that I became fanciful, and despised the -lavish creeper that hung like a costly dress over the fence between our -garden and the next, because the earth it grew in was not red earth but -a black pasty compound, full of cinders and mortar and decayed rags and -kittens. I used to like to go to the blacksmith’s to smell the singeing -hoof and to the tram-stables and smell the horses, and see the men -standing about in loose shirts, hanging braces, bare arms, clay pipes, -with a sort of free look that I could not see elsewhere. The navvies at -work in the road or on the railway line were a tremendous pleasure, and -I noticed that the clerks waiting for their trains in the morning loved -to watch these hulking free and easy men doing something that looked -as if it mattered, not like their own ledger work and so on. I had the -same sort of pleasure looking up the street that rose from east to west -and seeing the sun set between the two precipices of brick wall at the -top; it was as if a gate opened there and through it all the people and -things that saddened me had disappeared and left me to myself; it was -like the pit, too, that opened before me as a little child. - -“My father died of consumption. I was then just able to earn my own -living, so I was left in lodgings and my mother returned to Wales. I -worked hard at figures; at least I went early and stayed late and never -stopped to talk to the others; yet I made frequent mistakes, and the -figures swam in a mist of American rivers and English waterfalls and -gipsy camps, so that it was a wonder I could ever see my Thoreau and -Wordsworth and Borrow without these figures. Fancy men adopting as a -cry the ‘right to work’! Apparently they are too broken-spirited to -think of a right to live, and would be content only to work. It is not -wonderful that with such a cry they do very little. Men cannot fight -hard for the ‘right to work’ as I did. My office was at the bottom -of a pit. The four sides of the pit were walls with many windows, -and I could hear voices speaking in the rooms behind and the click -of typewriters, but could not see into them. Only for two or three -days in June could I see the sun out of the pit. But in the hot days -blue-bottles buzzed on my panes and I took care of them until one by -one they lay dead upon the window ledge. There were no spiders and -they seemed to have a good life. Sparrows sometimes flew up and down -the pit, and once for a week I had the company of a black-and-white -pigeon. It sat day after day in a hole in the opposite wall until it -died and fell on to the paved yard below. The clouds sailed over the -top of the pit. Sea-gulls flew over, all golden-winged, in October -afternoons. I liked the fog when all the lights were lit, and though -we did not know one another in the pit we seemed to keep one another -company. But I liked the rain best of all. It used to splash down from -all sides and make a country noise, and I looked up and saw the quaint -cowls sitting like cats on the chimney-pots, and had ridiculous fancies -that took me far away for a second or two. - -“The worst time of all was two or three years after my father’s death. -I spent most of my poor earnings on clothes; I took the trouble to talk -and smoke and think as much as possible like the other nine young men -in the railway carriage that took me into the city; I learned their -horrible, cowardly scorn for those who were poor or outlandish, and for -all things that were not like those in their own houses or in those of -the richer people of their acquaintance or envy. We were slaves, and we -gilded our collars.” - -“But the journalist and hack writer,” said I, “is worse off. At least -your master only asked for your dregs. The hack writer is asked to give -everything that can be turned into words at short notice, and so the -collar round his neck is never taken off as yours was between six in -the afternoon and nine in the morning.” - -“Ah, but it is open to you to do good or bad. We could only do bad. -All day we were doing things which we did not understand, which could -not in any way concern us, which had nothing to do with what we had -been taught at school, had read in books or had heard from our fathers -and mothers. When he was angry the head of the firm used to say we -had better take care or a machine would supersede us in ten years -instead of twenty. We had been driven out of life into a corner in an -underground passage where everything was unnecessary that did not help -us to be quick at figures, or taking down letters from dictation, or -neat in dress and obedient to the slaves who were set over us. When we -were out of the office we could do nothing which unfitted us for it. -The head of the firm used to say that we were each ‘playing a part, -however humble, in the sublime machine of modern civilization, that not -one of us was unnecessary, and that we must no more complain or grow -restive than does the earth because it is one of the least elements in -this majestic universe.’ We continued to be neat when we were away from -the office, we were disobedient to everything and everybody else that -was not armed with the power of taking away our bread--to the old, the -poor, the children, the women, the ideas which we had never dreamed of, -and that came among us as a white blackbird comes in the winter to a -barbarous parish where keeper and gardener and farmer go out with their -guns and stalk it from hedge to hedge until, starved and conspicuous -and rather apart from its companions, it falls to their beastly shot -and is sold to one of the gentry who puts it into a glass case. - -“Sometimes on a Saturday or Sunday I broke away in a vague unrest, -and walked alone to the pretty places where my father and mother had -taken me as a little boy. Most of them I had not seen for five or six -years. My visits were often formal. I walked out and was glad to be -back to the lights of the street, the strong tea, the newspaper and the -novel. But one day I went farther than usual to a wood where we used -to go without interference and, after finding all the blackbirds’ and -thrushes’ and robins’ nests within reach, boil a kettle and have tea. -I had never in that wood seen any man or woman except my father and -mother; never heard a voice except theirs--my father perhaps reading -Wordsworth aloud--and the singing birds’ and the moorhens’ in the pond -at the edge; it used to shut out everything but what I had learned to -love most, sunshine and wind and flowers and their love. When I saw it -again I cried; I really could not help it. For a road had been made -alongside of it, and the builder’s workmen going to and fro had made -a dozen gaps in the hedge and trodden the wood backward and forward -and broken down the branches and made it noisome. Worse than all, the -field, the golden field where I used to lie among the buttercups and be -alone with the blue sky--where I first felt the largeness and dearness -and nearness of the blue sky as a child of eight and put up my hand in -my delight to draw it through the soft blue substance that seemed so -near--the field was enclosed, a chapel built; it was a cemetery for all -the unknown herd, strange to one another, strange to every one else, -that filled the new houses spreading over the land. - -“At first I was for running away at once. But the sight made me -faint-hearted and my legs dragged, and it was all I could do to get -home--I mean, to my lodgings. - -“However, I was quite different after that. I was ashamed of my ways, -and now spent all my spare time and money in going out into the country -as far as possible, and reading the old books and the new ones that I -could hear of in the same spirit. I lived for these things. It was now -that I knew my slavery. Everything reminded me of it. The return half -of my railway ticket to the country said plainly, ‘You have got to be -back at ---- not later than 10.39 p.m.’ Then I used to go a different -way back or even walk the whole way to avoid having this thing in my -pocket that proclaimed me a slave. - -“It was now that I first accepted the invitation of a relation who -lived on the east coast very near the sea. The sea had a sandy shore -bounded by a perpendicular sandy cliff, to the edge of which came rough -moorland. The sea washed the foot of the cliff at high tide and swept -the yellow sand clean twice a day, wiping away all footprints and -leaving a fresh arrangement of blue pebbles glistering in the bitter -wind. It was impossible to be more alone than on this sand, and I was -contented again. The sea brought back the feelings I had when I lay in -the buttercup field--the cemetery--and looked into the sky. Walking -over the moor the undulations of the land hid and revealed the sea in -an always unexpected way, and often as I turned suddenly I seemed to -see the blue sky extended so as to reach nearly to my feet and half-way -up it went small brown or white clouds like birds--like ships--in fact -they were ships sailing on a sea that mingled with the sky. It seemed -a beautiful life, where clouds could not help being finely spun or -carved, or pebbles help being delicious to eye and touch. But out of -the extremity of my happiness came my worst grief. I fell in love. I -fell in love with one of my cousins, a girl of seventeen. She never -professed to return my love, but she was a most true friend, and for -a time I was intoxicated with the delight; I now envy even the brief -moment of pain and misery that I had in those days. - -“She was clever and understanding so that I was always at my best -with her, and yet, too, she was as sweet as a child and strange as an -animal. The few moments of pain were when I saw her with the other -girls. When they were together, running on the sands or talking or -dancing they seemed all to be one, like the wind; and sometimes I -thought that like the wind they had no heart amongst them--except -mine that raced with the runners and sighed among the laughers. It -was lovely to see her with animals! with cows or horses, her implicit -motherhood going out to them in an animal kindness, a bluff tenderness -without thought. At times I looked carefully and solemnly into her -eyes until I was lost in a curious pleasure like that of walking in a -shadowy, still, cold place, a cathedral or wintry grove--she had the -largest of dark grey eyes; and she did not turn away or smile, but -looked fearlessly forward, careless and unashamed like a deep pool in -a wood unused to wayfarers. Then she seemed so much a child, and I -longed for the days (which I had never really had) when I could have -been as careless and bold and free as she was. No, I could never teach -those eyes and lips the ways of love: that was for some boy to do. And -I thought I will be content to love her and to have her friendliness. -I was old for my years, and my life without the influence of women -in office and lodgings, I thought, had made me unfit for her delicate -ways. I turned away and the sunny ships in the sea were mournful -because of my thoughts. But I could not wait. I told her my love. She -was not angry or indifferent. She did not reject it. She was afraid. -They sent her away to college. She overworked and overplayed, and they -have told me she is now a schoolmistress. I see her sad and firm with -folded hands. When I knew her she was tall and straight, with long -brown hair in two heavy plaits, a shining, rounded brow, dark-lashed, -grey eyes, and a smile of inexpressible sweetness in which I once or -twice surprised her, pleased with the happiness and beauty of her -thoughts and of Nature. - -“When I had lost her, or thought I had-- - - Not comforted to live - But that there is this jewel in the world - Which I may see again---- - -I resolved that I would not be a slave any more. For a few weeks I used -to fancy it was only by a chance I had lost her, and every now and then -as I mused over it I got heated and my thoughts raced forward as if in -the hope of overtaking and averting that very evil chance which had -already befallen, and had in fact caused the train of thought. - -“I saved every penny that I could from my salary. In six months I had -saved twenty pounds. Out of this I bought a new black suit, a pair of -boots and a hat, and gave them to my landlady and asked her to take -care of them until I returned, which might be at the end of October. It -was then April. I gave notice to my employers and left them. The next -day very early I left London, and walked all day and all night until -I reached the sea. There I bathed and ate a hearty meal, and walking -along the cliffs till I came to a small farmhouse I engaged a bedroom, -and there I slept and thought and slept undisturbed for twenty-four -hours. I was free. I was free to dream myself no longer one of the -mob-led mob. With care my money would last until mid-summer, even if I -did no work. - -“It was a warm, wet May, and by the end of the month there was a -plentiful crop of weeds, and I had no difficulty in getting work at -hoeing. Strawberry picking and cherry picking followed. I was very -slow and earned little, but it was now warm enough to sleep out, and -I earned my food. By the end of July, as I liked the work, I was as -useful with my hayrake as any of the women and better than most of the -odd hands. I wore my fingers raw at tying up barley and oats and, later -on, at feeding the threshing machine. But before the end of October the -weather drove me back to London, with ten shillings in my pocket. - -“I put on my new clothes and got as good a berth as my first one, and -in the hope of another spring and summer out of doors I passed the -winter cheerfully. To save more money I went to bed as soon as I got -back to my lodgings, and read myself to sleep. - -“In May a spell of fine weather drove me to give notice again, and I -walked as far as Maidstone the first day. My second summer was like my -first. I was already known at half-a-dozen farms. When they could not -give me work at once they gave me leave to fish in the three or four -ponds to be found on all the farms in the Weald of Kent, and I had -many a large, if not always savoury, meal of tench and eels. At the end -of the summer I had three pounds in my pocket, and little less by the -end of October. - -“The winter I passed as before. For five years I lived in this way. -Then, for the sake of going abroad on my savings, I worked for a whole -year at a desk, and spent four months along the Loire and down to -Bordeaux; from there I worked my passage to Newport. Since then I have -gone back to my old plan.” - -Here he paused and mused. I asked him if he still found it easy to get -work in London. - -“No, that’s it,” he replied; “my handwriting is worse and it is slow. -The first weeks in London seem to undo all the good of my summer -outing, especially as my salary is less than it used to be. They begin -to ask me if I am a married man when I apply for work. The November -rains remind me that I have rheumatism. It is my great fear that I may -need a doctor, and so spend my savings, and be unable to leave London -until field work is plentiful in June. But I have my freedom; I could, -if necessary, take an under-cowman’s place and live entirely on the -land. They begin to look at my hands when I apply for clerical work, -and I can’t wear gloves.” - -“And ten years hence?” - -“That is ten years too far ahead for me to look, though I am less -cheerful than I used to be. I realize that I belong to the suburbs -still. I belong to no class or race, and have no traditions. We of the -suburbs are a muddy, confused, hesitating mass, of small courage though -much endurance. As for myself, I am world-conscious, and hence suffer -unutterable loneliness. I know what bitterness it is to be lacking in -those strong tastes and impulses which, blinding men to what does not -concern them, enables them to live with a high heart. For example, I -have a sensitive palate and am glad of my food, yet whenever I taste -lamb--which I do when I can--my pleasure is spoilt by the sight of the -butcher carrying a lamb under his arm. There it is. I am sensitive on -all sides. Your true man would either forget the sight or he would be -moved to a crusade. I can do neither. - -“I am weary of seeing things, the outsides of things, for I see nothing -else. It makes me wretched to think what swallows are to many children -and poets and other men, while to me they are nothing but inimitable, -compact dark weights tumbling I do not know how through the translucent -air--nothing more, and yet I know they are something more. I apprehend -their weight, buoyancy and velocity as they really are, but I have no -vision. Then it is that I remember those words of Sir Thomas Browne’s-- - - “‘I am sure there is a common spirit that plays within us, yet - makes no part in us; and that it is the Spirit of God, the fire and - scintillation of that noble and mighty essence, which is the life and - radical heat of spirits.... This is that gentle heat that brooded on - the waters and in six days hatched the world; this is that irradiation - that dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of horror, fear, sorrow, - despair; and preserves the region of the mind in serenity. Whosoever - feels not the warm gale and gentle ventilation of this spirit (though - I feel his pulse) I dare not say he lives; for truly without this, to - me there is no heat under the tropic; nor any light, though I dwell in - the body of the sun.’ - -“I dare not say I live. And yet the cows, the well-fed, quiet cows, in -this fine soft weather stare enviously at me through the gate, though -they know nothing of death, and I know it must come, and that even -though often desired, when it comes it will be unwelcome----Yet they -stare enviously at me, I am sure. - -“I have no courage. I can at least endure. I can use my freedom to -become a slave again, and at least I know that I have lost nothing by -my way of living. Yes, I can endure, and if after my death I am asked -questions difficult to answer, I can ask one that is unanswerable -which I have many times asked myself--often in London, but not here. -Here I love my food and my work, my rest. My dreams are good. I am not -unkindly spoken to; I make no enemies. - -“But yet I cannot look forward--there is nothing ahead--just as I -cannot look back. My people have not built; they were not settled on -the earth; they did nothing; they were oil or grit in a great machine; -they took their food and shelter modestly and not ungratefully from -powers above that were neither kind nor cruel. I hope I do no less; I -wish I could do more. - -“Now again returns that old feeling of my childhood--I felt it when I -had left my cousin--I have felt it suddenly not only in London, but -on the top of the Downs and by the sea; the immense loneliness of -the world, as if the next moment I might be outside of all visible -things. You know how it is, on a still summer evening, so warm that -the ploughman and his wife have not sent their children to bed, and -they are playing, and their loud voices startle the thought of the -woods; my feeling is like that, space and quiet and my own littleness -stupendously exaggerated. I have wished I could lay down my thoughts -and desires and noises and stirrings and cease to trouble that great -peace. It was, perhaps, of this loneliness that the Psalmist spoke: ‘My -days are consumed like smoke.... I watch, and am as a sparrow alone -on the housetop.’ The world is wrong, but the night is fine; the dew -light and the moist air is full of the honeysuckle scent. I will smoke -another pipe of your tobacco and leave you for a while. I like to be -alone before I sleep.” - -The next I saw of him was when he was frying bacon and boiling beans -for our meal. “Forget my night thoughts,” he said, “and be thankful -for the white dry road and the blue sky. We are not so young but that -we must be glad it is summer and fine. As for me, the dry weather is -so sweet that I like the smell of elder flower and the haycart horses’ -dung and the dust that get into the throat of an evening. Good-bye.” - -He went away to wash at the pump, as the cattle spread out from the -milking-stalls into the field and filled it with their sweet breath and -the sound of their biting the thick grass. - -I saw him again a few years later. - -London was hot and dry, and would have been parched, cracked and -shrivelled had it been alive instead of dead. The masonry was so dry -that the eye wearied of it before the feet wearied of the pavement, -and both desired the rain that makes the city at one with Nature. -The plane-trees were like so many captives along the streets, -shackled to the flagstones, pelted with dust, humiliated, all their -rusticity ravished though not forgotten. The very sky, lofty, blue, -white-clouded, was parched, the blue and the white being soiled by a -hot, yellowish-grey scum that harmonizes with gritty pavements and -stark towers and spires. The fairest thing to be seen--away from the -river--was the intense young green of the grass-blades trying to grow -up through the gratings which surround the trees of the streets. The -grass was a prophet muttering wild, ambiguous things, and since his -voice was very small and came from underground, it was hard to hear -him, even without understanding. Thousands tread down the grass, so -that except for a few hours at night it can never emerge from the -grating. - -Some vast machinery plunged and thundered behind the walls, but though -they trembled and grew hot, it burst not through. Even so the multitude -in the streets, of men and horses and machines and carriages of all -kinds, roared and moved swiftly and continuously, encaged within walls -that are invisible; and they also never burst through. Both are free -to do what they are told. All of the crowd seem a little more securely -imprisoned than him who watches, because he is aware of his bars; but -they move on, or seem to do, on and on, round and round, as thoughtless -as the belt of an engine. - -There was not one face I knew; not one smiled; not one relaxed or -contracted with a thought, an emotion, a fancy; but all were clear, -hard, and fixed in a vice, so that though they were infinite in their -variety--no two eyebrows set the same way, no two mouths in the same -relation to the eyes--the variety seemed the product of a senseless -ingenuity and immense leisure, as of a sublime philatelist. Hardly -one spoke; only the women moved from left to right instead of straight -on, and their voices were inaudible when their lips moved. The roar in -which all played a part developed into a kind of silence which not any -one of these millions could break; the sea does not absorb the little -rivers more completely than this silence the voices of men and women, -than this solitude their personalities. Now and then a face changed, an -eyebrow was cocked, or a mouth fell; but it meant less to me than the -flutter as of a bird when drop by drop the rain drips from the beeches -and gives a plash and a trembling to one leaf and then another in the -undergrowth. There is a more than human force in the movement of the -multitude, more than the sum of all the forces in the arched necks, the -grinding chest muscles, and the firm feet of the horses, the grace of -the bright women, the persistency of the tall men and thick men. They -cannot stop. They look stupid or callous or blank or even cruel. They -are going about another’s business; they conceal their own, hiding it -so that they forget (as a drunkard forgets where he has hidden his -gold) where they have hidden it, hiding their souls under something -stiffer and darker than the clothing of their bodies. It is hard to -understand why they do not sometimes stop one another, to demand where -the soul and the soul’s business is hid, to snatch away the masks. -It was intolerable that they were not known to me, that I was not -known to them, that we should go on like waves of the sea, obeying -whatever moon it is that sends us thundering on the unscalable shores -of night and day. Such force, such determination as moved us along the -burning streets might scale Olympus. Where was he who could lead the -storming-party? - -Between a pack of cabs and a pack of ’buses there was a quiet space of -fifty yards in length; for a little while it seemed that the waves were -refusing their task. There was not one black coat, not one horse, not -one brightly loaded ’bus: no haste. It was a procession. - -In front marched a tall son of man, with white black-bearded face, long -black hair, more like plumage than hair in its abundance and form, -and he wore no hat. He walked straight as a soldier, but with long, -slow steps, and his head hung so that his bare breast supported it, -for he had no coat and his shirt was half open. He had knee-breeches, -bare dark legs, and shoes on his feet. His hands were behind his back, -as if he were handcuffed. Two men walked beside him in other men’s -black clothes and black hats worn grey--two unnoticeable human beings, -snub-nosed, with small, rough beards, dull eyes, shuffling gait. Two -others followed them close, each carrying one of the poles of a small -white banner inscribed with the words: “The Unemployed.” These also -were unnoticeable, thin, grey, bent, but young, their clothes, their -faces, their hair, their hats almost the same dry colour as the road. -It was impossible to say what their features were, because their -heads hung down and their hats were drawn well on to their heads, and -their eyes were unseen. They could not keep step, nor walk side by -side, and their banner was always shaky and always awry. Next, in no -order, came three others of the same kind, shambling like the rest, of -middle height, moderately ill-dressed, moderately thin, their hands -in their pockets. In one of these I recognized the man who was born -in Caermarthenshire. A cart came close behind, drawn by a fat grey -donkey who needed no driving, for the one who rode in the cart had his -back to the shafts, and, leaning forward on a tub into which money was -expected to be thrown, he appeared to be talking to those who trailed -at the back, for he waved an arm and wagged his yellow beard. He was -fat, and dressed in a silk hat, frock-coat and striped trousers, almost -too ancient to be ridiculous had they not kept company with a jaunty -pair of yellow boots. He was midway between a seaside minstrel and a -minister, had not one gesture destroyed the resemblance by showing -that he wore no socks. Round about his coat also were the words: “The -Unemployed,” repeated or crudely varied. Those whom he addressed were -the fifteen or twenty who completed the procession but seemed not to -listen. They were all bent, young or middle-aged men, fair-haired, with -unintentional beards, road-coloured skins and slightly darker clothes. -Many wore overcoats, the collars turned up, and some had nothing under -them except a shirt, and one not that. All with hands in pockets, one -carrying a pipe, all silent and ashamed, struggled onward with bent -knees. No two walked together; there was no approach to a row or a -column in their arrangement, nor was there any pleasing irregularity -as of plants grown from chance-scattered seed; by no means could they -have been made to express more feebleness, more unbrotherliness, more -lack of principle, purpose or control. Each had the look of the meanest -thief between his captors. Two blue, benevolent, impersonal policemen, -large men, occasionally lifted their arms as if to help forward the -contemptible procession; sometimes, with a quick motion of the hand, -they caused the straggling rear to double their pace for a few yards -by running with knees yet more bent and coat-tails flapping and hands -still deep in pockets--only for a few yards, for their walking pace was -their best, all having the same strength, the same middle height, the -same stride, though no two could be seen keeping step. - -The traffic thickened, and amidst the horses that nodded and trampled -and the motor-cars that fumed and fretted the procession was closed up -into a grey block behind the donkey-cart. On one side of the donkey -was the black-bearded man, his right arm now resting on the animal’s -neck; on the other side the policemen; in front the standard-bearers -hung down their heads and held up their poles. Often the only remnant -visible was the raven crest of the leader. - -The multitude on the pavement continued to press straight onward, or -to flit in and out of coloured shops. None looked at the standard, -the dark man and his cloudy followers, except a few of the smallest -newspaper boys who had a few spare minutes and rushed over to march -with them in the hope of music or a speech or a conflict. The straight -flower-girl flashed her eyes as she stood on the kerb, her left arm -curving with divine grace round the shawl-hidden child at her bosom, -her left hand thrust out full of roses. The tender, well-dressed women -leaning on the arms of their men smiled faintly, a little pitiful, but -gladly conscious of their own security and pleasantness. Men with the -historic sense glanced and noted the fact that there was a procession. -One man, standing on the kerb, took a sovereign from his pocket, -looked at it and then at the unemployed, made a little gesture of -utter bewilderment, and dropping the coin down into the drain below, -continued to watch. Comfortable clerks and others of the servile -realized that here were the unemployed about whom the newspapers -had said this and that--(“a pressing question”--“a very complicated -question not to be decided in a hurry”--“it is receiving the attention -of some of the best intellects of the time”--“our special reporter is -making a full investigation”--“who are the genuine and who are the -impostors?”--“connected with Socialist intrigues”)--and they repeated -the word “Socialism” and smiled at the bare legs of the son of man -and the yellow boots of the orator. Next day they would smile again -with pride that they had seen the procession which ended in feeble, -violent speeches against the Army and the Rich, in four arrests and an -imprisonment. For they spoke in voices gentle with hunger. They were -angry and uttered curses. One waved an arm against a palace, an arm -that could scarcely hold out a revolver even were all the kings sitting -in a row to tempt him. In the crowd and disturbance the leader fell and -fainted. They propped him in their arms and cleared a space about him. -“Death of Nelson,” suggested an onlooker, laughing, as he observed the -attitude and the knee-breeches. “If he had only a crown of thorns ...” -said another, pleased by the group. “Wants a bit of skilly and real -hard work,” said a third. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -A RAILWAY CARRIAGE--SURREY--SUSSEX - - -I left London as quickly as possible. The railway carriage was -nearly full of men reading the same newspapers under three or four -different names, when a little grizzled and spectacled man of middle -age entered--a printer, perhaps--with a twisted face and simple -and puzzled expression that probably earned him many a laugh from -street-corner boys. As he sat down he recognized a sailor, a tall, -ponderous, kind-faced man made in three distinct storeys, who supported -his enormous red hands upon knees each fit to have been the mould of a -hero’s helmet. - -“Well, I never did, and how are you, Harry?” - -They looked at one another kindly but with a question piercing through -the kindness and an effort to divine the unknowable without betraying -curiosity. The kindness did, in fact, melt away the almost physical -obstacle of twenty years spent apart and in ignorance of one another. - -“When did you leave the old place?” said the sailor. - -“Soon after you did yourself, Harry; just after the shipwreck of the -_Wild Swan_; twenty-one, twenty-two--yes, twenty-two years ago.” - -“Is it so long? I could have sworn you had that beard when I saw you -last,” and the sailor looked at him in a way that showed he had already -bridged the twenty-two years and knew the man. - -“Yes, twenty-two years.” - -“And do you ever go back to the old place? How’s Charlie Nash, and -young Woolford, and the shepherd?” - -“Let me see----” - -“But how is Maggie Looker?” broke in the sailor upon a genial answer in -the bud. - -“Oh, didn’t you know? She took ill very soon after you went away, and -then they thought she was all right again; but they could not quite get -rid of the cough, and it got bad in the winter, and all through the -spring it was worse.” - -“And so she died in the summer.” - -“So she did.” - -“Oh, Christ! but what times we had.” - -And then, in reminiscences fast growing gay--the mere triumph of -memory, the being able to add each to the other’s store, was a -satisfaction--they told the story of a pretty country girl whom they -had quarrelled over until she grew too proud for both; how heavy was -her hair; how she could run, and nobody was like her for finding a -wasps’-nest. Her boldness and carelessness filled them with envy still. - -“I reckon we old ones would call her a tomboy now,” said the sailor. - -“I should say we would.” - -“Now, I wonder what sort of a wife she would have made?” - -“Hum, I don’t know....” - -“Do you remember that day her and you and me got lost in the forest?” - -“Yes, and we were there all night, and I got a hiding for it.” - -“Not Maggie.” - -“Not poor Maggie.” - -“And when we couldn’t see our way any more we lifted her up into that -old beech where the green woodpecker’s nest was.” - -“Yes, and you took off your coat and breeches to cover her up.” - -“And so did you, though I reckon one would have been enough now I come -to think of it.” - -“I don’t know about that. But how we did have to keep on the move all -night to keep warm.” - -“And dared not go very far for fear of losing the tree.” - -“And in the morning I wondered what we should do about getting back our -clothes.” - -“You wanted me to go because my shirt hadn’t any holes in it.” - -“But we both went together.” - -“And, before we had made up our minds which should go first and call, -up she starts. Lord, how she did laugh!” - -“Ay, she did.” - -“And says, ‘Now, that’s all my eye and Betty Martin, boys’; and so did -we laugh, and I never felt a bit silly either. She was a good sort of -girl, she was. Man and woman, I never met the likes of her, never heard -tell of the equal of her,” said the sailor musingly. - -“Married, Harry?” - -“No, nor likely to be, I don’t think. And yourself?” - -“Well, I was.... I married Maggie.... It was after the first baby....” - -A small boy in a corner could not get on with his novelette: he stared -open-mouthed and open-eyed, now and then unconsciously imitating -their faces; or he would correct this mere wonderment and become shy -and uncomfortable at the frank ways of these men talking aloud in -a crowded carriage, and utterly regardless of others, about private -matters. - -A trim shop assistant pretended to read about the cricket, but -listened, and could not conceal his cold contempt for men so sunken as -to give themselves away like this. - -A dark, thin, genial, pale-faced puritan clerk looked pitifully--with -some twinkles of superiority that asked for recognition from his -fellow-passengers--these _children_, for as such he regarded them, and -would not wholly condemn. - -Others occasionally jerked out a glance or rolled a leaderless eye -or rustled a newspaper without losing the dense veil over their -individuality that made them tombs, monuments, not men. - -One sat gentle, kindly, stupidly envying these two their spirited free -talk, their gestures, the hearty draughts of life which they seemed to -have taken. - -All were botanists who had heard and spoken words but had no sense -of the beauty and life of the flower because fate had refused, or -education destroyed, the gift of liberty and of joy. - - -SURREY. - -Then I saw a huge silence of meadows, of woods, and beyond these, of -hills that raised two breasts of empurpled turf into the sky; and, -above the hills, one mountain of cloud that beamed as it reposed in the -blue as in a sea. The white cloud buried London with a _requiescat in -pace_. - -I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London as she absorbed -the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin the winding-sheet and her -worms to fill in the grave, and her grass to cover it pitifully up, -adding flowers--as an unknown hand added them to the grave of Nero. -I like to see the preliminaries of this toil where Nature tries her -hand at mossing the factory roof, rusting the deserted railway metals, -sowing grass over the deserted platforms and flowers of rose-bay on -ruinous hearths and walls. It is a real satisfaction to see the long -narrowing wedge of irises that runs alongside and between the rails -of the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway almost into the heart of -London. And there are many kinds of weather when the air is full of -voices prophesying desolation. The outer suburbs have almost a moorland -fascination when fog lies thick and orange-coloured over their huge -flat wastes of grass, expectant of the builder, but does not quite -conceal the stark outlines of a traction engine, some procumbent -timber, a bonfire and frantic figures darting about it, and aërial -scaffolding far away. Other fields, yet unravished but menaced, the -fog restores to a primeval state. And what a wild noise the wind makes -in the telegraph wires as in wintry heather and gorse! When the waste -open spaces give way to dense streets there is a common here and a -lawn there, where the poplar leaves, if it be November, lie taintless -on the grass, and the starlings talk sweet and shrill and cold in the -branches, and nobody cares to deviate from the asphalte path to the -dewy grass: the houses beyond the green mass themselves gigantic, -remote, dim, and the pulse of London beats low and inaudible, as if -she feared the irresistible enemy that is drawing its lines invisibly -and silently about her on every side. If a breeze arises it makes that -sound of the dry curled leaves chafing along the pavement; at night -they seem spies in the unguarded by-ways. But there are also days--and -spring and summer days, too--when a quiet horror thicks and stills the -air outside London. - -The ridges of trees high in the mist are very grim. The isolated trees -stand cloaked in conspiracies here and there about the fields. The -houses, even whole villages, are translated into terms of unreality as -if they were carved in air and could not be touched; they are empty -and mournful as skulls or churches. There is no life visible; for the -ploughmen and the cattle are figures of light dream. All is soft and -grey. The land has drunken the opiate mist and is passing slowly and -unreluctantly into perpetual sleep. Trees and houses are drowsed beyond -awakening or farewell. The mind also is infected, and gains a sort of -ease from the thought that an eternal and universal rest is at hand -without any cry or any pain. - - -SUSSEX. - -The road skirts the marshland, the stream and the town, and goes -through a gap in the Downs towards another range and more elms -and farms at its feet. Stately walks the carter’s boy with his -perpendicular brass-bound whip, alongside four waggon-horses, while the -carter rides. It is a pleasant thing to see them going to their work in -the early gold of the morning, fresh, silent, their horses jingling, -down the firm road. If they were leading their team to yoke them to the -chariot of the sun they could not be more noble. They are the first men -I have seen this morning, and truly they create for a little while the -illusion that they are going to guide the world and that all will be -well in the golden freshness under the blue. - -The road now divides to go round the base of the Downs, but a farm -track sets out to climb them. There, at the corner, is a church, on -the very edge of the flat vale and its elms and ashes in the midst of -meadows; a plain towered church, but with a rough churchyard, half -graveyard and half orchard, its grass and parsley and nettle uncut -under the knotty apple trees, splashed with silver and dull gold-green, -dotted by silver buds among yellow-lichened branches that are matted -densely as a magpie’s nest. The dust from the high road powders the -nettles and perfects the arresting melancholy of the desolation, so -quiet, so austere, and withal as airy as a dream remembered. But above -are the Downs, green and sweet with uplifting grass, and beyond them -the sea, darkly gleaming under lustrous white cliffs and abrupt ledges -of turf, in the south; in the south-east a procession of tufted trees -going uphill in single file; in the south-west the dazzling slate -roofs of a distant town, two straight sea walls and two steamers and -their white wakes; northward the most beautiful minor range in all the -downland, isolated by a river valley at the edge of which it ends in a -gulf of white quarry, while on the other side it heaves and flows down -almost to the plain, but rises again into a lesser hill with woods, -and then slowly subsides. Within a few square miles it collects every -beauty of the chalk hill; its central height is a dome of flawless -grass only too tender to be majestic; and that is supported by lesser -rounds and wavering lines of approach in concavity and convexity, -playgrounds for the godlike shadows and lights, that prolong the -descent of the spent wave of earth into the plain. - -An uncertain path keeps to the highest ridge. The sides of the Downs -are invaded by long stream-like gorse-sided coombes, of which the -narrow floor is palest green grass. The highest points command much of -earth, all of heaven. They are treeless, but occasionally the turf is -over-arched by the hoops of a brier thicket, the new foliage pierced by -upright dead grey grass. They are the haunt of the swift, the home of -wheatear and lark and of whatsoever in the mind survives or is born in -this pure kingdom of grass and sky. Ahead, they dip to a river and rise -again, their sweep notched by a white road. - -At the inland end of this river valley is an antique red-tiled -large village or small town, a perfect group of human dwellings, as -inevitable as the Downs, dominated by a mound and on it a windmill -in ruin; mothered by a church at the river’s edge. Under the sign -of “Ye Olde ----” is a room newly wainscoted in shining matchboard. -Its altar--its little red sideboard--is symmetrically decorated by -tiers and rows of lemonade, cherry cider and ginger ale bottles, -many-coloured, and in the midst of these two syphons of soda-water. The -doorways and windows are draped in white muslin, the hearth filled by a -crinkled blue paper fan; the mantelpiece supports a dozen small vases. -The oilcloth is new and odorous and bright. There are pink geraniums in -salmon-coloured bowls on the table; a canary in a suspended cage; and -on the walls a picture of a girl teasing a dog with a toy mouse. - -At the cross-roads is a group of old slated white farm buildings and a -tiled farmhouse of brick and flint; and above, at the top of a slope of -down, is a grey spire and two orange roofs of cottages amidst a round -cluster of trees; the sheep graze and their bells tittle-tattle. The -seaward-going road alongside but above the river dips then under steep -banks of blackthorn and parsley to a village of flint where another -spire rises out of the old roofs of a farmhouse and its family of barns -and lodges; a nightingale sings at hand, a wheeling pewit cries and -gleams over the blue ripples of the river. Across the water a shallow -scoop has been carved by Nature out of the side of the down; it is -traversed by two diverging paths which alone are green, for the rest -of the surface is of gorse and, full in the face of the sun, forms a -mossy cirrus over the mist of its own warm shade. The down beside the -road is now all cowslips among its scattered bramble and thorn, until -it is cloven by a tributary bay, a quarter of a mile in length, marshy -at first and half-filled by elms and willows, but at its higher end -occupied, behind ash trees and an orchard, by a farmhouse, a circular -domed building and a barn, all having roofs of ochre tile, except the -thatched barn, and grey stained walls; a straight road goes to the -house along the edge of the marsh and elms. Grey plover whistle singly -on the wet borders of the stream or make a concerted whimper of two or -three. - -A little beyond is a larger bay of the same kind, bordered by a long -curving road entirely lined by elms dividing it from the broad meadow -that has an elm rookery in a corner under the steep clean slope of -down; at the end is a church singing to itself with all its bells in -the solitude. And the hedges are full of strong young thrushes which -there is no one to frighten--is there any prettier dress than the -speckled feathers of their breasts and the cape of brown over their -shoulders and backs, as they stir the dew in May? - -Then the valley opens wide and the river doubles in gleaming azure -about a narrow spit of grass, in sight of a sharp white fall of chalk, -into the lucid quiet sea. At this bend a company of sycamores girds -and is one with a group of tiled and thatched and gabled buildings, -of ochre, brown and rose. The road crosses the river and a path leads -near the sea, between mustard flower, lucerne, beans, corn and grass, -in flint-walled fields, to a church and farm of flint, overtopped by -embowering chestnuts, ilex and the elms of rooks; and below there -is another valley and river, a green pathless marsh, at whose edge -five noisy belching chimneys stand out of a white pit. The path, over -turf, rises to the Downs, passing a lonely flint barn with rich dark -roof and a few sycamores for mates. This is the cornland, and the -corn bunting sings solitary and monotonous, and the linnets twitter -still in flocks. Above and around, the furzy coombes are the home of -blackbirds that have a wilder song in this world of infinite corn -below and grass above, and but one house. Violets and purple orchis -(and its white buds) cloud the turf. On the other side the Downs sink -to gently clustered and mounded woods and yet more corn surrounding a -thatched flint barn, a granary and cart-lodge, and, again, a farm under -sycamores. - -The soft-ribbed grey sky of after-sunset is slowly moving, kindly and -promising rain. The air is still, the road dusty, but the hedges tender -green, and the grasshopper lark sings under the wild parsley of the -roadside and the sedge-warbler in the sallows. - -Just beyond is the town by the beautiful domed hill, a town of steep -lanes and wallflowers on old walls and such a date as 1577 modestly -inscribed on a doorway; its long old street, sternly adapted to the -needs of shopkeepers and gentry, looks only old-fashioned, its age -being as much repressed as if it were a kind of sin or originality. -This is that spirit which would quarrel with the stars for not being -in straight lines like print, the spirit of one who, having been -disturbed while shaving by the sight of a favourite cat in the midst -of her lovers and behaving after the manner of her kind, gives orders -during the long mid-day meal that she shall be drowned forthwith, -or--no--to-morrow, which is Monday. This is that spirit which says-- - - Nature is never stiff, and none recognizes this fact better than - ---- & Son, and their now well-known and natural-looking rockeries - have reclaimed many a dreary bit of landscape. At ---- they showed - me photographs of various country seats where the natural-looking - scenery has been evolved by their artistic taste and ingenuity out of - the most ordinary efforts of Nature. Thus a dull old mill-stream has, - with the aid of rockeries and appropriate vegetation, been converted - into a wonderfully picturesque spot, an ordinary brook was transformed - into a lovely woodland scene, with ferns, mosses, and lichens growing - among the rockeries, and the shores of an uninteresting lake became - undulating banks of beauty by the same means; while the beautiful - rockeries in ---- Park were also the work of this firm. ---- & Son - have other ways, too, of beautifying gardens and grounds by the - judicious use of balustrades, fountains, quaint figures, etc., made - of “---- terra-cotta,” or artificial stone, which is far more durable - than real stone or marble, not so costly, and impervious to frost and - all weathers, although it takes the vegetation in the same way, and - after a year’s exposure it can scarcely be distinguished from antique - stone. In it the great _spécialité_ here just now is “sundials,” the - latest craze; for without a sundial no ancient or up-to-date garden is - considered complete. - -Nevertheless the town smells heartily of cattle, sheep, and malt; a -rookery and white orchard confront the railway station, and in the -midst of the streets the long grass is rough and wet and full of -jonquils round ancient masonry: seen from a height the town shares the -sunlight equally with massy foliage and finds its place as a part of -Nature, and the peregrine takes it in its sweep. - -The turtle-doves have come and the oaks are budding bronze in the -Weald. The steep roadside banks are cloaked in grass, violet, and -primrose still, and robin-run-in-the-hedge and stitchwort and cuckoo -flowers, and the white-throats talk in the hazel copses. A brooklet -runs in a hollow that would almost hold the Thames, and crossing the -road fills a rushy mill-pond deep below, and makes a field all golden -and shining with marigold. Just beyond, a gnarled lime avenue leads to -a grey many-windowed house of stone within a stately park. Opposite the -gate an old woman sits on the grass, her feet in the dust at the edge -of the road; motor-cars sprinkle her and turn her black to drab; she -sits by the wayside eternally, expecting nothing. - -Turn out of this main road, and by-ways that tempt neither cyclists -nor motorists go almost as straight. Here is no famous house, not a -single inn or church, but only the unspoilt Weald, and far away, a long -viaduct that carries noiseless trains against the sky above hollow -meadows. Bluebell, primrose, anemone--anemone, primrose, bluebell--star -and cloud the lush banks and the roots of the blackthorns, hazels and -maples of the hedge. A stream washes the roots of many oaks, and flows -past flat fields of dusky grass, cuckoo flower and marigold,--black -pines at the verge. The light smoke of a roadside fire ascends into -the new leaves of the hazels where two tramps are drying their clothes. -Many oaks are down, and lie pale and gleaming like mammoth bones among -the bluebells in plantations roughened by old flint pits. - -The faggots of oak tops and cords of twisted timber are being made up; -the woodmen light a fire and the chips fly from the axes. It is only to -these men that I am a stranger as I walk through the land. At first I -admire the hardihood and simplicity of their necessary toil among the -oaks, but they lift their dark eyes, and then--it is as strange as when -I pass a white embowered house, and the road is muffled with straw, -and I hear by chance that some one unknown is dying behind that open -window through which goes the thrush’s song and the children’s homeward -chatter. Neither townsman or countryman, I cannot know them. The -countryman knows their trades and their speech, and is of their kind; -the townsman’s curiosity wins him a greeting. But in May at least I am -content, in the steep little valley made by a tributary of the Medway, -its sides wooded with oak and the flowers glad of the sun among the -lately cleared undergrowth, and the cuckoo now in this oak and now in -that, and the turtle-doves whose voices, in the soft lulls after rain, -make the earth seem to lie out sleek in the sun, stretching itself to -purr with eyes closed. The cuckoo is gone before we know what his cry -is to tell us or to remind us of. - -There are few things as pleasant as the thunder and lightning of May -that comes in the late afternoon, when the air is as solid as the earth -with stiff grey rain for an hour. There is no motion anywhere save of -this perpendicular river, of the swaying rain-hit bough and quivering -leaf. But through it all the thrushes sing, and jolly as their voices -are the roars and echoes of the busy thunder quarrying the cliffs of -heaven. And then the pleasure of being so wet that you may walk through -streams and push through thickets and be none the wetter for it. - -Before it is full night the light of the young moon falls for a moment -out of a troubled but silent sky upon the young corn, and the tranquil -bells are calling over the woods. - -Then in the early morning the air is still and warm, but so moist that -there is a soul of coolness in the heat, and never before were the -leaves of the sorrel and wood sanicle and woodruff, and the grey-green -foliage and pallid yellow flowers of the large celandine, so fair. -The sudden wren’s song is shrewd and sweet and banishes heaviness. -The huge chestnut tree is flowering and full of bees. The parsley -towers delicately in bloom. The beech boughs are encased in gliding -crystal. The nettles, the millions of nettles in a bed, begin to smell -of summer. In the calm and sweet air the turtle-doves murmur and the -blackbirds sing--as if time were no more--over the mere. - -The roads, nearly dry again, are now at their best, cool and yet -luminous, and at their edges coloured rosy or golden brown by the -sheddings of the beeches, those gloves out of which the leaves have -forced their way, pinched and crumpled by the confinement. At the bend -of a broad road descending under beeches these parallel lines of ruddy -chaff give to two or three days in the year a special and exquisite -loveliness, if the weather be alternately wet and bright and the long -white roads and virgin beeches are a temptation. What quests they -propose! They take us away to the thin air of the future or to the -underworld of the past. This one takes us to the old English sweetness -and robustness of an estate of large meadows, sound oak trees not too -close together, and a noble house within an oak-paled park. A poet -and a man lives there, one who recalls those other poets--they are -not many--who please us over the gulf of time almost as much by the -personal vigour and courage which we know to have been theirs or is -suggested by their work, men like Chaucer, Sidney, Ben Jonson, Drayton, -Byron, William Morris, and among the living ---- and ---- and ----. -I think we should miss their poems more than some greater men’s if -they were destroyed. They stand for their time more clearly than the -greatest. For example, Chaucer’s language, ideas and temper make it -impossible for us to read his work, no matter in how remote a study -or garden, shut out from time and change, without feeling that he and -all those who rode, and talked and were young with him are skeletons -or less, though Catullus or Milton may be read with no such feeling. -Chaucer seems to remind us of what once we were. His seems a golden -age. He wrote before Villon had inaugurated modern literature with the -cry-- - - _Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?_ - -before men appear to us to have learned how immense is the world and -time. But we, looking back, with the help of this knowledge, see in -the work of this man who filled a little nook of time and space with -gaiety, something apart from us, an England, a happy island which his -verses made. His gaiety bathes the land in the light of a golden age -and the freshness of all the May days we can never recover. He “led a -lusty life in May”: “in his lust present was all his thought.” And the -gaiety is no less in the sorrowful passages than in the joyful; when, -for example, he compares the subjection of the fierce, proud Troilus to -love, with the whipping of a spirited horse; when he uses the apparent -commonplace about age creeping in “always as still as stone” upon fresh -youth; when he exclaims to the false Jason-- - - Have at thee, Jason! now thy horne is blowe; - -or cries at the fate of Ugolino’s children-- - - Allas, Fortune! it was greet crueltee - Swiche briddes for to putte in swich a cage! - -Even in Griselda’s piteous cry-- - - O tendre, O deere, O yonge children myne, - -there is an intimation that in those words her sorrow is being spent -and that, though it will be renewed, it will be broken up by joyfulness -many times before her death. For, as Chaucer’s laughter is assuredly -never completed by a sigh, so there is something hearty in his tears -that hints of laughter before and after. His was a sharp surprising -sorrow that came when he was forced to see the suffering of lovely -humanity. He is all gaiety; but it has two moods. Sorrow never changes -him more than shadow changes a merry brook. In both moods he seems to -speak of a day when men had not only not so far outstripped the lark -and nightingale as we have done, but had moments when their joy was -equal to the lark’s above the grey dew of May dawns. And thus, if we -only had to thank Chaucer for the gaiety which is left behind in his -poems, as the straw of a long-past harvest clings to the thorns of a -narrow lane, we could never be thankful enough. - -I feel that Chaucer was the equal of those of whom he wrote, as Homer -was the equal of Achilles and Odysseus, just as Byron was the peer of -the noblest of the Doges and of the ruined Emperor whom he addressed -as-- - - Vain froward child of Empire! say - Are all thy playthings snatched away? - -Byron is one of the few poets whose life it was ever necessary to -write. His acts were representative; from his Harrow meditations on -a tomb to his death on the superb pedestal of Missolonghi, they are -symbolic. His life explains nearly everything in his poetry. The life -and the poetry together make an incomparable whole. Most lives of -poets stand to their work as a block of unhewn marble stands to the -statue finished and unveiled; if the marble is not as much forgotten -as was Pygmalion’s when Galatea breathed and sighed. Byron’s poetry -without his life is not finished; but with it, it is like a statue -by Michael Angelo or Rodin that is actually seen to grow out of the -material. He was a man before he was a poet. Other poets may once have -been men; they are not so now. We read their lives after their poetry -and we forget them. It is by their poetry that they survive--blithe -or pathetic or glorious, but dim, ghosts who are become a part of -the silence of libraries and lovers’ hearts. They are dead but for -the mind that enjoys and the voice that utters their verse. I had -not the smallest curiosity about Mr. Swinburne when he was alive and -visible. When I think of him, I think of Rosamund speaking to Eleanor -or Tristram to Isoud; he has given up his life to them. But with Byron -it is different. If all record of him could be destroyed, more than -half of him would be lost. For I think that it is upon the life and the -portraits and the echoes that are still reverberating in Europe, that -we found our belief that he is a great man. Without them he would be -an interesting rhetorician, perhaps little more. There are finer poems -than his “Mazeppa,” but the poet is the equal of that wild lover and of -the great King who slept while the tale was told. - -And Shelley, too, is an immortal sentiment. Men may forget to -repeat his verses; they can never be as if Shelley had never been. -He is present wherever love and rapture are. He is a part of all -high-spirited and pure audacity of the intellect and imagination, of -all clean-handed rebellion, of all infinite endeavour and hope. The -remembered splendour of his face is more to us than Parliaments; one -strophe of his odes is more nourishing than a rich man’s gold.... - -Under those oaks in May I could wish to see these men walking together, -to see their gestures and brave ways. It is the poet there who all but -creates them for me. But only one can I fairly see because I have seen -him alive and speaking. Others have sent up their branches higher among -the stars and plunged their roots deeper among the rocks and waters. -But he and Chaucer and Jonson and Byron have obviously much plain -humanity in their composition. They have a brawn and friendliness not -necessarily connected with poetry. We use no ceremony--as we do with -some other poets--with Morris when we read-- - - The days have slain the days, and the seasons have gone by, - And brought me the summer again; and here on the grass I lie, - As erst I lay and was glad ere I meddled with right and with wrong. - -Or the end of “Thunder in the Garden”-- - - Then we turned from the blossoms, and cold were they grown: - In the trees the wind westering moved; - Till over the threshold back fluttered her gown, - And in the dark house was I loved. - -There is a humanity of this world and moment in Morris’s feeling for -Nature with which no other poet’s except Whitman’s can be compared. -Except in the greatest--the unaccomplished things--in “Leaves of Grass” -there is no earth-feeling in the literature of our language so majestic -and yet so tender as in “The Message of the March Wind.” With him -poetry was not, as it has tended more and more to be in recent times, -a matter as exclusive as a caste. He was not half-angel or half-bird, -but a man on close terms with life and toil, with the actual, troublous -life of every day, with toil of the hands and brain together; in short, -a many-sided citizen. He was one whom Skarphedin the son of Njal of -Bergthorsknoll would not have disdained, and when he spoke he seemed -indignant at the feebleness of words, one that should have used a sword -and might have lamented with the still later poet-- - - The Spirit stands and looks on infamy, - And unashamed the faces of the pit - Snarl at their enemy; - Finding him wield no insupportable light, - And no whirled edge of blaze to hit - Backward their impudence, and hammer them to flight; - Although ready is he, - Wearing the same righteous steel - Upon his limbs, helmed as he was then - When he made olden war; - Yet cannot now with foulness fiercely deal. - There is no indignation among men, - The Spirit has no scimitar - Wilt thou not come again, thou godly sword, - Into the Spirit’s hands? - That he may be a captain of the Lord - Again, and mow out of our lands - The crop of wicked men.... - O for that anger in the hands - Of Spirit! To us, O righteous sword, - Come thou and clear our lands, - O fire, O indignation of the Lord![2] - -[2] From _Poems and Interludes_, by Lascelles Abercrombie. - -Bitter it is to think of that talk and laughter of shadows on the long -lawns under those oaks; for though their shadows are even yet better -than other men’s bone or blood, never yet did dead man lift up a hand -to strike a blow or lay a brick. In a churchyard behind I saw the -tombstone of one Robert Page, born in the year 1792 here in Sussex, and -dead in 1822--not in the Bay of Spezzia but in Sussex. He scared the -crows, ploughed the clay, fought at Waterloo and lost an arm there, -was well pleased with George the Fourth, and hoed the corn until he -was dead. That is plain sense, and I wish I could write the life of -this exact contemporary of Shelley. That is quite probably his great -granddaughter, black-haired, of ruddy complexion, full lips, large -white teeth, black speechless eyes, dressed in a white print dress and -stooping in the fresh wind to take clean white linen out of a basket, -and then rising straight as a hazel wand, on tiptoe, her head held back -and slightly on one side while she pegs the clothes to the line and -praises the weather to a passer-by. She is seventeen, and of such is -the kingdom of earth. - -Now at the coming on of night the wind has carried away all the noises -of the world. The lucid air under the hazels of the lane is dark as if -with dream, and the roadway leads glimmering straight on to a crystal -planet low in the purple of the west. I cannot hear my footsteps, so -full charged is the silence. I am no more in this tranquillity than -one of the trees. The way seems paved that some fair spirit may pass -down in perfect beauty and bliss and ease. The leaves will hail it and -the blue sky lean down to bless, and the planet lend its beams for a -path. Suddenly, the name of Mary is called by some one invisible. Mary! -For a little while the cry is repeated more loudly but always sweetly; -then the caller is entranced by the name, by the sound of her own voice -and the silence into which it falls as into a well, and it grows less -and less and ceases and is dead except in the brain of the bearer. -I thought of all the music to ear and mind of that sound of “m.” I -suppose the depth of its appeal is due to its place at the beginning of -the word “mother,” or rather to the need of the soul which gave it that -place; and it is a sound as dear to the animals as to us, since the ewe -hears it first from her lamb and the cow from her calf as the woman -from her child. It is the main sound in “music,” “melody,” “harmony,” -“measure,” “metre,” “rhythm,” “minstrel,” “madrigal.” It endears even -sadness by its presence in “melancholy,” “moan” and “mourn.” It makes -melody on the lips of friends and lovers, in the names of “mistress,” -“comrade,” “mate,” “companion.” It murmurs autumnally in all mellow -sounds, in the music of wind and insect and instrument. To “me” and -“mine” it owes a meaning as deep as to “mother.” And this mild air -could bear no more melodious burden than the name that floated upon it -and sank into it, down, down, to reveal its infinite depth--Mary! - -There are parks on both sides of the road, bounded by hedges or high -brick walls, and the public road has all the decorum of a drive. For a -mile the very ivy which is destined to adorn the goodly wall and spread -into forms as grand as those at Godstow Nunnery is protected by wire -netting. Doves croon in the oaks: underneath, hazel and birch flicker -their new leaves over the pools of bluebells. The swallows fly low over -every tuft of the roadside grass and glance into every bay of the wood, -and then out above the white road, from which they rebound suddenly -and turn, displaying the white rays of their tails. Now and then a -gateway reveals the park. The ground undulates, but is ever smooth. It -is of the mellow green of late afternoon. Bronzed oak woods bound the -undulations, and here and there a solitary tree stands out on the grass -and shows its poise and complexity with the added grace of new leaf. -The cattle graze as on a painted lawn. A woman in a white dress goes -indolent and stately towards the rhododendrons and rook-haunted elms. -The scene appears to have its own sun, mellow and serene, that knows -not moorland or craggy coast or city. Only a thousand years of settled -continuous government, of far-reaching laws, of armies and police, of -roadmaking, of bloody tyranny and tyranny that poisons quietly without -blows, could have wrought earth and sky into such a harmony. It is a -thing as remote from me here on the dusty road as is the green evening -sky and all its tranquillity of rose and white, and even more so -because the man in the manor house behind the oaks is a puzzle to me, -while the sky is always a mystery with which I am content. At such an -hour the house and lawns and trees are more wonderfully fortified by -the centuries of time than by the walls and gamekeepers. They weave -an atmosphere about it. We bow the head and reverence the labour of -time in smoothing the grass, mellowing the stone and the manners of the -inhabitants, and yet an inevitable conflict ensues in the mind between -this respect and the feeling that it is only a respect for surfaces, -that a thousand years is a heavy price to pay for the maturing of -park and house and gentleman, especially as he is most likely to be a -well-meaning parasite on those who are concerned twenty-four hours a -day about the difficulty of living and about what to do when they are -alive. - -No, it is the alien remote appearance of the house and land serene in -the May evening light which creates this reverence in the mind. It is -not feudalism, or the old nobility and gentility, that we are bowing -down to, but only to Nature without us and the dream within us. It is -certainly not pure envy. Nor yet is it for the same reason as made -Borrow reflect when he saw the good house at the end of an avenue of -noble oaks near Llandovery-- - - “... A plain but comfortable gentleman’s seat with wings. It looked - south down the dale. ‘With what satisfaction I could live in that - house,’ said I to myself, ‘if backed by a couple of thousand a year. - With what gravity could I sign a warrant in its library, and with what - dreamy comfort translate an ode of Lewis Glyn Cothi, my tankard of - rich ale beside me. I wonder whether the proprietor is fond of the old - bard and keeps good ale. Were I an Irishman instead of a Norfolk man I - would go in and ask him.’” - -Not if he were a Welshman, either. For I at least know that in no -other man’s house should I be better off than I am, and I lack the -confidence to think I could make any use of his income. I would as soon -envy a tramp because he has no possessions, or a navvy because he walks -like a hero as he pushes a heavy trolley before him, his loose jacket -fitting him as a mane fits a lion. To envy a man is to misunderstand -him or yourself. - -Nor yet is it pure admiration. That is what I feel for something -external that can be described as right, as having absolute -individuality and inevitableness of form. For example, I admire certain -groups that are the result of what we call chance--an arrangement of -fishing boats going out to sea, first one, then at a long interval two -close together, a fourth a little behind, and then by ones and pairs -and clusters at different intervals; or the four or five oaks left in -a meadow that was once a copse; or the fruit fallen on autumn rime; -or sunset clouds that pause darkly along the north-west in a way that -will never be seen again; or of tragic figures at such a moment as when -Polyxena, among the Grecian youths, gave her throat to the dagger of -Neoptolemus, and fell beautiful in death. - -No. Those houses are castles in Spain. They are fantastic architecture. -We have made them out of our spirit stuff and have set our souls to -roam their corridors and look out of their casements upon the sea or -the mountains or the clouds. It is because they are accessible only -to the everywhere wandering irresistible and immortal part of us that -they are beautiful. There is no need for them to be large or costly or -antique. The poorest house can do us a like service. In a town, for -example, and in a suburb, I have had the same yearning when, on a fine -still morning of May or June, in streets away from the traffic, I have -seen through the open windows a cool white-curtained shadowy room, -and in it a table with white cloths and gleaming metal and glass laid -thereon, and nobody has yet come down to open the letters. It all seems -to be the work of spirit hands. It is beautiful and calm and celestial, -and is a profound pleasure--tinged by melancholy--to see. It gives a -sense of fitness--for what? For something undivined, imperfectly known, -guessed at, or hoped for, in ourselves; for a wider and less tainted -beauty, for a greater grace. Or it may not be a house at all, but a -hill-top five miles off, up which winds a white road in two long loops -between a wood and the turf. The grass is smooth and warm and bright at -the summit in the blue noon; or in the horizontal sunbeams each stem -is lit so that the hill is transmuted into a glowing and insubstantial -thing; and then, at noon or evening, something in me flies at the -sight and desires to tread that holy ground. It is an odd world where -everything is fleeting yet the soul desires permanence even for fancies -so unprofitable as this. - -And so these thoughts at the sight of the great houses mingle with -the thoughts that grow at twilight and fade gradually away in the -windless night when the sky is soft-ridged all over with white clouds -and in the dark vales between them are the stars. Then, for it is -Saturday, follows another pleasure of the umbrageous white country -roads at night--the high contented voices of children talking to father -and mother as they go home from the market town. The parents move -dark-clothed, silent, laden; the children flit about them with white -hats or pinafores. Their voices travel far and long after they are -invisible in the mist that washes over the fields in long white firths, -but die away as the misty night blots out the hills, the clouds, the -stars, the trees, and everything but the branches overhead and the -white parsley flowers floating along the hedge. There is no breath of -wind. The owls are quiet. The air is full of the scent of holly flower -and may and nettles and of the sound of a little stream among the -leaves. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -JUNE--HAMPSHIRE--THE GOLDEN AGE--TRAHERNE - - -HAMPSHIRE. - -Now day by day, indoors and out of doors, the conquest of spring -proceeds to the music of the conquerors. One evening the first chafer -comes to the lamp, and his booming makes the ears tremble with -dim apprehension. He climbs, six-legged and slow, up the curtain, -supporting himself now and then by unfurling his wings, or if not he -falls with a drunken moan, then begins to climb again, and at last -blunders about the room like a ball that must strike something, the -white ceiling, the white paper, the lamp, and when he falls he rests. -In his painful climbing he looks human, as perhaps a man looks angelic -to an angel; but there is nothing lovelier and more surprising than the -unfurling of his pinions like a magic wind-blown cloak out of that hard -mail. - -Another day the far-off woods in a hot, moist air first attain their -rich velvet mossiness, and even near at hand the gorse-bushes all -smouldering with bloom are like clouds settled on the earth, having no -solidity, but just colour and warmth and pleasantness. - -The broad-backed chestnuts bloom. On the old cart-lodge tiles the vast -carapace of the house-leek is green and rosy, and out of the midst of -it grow dandelions and grass, and the mass of black mould which it has -accumulated in a century bends down the roof. - -The hawthorn-bloom is past before we are sure that it has reached its -fulness. Day after day its warm and fragrant snow clouded the earth -with light, and yet we waited, thinking surely to-morrow it will be -fairer still, and it was, and the next day we thought the same and we -were careless as in first love, and then one day it lay upon the grass, -an empty shell, the vest of departed loveliness, and another year was -over. The broad grass is full of buttercups’ gold or it is sullen -silvery under a burning afternoon sun, without wind, the horizon smoky, -the blue sky and its white, still clouds almost veiled by heat; the -red cattle are under the elms; the unrippled water slides under sullen -silvery willows. - -The night-haze peels off the hills and lets the sun in upon small -tracts of wood--upon a group of walnuts in the bronze of their fine, -small leaf--upon downland grass, and exposes blue sky and white cloud, -but then returns and hides the land, except that the dewy ground-ash -and the ivy and holly gleam; and two cuckoos go over crying and crying -continually in the hollow vale. - -Already the ash-keys hang in cool, thick bunches under the darker -leaves. The chestnut-bloom is falling. The oak-apples are large and -rosy. The wind is high, and the thunder is away somewhere behind the -pink mountains in the southern sky or in the dark drifts overhead. And -yet the blue of the massy hangers almost envelops the beechen green; -the coombes and the beeches above and around their grassy slopes of -juniper are soft and dim, and far withdrawn, and the nightjar’s voice -is heard as if the wind there were quiet. The rain will not come; -the plunging wind in the trees has a sound of waterfalls all night, -yet cannot trouble the sleep of the orange-tip butterfly on the -leopard’s-bane’s dead flower. - -Now the pine blooms in the sandy lands, above the dark-fronded brake -and glaucous-fruited whortleberry, the foxgloves break into bell after -bell under the oaks and birches. The yellow broom is flowering and -scented, and the white lady’s bedstraw sweetens the earth’s breath. -The careless variety of abundance and freshness makes every lane a -bride. Suddenly, in the midst of the sand, deep meadows gleam, and the -kingfisher paints the air with azure and emerald and rose above the -massy water tumbling between aspens at the edge of a neat, shaven lawn, -and, behind that, a white mill and miller’s house with dark, alluring -windows where no one stirs. - -June puts bronze and crimson on many of her leaves. The maple-leaves -and many of the leaves of thorn and bramble and dogwood are rosy; the -hazel-leaves are rosy-brown; the herb-robert and parsley are rose-red; -the leaves of ash and holly are dark lacquered. The copper beeches, -opulently sombre under a faintly yellowed sky, seem to be the sacred -trees of the thunder that broods above. Presently the colour of the -threat is changed to blue, which soiled white clouds pervade until -the whole sky is woolly white and grey and moving north. There is no -wind, but there is a roar as of a hurricane in the trees far off; soon -it is louder, in the trees not so remote; and in a minute the rain -has traversed half-a-mile of woods, and the distant combined roar is -swallowed up by the nearer pattering on roof and pane and leaf, the -dance of leaves, the sway of branches, the trembling of whole trees -under the flood. The rain falls straight upon the hard road, and each -drop seems to leap upward from it barbed. Great drops dive among the -motionless, dusty nettles. The thunder unloads its ponderous burden -upon the resonant floor of the sky; but the sounds of the myriad -leaves and grass-blades drinking all but drowns the boom, the splitting -roar, and the echo in the hills. When it is over it has put a final -sweetness into the blackbird’s voice and into the calm of the evening -garden when the voice of a singer does but lay another tribute at the -feet of the enormous silence. Frail is that voice as the ghost-moth -dancing above the grass so faithfully that it seems a flower attached -to a swaying stem, or as the one nettle-leaf that flutters in a -draught of the hedge like a signalling hand while all the rest of the -leaves are as if they could not move again, or as the full moon that -is foundering on a white surf in the infinite violet sky. More large -and more calm and emptier of familiar things grows the land as I pass -through it, under the hoverings of the low-flying but swiftly-turning -nightjar, until at midnight only a low white mist moves over the gentle -desolation and warm silence. The mist wavers, and discloses a sky all -strewn with white stars like the flowers of an immense jessamine. It -closes up again, and day is born unawares in its pale arms, and earth -is for the moment nothing but the tide of downs flowing west and the -branch of red roses that hangs heavily laden and drowsed with its -weight and beauty over my path, dipping its last spray in the dew of -the grass. - -The day is a Sunday, and no one is on foot or on wheel in the broad -arable country that ripples in squares of green, or brown, or yellow, -or grey, to the green Downs and their dark, high-perched woods. As if -for some invisible beholder, the green elders and their yellow-green -flower-buds make their harmony with the yellow-lichened barns against -which they lean; the grass and the noble trees, the groups of wayside -aspen, the line of horse-chestnuts, the wych-elms on both sides of -the road, the one delicate sycamore before the inn and the company -of sycamores above the cross--the spacious thatch and tiles of the -farmyard quadrangle--the day newly painted in white and blue--the -green so green in the hedges, and the white and purple so pure in the -flowers--all seem to be meant for eyes that know nothing of Time and -of what “brought death into the world and all our woe.” And in this -solitude the young birds are very happy. They have taken possession -of the thick hedges, of the roadside grass, of the roads themselves. -They flutter and run and stumble there; they splash in the pools and in -the dust, which not a wheel nor a foot has marked. These at least are -admitted into the kingdom along with that strange wildfowl that lives -“to maintain the trade and mystery of typographers.” - -Such a day, in the unblemished summer land, invariably calls up -thoughts of the Golden Age. As mankind has looked back to a golden age, -so the individual, repeating the history of the race, looks back and -finds one in his own past. Historians and archæologists have indeed -made it difficult for men of our time to look far back for a golden -age. We are shown a skull with supraciliary prominences and are told -that its owner, though able to survive the mammoth by means of tools of -flint, lived like the Tasmanian of modern times; and his was no Golden -Age. Then we look back to heroic ages which poetry and other arts -have magnified--to the Greece of Homer or Pheidias, to the Ireland of -Cuchulain, to the Wales of Arthur, to the England which built the great -cathedrals or produced Chaucer, Sir Philip Sidney, Izaak Walton. - -In the same way, few men can now look back to their childhood like -Traherne and say that - - “All appeared new and strange at first, inexpressibly rare and - delightful and beautiful. I was a little stranger which at my entrance - into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys. - My knowledge was Divine. I knew by intuition those things which - since my Apostasy I collected again by the highest reason. My very - ignorance was advantageous. I seemed as one brought into the Estate - of Innocence. All things were spotless and pure and glorious; yea, - and infinitely mine, and joyful and precious. I knew not that there - were any sins or complaints or laws. I dreamed not of poverties, - contentions or vices. All tears and quarrels were hidden from mine - eyes. Everything was at rest, free and immortal. I knew nothing - of sickness or death or rents or exaction, either for tribute or - bread.... All Time was Eternity, and a perpetual Sabbath. Is it not - strange, that an infant should be heir of the whole world and see - those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold?”[3] - -[3] _Centuries of Meditation_, by Thomas Traherne (Dobell). - -We blink, deliberately or not, unpleasant facts in our own lives, as -in the social life of Greece or the Middle Ages. Some have no need to -do so; robustly or sensitively made, their childish surroundings have -been such as to meet their utmost needs or to draw out their finest -powers or to leave them free. Ambition, introspection, remorse had not -begun. The vastness and splendour and gloom of a world not understood, -but seen in its effects and hardly at all in its processes, made a -theatre for their happiness which--especially when seen through a mist -of years--glorify it exceedingly, and it becomes like a ridge of the -far-off downs transfigured in golden light, so that we in the valley -sigh at the thought that where we have often trod is heaven now. Such -beauties of the earth, seen at a distance and inaccessibly serene, -always recall the equally inaccessible happiness of childhood. Why have -we such a melting mood for what we cannot reach? Why, as we are whirled -past them in a train, does the sight of a man and child walking quietly -beside a reedy pond, the child stooping for a flower and its gossip -unheard--why should we tremble to reflect that we have never tasted -just that cloistered balm? - -Perhaps the happiest childhoods are those which pass completely away -and leave whole tracts of years without a memory; those which are -remembered are fullest of keen joy as of keen pain, and it is such that -we desire for ourselves if we are capable of conceiving such fantastic -desires. I confess to remembering little joy, but to much drowsy -pleasure in the mere act of memory. I watch the past as I have seen -workless, homeless men leaning over a bridge to watch the labours of a -titanic crane and strange workers below in the ship running to and fro -and feeding the crane. I recall green fields, one or two whom I loved -in them, and though no trace of such happiness as I had remains, the -incorruptible tranquillity of it all breeds fancies of great happiness. -I recall many scenes: a church and churchyard and black pigs running -down from them towards me in a rocky lane--ladslove and tall, crimson, -bitter dahlias in a garden--the sweetness of large, moist yellow apples -eaten out of doors--children: I do not recall happiness in them, yet -the moment that I return to them in fancy I am happy. Something like -this is true also of much later self-conscious years. I cannot--I am -not tempted to--allow what then spoiled the mingling of the elements -of joy to reappear when I look back. The reason, perhaps, is that only -an inmost true self that desires and is in harmony with joy can perform -these long journeys, and when it has set out upon them it sheds those -gross incrustations which were our curse before. - -Many are the scenes thus to be recalled without spot or stain. It is -a May morning, warm and slightly breezy after midnight rain. In the -beech-woods the trees are unloading the dew, which drops from leaf to -leaf and down on to the lemon-tinged leaves of dark dog’s-mercury. At -the edge of the wood the privet branches are bent down by the weight of -raindrops of the size of peas. The dewy white stitchwort stars and the -feathered grasses are curved over on the banks. The sainfoin is hoary -and sparkling as I move. Already the sun is hot and the sky blue, with -faint white clouds in whirls. And in the orchard-trees and drenched -luxuriant hedges the garden-warbler sings a subdued note of rushing, -bubbling liquidity as of some tiny brook that runs in quick pulsations -among the fleshy-leaved water-plants. The bird’s head is uplifted; its -throat is throbbing; it moves restlessly from branch to branch, but -always renews its song on the new perch; being leaf-like, it is not -easily seen. And sometimes through this continuous jargon the small, -wild song of the blackcap is heard, which is the utmost expression of -moist warm dawns in May thickets of hawthorn-bloom and earliest roses. -On such a dawn the very spirit bathes in the dew and nuzzles into the -fragrance with delight; but it is no sooner left behind with May than -it has developed within me into an hour and a scene of utmost grace and -bliss, save that I am in it myself. - -It is curious, too, how many different kinds of Eden or Golden Age -Nature has in her gift, as if she silently recorded the backward dreams -of each generation and reproduced them for us unexpectedly. It is, -for instance, an early morning in July. The cows pour out from the -milking-stalls and blot out the smell of dust with their breath in the -white road between banks of hazel and thorn. The boy who is driving -them to the morning’s pasture calls to them monotonously, persuasively, -in turn, as each is tempted to crop the roadside sward: “Wo, Cherry! -Now, Dolly! Wo, Fancy! Strawberry!... Blanche!... Blossom!... -Cowslip!... Rosy! Smut!... Come along, Handsome!... Wo, Snowdrop!... -Lily!... Darky!... Roany!... Come along, Annie!” Here the road is -pillowed with white aspen-down, there more fragrant than pines with the -brown sheddings of yew, and here thick with the dry scent of nettle and -cow-parsnip, or glorious in perfect mingling of harebell and foxglove -among the bracken and popping gorse on the roadside. The cows turn into -the aftermath of the sainfoin, and the long valley echoes to their -lowing. After them, up the road, comes a gypsy-cart, and the boy hangs -on the gate to see the men and women walking, black-haired, upright, -bright-eyed, and on the name-board of the cart the words: “Naomi -Sherwood, Burley, Hampshire.” These things also propose to the roving, -unhistoric mind an Eden, one still with us, one that is passing, not, -let us hope, the very last. - -Some of these scenes, whether often repeated or not, come to have a -rich symbolical significance; they return persistently and, as it -were, ceremoniously--on festal days--but meaning I know not what. -For example, I never see the flowers and scarlet-stained foliage of -herb-robert growing out of old stone-heaps by the wayside without a -feeling of satisfaction not explained by a long memory of the contrast -between the plant and the raw flint; so also with the drenched -lilac-bloom leaning out over high walls of unknown gardens; and inland -cliffs, covered with beech, jutting out westward into a bottomless -valley in the mist of winter twilights, in silence and frost. Something -in me belongs to these things, but I hardly think that the mere naming -of them will mean anything except to those--many, perhaps--who have -experienced the same. A great writer so uses the words of every day -that they become a code of his own which the world is bound to learn -and in the end take unto itself. But words are no longer symbols, -and to say “hill” or “beech” is not to call up images of a hill or a -beech-tree, since we have so long been in the habit of using the words -for beautiful and mighty and noble things very much as a book-keeper -uses figures without seeing gold and power. I can, therefore, only -try to suggest what I mean by the significance of the plant in the -stone-heap, the wet lilac, the misty cliff, by comparing it with that -of scenes in books where we recognize some power beyond the particular -and personal. All of Don Quixote’s acts have this significance; so -have the end of Mr. Conrad’s story of _Youth_ and the opening of Mr. -Hudson’s _El Ombu_--the old man sitting on a summer’s day under the -solitary tree to tell the history “of a house that had been.” Malory’s -_Morte d’Arthur_ is full of scenes like this. For ten centuries, from -the battle of Badon to the writing of _Morte d’Arthur_, these stories -were alive on the lips of many kinds of men and women in many lands, -from Connemara to Calabria. Many of these men and women survive only -in the turns which their passionate hearts gave to these ghostly, -everlastingly wandering tales. Artists have worked upon them. Bards -have sung them, and the sound of their harping is entangled in the -words that have reached us to-day. This blending of many bloods is -suggested by the Saracen in the _Morte d’Arthur_ who was descended -from Hector and Alexander and Joshua and Maccabæus; by Taliesin, whose -“original country is the region of the summer stars,” who was with -Noah and Alexander and at the birth of Christ. And thus has the tale -become so full in the ear of humanity, so rich in scenes designed to -serve only an immediate purpose, yet destined by this grace to move -all kinds of men in manifold ways. Such is the chess-playing in _The -Dream of Rhonabwy_; the madness of Tristram when he ran naked in the -wood many days, but was lured by the music of a damsel playing on his -own harp; the speech of Arthur at the scattering of his knights in the -Sangraal quest; Launcelot’s fighting with the black knights against -the white; Launcelot’s adventures ending at the castle of Carbonek, -where he put on all his arms and armour and went--“and the moon shone -clear”--between the lions at the gate and forced open the door, and saw -the “Holy Vessel, covered with red samite, and many angels about it”; -and Arthur and Guenevere watching the dead Elaine in the barge; and in -the wars of Arthur and Launcelot, the scene opening with the words: -“Then it befell upon a day in harvest-time, Sir Launcelot looked over -the walls, and spake on high unto King Arthur and Sir Gawaine....” - -No English writer has expressed as well as Traherne the spiritual -glory of childhood, in which Wordsworth saw intimations of immortality. -He speaks of “that divine light wherewith I was born” and of his “pure -and virgin apprehensions,” and recommends his friend to pray earnestly -for these gifts: “They will make you angelical, and wholly celestial.” -It was by the “divine knowledge” that he saw all things in the peace of -Eden-- - - “The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be - reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting - to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious - as gold; the gates were at first the end of the world. The green - trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and - ravished me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap - and almost mad with ecstasy; they were such strange and wonderful - things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged - seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling - angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and - girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew - not that they were born or should die; but all things abided eternally - as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the - light of the day, and something infinite behind everything appeared, - which tallied with my expectation and moved my desire....” - -Yet was this light eclipsed. He was “with much ado” perverted by the -world, by the temptation of men and worldly things and by “opinion and -custom,” not any “inward corruption or depravation of Nature.” - -For he tells us how he once entered a noble dining-room and was there -alone “to see the gold and state and carved imagery,” but wearied of -it because it was dead, and had no motion. A little afterwards he saw -it “full of lords and ladies and music and dancing,” and now pleasure -took the place of tediousness, and he perceived, long after, that “men -and women are, when well understood, a principal part of our true -felicity.” Once again, “in a lowering and sad evening, being alone in -the field, when all things were dead quiet,” he had the same weariness, -nay, even horror. “I was a weak and little child, and had forgotten -there was a man alive in the earth.” Nevertheless, hope and expectation -came to him and comforted him, and taught him “that he was concerned in -all the world.” That he was “concerned in all the world” was the great -source of comfort and joy which he found in life, and of that joy which -his book pours out for us. Not only did he see that he was concerned -in all the world, but that river and corn and herb and sand were so -concerned. God, he says, “knoweth infinite excellencies” in each of -these things; “He seeth how it relateth to angels and men.” In this -he anticipated Blake’s _Auguries of Innocence_. He seems to see the -patterns which all living things are for ever weaving. He would have -men strive after this divine knowledge of things and of their place in -the universe. - -He came to believe that “all other creatures were such that God was -Himself in their creation, that is, Almighty Power wholly exerted; and -that every creature is indeed as it seemed in my infancy, not as it is -commonly apprehended.” - -Yet he feels the superiority of man’s soul to the things which it -apprehends: “One soul in the immensity of its intelligence is greater -and more excellent than the whole world.” Even so Richard Jefferies -prayed that his soul “might be more than the cosmos of life.” The soul -is greater than the whole world because it is capable of apprehending -the whole world, because it is spiritual, and the spiritual nature is -infinite. Thus Traherne was led to the splendid error of making the sun -“a poor little dead thing.” Or perhaps it was a figure of speech used -to convince the multitude of his estimation of man’s soul as above all -visible things. In the same spirit he speaks of “this little Cottage -of Heaven and Earth as too small a gift, though fair,” for beings of -whom he says: “Infinity we know and feel by our souls; and feel it so -naturally as if it were the very essence and being of the soul”; and -again, with childlike simplicity and majesty-- - -“Man is a creature of such noble principles and severe expectations, -that could he perceive the least defect to be in the Deity, it would -infinitely displease him.” - -He could not well have thought of man except loftily, since he was -himself one whom imagination never deserted--imagination the greatest -power of the mind by which not poets only live and have their being-- - -“For God,” says he, “hath made you able to create worlds in your own -mind which are more precious unto Him than those which He created; and -to give and offer up the world unto Him, which is very delightful in -flowing from Him, but made more in returning to Him.” - -That power to create worlds in the mind is the imagination, and is -the proof that the creature liveth and is divine. “Things unknown,” -he says, “have a secret influence on the soul,” and “we love we know -not what.” The spirit can fill the whole world and the stars be your -jewels: “You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth -in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with -the stars, and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole -world.” And our inheritance is more than the world, “because men are -in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.” It is a social -mysticism. “The world,” he says in another place, “does serve you, -not only as it is the place and receptacle of all your joys, but as -it is a great obligation laid upon all mankind, and upon every person -in all ages, to love you as himself; as it also magnifieth all your -companions.” His is the true “public mind,” as he calls it. “There is -not,” he says in another place--“there is not a man in the whole world -that knows God, or himself, but he must honour you. Not only as an -Angel or as a Cherubim, but as one redeemed by the blood of Christ, -beloved by all Angels, Cherubims, and Men, the heir of the world, and -as much greater than the Universe, as he that possesseth the house -is greater than the house. O what a holy and blessed life would men -lead, what joys and treasures would they be to each other, in what a -sphere of excellency would every man move, how sublime and glorious -would their estate be, how full of peace and quiet would the world be, -yea, of joy and honour, order and beauty, did men perceive this of -themselves, and had they this esteem for one another!” - -Here, as in other passages, he seems to advance to the position of -Whitman, whom some have blamed for making the word “divine” of no value -because he would apply it to all, whereas to do so is no more than to -lay down that rule of veneration for men--and the other animals--which -has produced and will produce the greatest revolutions. - -This conception of universal divinity sprang from his doctrine of Love. -By love we can be at one with the divine power which he calls God. -“Love,” he says, “is the true means by which the world is enjoyed: our -love to others, and others’ love to us.” Why, even the love of riches -he excuses, since “we love to be rich ... that we thereby might be more -greatly delightful.” And just as Richard Jefferies says that Felise -loved before ever she loved a man, so Traherne says: “That violence -wherewith a man sometimes doteth upon one creature is but a little -spark of that love, even towards all, which lurketh in his nature.... -When we dote upon the perfections and beauties of some one creature, -we do not love that too much, but other things too little.” It is -this love by which alone the commonwealth of all forms of life can be -truly known, and men are like God when they are “all life and mettle -and vigour and love to everything,” and “concerned and happy” in all -things. His feeling of the interdependence of all the world is thus -inseparable from his doctrine of love; love inspires it; by love alone -can it be real and endure. “He that is in all and with all can never -be desolate.” And, nevertheless, he cannot always be thinking of the -universe--he thought that the sun went round the earth--and just as he -regards man as superior to other forms of life, so, perhaps, he has a -filial love of “this cottage of Heaven and Earth,” the brown land and -blue sky, and one of the most beautiful of his meditations is where he -says-- - - “When I came into the country, and being seated among silent trees, - and meads, and hills, had all my time in mine own hands, I resolved - to spend it all, whatever it cost me, in the search of happiness, and - to satiate that burning thirst which Nature had enkindled in me from - my youth. In which I was so resolute, that I chose rather to live upon - ten pounds a year, and go in leather clothes, and feed upon bread - and water, so that I might have all my time clearly to myself, than - to keep many thousands per annum in an estate of life where my time - would be devoured in care and labour. And God was so pleased to accept - of that desire, that from that time to this, I have had all things - plentifully provided for me, without any care at all, my very study - of Felicity making me more to prosper, than all the care in the whole - world. So that through His blessing I live a free and a kingly life as - if the world were turned again into Eden, or much more, as it is at - this day.” - -Traherne is remarkable in many ways, but for nothing more than for -his mingling of man and nature in the celestial light of infancy. He -begins, indeed, with the corn--the “orient and immortal wheat”--but he -goes on to the dust and stones and gates of the town, and then to the -old men and the young men and the children. But it was only on “some -gilded cloud or flower” that Vaughan saw “some shadows of eternity”; -he longs to travel back to his childish time and to a city of the -soul, but a shady city of palm-trees. Wordsworth, though he says that -“every common spirit” was “apparell’d in celestial light” in his early -childhood, only mentions “meadow, grove and stream”; it is a tree, -a single field, a flower, that reminds him of his loss; it is the -fountains, meadows, hills and groves which he is anxious to assure of -his lasting love. Perhaps many people’s memories in this kind are of -Nature more than of men. Even the social Lamb is at his deepest in -recalling the child who was solitary in the great house and garden of -Blakesmoor. With some the reason for this priority of Nature is that -her solitudes are the most rich. The presence of other children and -of adults is comparatively commonplace, and in becoming, permanently -or temporarily, part of a community, the spirit makes some sacrifice. -Provided, then, that a child is happy and at ease in the solitude of -Nature, it is more open than in company to what is afterwards regarded -as spiritual intercourse. But above all, our memories of Nature are -seldom or never flawed by the seeming triviality, the dislikes, the -disgusts, the misunderstandings which give to memories of human society -something of dulness and the commonplace. Thinking of ourselves and -other children, we may also think of things which make idealization -impossible. Thinking of ourselves in a great wood or field of flowers -ever so long ago, it is hard not to exaggerate whatever give-and-take -there was between the spirit of the child and the vast pure forces of -the sun and the wind. In those days we did not see a tree as a column -of a dark stony substance supporting a number of green wafers that -live scarcely half a year, and grown for the manufacture of furniture, -gates, and many other things; but we saw something quite unlike -ourselves, large, gentle, of foreign tongue, without locomotion, yet -full of the life and movement and sound of the leaves themselves, and -also of the light, of the birds, and of the insects; and they were -givers of a clear, deep joy that cannot be expressed. The brooding -mind easily exalts this joy with the help of the disillusions and the -knowledge and the folly and the thought of later years. A little time -ago I heard of the death of one whom I had once seemed to know well, -had roamed and talked and been silent with him, and I should have gone -on doing so had he not gone far away and died. And when I heard of his -death I kept on recalling his face and figure to my mind under familiar -conditions, in the old rooms, by the same river, under the same elms. -As before, I saw him in the clothes which he used to wear, smiling or -laughing or perhaps grim. But wherever he was and whatever his look, -there was always something--the shadow of a shadow, but awful--in his -face which made me feel that had I only seen it (and I felt that I -ought to have seen it), in those days, I should have known he was to -die early, with ambitions unfulfilled, far away. - -And in this same way will the brain work in musing of earlier times. -All that has come after deepens that candid brow of the child as a -legend will darken a bright brook. - -I once saw a girl of seven or eight years walking alone down a long -grassy path in an old garden. On one hand rose a peaceful long slope -of down; on the other, beyond the filberts, a high hedge shut out all -but the pale blue sky, with white clouds resting on its lower mist like -water-lilies on a still pool. Turning her back to the gabled house -and its attendant beeches, she walked upon the narrow level path of -perfect grass. The late afternoon sun fell full upon her, upon her -brown head and her blue tunic, and upon the flowers of the borders at -either side, the lowly white arabis foaming wild, the pansy, the white -narcissus, the yellow jonquil and daffodil, the darker smouldering -wallflowers, the tall yellow leopard’s-bane, the tufts of honesty among -the still dewy leaves of larkspur and columbine. But here and there, -as she walked, the light was dimmed by the clusters of cool white -humming cherry-blossom hanging out of the hot sky. In front of her the -cherry-trees seemed to meet and make a corridor of dark stems on either -hand, paved green and white and gold, and roofed by milky white clouds -that embowered the clear, wild warble of black-caps. Farther on, the -flowers ceased and the grass was shadowed by new-leaved beeches, and at -length involved in an uncertain mist of trees and shadows of trees, and -there the cuckoo cried. For the child there was no end to the path. - -She walked slowly, at first picking a narcissus or two, or stooping -to smell a flower and letting her hair fall over it to the ground; -but soon she was content only to brush the tips of the flowers with -her outstretched hands, or, rising on tiptoe, to force her head up -amongst the lowest branches of cherry-bloom. Then she did nothing -at all but gravely walk on into the shadow and into Eternity, dimly -foreknowing her life’s days. She looked forward as one day she would -look back over a broad sea of years, and in a drowsy, haunted gloom, -full of the cuckoo’s note, saw herself going always on and on among the -interlacing shadows of tree trunks and branches and joys and pleasures -and pains and sorrows that must have an end, she knew not how. She -stopped, not venturing into that strange future under the beeches. She -stared into the mist, where hovered the phantoms of the big girl, the -young woman, the lover ... which in turn she was to become. Under the -last cherry-tree something went out of her into the shadow, and those -phantoms fed upon her blood as she stood still. But presently in the -long beech corridors the gloom began to lighten and move and change to -a glinting blue that approached her. “Pee-oi,” shouted the peacock, now -close at hand; “pee-oi ... pee-oi,” as he passed her by, and turning, -she also shouted “pee-oi,” frightening the cuckoo from the beeches, as -she ran back among the flowers to the house. - -What is to come of our Nature-teaching in schools? What does it aim at? -Whence does it arise? In part, no doubt, it is due to our desire to -implant information. It is all very well for the poet to laugh-- - - When Science has discovered something more - We shall be happier than we were before; - -but that is the road we are on at a high rate of speed. If we are -fortunate we shall complete our inventory of the contents of heaven and -earth by the time when the last man or woman wearing the last pair of -spectacles has decided that, after all, it is a very good world and one -which it is quite possible to live in. That, however, is an end which -would not in itself be a sufficient inducement to push on towards it; -still less can such a vision have set us upon the road. - -Three things, perhaps, have more particularly persuaded us to pay -our fare and mount for somewhere-- three things which are really not -to be sharply distinguished, though it is convenient to consider -them separately. First, the literary and philosophical movement -imperfectly described as the romantic revival and return to Nature -of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Poets and philosophers -need private incomes, State porridge and what not, but literature and -philosophy is a force, and for a century it has followed a course which -was entered in the period of the French Revolution. This literature -shows man in something like his true position in an infinite universe, -and shows him particularly in his physical environment of sea, sky, -mountain, rivers, woods, and other animals. Second, the enormous, -astonishing, perhaps excessive, growth of towns, from which the only -immediate relief is the pure air and sun of the country, a relief which -is sought by the urban multitudes in large but insufficient numbers and -for too short a time. Third, the triumph of science, of systematized -observation. Helped, no doubt, by the force of industrialism--to which -it gave help in return--science has had a great triumph. At one time -it was supposed to have fatally undermined poetry, romance, religion, -because it had confused the minds of some poets and critics. - -These three things considered, Nature-study is inevitable. Literature -sends us to Nature principally for joy, joy of the senses, of the -whole frame, of the contemplative mind, and of the soul, joy which if -it is found complete in these several ways might be called religious. -Science sends us to Nature for knowledge. Industrialism and the great -town sends us to Nature for health, that we may go on manufacturing -efficiently, or, if we think right and have the power, that we may -escape from it. But it would be absurd to separate joy, knowledge and -health, except as we separate for convenience those things which have -sent us out to seek for them; and Nature-teaching, if it is good, -will never overlook one of these three. Joy, through knowledge, on a -foundation of health, is what we appear to seek. - -There is no longer any need to hesitate in speaking of joy in -connection with schools, yet might we not still complain, as Thomas -Traherne did two hundred and fifty years ago-- - - “There was never a tutor that did professly teach Felicity, though - that be the mistress of all other sciences. Nor did any of us study - these things but as aliena, which we ought to have studied as our - enjoyments. We studied to inform our Knowledge, but knew not for what - end we so studied. And for lack of aiming at a certain end we erred in - the manner.” - -If we cannot somehow have a professor of Felicity we are undone. -Perhaps Nature herself will aid. Her presence will certainly make for -felicity by enlarging her pupil for a time from the cloistered life -which modern towns and their infinite conveniences and servitudes -encourage. Tolstoy has said that in the open air “new relations are -formed between pupil and teacher: freer, simpler and more trustful”; -and certainly his walk on a winter night with his pupils, chatting and -telling tales (see _The School at Yasnaya Polyana_, by Leo Tolstoy), -leaves an impression of electrical activity and felicity in the young -and old minds of that party which is hardly to be surpassed. And how -more than by Nature’s noble and uncontaminated forms can a sense of -beauty be nourished? Then, too, the reading of great poetry might well -be associated with the study of Nature, since there is no great poetry -which can be dissevered from Nature, while modern poets have all dipped -their pens in the sunlight and wind and great waters, and appeal most -to those who most resemble them in their loves. The great religious -books, handed down to us by people who lived in closer intercourse with -Nature than many of us, cannot be understood by indoor children and -adults. Whether connected with this or that form of religion or not, -whether taken as “intimations of immortality” or not, the most profound -and longest remembered feelings are often those derived from the -contact of Nature with the child’s mind. - -Of health, though there are exactly as many physicians as patients, -it is unnecessary to say anything, except that one of the pieces of -knowledge--I do not speak of information--which science has left to us -is that movement and the working of the brain in pure air and sunlight -is good for body and soul, especially if joy is aiding. - -Knowledge aids joy by discipline, by increasing the sphere of -enjoyment, by showing us in animals, in plants, for example, what -life is, how our own is related to theirs, showing us, in fact, our -position, responsibilities and debts among the other inhabitants of the -earth. Pursued out of doors where those creatures, moving and still, -have their life and their beauty, knowledge is real. The senses are -invited there to the subtlest and most delightful training, and have -before them an immeasurable fresh field, not a field like that of -books, full of old opinions, but one with which every eye and brain can -have new vital intercourse. It is open to all to make discoveries as to -the forms and habits of things, and care should be taken to preserve -the child from the most verbose part of modern literature, that which -repeats in multiplied ill-chosen words stale descriptions of birds and -flowers, etc., coupled with trivial fancies and insincere inventions. -Let us not take the study, the lamp and the ink out of doors, as we -used to take wild life--having killed it and placed it in spirits of -wine--indoors. Let us also be careful to have knowledge as well as -enthusiasm in our masters. Enthusiasm alone is not enthusiasm. There -must, at some stage, be some anatomy, classification, pure brain-work; -the teacher must be the equal in training of the mathematician, and he -must be alive, which I never heard was a necessity for mathematicians. -But not anatomy for all, perhaps; for some it might be impossible, and -a study of colours, curves, perfumes, voices--a thousand things--might -be substituted for it. - -Yet Nature-study is not designed to produce naturalists, any more than -music is taught in order to make musicians. If you produce nothing but -naturalists you fail, and you will produce very few. The aim of study -is to widen the culture of child and man, to do systematically what -Mark Pattison tells us in his dry way he did for himself, by walking -and outdoor sports, then--at the late age of seventeen--by collecting -and reading such books as _The Natural History of Selborne_, and -finally by a slow process of transition from natural history into “the -more abstract poetic emotion ... a conscious and declared poetical -sentiment and a devoted reading of the poets.” Geology did not come for -another ten years, “to complete the cycle of thought, and to give that -intellectual foundation which is required to make the testimony of the -eye, roaming over an undulating surface, fruitful and satisfying. When -I came in after years to read _The Prelude_ I recognized, as if it were -my own history which was being told, the steps by which the love of the -country boy for his hills and moors grew into poetical susceptibility -for all imaginative presentations of beauty in every direction.” The -botany, etc., would naturally be related to the neighbourhood of school -or home; for there is no parish or district of which it might not be -said, as Jefferies and Thoreau each said of his own, that it is a -microcosm. By this means the natural history may easily be linked to -a preliminary study of hill and valley and stream, the positions of -houses, mills and villages, and the reasons for them, and the food -supply, and so on, and this in turn leads on to--nay, involves--all -that is most real in geography and history. The landscape retains the -most permanent marks of the past, and a wise examination of it should -evoke the beginnings of the majestic sentiment of our oneness with -the future and the past, just as natural history should help to give -the child a sense of oneness with all forms of life. To put it at its -lowest, some such cycle of knowledge is needed if a generation that -insists more and more on living in the country, or spending many weeks -there, is not to be bored or to be compelled to entrench itself behind -the imported amusements of the town. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -HISTORY AND THE PARISH--HAMPSHIRE--CORNWALL - - -Some day there will be a history of England written from the point of -view of one parish, or town, or great house. Not until there is such a -history will all our accumulations of information be justified. It will -begin with a geological picture, something large, clear, architectural, -not a mass of insignificant names. It must be imaginative: it might, -perhaps, lean sometimes upon Mr. Doughty’s _Dawn in Britain_. The -peculiar combination of soil and woodland and water determines the -direction and position and importance of the ancient trackways; it will -determine also the position and size of the human settlements. The -early marks of these--the old flint and metal implements, the tombs, -the signs of agriculture, the encampments, the dwellings--will have to -be clearly described and interpreted. Folk-lore, legend, place-names -must be learnedly, but bravely and humanly used, so that the historian -who has not the extensive sympathy and imagination of a great novelist -will have no chance of success. What endless opportunities will he have -for really giving life to past times in such matters as the line made -by the edge of an old wood with the cultivated land, the shapes of the -fields, with their borders of streams or hedge or copse or pond or wall -or road, the purpose and interweaving of the roads and footpaths that -suggest the great permanent thoughts and the lesser thoughts and dreams -of the brain.... As the historic centuries are reached, the action of -great events, battles, laws, roads, invasions, upon the parish--and of -the parish upon them--must be shown. Architecture, with many of its -local characteristics still to be traced, will speak as a voice out of -the stones of castle, church, manor, farm, barn and bridge. The birds -and beasts cannot be left out. The names of the local families--gentle -and simple--what histories are in them, in the curt parish registers, -in tombstones, in the names of fields and houses and woods. Better a -thousand errors so long as they are human than a thousand truths lying -like broken snail-shells round the anvil of a thrush. If only those -poems which are place-names could be translated at last, the pretty, -the odd, the romantic, the racy names of copse and field and lane and -house. What a flavour there is about the Bassetts, the Boughtons, -the Worthys, the Tarrants, Winterbournes, Deverills, Manningfords, -the Suttons: what goodly names of the South Country--Woodmansterne, -Hollingbourne, Horsmonden, Wolstanbury, Brockenhurst, Caburn, Lydiard -Tregoze, Lydiard Millicent, Clevancy, Amesbury, Amberley (I once tried -to make a beautiful name and in the end it was Amberley, in which Time -had forestalled me); what sweet names Penshurst, Frensham, Firle, -Nutley, Appleshaw, Hambledon, Cranbrook, Fordingbridge, Melksham, -Lambourn, Draycot, Buscot, Kelmscot, Yatton, Yalding, Downe, Cowden, -Iping, Cowfold, Ashe, Liss.... Then there are the histories of roads. -Every traveller in Hampshire remembers the road that sways with airy -motion and bird-like curves down from the high land of clay and -flint through the chalk to the sand and the river. It doubles round -the head of a coombe, and the whole descent is through beech woods -uninterrupted and all but impenetrable to the eye above or below except -where once or twice it looks through an arrow slit to the blue vale and -the castled promontory of Chanctonbury twenty miles south-east. As the -road is a mere ledge on the side of a very steep hill the woods below -it hurry down to a precipitous pit full of the glimmering, trembling -and murmuring of innumerable leaves and no sight or sound of men. It -is said to have been made more than half a century ago to take the -place of the rash straight coach road which now enters it near its -base. A deeply-worn, narrow and disused track joining it more than -half-way down suggests that the lower part was made by the widening of -an old road; but much of the upper half is new. Certainly the road as -it now is, broad and gently bending round the steep coombe, is new, -and it was made at the expense of the last of a family which had long -owned the manor house near the entrance of the coombe. His were all -the hanging beech woods--huge as the sky--upon the hill, and through -them the road-makers conducted this noble and pleasant way. But near -the top they deviated by a few yards into another estate. The owner -would not give way. A lawsuit was begun, and it was not over when the -day came for the road to be open for traffic according to the contract -or, if not, to pass out of the defaulter’s hands. The day passed; the -contract was broken; the speculation had failed, and the tolls would -never fill the pockets of the lord of the manor. He was ruined, and -left his long white house by the rivulet and its chain of pools, his -farms and cottages, his high fruit walls, his uncounted beeches, the -home of a hundred owls, his Spanish chestnuts above the rocky lane, his -horse-chestnut and sycamore stately in groups, his mighty wych elms, -his apple trees and all their mistletoe, his walnut trees, and the long -bay of sky that was framed by his tall woods east and north and west. - -There are many places which nobody can look upon without being -consciously influenced by a sense of their history. It is a -battlefield, and the earth shows the scars of its old wounds; or a -castle or cathedral of distinct renown rises among the oaks; or a manor -house or cottage, or tomb or woodland walk that speaks of a dead poet -or soldier. Then, according to the extent or care of our reading and -the clearness of our imagination, we can pour into the groves or on the -turf tumultuous or silent armies, or solitary man or woman. It is a -deeply-worn coast; the spring tide gnaws the yellow cliff, and the wind -files it with unceasing hiss, and the relics of every age, skull and -weapon and shroudpin and coin and carven stone, are spread out upon the -clean, untrodden sand, and the learned, the imaginative, the fanciful, -the utterly unhistoric and merely human man exercises his spirit upon -them, and responds, if only for a moment. In some places history has -wrought like an earthquake, in others like an ant or mole; everywhere, -permanently; so that if we but knew or cared, every swelling of -the grass, every wavering line of hedge or path or road were an -inscription, brief as an epitaph, in many languages and characters. -But most of us know only a few of these unspoken languages of the -past, and only a few words in each. Wars and parliaments are but dim, -soundless, and formless happenings in the brain; toil and passion of -generations produce only an enriching of the light within the glades, -and a solemnizing of the shadows. - -Out of a whole century or age we remember nothing vividly and in a -manner that appeals to the eye, except some such picture as that which -Gerald of Wales gives of a Welsh prince, Cyneuric, son of Rhys. He was -tall and handsome, fair-complexioned, his hair curled; his dress was -a thin cloak, and under that a shirt, his legs and feet being bare, -regardless of thistle and brier; a man to whom nature and not art had -given his beauty and comely bearing. Outside Wales, and in ages far -removed from the twelfth century, this figure of a man will follow us, -and help to animate any wild scene that is coloured by antiquity. It -is some such man, his fair hair perhaps exchanged for black, and his -nobility more animal and clothed in skins, that we see, if we see a -man at all, when we muse deeply upon the old road worn deep into the -chalk, among burial mound and encampment; we feel rather than see the -innumerable companies of men like this, following their small cattle to -the stream or the dew-pond, wearing out the hard earth with their naked -feet and trailing ash staves. Going up such a road, between steep banks -of chalk and the roots and projecting bases of beeches whose foliage -meets overhead--a road worn twenty feet deep, and now scarce ever used -as a footpath except by fox and hare--we may be half-conscious that we -have climbed that way before during the furrowing of the road, and we -move as in a dream between this age and that dim one which we vainly -strive to recover. - -But because we are imperfectly versed in history, we are not therefore -blind to the past. The eye that sees the things of to-day, and the -ear that hears, the mind that contemplates or dreams, is itself an -instrument of an antiquity equal to whatever it is called upon to -apprehend. We are not merely twentieth-century Londoners or Kentish -men or Welshmen. We belong to the days of Wordsworth, of Elizabeth, -of Richard Plantagenet, of Harold, of the earliest bards. We, too, -like Taliesin, have borne a banner before Alexander, have been with -our Lord in the manger of the ass, have been in India, and with the -“remnant of Troia,” and with Noah in the ark, and our original country -is “the region of the summer stars.” And of these many folds in our -nature the face of the earth reminds us, and perhaps, even where there -are no more marks visible upon the land than there were in Eden, we -are aware of the passing of time in ways too difficult and strange for -the explanation of historian and zoologist and philosopher. It is this -manifold nature that responds with such indescribable depth and variety -to the appeals of many landscapes. - -We come to a huge, flat-bottomed, grassy coombe, smooth as a -racecourse, that winds out of the cornland into the heart of the Downs. -It is like the bed of a river of great depth. At its entrance beeches -clothe either side; but presently they cease, and up the steep juniper -slopes go the paths of hares, of the herds and flocks of earliest -ages and of the men and women and children also, whose children’s -children’s children have forgotten them though not perhaps their -philosophy. The grass of the slope is mingled with small sweet herbage, -the salad burnet rosy-stemmed, the orange bird’s-foot trefoil, the -purple thyme, the fine white flax, the delicatest golden hawk-bit, and -basil and marjoram, and rosettes of crimson thistles, all sunny warm -and fragrant, glittering and glowing or melting into a simmering haze, -musical with grasshoppers and a-flutter with blue butterflies, so that -the earth seems to be a thick-furred, genial animal. At length the -windings shut out the plain, and the coombe is a green hall roofed by -the hot blue sky. Its walls are steeper than ever, and the burrowings -of the rabbits have streaked the grasses with long splashes--like -those made by sea-birds on rocks--of white chalk. The curves of these -walls are like those of the flight of the swifts that dive overhead. -Here there are no human paths, no sign of house, of grave, of herd, of -cultivation. It is the world’s end, and the rabbits race up and down as -in a dream of solitude. - -Yet the mind is not discontented and unfed. This is no boundless -solitude of ocean where one may take a kind of pleasure - - To float for ever with a careless course - And think himself the only being alive. - -It is not an end but a beginning that we have reached. These are the -elements--pure earth and wind and sunlight--out of which beauty and joy -arise, original and ancient, for ever young. Their presence restores us -not to the Middle Ages, not to the days of Mr. Doughty’s heroic princes -and princesses of Britain,[4] not to any dim archæologist’s world of -reeking marsh and wood, of mammoth and brutish men, but to a region out -of space and out of time in which life and thought and physical health -are in harmony with sun and earth, fragrant as the flowers in the -grass, blithe as the grasshopper, swift as the hares, divine; and out -of it all arises a vision of the man who will embody this thought, a -man whom human infelicity, discontented with the past, has placed in a -golden age still farther back, for the sufficient reason that in every -age he has been a dream, and our dreaming is of the dawn or the night, -always disappointed but undaunted by the day that follows. And so no -storied valley or hillside is richer in humanity than this coombe. It -is one of the countless Edens where we are in contact not with the -soldier and ploughman and mason that change the surface of the earth, -but with prophet and poet who have ever lived to trace to Nature and -to the early ages the health and vigour of men. There is the greatest -antiquity of all, peace and purity and simplicity, and in the midst is -the mother Earth, the young mother of the world, with a face like Ceres -before she had lost Persephone in the underworld. In fact, so blessed -is this solitary hall that after climbing out it is mournful to see the -rabbit-worn tunnels and the Roman camp on the ridge. - -[4] _The Dawn in Britain_, by Charles M. Doughty. - - -CORNWALL. - -In Cornwall, where the wrinkles and angles of the earth’s age are -left to show, antiquity plays a giant’s part on every hand. What a -curious effect have those ruins, all but invisible among the sands, the -sea-blue scabious, the tamarisk and rush, though at night they seem -not inaudible when the wild air is full of crying! Some that are not -nearly as old are almost as magical. One there is that stands near a -great water, cut off from a little town and from the world by a round -green hill and touched by no road but only by a wandering path. At the -foot of this hill, among yellow mounds of sand, under blue sky, the -church is dark and alone. It is not very old--not five centuries--and -is of plainest masonry: its blunt short spire of slate slabs that leans -slightly to one side, with the smallest of perforated slate windows at -the base, has a look of age and rusticity. In the churchyard is a rough -grey cross of stone--a disc supported by a pillar. It is surrounded by -the waving noiseless tamarisk. It looks northward over the sandhills -at a blue bay, guarded on the west by tall grey cliffs which a white -column surmounts. - -For a time the nearer sandhills have rested and clothed themselves in -bird’s-foot trefoil, thyme, eyebright and short turf: but once the -church was buried beneath them. Between the round hill and the church -a tiny stream sidles along through a level hiding-place of flags and -yellow flag flowers, of purple figwort and purple orchis and green -grass. - -A cormorant flies low across the sky--that sable bird which seems to -belong to the old time, the time of badger and beaver, of ancient men -who rose up out of the crags of this coast. To them, when the cuckoo -first called one April, came over the blue sea a small brown ship, -followed by three seals, and out of it descended a Christian from -Ireland, black-haired, blue-eyed, with ready red lips and deep sweet -voice and spoke to them, all alone. He told them of a power that ruled -the blue waters and shifting sands, who could move the round green hill -to the rock of the white gulls; taller and grimmer than the cloven -headland yet sweet and gentle as the fennel above; deep-voiced as the -Atlantic storm, tender also as the sedgewarbler in the flags below the -hill; whose palace was loftier than the blue to which the lark was now -soaring, milder and richer than the meadows in May and everlasting; and -his attendants were more numerous and bright than the herring under a -moon of frost. The milkpails should be fuller and the grass deeper and -the corn heavier in the car if they believed in this; the pilchards -should be as water boiling in the bay; and they should have wings as -of the white birds that lounged about the precipices of the coast. And -all the time the three seals lay with their heads and backs above the -shallows and watched. Perhaps the men believed his word; perhaps they -dropped him over the precipice to see whether he also flew like a gull: -but here is the church named after him. - -All along the coast (and especially where it is lofty and houseless, -and on the ledges of the crags the young grey gulls unable to fly bob -their heads seaward and try to scream like their parents who wheel far -and near with double yodeling cry), there are many rounded barrows -looking out to sea. And there are some amidst the sandhills, bare and -corrugated by the wind and heaved up like a feather-bed, their edges -golden against the blue sky or mangily covered by drab marram grass -that whistles wintrily; and near by the blue sea, slightly roughened -as by a barrow, sleeps calm but foamy among cinder-coloured isles; -donkeys graze on the brown turf, larks rise and fall and curlews go -by; a cuckoo sings among the deserted mines. But the barrows are most -noble on the high heather and grass. The lonely turf is full of lilac -scabious flowers and crimson knapweed among the solid mounds of gorse. -The brown-green-grey of the dry summer grass reveals myriads of the -flowers of thyme, of stonecrop yellow and white, of pearly eyebright, -of golden lady’s fingers, and the white or grey clover with its purest -and earthiest of all fragrances. Here and there steep tracks descend -slantwise among the thrift-grown crags to the sea, or promise to -descend but end abruptly in precipices. On the barrows themselves, -which are either isolated or in a group of two or three, grow thistle -and gorse. They command mile upon mile of cliff and sea. In their sight -the great headlands run out to sea and sinking seem to rise again a -few miles out in a sheer island, so that they resemble couchant beasts -with backs under water but heads and haunches upreared. The cliffs -are cleft many times by steep-sided coves, some with broad sand and -shallow water among purple rocks, the outlet of a rivulet; others -ending precipitously so that the stream suddenly plunges into the black -sea among a huddle of sunless boulders. Near such a stream there will -be a grey farm amid grey outbuildings--with a carved wooden eagle from -the wreckage of the cove, or a mermaid, once a figure-head with fair -long hair and round bosom, built into the wall of a barn. Or there -is a briny hamlet grouped steeply on either side of the stream which -gurgles among the pebbles down to the feet of the bearded fisherman and -the ships a-gleam. Or perhaps there is no stream at all, and bramble -and gorse come down dry and hot to the lips of the emerald and purple -pools. Deep roads from the sea to the cliff-top have been worn by -smuggler and fisherman and miner, climbing and descending. Inland shows -a solitary pinnacled church tower, rosy in the warm evening--a thin -line of trees, long bare stems and dark foliage matted--and farther -still the ridges of misty granite, rough as the back of a perch. - -Of all the rocky land, of the sapphire sea white with quiet foam, the -barrows are masters. The breaking away of the rock has brought them -nearer to the sea as it has annihilated some and cut off the cliff-ways -in mid-career. They stand in the unenclosed waste and are removed from -all human uses and from most wayfaring. Thus they share the sublimity -of beacons and are about to show that tombs also have their deaths. -Linnet and stonechat and pipit seem to attend upon them, with pretty -voices and motions and a certain ghastliness, as of shadows, given -to their cheerful and sudden flittings by the solemn neighbourhood. -But most of their hold upon the spirit they owe to their powerful -suggestion that here upon the high sea border was once lived a bold -proud life, like that of Beowulf, whose words, when he was dying from -the wounds of his last victory, were: “Bid the warriors raise a funeral -mound to flash with fire on a promontory above the sea, that it may -stand high and be a memorial by which my people shall remember me, and -seafarers driving their tall ships through the mist of the sea shall -say: ‘Beowulf’s Mound.’” - -In Cornwall as in Wales, these monuments are the more impressive, -because the earth, wasting with them and showing her bones, takes their -part. There are days when the age of the Downs, strewn with tumuli and -the remnants of camp and village, is incredible; or rather they seem -in the course of long time to have grown smooth and soft and kind, -and to be, like a rounded languid cloud, an expression of Earth’s -summer bliss of afternoon. But granite and slate and sandstone jut -out, and in whatsoever weather speak rather of the cold, drear, hard, -windy dawn. Nothing can soften the lines of Trendreen or Brown Willy -or Carn Galver against the sky. The small stone-hedged ploughlands -amidst brake and gorse do but accentuate the wildness of the land -from which they have been won. The deserted mines are frozen cries of -despair as if they had perished in conflict with the waste; and in a -few years their chimneys standing amidst rotted woodwork, the falling -masonry, the engine rusty, huge and still (the abode of rabbits, and -all overgrown with bedstraw, the stern thistle and wizard henbane) are -in keeping with the miles of barren land, littered with rough silvered -stones among heather and furze, whose many barrows are deep in fern and -bramble and foxglove. The cotton grass raises its pure nodding white. -The old roads dive among still more furze and bracken and bramble and -foxglove, and on every side the land grows no such crop as that of grey -stones. Even in the midst of occasional cornfield or weedless pasture -a long grey upright stone speaks of the past. In many places men have -set up these stones, roughly squaring some of them, in the form of a -circle or in groups of circles--and over them beats the buzzard in -slow hesitating and swerving flight. In one place the work of Nature -might be mistaken for that of man. On a natural hillock stands what -appears to be the ruin of an irregularly heaped wall of grey rock, -roughened by dark-grey lichen, built of enormous angular fragments like -the masonry of a giant’s child. Near at hand, bracken, pink stonecrop, -heather and bright gold tormentil soften it; but at a distance it -stands black against the summer sky, touched with the pathos of man’s -handiwork overthrown, yet certainly an accident of Nature. It commands -Cape Cornwall and the harsh sea, and St. Just with its horned church -tower. On every hand lie cromlech, camp, circle, hut and tumulus of -the unwritten years. They are confused and mingled with the natural -litter of a barren land. It is a silent Bedlam of history, a senseless -cemetery or museum, amidst which we walk as animals must do when they -see those valleys full of skeletons where their kind are said to go -punctually to die. There are enough of the dead; they outnumber the -living; and there those trite truths burst with life and drum upon the -tympanum with ambiguous fatal voices. At the end of this many-barrowed -moor, yet not in it, there is a solitary circle of grey stones, where -the cry of the past is less vociferous, less bewildering, than on the -moor itself, but more intense. Nineteen tall, grey stones stand round -a taller, pointed one that is heavily bowed, amidst long grass and -bracken and furze. A track passes close by, but does not enter the -circle; the grass is unbent except by the weight of its bloom. It bears -a name that connects it with the assembling and rivalry of the bards -of Britain. Here, under the sky, they met, leaning upon the stones, -tall, fair men of peace, but half-warriors, whose songs could change -ploughshare into sword. Here they met, and the growth of the grass, the -perfection of the stones (except that one stoops as with age), and the -silence, suggest that since the last bard left it, in robe of blue or -white or green--the colours of sky and cloud and grass upon this fair -day--the circle has been unmolested, and the law obeyed which forbade -any but a bard to enter it. Sky-blue was the colour of a chief bard’s -robe, emblematic of peace and heavenly calm, and of unchangeableness. -White, the colour of the Druid’s dress, was the emblem of light, and of -its correlatives, purity of conduct, wisdom, and piety. Green was the -colour of the youthful ovate’s robe, for it was the emblem of growth. -Their uniformity of colour signified perfect truth. And the inscription -upon the chair of the bards of Beisgawen was, “Nothing is that is not -for ever and ever.” Blue and white and green, peace and light and -growth--“Nothing is that is not for ever and ever”--these things and -the blue sky, the white, cloudy hall of the sun, and the green bough -and grass, hallowed the ancient stones, and clearer than any vision -of tall bards in the morning of the world was the tranquil delight of -being thus “teased out of time” in the presence of this ancientness. - -It is strange to pass from these monumental moors straight to the -sea which records the moments, not the years or the centuries. In -fine weather especially its colour--when, for example, it is faintly -corrugated and of a blue that melts towards the horizon into such a -hue that it is indistinguishable from the violet wall of dawn--is a -perpetual astonishment on account of its unearthliness and evanescence. -The mind does not at once accept the fact that here underneath our eyes -is, as it were, another sky. The physical act of looking up induces -a special mood of solemnity and veneration, and during the act the -eyes meet with a fitting object in the stainless heavens. Looking -down we are used to seeing the earth, the road, the footpath, the -floor, the hearth; but when, instead, it is the sea and not any of -these things, although our feet are on firm land, the solemnity is of -another kind. In its anger the sea becomes humanized or animalized: we -see resemblances to familiar things. There is, for instance, an hour -sometimes after sunset, when the grey sky coldly lights the lines of -white plumes on a steely sea, and they have an inevitable likeness -to a trampling chivalry that charges upon a foe. But a calm sea is -incomparable except to moods of the mind. It is then as remote from the -earth and earthly things as the sky, and the remoteness is the more -astonishing because it is almost within our grasp. It is no wonder -that a great idea was expressed by the fortunate islands in the sea. -The youthfulness, the incorruptibility of the sea, continually renewing -itself, the same from generation to generation, prepares it as a fit -sanctuary of the immortal dead. So at least we are apt to think at -certain times, coming from the heavy, scarred, tormented earth to that -immense aëry plain of peacock blue. And yet at other times that same -unearthliness will suggest quite other thoughts. It has not changed -and shrunken and grown like the earth; it is not sun-warmed: it is a -monster that has lain unmoved by time, sleeping and moaning outside -the gates within which men and animals have become what they are. -Actually that cold fatal element and its myriad population without a -sound brings a wistfulness into the mind as if it could feel back and -dimly recall the dawn of time when the sea was incomprehensible and -impassable, when the earth had but lately risen out of the waters and -was yet again to descend beneath: it becomes a type of the waste where -everything is unknown or uncertain except death, pouring into the brain -the thoughts that men have had on looking out over untrodden mountain, -forest, swamp, in the drizzling dawn of the world. The sea is exactly -what it was when mountain, forest, swamp were imperturbable enemies, -and the sight of it restores the ancient fear. I remember one dawn -above all others when this restoration was complete. When it was yet -dark the wind rose gustily under a low grey sky and a lark sang amidst -the moan of gorse and the creak of gates and the deeply-taken breath -of the tide at the full. Nor was it yet light when the gulls began to -wheel and wind and float with a motion like foam on a whirlpool or -interwoven snow. They wheeled about the masts of fishing-boats that -nodded and kissed and crossed in a steep cove of crags whose black -edges were slavered by the foam of the dark sea; and there were no men -among the boats or about the grey houses that looked past the walls -of the cove to the grim staircase and sea-doors of a black headland, -whose perpendicular rocks stood up far out of the reach of the wings -fashioned in the likeness of gigantic idols. The higher crags were -bushy and scaly with lichen, and they were cushioned upon thrift and -bird’s-foot trefoil and white bladder campion. It was a bristling sea, -not in the least stormy, but bristling, dark and cold through the slow -colourless dawn, dark and cold and immense; and at the edge of it the -earth knelt, offering up the music of a small flitting bird and the -beauty of small flowers, white and gold, to those idols. They were -terrible enough. But the sea was more terrible; for it was the god of -whom those rocks were the poor childish images, and it seemed that -the god had just then disclosed his true nature and hence the pitiful -loveliness of the flowers, the pitiful sweetness of the bird that sang -among the rocks at the margin of the kind earth. - -Now and then the sea will startle by some resemblance to the earth. -Thus I have come unexpectedly in sight of it on a strange coast -and have not known that it was the sea. A gale from the north-east -was blowing, and it was late afternoon in mid-winter. The land was -sandy moorland, treeless and dark with iron-coloured heather. A mile -away I saw rising up into the sky what seemed a peaty mountain in -Cardiganshire, as it would be in a tempest of rain, and it was only -when I was near the cliff and could see the three long walls of white -waves towards the shore that I knew it was the sea. More common is the -calm dark-blue sea in mid-summer, over which go criss-cross bands of -lighter hue, like pale moorland paths winding about a moor. - -In a stern land like Cornwall that so often refuses the consolations of -grass and herb and tree, the relentings are the more gracious. These -are to be found in a whole valley where there are sloping fields of -corn and grass divided by green hedges, and woods rich and misty and -warm, and the bones of the land are buried away until it ends in a -bay where high and cavernous dark rocks stand on either side of blue -water and level sand. Often all the sweetness of the country round -seems to have run into one great roadside hedge as dewdrops collect in -the bosom of a leaf. The stones of the original wall are themselves -deeply hidden in turf, or from the crevices ferns descend and the pale -blooms of pennywort rise up; the lichen is furry and the yellow or -pink stonecrop is neat and dense; ivy climbs closely up and hangs down -in loose array. Up from the top of the wall or mound rise bramble and -gorse and woodbine over them, or brier and thorn and woodbine again; -and the tallest and massiest of foxgloves cleave through these with -their bells, half a hundred of them in rows five deep already open and -as many more yet in bud, dense as grapes, dewy, murmurous; and below -the foxgloves are slender parsleys, rough wood sage and poppies. At the -foot of the wall, between it and the road, is a grassy strip, where -the yarrow grows feathery with gilded cinquefoil and tormentil--or -above nettles as dense as corn rise large discs of white hog parsnip -flower, a coarse and often dirty flower that has a dry smell of -summer--or bramble and brier arch this way and that their green and -rosy and purple stems, bright leaves, flowers pink and white. Only -the shin-breaking Cornish stiles of stone, interrupting the hedge and -giving a view of barren hills or craggy-sided sea, destroy the illusion -created by this exuberance of herb and bush and the perfume of woodbine -and rose. - -Nowhere is the stateliness or grace or privacy of trees more -conspicuous than about the Cornish towns and farms. The tall -round-topped elms above Padstow, for example, would be natural and -acceptable unconsciously elsewhere; but above those crossing lines of -roof they have an indescribable benevolence. The farmhouses are usually -square, dry and grey, being built of slate with grey-slated roofs -painted by lichen; some are whitewashed; in some, indeed, the stones -are of many greys and blues, with yellowish and reddish tinges, hard, -but warm in the sun and comforting to look at when close to the sea -and some ruinous promontory; few are screened by ivy or climbing rose. -The farm buildings are of the same kind, relieved by yellow straw, the -many hues of hay, the purple bracken stacks, the dark peat. The gates -are coarse and mean, of iron or of cheap or rough wood, lightly made, -patched, held together by string, and owing their only charm to the -chance use of the curved ribs of ships as gate-posts. But to many of -the buildings sycamore and ash and apple trees bent above tall grass -lend their beauty of line, of mass, of colour, of shade, of sound and -of many motions. I can never forget the rows of ash trees, the breezy -sycamores and the tamarisks by ancient Harlyn, with its barrows on the -hill, its ruins of chapel and church among rushes and poppies, its -little oak wood by the sandy river mouth where the men of old time -buried their dead, the poppied corn, the white gulls and their black -shadows wheeling over sunny turf. The file of lean woods seen between -Perranporth and St. Agnes inland. The sycamores above the farm near -Towan cross where the road dips and the deep furrow of a little valley -winds, with hay upon its slopes, out to sea. The green wood, long and -beautiful, below the gentle brown slopes of Hudder Down. The several -companies of trees in the valley by the Red River, and the white farm -of Reskajeage near by, under ash and elm, sycamore and wych-elm and -lime, a rough orchard of apples and a gnarled squat medlar to one -side--the trees grouped as human figures are when they begin to move -after some tense episode. The wych-elm, sycamore and ash round the -tower of Gwithian church and in amongst the few thatched cottages -alongside the yellow towans and violet sea. In a land of deserted -roofless houses with solid chimneys that no man wants, the narrow copse -of small spindly oaks upholding with bare crooked stems as of stone a -screen of leaves, above a brooklet that runs to the sea through dense -rush and foxglove and thistle where the sedge-warbler sings. The long -low mound of green wood nearest to Land’s End. Between Tregothal and -Bosfranken, the wet copse in a narrow valley, where red campion and -bracken and bramble are unpenetrated among flowery elders, sallows, -thorns and sycamores. A farm that has a water-mill and water gloomy -and crystal under sycamore and ash. The thin halting procession of -almost branchless trees on the ridge of the Beacon above Sancreed--a -procession that seems even at mid-day to move in another world, in the -world and in the age of the stone circles and cairns and cromlechs of -the moor beyond. The sycamore and elder that surround and tower above -Tregonebris near Boscawen Un. The avenue of ash and elm and wych-elm -and sycamore, very close together, leading from grey Nancothan mill, -where the dark-brown water mingles its noise with the rustling trees. -The wych-elms and golden-fruited sycamores about the roads near St. -Hilary, and the long avenue of ash up to the church itself, and the -elms through which the evening music floats, amidst the smell of hay, -in a misty mountained sunset. - -Under the flaming fleeces of a precipitous sky, in a windless hush -and at low tide, I descended to a narrow distinct valley just where -a stream ran clear and slow through level sands to a bay, between -headlands of rocks and of caves among the rocks. The sides of the -valley near the sea were high and steep and of grass until their abrupt -end in a low but perpendicular wall of rock just above the river -sands. Inland the valley began to wind and at the bend trees came -darkly trooping down the slopes to the water. Immediately opposite the -ford--the wet sands being unscathed by any foot or hoof or wheel--a -tributary ran into the river through a gorge of its own. It was a -gorge not above a hundred feet across, and its floor was of sand save -where the brook was running down, and this floor was all in shadow -because the banks were clothed in thick underwood and in ash, sycamore, -wych-elm and oak meeting overhead. And in these sands also there was no -footprint save of the retreated sea. There was no house, nor wall, nor -road. And there was no sound in the caverns of foliage except one call -of a cuckoo as I entered and the warbling of a blackbird that mused in -the oaks and then laughed and was silent and mused again and filled -the mind with the fairest images of solitude--solitude where a maid, -thinking of naught, unthought of, unseen, combs out her yellow hair and -lets her spirit slip down into the tresses--where a man fearful of his -kind ascends out of the deeps of himself so that his eyes look bravely -and his face unstiffens and unwrinkles and his motion and gesture is -fast and free--where a child walks and stops and runs and sings in -careless joy that takes him winding far out into abysses of eternity -and makes him free of them, so that years afterward the hour and place -and sky return, and the eternity on which they opened as a casement, -but not the child, not the joy. - -I like trees for the cool evening voices of their many leaves, for -their cloudy forms linked to earth by stately stems--for the pale -lifting of the sycamore leaves in breezes and also their drooping, -hushed and massed repose, for the myriad division of the light ash -leaves--for their straight pillars and for the twisted branch work, -for their still shade and their rippling or calm shimmering or dimly -glowing light, for the quicksilver drip of dawn, for their solemnity -and their dancing, for all their sounds and motions--their slow-heaved -sighs, their nocturnal murmurs, their fitful fingerings at thunder -time, their swishing and tossing and hissing in violent rain, the roar -of their congregations before the south-west wind when it seems that -they must lift up the land and fly away with it, for their rustlings -of welcome in harvest heat--for their kindliness and their serene -remoteness and inhumanity, and especially the massiest of the trees -that have also the glory of motion, the sycamores, which are the chief -tree of Cornwall, as the beeches and yews are of the Downs, the oaks -of the Weald, the elms of the Wiltshire vales. - -Before I part from trees I should like to mention those of -mid-Somerset--and above all, the elms. I am thinking of them as they -are at noon on the hottest days of haymaking at the end of June. The -sky is hot, its pale blue without pity and changing to a yellow of mist -near the horizon. The land is level and all of grass, and where the hay -is not spread in swathes the grass is almost invisible for the daisies -on its motionless surface. Here and there the mower whirrs and seems -natural music, like the grasshopper’s, of the burning earth. Through -the levels wind the heavy-topped grey willows of a hidden stream. -In the hedges and in the wide fields and about the still, silent -farmhouses of stone there are many elms. They are tall and slender -despite their full mounded summits. They cast no shade. In the great -heat their green is all but grey, and their leaves are lost in the mist -which their mingling creates. Grey-hooded, grey-mantled, they seem to -be stealing away over the fields to the sanctuary of the dark-wooded -hills, low and round and lapped entirely in leaves, which stand in -the mist at the edge of the plain--to be leaving that plain to the -possession of the whirring mower and the sun of almighty summer. - -Sycamores solemnized the Cornish farm in the twilight, where I asked -the farmer’s wife if she could let us have two beds for the night. She -stood in the doorway, hands on hips, watching her grandchildren’s last -excited minutes of play in the rickyard. - -“He’s the master,” she replied, pointing to the farmer who was talking -to his carter, between the rickyard and the door, under the sycamores. - -“Two beds?” - -“That is what we should like,” said my friend and I. - -“What do you want with two beds?” he asked with a tinge of scorn as -well as of pity in his frank amusement. “My missus and I have only had -one bed these forty years.” - -Here he laughed so gaily that he could not have embarrassed the very -devil of puritanism, and turning to his man he called forth a deep -bass laughter and from his wife a peal that shook her arms so that she -raised them to the sides of the porch for better support; the children -also turned their laughter our way. - -“But perhaps one of you kicks in his sleep?... We don’t.... Come -inside. I dare say you are tired.... Good-night, John. Now, children, -up with you.” - -I think they were the most excellent pair of man and woman I ever -saw. Both were of a splendid physical type, she the more energetic, -black-haired, black-eyed, plump and tall and straight; he the more -enduring, fair-haired and bearded, blue-eyed, hardly her equal in -height, certainly not in words. In forty years neither had overpowered -the other. They had not even agreed to take separate paths, but like -two school-boys, new friends, they could afford to contend together -in opinions without fear of damage or of lazy truce. He had ploughed -and sowed and reaped: she had borne him seven children, had baked and -churned and stitched. They had loved sweet things together, and, with -curses at times, their children and the land. Physical strength and -purity--that were in them the whole of morality--seemed to have given -them that equality with the conditions of life which philosophy has -done nothing but talk about. They of all men and women had perhaps -jarred least upon the music of the spheres. They had the right and -power to live, and the end was laughter. - -In all those years they had been separated but once. Until four years -ago she had not been out of Cornwall except to bury her mother, who had -suddenly died in London. Two hundred pounds fell to her share on that -death and the money arrived one morning after the harvest thanksgiving. -For a week she continued to go about her work in the old way save that -she sent rather hurriedly for a daughter who had just left her place -as cook in Exeter. At the end of the week, having stored the apples -and shown her daughter how to use the separator, she walked in to -Penzance in her best clothes but without even a handbag; her husband -was out with his gun. By the next day she was at Liverpool. She sent -off a picture postcard, with a little note written by the shopkeeper, -saying that she would be back by Christmas, and telling her husband -to sell the old bull. Then she sailed for New York. She saw Niagara; -she visited her nephew, John Davy, at Cincinnati; she spent two weeks -in railway travelling west and south, and saw the Indians. Four days -before Christmas she was back in the rickyard, driving before her a -young bull and carrying in her hand a bunch of maize. - -“Well, Ann, you’re back before your time,” said her husband, after -praising the beast. - -“Yes, Samuel, and I feel as if I could whitewash the dairy, that I do,” -said she. - -“Suppose you wait till to-morrow,” proposed Sam Davy. - -“I think I will, for I can hear that Mary is behind with the separator.” - -“She’s a good girl, but she hasn’t got your patience, my dear.” - -“Oh, here, Sam, here’s the change,” she said, giving him the bunch of -maize. - - * * * * * - -In Cornwall many of the women looked less English than the men. The -noticeable men were fair-haired and, of fair complexion, blue-eyed and -rather small-headed, upright and of good bearing. The noticeable women -had black hair, pale, seldom swarthy, faces, very dark eyes. Perhaps -the eyes were more foreign than anything else in them: they were -singularly immobile and seldom changed in expression with their voices. -Several of the dark-eyed, black-haired women had a beauty of a fearless -character like gypsy women, in their movement and expression. But the -wives of small farmers and miners on piecework look old very soon and -are puckered and shadowy in the face. Some of these middle-aged and -old women suggested an early and barbarous generation. The eyes were -small and deep-set, and the face narrowed forward like an animal’s; -which gave the whole a peering expression of suspicion and even alarm. -The eyes of most human beings are causes of bewilderment and dismay -if curiously looked at; but the strangest I ever saw were in an old -Cornish woman. They were black and round as a child’s, with a cold -brightness that made them seem not of the substance of other eyes, but -like a stone. They were set in a narrow, bony face of parchment among -grey hair crisp and disarrayed. I saw them only for a few minutes -while I asked a few questions about the way, and it was as much as I -could do to keep up the conversation, so much did those motionless eyes -invite me to plunge into an abyss of human personality--such intense -loneliness and strangeness did they create, since they proclaimed -shrilly and clearly that beyond a desire to be fed and clothed we had -nothing in common. Had they peered up at me out of a cromlech or hut at -Bosporthennis I could not have been more puzzled and surprised. - -Men and women were hospitable and ready to smile as the Welsh are; and -they have an alluring naïveté as well as some righteousness. One family -was excessively virtuous or had a wish to appear so: I do not know -which alternative to like the less, since it was in a matter of game. -They rented land on a large estate and had a right to the rabbits: the -hares were sacred to the great landowner. The farmer’s wife assured me -that one of her sons had lately brought in a lame hare and proposed to -put it out of its pain, but that she had said: “No, take it out and -let it die outside anywhere. The best thing is to be afraid in things -of this kind and then you won’t go wrong.” Doing much the same kind or -quantity of manual work as their husbands and being much out of doors, -the women’s manners were confident and free. Their speech was as a rule -fluent and grammatical and clearly delivered, with less accent than in -any part of England. Coming into a mining village one day and wanting -tea, I asked a woman who was drawing water from a farmyard well if she -could make me some, thinking she was the farmer’s wife. She said she -would, but took me to one of a small row of cottages over the way, -where her husband was half-naked in the midst of his Saturday wash. -Taking no notice of him she led me into the sitting-room and, with a -huge loaf held like a violin, began buttering and cutting thin slices -while she talked to me, to the little children and to her husband, from -the adjacent kitchen. She was tall, straight as a pillar, black-haired, -with clear untanned but slightly swarthy skin, black eyes, kindly -gleaming cheeks and red lips smiling above her broad breast and hips. -Her clothes were black but in rags that hardly clung to her shoulders -and waist. She was barely five and twenty, but had six young children -about her, one in a cradle by the hearth and another still crawling -at her feet. Her only embarrassment came when I asked to pay for my -tea--she began adding up the cost, a pennyworth of bread and butter, a -halfpennyworth of tea, etc.! The kitchen consisted simply of a large -grate and baking oven, plain tables and chairs on a flagged floor. -But the sitting-room was a museum--with photographs of a volunteer -corps, of friends and relations on the wall over the fire; foxgloves in -jam-pots surrounded by green crinkled paper in the fireplace; on the -mantelpiece, cheap little vases and scraps of ore and more photographs. -On the walls were three pictures: one of two well-dressed children -being timidly inspected by fallow deer; another of a grandmother -showing a book to a child whose attention is diverted by the frolics -of two kittens at her side; and a third of Jesus, bleeding and crowned -with thorns, high on a cross over a marble city beneath a romantic -forest ridge, behind which was the conflagration of a crimson sunset. - -Other sitting-rooms were similarly adorned, with the addition of a -picture of John Wesley as a child escaping from the window of a -burning house, with many anxious men holding up their hands from below. -The smell of flowers and of sun-warmed furniture and old upholstery -mingles in such rooms. - -But the kitchens are often as charming as in Wales. I remember one -especially near Carn Galver. The farmhouse was of whitened stone under -a steep thatch. In front were fuchsia trees in the corner of a stony -yard; to one side, the haystacks and piles of furze and bracken and -peat. The farmer’s wife was carrying peat on an iron hook into the -kitchen and I followed her. A pan of yellow scalded cream stood inside. -The fireplace was a little room in itself, with seats at each side and -a little fire of wood and three upright turves in one corner of the -great stone hearth: over the fire the kettle boiled. Horse ornaments -of polished brass surmounted the fireplace. The wallpaper had given -up its pattern long since to a smoky uneven gold; nailed to it were -calendars and lists of fairs and sales; against it were two small -tables, one to support a Bible and an almanac, the other spread with a -white cloth on which was a plate and a bowl of cream. Behind the door -and between it and the fire was a high-backed settle of dark wood, -with elbow-rests. The floor was flagged and sanded. The light came in -through a little square window on to the Bible by the opposite wall, -and through the open door on to the figure of the housewife, a woman -of forty. A delicate white face shone beneath a broad untrimmed straw -hat that was tied tightly under her chin so as to hide her ears and -most of her black hair. Her black skirt was kilted up behind; a white -apron contrasted with black shoes, black stockings and black clothes. -At first her face was hardly seen, not only because but a part of -it emerged from the shell of her hat, but because the spirit that -emanated from it was more than the colour and features and so much in -harmony with the sea and crag and moor and dolmen of her land. It is -evading an insuperable difficulty to say that this spirit was not so -much human as fay. It was the spirit of which her milky complexion, -the bright black eyes, white teeth and fine red lips of her readily -smiling and naïvely watching fearless face, her slender form, her -light and rapid movements upon small feet, were only the more obvious -expressions. Her spirit danced before her--not quite visibly, not quite -audibly--as she moved or spoke or merely smiled; if it could have been -seen it would have been a little singing white flame changing to blue -and crimson in its perpetual flickering. It was a spirit of laughter, -of laughter unquenchable since the beginning of time, of laughter in -spite of and because of all things, the laughter of life like a jewel -in desolate places. It was a spirit most ancient and yet childlike, -birdlike: it belonged to a world outside any which other human beings -ever seemed to touch, but the laughter in it made it friendly, for -it was far deeper than humour, it was gaiety of heart. Her goings -to and fro on those light feet had the grace, quickness, suddenness -of a bird, of a wren that slips from twig to twig and jets out its -needle of song, of a moorhen flicking its tail and hooting sharply. -Her laugh startled and delighted like the laugh of the woodpecker as -it leaps across the glades--like the whistling of birds up amongst -the dark clouds and the moon. But most of all she called to mind the -meadow pipit of her own crags, that rises from green ledges out over -the sea and then, falling slantwise with body curved like a crescent, -utters his passionate pulsating song, so rapid and passionate that it -seems impossible and unfit that it should end except in death, yet -suddenly ceasing as it lands again upon the samphire or the thrift. The -spirit was as quicksilver in the corners of her eyes, as quicksilver -in the heart. Such a maid she must have been as the bard would have -thought to send out the thrush to woo for him, when he heard the bird -of ermine breast singing from the new-leaved hazel at dawn, on the -edge of a brook among the steep woods--singing artfully with a voice -like a silver bell--solemnly, too, so as to seem to be performing a -sacrifice--and amorously, bringing balm to lovers’ hearts and inspiring -the bard to send by him a message to the sun of all maidens that she, -white as the snow of the first winter night, should come out to the -green woods to him. She had lived for generations on the moor, for -generations upon generations, and this was what she had gained from -heather and furze and crag and seawind and sunshine tempered by no -trees--inextinguishable laughter. But she was inarticulate. She milked -the cows, made butter, baked bread, kept the peat fire burning and -tended her children. When she talked, I asked for more cream. Perhaps -after several more generations have passed she will be a poet and -astonish the world with a moorland laughter of words that endure. - - * * * * * - -Everything in that house was old or smooth and bright with use, and -the hollowed threshold of the doorway in the sun put me in mind of -a hundred old things and of their goodliness to mortal eyes--the -wrecked ship’s ribs, their bolt-holes rusty, that stand among nettles -as gate-posts--the worn dark stones that rock to the tread among the -ripples of an umbrageous ford--many a polished stile and gate--the -group of rigid but still gracious bowery thorns dotted with crimson -haws in the middle of a meadow, their holes and lower branches rubbed -hard and smooth and ruddy like iron by the cows--the ash staff -beginning to bend like its master, the old man upon the roads who once -wore scarlet and wound the horn for Mr. ----’s hounds. Odd it is how -old use sanctifies a little thing. There was once a hut where a good -man, but a poor and a weak and unwise, stayed all one fair summer and -talked of English roads--he was a lord of the roads, at least of South -Country roads--and of ships, which he knew. Now on the first night of -his stay, needing a candlestick he kicked off the top of a pointed -wooden paling, so as to make a five-angled piece on which he stuck the -candle in its own grease. All through his stay he used the candlestick, -when he read the _Divina Commedia_ and _Pantagruel_ and _Henry Brocken_ -and recollected airs of Italy and Spain, amidst the sound of nightjars -and two leafy streams: the light flickered out as he mused about the -open sea, calm but boundless and without known harbour, on which he was -drifting cheerfully, regardless of Time, pied with nights and days. -The hut was burnt and the man went--to drown a little afterwards with -a hundred unlike himself in the sea--but among nettle and dock the -candlestick was picked up safe. It had broken off straight and the -simple shape was pleasant; it was dark with age; along with the mound -and little pillar of wax remaining it had the shape of a natural thing; -and it was his. - -Animate as well as inanimate things are open to this sanctification -by age or use. I am not here thinking of ceremonious use--for which -I have small natural respect, so that I have been denied the power -of appreciating either a great religious pomp or the dancing of -Mademoiselle Genée. But some men, particularly sailors and field -labourers, but also navvies and others who work heavily with their -hands, have this glory of use. Their faces, their clothes, their -natures all appear to act and speak harmoniously, so that they cause -a strong impression of personality which is to be deeply enjoyed in a -world of masks, especially of black clerical masks. One of the best -examples of this kind was a gamekeeper who daily preceded me by twenty -or thirty yards in a morning walk up through a steep wood of beeches. -He was a short, stiffly-built and stoutish man who wore a cap, thick -skirted coat and breeches, leather gaiters and heavy boots, all patched -and stained, all of nearly the same colour as his lightish-brown hair -and weathered skin, but not so dark as the gun over his shoulder. The -shades of this colour were countless and made up like the colour of a -field of ripe wheat, which they would have resembled had they not been -liberally dusted all over, just as his brown beard was grizzled. He -went slowly up, swinging slightly at the shoulders and always smoking a -pipe of strong shag tobacco of which the fumes hovered in the moist air -with inexpressible sweetness and a good brown savour: if I may say so, -the fit emanation of the brown woodland man who, when he stood still, -looked like the stump of a tree. - - - - -CHAPTER X - -SUMMER--SUSSEX - - -Far up on the Downs the air of day and night is flavoured by -honeysuckle and new hay. It is good to walk, it is good to lie still; -the rain is good and so is the sun; and whether the windy or the quiet -air be the better let us leave to a December judgment to decide. One -day the rain falls and there is no wind, and all the movement is in -the chaos of the dark sky; and thus is made the celestial fairness of -an earth that is brighter than the heavens; for the green and lilac of -the grasses and the yellow of the goat’s-beard flowers glow, and the -ripening corn is airy light. But next day the sun is early hot. The wet -hay steams and is sweet. The beams pour into a southward coombe of the -hills and the dense yew is warm as a fruit-wall, so that the utmost -of fragrance is extracted from the marjoram and thyme and fanned by -the coming and going of butterflies; and in contrast with this gold -and purple heat on flower and wing, through the blue sky and along the -hill-top moist clouds are trooping, of the grey colour of melting snow. -The great shadows of the clouds brood long over the hay, and in the -darker hollows the wind rustles the dripping thickets until mid-day. On -another morning after night rain the blue sky is rippled and crimped -with high, thin white clouds by several opposing breezes. Vast forces -seem but now to have ceased their feud. The battle is over, and there -are all the signs of it plain to be seen; but they have laid down their -arms, and peace is broad and white in the sky, but of many colours -on the earth--for there is blue of harebell and purple of rose-bay -among the bracken and popping gorse, and heather and foxglove are -purple above the sand, and the mint is hoary lilac, the meadow-sweet -is foam, there is rose of willow-herb and yellow of fleabane at the -edge of the water, and purple of gentian and cistus yellow on the -Downs, and infinite greens in those little dense Edens which nettle and -cow-parsnip and bramble and elder make every summer on the banks of the -deep lanes. A thousand swifts wheel as if in a fierce wind over the -highest places of the hills, over the great seaward-looking camp and -its three graves and antique thorns, down to the chestnuts that stand -about the rickyards in the cornland below. - -These are the hours that seem to entice and entrap the airy inhabitants -of some land beyond the cloud mountains that rise farther than the -farthest of downs. Legend has it that long ago strange children were -caught upon the earth, and being asked how they had come there, they -said that one day as they were herding their sheep in a far country -they chanced on a cave; and within they heard music as of heavenly -bells, which lured them on and on through the corridors of that cave -until they reached our earth; and here their eyes, used only to a -twilight between a sun that had set for ever and a night that had never -fallen, were dazed by the August glow, and lying bemused they were -caught before they could find the earthly entrance to their cave. Small -wonder would this adventure be from a region no matter how blessed, -when the earth is wearing the best white wild roses or when August is -at its height. - -The last hay-waggon has hardly rolled between the elms before the -reaper and the reaping-machines begin to work. The oats and wheat -are in tents over all the land. Then, then it is hard not to walk -over the brown in the green of August grass. There is a roving spirit -everywhere. The very tents of the corn suggest a bivouac. The white -clouds coming up out of the yellow corn and journeying over the blue -have set their faces to some goal. The traveller’s-joy is tangled over -the hazels and over the faces of the small chalk-pits. The white beam -and the poplar and the sycamore fluttering show the silver sides of -their leaves and rustle farewells. The perfect road that goes without -hedges under elms and through the corn says, “Leave all and follow.” -How the bridges overleap the streams at one leap, or at three, in -arches like those of running hounds! The far-scattered, placid sunsets -pave the feet of the spirit with many a road to joy; the huge, vacant -halls of dawn give a sense of godlike power. - -But it is hard to make anything like a truce between these two -incompatible desires, the one for going on and on over the earth, the -other that would settle for ever, in one place as in a grave and have -nothing to do with change. Suppose a man to receive notice of death, it -would be hard to decide whether to walk or sail until the end, seeing -no man, or none but strangers; or to sit--alone--and by thinking or -not thinking to make the change to come as little as is permitted. The -two desires will often painfully alternate. Even on these harvest days -there is a temptation to take root for ever in some corner of a field -or on some hill from which the world and the clouds can be seen at a -distance. For the wheat is as red as the most red sand, and up above it -tower the elms, dark prophets persuading to silence and a stillness -like their own. Away on the lesser Downs the fields of pale oats are -liquid within their border of dark woods; they also propose deep -draughts of oblivion and rest. Then, again, there is the field--the -many fields--where a regiment of shocks of oats are ranked under the -white moon between rows of elms on the level Sussex land not far from -the sea. The contrast of the airy matter underfoot and the thin moon -overhead, with the massy dark trees, as it were, suspended between; -the numbers and the order of the sheaves; their inviolability, though -protected but by the gateway through which they are seen--all satisfy -the soul as they can never satisfy the frame. Then there are the mists -before heat which make us think of autumn or not, according to our -tempers. All night the aspens have been shivering and the owls exulting -under a clear full moon and above the silver of a great dew. You -climb the steep chalk slope, through the privet and dog-wood coppice; -among the scattered junipers--in this thick haze as in darkness they -group themselves so as to make fantastic likenesses of mounted men, -animals, monsters; over the dead earth in the shade of the broad yews, -and thence suddenly under lightsome sprays of guelder-rose and their -cherry-coloured berries; over the tufted turf; and then through the -massed beeches, cold and dark as a church and silent; and so out to the -level waste cornland at the top, to the flints and the clay. There a -myriad oriflammes of ragwort are borne up on all stems of equal height, -straight and motionless, and near at hand quite clear, but farther away -forming a green mist until, farther yet, all but the flowery surface -is invisible, and that is but a glow. The stillness of the green and -golden multitudes under the grey mist, perfectly still though a wind -flutters the high tops of the beech, has an immortal beauty, and that -they should ever change does not enter the mind which is thus for the -moment lured happily into a strange confidence and ease. But the sun -gains power in the south-east. It changes the mist into a fleeting -garment, not of cold or of warm grey, but of diaphanous gold. There is -a sea-like moan of wind in the half-visible trees, a wavering of the -mist to and fro until it is dispersed far and wide as part of the very -light, of the blue shade, of the colour of cloud and wood and down. -As the mist is unwoven the ghostly moon is disclosed, and a bank of -dead white clouds where the Downs should be. Under the very eye of the -veiled sun a golden light and warmth begins to nestle among the mounds -of foliage at the surface of the low woods. The beeches close by have -got a new voice in their crisp, cool leaves, of which every one is -doing something--cool, though the air itself is warm. Wood-pigeons coo. -The white cloud-bank gives way to an immeasurable half-moon of Downs, -some bare, some saddle-backed with woods, and far away and below, out -of the ocean of countless trees in the southern veil, a spire. It is -a spire which at this hour is doubtless moving a thousand men with a -thousand thoughts and hopes and memories of men and causes, but moves -me with the thought alone that just a hundred years ago was buried -underneath it a child, a little child whose mother’s mother was at the -pains to inscribe a tablet saying to all who pass by that he was once -“an amiable and most endearing child.” - -And what nights there are on the hills. The ash-sprays break up the -low full moon into a flower of many sparks. The Downs are heaved up -into the lighted sky--surely they heave in their tranquillity as with a -slowly taken breath. The moon is half-way up the sky and exactly over -the centre of the long curve of Downs; just above them lies a long -terrace of white cloud, and at their feet gleams a broad pond, the rest -of the valley being utterly dark and indistinguishable, save a few -scattered lamps and one near meadow that catches the moonlight so as to -be transmuted to a lake. But every rainy leaf upon the hill is brighter -than any of the few stars above, and from many leaves and blades hang -drops as large and bright as the glowworms in their recesses. Larger -by a little, but not brighter, are the threes and fours of lights -at windows in the valley. The wind has fallen, but a mile of woods -unlading the rain from their leaves make a sound of wind, while each -separate drop can be heard from the nearest branches, a noise of rapt -content, as if they were telling over again the kisses of the shower. -The air itself is heavy as mead with the scent of yew and juniper and -thyme. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - -HAMPSHIRE--AN UMBRELLA MAN - - -A beggar is a rich man on some of these August days, especially one I -know, whom first I met some Augusts ago now. A fine Sunday afternoon -had sprinkled the quiet and thinly-peopled land with black-dressed men -and white-dressed women, the older married couples and their trains -of children keeping chiefly to the roads and most straightforward -paths, the younger, with one child or none, choosing rather the green -lanes, while the lovers and the boys found out tall hedge-sides and the -footpaths across which more than one year’s growth of hazel had spread, -so that the shortest of the maids must stoop. Many showers following a -dry season made miles of the country as clean and fragrant as a garden. -Honeysuckle and privet were in every hedge with flowers that bring a -thrill of summer bridals on their scent. The brisk wind was thymy from -the Downs. The ragwort was in its glory; it rose tall as a man in one -straight leap of dark-foliaged stem, and then crowned itself in the -boldest and most splendid yellows derived from a dark golden disc and -almost lemon rays; it was as if Apollo had come down to keep the flocks -of a farmer on these chalk hills and his pomp had followed him out of -the sky. A few birds still sang; one lark now and then, a cirl-bunting -among the topmost haws of a thorn, chiffchaffs in the bittersweet and -hazel of the little copses. - -There was apparently comfort, abundance and quiet everywhere. They -were seen in the rickyards where grand haystacks, newly thatched, stood -around ancient walnut-trees. Even the beeches had a decorous look in -their smooth boles and perfect lavish foliage. The little patches of -flowery turf by the roadside and at corners were brighter and warmer -than ever, as the black bees and the tawny skipper butterflies flew -from bloom to bloom of the crimson knapweed. Amplest and most unctuous -of all in their expression of the ceremonious leisure of the day and -the maturity of the season were the cart-horses. They leaned their -large heads benignly over the rails or gates; their roan or chestnut -flanks were firm and polished; manes, tails and fetlocks spotless; -now and then they lifted up their feet and pressed their toes into -the ground, showing their enormous shoes that shone and were of girth -sufficient to make a girdle for the lightest of the maids passing by. - -Sunday with not too strict a rod of black and white ruled the land and -made it all but tedious except in the longest of the green lanes, which -dipped steeply under oaks to a brook muffled in leaves and rose steeply -again, a track so wet in spring--and full of the modest golden green of -saxifrage flowers--that only the hottest Sunday ever saw it disturbed -except by carter and horses. In a hundred yards the oak-hidden windings -gave the traveller a feeling of reclusion as if he were coiled in a -spool; very soon a feeling of possession ripened into one of armed -tyranny if another’s steps clattered on the stones above. Sometimes in -a goodly garden a straight alley of shadows leads away from the bright -frequented borders to--we know not quite whither, and perhaps, too much -delighted with half-sad reverie, never learn, smother even the guesses -of fancy, lest they should bring some old unpleasant truth in their -train; but if the fancy will thread the alley and pass the last of the -shadows it is into some such lane as this that it would gladly emerge, -to come at last upon the pure wild. It seemed that I had come upon -the pure wild in this lane, for in a bay of turf alongside the track, -just large enough for a hut and thickly sheltered by an oak, though -the south-west sun crept in, was a camp. Under the oak and at the edge -of the tangled bramble and brier and bracken was a low purple light -from those woodside flowers, self-heal and wood-betony. A perambulator -with a cabbage in it stood at one corner; leaning against it was an -ebony-handled umbrella and two or three umbrella-frames; underneath -it an old postman’s bag containing a hammer and other tools. Close by -stood half a loaf on a newspaper, several bottles of bright water, -a black pot of potatoes ready for boiling, a tin of water steaming -against a small fire of hazel twigs. Out on the sunny grass two shirts -were drying. In the midst was the proprietor, his name revealed in -fresh chalk on the side of his perambulator: “John Clark, Hampshire.” - -He had spent his last pence on potatoes and had been given the cabbage. -No one would give him work on a Sunday. He had no home, no relations. -Being deaf, he did not look for company. So he stood up, to get dry and -to think, think, think, his hands on his hips, while he puffed at an -empty pipe. During his meditation a snail had crawled half-way up his -trousers, and was now all but down again. He was of middle height and -build, the crookedest of men, yet upright, like a branch of oak which -comes straight with all its twistings. His head was small and round, -almost covered by bristly grey hair like lichen, through which peered -quiet blue eyes; the face was irregular, almost shapeless, like dough -being kneaded, worn by travel, passion, pain, and not a few blows; -where the skin was visible at all through the hair it was like red -sandstone; his teeth were white and strong and short like an old dog’s. -His rough neck descended into a striped half-open shirt, to which was -added a loose black waistcoat divided into thin perpendicular stripes -by ribs of faded gold; his trousers, loose and patched and short, -approached the colour of a hen pheasant; his bare feet were partly -hidden by old black boots. His voice was hoarse and, for one of his -enduring look, surprisingly small, and produced with an effort and a -slight jerk of the head. - -He was a Sussex man, born in the year 1831, on June the twenty-first -(it seemed a foppery in him to remember the day, and it was impossible -to imagine with what ceremony he had remembered it year by year, during -half a century or near it, on the roads of Sussex, Kent, Surrey and -Hampshire). His mother was a Wild--there were several of them buried -not far away under the carved double-headed tombstones by the old -church with the lancet windows and the four yews. He was a labourer’s -son, and he had already had a long life of hoeing and reaping and -fagging when he enlisted at Chatham. He had kept his musket bright, -slept hard and wet, and starved on thirteenpence a day, moving from -camp to camp every two years. He had lost his youth in battle, for a -bullet went through his knee; he lay four months in hospital, and they -took eighteen pieces of bone out of his wound--he was still indignant -because he was described as only “slightly wounded” when he was -discharged after a “short service” of thirteen years. He showed his -gnarled knee to explain his crookedness. Little he could tell of the -battle except the sobbing of the soldier next to him--“a London chap -from Haggerston way. Lord! he called for his mother and his God and me -to save him, and the noise he made was worse than the firing and the -groaning of the horses, and I was just thinking how I could stop his -mouth for him when a bullet hits me, and down I goes like a baby.” - -He had been on the road forty years. For a short time after his -discharge he worked on the land and lived in a cottage with his wife -and one child. The church bells were beginning to ring, and I asked him -if he was going to church. At first he said nothing, but looked down at -his striped waistcoat and patched trousers; then, with a quick violent -gesture of scorn, he lifted up his head and even threw it back before -he spoke. “Besides,” he said, “I remember how it was my little girl -died----My little girl, says I, but she would have been a big handsome -woman now, forty-eight years old on the first of May that is gone. She -was lying in bed with a little bit of a cough, and she was gone as -white as a lily, and I went in to her when I came home from reaping. -I saw she looked bad and quiet-like--like a fish in a hedge--and -something came over me, and I caught hold of both her hands in both of -mine and held them tight, and put my head close up to hers and said, -‘Now look here, Polly, you’ve got to get well. Your mother and me can’t -stand losing you. And you aren’t meant to die; such a one as you be -for a lark.’ And I squeezed her little hands, and all my nature seemed -to rise up and try to make her get well. Polly she looked whiter than -ever and afraid; I suppose I was a bit rough and dirty and sunburnt, -for ’twas a hot harvest and ’twas the end of the second week of it, -and I was that fierce I felt I ought to have had my way.... All that -night I thought I had done a wrong thing trying to keep her from dying -that way, and I tell you I cried in case I had done any harm by it.... -That very night she died without our knowing it. She was a bonny maid, -that fond of flowers. The night she was taken ill she was coming home -with me from the Thirteen Acre, where I’d been hoeing the mangolds, and -she had picked a rose for her mother. All of a sudden she looks at it -and says, ‘It’s gone, it’s broke, it’s gone, it’s gone, gone, gone,’ -and she kept on, ‘It’s broke, it’s gone, it’s gone,’ and when she got -home she ran up to her mother, crying, ‘The wild rose is broke, mother; -broke, gone, gone,’ she says, just like that,” said the old man, in a -high finical voice more like that of a bird than a child.... - -“Then my old woman--well, she was only a bit of a wench too; seventeen -when we were married--she took ill and died within a week after.... -There was a purpose in it.... It was then the end of harvest. I spent -all my wages down at the Fighting Cocks, and then I set out to walk -to Mildenhall in Wiltshire, where my wife came from. On the way I met -a chap I had quarrelled with in Egypt, and he says to me, ‘Hullo, -Scrammy-handed Jack,’ with a sort of look, and I, not thinking what I -did, I set about him, and before I knew it he was lying there as might -be dead, and I went and gave myself up, and I don’t mind saying that I -wished I might be hanged for it. However, I did six months. That was -how I came to be in the umbrella line. I took up with a chap who did a -bit of tinkering and umbrella-mending and grinding in the roving way, -and a job of hoeing or mowing now and then. He died not so very long -after in the year of the siege of Paris, and I have been alone ever -since. Nor I haven’t been to church since, any more than a blackbird -would go and perch on the shoulder of one of those ladies with feathers -and wings and a bit of a fox in their hats.” - -Labourer, soldier, labourer, tinker, umbrella man, he had always -wandered, and knew the South Country between Fordingbridge and Dover -as a man knows his garden. Every village, almost every farmhouse, -especially if there were hops on the land, he knew, and could see with -his blue eyes as he remembered them and spoke their names. I never -met a man who knew England as he did. As he talked of places his eyes -were alight and turned in their direction, and his arm stretched out -to point, moving as he went through his itinerary, so that verily, -wherever he was, he seemed to carry in his head the relative positions -of all the other places where he had laboured and drunk and lit his -solitary fire. “Was you ever at H----?” he said, pointing to the Downs, -through which he seemed to see H---- itself. “General ----, that -commanded us, lived there. He died there three years ago at the age of -eighty-eight, and till he died I was always sure of a half-crown if I -called there on a Christmas Eve, as I generally managed to do.” Of any -place mentioned he could presently remember something significant--the -words of a farmer, a song, a signboard, a wonderful crop, the good -ale--the fact that forty-nine years ago the squire used to go to church -in a smock frock. All the time his face was moved with free and broad -expressions as he thought and remembered, like an animal’s face. Living -alone and never having to fit himself into human society, he had not -learnt to keep his face in a vice. He was returning--if the grave was -not too near at the age of seventy-seven--to a primeval wildness and -simplicity. It was a pleasure to see him smoke--to note how it eased -his chest--to see him spit and be the better for it. The outdoor life -had brought him rheumatism, but a clear brain also and a wild purity, a -physical cleanliness too, and it was like being with a well-kept horse -to stand beside him; and this his house was full of the scent of the -bracken growing under the oaks. Earth had not been a kind but a stern -mother, like some brawny full-bosomed housewife with many children, -who spends all her long days baking and washing, and making clothes, -and tending the sick one, and cutting bread and pouring out tea, and -cuffing one and cuddling another and listening to one’s tale, and -hushing their unanimous chatter with a shout or a bang of her enormous -elbow on the table. The blows of such a one are shrewd, but they are -not as the sweetness of her nursing voice for enduring in the memory of -bearded men and many-childed women. - -Once or twice again I met him in later summers near the same place. The -last time he had been in the infirmary, and was much older. His fire -was under the dense shelf of a spruce bough in a green deserted road -worn deep in the chalk, blocked at both ends, and trodden by few mortal -feet. Only a few yards away, under another spruce, lay a most ancient -sheep who had apparently been turned into the lane to browse at peace. -She was lame in one leg, and often fed as she knelt. Her head was dark -grey and wise, her eyes pearly green and iridescent with an oblong -pupil of blackish-blue, quiet, yet full of fear; her wool was dense -but short and of a cinder grey; her dark horny feet were overgrown -from lack of use. She would not budge even when a dog sniffed at her, -but only bowed her head and threatened vainly to butt. She was huge -and heavy and content, though always all alone. As she lay there, her -wool glistening with rain, I had often wondered what those eyes were -aware of, what part she played in the summer harmonies of night and -day, the full night heavens and cloudless noon, storm and dawn, and the -long moist heat of dewy mornings. She was now shorn, and the old man -watched her as he drank the liquor in which a cabbage and a piece of -bacon had been boiled. “I often thinks,” he said, “that I be something -like that sheep ... ‘slightly wounded’ ... but not ‘short service’ now -... haha! ... left alone in this here lane to browse a bit while the -weather’s fine and folks are kind.... But I don’t know but what she is -better off. Look there,” he said, pointing to a wound which the shearer -had made in one of her nipples, where flies clustered like a hideous -flower of crape, “I have been spending this hour and more flicking -the flies off her.... Nobody won’t do that for me--unless I come in -for five shillings a week Old Age Pension. But I reckon that won’t be -for a roving body like me without a letter-box.” In the neighbouring -field a cart-horse shook herself with a noise of far-off thunder and -laughed shrilly and threw up her heels and raced along the hedge. A -bee could be seen going in and out of the transparent white flowers -of convolvulus. The horse had her youth and strength and a workless -day before her; the bee its business, in which was its life, among -sunbeams and flowers; and they were glad. The old man smacked his lips -as he drained the salty broth, tried three times to light his empty -pipe and then knocked out the ashes and spat vigorously, and took a -turn up the lane alone in the scent of the bracken. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - -CHILDREN OF EARTH--HAMPSHIRE AND SUSSEX - - -At the end of the lane, at the head of one of the beechen chalky -coombes, just where the beeches cease and the flinty clay begins, -stands a thatched cottage under five tall ash-trees. A grassy lane runs -by, but on three sides the place is surrounded by huge naked concave -sweeps of grey ploughland which take the February sunshine and cloud -shadow as delicately as beaten silver. The walls are of grey-white -soft stone, but only a little of them is visible, because the steep -thatch sweeps almost to the ground and overhangs the gables, in each of -which is a small window and under one a door. In hot summer or windy -winter, if the field happens to be without a crop, the earth is of the -same colour as the thatch, and the cottage looks as if it were the -work--like a mole-hill--of some creature that has worked underground -and risen up just there and rested, peering out of the two dark windows -upon the world. It is impossible to find any point of view from which -any house can be seen along with this, except one--the ash-trees, the -tall hazels of the lane, or the swelling fields hide them away. But the -pewits loop their flight every spring over and round about the cottage, -and the dark eyes under the thatch can always see a hare, and often -half-a-dozen. Whether the ashes are purple in spring, yellow in autumn -or grey in winter, whether the surrounding fields are bare, or green -with turnips, or yellow with charlock, or empurpled gold with ripe -wheat, the cottage is always the same stubborn, dull, simple mound -raised up out of the earth. The one other house is not so high; nor has -it eyes; nor do an old man and a girl and two children go in and out of -it; it is, in fact, not a house of the living, but of the dead, a round -tumulus at the edge of the hill. - -The grey mound of the dead and the grey house of the living are at -their best in the midst of winter and in the midst of summer. Standing -upon the tumulus in the north-west wind, the cottage could be seen -huddled under the lashing trees. Many a thousand beech-trees on the -steep slopes below gave out a roar, and it was a majestic position -to be up there, seeing and feeling that the strong wind was scouring -the world with a stream miles deep and miles wide. Far underneath, -two beechen promontories with bald white brows projected into the -vast valley; not really much lower than the hill of the tumulus, but -seeming so in that more than Amazonian stream of air. Beyond these -promontories the broad land was washed bright and clear. Nearer at hand -the thrice cleaned traveller’s-joy was as silken foam surging upon the -surface of black yews and olive hazels. The kestrel swayed and lunged -in his flight. Branches gleamed, hard and nervously moving. Rain-pools -glittered, and each brittle stem and flower of a dead plant, each -grass-blade and brown lock of beech or oak-leaf, gave out its little -noise to join the oceanic murmur of the earth. Now and then a dead -leaf took flight, rose high and went out over the valley till it was -invisible, never descending, in search of the moon. Near the horizon -a loose white drift went rapidly just over the summits of the highest -woods; but in the upper air were the finest flowers of the wind--hard -white flowers of cloud, flowers and mad tresses and heaven-wide -drapery of gods, and some small and white like traveller’s-joy, as -if up there also they travelled and knew the houseless joy along the -undulating highway of the deep wind. And the little house was as -a watch-tower planted in the middle swirl of the current that was -scouring valley and wood and sky and water and, as far as it could, the -dull eyes and duller brains of men. - -In summer I saw it at the end of one of those days of sun and wind and -perfectly clear air when the earth appears immensely heavy and great -and strong--so that for a moment it is possible to know the majesty of -its course in space--and the sheep very light, like mere down, as they -crawl in a flock over the grass. Swathes and wisps of white cloud were -strewn over the high blue sky as if by haymakers. But the lanes were -deep, and for miles at a time nearly shut out the sky, and all the day -the lanes were empty and wholly mine. Here the high banks were thickly -grown with wild parsnip, and its umbels of small yellow-green flowers, -fragrant and a little over-sweet, were alive and, as it were, boiling -over with bees and the sunniest flies. There the hazel was laced with -white bryony, whose leaves and pale tendrils went hovering and swimming -and floating over the hedge. In one place an elder-tree stood out of -the hedge, stiff, with few branches, and every leaf upon them red as -a rose. Wherever there was a waste strip beside the road the tall -yellow ragwort grew densely, each of the nearer flowers as hard and -clear as brass, the farther ones dimly glowing and half lost in the -green mist of their leaves and the haze of the brightness of their -multitudes. Where the road changed into an unused lane the grass was -tall, and under the hazels, yet fully seen, were the wild basil and -marjoram and centaury and knapweed and wood-betony, and over them hung -moths of green crimson-spotted silk. There, too, were the plants that -smell most of the dry summer--the white parsleys and the white or rosy -cow-parsnip, the bedstraws white and yellow, the yellow mugwort. Now -and then the hedges gave way and on either hand was open turf; sloping -steep and rough on one side, grooved by ancient paths of men and -cattle, dotted by thorns, with the freshly flowering traveller’s-joy -over them, ash-trees at the top; on the other side, level, skirted by -cloudy wych-elms and having at one corner a white inn half shadowed by -a walnut, and two sycamores and cattle below them; and at another, a -stately autumnal house veiled by the cedars and straight yews on its -darkly glowing lawn. - -All these things I saw as if they had been my own, as if I were going -again slowly through old treasures long hidden away, so that they were -memoried and yet unexpected. Nothing was too small to be seen, and -ascending the chalk hill among the beeches every white flint was clear -on the sward, each in its different shape--many chipped as the most -cunning chisel would be proud to chip them; one, for example, carved -by the loss of, two exquisitely curved and balanced flakes into the -likeness of a moth’s expanded upper wings. - -A dark beech alley, paved with the gold and green of moss and walled by -crumbling chalk, brought me to the tumulus. There lay the old house in -shadow, its ash crests lighted yellow by horizontal beams that caught -here the summit of a wood, and there the polished grass stems on a -rising field. It was the one house, and at that hour it gathered to -itself all that can be connected with a home. It was alone, but its -high cool thatch was full of protection and privacy, sufficient against -sun or rain or wind or frost, yet impregnated with free air and light. -Its ash-trees communed with the heavens and the setting sun. The wheat -glowed at its gates. The dark masses of the lower woods enhanced by a -touch of primeval gloom and savagery the welcoming expression of the -house. Slowly the light died out of the ash-tops and the wheat turned -to a mist. The wood seemed to creep up close and lay its shadows over -the house. But, stronger than the wood and the oncoming tide of night -that enveloped it, the spirits of roof and wall and hearth were weaving -a spell about the house to guard it, so that it looked a living, -breathing, dreaming thing. Nimble, elvish, half-human but wholly kind -small spirits I fancied them, creeping from corners in stone and thatch -and rafter, at war with those that dwelt in lonely and dark places, -that knew not fire and lamp and human voices save as invaders. For a -little while there was a pause, a suspense, a hesitation--Could the -small spirits win?--Were not the woods older and more mighty?--Was not -that long black bar of cloud across the cold west something sinister, -already engulfing the frail white moon? But suddenly, as if the life of -the house had found a powerful voice, one eye in the nearer gable was -lit by a small lamp and a figure could be guessed behind it. The first -Promethean spark of fire stolen from the gods was hardly a more signal -victory than that at which the house and I rejoiced when the white -light glimmered across the corn. It seemed the birth of light. - - * * * * * - -The man who lives under that roof and was born there seventy years ago -is like his house. He is short and immensely broad, black-haired, with -shaved but never clean-shaven face creased by a wide mouth and long, -narrow black eyes--black with a blackness as of cold, deep water that -had never known the sun but only the candle-light of discoverers. His -once grey corduroys and once white slop are stained and patched to -something like the colour of the moist, channelled thatch and crumbling -“clunch” of the stone walls. He wears a soft felt hat with hanging -broad brim of darker earthy hues; it might have been drawn over his -face and ears in his emergence from his native clay and flint. Only -rarely does his eye--one eye at a time--gloom out from underneath, -always accompanied by a smile that slowly puckers the wrinkled oak-bark -of his stiff cheeks. His fingers, his limbs, his face, his silence, -suggest crooked oak timber or the gnarled stoles of the many times -polled ash. It is barely credible that he grew out of a child, the son -of a woman, and not out of the earth itself, like the great flints that -work upwards and out on to the surface of the fields. Doubtless he did, -but like many a ruined castle, like his own house, he has been worn to -a part of the earth itself. That house he will never give up except by -force, to go to workhouse or grave. They want him to go out for a few -days that it may be made more weather-tight; but he fears the chances -and prefers a rickety floor and draughty wall. He is half cowman, half -odd-job man--at eight shillings a week--in his last days, mending -hedges, cleaning ditches, and carrying a sack of wheat down the steep -hill on a back that cannot be bent any farther. Up to his knees in the -February ditch, or cutting ash-poles in the copse, he is clearly half -converted into the element to which he must return. - -When the underwood is for sale it is a pleasure to read the notices -fixed to the doors of barn and shed, with the names of the copses and -woods. At Penshurst lately, for example, I saw these names-- - - Black Hoath Wood. - Heronry Pond. - Marlpit Field. - Tapner’s Wood. - Ashour Farm. - Sidney’s Coppice. - Weir Field. - Well Place. - -I was back in Sidney’s time, remembering that genial poem of Ben -Jonson’s, “To Penshurst,” and especially the lines-- - - “Thy copse too, named of Gamage, thou hast there, - That never fails to serve thee season’d deer, - When thou wouldst feed or exercise thy friends. - The lower land, that to the river bends, - Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed; - The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed. - Each bank doth yield thee conies; and the tops - Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sidney’s copps, - To crown thy open table, doth provide - The purple pheasant with the speckled side, ...” - -and so onward to that opulence and ease three centuries old-- - - “Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers, - Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours. - The early cherry, with the later plum, - Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come; - The blushing apricot and woolly peach - Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach. - And though thy walls be of the country stone, - They’re reared with no man’s ruin, no man’s groan; - There’s none, that dwell about them, wish them down; - But all come in, the farmer and the clown; - And no one empty handed, to salute - Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit. - Some bring a capon, some a rural cake, - Some nuts, some apples; some that think they make - The better cheeses, bring them; or else send - By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend - This way to husbands; and whose baskets bear - An emblem of themselves, in plum or pear....” - -Almost to such a time as that does the old man carry back the thoughts. -His old master was the fifth in the direct line to work one farm in the -vale; he left money in his will to pay for new smocks, all of the best -linen, to be worn by the labourers who should carry him to the grave. - -The old man has three companions under that roof. The hand that lit -the lamp is his daughter’s, the youngest by the second wife, whom he -married when he was fifty. The other two are her children, and she is -unmarried. She earns no money except by keeping a few fowls and bees. -When the younger child was born--the old man having to go six miles -out at midnight for the parish doctor--the married women commented: -“There’s forgiveness for the first, but not for the second; no”: -for the first showed indiscretion, carelessness, youth; the second, -helplessness. The old man can hardly leave the children, and though he -is deaf he will, when he is told that the baby is crying, go to the -room and listen carefully for the pleasure of the infant voice. That -voice means colder winter nights for him and less cheer of meat and -ale. But for all young life he has a passion equal to a mother’s, so -he laces up his boots and does not grieve. See him in the dim outlying -barn with the sick heifer which is sure to die. The wet killed several -in the open field; this one is to die on dry hay. She lies with stiff, -high-ridged back, patient and motionless, except that her ears move -now and then like birds--they alone seem alive. There is a deep blue -gleam in her eyes. Her head is stretched forward upon the ground. She -is alone. Through the open door the sunlight falls, and the swallows -fly in and out or hang twittering at the dark beams over her head. -Twice a day the cowman comes to the door and salutes her with deep, -slow voice, hearty and blithe: “Hoho! Cowslip; how’s Cowslip?” He pulls -away the foul hay from under her and puts in fresh, talking now in a -high falsetto voice as to a child; he raises her head that she may lap -the bucket of gruel, still talking unintelligible baby talk interlarded -with her pretty name. She holds up her head for a minute or two, -heartened by her moist lips and full stomach and that friend’s voice. -He stands in the doorway watching and silent now, as her head slowly -sinks down, and she sighs while her limbs find their position of least -pain. “She’s going to die,” he mutters in the deep voice as he goes. - -A very different earth child, an artist, used to live in a cottage at -the foot of the opposite Downs. The village itself, whether you saw -it from its own street or from the higher land, was wrought into such -a rightness of form as few other artists than Time ever achieve; it -made a music to which the hands unconsciously beat time. But though -apparently complete in itself, it was as part of a huge and gentle -harmony of sky, down and forest that the village was most fascinating. -Like all beautiful things in their great moments the whole scene was -symbolic, not only in the larger sense by expressing in an outward -and visible way an inward grace, but in the sense that it gathered up -into itself the meanings which many other scenes only partly and in a -scattered way expressed. - -Two roads of a serpentining form that was perpetually alluring from -afar climbed the Down from the village and, skirting the forest, ended -in the white mountains of the moon. At the tail of one of these roads -the artist lived. His work still further enlarged the harmony of sky -and down and village. For a short time I used to wonder why it was that -when I entered his studio the harmony was prolonged into something -even more huge and gentle than seemed to have been designed. How came -it that he could safely hang his pictures on the wall of the Down, as -practically they were hung? - -It is not enough to say merely that it was because they did not, as -some landscapes seem to do, enter into competition with Nature. The -spirit that raised and sculptured the Downs, that entered the beech and -made a melody of its silent towering and branching, that kept the sky -above alive and beautiful with the massiveness of mountains and the -evanescence of foam, was also in this man’s fingers. He was a great -lover of these things, and in his love for them combined the ecstasy -of courtship with the understanding of marriage. But he loved them too -well to draw and paint them. He was not of those who tear themselves -from a mistress to write a sonnet on her face. No. He painted the -images which they implanted--such was their love of him and his of -them--in his brain. There many a metamorphosis as wonderful as Ovid’s -was made. The beech-trees mingled with the fantasies of the brain and -brought forth holes that are almost human forms, branches that are -thoughts and roots that are more than wood. Often, I think, he hardly -looked at Nature as he walked, except to take a careless pleasure in -the thymy winds, in the drama of light and shade on the woods and -hills, in the sound of leaves and birds and water. Within him these -things lived a new life until they reached forms as different from -their beginnings as we are from Palæolithic man. They attained to that -beauty of which, as I have said, Nature was so little jealous, by -this evolution. Some of his pictures of the leaf-dappled branch-work -of beeches always remind me of the efflorescence of frost on a -window-pane, and the comparison is not purely fantastic but has a real -significance. - -And yet the landscapes of this metamorphosis are not, as might have -been expected, decorations that have lost all smell of earth and light -of sun and breath of breeze. Decorative they certainly are, and I know -few pictures which are less open to the accusation of being scraps from -Nature, which it is more impossible to think of extending beyond the -limits of the frame. But such is the personality of the artist that -all this refinement only made more powerful than ever the spirit of -the motionless things, the trees, the pools, the hills, the clouds. -Frankly, there is a deep fund of what must narrowly, and for the moment -only, be called inhumanity in the artist, or he could not thus have -reinforced or intensified the inhumanity of Nature. Consider, for -example, his “Song of the Nightingale.” Those woods are untrodden woods -as lonely as the sky. They are made for the nightingale’s song to rule -in solitude under the crescent moon. No lovers walk there. Mortal who -enters there must either a poet or a madman be. - -Look again at his “Castle in Spain,” how it is perched up above that -might of forest, like a child that has climbed whence it can never -descend. And the little house at the edge of the high, dark wood--in -“The Farm under the Hill”--is as frail and timid as if it heard the -roaring of wild beasts, and the little white road winds into the -darkness as to death. So, too, with the children who make a pretence -of playing hoops at the edge of just such another wood, though mortal -has never come out of it since the beginning of the world. The ship in -the “Fall of the Leaf” is subdued to the spirit of autumn as is the -poet subdued to the immense scenes of “Alastor.” To introduce an elvish -figure, as he has done, in “Will o’ the Wisp” was an unnecessary aid -to the elvishness of the scene itself. Indeed, his human or fantastic -figures seem to be sometimes as much out of place as a Yankee at the -court of King Arthur, though there are two notable exceptions--“The -Sower” and “The Weed Burner”--both figures towards which idolatry might -be excusable, so nobly do they represent labour in the field. And even -in “The Weed Burner” the boy seems bemused by the motion and savour -of the smoke that curdles up through the autumn air. The picture of a -forest pool is magical, but it repudiates the fairy altogether. Nothing -would be more out of place here than the kind of sucking harlequin or -columbine which is commonly foisted upon us as a fairy; for here is -something more desirable, the very forces which begot the fairies upon -a different age from ours. Even when he draws a house it is, I think, -for the house’s sake, for the sake of whatever soul it has acquired, -which men cannot take away. Was there ever such an inn as “The -Wispers”? The landlord is dead, the casks are dry, a rat has littered -on the top stair of the cellar, and the landlord says-- - - “’Tis late and cold, stir up the fire: - Sit close, and draw the table nigher; - Be merry, and drink wine that’s old, - A hearty medicine ’gainst a cold: - Your beds of wanton down the best, - Where you shall tumble to your rest; - I could wish you wenches too, - But I am dead, and cannot do. - Call for the best the house may ring, - Sack, white, and claret let them bring, - And drink apace, while breath you have; - You’ll find but cold drink in the grave: - Plover, partridge, for your dinner, - And a capon for the sinner, - You shall find ready when you’re up, - And your horse shall have his sup: - Welcome, welcome, shall fly round, - And I shall smile, though underground.” - -I like the inn, but the spider loves it, and his webs bar the door -against all but ghostly travellers. The barn, again, with its doorway -opening upon the summer night, has a life of its own. The two figures -at the door are utterly dwarfed by its ancientness, its space, and the -infinite silence without. - -The picture in which there is most humanity is that of a high wall, -ruinous and overgrown. The deep gap in it is tragical. But even here I -am not sure that it is a wall that was raised by hand of mason, and as -to the inhabitants who left it desolate I feel more doubtful still, I -believe it was built in a dream, long ago lost in some victory gained -by the forest over men, and quite forgotten until this artist thought -it would be a happy lair for a faun. He has not shown us the faun--I -wish he had; he ought to know what it was like--but that gap is its -gateway out from the forest into the dew of the river lawns. - -It induces an awful sense of the infinite variety of human character to -think of the love of earth first in this man and then in that cowman -old. I wonder tolerance is not deeper as well as wider than it is. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - -AUGUST--GOING WEST--HAMPSHIRE AND WILTSHIRE - - -Rain begins as I set out and mount under the beeches. The sky is dark -as a ploughed field, but the leaves overhead are full of light like -precious stones. The rain keeps the eyes down so that they see one by -one the little things of the wayside, the strings of the grey-green and -of the scarlet bryony berries, the stony bark of the young ash unveiled -by the moving leaves, the million tall straight shoots which the strong -nature of ash and hazel has soared into since the spring. Then follows -field after field of corn, of sheep among hurdled squares, of mustard -in flower, of grass, interrupted now and then by the massed laurels -and rhododendrons and the avenues of monkey puzzles that announce the -pleasure grounds of the rich. It is a high land of too level clay, -chiefly blest in that it beholds the Downs, their saddles of woodland, -and, through the deepest passes, the sea and an island rising out of it -like an iceberg; and that it is traversed by the Pilgrims’ Way, which -gathers to itself Canterbury-bells and marjoram under its hazels, and -pours traveller’s-joy cloudily over the ash and brier that overhang -the side of an old chalk pit, long, straight and even like a wall. -Just here are many grassy lanes between hazel and blackthorn hedges. -An old farmhouse with ivied chimneys and ten blind windows in front -stands bereaved with weedy garden, but for miles the air sounds with -poultry and the building of bungalows in deal and iron for strangers. -It is not a stranger that rides by. I think his fathers must have been -in this land when Wolf Hanger was not a strange name for the beeches -over the hill. He is a tall straight man with long narrow face, clear, -not too irregular features, sallow complexion, black hair and black -drooping moustache, and flashing eyes as dark as privet berries in -autumn dews. - -Now it is a woodland country, of broad wooded common and low undulating -Downs crowned or fringed by woods: this is “Swineherd’s County” -according to the gypsies. Houses are few and stand either well off the -road or with scarcely a dividing line between their gardens and the -commons from which they have been filched. Their linen and red flannel -flap under enormous beeches where an old track makes its way betwixt -them. The children living here, the generations of them who have been -bred in the little flint house, are children of the woods, their minds -half made by the majestic but dark and deep-voiced trees that stand -over them day and night and by the echoes--you may hear them summoning -the echoes at evening out of the glades and see them pause as if dazed -by the wild reply. Opposite the door is a close untrodden tangle of -brier and thorn and bramble under oaks where the dead leaves of many -autumns lie untouched even by the wind--so dense is the underwood--that -sighs continually in the topmost boughs: at the edge nettles with -translucent leaves waver and nod above mossy banks. Not far off is a -Woodland Farm, a group of houses and barns and sheds built of flint -and wood and thatched, aloof. A man enters one of the cavernous sheds -with a pail; a thick, bent, knotty man, with bushy dark hair and beard -and bright black eyes, a farmer, the son’s son of one who rebuilt the -house when the woods were darker and huger still. Life is a dark simple -matter for him; three-quarters of his living is done for him by the -dead; merely to look at him is to see a man live generations thick, so -to speak, and neither Nature nor the trumpery modern man can easily -disturb a human character of that density. As I watch him going to and -fro I lose sight of everything away from his rude house and the tall -woods, because they and he are so powerful--he has the trees as well -as his ancestors at his back--and it is no flight of fancy to see him -actually cut off from all the world except the house and woods, and -yet holding his own, able to keep his fire burning, his larder full, -his back covered and his house dry. I feel but a wraith as I pass by. -I wonder what there is worth knowing that he does not know, with his -bright eyes, bright long teeth, stiff limbs capable of unceasing toil, -and that look of harmony with day and night. I see him looking on as -the wounded trooper--two hundred and fifty years, a trifle, ago--drains -the water just lifted from the well; look at his gallant face, his -delicate ardour as of another race, bright dress, restless blue eyes, -his helplessness after the defeat in a cavalry fight about nothing at -all. The cornet rides away and the woodland fellow puts all his nature -into the felling of a beech as into an object worthy of cold steel, -and as he plies his axe he smiles at the thought of that brave, that -silly face and sleek hair. He smiles to-day as he sees a youth go by -with proud looks of command, incapable, as he well understands, of -commanding anything except perhaps a wife or a groom or a regiment of -townsmen--yet his landlord. - -Rough grass and scattered thorns and lofty groups of mossy-pedestalled -beeches lie on either side of the road, and grassy tracks lead to -thatched cottages in the woods. A grey-clouded silver sky moves -overhead. Along the road the telegraph wires go humming the one shrill -note in this great harmony of men and woods and sky. Beyond, a broad -champaign of corn and grey grass heaves from the woodland edge. The -road is gay with red polished fruit and equally red soft leaves, with -darkest purple and bronze and wine-red and green berries and leaves, -and beam foliage still pure green and white. So high now are the -unkempt hedges that the land is hid and only the sky appears above -the coloured trees: except at a meeting of ways when a triangular -patch of turf is sacred to burdock, ragwort and thistle and--touching -the dust of the road--the lowly silverweed; an oak overhangs, yet -the little open space admits a vision of the elephantine Downs going -west in the rain. In a moment the world is once again this narrow -one of the high-hedged lane, where I see and touch with the eye and -enjoy the shapes of each bole and branch in turn, their bone-like -shapes, their many colours of the wood itself, wrinkled and grooved, -or overlaid by pale green mould, silver lichen or dark green moss. -Each bend in the road is different. At one all the leaves are yellow -but green-veined, the bramble, the hazel, the elder; and there is a -little chalk pit below, fresh white and overhung by yew and the dark -purple elder berries, small but distinct: at another there is a maple -of exquisite small leaves and numerous accordingly, a fair-built tree -in a lovely attitude and surmounted by a plume, only a small plume, of -traveller’s-joy. In Swineherd’s County they call it “Angel’s hair.” - -Suddenly there is a village of thatched roofs, phlox in the gardens, -good spaces of green and of sycamore-trees between one house and the -next, and a green-weeded crystal river pervading all with its flash -and sound. The anvil rings and the fire glows in the black smithy. -The wheel-wright’s timber leans outside his thatched shed against an -ancient elder, etherealized by lucent yellow leaves. Before the inn a -jolly ostler with bow legs and purple neck washes the wheels of a cart, -ever and anon filling his pail from the stream and swishing the bright -water over the wheels as they spin. A decent white-haired old man -stands and watches, leaning on his stick held almost at arm’s length so -as to make an archway underneath which a spaniel sprawls in the sun. -The men are all at the corn and he does not know what to do. Can he -read? asks the ostler, knowing the answer very well. No! We all read -now, chuckles the ostler as he flings a pailful over the wheel. The -old man is proud at least to have lived into such a notable day: “Yes, -man reads now almost as well as master--quite as well. They used to be -dummies, the working class people, yes, that they was. You can’t tell -what will happen now.” Meantime the ostler fills his pail and the old -man having too many thoughts to say any more, lays his blackthorn on -the bench and calls for his glass of fourpenny ale. - -Close by there is an entrance to the more open Downs. The uncut hedges -are so thick that the lane seems a cutting through a wood, and soon -it becomes a grassy track of great breadth under ash-trees and amidst -purple dogwood and crimson-hearted traveller’s-joy, and finally it is -a long broad field full of wild carrot and scabious through which many -paths meander side by side until the last gate gives a view, under oak -and hazel sprays, on to the green undulations of hill and coombe, their -sides studded with juniper and thorn, with something of oceanic breadth -in the whole, as far as the utmost bound, leagues away, where a line of -small trees stands against the sky in the manner of ships. The hedges -in this downland are low or broken. A few ricks stand at the borders -of stubble and grass. Sheep munch together in square pens. There is no -house, and the rain has wiped out everything that moved save its own -perpendicular fringes waving along the hills. This solitude of grey -and brown is completed by the owner’s notice, on a frail and tottering -post: “Trespassers will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the -law.” Towards the farther verge compact copses of beech begin to saddle -the ridges and invade the hollows so as to form cliffy dark sides to -the friths of pale stubble or turf amongst them. And then the green way -runs into a Roman road, and in the twilight and rain I can see many -other narrow ancient tracks winding into the white road as straight as -a sword, losing themselves in it like children in a dragon’s mouth. -The turf alongside is mounded by tumuli; and against the hedge a gypsy -family pretend to shelter from the windy rain; the man stands moody, -holding the pony, the women crouch with chins upon knees, the children -laugh and will not be still. They belong to the little roads that are -dying out: they hate the sword-like shelterless road, the booming cars -that go straight to the city in the vale below. They are less at home -there than the swallows that haunt the leeward sides of the sycamores, -ever rushing up towards the trees and ever beaten back, like children -playing “I’m the king of the castle,” at the verge of the city. There, -by the inn piano, soldiers and their friends and women sing with vague -pathos songs about “Mother” and “Dear Love” and “Farewell” and “Love is -all” and “The girls,” while the streets glitter and gurgle with rain. -Just before night the sky clears. It is littered with small dark clouds -upon rose, like rocks on a wild and solitary coast of after-tempest -calm, and it is infinitely remote and infinitely alluring. Those clouds -are the Islands of the Blest. Even so alluring might be this life -itself, this world, if I were out of it. For a moment I fancy how I -might lean and watch it all, being dead. For a moment only, since the -poverty of death is such that we cannot hope from it such a gift of -contemplation from afar, cannot hope even that once out of the world we -may turn round and look at it and feel that we are not of it any more, -nor hope that we shall know ourselves to be dead and be satisfied. Rain -shrouds the islands of the sky: the singers find them in their song. - -In the morning the ground is beautiful with blue light from one -white-clouded pane of sky that will not be hidden by the tumultuous -rain. Outside the city the new thatch of the ricks shines pale in the -sodden land, which presently gives way to a great water with leaning -masts and a majestic shadowy sweep of trees down to the flat shore, to -level green marsh and bridges crossing the streams that are announced -by ripples in the sun, by swishing sedge, by willows blenching. Beyond -is forest again. First, scattered cottages and little yellow apples -beaming pale on crooked trees; then solitudes of heather and bracken, -traversed and lighted by blue waters, ponds and streams among flats -of rushes; and beyond, at either hand, woods on low and high land -endlessly changing from brightness to gloom under windy clouds. The -roads are yellow, and oaks and beeches hang over them in whispering -companies. The wind reigns, in the high magnificent onset of the -clouds, in the surging trees, in the wings of rooks and daws, in bowing -sedges and cotton grass, in quivering heather and grass, in rippling -water, in wildly flying linen; yet in the open there is a strange -silence because the roar in my ears as I walk deafens me to all sound. - -White ponies graze by dark waters and stir the fragrance of the bog -myrtle. The rises of the heathery moor are scarred yellow where the -gravel is exposed. Sometimes great beeches, plated with green lichen -and grey, wave their stiffening foliage overhead; or there is a group -of old hollies encircled by coeval ivy whose embraces make them one, -and both seem of stone. Sometimes the yellow road runs green-edged -among heather and gorse, shadowed by pines that shake and plunge in -the wind but are mute. A white fungus shines damp in the purple moor. -There are a myriad berried hawthorns here, more gorse, more heather and -bracken. The tiny pools beneath are blown into ripples like a swarming -of bees, but the infuriate streams cannot trouble the dark water and -broad lily leaves in their bays. Other pools again are tranquil and -lucid brown over submerged moss and pennywort and fallen leaves, worlds -to themselves with a spirit indwelling in the pure element. Presently, -denser trees hold back the wind save in their tempestuous crests, -and now the road is carpeted with pine needles and nothing can be -seen or felt but the engulfing sound of wind and rain. The pines are -interrupted by tall bracken, hollies and thorns, by necks of turf and -isolated hawthorns thereon; and far away the light after rain billows -grandly over the mounded forest. Many a golden stream pours through -the dark trees. Oaks succeed, closing in lichened multitudes about a -grassy-rutted ferny road, but suddenly giving way to beeches pallid -and huge. One lies prone across the road, still green of leaf, having -torn up a mound of earth and bracken and bramble as large as a house in -its upheaval. Others have lost great branches, and the mossy earth is -ploughed by their fall. They seem to have fought in the night and to be -slumbering with dreams of battle to come; and their titanic passions -keep far away the influence of the blue sky and silver clouds that -laugh out unconcerned after the rain. - -After them birches and birchlings grow out of the heather backed by -a solid wall of oaks. And again there are many beeches over mossy -golden turf, and one tree of symmetrical rounded foliage makes a -circle of shade where nothing grows, but all about it a crowd of -dwarf brackens twinkle and look like listeners at an oracle. Beyond, -countless pillars of dark pines tower above green grass. Then the road -forks; a shapely oak, still holding up dead arms through clouds of -greenery, stands at one side; at the other a green road wanders away -under beeches in stately attitudes and at ceremonious distance from -one another: straight ahead, open low meadows surround a reedy water -where coot and moorhen cry to each other among willow islets and the -reflex of a bright and windy heaven. And yet once more the road pierces -the dense woodland roar, form and colour buried as it were in sound, -except where a space of smoothest turf expands from the road, and out -of the crimson berries of an old thorn comes the voice of a robin -singing persistently; and past that, inevitably, is a cottage among -the beeches. More cottages are set in the moorland that rolls to an -horizon of ridgy oak away from small green meadows behind the cottages. -These give way to treeless undulations like gigantic long barrows, -coloured by sand, by burnt gorse and by bracken; farther away a wooded -hump all dark under threatenings of storm; and farthest of all, the -Downs, serene and pale. The plough begins to invade the forest. The -undulations sink to rest in a land of corn and cloud, of dark green -levels, of windy whitened abeles, and a shining flood gilded by a lofty -western sky of gold and grey. Beside the darkling waters couches an -old town with many windows looking under thatch and tile upon grave -streets, ending in a spread of the river where great horses wading -lift their knees high as they splash under a long avenue of aspens and -alarm the moorhens. Beautiful looks the running river under the night’s -hunting of the clouds and the few bright stars, and beautiful again, -broad blue, or streaked, or shadowy, or glittering, or reed-reflecting, -beside a white mill or company of willows, under the breezes and pearl -of dawn; and I wish there were a form for saluting a new country’s gods -and the _adhuc ignota ... flumina_. - -Two roads go northward against the stream; the main road straight or in -long curves on one side of the river, the other on the opposite bank -in a string of fragments zigzagging east and west and north. These -fragments connect houses or groups of houses with one another, and it -looks as if only by accident they had made the whole which now connects -two towns. Their chief business is to serve the wheels and feet of -those bound upon domestic or hamlet but not urban business. Seen upon -the map the road sets out straight for a town far north; but in two -miles the hospitality of a great house seems to draw it aside, then of -“The Plough”; emerging again it wanders awhile before returning to its -northward line; and this it does time after time, and as often as it -pauses a lesser road runs out of it to the great road across the river. -There are scores of such parallel roads--sometimes the lesser is in -part, or entirely, a footpath--in England, and in avoiding the dust, -the smell, the noise, the insolence of the new traffic, the lesser are -an invaluable aid. This one proceeds without rise or fall through the -green river levels, but looks up to a ridge of white-scarred purple -moor away from the stream, with oak and thatched cottages below the -heather. It creeps in and out like an old cottage woman at a fair -and sees everything. It sees all the farms and barns. It sees the -portly brick house and its gardens bounded by high fruit walls and -its walnut-trees in front, on the bank of a golden brook that sings -under elms and sallows; the twenty-four long white windows, the decent -white porch, the large lawns, the pond and its waterfowl sounding in -the reeds, the oaks and acacias, the horse mowing the lawn lazily, the -dogs barking behind the Elizabethan stables. It sees the broad grassy -borders--for this is not a road cut by a skimping tailor--and the woods -of oak and ash and hazel which the squirrel owns, chiding, clucking -and angrily flirting his tail at those who would like to share his -nuts. At every crossing road these grassy borders, which are in places -as broad as meadows so that cattle graze under their elms, spread out -into a green; and round about are yellow thatched cottages with gardens -full of scarlet bean flowers and yellow dahlias; and a pond reflects -the blue and white sky, wagtails flutter at the edge and geese launch -themselves as if for a voyage. The only sound upon the road is made by -the baker’s cart carrying a fragrant load. - -After ten miles the road crosses the river and wanders even farther -from the highway. Here there are more woods of hazel and oak, and -borders where sloe and blackberry shine, polished by rain, among -herbage of yellow ragwort and flea-bane, purple knapweed, yellowing -leaves. The gateways show steep meadows between the woods. One shows -two lovers of sixteen years old gathering nuts in the warm sun, the -silence, the solitude. The boy bends down and she steps quickly and -carelessly upon his back to reach a cluster of six, and then descending -looks away for a little while and turns her left cheek to him, softly -smiling wordless things to herself, so that her lover could not but -lean forward and kiss her golden skin where it is most beautiful -beneath her ear and her looped black hair. There is a maid whose ways -are so wonderful and desirable that it would not be more wonderful and -desirable if Helen had never grown old and Demeter had kept Persephone. -For a day white-throated convolvulus hides all the nettles of life. -Of all the delicate passing things I have seen and heard--the slow, -languid, gracious closing and unclosing of a pewit’s rounded wings as -it chooses a clod to alight on; the sound of poplar leaves striving -with the sound of rain in a windy summer shower; the glow of elms where -an autumn rainbow sets a foot amongst them; the first fire of September -lighted among men and books and flowers--not one survives to compare -with this gateway vision of a moment on a road I shall never travel -again. To rescue such scenes from time is one of the most blessed -offices of books, and it is a book that I remember now as I think of -that maiden smiling, a book[5] which says-- - -[5] _The Heifer of the Dawn_, by F. W. Bain. - - And I could tell thee stories that would make thee laugh at all thy - trouble, and take thee to a land of which thou hast never dreamed. - Where the trees have ever blossoms, and are noisy with the humming - of intoxicated bees. Where by day the suns are never burning, - and by night the moon-stones ooze with nectar in the rays of the - camphor-laden moon. Where the blue lakes are filled with rows of - silver swans, and where, on steps of lapis-lazuli, the peacocks dance - in agitation at the murmur of the thunder in the hills. Where the - lightning flashes without harming, to light the way to women, stealing - in the darkness to meetings with their lovers, and the rainbow hangs - for ever like an opal on the dark blue curtain of the clouds. Where, - on the moonlit roofs of crystal palaces, pairs of lovers laugh at the - reflection of each other’s lovesick faces in goblets of red wine, - breathing as they drink air heavy with the fragrance of the sandal, - wafted from the mountain of the south. Where they play and pelt each - other with emeralds and rubies, fetched at the churning of the ocean - from the bottom of the sea. Where rivers, whose sands are always - golden, flow slowly past long lines of silent cranes that hunt for - silver fishes in the rushes on their banks. Where men are true, and - maidens love for ever, and the lotus never fades.... - -The great old books do the same a hundred times. Take _The Arabian -Nights_ for example. They are full of persons, places and events -depicted with so strong an appeal to our eyes and to that part of our -intelligence which by its swiftness and simplicity corresponds to -our eyes, that no conceivable malversation by a translator can matter -much. They are proof against it, just as our tables and chairs and -walking-sticks are proof against the man who tears our books and cracks -our glass cases of artificial grapes or stuffed kingfishers when we -move to a new house. This group of women is beyond the reach of time or -an indifferent style-- - - Ten female slaves approached with a graceful and conceited gait, - resembling moons, dazzling the sight, and confounding the imagination. - They stood in ranks, looking like the black-eyed damsels of Paradise; - and after them came ten other female slaves, with lutes in their - hands, and other instruments of diversion and mirth; and they saluted - the two guests, and played upon the lutes, and sang verses; and every - one of them was a temptation to the servants of God.... - -A hundred others flock to my mind, competing for mention like a company -of doves for a mere pinch of seed--Rose-in-Bloom sitting at a lattice -to watch the young men playing at ball, and throwing an apple to -Ansal Wajoud, “bright in countenance, with laughing teeth, generous, -wide-shouldered”; or that same girl letting herself down from her -prison and escaping over the desert in her most magnificent apparel -and a necklace of jewels on her neck; Sindbad returning home rich -from every voyage, and as often, in the midst of the luxuries of his -rest, going down to the river by Bagdad and seeing a fair new ship and -embarking for the sake of profit and of beholding the countries and -islands of the world. - -These clear appeals come into the tales like white statues suddenly -carven to our sight among green branches. But they are also something -more than a satisfaction to our love of what is large, bright, -coloured, in high relief. Every one knows how, at a passage like that -in the _Æneid_, when the exiled Æneas sees upon the new walls of the -remote city of Carthage pictures of that strife about Troy in which he -was a great part, or at a verse in a ballad like-- - - “It was na in the ha’, the ha’; - It was na in the painted bower; - But it was in the good greenwood, - Amang the lily flower.” - ---how the cheek flushes and the heart leaps up with a pleasure which -the incidents themselves hardly justify. We seem to recognize in them -symbols or images of ideas which are important to mortal minds. They -are of a significance beyond allegories. They are as powerful, and -usually as mysterious in their power, as the landscape at sight of -which the gazer sighs in his joy, he knows not why. In such passages -the _Nights_ abound. - -One of the finest is in _Seifelmolouk and Bedia Eljemal_. The hero -and his memlooks were captured by a gigantic Ethiopian king. Some -were eaten. The survivors so pleased the king by the sweetness of -their voices while they were crying and lamenting that they were hung -up in cages for the king to hear them. Seifelmolouk and three of his -companions the king gave to his daughter, and when the youth sat -thinking of the happy past, and crying over it, she was overjoyed at -the singing of her little captive. Perhaps more pleasing still is the -door in the grass which has only to be removed to discover a splendid -subterranean palace and a “woman whose aspect banished from the heart -all anxiety and grief and affliction,” even when the finder is the son -of a king cutting wood in a forest, far from his lost home and from -those who know him as the son of a king. The incognito appearances of -the great Caliph make scenes of the same class. A young man sits with -his mistress, and the sound of her lovely singing draws four darwishes -to the door; he descends and lets them in; they promise to do him an -immense and undreamed-of service-- - -“Now these darwishes,” says the tale, “were the Khalifeh Harun -Er-Rashid, and the Wezir Ja’far El-Barmeki, and Abu-Nuwas El-Hasan, the -son of Hani, and Mesrur the Executioner.” - -Then there is that page where Nimeh and the Persian sage open a shop in -Damascus, and stock it with costly things, and the sage sits with the -astrolabe before him, “in the apparel of sages and physicians”--to wait -for Nimeh’s lover, or some one who has news of her, to appear. Of a -more subtly appealing charm is a sentence in the story of “Ala-ed-din,” -where a man tells the father of one who is supposed to have been -executed that another was actually slain in his stead, “for I ransomed -him, by substituting another, from among such as deserved to be put to -death.” A good book might be made of the stories of such poor unknown -men in famous books as this prisoner who was of those that deserved to -die. - -Lofty, strange, and infinite in its suggestiveness is the tale of -Kamar-ez-Zeman and the Princess Budur. Two demons, an Efrit and an -Efritch, contend as to the superiority in beauty of a youth and a girl -whom they watch asleep in widely remote parts of the earth; and they -carry them through the midnight sky and lay the two side by side to -judge. On the morrow, the youth longs for the girl and the girl for -the youth. Of their dreams, the King, the father of the youth, says: -“Probably it was a confused dream that thou sawest in sleep,” and the -father of the girl chains her up as mad. But in the end, after many -wanderings and impediments, they transcend the separation of space and -are married. Noblest of all, perhaps, is one of the short “Anecdotes” -about the discovery of a terrestrial paradise. - -Abd-allah went out to seek a straying camel, and chanced upon a superb -and high-walled city lying silent in the desert. And when the Caliph -inquired about that city, a learned man told him that it was built by -Sheddad, the King. This prince was fond of ancient books, and took -delight in nothing so much as in descriptions of Paradise, so that -his heart enticed him to make one like it on the earth. Under him -were a hundred thousand kings, and under each of them were a hundred -thousand soldiers, and he furnished them with the measurements and -set them to collect the materials of gold and silver and ruby and -pearl and chrysolite. For twenty years they collected. Then he sought -a fit place among rivers on a vast open plain. In twenty years they -built the city and finished its impregnable fortifications. For twenty -years he laboured in equipping himself, his viziers, his harem and his -troops for the occupation of this Paradise. Then when he was rejoicing -on his way, “God sent down upon him and upon the obstinate infidels -who accompanied him a loud cry from the heaven of his power, and it -destroyed them all by the vehemence of its sound. Neither Sheddad nor -any of those who were with him arrived at the city or came in sight -of it, and God obliterated the traces of the road that led to it; -but the city remaineth as it was in its place until the hour of the -judgment.”... - -Beyond the gateway the Downland and the corn begins, and with it the -rain, so that the great yellow-banded bee hangs long pensive on the -lilac flower of the scabious. Hereby is a farm with a wise look in its -narrow window on either side of the white door under the porch; the -walls of the garden and the farmyard are topped with thatch; opposite -rises up a medlar tree, russet-fruited: and those two eyes of the -little farm peep out at the stranger. From the next hill-top the land -spreads out suddenly--an immense grey hedgeless land of pasture and -ploughland and stubble with broadcast shadows of clouds and lines, -and clumps of dark-blue trees a league apart. These woods are of pine -and thorn and elder and beam, and some yew and juniper, haunted by -the hare and the kestrel, by white butterflies going in and out, by -the dandelion’s down. Sometimes under the pines a tumulus whispers -a gentle _siste viator_ and the robin sings beside. Far away, white -rounds of cloud bursting with sunlight are lifted up out of the ground; -born of earth they pause a little upon the ridge and then take flight -into the blue profound, their trains of shadow moving over the corn -sheaves, over the ploughs working along brown bands of soil, the furzy -spaces, the deeply cloven grassy undulations, the lines of yews and of -corn-stacks. Slowly a spire like a lance-head is thrust up through the -Downs into the sky. - -Beyond the spire a huge woody mound rises up from the low flowing land, -huge and carved all round by an entrenchment as if by the weight of a -crown that it had worn for ages. Certainly it wears no crown to-day. -Not a human being lives there; they have all fled to the riverside -and the spire, leaving their ancient home to the triumphs of the -wide-flowering traveller’s-joy, to the play of children on the sward -within its walls, and to the archæologist: and very sad and very noble -it looks at night when it and the surrounding Downs lift up their dark -domes of wood among the mountains of the sky, and the great silence -hammers upon the ears. - -Then a hedgeless road traverses without interrupting the long Downs. -One after another, lines of trees thin and dark and old come out -against the pale bright sky of late afternoon and file away, beyond -the green turf and roots and the grey or yellow stubble. As the sun -sets, dull crimson, at the foot of a muslin of grey and gold which his -course has crimsoned, the low clouds on the horizon in the north become -a deathly blue white belonging neither to day nor to night, while -overhead the light-combed cloudlets are touched faintly with flame. Now -the glory and the power of the colour in the west, and now the pallid -north, fill the brain to overflowing with the mingling of distance, -of sublime motion, and of hue, and intoxicate it and give it wings, -until at last when the west is crossed by long sloping strata as of -lava long cooled they seem the bars of a cage impassable. But even they -are at last worn away and the sky is as nothing compared with earth. -For there, as I move, the infinite greys and yellows of the crops, the -grass, the bare earth, the clumps of firs, the lines of beeches and -oaks, play together in the twilight, and the hills meet and lose their -lines and flow into one another and build up beautiful lines anew, the -outward and visible signs of a great thought. Out of the darkness in -which they are submerged starts a crying of pewits and partridges; and -overhead and close together the wild duck fly west into the cold gilded -blue. - -At dawn a shallow crystal river runs over stones and waves green hair -past ancient walls of flint, tall towers and many windows, with vines -about the mullions, past desolate grass of old elmy meads, high-gated, -and umbrageous roads winding white by carven gateways, under sycamore -and elm and ash and many alders and haughty avenues of limes, past -an old great church, past a park where elms and oaks and bushy limes -hide a ruin among nettles and almost hide a large stone house from -which peacocks shout, past a white farm, red-tiled, that stands with a -village of its own thatched barns, cart-lodges and sheds under walnut -and elm, enclosed within a circuit of old brick with a tower that looks -along the waters. It is a place where man has known how to aid his own -stateliness by that of Nature. The trees are grand and innumerable, but -they stand about in aristocratic ways; the bright young water does not -flout the old walls but takes the shadow of antiquity from them and -lends them dew-dropping verdure in return. The pebbles under the waves -are half of them fallen from the walls; the curves round which they -bend are of masonry; so that it is unapparent and indifferent whether -the masonry has been made to fit the stream or the stream persuaded to -admit the masonry. As I look, I think of it as Statius thought of the -Surrentine villa when he prayed that Earth would be kind to it and not -throw off that ennobling yoke. Everywhere the river rushes and shines, -or roars unseen behind trees. The sun is warm and the golden light -hangs as if it were fruit among the leaves over the ripples. - -Above the stream the elms open apart and disclose a wandering grey land -and clumps of beeches, a grey windy land and a grey windy sky in which -the dark clumps are islanded. Flocks of sheep move to and fro, and with -them the swallows. Two shepherds, their heavy grey overcoats slung -about their shoulders and the sleeves dangling, their flat rush baskets -on their backs, stand twenty yards apart to talk, leaning on their -sticks, while their swallow-haunted flocks go more slowly and their two -dogs converse and walk round one another. - -The oats have been trampled by rain, and two men are reaping it by -hand. They are not men of the farm, but rovers who take their chance -and have done other things than reaping in their time. One is a -Hampshire man, but fought with the Wiltshires against “Johnny Boer”--he -liked the Boers ... “they were very much like a lot of working men.... -We never beat ’em.... No, we never beat ’em.” He is a man of heroic -build; tall, lean, rather deep-chested than broad-shouldered, narrow in -the loins, with goodly calves which his old riding breeches perfectly -display; his head is small, his hair short and crisp and fair, his -cheeks and neck darkly tanned, his eye bright blue and quick-moving, -his features strong and good, except his mouth, which is over large -and loose; very ready to talk, which he does continually in a great -proud male voice, however hard he is working. A man as lean and hard -and bright as his reaping hook. First he snicks off a dozen straws -and lays them on the ground for a bond, then he slashes fast along -the edge of the corn for two or three yards, gathers up what is cut -into his hook and lays it across the straws: when a dozen sheaves are -prepared in the same way he binds them with the bonds and builds them -into a stook of two rows leaning together. It is impossible to work -faster and harder than he does in cutting and binding; only at the -end of each dozen sheaves does he stand at his full height, straight -as an ash, and laugh, and round off what he has been saying even more -vigorously than he began it. Then crouching again he slays twelve other -sheaves. Then he goes over to the four-and-a-half-gallon cask in the -hedge: it is a “fuel” that he likes, and he pays for it himself. In -his walk and attitude and talk--except in his accent--there is little -of the countryman. He is a citizen of the world, without wife or home -or any tie except to toil--and after that pleasure--and toil again. A -loose bold liver--and lover--there can be no doubt. The spirit of life -is strong in him, in limbs and chest and eyes and brain, the spirit -which compels one man to paint a picture, one to sacrifice his life -for another, one to endure poverty for an idea, another to commit a -murder. What is there for him--to be the mark for a bullet, to contract -a ravenous disease, to bend slowly under the increasing pile of years, -of work, of pleasures? He does not care. He is always seeing “a bit of -life” from town to town, from county to county, a peerless fleshly man -casting himself away as carelessly as Nature cast him forth into the -world. His father before him was the same, ploughboy, circus rider, -brickmaker, and day labourer again on the land, one who always “looked -for a policeman when he had had a quart.” He set out on his travels -again and disappeared. His wife went another way, and she is still to -be met with in the summer weather, not looking as if she had ever borne -such a son as this reaper. As she grows older she seems to stretch out -a connecting hand to long-vanished generations, to the men and women -who raised the huge earthen walls of the camps on these hills. She -has a trembling small face, wrinkled and yellow like old newspaper, -above a windy bunch of rags, chiefly black rags. A Welshwoman who has -been in England fifty years, she remembers or thinks of chiefly those -Welsh years when, as a girl, she rode a pony into Neath market. She -hums a Welsh tune and still laughs at it because she heard it first in -those days from one then poor and old and abject--she herself tall and -wilful--and the words of it were: “O, my dear boy, don’t get married.” -She would like once again to lie in her warm bed and hear the steady -rain falling in the black night upon the mountain. She feels the sharp -flint against the sole of her foot and appears not to be annoyed or -indignant or resolved to be rid of the pain, but only puzzled by the -flintiness of God as she travels, in the long pageant of those who go -on living, the lonely downland road among the gorse and the foxgloves, -in the hot but still misty morning when the grey and the chestnut -horses, patient and huge and shining among the sheaves, wait for the -reaping machine to be uncovered and the day’s work to begin. - -Through the grey land goes a narrow and flat vale of grass and of -thatched cottages. The river winds among willows and makes a green -world, out of which the Downs rise suddenly with their wheat. Here -stands a farm with dormers in its high yellow roof and a square -of beeches round about. There a village, even its walls thatched, -flutters white linen and blue smoke against a huge chalk scoop in the -Downs behind. For miles only the cherry-coloured clusters of the -guelder-rose break through the rain and the gently changing grey of the -cornland and green of the valley, until several farms of thatched brick -gather together under elms and mellowing chestnuts and make a crooked -hamlet. Or at a bend in the road a barn like a diminutive down stands -among ricks and under elms; behind is a red farm and church tower -embowered; in front, the threshing machine booms and smokes and an old -drenched woman stands bent aloft receiving the sheaves in her blue -stiff claws. Close by, a man leads a horse away from a field and its -companion looks over the gate with longing, and turns away and again -returning almost jumps it, but failing through fearfulness at seeing -the other so near the bend in the road, races down the hedge and back -and stands listening to the other’s whinny, and then scattering the -turf dashes into an orchard beyond and whinnies as he gallops. - -In majesty, rigid and black, the steam ploughs are working up against -the treeless sky; and, just seen in the rain, the white horse carved -upon the hill seems a living thing, but of mist. - -Now, as if for the sake of the evening bells and the gleaners, the -rain withholds itself, and over the drenching stubble the women and -children, in black and grey and dirty white, crawl, doubled up, -careless of the bells and of the soft moist gold of the sun that -envelops them, as of the rain and wind that after a little while cover -up the gold upon the field and the green and rose of the sky. - -And so to the inn. Why do not inns have a regular tariff for the -poorish man without a motor-car? Let inn-keepers bleed the rich, by all -means, but why should they charge me one shilling and ninepence for a -cod steak or a chop or the uneatable cold roast beef of new England, -and then charge the same sum for the best part of a duckling and -cheese and a pint of ale? I once asked the most enterprising publisher -in London whether he would print a book that should tell the sober -truth about some of our English inns, and he said that he dared not -do anything so horrible. For fear of ruining my publisher I will not -mention names, but simply say that at nine inns out of ten the charges -are incalculable and excessive unless the traveller makes a point of -asking beforehand what they are going to be, a course that provokes -discomfort in his relation to the host outweighing what is saved. The -tea room, on the other hand, is inexpensive. It lies behind a shop and -there is a slaughter-house adjacent--even now the butcher can be heard -parting the warm hide from the flesh. Inside, the room is green and the -little light and the rain also come sickly through windows of stained -glass and fall upon a piano, a bicycle, an embroidered deck chair, -vases of dead grass on a marble-topped table, a screen pasted over with -scraps from the newspapers, and, upon the walls, a calendar from the -butcher depicting a well-dressed love scene, a text or two, pictures of -well-dressed children and their animals, and upon the floor, oilcloth -odorous and wet. Here, as at the inns, the adornments are dictated by -a taste begotten by the union of peasant taste and town taste, and are -entirely pretentious and unrelated to the needs of the host or of the -guests. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - -AN OLD HOUSE AND A BOOK--WILTSHIRE - - -The country is deserted in the rain, and I have the world to myself, -a world of frenzied rain among the elms of the lowland, an avenue of -elms up to a great house, hidden sheep tinkling and bleating, shepherds -muffled, huge slopes of grass and pearled clover above a coombe where a -grey heron sails and clanks alone, a farm desolate among elder and ash -at the highest part of the hills, and then miles of pathless pasture -and stubble descending past an old camp and a tumulus to the submerged -vale, where yellow elms tremble about a church tower, a cluster of -red cottages and bowed yellow dahlias and chrysanthemums, and a house -standing aloof. This house is some way from the Downs themselves, but -just at the foot of a lesser slope, a fair golden hill--golden with -cowslips in May--that rises on one side with a swift, short ascent and -then shoots forward, as if with the impetus, almost level until, after -crowning itself with beeches, it descends in a lazy curve to a field, -roughened by the foundations of a vanished house, at one corner of -which the chimneys join with another group of elms in the haze of rain. - -Hanging from the wall in rags, too wet even to flap, are the remains -of an auctioneer’s announcement of a sale at the house behind. -Mahogany--oak chests--certain ounces of silver--two thousand -books--portraits and landscapes and pictures of horses and game--of all -these and how much else has the red house been disembowelled? It is -all shadowy within, behind the windows, like the eyes of a corpse, and -without sound, or form, or light, and it is for no one that the creeper -magnificently arrays itself in bediamonded crimson and gold that throbs -and wavers in the downpour. The martins are still there, and their play -up and down before the twenty windows is a senseless thing, like the -play of children outside a chamber of agony or grief. They seem to be -machines going on and on when their master and purpose are dead. But -then, too, there is gradually a consolation, a restfulness, a deceit, -a forgetting, in the continuity of their movement and their unchanged -voices. The two hundred autumns perpetuated in the tones of the bricks -are in vain. Strangers will come, no doubt--I hope they will not--and -be pleased, actually proud, at this mellowness, which ought to have -died with the last of the family that built the house. - -The tall horse-chestnuts throw down their fruit out of the crisp, -rusty foliage and it rolls darkly burnished out of the pods white -as mushrooms in the rain, and where it falls it lies, and no child -gathers it, and the harvest waggons have crushed a thousand under -their wheels. The moss is beginning to encrust the gravel for the -soft feet of the ghosts, of the old men and the mothers and the maids -and the school-boys and tottering babes that have trodden it once. -Now that they are all gone, every one, they seem always to have been -ghosts, with loud, happy voices and wails of sorrow, with smiles, dark -looks, passionate splendours, bright hair, the bright brown hair as -of red deer in the men, the long, heavy coils of living odorous gold -in the women, but flitting to and fro, footless, unconfined, like the -swallows, returning and wandering up and down, as if they had left -something behind in their home. - -When I first entered the house by an accident in passing that way, -a great-grandfather, a granddaughter and her son were alone in the -house, with two servants. The mother, early widowed, had come with her -child to minister to the last days of the ancient man. The house was -by then full of the reports of death. In almost every room there had -been a deathbed. For it had always been full of life; there was never -such a house for calling back its children; the sons of it brought -their wives, and the daughters their husbands, and often an excuse -was made for one pair to stay on indefinitely; and thus it came to be -full also of death. This granddaughter, however, had stayed, as she -wished to believe, against her will, because the old man was so fond -of his great-grandchild. She was a beautiful, strong woman, with the -dark, lustrous skin, gold hair, perfect clear features, proud step and -prouder voice, of all the family; she had shone before a thousand eyes; -and yet she stayed on and on, obsessed by the multitudinous memories of -the house alone under the Downs. - -Her grandfather would talk of nothing but his father and his -grandfather, the lawyers, the captains, the scholars, whose bones were -under the churchyard elms, and his sons and their sons, all of them -also now dead. He had their childish ways by heart, the childish ways -of men who were white-haired at his birth as well as of those who went -golden-haired but yesterday into the grave; and all their names, their -stately, their out-of-the-way names, and those which recorded the -maiden names of their mothers; their nicknames, too, a whole book of -them; the legends about the most conspicuous, their memorable speeches -and acts, down to the names of their very dolls, and their legends -also, which, of course, recurred again and again in the family fantasy. -Every tree and field and gate and room was connected with some one of -the dear and beauteous or brave dead, with their birth, their deeds, -their ends. - -The portraits of many of them, at least one to every generation, hung -on the walls, and it was curious to notice, what never any one of them -could see, except the granddaughter, the progress and the decline -from generation to generation. The earliest of all had sailed and -buccaneered with Henry Morgan, a great lover and destroyer of life. It -was from him that the expression and air of them all had descended. -Love and battle had carved his face. Out from behind his bold but easy -face peered a prophetic pitifulness, just as behind the loaded brown -clouds of drifting storm peers the innocence of blue, and upon it white -clouds that are thin and waved like an infant’s hair. Upon this model -his descendants’ faces had been carved, not by love and battle, but -by his might alone. Even the tender women flaunted it. It nestled, an -eagle, among the old man’s snows; it possessed the little child, and he -had nothing but the face of the buccaneer, like an eaglet in a cage. - -A house is a perdurable garment, giving and taking of life. If it -only fit, straightway it begins to chronicle our days. It beholds our -sorrows and our joys; its untale-bearing walls know all our thoughts, -and if it be such a house as grows after the builders are gone, our -thoughts presently owe much to it; we have but to glance at a certain -shadow or a curve in the wall-paper pattern to recall them, softened -as by an echo, and that corner or that gable starts many a fancy that -reaches beyond the stars, many a fancy gay or enriched with regrets. -It is aware of birth, marriage and death; and who dares say that there -is not kneaded into the stones a record more pleasing than brass? With -what meanings the vesperal beam slips through a staircase window in -autumn! The moon has an expression proper to us alone, nested among -our limes, or heaving an ivory shoulder above the neighbour roofs. -As we enter a room in our house we are conscious of a fitness in its -configuration that defies mathematics. Rightly used, such a space will -inspire a stately ordering of our lives; it is, in another respect, the -amplest canvas for the art of life. It becomes so much a part of us -that we exclaim-- - - “This beautiful house in sand and stone: - What will it be in heaven?” - -This beautiful house under the Downs was already more than “sand and -stone.” It was a giant, very gentle but very powerful, and adding to -its power the lore of the family it was irresistible. This young mother -had all the lore by heart and loved it, yet had fought against it. She -had been happy when her child had grown at first unlike her own family -and much like her husband’s; but no! his hair grew lighter, his nose -was as those of her brothers’ in bud, and now that he was five he was -not a child so much as an incarnation of the family, a sort of graven -image to which the old man bowed down, and with all the more fervour -because of that weakness in the boy which others thought imbecility. -The old man, too, had been not only a man but a family; now that the -child was there he waited, garrulously contented, for his release from -the post. So contented was he that when the granddaughter left her -child with him, and after delays and excuses and delays disappeared -into the blank, indifferent abyss of the multitude far away who knew -not the house and the family, he was not only contented but glad at -heart, for it was a rebel that was gone. - -For several years the white beard and the poor child lived together -happily, turning over old memories, old books, old toys, taking the old -walks through the long garden, past, but not into, the beech wood that -a whim of the old man’s had closed against even himself, against all -save the birds and the squirrels; over the high downs and back into the -deep vale which had produced that delicate physical beauty and those -gracious lusty ways beyond which it seemed that men and women could -hardly go in earthly life. Very happy were those two, and very placid; -but within a week their tragic peace was perfected. The boy fell out -of one of the apple-trees and was killed. The old man could not but -stumble over that small grave into his own, and here is the end, the -unnoted, the common end, and the epitaph written by the auctioneer and -the rain. - -Much as I love rain, heavy or light, freakish or continuous, I am glad -to be out of it for a little while and to open a book of ballads by a -solitary fire at “The White Horse,” and soon to close it after reading -again the lines-- - - “O then bespake her daughter dear, - She was baith jimp and sma’: - ‘O row me in a pair o’ sheets, - And tow me owre the wa’!’ - - They row’d her in a pair o’ sheets, - And tow’d her owre the wa’; - But on the point o’ Gordon’s spear - She gat a deadly fa’. - - O bonnie, bonnie was her mouth, - And cherry were her cheeks, - And clear, clear was her yellow hair, - Whereon the red blood dreeps. - - Then wi’ his spear he turn’d her owre; - O gin her face was wan! - He said, ‘Ye are the first that e’er - I wish’d alive again.’ - - He cam’ and lookit again at her; - O gin her skin was white! - ‘I might hae spared that bonnie face - To hae been some man’s delight. - - ‘Busk and boon, my merry men a’, - For ill dooms I do guess; - I cannot look on that bonnie face - As it lies on the grass.’ - - ‘Wha looks to freits, my master dear, - Its freits will follow them; - Let it ne’er be said that Edom o’ Gordon - Was daunted by a dame....’” - -I cannot help wondering whether the great work done in the last century -and a half towards the recovery of old ballads in their integrity will -have any effect beyond the entertainment of a few scientific men and -lovers of what is ancient, now that the first effects upon Wordsworth -and his contemporaries have died away. Can it possibly give a vigorous -impulse to a new school of poetry that shall treat the life of our time -and what in past times has most meaning for us as freshly as those -ballads did the life of their time? It is possible; and it is surely -impossible that such examples of simple, realistic narrative shall be -quite in vain. Certainly the more they are read the more they will be -respected, and not only because they often deal with heroic matters -heroically, but because their style is commonly so beautiful, their -pathos so natural, their observation of life so fresh, so fond of -particular detail--its very lists of names being at times real poetry. - -Sometimes the style is equal and like to that of the most accomplished -poetry, as in the stanza-- - - “The Ynglyshe men let ther boys (bows) be, - And pulde owt brandes that were brighte; - It was a hevy syght to se - Bryght swordes on basnites lyght.” - -Or in-- - - “God send the land deliverance - Frae every reaving, riding Scot! - We’ll sune hae neither cow nor ewe, - We’ll sune hae neither staig nor stot.” - -It is equally good in passages where the poet simply expresses his -hearty delight in something which his own eyes have seen among his -neighbours, as in-- - - “He had horse and harness for them all, - Goodly steeds were all milke-white: - O the golden bands an about their necks, - And their weapons, they were all alike....” - -And, by the way, do not touches like these often reveal the stamp of -individuals upon pieces which are loosely said to have been “composed -by the folk”? They quite do away with the notion that ballads were -composed by a number of people, after the fashion of a story in the -game of “Consequences.” In fact, it is one of the pleasures of reading -ballads to watch for those things which show us the heart of one man -who stands out by himself. Such a one was the man who said-- - - “I dreamt I pu’d the heather green - Wi’ my true love on Yarrow.” - -And who was that unhappy one who served a king for seven years and only -once saw the king’s daughter, and that was through a gimlet-hole? Two -were putting on her gown, two putting on her shoes, five were combing -down her hair-- - - “Her neck and breast was like the snow-- - Then from the bore I was forced to go.” - -Was he the man who made it a common thing to speak in ballads of -“combing her yellow hair”? - -What a poet, too, was he who put that touch into “Bewick and Grahame,” -where the father throws down his glove as a challenge to his son and -the son stoops to pick it up, and says-- - - “O father, put on your glove again, - The wind hath blown it from your hand.” - -It is one of the most delicate things, and with it the stanza in the -same ballad where the father praises the son for his victory over a -friend, but the son, hating the battle which would not have been fought -if the fathers had not quarrelled in their wine, says-- - - “Father, could ye not drink your wine at home - And letten me and my brother be?” - -And the mind of a poet is to be seen in the whole of some ballads and -in every detail, as for example in the three perfect verses-- - - “O lang, lang may their ladies sit - Wi’ their fans into their hand, - Or ere they see Sir Patrick Spens - Come sailing to the land. - - O lang, lang may the ladies stand, - Wi’ their gold combs in their hair, - Wailing for their ain dear lords, - For they’ll see them na mair. - - Half-owre, half-owre to Aberdour, - It’s fiftie fadom deep, - And there lies guid Sir Patrick Spens, - Wi’ the Scots lords at his feet.” - -This ballad is one peculiar to our island, and no one can seriously -deny that some one of its authors was one of the greatest writers of -narrative poetry that ever lived. - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -AN OUTCAST--WILTSHIRE - - -Not far from “The White Horse” is a little town upon a stream that -waves myriads of reeds and tall purple flowers of hemp agrimony. These -are the last shops I am likely to pass in Wiltshire, and it occurs -to me that I should like to taste lardy cakes--which I last bought -in Wroughton fifteen years ago--before I leave the county. Richard -Jefferies’ grandfather was “My Lord Lardy Cake” in old Swindon sixty -years ago, and his memory is kept alive by those tough, sweet slabs -of larded pastry which, in his generous ovens, gathered all the -best essences of the other cakes, pies, tarts and joints which were -permitted to be baked with them. In “Amaryllis at the Fair” they are -mentioned with some indignity as a ploughboy’s delicacy. My lips water -for them, and at the first bakery in ---- I ask for some. The baker -tells me he has sold the last one. He is a small, white-haired and -white-bearded man with an expression of unctuous repose, assuredly -a pillar of his chapel and possibly its treasurer, and though he -himself will, by his own telling, have no more lardy cakes until -the next morning, he stiffly tries to persuade me that none of his -fellow-townsmen bakes them. I disbelieve the man of dough for all his -conscious look of sagacity and virtue, and am rewarded for my disbelief -by four lardy cakes for threepence-halfpenny not many yards from his -accursed threshold. Lardy cakes, I now discover for the first time, -have this merit besides their excellent taste and provision of much -pleasant but not finical labour for the teeth, that one is enough at a -time, and that four will, therefore, take a man quite a long way upon -the roads of England. - - * * * * * - -At the next inn three labourers and the landlord are heated in -conversation about some one not present. - -“Quite right,” says one, a sober carter whose whip leans against the -counter, “’tis the third time this week that a tramp has been to his -door, and by the looks of them they didn’t call for naught.” - -“One of them didn’t, I know,” says the landlord. “He came in here once -and asked for a job and left without a drink, but after he’d been to -Stegbert’s Cottage he came straight here and ordered a pint of mild. -And I heard as he let a chap and a woman sleep two nights running in -that rough patch behind the house. Don’t you think the parson ought to -hear of that? And what does he do for a living? He looks poor enough -himself.” - -“I don’t know. Mr. Jones is a kind-hearted fellow. He stopped my -youngest in the street the other day and gave her a penny and measured -her hair, and told her she’d have a yard of it some day. They tell me -he hasn’t a carpet on the floor anywhere, and no parlour, and not even -a chest of drawers; and the postman says he hasn’t a watch or a clock. -What does he do with himself?” - -“I reckon he’s mad,” says the third, chuckling, “and I don’t mind if he -is. My old dog doesn’t need feeding at home since he’s been here. He -doesn’t eat no meat himself neither. The widow Nash was reckoning it -up, and she says he spends four shillings a week----” - -“And a shilling here regular,” interjects the landlord. - -“On groceries, including one-and-six for tobacco. He has four loaves, -and I know ‘Kruger’ must have more than half of them.” - -“And every other week he buys a postal order for two shillings and a -penny stamp----” - -“Pint of mild, mister,” says a tall blear-eyed man who comes in, meekly -followed by a small woman, dusty and in rags but neat, to whom he -offers the tankard after nearly draining it himself. - -“Nice weather,” he ventures, smacking his lips. - -“Yes,” says the landlord discouragingly, and the carter leaves. - -“Everybody seems to be gone to the flower show,” continues the -intruder, “and that’s where I’m going” (here he looks at his boots), -“but the best way for sore feet is three days in a tap-room in some -good sawdust.” - -The wife sighs. - -“The fat woman that weighs twenty-three stone,” says her husband to -the company, “is a cousin of mine twice removed, and I have done a bit -in the show line myself. It’s a rum business. Better than working in a -brewery stables, though. Me and my mate had to go because we got up so -early that we burnt too many candles.” - -The mention of the fat woman rouses the labourers, and one says-- - -“They say them fat women eats hardly anything at all.” - -“Very small eater is Daisy. But you see her food does her good. None of -it’s wasted.” - -“That’s it. Her food agrees with her.” - -The wife sighs. - -“Now there’s my missus here,” says the husband. “She was one of these -pretty gallus dancing-girls who get their fifteen shillings a week. Her -food don’t nourish her. Now my brother used to laugh in publics for a -pint and he would laugh till they gave him a pint to stop.” - -“Oh, I can laugh _after_ a pint,” says the wife, “but then I could just -as easy cry, I worries so. There’s many a aching heart goes up and down -that Great Western Railway in the express trains.” - -“I never worries, missus,” says a labourer with pursy mouth, short -pipe, and head straight up behind from his neck. - -“Quite right,” says the husband. “My old girl here lives on the fat of -the land and is always thin. Her food don’t nourish her. There’s more -harm done in the world by a discontented gut than anything else. I -think of asking her to try living on her pipe by itself.” - -“Like Mr. Jones over there,” says one of the labourers. - -“Mr. Jones? What, my friend Mr. William Jones?” asks the tall man. - -“Is he a friend of yours?” asks the landlord, curiosity overpowering -his natural caution with a man who is selling spectacles at a shilling -a pair. - -“He is, and I don’t mind letting any one know it. I’m very glad to see -him settled down. He’s the only one along the road who hasn’t gone to -the flower show to-day.” Here the tall man calls for another tankard, -which, as he is doing all the talking, he does not pass to the small -neat woman behind him. Pleased to be civilly used, and warmed by the -liquor, he tells the story of his friend, the little woman helping him -out, and landlord and labourers adding some touches; and Mr. Jones -himself completed the picture during my few days in the village. - -The man who fed his neighbour’s dog, and sent the beggar satisfied -away, and made presents to the children, and lived on six ounces of -tobacco a week, is a native of Zennor in Cornwall. “Wonderful place -for pedlars is Cornwall. The towns are so few and far between that -the people along the road aren’t used to pedlars, and when you do -call you are sure of the best of treatment.” He was apprenticed to a -shoemaker in a town in South Devon, and for a time practised his trade -there as an assistant. He was very clever at boxing and wrestling, -and a hard fighter, too, though unwilling to make a quarrel. But he -was a queer youth and took violent likes and dislikes to men, and one -day he dropped a boot and went out into the street and took a young -gentleman by the arm and said to him: “Excuse me, sir, you have passed -this shop for five years nearly every day and I can’t stand it any -longer.” Whereupon he gave that young gentleman a beating. He was sent -to prison; he lost his employment and went to sea. And at sea or else -in foreign countries he stayed six years. He left the sea only because -he broke an arm which had at length to be amputated above the elbow. -He was a changed man and many thought then that he was mad. When he -left the hospital it was December and bitter weather: he had only five -shillings and it was notorious how he spent it. Every day for a week -he bought three loaves of bread and went out and fed the birds with -them. When that week was over he had to go into the workhouse, and -there he stayed until the spring. It was there that he fell in with -the tall man who helped to tell his tale. They left together and -for some time he almost kept the two by begging, his lack of an arm -ensuring his success. But he was not altogether to his companion’s -taste, nevertheless. He would stop and smoke a pipe and admire the view -when he was miles from anywhere and their object was to reach a town -and find enough money to pay for lodgings. He would stand by a hedge, -content for an hour to disentangle the bryony strands that were in -danger of straying to the road, and to restore them to the hazel and -thorn where their fellows ramped. He was willing to be foster-father to -half the helpless fledglings that he found on the roadside. Sleeping -one night in a barn he could not be persuaded to leave until he had -decided whether it was better to kill a spider who had a great appetite -for flies or to leave it to Fate. Several he rescued from the web -and then out of pity for the spider brought it flies already dead; -but finding that these were not to its taste he left the difficulty -unsolved and went sadly on his way. Almost equal to his pitifulness was -his dislike of work and his moral cowardice. Nothing could persuade him -to do any work, and such a coward was he that if he failed at the first -house where he offered his laces for sale he would not try again in -that village or town. Yet he did not scruple to steal--even with a hint -of physical violence--if he needed anything which chance presented to -him in another man’s possession: but he stole only necessaries, having -none of the acquisitiveness which is more common in their victims than -in thieves. Few men use leisure as well as he; perhaps no man was ever -idle with less harm to his fellows. The rich could have learned many -lessons at his feet: they must always be shooting or driving furiously -or meddling with politics or stopping footpaths; they cannot be kept -out of harm, however rich. How well this man would have employed money: -he would have given it away! - -By and by his pity for goaded cattle and his frequent gazings into -their brown eyes as they stared at him by a stile still further reduced -his necessities--he would touch no meat; so that his companion, finding -him no longer of much use in spite of his possession of but one arm, -left him and only crossed his path at increasing intervals of time. It -was now that Jones remembered with horror a scene which had slumbered -in his mind with the fear which it originally roused in youth. He and -other boys were in the habit of peeping through a hole in the wall -of a slaughter-house and watching the slaughter, the skinning and -the cutting up, until their ears became familiar with the groans, -the screams, the gurglings, the squelchings in the half-darkness of -candle-light, the blood and white faces and the knife. But one day -there was led into the slaughter-house a white heifer fresh from the -May pasture, clean and bright from her gleaming rosy hoofs to the tips -of the horns that swayed as she walked. Her breath made, as it were, a -sacred space about her as the light of a human face will do. She stood -quiet but uncertain and musingly in the dark, soaked, half-ruinous -place, into which light only came in bars through a cobwebbed lattice -and fell that day upon her white face, leaving in darkness the tall -butcher and the imbecile assistant who held the rope by which the -animal’s head was drawn down to the right level for a blow. The men -were in no hurry and as the heifer was not restive they finished their -talk about Home Rule. Then the idiot tried to put her into the right -position, but for a time could not get her to see that her head must -be drawn tight and somewhat askew against the oaken pillar. He only -succeeded by patting her flanks and saying gently as if to a girl: -“Come along, Daisy!” She lowed soft and bowed her head; the blow fell; -she rolled to the ground and the butcher once more let loose the heavy -scent of blood. The wholesome pretty beast, the familiar “Come along, -Daisy!” and the blow and the scent came often into Jones’ mind. He -ate no meat, but made no attempt to proselytize; he simply retreated -deeper and deeper into his childlike love of Nature. The birds and -the flowers and the creeping and running things he seemed to regard -as little happy, charming, undeveloped human beings, looking down on -them with infinite tenderness and a little amusement; with them alone -was he quite at home. Nature, as she presented herself to his simple -senses, was but a fragrant, many-coloured, exuberant, chiefly joyous -community, with which most men were not in harmony. Silent for days and -thinking only “green thoughts” under the branches of the wood, he came -to demand, unconsciously, that there should be such a harmony. But he -loved Nature also because she had no ambiguity, told no lies, uttered -no irony. Sitting among flowers by running water he wore an expression -of blessed satisfaction with his company which is not often seen at -the friendliest table. He drew no philosophy from Nature, no opinions, -ideas, proposals for reform, but only the wisdom to live, happily and -healthily and simply, himself. - -I dare say modernity was in his blood, but no man seemed to belong less -to our time. Of history and science he knew nothing, of literature -nothing; he had to make out the earth with his own eyes and heart. He -had not words for it, but he felt that whatever he touched was God. -No myth or religion had any value to him. There were no symbols for -him to use. The deities he surmised or smelt or tasted in the air or -upon the earth had neither name nor shape. Had he been able to think, -he was the man to put our generation on the way to a new mythology. -For all I know, he had the vision, the power of the seer, without -the power of the prophet. A little more and perhaps he would have -invaded Christendom as St. Paul invaded Heathendom. Yet I think he -was not wholly the loser by being unable to think. The eye untroubled -by thought sees things like a mirror newly burnished; at night, for -example, the musing man can see nothing before him but a mist, but -if he stops thinking quickly the roads, the walls, the trees become -visible. So this man saw with a clearness as of Angelico, and in his -memory violets and roses, trees and faces were as clear as if within -his brain were another sun to light them. He had but to close his -eyes to see these things, an innumerable procession of days and their -flowers and their birds in the sky or on the bough. And this he had at -no cost. He employed only such labour as was needed to make his bread -and occasionally clothes and a pipe. Nor did he merely ask alms of -Nature and Civilization. He paid back countless charities to flower -and bird and child and poorer men, and there was nothing against him -of pain or sorrow or death inflicted. And as he was without religion -so he was without patriotism. He had no country, knew nothing of men -and events. Asked by a person who saw him idle and did not observe his -defect, whether he would not like to do something for his country, he -replied: “I have no country like you, sir. I own nothing; my people -never did, that I know. I admire those that do, for I have been in many -a country when I was a sailor, but never a one to beat England, let -alone the West Country when it’s haymaking time.” - -He continued to beg with a free conscience, and was always willing to -give away all that he had to one in more need. And now chance found -him out and gave him ten shillings a week. He rented a cottage in this -village, weeded his flower-borders, but let his vegetable-plots turn -into poppy-beds. Sometimes he wearied of his monotonous meals; he would -then fast for a day or two, giving his food to the birds and mice, -until his hearty appetite returned.... - -He did not stay long in the village. He was shy and suspicious of men, -and except by the younger children he was not liked. He set out on his -travels again, and is still on the road or--unlike most tramps--on the -paths and green lanes, the simplest, kindest, and perhaps the wisest -of men, indifferent to mobs, to laws, to all of us who are led aside, -scattered and confused by hollow goods, one whom the last day of his -full life will not find in a whirlpool of affairs, but ready to go--an -outcast. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -THE END OF SUMMER--KENT--BERKSHIRE--HAMPSHIRE--SUSSEX--THE FAIR - - -The road mounts the low Downs again. The boundless stubble is streaked -by long bands of purple-brown, the work of seven ploughs to which the -teams and their carters, riding or walking, are now slowly descending -by different ways over the slopes and jingling in the rain. Above is -a Druid moor bounded by beech-clumps, and crossed by old sunken ways -and broad grassy tracks. It is a land of moles and sheep. At the end -of a shattered line of firs a shepherd leans, bunched under his cape -of sacking, to watch his black-faced flock dull-tinkling in the short -furze and among the tumuli under the constant white rain. Those old -roads, being over hilly and open land, are as they were before the -making of modern roads, and little changed from what they were before -the Roman. But it is a pity to see some of the old roads that have been -left to the sole protection of the little gods. One man is stronger -than they, as may be known by any one who has seen the bones, crockery, -tin and paper thrown by Shere and Cocking into the old roads near by -as into a dust-bin; or seen the gashes in the young trees planted down -Gorst Road, Wandsworth Common; or the saucy “Private” at the entrance -to a lane worn by a hundred generations through the sand a little -north of Petersfield; or the barbed wire fastened into the living -trees alongside the footpath over a neighbouring hill that has lately -been sold. What is the value of every one’s right to use a footpath -if a single anti-social exclusive landowning citizen has the right to -make it intolerable except to such as consider it a place only for -the soles of the feet? The builder of a house acquires the right to -admit the sunlight through his window. Cannot the users of a footpath -acquire a right, during the course of half-a-dozen dynasties or less, -to the sight of the trees and the sky which that footpath gives them -in its own separate way? At least I hope that footpaths will soon -cease to be defined as a line--length without breadth--connecting one -point with another. In days when they are used as much for the sake -of the scenes historic or beautiful through which they pass as of the -villages or houses on this hand or that, something more than the mere -right to tread upon a certain ribbon of grass or mud will have to be -preserved if the preservation is to be of much use, and the right of -way must become the right of view and of very ancient lights as well. -By enforcing these rights some of the mountains of the land might even -yet be saved, as Mr. Henry S. Salt wishes to save them.[6] In the -meantime it is to be hoped that his criticisms will not be ignored by -the tourists who leave the Needle Gully a cascade of luncheon wrappings -and the like; for it is not from a body of men capable of such manners -that a really effective appeal against the sacrifice of “our mountains” -to commercial and other selfishness is like to spring. - -[6] See his valuable _On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills_ (Fifield). - -And those lone wayside greens, no man’s gardens, measuring a few feet -wide but many miles in length--why should they be used either as -receptacles for the dust of motor-cars or as additions to the property -of the landowner who happens to be renewing his fence? They used to -be as beautiful and cool and fresh as rivers, these green sisters of -the white roads--illuminated borders of many a weary tale. But now, -lest there should be no room for the dust, they are turning away from -them the gypsies who used to camp there for a night. The indolent -District Council that is anxious to get rid of its difficulties--for -the moment--at the expense of a neighbouring district--it cares -not--will send out its policemen to drive away the weary horses and -sleeping children from the acre of common land which had hitherto been -sacred--to what?--to an altar, a statue, a fountain, a seat?--No! to a -stately notice-board; half-a-century ago the common of which this is a -useless patch passed on easy terms to the pheasant lords. The gypsies -have to go. Give them a pitch for the night and you are regarded as -an enemy of the community or perhaps even as a Socialist. The gypsies -shall be driven from parish to parish, and finally settle down as -squalid degenerate nomads in a town where they lose what beauty and -courage they had, in adding to the difficulties of another council. -Yet if they were in a cage or a compound which it cost money to see, -hundreds would pay for a stare at their brown faces and bright eyes, -their hooped tents, their horses, their carelessness of the crowd, and -in a few years an imitation of these things will be applauded in a -“pageant” of the town which has destroyed the reality. - -The grassy way ends with the moor at a pool beside a road, on one side -of it six thatched cottages fenced by sycamore and ash and elm, on the -other a grey farm and immense brown barn, within a long wall roofed -with mossy thatch; and the swallows fly low and slowly about the trees. - -First beeches line the rising and descending road--past a church whose -ivied tombstones commemorate men of Cornish name--as far as an inn -and a sycamore nobly balanced upon a pedestal of matted roots. Then -there are ash-trees on either side and ricks of straw wetted to an -orange hue, and beyond them the open cornland, and rising out of it an -all-day-long procession in the south, the great company of the Downs -again, some tipped with wood, some bare; in the north, a broken chain -of woods upon low but undulating land seem the vertebræ of a forest -of old time stretching from east to west like the Downs. Hither and -thither the drunken pewits cry over the furrows, and thousands of -rocks and daws wheel over the stubble. As the day grows old it grows -sweet and golden and the rain ceases, and the beauty of the Downs in -the humid clearness does not long allow the eyes to wander away from -them. At first, when the sun breaks through, all silver bright and -acclaimed by miles of clouds in his own livery, the Downs below are -violet, and have no form except where they carve the sky with their -long arches. It is the woods northward that are chiefly glorified by -the light and warmth, and the glades penetrating them and the shining -stubble and the hedges, and the flying wood-pigeons and the cows of -richest brown and milky white; the road also gleams blue and wet. But -as the sun descends the light falls on the Downs out of a bright cave -in the gloomy forest of sky, and their flanks are olive and their -outlines intensely clear. From one summit to another runs a string of -trees like cavalry connecting one beech clump with another, so that -they seem actually to be moving and adding themselves to the clumps. -Above all is the abstract beauty of pure line--coupled with the beauty -of the serene and the uninhabited and remote--that holds the eye until -at length the hills are humbled and dispread as part of the ceremony -of sunset in a tranquil, ensanguined, quietly travelling sky. The blue -swallows go slowly along the silent road beside me, and the last rays -bless a grooved common grazed upon by cows and surrounded by ranges -of low white buildings and a row of lichened grotesque limes, dark of -bole, golden-leaved, where children are playing and an anvil rings. - -Frost follows after the blue silence and chill of twilight, and the -dawn is dimmest violet in a haze that reveals the candied grass, the -soaking blue dark elms painted yellow only in one place, the red roofs, -all in a world of the unborn, and the waters steaming around invisible -crying coots. Gradually round white clouds--so dim that the sky seems -but to dream of round white clouds--appear imbedded in the haze; the -beams grow hot, and a breeze joins with them in sucking and scattering -all the sweet of the first fallen leaves, the weed fires and the late -honeysuckle. - -Why are there no swifts to race and scream? We fret over these stages -of the descending year; we dream on such a day as this that there is no -need of farther descent. We would preserve those days of the reaping; -we have lost them; but we recall them now when the steam-plough has -furrowed the sheeny stubble, and long for the day when the gentle -north wind can only just stir the clusters of aspen-leaves, and the -branches are motionless. The nut bushes hang dreamily, heavily, over -the white cool roads. The wood-pigeon’s is the sole voice in the oak -woods of the low hills, except that once or twice a swift screams as -he pursues that martial flight of his--as of one who swings a sword as -he goes--towards the beeches and hop gardens of the higher hills in -the north; it is perhaps the last day for more than eight months that -his cry will be heard. A few barley-straws hang from the hazels; some -leaves are yellow. Autumn, in fact, seems possible to the mind that is -not perfectly content with these calm sweet airs and the sense of the -fulness of things. - -At a crossing a small island is made amidst this and three other roads, -and on the island stands an oast house with two mellow cones and -white leaning cowls; and beside it a simple tiled cart-lodge, dimly -displaying massive wheels, curving bulwarks of waggons and straight -shafts behind its doorless pillars of rough-hewn wood. Making one group -with these, though separated from them by one road, is an old red -farmhouse, of barely distinguishable timber and brick, with white-edged -dormers and lower windows and doors, entrenched behind hollyhocks of -deepest red and the burning discs of everlasting sunflowers. Behind the -gates stand four haystacks brightly thatched, and one that is dark and -old and carved into huge stairs. - -Notice the gate into the rickyard. It is of the usual five oak bars; -and across these is a diagonal bar from the lowest end nearest the -hinge to the upper end of the opposite side, and from top to bottom a -perpendicular cross-bar divides the gate. The top bar marks it as no -common gate made at a factory with a hundred others of the same kind, -though there are scores of them in Kent. It thickens gradually towards -the hinge end of the gate, and then much more decidedly so that it -resembles a gun-barrel and stock; and just where the stock begins it -is carved with something like a trigger-guard; the whole being well -proportioned, graceful but strong. In all the best gates of Kent, -Sussex and Surrey and the South Country there is an approach to this -form, usually without the trigger-guard, but sometimes having instead a -much more elaborate variation of it which takes away from the dignity -and simplicity of the gate. At the road’s edge crooked quince-trees -lean over a green pond and green but nearly yellow straight reeds; -and four cart-horses, three sorrels and a grey, are grouped under one -stately walnut. - -These things mingle their power with that of the silence and the wooded -distance under the blue and rosy west. The slow dying of a train’s roar -beats upon the shores of the silence and the distance, and is swallowed -up in them like foam in sand, and adds one more trophy to the glory of -the twilight. - -Night passes, and the white dawn is poured out over the dew from the -folds in low clouds of infinitely modulated grey. Autumn is clearly -hiding somewhere in the long warm alleys under the green and gold of -the hops. The very colours of the oast houses seem to wait for certain -harmonies with oaks in the meadows and beeches in the steep woods. -The songs, too, are those of the drowsy yellow-hammer, of the robin -moodily brooding in orchards yellow spotted and streaked, of the unseen -wandering willow-wren singing sweetly but in a broken voice of a matter -now forgotten, of the melancholy twit of the single bullfinch as he -flies. The sudden lyric of the wren can stir no corresponding energy -in the land which is bowed, still, comfortable, like a deep-uddered -cow fastened to the milking-stall and munching grains. Soon will the -milk and honey flow. The reaping-machine whirrs; the wheelwrights have -mended the waggons’ wheels and patched their sides; they stand outside -their lodges. - -There is a quarter of a sloping wheat-field reaped; the shocks stand -out above the silvery stubble in the evening like rocks out of a -moonlight sea. The unreaped corn is like a tawny coast; and all is -calm, with the quiet of evening heavens fallen over the earth. This -beauty of the ripe Demeter standing in the August land is incomparable. -It reminds one of the poet who said that he had seen a maid who looked -like a fountain on a green lawn when the south wind blows in June; and -one whose smile was as memorable as the new moon in the first still -mild evening of the year, when it is seen for a moment only over the -dark hills; and one whose walking was more kindling to the blood than -good ale by a winter fire on an endless evening among friends; but that -now he has met another, and when he is with her or thinks of her he -becomes as one that is blind and deaf to all other things. - -But a few days and the bryony leaves are palest yellow in the hedge. -Rooks are innumerable about the land, but their cawing, like all other -sounds, like all the early bronze and rose and gold of the leaves, is -muffled by the mist which endures right through the afternoon; and -all day falls the gentle rain. In the hillside hop garden two long -lines of women and children, red and white and black, are destroying -the golden green of the hops, and they are like two caterpillars -destroying a leaf. Pleasant it is now to see the white smoke from the -oast house pouring solidly like curving plumes into the still rain, -and to smell the smell, bitter and never to be too much sniffed and -enjoyed, that travels wide over the fields. For the hop drier has lit -his two fires of Welsh coal and brimstone and charcoal under the two -cones of the oast house, and has spread his couch of straw on the -floor where he can sleep his many little sleeps in the busy day and -night. The oast house consists of the pair of cones, white-vaned and -tiled, upon their two circular chambers in which the fires are lit. -Attached to these on one side is a brick building of two large rooms, -one upon the ground, where the hop drier sleeps and tends his fires, -lighted only by doors at either side and divided by the wooden pillars -which support the floor of the upper room. This, the oast chamber, -reached by a ladder, is a beautiful room, its oak boards polished by -careful use and now stained faintly by the green-gold of hops, its -roof raftered and high and dim. Light falls upon it on one side from -two low windows, on the opposite side from a door through which the -hops arrive from the garden. The waggon waits below the door, full of -the loose, stained hop-sacks which the carter and his boy lift up to -the drier. From the floor two short ladders lead to the doors in the -cones where the hops are suspended on canvas floors above the kilns. -The inside of the cone is full of coiling fumes which have killed the -young swallows in the nests under the cowl--the parents return again -and again, but dare no longer alight on their old perches on the vanes. -When dried the hops are poured out on the floor of the vast chamber in -a lisping scaly pile, and the drier is continually sweeping back those -which are scattered. Through a hole in the floor he forces them down -into a sack reaching to the floor of the room below. He is hard at -work making these sacks or “pokes,” which, when full and their necks -stitched up, are as hard as wood. Before the drying is over the full -sacks will take up half the room. The children tired of picking come -to admire and to visit all the corners of the room; of the granary -alongside and its old sheepbells, its traps, a crossbow and the like; -of the farmyard and barns, sacred except at this time. For a few -minutes the sun is visible as a shapeless crimson thing above the mist -and behind the elms. It is twilight; the wheels and hoofs of the last -waggon approach and arrive and die away. And so day after day the fires -glow with ruby and sapphire and emerald; the cone wears its plume of -smoke; and everything is yellow-green--the very scent of the drying -hops can hardly be otherwise described, in its mixture of sharpness -and mellowness. Then when the last sack is pressed benches are placed -round the chamber and a table at one end. The master, who is giving up -the farm, leans on the table and pays each picker and pole-puller and -measurer, with a special word for each and a jest for the women. Ale -and gin and cakes are brought in, and the farmer leaves the women and -one or two older men to eat and drink. The women in their shabby black -skirts and whitish blouses shuffle through a dance or two, all modern -and some American. One old man tipsily tottering recalls the olden time -with a step-dance down the room; some laugh at him, others turn up -their new roseate noses. Next year the hops are to be grubbed up; the -old man to be turned out of his cottage--for he has paid no rent these -seven years; but now it is cakes and ale, and the farmer has hiccupped -a lying promise that his successor will go on growing hops. - - -HAMPSHIRE. - -To-day is fair day. The scene is a green, slightly undulating common, -grassy and rushy at its lower end where a large pond wets the margin of -the high road, and at the upper end sprinkled with the dwarf and the -common gorse out of which rise many tumuli, green or furzy mounds of -earth, often surmounted by a few funereal pines. The common is small; -it is bounded on every side by roads, and on one by a row of new mean -houses; there is a golf-house among the tumuli; in one place a large -square has been ploughed and fenced by a private owner. But the slope -of the sandy soil is pleasant; in one place it is broken into a low -cliff overhanging the water, and this with the presence of the gorse -give it a touch of the wildness by which it may still deserve its name -of “heath.” Most powerful of all in their effect upon the place are the -tumuli. They are low and smooth; one or two scarcely heave the turf; -some have been removed; and there is no legend attached to them. Yet -their presence gives an indescribable charm and state, and melancholy -too, and makes these few acres an expanse unequalled by any other of -the same size. Not too far off to be said to belong to the heath, from -which they are separated by three miles of cultivated land and a lesser -beechen hill, are the Downs; among them one that bears a thin white -road winding up at the edge of a dark wood. In the moist October air -the Downs are very grave and gentle and near, and are not lost to sight -until far beyond the turreted promontory of Chanctonbury. - -Early in the morning the beggars begin to arrive, the lame and the -blind, with or without a musical instrument. King of them all certainly -is he with no legs at all and seeming not to need them, so active is -he on a four-wheeled plank which suspends him only a foot above the -ground. Many a strong man earns less money. The children envy him -as he moves along, a wheeled animal, weather-beaten, white-haired, -white-bearded, with neat black hat and white slop, a living toy, but -with a deep voice, a concertina and a tin full of pence and halfpence. - -These unashamed curiosities line the chief approaches, down which every -one is going to the fair except a few shabby fellows who offer blue -sheets full of music-hall ballads to the multitude and, with a whisper, -indecent songs to the select. Another not less energetic, but stout -and condescending, yellow-bearded, in a high hard felt hat, gives away -tracts. The sound of a hymn from one organ mingles with the sound of -“Put me among the girls” from another and the rattle of the legless -man’s offertory-tin. - -The main part of the fair consists of a double row, a grove, of tents -and booths, roundabouts, caravans, traps and tethered ponies. A crowd -of dark-clad women goes up and down between the rows: there is a sound -of machine-made music, of firing at targets, of shouts and neighs and -brays and the hoot of engines. Here at the entrance to the grove is a -group of yellow vans; some children playing among the shafts and wheels -and musing horses; and a gypsy woman on a stool, her head on one side, -combing her black hair and talking to the children, while a puppy -catches at the end of her tresses when they come swishing down. Beyond -are cocoanut-shies, short-sighted cyclists performing, Aunt Sallies, -rows of goldfish bowls into which a light ball has to be pitched to -earn a prize, stalls full of toys, cheap jewellery and sweets like -bedded-out plants, and stout women pattering alongside--bold women, -with sleek black or yellow hair and the bearing and countenance of -women who have to make their way in the world. Behind these, women are -finishing their toilet and their children’s among the vans, preparing -meals over red crackling fires, and the horses rest their noses on the -stalls and watch the crowd; the long yellow dogs are curled up among -the wheels or nosing in the crowd. - -There are men selling purses containing a sovereign for sixpence, -loud, fat cosmopolitans on a cockney basis with a ceaseless flow of -cajolery intermingled with sly indecency; the country policeman in -the background puzzling over his duty in the matter, but in the end -paralyzed by the showmen’s gift of words. One man has before him a -counter on which he asks you to cover a red-painted disc with five -smaller discs of zinc, charging twopence for the attempt and promising -a watch to the great man who succeeds. After a batch of failures he -himself, with good-natured but bored face, shows how easily it is -done, and raising his eyes in despair craves for more courage from the -audience. The crowd looks on, hesitating, until he singles out the most -bashful countryman at the back of the throng, saying: “I like your -face. You are a good sort. You have a cheerful face; it’s the rich have -the sad faces. So I’ll treat you to a go.” The hero steps forward and -succeeds, but as it was a free trial he receives no watch; trying again -for twopence he fails. Another tries: “By Jove! that was a near one.” -A woman tries, and just as she is finishing, “You’re a ’cute one, -missus,” he ejaculates, and she fails. Another tries, and the showman -has a watch ready to hand over, and only at the last moment says -excitedly (restoring the watch quietly to its place): “I thought you’d -got it that time.... Come along! It’s the best game in the world.” Once -more he repeats the trick himself without looking, and then exclaims -as he sweeps the discs together: “It’s a silly game, I call it!” He is -like the preachers who show the stupid world how virtue is won: he has -a large audience, a large paunch, and many go away disappointed. The -crowd stares, and has the one deep satisfaction of believing that the -woman who travels with him is not his wife. - -At the upper end of the grove is the gaudy green and gold and -scarlet-painted and embossed entrance to the bioscope, raised a few -feet above the crowd. On the platform before the door stand two painted -men and a girl. The girl has a large nose, loose mouth and a ready, -but uneasy, discontented smile as if she knows that her paint is an -imperfect refuge from the gaze of the crowd; as if she knows that her -eyes are badly darkened, and her white stockings soiled, and her legs -too thin under her short skirt, and her yellow hair too stiff. She -lounges wearily with a glib clown who wears a bristly fringe of sandy -hair round his face, which tickles her and causes roars of laughter -when he aims at a kiss. The other performer is a contortionist, a small -slender man in dirty, ill-fitting scarlet jacket with many small brass -buttons, dirty brown trousers criss-crossed by yellow stripes; his -hands in his pockets; his snub nose deep pink, and his lean face made -yet leaner and more dismal by a thin streak of red paint on either -cheek. His melancholy seems natural, yet adds to his vulgarity because -he forsakes it so quickly when he smirks and turns away if the girl -exposes her legs too much. For she turns a somersault with the clown -at intervals; or doubles herself back to touch the ground first with -her yellow hair and at last with her head; or is lifted up by the clown -and, supported on the palm of one of his hands, hangs dangling in a -limp bow, her face yet gaunter and sadder upside down with senseless -eyes and helpless legs. The crowd watch--looking sideways at one -another to get their cue--some with unconscious smiles entranced, but -most of them grimly controlling the emotions roused by the girl or the -contortionist or the clown and the thought of their unstable life. A -few squirt water languidly or toss confetti. Others look from time to -time to see whether any one in the county dare in broad daylight enter -the booth for “gentlemen only,” at the door of which stands a shabby -gaudy woman of forty-five grinning contemptuously. - -Up and down moves the crowd--stiffly dressed children carrying gay toys -or bowls of goldfish or cocoanuts--gypsy children with scarves, blue -or green or red--lean, tanned, rough-necked labourers caged in their -best clothes, except one, a labourer of well past middle age, a tall -straight man with a proud grizzled head, good black hat of soft felt -low in the crown, white scarf, white jacket, dark-brown corduroys above -gleaming black boots. - -On the open heath behind the stalls they are selling horses by auction. -Enormous cart-horses plunge out of the groups of men and animals and -carry a little man suspended from their necks; stout men in grey -gaiters and black hats bobble after. Or more decorously the animals -are trotted up and down between rows of men away from the auctioneer -and back again, their price in guineas mingling with the statement that -they are real workers, while a small boy hustles them with whip and -shout from behind, and a big stiff man leads them and, to turn them at -the end of the run, shoves his broad back into their withers. The Irish -dealers traffic apart and try to sell without auction. Their horses -and ponies, braided with primrose and scarlet, stand in a quiet row. -Suddenly a boy leads out one on a halter, a hard, plump, small-headed -beast bucking madly, and makes it circle rapidly about him, stopping it -abruptly and starting it again, with a stiff pink flag which he flaps -in its face or pokes into its ribs; if the beast refuses he raises a -high loud “whoo-hoop” and curses or growls like an animal. For perhaps -five minutes this goes on, the boy never abating his oaths and growls -and whoops and flirtings of the pink flag. The horse is led back; a -muttering calm follows; another horse is led out. Here and there are -groups of cart-mares with huge pedestalled feet and their colts, or -of men bending forward over long ash-sticks and talking in low tones. -Horses race or walk or are backed into the crowd. Droves of bullocks -are driven through the furze. Rows of bulls, sweating but silent and -quiet, bow their heads and wait as on a frieze. Again the pink flags -are flourished, and the dealer catches a horsy stranger by the arm and -whispers and shows him the mare’s teeth. This dealer is a big Irishman -with flattened face and snaky nose, his voice deep and laughing. He -smiles continually, but when he sees a possible buyer he puts on an -artful expression so transparent that his merry face shines clearly -underneath and remains the same in triumph or rebuke--is the same -at the end of the day when he leads off his horses and stopping at a -wayside inn drinks on the kerb, but first gives the one nearest him a -gulp from the tankard. - - * * * * * - -All night--for a week--it rains, and at last there is a still morning -of mist. A fire of weeds and hedge-clippings in a little flat field is -smouldering. The ashes are crimson, and the bluish-white smoke flows -in a divine cloudy garment round the boy who rakes over the ashes. -The heat is great, and the boy, straight and well made, wearing close -gaiters of leather that reach above the knees, is languid at his -task, and often leans upon his rake to watch the smoke coiling away -from him like a monster reluctantly fettered and sometimes bursting -into an anger of sprinkled sparks. He adds some wet hay, and the -smoke pours out of it like milky fleeces when the shearer reveals the -inmost wool with his shears. Above and beyond him the pale blue sky is -dimly white-clouded over beech woods, whose many greens and yellows -and yellow-greens are softly touched by the early light which cannot -penetrate to the blue caverns of shade underneath. Athwart the woods -rises a fount of cottage-smoke from among mellow and dim roofs. Under -the smoke and partly scarfed at times by a drift from it is the yellow -of sunflower and dahlia, the white of anemone, the tenderest green and -palest purple of a thick cluster of autumn crocuses that have broken -out of the dark earth and stand surprised, amidst their own weak light -as of the underworld from which they have come. Robins sing among the -fallen apples, and the cooing of wood-pigeons is attuned to the soft -light and the colours of the bowers. The yellow apples gleam. It is -the gleam of melting frost. Under all the dulcet warmth of the face of -things lurks the bitter spirit of the cold. Stand still for more than -a few moments and the cold creeps with a warning and then a menace -into the breast. That is the bitterness that makes this morning of all -others in the year so mournful in its beauty. The colour and the grace -invite to still contemplation and long draughts of dream; the frost -compels to motion. The scent is that of wood-smoke, of fruit and of -some fallen leaves. This is the beginning of the pageant of autumn, -of that gradual pompous dying which has no parallel in human life yet -draws us to it, with sure bonds. It is a dying of the flesh, and we -see it pass through a kind of beauty which we can only call spiritual, -of so high and inaccessible a strangeness is it. The sight of such -perfection as is many times achieved before the end awakens the never -more than lightly sleeping human desire of permanence. Now, now is the -hour; let things be thus; thus for ever; there is nothing further to be -thought of; let these remain. And yet we have a premonition that remain -they must not for more than a little while. The motion of the autumn -is a fall, a surrender, requiring no effort, and therefore the mind -cannot long be blind to the cycle of things as in the spring it can -when the effort and delight of ascension veils the goal and the decline -beyond. A few frosts now, a storm of wind and rain, a few brooding -mists, and the woods that lately hung dark and massive and strong upon -the steep hills are transfigured and have become cloudily light and -full of change and ghostly fair; the crowing of a cock in the still -misty morning echoes up in the many-coloured trees like a challenge to -the spirits of them to come out and be seen, but in vain. For months -the woods have been homely and kind, companions and backgrounds to our -actions and thoughts, the wide walls of a mansion utterly our own. -We could have gone on living with them for ever. We had given up the -ardours, the extreme ecstasy of our first bridal affection, but we had -not forgotten them. We could not become indifferent to the Spanish -chestnut-trees that grow at the top of the steep rocky banks on either -side of the road and mingle their foliage overhead. Of all trees -well-grown chestnuts are among the most pleasant to look up at. For the -foliage is not dense and it is for the most part close to the large -boughs, so that the light comes easily down through all the horizontal -leaves, and the shape of each separate one is not lost in the -multitude, while at the same time the bold twists of the branches are -undraped or easily seen through such translucent green. The trunks are -crooked, and the handsome deep furrowing of the bark is often spirally -cut. The limbs are few and wide apart so as to frame huge delicately -lighted and shadowed chambers of silence or of birds’ song. The leaves -turn all together to a leathern hue, and when they fall stiffen and -display their shape on the ground and long refuse to be merged in the -dismal trodden hosts. But when the first one floats past the eye and is -blown like a canoe over the pond we recover once more our knowledge and -fear of Time. All those ladders of goose-grass that scaled the hedges -of spring are dead grey; they are still in their places, but they -clamber no longer. The chief flower is the yellow bloom set in the dark -ivy round the trunks of the ash-trees; and where it climbs over the -holly and makes a solid sunny wall, and in the hedges, a whole people -of wasps and wasp-like flies are always at the bloom with crystal -wings, except when a passing shadow disperses them for a moment with -one buzz. But these cannot long detain the eye from the crumbling woods -in the haze or under the large white clouds--from the amber and orange -bracken about our knees and the blue recesses among the distant golden -beeches when the sky is blue but beginning to be laden with loose -rain-clouds, from the line of leaf-tipped poplars that bend against the -twilight sky; and there is no scent of flowers to hide that of dead -leaves and rotting fruit. We must watch it until the end, and gain -slowly the philosophy or the memory or the forgetfulness that fits us -for accepting winter’s boon. Pauses there are, of course, or what seem -pauses in the declining of this pomp; afternoons when the rooks waver -and caw over their beechen town and the pigeons coo content; dawns -when the white mist is packed like snow over the vale and the high -woods take the level beams and a hundred globes of dew glitter on every -thread of the spiders’ hammocks or loose perpendicular nets among the -thorns, and through the mist rings the anvil a mile away with a music -as merry as that of the daws that soar and dive between the beeches and -the spun white cloud; mornings full of the sweetness of mushrooms and -blackberries from the short turf among the blue scabious bloom and the -gorgeous brier; empurpled evenings before frost when the robin sings -passionate and shrill and from the garden earth float the smells of a -hundred roots with messages of the dark world; and hours full of the -thrush’s soft November music. The end should come in heavy and lasting -rain. At all times I love rain, the early momentous thunderdrops, -the perpendicular cataract shining, or at night the little showers, -the spongy mists, the tempestuous mountain rain. I like to see it -possessing the whole earth at evening, smothering civilization, taking -away from me myself everything except the power to walk under the dark -trees and to enjoy as humbly as the hissing grass, while some twinkling -house-light or song sung by a lonely man gives a foil to the immense -dark force. I like to see the rain making the streets, the railway -station, a pure desert, whether bright with lamps or not. It foams all -the roofs and trees and bubbles into the water-butts. It gives the grey -rivers a demonic majesty. It scours the roads, sets the flints moving, -and exposes the glossy chalk in the tracks through the woods. It does -work that will last as long as the earth. It is about eternal business. -In its noise and myriad aspect I feel the mortal beauty of immortal -things. And then after many days the rain ceases at midnight with the -wind, and in the silence of dawn and frost the last rose of the world -is dropping her petals down to the glistering whiteness, and there they -rest blood-red on the winter’s desolate coast. - - - - -INDEX - - - Angelico, Fra, 253 - - April, 31, 155 - - _Arabian Nights_, 63, 222 - - Ashdown, 8, 47, 48 - - August, 51, 181, 186, 210, 262 - - - Bain, F. W., 222 - - Ballads, 224, 240 - - Belloc, Hilaire, 1 - - Beowulf, 158 - - Berkshire, 255 - - Blake, 35, 133 - - Books, 26, 109, 130, 131, 178 - - Borrow, 77, 117 - - Bradley, A. G., 11 - - _Brocken, Henry_, 178 - - Browne, Thomas, 86 - - Byron, 111 - - - Canal, Wilts. and Berks., 3 - - Cathedrals, 4 - - Catullus, 109 - - _Centuries of Meditation_, 126 - - Chaucer, 109, 110, 125 - - Colman’s Hatch, 60 - - Conrad, Joseph, 130 - - Cornwall, 154, 249 - - Cows, 129, 204, 252 - - Crouch’s Croft, 47 - - Crowborough, 47 - - Cuckoo, 41 - - - Doughty, Charles M., 147, 153 - - Downs, 1, 2, 8, 10, 28, 31, 35, 38, 40, 48, 50, 53, 71, 87, 101, - 104, 152, 169, 183, 205, 210, 227, 237, 255, 258 - - Drayton, Michael, 109 - - - Fair, A South Country, 266 - - February, 17 - - - Game, 59, 68 - - Genée, Mademoiselle, 179 - - Gerald of Wales, 150 - - Golden Age, 125 - - Gypsies, 129, 257, 266 - - - Hampshire, 19, 28, 46, 121, 129, 186, 188, 196, 210, 230, 255, 265 - - History, 5, 147 - - Hops, 262 - - Houses, 12, 57, 116, 117, 118, 196, 201, 220, 227, 229, 235 - - Hudson, W. H., 130 - - - Inns, 12, 72, 102, 192, 208, 214, 216, 233, 240 - - - Jefferies, Richard, 136, 145, 245 - - Jonson, Ben, 109, 202 - - Journalist, 7, 78, 125 - - June, 121 - - - Kent, 11, 44, 47, 260 - - - Lamb, Charles, 138 - - Land’s End, 42, 166 - - London, 3, 10, 51, 60, 74, 87, 95, 98, 171, 190 - - Lucas, E. V., 11 - - - M, 115 - - Maeterlinck, 36 - - Malory, 130 - - March, 20, 30 - - May, 49, 84, 103, 107, 109, 112, 117, 128 - - Milton, John, 109 - - Morris, William, 109, 113 - - - Names of places, 148 - - Nature-teaching, 141 - - Nightingale, 33, 206 - - November, 99 - - - Oasts, 49, 260 - - October, 80, 265 - - - _Pantagruel_, 178 - - Pattison, Mark, 145 - - Penshurst, 202 - - Piet Down, 47 - - Pilgrim’s Way, 3, 11, 44, 50, 52, 55, 58, 59, 210 - - - Railway, 95, 199 - - Rivers of the South Country, 2, 3, 52, 107, 219, 229, 232 - - Roads, 101, 108, 124, 193, 215, 219, 228, 246, 255 - - - Salt, Henry S., 256 - - Sandsbury Lane, 60 - - Scott, 63 - - Sea, 15, 157 - - Shelley, 112, 114 - - Sidney, Sir Philip, 109, 125, 202 - - Signboards, 4 - - Socialism, 94 - - Socialist, 257 - - Spring, 22 _et passim_ - - Statius, 229 - - Suburbs, 61 - - Suffolk, 15 - - Sunday, 124, 186 - - Surrey, 41, 58, 98 - - Sussex, 68, 100, 114, 181, 189, 196, 255 - - Swinburne, A. C., 111 - - “Swineherds County,” 211 - - - Thoreau, 76, 77, 145 - - Tolstoy, 143 - - Traherne, Thomas, 126, 131, 134, 142 - - Trespassers, 59, 215 - - - Vagrants, 25, 188, 249 - - Vaughan, Thomas, 137 - - Villon, 109 - - - Wales, 7, 9, 10, 76, 77, 125, 150, 153, 163, 175, 232 - - Walton, Izaak, 125 - - Wandsworth, 74, 255 - - Weald, 53, 56, 58, 70, 85, 106, 169 - - West, the, 9, 254 - - White, Gilbert, 76, 145 - - Whitman, Walt, 113, 135 - - Wiltshire, 11, 191, 210, 235, 245 - - Winchester, 6, 7, 38 - - Woolmer, 8, 47 - - Wordsworth, 6, 77, 132, 137, 241 - - -THE END - - - - - RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, - BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND - BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. - - - - -Transcriber's Note - - -The following apparent errors have been corrected: - -p. 19 "HAMPSHIRE" changed to "HAMPSHIRE." - -p. 34 "gnomes of undergound" changed to "gnomes of underground" - -p. 62 "hoisery" changed to "hosiery" - -p. 154 "CORNWALL" changed to "CORNWALL." - -p. 222 (note) "F W. Bain" changed to "F. W. Bain" - -p. 256 (note) "(Fifield)" changed to "(Fifield)." - -p. 277 "210 262" changed to "210, 262" - -p. 277 "Wilts. and Berks" changed to "Wilts. and Berks." - -Inconsistent or archaic spelling and punctuation have otherwise been -left as printed. - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The South Country, by Edward Thomas - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUTH COUNTRY *** - -***** This file should be named 60760-0.txt or 60760-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/7/6/60760/ - -Produced by Henry Flower and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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