{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_13367/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_13367","id":"gutenberg_13367","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13367","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Adventure","Category: British Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Novels","England -- Description and travel","Europe -- Description and travel"],"text":"HILLS AND THE SEA\n\nBY H. BELLOC\n\nMETHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nDEDICATION\n\nTO THE OTHER MAN\nMR PHILIP KERSHAW\n\n\n_There were once two men. They were men of might and breeding. They were\nyoung, they were intolerant, they were hale. Were there for humans as\nthere is for dogs a tribunal to determine excellence; were there judges\nof anthropoidal points and juries to, give prizes for manly race,\nvigour, and the rest, undoubtedly these two men would have gained the\ngold and the pewter medals. They were men absolute._\n\n_They loved each other like brothers, yet they quarrelled like\nSocialists. They loved each other because they had in common the bond of\nmankind; they quarrelled because they differed upon nearly all other\nthings. The one was of the Faith, the other most certainly was not. The\none sang loudly, the other sweetly. The one was stronger, the other more\ncunning. The one rode horses with a long stirrup, the other with a\nshort. The one was indifferent to danger, the other forced himself at\nit. The one could write verse, the other was quite incapable thereof.\nThe one could read and quote Theocritus, the other read and quoted\nhimself alone. The high gods had given to one judgment, to the other\nvalour; but to both that measure of misfortune which is their Gift to\nthose whom they cherish._\n\n_From this last proceeded in them both a great knowledge of truth and a\ndefence of it, to the tedium of their friends: a demotion to the beauty\nof women and of this world; an outspoken hatred of certain things and\nmen, and, alas! a permanent sadness also. All these things the gods\ngave them in the day when the decision was taken upon Olympus that these\ntwo men should not profit by any great good except Friendship, and that\nall their lives through Necessity should jerk her bit between their\nteeth, and even at moments goad their honour._\n\n_The high gods, which are names only to the multitude, visited these\nmen. Dionysus came to them with all his company once, at dawn, upon the\nSurrey hills, and drove them in his car from a suburb whose name I\nforget right out into the Weald. Pallas Athene taught them by word of\nmouth, and the Cytherean was their rosy, warm, unfailing friend. Apollo\nloved them. He bestowed upon them, under his own hand the power not only\nof remembering all songs, but even of composing light airs of their own;\nand Pan, who is hairy by nature and a lurking fellow afraid of others,\nwas reconciled to their easy comradeship, and would accompany them into\nthe mountains when they were remote from mankind. Upon these occasions\nhe revealed to them the life of trees and the spirits that haunt the\ncataracts, so that they heard voices calling where no one else had ever\nheard them, and that they saw stones turned into animals and men._\n\n_Many things came to them in common. Once in the Hills, a thousand miles\nfrom home, when they had not seen men for a very long time, Dalua\ntouched them with his wing, and they went mad for the space of thirty\nhours. It was by a stream in a profound gorge at evening and under a\nfretful moon. The next morning they lustrated themselves with water, and\nimmediately they were healed._\n\n_At another time they took a rotten old leaky boat they were poor and\ncould afford no other--they took, I say, a rotten old leaky boat whose\ntiller was loose and whose sails mouldy, and whose blocks were jammed\nand creaking, and whose rigging frayed, and they boldly set out together\ninto the great North Sea._\n\n_It blew a capful, it blew half a gale, it blew a gale: little they\ncared, these sons of Ares, these cousins of the broad daylight! There\nmere no men on earth save these two who would not have got her under a\ntrysail and a rag of a storm-jib with fifteen reefs and another: not so\nthe heroes. Not a stitch would they take in. They carried all her\ncanvas, and cried out to the north-east wind: \"We know her better than\nyou! She'll carry away before she capsizes, and she'll burst long before\nshe'll carry away.\" So they ran before it largely till the bows were\npressed right under, and it was no human poser that saved the gybe. They\nwent tearing and foaming before it, singing a Saga as befitted the place\nand time. For it was their habit to sing in every place its proper\nsong--in Italy a Ritornella, in Spain a Segeduilla, in Provence a\nPastourou, in Sussex a Glee, but an the great North Sea a Saga. And they\nrolled at last into Orford Haven on the very tiptop of the highest tide\nthat ever has run since the Noachic Deluge; and even so, as they crossed\nthe bar they heard the grating of the keel. That night they sacrificed\noysters to Poseidon._\n\n_And when they slept the Sea Lady, the silver-footed one, came up\nthrough the waves and kissed them in their sleep; for she had seen no\nsuch men since Achilles. Then she went back through the waves with all\nher Nereids around her to where her throne is, beside her old father in\nthe depths of the sea._\n\n_In their errantry they did great good. It was they that rescued\nAndromeda, though she lied, as a woman will, and gave the praise to her\nlover. It was they, also, who slew the Tarasque on his second\nappearance, when he came in a thunderstorm across the broad bridge of\nBeaucaire, all scaled in crimson and gold, forty foot long and twenty\nfoot high, galloping like an angry dog and belching forth flames and\nsmoke. They also hunted down the Bactrian Bear, who had claws like the\nhorns of a cow, and of whom it is written in the Sacred Books of the\nEast that:_\n\n     _A Bear out of Bactria came,\n       And he wandered all over the world,\n     And his eyes were aglint and aflame,\n       And the tip of his caudal was curled._\n\n_Oh! they hunted him down and they cut him up, and they cured one of his\nhams and ate it, thereby acquiring something of his mighty spirit....\nAnd they it was who caught the great Devil of Dax and tied him up and\nswinged him with an ash-plant till he swore that he would haunt the\nwoods no more._\n\n_And here it is that you ask me for their names. Their names! Their\nnames? Why, they gave themselves a hundred names: now this, now that,\nbut always names of power. Thus upon that great march of theirs from\nGascony into Navarre, one, on the crest of the mountains, cut himself a\nhuge staff and cried loudly:_\n\n_\"My name is URSUS, and this is my staff DREADNOUGHT: let the people in\nthe Valley be afraid!\"_\n\n_Whereat the other cut himself a yet huger staff, and cried out in a yet\nlouder voice:_\n\n_\"My name is TAURUS, and this is my staff CRACK-SKULL: let them tremble\nwho live in the Dales!\"_\n\n_And when they had said this they strode shouting down the\nmountain-side and conquered the town of Elizondo, where they are\nworshipped as gods to this day. Their names? They gave themselves a\nhundred names!_\n\n_\"Well, well,\" you say to me then, \"no matter about the names: what are\nnames? The men themselves concern me!... Tell me,\" you go on, \"tell me\nwhere I am to find them in the flesh, and converse with them. I am in\nhaste to see them with my own eyes.\"_\n\n_It is useless to ask. They are dead. They will never again be heard\nupon the heaths at morning singing their happy songs: they will never\nmore drink with their peers in the deep ingle-nooks of home. They are\nperished. They have disappeared. Alas! The valiant fellows!_\n\n_But lest some list of their proud deeds and notable excursions should\nbe lost on earth, and turn perhaps into legend, or what is worse, fade\naway unrecorded, this book has been got together; in which will be found\nnow a sight they saw together, and now a sight one saw by himself, and\nnow a sight seen only by the other. As also certain thoughts and\nadmirations which the second or the first enjoyed, or both together: and\nindeed many other towns, seas, places, mountains, rivers, and\nmen--whatever could be crammed between the covers._\n\n_And there is an end of it._\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n     Many of these pages have appeared in the \"Speaker,\"\n     the \"Pilot,\" the \"Morning Post,\" the \"Daily News.\"\n     the \"Pall Mall Magazine,\" the \"Evening Standard,\"\n     the \"Morning Leader,\" and the \"Westminster Gazette.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nTHE NORTH SEA\n\n\nIt was on or about a Tuesday (I speak without boasting) that my\ncompanion and I crept in by darkness to the unpleasant harbour of\nLowestoft. And I say \"unpleasant\" because, however charming for the\nlarge Colonial yacht, it is the very devil for the little English craft\nthat tries to lie there. Great boats are moored in the Southern Basin,\neach with two head ropes to a buoy, so that the front of them makes a\nkind of entanglement such as is used to defend the front of a position\nin warfare. Through this entanglement you are told to creep as best you\ncan, and if you cannot (who could?) a man comes off in a boat and moors\nyou, not head and stern, but, as it were, criss-cross, or slant-ways, so\nthat you are really foul of the next berth alongside, and that in our\ncase was a little steamer.\n\nThen when you protest that there may be a collision at midnight, the man\nin the boat says merrily, \"Oh, the wind will keep you off,\" as though\nwinds never changed or dropped.\n\nI should like to see moorings done that way, at Cowes, say, or in\nSouthampton Water. I should like to see a lot of craft laid head and\ntail to the wind with a yard between each, and, when Lord Isaacs\nprotested, I should like to hear the harbour man say in a distant voice,\n\"_Sic volo, sic jubeo_\" (a classical quotation misquoted, as in the\nSouth-country way), \"the wind never changes here.\"\n\nSuch as it was, there it was, and trusting in the wind and God's\nprovidence we lay criss-cross in Lowestoft South Basin. The Great Bear\nshuffled round the pole and streaks of wispy clouds lay out in heaven.\n\nThe next morning there was a jolly great breeze from the East, and my\ncompanion said, \"Let us put out to sea.\" But before I go further, let me\nexplain to you and to the whole world what vast courage and meaning\nunderlay these simple words. In what were we to put to sea?\n\nThis little boat was but twenty-five feet over all. She had lived since\n1864 in inland waters, mousing about rivers, and lying comfortably in\nmudbanks. She had a sprit seventeen foot outboard, and I appeal to the\nTrinity Brothers to explain what that means; a sprit dangerous and\nhorrible where there are waves; a sprit that will catch every sea and\nwet the foot of your jib in the best of weathers; a sprit that weighs\ndown already overweighted bows and buries them with every plunge. _Quid\ndicam?_ A Sprit of Erebus. And why had the boat such a sprit? Because\nher mast was so far aft, her forefoot so deep and narrow, her helm so\ninsufficient, that but for this gigantic sprit she would never come\nround, and even as it was she hung in stays and had to have her weather\njib-sheet hauled in for about five minutes before she would come round.\nSo much for the sprit.\n\nThis is not all, nor nearly all. She had about six inches of free-board.\nShe did not rise at the bows: not she! Her mast was dependent upon a\nforestay (spliced) and was not stepped, but worked in a tabernacle. She\nwas a hundred and two years old. Her counter was all but awash. Her\nhelm--I will describe her helm. It waggled back and forth without effect\nunless you jerked it suddenly over. Then it \"bit,\" as it were, into the\nrudder post, and she just felt it--but only just--the ronyon!\n\nShe did not reef as you and I do by sane reefing points, but in a\ngimcrack fashion with a long lace, so that it took half an hour to take\nin sail. She had not a jib and foresail, but just one big headsail as\nhigh as the peak, and if one wanted to shorten sail after the enormous\nlabour of reefing the mainsail (which no man could do alone) one had to\nchange jibs forward and put up a storm sail--under which (by the way)\nshe was harder to put round than ever.\n\nDid she leak? No, I think not. It is a pious opinion. I think she was\ntight under the composition, but above that and between wind and water\nshe positively showed daylight. She was a basket. Glory be to God that\nsuch a boat should swim at all!\n\nBut she drew little water? The devil she did! There was a legend in the\nyard where she was built that she drew five feet four, but on a close\nexamination of her (on the third time she was wrecked), I calculated\nwith my companion that she drew little if anything under six feet. All\nthis I say knowing well that I shall soon put her up for sale; but that\nis neither here nor there. I shall not divulge her name.\n\nSo we put to sea, intending to run to Harwich. There was a strong flood\ndown the coast, and the wind was to the north of north-east. But the\nwind was with the tide--to that you owe the lives of the two men and the\nlection of this delightful story; for had the tide been against the wind\nand the water steep and mutinous, you would never have seen either of us\nagain: indeed we should have trembled out of sight for ever.\n\nThe wind was with the tide, and in a following lump of a sea, without\ncombers and with a rising glass, we valorously set out, and, missing the\nSouth Pier by four inches, we occupied the deep.\n\nFor one short half-hour things went more or less well. I noted a white\nhorse or two to windward, but my companion said it was only the sea\nbreaking over the outer sands. She plunged a lot, but I flattered myself\nshe was carrying Caesar, and thought it no great harm. We had started\nwithout food, meaning to cook a breakfast when we were well outside: but\nmen's plans are on the knees of the gods. The god called \u00c6olus, that\nblows from the north-east of the world (you may see him on old maps--it\nis a pity they don't put him on the modern), said to his friends: \"I see\na little boat. It is long since I sank one\"; and altogether they gave\nchase, like Imperialists, to destroy what was infinitely weak.\n\nI looked to windward and saw the sea tumbling, and a great number of\nwhite waves. My heart was still so high that I gave them the names of\nthe waves in the eighteenth _Iliad_: The long-haired wave, the graceful\nwave, the wave that breaks on an island a long way off, the sandy wave,\nthe wave before us, the wave that brings good tidings. But they were in\nno mood for poetry. They began to be great, angry, roaring waves, like\nthe chiefs of charging clans, and though I tried to keep up my courage\nwith an excellent song by Mr. Newbolt, \"Slung between the round shot in\nNombre Dios Bay,\" I soon found it useless, and pinned my soul to the\ntiller. Every sea following caught my helm and battered it. I hung on\nlike a stout gentleman, and prayed to the seven gods of the land. My\ncompanion said things were no worse than when we started. God forgive\nhim the courageous lie. The wind and the sea rose.\n\nIt was about opposite Southwold that the danger became intolerable, and\nthat I thought it could only end one way. Which way? The way out, my\nhonest Jingoes, which you are more afraid of than of anything else in\nthe world. We ran before it; we were already over-canvased, and she\nburied her nose every time, so that I feared I should next be cold in\nthe water, seeing England from the top of a wave. Every time she rose\nthe jib let out a hundredweight of sea-water; the sprit buckled and\ncracked, and I looked at the splice in the forestay to see if it yet\nheld. I looked a thousand times, and a thousand times the honest splice\nthat I had poked together in a pleasant shelter under Bungay Woods (in\nthe old times of peace, before ever the sons of the Achaians came to the\nland) stood the strain. The sea roared over the fore-peak, and gurgled\nout of the scuppers, and still we held on. Till (\u00c6olus blowing much more\nloudly, and, what you may think a lie, singing through the rigging,\nthough we were before the wind) opposite Aldeburgh I thought she could\nnot bear it any more.\n\nI turned to my companion and said: \"Let us drive her for the shore and\nhave done with it; she cannot live in this. We will jump when she\ntouches.\" But he, having a chest of oak, and being bound three times\nwith brass, said: \"Drive her through it. _It is not often we have such a\nfair-wind_.\" With these words he went below; I hung on for Orfordness.\nThe people on the strand at Aldeburgh saw us. An old man desired to put\nout in a boat to our aid. He danced with fear. The scene still stands in\ntheir hollow minds.\n\nAs Orfordness came near, the seas that had hitherto followed like giants\nin battle now took to a mad scrimmage. They leapt pyramidically, they\nheaved up horribly under her; she hardly obeyed her helm, and even in\nthat gale her canvas flapped in the troughs. Then in despair I prayed to\nthe boat itself (since nothing else could hear me), \"Oh, Boat,\" for so I\nwas taught the vocative, \"bear me safe round this corner, and I will\nscatter wine over your decks.\" She heard me and rounded the point, and\nso terrified was I that (believe me if you will) I had not even the soul\nto remember how ridiculous and laughable it was that sailors should call\nthis Cape of Storms \"the Onion.\"\n\nOnce round it, for some reason I will not explain, but that I believe\nconnected with my prayer, the sea grew tolerable. It still came on to\nthe land (we could sail with the wind starboard), and the wind blew\nharder yet; but we ran before it more easily, because the water was less\nsteep. We were racing down the long drear shingle bank of Oxford, past\nwhat they call \"the life-boat house\" on the chart (there is no life-boat\nthere, nor ever was), past the look-out of the coastguard, till we saw\nwhite water breaking on the bar of the Alde.\n\nThen I said to my companion, \"There are, I know, two mouths to this\nharbour, a northern and a southern; which shall we take?\" But he said,\n\"Take the nearest.\"\n\nI then, reciting my firm beliefs and remembering my religion, ran for\nthe white water. Before I knew well that she was round, the sea was\nyellow like a pond, the waves no longer heaved, but raced and broke as\nthey do upon a beach. One greener, kindly and roaring, a messenger of\nthe gale grown friendly after its play with us, took us up on its crest\nand ran us into the deep and calm beyond the bar, but as we crossed, the\ngravel ground beneath our keel. So the boat made harbour. Then, without\nhesitation, she cast herself upon the mud, and I, sitting at the tiller,\nmy companion ashore, and pushing at her inordinate sprit, but both\nrevelling in safety, we gave thanks and praise. That night we scattered\nher decks with wine as I had promised, and lay easy in deep water\nwithin.\n\nBut which of you who talk so loudly about the island race and the\ncommand of the sea have had such a day? I say to you all it does not\nmake one boastful, but fills one with humility and right vision. Go out\nsome day and run before it in a gale. You will talk less and think more;\nI dislike the memory of your faces. I have written for your correction.\nRead less, good people, and sail more; and, above all, leave us in\npeace.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SINGER\n\n\nThe other day as I was taking my pleasure along a river called \"The\nRiver of Gold,\" from which one can faintly see the enormous mountains\nwhich shut off Spain from Europe, as I walked, I say, along the Mail, or\nordered and planted quay of the town, I heard, a long way off, a man\nsinging. His singing was of that very deep and vibrating kind which\nGascons take for natural singing, and which makes one think of hollow\nmetal and of well-tuned bells, for it sounds through the air in waves;\nthe further it is the more it booms, and it occupies the whole place in\nwhich it rises. There is no other singing like it in the world. He was\ntoo far off for any words to be heard, and I confess I was too occupied\nin listening to the sound of the music to turn round at first and notice\nwho it was that sang; but as he gradually approached between the houses\ntowards the river upon that happy summer morning, I left the sight of\nthe houses, and myself sauntered nearer to him to learn more about him\nand his song.\n\nI saw a man of fifty or thereabouts, not a mountaineer, but a man of the\nplains--tall and square, large and full of travel. His face was brown\nlike chestnut wood, his eyes were grey but ardent; his brows were\nfierce, strong, and of the colour of shining metal, half-way between\niron and silver. He bore himself as though he were still well able to\nwrestle with younger men in the fairs, and his step, though extremely\nslow (for he was intent upon his song), was determined as it was\ndeliberate. I came yet nearer and saw that he carried a few pots and\npans and also a kind of kit in a bag: in his right hand was a long and\npolished staff of ashwood, shod with iron; and still as he went he\nsang. The song now rose nearer me and more loud, and at last I could\ndistinguish the words, which, were, in English, these:\n\n\"Men that cook in copper know well how difficult is the cleaning of\ncopper. All cooking is a double labour unless the copper is properly\ntinned.\"\n\nThis couplet rhymed well in the tongue he used, which was not Languedoc\nnor even B\u00e9arnais, but ordinary French of the north, well chosen,\nrhythmical, and sure. When he had sung this couplet once, glancing, as\nhe sang it, nobly upwards to the left and the right at the people in\ntheir houses, he paused a little, set down his kit and his pots and his\npans, and leant upon his stick to rest. A man in white clothes with a\nwhite square cap on his head ran out of a neighbouring door and gave him\na saucepan, which he accepted with a solemn salute, and then, as though\ninvigorated by such good fortune, he lifted his burdens again and made a\ndignified progress of some few steps forward, nearer to the place in\nwhich I stood. He halted again and resumed his song.\n\nIt had a quality in it which savoured at once of the pathetic and of the\nsteadfast: its few notes recalled to me those classical themes which\nconceal something of dreadful fate and of necessity, but are yet\ninstinct with dignity and with the majestic purpose of the human will,\nand Athens would have envied such a song. The words were these:\n\n\"All kinds of game, Izard, Quails, and Wild Pigeon, are best roasted\nupon a spit; but what spit is so clean and fresh as a spit that has been\nnewly tinned?\"\n\nWhen he had sung this verse by way of challenge to the world, he halted\nonce more and mopped his face with a great handkerchief, waiting,\nperhaps, for a spit to be brought; but none came. The spits of the town\nwere new, and though the people loved his singing, yet they were of too\nactive and sensible a kind to waste pence for nothing. When he saw that\nspits were not forthcoming he lifted up his kit again and changed his\nsubject just by so pinch as might attract another sort of need. He\nsang--but now more violently, and as though with a worthy protest:\n\n     Le li\u00e8vre et le lapin,\n     Quand c'est bien cuit, \u00e7a fait du bien.\n\nThat is: \"Hare and rabbit, properly cooked, do one great good,\" and then\nadded after the necessary pause and with a gesture half of offering and\nhalf of disdain: \"But who can call them well cooked if the tinning of\nthe pot has been neglected?\" And into this last phrase he added notes\nwhich hinted of sadness and of disillusion. It was very fine.\n\nAs he was now quite near me and ready, through the slackness of trade,\nto enter into a conversation, I came quite close and said to him, \"I\nwish you good day,\" to which he answered, \"And I to you and the\ncompany,\" though there was no company.\n\nThen I said, \"You sing and so advertise your trade?\"\n\nHe answered, \"I do. It lifts the heart, it shortens the way, it attracts\nthe attention of the citizens, it guarantees good work.\"\n\n\"In what way,\" said I, \"does it guarantee good work?\"\n\n\"The man,\" he answered, \"who sings loudly, clearly, and well, is a man\nin good health. He is master of himself. He is strict and well-managed.\nWhen people hear him they say, 'Here is a prompt, ready, and serviceable\nman. He is not afraid. There is no rudeness in him. He is urbane, swift,\nand to the point. There is method in this fellow.' All these things may\nbe in the man who does not sing, but singing makes them apparent.\nTherefore in our trade we sing.\"\n\n\"But there must be some,\" I said, \"who do not sing and who yet are good\ntinners.\"\n\nAt this he gave a little shrug of his shoulders and spread down his\nhands slightly but imperatively. \"There are such,\" said he. \"They are\neven numerous. But while they get less trade they are also less happy\nmen. For I would have you note (saving your respect and that of the\ncompany) that this singing has a quality. It does good within as well\nas without. It pleases the singer in his very self as well as brings him\nwork and clients.\"\n\nThen I said, \"You are right, and I wish to God I had something to tin;\nlet me however tell you something in place of the trade I cannot offer\nyou. All things are trine, as you have heard\" (here he nodded), \"and\nyour singing does, therefore, not a double but a triple good. For it\ngives you pleasure within, it brings in trade and content from others,\nand it delights the world around you. It is an admirable thing.\"\n\nWhen he heard this he was very pleased. He took off his enormous hat,\nwhich was of straw and as big as a wheel, and said, \"Sir, to the next\nmeeting!\" and went off singing with a happier and more triumphant note,\n\"Carrots, onions, lentils, and beans, depend upon the tinner for their\nworth to mankind.\"\n\n\n\n\nON \"MAILS\"\n\n\nA \"Mail\" is a place set with trees in regular order so as to form\nalleys; sand and gravel are laid on the earth beneath the trees; masonry\nof great solidity, grey, and exquisitely worked, surrounds the whole\nexcept on one side, where strong stone pillars carry heavy chains across\nthe entrance. A \"Mail\" takes about two hundred years to mature, remains\nin perfection for about a hundred more, and then, for all I know, begins\nto go off. But neither the exact moment at which it fails nor the length\nof its decline is yet fixed, for all \"Mails\" date from the seventeenth\ncentury at earliest, and the time when most were constructed was that of\nCharles II's youth and Louis XIV's maturity--or am I wrong? Were these\ntwo men not much of an age?\n\nI am far from books; I am up in the Pyrenees. Let me consider dates and\nreconstruct my formula. I take it that Charles II was more than a boy\nwhen Worcester was fought and when he drank that glass of ale at\nHotighton, at the \"George and Dragon\" there, and crept along tinder the\nDowns to Bramber and so to Shoreham, where he took ship and was free. I\ntake it, therefore, that when he came back in 1660 he must have been in\nthe thirties, more or less, but how far in the thirties I dare not\naffirm.\n\nNow, in 1659, the year before Charles II came back, Mazarin signed the\ntreaty with Spain. At that time Louis XIV must have been quite a young\nman. Again, he died about thirty years after Charles II, and he was\nseventy something when he died.\n\nI am increasingly certain that Charles II was older than Louis XIV.... I\naffirm it. I feel no hesitation....\n\nLord! How dependent is mortal man upon books of reference! An editor or\na minister of the Crown with books of reference at his elbow will seem\nmore learned than Erasmus himself in the wilds. But let any man who\nreads this (and I am certain five out of six have books of reference by\nthem as they read), I say, let any man who reads this ask himself\nwhether he would rather be where he is, in London, on this August day\n(for it is August), or where I am, which is up in Los Altos, the very\nhigh Pyrenees, far from every sort of derivative and secondary thing and\nclose to all things primary?\n\nI will describe this place. It is a forest of beech and pine; it grows\nupon a mountain-side so steep that only here and there is there a ledge\non which to camp. Great precipices of limestone diversify the wood and\nshow through the trees, tall and white beyond them. One has to pick\none's way very carefully along the steep from one night's camp to\nanother, and often one spends whole hours seeking up and down to turn a\nface of rock one cannot cross.\n\nIt seems dead silent. There are few birds, and even at dawn one only\nhears a twittering here and there. Swirls of cloud form and pass beneath\none in the gorge and hurry up the opposing face of the ravine; they add\nto this impression of silence: and the awful height of the pines and the\nutter remoteness from men in some way enhance it. Yet, though it seems\ndead silent, it is not really so, and if you were suddenly put here from\nthe midst of London, you would be confused by the noise which we who\nknow the place continually forget--and that is the waterfalls.\n\nAll the way down the gorge for miles, sawing its cut in sheer surfaces\nthrough the rock, crashes a violent stream, and all the valley is full\nof its thunder. But it is so continuous, so sedulous, that it becomes\npart of oneself. One does not lose it at night as one falls asleep, nor\ndoes one recover it in the morning, when dreams are disturbed by a\nlittle stir of life in the undergrowth and one opens one's eyes to see\nabove one the bronze of the dawn.\n\nIt possesses one, does this noise of the torrent, and when, after many\ndays in such a wood, I pick my way back by marks I know to a ford, and\nthence to an old shelter long abandoned, and thence to the faint\nbeginnings of a path, and thence to the high road and so to men; when I\ncome down into the plains I shall miss the torrent and feel ill at ease,\nhardly knowing what I miss, and I shall recall Los Altos, the high\nplaces, and remember nothing but their loneliness and silence.\n\nI shall saunter in one of the towns of the plain, St. Girons or another,\nalong the riverside and under the lime trees ... which reminds me of\n\"Mails\"! Little pen, little fountain pen, little vagulous, blandulous\npen, companion and friend, whither have you led me, and why cannot you\nlearn the plodding of your trade?\n\n\n\n\nTHE PYRENEAN HIVE\n\n\nShut in between two of the greatest hills in Europe--hills almost as\nhigh as Etna, and covering with their huge bases half a county of\nland--there lies, in the Spanish Pyrenees, a little town. It has been\nmentioned in books very rarely, and visited perhaps more rarely. Of\nthree men whom in my life I have heard speak its name, two only had\nwritten of it, and but one had seen it. Yet to see it is to learn a\nhundred things.\n\nThere is no road to it. No wheeled thing has ever been seen in its\nstreets. The crest of the Pyrenees (which are here both precipitous and\nextremely high) is not a ridge nor an edge, but a great wall of slabs,\nas it were, leaning up against the sky. Through a crack in this wall,\nbetween two of these huge slabs, the mountaineers for many thousand\nyears have wormed their way across the hills, but the height and the\nextreme steepness of the last four thousand feet have kept that passage\nisolated and ill-known. Upon the French side the path has recently been\nrenewed; within a few yards upon the southern slope it dwindles and\nalmost disappears.\n\nAs one so passes from the one country to the other, it is for all the\nworld like the shutting of a door between oneself and the world. For\nsome reason or other the impression of a civilisation active to the\npoint of distress follows one all up the pass from the French railway to\nthe summit of the range; but when that summit is passed the new and\nbrilliant sun upon the enormous glaciers before one, the absence of\nhuman signs and of water, impress one suddenly with silence.\n\nFrom that point one scrambles down and down for hours into a deserted\nvalley--all noon and afternoon and evening: on the first flats a rude\npath, at last appears. A river begins to flow; great waterfalls pour\nacross one's way, and for miles upon miles one limps along and down the\nvalley across sharp boulders such as mules go best on, and often along\nthe bed of a stream, until at nightfall--if one has started early and\nhas put energy into one's going, and if it is a long summer day--then at\nnightfall one first sees cultivated fields--patches of oats not half an\nacre large hanging upon the sides of the ravine wherever a little shelf\nof soil has formed.\n\nSo went the Two Men upon an August evening, till they came in the\nhalf-light upon something which might have been rocks or might have been\nruins--grey lumps against the moon: they were the houses of a little\ntown. A sort of gulf, winding like a river gorge, and narrower than a\ncolumn of men, was the street that brought us in. But just as we feared\nthat we should have to grope our way to find companionship we saw that\ngreat surprise of modern mountain villages (but not of our own\nEngland)--a little row of electric lamps hanging from walls of an\nincalculable age.\n\nHere, in this heap of mountain stones, and led by this last of\ninventions, we heard at last the sound of music, and knew that we were\nnear an inn. The Moors called (and call) an inn Fundouk; the Spaniards\ncall it Fonda. To this Fonda, therefore, we went, and as we went the\nsound of music grew louder, till we came to a door of oak studded with\ngigantic nails and swung upon hinges which, by their careful workmanship\nand the nature of their grotesques, were certainly of the Renaissance.\nIndeed, the whole of this strange hive of mountain men was a\nmixture--ignorance, sharp modernity, utter reclusion: barbaric,\nChristian; ruinous and enduring things. The more recent houses had for\nthe most part their dates marked above their doors. There were some of\nthe sixteenth century, and many of the seventeenth, but the rest were\nfar older, and bore no marks at all. There was but one house of our own\ntime, and as for the church, it was fortified with narrow windows made\nfor arrows.\n\nNot only did the Moors call an inn a Fundouk, but also they lived (and\nlive) not on the ground floor, but on the first floor of their houses:\nso after them the Spaniards. We came in from the street through those\ngreat oaken doors, not into a room, but into a sort of barn, with a\nfloor of beaten earth; from this a stair (every banister of which was\nseparately carved in a dark-wood) led up to the storey upon which the\ninn was held. There was no hour for the meal. Some were beginning to\neat, some had ended. When we asked for food it was prepared, but an hour\nwas taken to prepare it, and it was very vile; the wine also was a wine\nthat tasted as much of leather as of grapes, and reminded a man more of\nan old saddle than of vineyards.\n\nThe people who put this before us had in their faces courage, complete\ninnocence, carelessness, and sleep. They spoke to us in their language\n(I understood it very ill) of far countries, which they did not clearly\nknow--they hardly knew the French beyond the hills. As no road led into\ntheir ageless village, so did no road lead out of it. To reach the great\ncities in the plain, and the railway eighty miles away, why, there was\nthe telephone. They slept at such late hours as they chose; by midnight\nmany were still clattering through the lane below. No order and no law\ncompelled them in anything.\n\nThe Two Men were asleep after this first astonishing glimpse of\nforgotten men and of a strange country. In the stifling air outside\nthere was a clattering of the hoofs of mules and an argument of drivers.\nA long way off a man was playing a little stringed instrument, and there\nwas also in the air a noise of insects buzzing in the night heat; when\nall of a sudden the whole place awoke to the noise of a piercing cry\nwhich but for its exquisite tone might have been the cry of pain, so\nshrill was it and so coercing to the ear. It was maintained, and before\nit fell was followed by a succession of those quarter-tones which only\nthe Arabs have, and which I had thought finally banished from Europe. To\nthis inhuman and appalling song were set loud open vowels rather than\nwords.\n\nOf the Two Men, one leapt at once from his bed crying out, \"This is the\nmusic! This is what I have desired to hear!\" For this is what he had\nonce been told could be heard in the desert, when first he looked out\nover the sand from Atlas: but though he had travelled far, he had never\nheard it, and now he heard it here, in the very root of these European\nhills. It was on this account that he cried out, \"This is the music!\"\nAnd when he had said this he put on a great rough cloak and ran to the\nroom from which the song or cry proceeded, and after him ran his\ncompanion.\n\nThe Two Men stood at the door behind a great mass of muleteers, who all\ncraned forward to where, upon a dais at the end of the room, sat a\nJewess who still continued for some five minutes this intense and\nterrible effort of the voice. Beside her a man who was not of her race\nurged her on as one urges an animal to further effort, crying out, \"Hap!\nHap!\" and beating his palms together rhythmically and driving and\ngoading her to the full limit of her power.\n\nThe sound ceased suddenly as though it had been stabbed and killed, and\nthe woman whose eyes had been strained and lifted throughout as in a\ntrance, and whose body had been rigid and quivering, sank down upon\nherself and let her eyelids fall, and her head bent forward.\n\nThere was complete silence from that moment till the dawn, and the\nsecond of the Two Men said to the first that they had had an experience\nnot so much of music as of fire.\n\n\n\n\nDELFT\n\n\nDelft is the most charming town in the world. It is one of the neat\ncities: trim, small, packed, self-contained. A good woman in early\nmiddle age, careful of her dress, combined, orderly, not without a sober\nbeauty--such a woman on her way to church of a Sunday morning is not\nmore pleasing than Delft. It is on the verge of monotony, yet still\nindividual; in one style, yet suggesting many centuries of activity.\nThere is a full harmony of many colours, yet the memory the place leaves\nis of a united, warm, and generous tone. Were you suddenly put down in\nDelft you would know very well that the vast and luxuriant meadows of\nHolland surrounded it, so much are its air, houses, and habits those of\nmen inspired by the fields.\n\nDelft is very quiet, as befits a town so many of whose streets are\nordered lanes of water, yet one is inspired all the while by the voices\nof children, and the place is strongly alive. Over its sky there follow\nin stately order the great white clouds of summer, and at evening the\nhaze is lit just barely from below with that transforming level light\nwhich is the joy and inspiration of the Netherlands. Against such an\nexpanse stands up for ever one of the gigantic but delicate belfries,\nround which these towns are gathered. For Holland, it seems, is not a\ncountry of villages, but of compact, clean towns, standing scattered\nover a great waste of grass like the sea.\n\nThis belfrey of Delft is a thing by itself in Europe, and all these\ntruths can be said of it by a man who sees it for the first time: first,\nthat its enormous height is drawn up, as it were, and enhanced by every\nchance stroke that the instinct of its slow builders lit upon; for\nthese men of the infinite flats love the contrast of such pinnacles, and\nthey have made in the labour of about a thousand years a landscape of\ntheir own by building, just as they have made by ceaseless labour a rich\npasture and home out of those solitary marshes of the delta.\n\nSecondly, that height is inhanced by something which you will not see,\nsave in the low countries between the hills of Ardennes and the yellow\nseas--I mean brick Gothic; for the Gothic which you and I know is built\nup of stone, and, even so, produces every effect of depth and distance;\nbut the Gothic of the Netherlands is often built curiously of bricks,\nand the bricks are so thin that it needs a whole host of them in an\ninfinity of fine lines to cover a hundred feet of wall. They fill the\nblank spaces with their repeated detail; they make the style (which even\nin stone is full of chances and particular corners) most intricate,\nand--if one may use so exaggerated a metaphor--\"populous.\" Above all,\nthey lead the eye up and up, making a comparison and measure of their\ntiny bands until the domination of a buttress or a tower is exaggerated\nto the enormous. Now the belfry of Delft, though all the upper part is\nof stone, yet it stands on a great pedestal (as it were) of brick--a\npedestal higher than the houses, and in this base are pierced two\ntowering, broad, and single ogives, empty and wonderful and full of that\nuntragic sadness which you may find also in the drooping and wide eyes\nof extreme old age.\n\nThirdly, the very structure of the thing is bells. Here the bells are\nmore than the soul of a Christian spire; they are its body too, its\nwhole self. An army of them fills up all the space between the delicate\nsupports and framework of the upper parts; for I know not how many feet,\nin order, diminishing in actual size and in the perspective also of that\ntriumphant elevation, stand ranks on ranks of bells from the solemn to\nthe wild, from the large to the small; a hundred or two hundred or a\nthousand. There is here the prodigality of Brabant and Hainaut and the\nBatavian blood, a generosity and a productivity in bells without stint,\nthe man who designed it saying: \"Since we are to have bells, let us\nhave bells: not measured out, calculated, expensive, and prudent bells,\nbut careless bells, self-answering multitudinous bells; bells without\nfear, bells excessive and bells innumerable; bells worthy of the\necstasies that are best thrown out and published in the clashing of\nbells. For bells are single, like real pleasures, and we will combine\nsuch a great number that they shall be like the happy and complex life\nof a man. In a word, let us be noble and scatter our bells and reap a\nharvest till our town is famous for its bells.\" So now all the spire is\nmore than clothed with them; they are more than stuff or ornament; they\nare an outer and yet sensitive armour, all of bells.\n\nNor is the wealth of these bells in their number only, but also in their\nuse; for they are not reserved in any way, but ring tunes and add\nharmonies at every half and quarter and at all the hours both by night\nand by day. Nor must you imagine that there is any obsession of noise\nthrough this; they are far too high and melodious, and, what is more,\ntoo thoroughly a part of all the spirit of Delft to be more than a\nperpetual and half-forgotten impression of continual music; they render\nits air sacred and fill it with something so akin to an uplifted silence\nas to leave one--when one has passed from their influence--asking what\nbalm that was which soothed all the harshness of sound about one.\n\nRound that tower and that voice the town hangs industrious and\nsubdued--a family. Its waters, its intimate canals, its boats for\ntravel, and its slight plashing of bows in the place of wheels, entered\nthe spirit of the traveller and gave him for one long day the Right of\nBurgess. In autumn, in the early afternoon--the very season for those\nwalls--it was easy for him to be filled with a restrained but united\nchorus, the under-voices of the city, droning and murmuring perpetually\nof Peace and of Labour and of the wild rose--Content....\n\nPeace, labour, and content--three very good words, and summing up,\nperhaps, the goal of all mankind. Of course, there is a problem\neverywhere, and it would be heresy to say that the people of Delft have\nsolved it. It is Matter of Breviary that the progress of our lives is\nbut asymptotic to true joy; we can approach it nearer and nearer, but we\ncan never reach it.\n\nNevertheless, I say that in this excellent city, though it is outside\nEden, you may, when the wind is in the right quarter, receive in distant\nand rare appeals the scent and air of Paradise; the soul is filled.\n\nTo this emotion there corresponds and shall here be quoted a very noble\nverse, which runs--or rather glides--as follows:--\n\n     Satiety, that momentary flower\n     Stretched to an hour--\n     These are her gifts which all mankind may use,\n     And all refuse.\n\nOr words to that effect. And to think that you can get to a place like\nthat for less than a pound!\n\n\n\n\nTHE WING OF DALUA\n\n\nTime was, and that not so long ago, when the Two Men had revealed to\nthem by their Genius a corner of Europe wherein they were promised more\nsurprises and delights than in any other.\n\nIt was secretly made known to them that in this place there were no\npictures, and no one had praised its people, and further that no Saint\nhad ever troubled it; and the rich and all their evils (so the Two Men\nwere assured) had never known the place at all.\n\nIt was under the influence of such a message that they at once began\nwalking at a great speed for the river which is called the River of\nGold, and for the valleys of Andorra; and since it seemed that other men\nhad dared to cross the Pyrenees and to see the Republic, and since it\nseemed also, according to books, records, and what not, that may have\nbeen truth or may have been lies, that common men so doing went always\nby one way, called the Way of Hospitalet, the Two Men determined to go\nby no such common path, but to march, all clothed with power, in a\nstraight line, and to take the main range of the mountains just where\nthey chose, and to come down upon the Andorrans unexpectedly and to\ndeserve their admiration and perhaps their fear.\n\nThey chose, therefore, upon the map the valley of that torrent called\nthe Aston, and before it was evening, but at an hour when the light of\nthe sun was already very ripe and low, they stood under a great rock\ncalled Guie, which was all of bare limestone with fa\u00e7ades as bare as the\nYosemite, and almost as clean. They looked up at this great rock of Guie\nand made it the terminal of their attempt. I was one and my companion\nwas the other: these were the Two Men who started out before a sunset\nin August to conquer the high Pyrenees. Before me was a very deep valley\nfull of woods, and reaching higher and higher perpetually so that it\nreminded me of Hyperion, but as for my companion, it reminded him of\nnothing, for he said loudly that he had never seen any such things\nbefore and had never believed that summits of so astonishing a height\nwere to be found on earth. Not even at night had he imagined such\nappalling upward and upward into the sky, and this he said though he had\nseen the Alps, of which it is true that when you are close to them they\nare very middling affairs; but not so the Pyrenees, which are not only\ngreat but also terrible, for they are haunted, as you shall hear. But\nbefore I begin to write of the spirits that inhabit the deserts of the\nAston, I must first explain, for the sake of those who have not seen\nthem, how the awful valleys of the Pyrenees are made.\n\nAll the high valleys of mountains go in steps, but those of the Pyrenees\nin a manner more regular even than those of the Sierra Nevada out in\nCalifornia, which the Pyrenees so greatly resemble. For the steps here\nare nearly always three in number between the plain and the main chain,\nand each is entered by a regular gate of rock. So it is in the valley of\nthe Ariege, and so it is in that of the Aston, and so it is in every\nother valley until you get to the far end where live the cleanly but\nincomprehensible Basques. Each of these steps is perfectly level,\nsomewhat oval in shape, a mile or two or sometimes five miles long, but\nnot often a mile broad. Through each will run the river of the valley,\nand upon either side of it there will be rich pastures, and a high plain\nof this sort is called a _jasse_, the same as in California is called a\n\"flat\": as \"Dutch Flat,\" \"Poverty Flat,\" and other famous flats.\n\nFirst, then, will come a great gorge through which one marches up from\nthe plain, and then at the head of it very often a waterfall of some\nkind, along the side of which one forces one's way up painfully through\na narrow chasm of rock and finds above one The great green level of the\nfirst jasse with the mountains standing solemnly around it. And then\nwhen one has marched all along this level one will come to another gorge\nand another chasm, and when one has climbed over the barrier of rock and\nrisen up another 2000 feet or so, one comes to a second jasse, smaller\nas a rule than the lower one; but so high are the mountains that all\nthis climbing into the heart of them does not seem to have reduced their\nheight at all. And then one marches along this second jasse and one\ncomes to yet another gorge and climbs up just as one did the two others,\nthrough a chasm where there will be a little waterfall or a large one,\nand one finds at the top the smallest and most lonely of the jasses.\nThis often has a lake in it. The mountains round it will usually be\ncliffs, forming sometimes a perfect ring, and so called cirques, or, by\nthe Spaniards, cooking-pots; and as one stands on the level floor of one\nsuch last highest jasse and looks up at the summit of the cliffs, one\nknows that one is looking at the ridge of the main chain. Then it is\none's business, if one desires to conquer the high Pyrenees, to find a\nsloping place up the cliffs to reach their summits and to go down into\nthe further Spanish valleys. This is the order of the Pyrenean dale, and\nthis was the order of that of the Aston.\n\nUp the gorge then we went, my companion and I; the day fell as we\nmarched, and there was a great moon out, filling the still air, when we\ncame to the first chasm, and climbing through it saw before us, spread\nwith a light mist over its pastures, the first jasse under the\nmoonlight. And up we went, and up again, to the end of the second jasse,\nhaving before us the vast wall of the main range, and in our hearts a\nfear that there was something unblessed in the sight of it. For though\nneither I told it to my companion nor he to me, we had both begun to\nfeel a fear which the shepherds of these mountains know very well. It\nwas perhaps midnight or a little more when we made our camp, after\nlooking in vain for a hut which may once have stood there, but now stood\nno longer. We lit a fire, but did not overcome the cold, which tormented\nus throughout the night, for the wind blew off the summits; and at last\nwe woke from our half-sleep and spent the miserable hours in watching\nthe Great Bear creeping round the pole, and in trying to feed the dying\nembers with damp fuel. And there it was that I discovered what I now\nmake known to the world, namely, that gorse and holly will burn of\nthemselves, even while they are yet rooted in the ground. So we sat\nsleepless and exhausted, and not without misgiving, for we had meant\nthat night before camping to be right under the foot of the last cliffs,\nand we were yet many miles away. We were glad to see the river at last\nin the meadows show plainly under the growing light, the rocks turning\nred upon the sky-line, and the extinction of the stars. As we so looked\nnorth and eastward the great rock of Guie stood up all its thousands of\nfeet enormous against the rising of the sun.\n\nWe were very weary, and invigorated by nothing but the light, but,\nhaving that at least to strengthen us, we made at once for the main\nrange, knowing very well that, once we were over it, it would be\ndownhill all the way, and seeing upon our maps that there were houses\nand living men high in the further Andorran valley, which was not\ndeserted like this vale of the Aston, but inhabited: full, that is, of\nCatalans, who would soon make us forget the inhuman loneliness of the\nheights, for by this time we were both convinced, though still neither\nof us said it to the other, that there was an evil brooding over all\nthis place.\n\nIt was noon when, after many hours of broken marching and stumbling,\nwhich betrayed our weakness, we stood at last beside the tarn in which\nthe last cliffs of the ridge are reflected, and here was a steep slope\nup which a man could scramble. We drank at the foot of it the last of\nour wine and ate the last of our bread, promising ourselves refreshment,\nlight, and peace immediately upon the further side, and thus lightened\nof our provisions, and with more heart in us, we assaulted the final\nhill; but just at the summit, where there should have greeted us a great\nview over Spain, there lowered upon us the angry folds of a black cloud,\nand the first of the accidents that were set in order by some enemy to\nruin us fell upon my companion and me.\n\nFor a storm broke, and that with such violence that we thought it would\nhave shattered the bare hills, for an infernal thunder crashed from one\nprecipice to another, and there flashed, now close to us, now vividly\nbut far off, in the thickness of the cloud, great useless and blinding\nglares of lightning, and hailstones of great size fell about us also,\nleaping from the bare rocks like marbles. And when the rain fell it was\njust as though it had been from a hose, forced at one by a pressure\ninstead of falling, and we two on that height were the sole objects of\nso much fury, until at last my companion cried out from the rock beneath\nwhich he was cowering, \"This is intolerable!\" And I answered him, from\nthe rock which barely covered me, \"It is not to be borne!\" So in the\nmidst of the storm we groped our way down into the valley beneath, and\ngot below the cloud; and when we were there we thought we had saved the\nday, for surely we were upon the southern side of the hills, and in a\nvery little while we should see the first roofs of the Andorrans.\n\nFor two doubtful hours we trudged down that higher valley, but there\nwere no men, nor any trace of men except this, that here and there the\nsemblance of a path appeared, especially where the valley fell rapidly\nfrom one stage to another over smooth rocks, which, in their least\ndangerous descent, showed by smooth scratches the passage of some lost\nanimal. For the rest, nothing human nor the memory of it was there to\ncomfort us, though in one place we found a group of cattle browsing\nalone without a master. There we sat down in our exhaustion and\nconfessed at last what every hour had inwardly convinced us of with\ngreater strength, that we were not our own masters, that there was\ntrouble and fate all round us, that we did not know what valley this\nmight be, and that the storm had been but the beginning of an unholy\nadventure. We had been snared into Fairyland.\n\nWe did not speak much together, for fear of lowering our hearts yet more\nby the confession one to the other of the things we knew to be true. We\ndid not tell each other what reserve of courage remained to us, or of\nstrength. We sat and looked at the peaks immeasurably above us, and at\nthe veils of rain between them, and at the black background of the sky.\nNor was there anything in the landscape which did not seem to us\nunearthly and forlorn.\n\nIt was, in a manner, more lonely than had been the very silence of the\nfurther slope: there was less to comfort and support the soul of a man;\nbut with every step downward we were penetrated more and more with the\npresence of things not mortal and of influences to which any desolation\nis preferable. At one moment voices called to us from the water, at\nanother we heard our names, but pronounced in a whisper so slight and so\nexact that the more certain we were of hearing them the less did we dare\nto admit the reality of what we had heard. In a third place we saw twice\nin succession, though we were still going forward, the same tree\nstanding by the same stone: for neither tree nor stone were natural to\nthe good world, but each had been put there by whatever was mocking us\nand drawing us on.\n\nAlready had we stumbled twice and thrice the distance that should have\nseparated us from the first Andorran village, but we had seen nothing,\nnot a wall, nor smoke from a fire, let alone the tower of a Christian\nchurch, or the houses of men. Nor did any length of the way now make us\nwonder more than we had already wondered, nor did we hope, however far\nwe might proceed, that we should be saved unless some other influence\ncould be found to save us from the unseen masters of this place. For by\nthis time we had need of mutual comfort, and openly said it to one\nanother--but in low tones--that the valley was Fa\u00ebry. The river went on\ncalling to us all the while. In places it was full of distant cheering,\nin others crowded with the laughter of a present multitude of tiny\nthings, and always mocking us with innumerable tenuous voices. It grew\nto be evening. It was nearly two days since we had seen a man.\n\nThere stood in the broader and lower part of the valley to which we had\nnow come, numerous rocks and boulders; for our deception some one of\nthem or another would seem to be a man. I heard my companion call\nsuddenly, as though to a stranger, and as he called I thought that he\nhad indeed perceived the face of a human being, and I felt a sort of\nsudden health in me when I heard the tone of his voice; and when I\nlooked up I also saw a man. We came towards him and he did not move.\nClose up beside his form we put out our hands: but what we touched was a\nrough and silent stone.\n\nAfter that we spoke no more. We went on through the gathering twilight,\ndetermined to march downwards to the end, but knowing pretty well what\nthe end would be. Once only did we again fall into the traps that were\nlaid about us, when we went and knocked at the hillside where we thought\nwe had seen a cottage and its oaken door, and after the mockery of that\ndisappointment we would not be deceived again, nor make ourselves again\nthe victims of the laughter that perpetually proceeded from the torrent.\nThe path led us onwards in a manner that was all one with the plot now\nwoven round our feet. We could but follow the path, though we knew with\nwhat an evil purpose it was made: that it was as phantom as the rest. At\none place it invited us to cross, upon two shaking pine trunks, the\nabyss of a cataract; in another it invited us to climb, in spite of our\nfinal weariness, a great barrier of rock that lay between an upper and a\nlower jasse. We continued upon it determinedly, with heads bent, barely\nhoping that perhaps at last we should emerge from this haunted ground,\nbut the illusions which had first mocked us we resolutely refused. So\nmuch so, that where at one place there stood plainly before us in the\ngathering darkness a farm-house with its trees and its close, its\norchard and its garden gate, I said to my companion, \"All this place is\ncursed, and I will not go near.\" And he applauded me, for he knew as\nwell as I that if we had gone a few steps towards that orchard and that\ngarden close, they would have turned into the bracken of the hillside,\nbare granite and unfruitful scree.\n\nThe main range, where it appeared in revelations behind us through the\nclouds, was far higher than mountains ever seem to waking men, and it\nstood quite sheer as might a precipice in a dream. The forests upon\neither side ran up until they were lost miles and miles above us in the\nstorm.\n\nNight fell and we still went onward, the one never daring to fall far\nbehind the other, and once or twice in an hour calling to each other to\nmake sure that another man was near; but this we did not continue,\nbecause as we went on each of us became aware under the midnight of the\npresence of a Third.\n\nThere was a place where the path, now broad and plain, approached a sort\nof little sandy bay going down towards the stream, and there I saw, by a\nsudden glimpse of the moon through the clouds, a large cave standing\nwide. We went down to it in silence, we gathered brushwood, we lit a\nfire, and we lay down in the cave. But before we lay down I said to my\ncompanion: \"I have seen the moon--she is in the _north_. Into what place\nhave we come?\" He said to me in answer, \"Nothing here is earthly,\" and\nafter he had said this we both fell into a profound sleep in which we\nforgot not only cold, great hunger, and fatigue, but our own names and\nour very souls, and passed, as it were, into a deep bath of\nforgetfulness.\n\nWhen we woke at the same moment, it was dawn.\n\nWe stood up in the clear and happy light and found that everything was\nchanged. We poured water upon our faces and our hands, strode out a\nhundred yards and saw again the features of a man. He had a kind face of\nsome age, and eyes such as are the eyes of mountaineers, which seem to\nhave constantly contemplated the distant horizons and wide plains\nbeneath their homes. We heard as he came up the sound of a bell in a\nChristian church below, and we exchanged with him the salutations of\nliving men. Then I said to him: \"What day is this?\" He said \"Sunday,\"\nand a sort of memory of our fear came on us, for we had lost a day.\n\nThen I said to him: \"What river are we upon, and what valley is this?\"\n\nHe answered: \"The river and the valley of the Aston.\" And what he said\nwas true, for as we rounded a corner we perceived right before us a\nbarrier, that rock of Guie from which we had set out. We had come down\nagain into France, and into the very dale by which we had begun our\nascent.\n\nBut what that valley was which had led us from the summits round\nbackward to our starting-place, forcing upon us the refusal of whatever\npowers protect this passage of the chain, I have never been able to\ntell. It is not upon the maps; by our description the peasants knew\nnothing of it. No book tells of it. No men except ourselves have seen\nit, and I am willing to believe that it is not of this world.\n\n\n\n\nON ELY\n\n\nThere are two ways by which a man may acquire any kind of learning or\nprofit, and this is especially true of travel.\n\nEverybody knows that one can increase what one has of knowledge or of\nany other possession by going outwards and outwards; but what is also\ntrue, and what people know less, is that one can increase it by going\ninwards and inwards. There is no goal to either of these directions, nor\nany term to your advantage as you travel in them.\n\nIf you will be extensive, take it easy; the infinite is always well\nahead of you, and its symbol is the sky.\n\nIf you will be intensive, hurry as much as you like you will never\nexhaust the complexity of things; and the truth of this is very evident\nin a garden, or even more in the nature of insects; of which beasts I\nhave heard it said that the most stolid man in the longest of lives\nwould acquire only a cursory knowledge of even one kind, as, for\ninstance, of the horned beetle, which sings so angrily at evening.\n\nYou may travel for the sake of great horizons, and travel all your life,\nand fill your memory with nothing but views from mountain-tops, and yet\nnot have seen a tenth of the world. Or you may spend your life upon the\nreligious history of East Rutland, and plan the most enormous book upon\nit, and yet find that you have continually to excise and select from the\ngrowing mass of your material.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA wise man having told me this some days before (and I having believed\nit), it seemed to me as though a new entertainment had been invented for\nme, or rather as though I had found a bottomless purse; since by this\ndoctrine there was manifestly no end to the number of my pleasures, and\nto each of this infinite number no possibility of exhaustion; but I\nthought I would put it to the test in this way: putting aside but three\ndays, I determined in that space to explore a little corner of this\ncountry.\n\nNow, although I saw not one-hundredth of the buildings or the people in\nthis very small space, and though I knew nothing of the birds or the\nbeasts or the method of tillage, or of anything of all that makes up a\nland, yet I saw enough to fill a book. And the pleasure of my thoughts\nwas so great that I determined to pick out a bit here and a bit there,\nand to put down the notes almost without arrangement, in order that\nthose who cannot do these things (whether from lack of leisure or for\nsome other reason) may get some part of my pleasure without loss to me\n(on the contrary, with profit); and in order that every one may be\nconvinced of what this little journey finally taught me, and which I\nrepeat--that there is an inexhaustible treasure everywhere, not only\noutwards, but inwards.\n\nI had known the Ouse--(how many years ago!)--had looked up at those\ntowers of Ely from my boat; but a town from a river and a town from the\nstreet are two different things. Moreover, in that time I speak of, the\nday years ago, it was blowing very hard from the south, and I was\nanxious to be away before it, and away I went down to Lynn at one\nstretch; for in those days the wind and the water seemed of more moment\nthan old stones. Now (after how many years!) it was my business to go up\nby land, and as I went, the weight of the Cathedral filled the sky\nbefore me.\n\nImpressions of this sort are explained by every man in his own way--for\nmy part I felt the Norman.\n\nI know not by what accident it was, but never had I come so nearly into\nthe presence of the men who founded England. The isolation of the hill,\nthe absence of clamour and false noise and everything modern, the\nsmallness of the village, the solidity and amplitude of the homes and\ntheir security, all recalled an origin.\n\nI went into the door of the Cathedral under the high tower. I noted the\nponderous simplicity of the great squat pillars, the rough\ncapitals--plain bulges of stone without so much as a pattern cut upon\nthem--the round arch and the low aisles; but in one corner remaining\nnear the door--a baptistery, I suppose--was a crowd of ornament which\n(like everything of that age) bore the mark of simplicity, for it was an\nendless heap of the arch and the column and the zigzag ornament--the\nbroken line. Its richness was due to nothing but the repetition of\nsimilar forms, and everywhere the low stature, the muscles, the broad\nshoulders of the thing, proved and reawoke the memory of the Norman\nsoldiers.\n\nThey have been written of enough to-day, but who has seen them from\nclose by or understood that brilliant interlude of power?\n\nThe little bullet-headed men, vivacious, and splendidly brave, we know\nthat they awoke all Europe, that the first provided settled financial\nsystems and settled governments of land, and that everywhere, from the\nGrampians to Mesopotamia, they were like steel when all other Christians\nwere like wood or like lead.\n\nWe know that they were a flash. They were not formed or definable at all\nbefore the year 1000; by the year 1200 they were gone. Some odd\ntransitory phenomenon of cross-breeding, a very lucky freak in the\nhistory of the European family, produced the only body of men who all\nwere lords and who in their collective action showed continually nothing\nbut genius.\n\nWe know that they were the spear-head, as it were, of the Gallic spirit:\nthe vanguard of that one of the Gallic expansions which we associate\nwith the opening of the Middle Ages and with the crusades. ... We know\nall this and write about it; nevertheless, we do not make enough of the\nNormans in England.\n\nHere and there a man who really knows his subject and who disdains the\nmarket of the school books, puts as it should be put their conquest of\nthis island and their bringing into our blood whatever is still\nstrongest in it. Many (descended from their leaders) have remarked\ntheir magical ride through South Italy, their ordering of Sicily, their\nhand in Palestine. As for the Normans in Normandy, of their exchequer\nthere, of what Rouen was--all that has never been properly written down\nat all. Their great adventure here in England has been most written of\nby far; but I say again no one has made enough of them; no one has\nbrought them back out of their graves. The character of what they did\nhas been lost in these silly little modern quarrels about races, which\nare but the unscholarly expression of a deeper hypocritical quarrel\nabout religion.\n\nYet it is in England that the Norman can be studied as he can be studied\nnowhere else. He did not write here (as in Sicily) upon a palimpsest. He\nwas not merged here (as in the Orient) with the rest of the French. He\nwas segregated here; he can be studied in isolation; for though so many\nthat crossed the sea on that September night with William, the big\nleader of them, held no Norman tenure, yet the spirit of the whole thing\nwas Norman: the regularity the suddenness, the achievement, and, when\nthe short fighting was over the creation of a new society. It was the\nNorman who began everything over again--the first fresh influence since\nRome.\n\nThe riot of building has not been seized. The island was conquered in\n1070. It was a place of heavy foolish men with random laws, pale eyes,\nand a slow manner; their houses were of wood: sometimes they built (but\nhow painfully, and how childishly!) with stone. There was no height,\nthere was no dignity, there was no sense of permanence. The Norman\nGovernment was established. At once rapidity, energy, the clear object\nof a united and organised power followed. And see what followed in\narchitecture alone, and in what a little space of the earth, and in what\na little stretch of time--less than the time that separates us to-day\nfrom the year of Disraeli's death or the occupation of Egypt.\n\nThe Conquest was achieved in 1070. In that same year they pulled down\nthe wooden shed at Bury St Edmunds, \"unworthy,\" they said, \"of a great\nsaint,\" and began the great shrine of stone. Next year it was the\ncastle at Oxford, in 1075 Monkswearmouth, Jarrow, and the church at\nChester; in 1077 Rochester and St Albans; in 1079 Winchester. Ely,\nWorcester, Thorney, Hurley, Lincoln, followed with the next years; by\n1089 they had tackled Gloucester, by 1092 Carlisle, by 1093 Lindisfarne,\nChristchurch, tall Durham.... And this is but a short and random list of\nsome of their greatest works in the space of one boyhood. Hundreds of\ncastles, houses, village churches are unrecorded.\n\nWere they not indeed a people?... And all that effort realised itself\nbefore Pope Urban had made the speech which launched the armies against\nthe Holy Land. The Norman had created and founded all this before the\nMass of Europe was urged against the flame of the Arab, to grow fruitful\nand to be transformed.\n\nOne may say of the Norman preceding the Gothic what Dante said of Virgil\npreceding the Faith: Would that they had been born in a time when they\ncould have known it! But the East was not yet open. The mind of Europe\nhad not yet received the great experience of the Crusades; the Normans\nhad no medium wherein to express their mighty soul, save the round arch\nand the straight line, the capital barbaric or naked, the sullen round\nshaft of the pillar--more like a drum than like a column. They could\nbuild, as it-were, with nothing but the last ruins of Rome. They were\ngiven no forms but the forms which the fatigue and lethargy of the Dark\nAges had repeated for six hundred years. They were capable, even in the\nnorth, of impressing even these forms with a superhuman majesty.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWas I not right in saying that everywhere in the world one can look in\nand in and never find an end to one's delight? I began to explore but a\ntiny corner of England, and here in one corner of that corner, and in\nbut one thought arising from this corner of a corner, I have found these\nthings.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut England is especially a garden of this sort, or a storehouse; and\nin nothing more than in this matter of the old architecture which\nperpetuates the barbaric grandeur of the eleventh century--the time\nbefore it was full day.\n\nWhen the Gothic came the whole of northern Europe was so enamoured of it\nthat common men, bishops, and kings pulled down and rebuilt everywhere.\nOld crumbling walls of the Romanesque fell at Amiens; you can still see\nthem cowering at Beauvais; only an accident of fire destroyed them in\nNotre Dame. In England the transition survived; nowhere save in England\nis the Northern Romanesque triumphant, not even at Caen. Elsewhere the\nGothic has conquered. Only here in England can you see the Romanesque\nfacing, like an equal, newer things, because here only was there a great\noutburst of building--a kind of false spring before the Gothic came,\nbecause here only in Europe had a great political change and a great\nflood of wealth come in before the expansion of the twelfth century\nbegan.\n\nThere is one little corner of England; here is another.\n\nThe Isle of Ely lying on the fens is like a starfish lying on a flat\nshore at low tide. Southward, westward, and northward from the head or\ncentre of the clump (which is where the Cathedral stands) it throws out\narms every way, and these arms have each short tentacles of their own.\nIn between the spurs runs the even fen like a calm sea, and on the crest\nof the spurs, radiating also from Ely, run the roads. Long ago there was\nbut one road of these that linked up the Isle with the rest of England.\nIt was the road from the south, and there the Romans had a station; the\nothers led only to the farms and villages dependent upon the city. Now\nthey are prolonged by artifice into the modern causeways which run over\nthe lower and new-made land.\n\nThe Isle has always stood like a fortress, and has always had a title\nand commandership, which once were very real things; the people told me\nthat the King of England's third title was Marquis of Ely, and I knew of\nmyself that just before the civil wars the commandership of the Isle\ngave the power of raising men.\n\nThe ends of many wars drifted to this place to die. Here was the last\nturn of the Saxon lords, and the last rally of the feudal rebellions of\nthe thirteenth century.\n\nNot that the fens were impassable or homeless, but they were difficult\nin patches; their paths were rare and laid upon no general system. Their\ninhabited fields were isolated, their waters tidal, with great banks of\ntreacherous mud, intricate and unbridged; such conditions are amply\nsufficient for a defensive war. The flight of a small body in such a\nland can always baffle an army until that small body is thrust into some\none refuge so well defended by marsh or river that the very defence cuts\noff retreat: and a small body so brought to bay in such a place has this\nfurther advantage, that from the bits of higher land, the \"Islands,\" one\nof the first requirements of defence is afforded--an unbroken view of\nevery avenue by which attack can come. There is no surprising such\nforts.\n\nSo much is in Ely to-day and a great deal more. For instance (a third\nand last idea out of the thousand that Ely arouses), Ely is dumb and yet\noracular. The town and the hill tell you nothing till you have studied\nthem in silence and for some considerable time. This boast is made by\nmany towns, that they hold a secret. But Ely, which is rather a village\nthan a town, has alone a true claim, the proof of which is this, that no\none comes to Ely for a few hours and carries anything away, whereas no\nman lives in Ely for a year without beginning to write a book. I do not\nsay that all are published, but I swear that all are begun.\n\n\n\n\nTHE INN OF THE MARGERIDE\n\n\nWhatever, keeping its proportion and form, is designed upon a scale much\ngreater or much less than that of our general experience, produces upon\nthe mind an effect of phantasy.\n\nA little perfect model of an engine or a ship does not only amuse or\nsurprise; it rather casts over the imagination something of that veil\nthrough which the world is transfigured, and which I have called \"the\nwing of Dalua\"; the medium of appreciations beyond experience; the\nmedium of vision, of original passion and of dreams. The principal spell\nof childhood returns as we bend over the astonishing details. We are\ngiants--or there is no secure standard left in our intelligence.\n\nSo it is with the common thing built much larger than the million\nexamples upon which we had based our petty security. It has been always\nin the nature of worship that heroes, or the gods made manifest, should\nbe men, but larger than men. Not tall men or men grander, but men\ntranscendent: men only in their form; in their dimension so much\nsuperior as to be lifted out of our world. An arch as old as Rome but\nnot yet ruined, found on the sands of Africa, arrests the traveller in\nthis fashion. In his modern cities he has seen greater things; but here\nin Africa, where men build so squat and punily, cowering under the heat\nupon the parched ground, so noble and so considerable a span, carved as\nmen can carve under sober and temperate skies, catches the mind and\nclothes it with a sense of the strange. And of these emotions the\nstrongest, perhaps, is that which most of those who travel to-day go\nseeking; the enchantment of mountains; the air by which we know them\nfor something utterly different from high hills. Accustomed to the\ncontour of downs and tors, or to the valleys and long slopes that\nintroduce a range, we come to some wider horizon and see, far off, a\nfurther line of hills. To hills all the mind is attuned: a moderate\necstasy. The clouds are above the hills, lying level in the empty sky;\nmen and their ploughs have visited, it seems, all the land about us;\ntill, suddenly, faint but hard, a cloud less varied, a greyer portion of\nthe infinite sky itself, is seen to be permanent above the world. Then\nall our grasp of the wide view breaks down. We change. The valleys and\nthe tiny towns, the unseen mites of men, the gleams or thread of roads,\nare prostrate, covering a little watching space before the shrine of\nthis dominant and towering presence.\n\nIt is as though humanity were permitted to break through the vulgar\nillusion of daily sense, and to learn in a physical experience how\nunreal are all the absolute standards by which we build. It is as though\nthe vast and the unexpected had a purpose, and that purpose were the\nshowing to mankind in rare glimpses what places are designed for the\nsoul--those ultimate places where things common become shadows and fail,\nand the divine part in us, which adores and desires, breathes its own\nair, and is at last alive.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis awful charm which attaches to the enormous envelops the Causse of\nMende; for its attributes are all of them pushed beyond the ordinary\nlimit.\n\nEach of the four Causses is a waste; but the Causse of Mende is utterly\nbereft of men. Each is a high plateau; but this, I believe, the highest\nin feet, and certainly in impression. You stand there as it were upon\nthe summit of a lonely pedestal, with nothing but a rocky edge around\nyou. Each is dried up; but the Catisse of Mende is without so much as a\ndew-pan or a well; it is wrinkled, horny, and cauterised under the\nalternate frost and flame of its fierce open sky, as are the deserts of\nthe moon. Each of the Causses is silent; but the silence of the Causse\nof Mende is scorched and frozen into its stones, and is as old as they:\nall around, the torrents which have sawn their black canons upon every\nside of the block frame this silence with their rumble. Each of the\nCausses casts up above its plain fantastic heaps of rock consonant to\nthe wild spirit of its isolation; but the Causse of Mende holds a kind\nof fortress--a medley so like the ghost of a dead town that, even in\nfull daylight, you expect the footsteps of men; and by night, as you go\ngently, in fear of waking the sleepers, you tread quite certainly among\nbuilt houses and spires. This place the peasants of the canons have\ncalled \"The Old City\"; and no one living will go near it who knows it\nwell.\n\nThe Causses have also this peculiar to them: that the ravines by which\neach is cut off are steep and sudden. But the cliffs of the Causse of\nMende are walls. That the chief of these walls may seem the more\nterrible, it is turned northwards, so that by day and night it is in\nshadow, and falls sheer.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was when I had abandoned this desolate wonder (but with its influence\nstrong upon me) that I left the town of Mende, down on the noise of its\nriver, and began to climb the opposing mountain of the Margeride.\n\nIt was already evening, though as yet there were no stars. The air was\nfresh, because the year was at that season when it is summer in the\nvineyard plains, but winter in the hills. A twilight so coloured and\ntranslucent as to suggest cold spanned like an Aurora the western mouth\nof the gully. Upon my eastward and upward way the full moon, not yet\nrisen, began to throw an uncertain glory over the sky.\n\nThis road was made by the French kings when their influence had crept so\nfar south as to control these mountains. They became despots, and their\ndespotism, which was everywhere magnificent, engraved itself upon these\nuntenanted bare rocks. They strengthened and fortified the road. Its\ngrandeur in so empty and impoverished a land was a boast or a threat of\ntheir power. The Republic succeeded the kings, the Armies succeeded the\nRepublic, and every experiment succeeded the victories and the breakdown\nof the Armies. The road grew stronger all the while, bridging this\ndesert, and giving pledge that the brain of Paris was able, and more\nable, to order the whole of the soil. So then, as I followed it, it\nseemed to me to bear in itself, and in its contrast with untamed\nsurroundings, the history and the character of this one nation out of\nthe many which live by the tradition of Europe. As I followed it and saw\nits exact gradient, its hard and even surface, its square border stones,\nand, every hundred yards, its carved mark of the distance done, these\nelaborations, standing quite new among the tumbled rocks of a vague\nupland, made one certain that Paris had been at work. Very far back (how\nfar was marked on the milestone) the road had left the swarming gate of\nToulouse. Very far on (how far was marked on the milestone) it was to\ncross the Sa\u00f4ne by its own bridge, and feed the life of Lyons. In\nbetween it met and surmounted (still civilised, easy, complete) this\nbarbaric watershed of the Margeride.\n\nAs I followed it, law--good law and evil--seemed to go with me up the\nmountain side.\n\nThere was more sound than on the arid wastes of the Causse. There were\ntrees, and birds in the trees, moving faintly. The great moon, which had\nnow risen, shone also upon scanty grass and (from time to time) upon the\ntrickle of water passing in runnels beneath the road.\n\nThe torrent in the depth below roared openly and strong, and, beyond it,\nthe black wall of the Causse, immense and battlemented above me under\nthe moon, made what poor life this mountain supported seem for a moment\ngracious by comparison. I remembered that sheep and goats and men could\nlive on the Margeride.\n\nBut the Margeride has rightly compelled its 'very few historians to\nmelancholy or fear.\n\nIt is a district, or a mountain range, or a single summit, which cuts\noff the east from the west, the Loire from the Gironde: a long, even\nbarrow of dark stone. Its people are one, suspicious of the plains. Its\nline against the sky is also one: no critical height in Europe is so\nstrict and unbroken. You may see it from a long way east--from the\nVelay, or even from the last of the For\u00e8z, and wonder whether it is a\nland or a sullen bar of black cloud.\n\nAll the world knows how snow, even in mere gullies and streaks, uplifts\na mountain. Well, I have seen the dull roof-tile of the Margeride from\nabove Puy in spring, when patches of snow still clung to it, and the\nsnow did no more than it would have done to a plain. It neither raised\nnor distinguished this brooding thing.\n\nBut it is indeed a barrier. Its rounded top is more formidable than if\nit were a ridge of rock; its saddle, broad and indeterminate, deceives\nthe traveller, with new slight slopes following one upon the other when\nthe sharp first of the ascent is done.\n\nAlready the last edge of the Causse beyond the valley had disappeared,\nand already had the great road taken me higher than the buttress which\nholds up that table-land, when, thinking I had gained the summit, I\nturned a corner in the way and found a vague roll of rising land before\nme. Upon this also, under the strong moonlight, I saw the ruin of a\nmill. Water, therefore, must have risen behind it. I expected and found\nyet another uncertain height, and beyond it a third, and, a mile beyond,\nanother. This summit was like those random marshy steps which rise\ncontinually and wearily between the sluggish rivers of the prairies.\n\nI passed the fields that gave his title to La Peyrouse. The cold, which\nwith every hundred feet had increased unnoticed, now first disturbed me.\nThe wind had risen (for I had come to that last stretch of the glacis,\nover which, from beyond the final height, an eastern wind can blow), and\nthis wind carried I know not what dust of ice, that did not make a\nperceptible fall, yet in an hour covered my clothes with tiny spangles,\nand stung upon the face like Highland snow in a gale. With that wind and\nthat fine, powdery frost went no apparent clouds. The sky was still\nclear above me. Such rare stars as can conquer the full moon shone\npalely; but round the moon herself bent an evanescent halo, like those\none sees over the Channel upon clear nights before a stormy morning. The\nspindrift of fine ice had, I think, defined this halo.\n\nHow long I climbed through the night I do not know. The summit was but a\nslight accident upon a tumbled plain. The ponds stood thick with ice,\nthe sound of running water had ceased, when the slight downward of the\nroad through a barren moor and past broad undrained films of frozen bog,\ntold me that I was on the further northern slope. The wind also was now\nroaring over the platform of the watershed, and great patches of\nwhirling snow lay to the right and left like sand upon the grassy dunes\nof a coast.\n\nThrough all this loneliness and cold I went down, with the great road\nfor a companion. Majesty and power were imposed by it upon these savage\nwilds. The hours uncalculated, and the long arrears of the night, had\nconfused my attention; the wind, the little arrows of the ice, the\nabsence of ploughlands and of men. Those standards of measure which (I\nhave said) the Causses so easily disturb would not return to me. I took\nmile after mile almost unheeding, numbed with cold, demanding sleep, but\nignorant of where might be found the next habitation.\n\nIt was in this mood that I noticed on a distant swirl of rocks before me\nwhat might have been roofs and walls; but in that haunted country the\nrocks play such tricks as I have told. The moonlight also, which seems\nso much too bright upon a lonely heath, fails one altogether when\ndistinction must be made between distant things, and when men are near.\nI did not know that these rocks (or houses) were the high group of\nChateauneuf till I came suddenly upon the long and low house which\nstands below it on the road, and is the highway inn for the mountain\ntown beyond.\n\nI halted for a moment, because no light came from the windows. Just\nopposite the house a great tomb marked the fall of some hero. The wind\nseemed less violent. The waters of the marshy plain had gathered. They\nwere no longer frozen, and a little brook ran by. As I waited there,\nhesitating, my fatigue came upon me, and I knocked at their great door.\nThey opened, and light poured upon the road, and the noise of peasants\ntalking loudly, and the roaring welcome of a fire. In this way I ended\nmy crossing of these sombre and unrecorded hills.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI that had lost count of hours and of heights in the glamour of the\nmidnight and of the huge abandoned places of my climb, stepped now into\na hall where the centuries also mingled and lost their order. The\ndancing fire filled one of those great pent-house chimneys that witness\nto the communal life of the Middle Ages. Around and above it, ironwork\nof a hundred years branched from the ingle-nooks to support the drying\nmeats of the winter provision. A wide board, rude, over-massive, and\nshining with long usage, reflected the stone ware and the wine. Chairs,\ncarved grotesquely, and as old almost as the walls about me, stood round\nthe comfort of the fire. I saw that the windows were deeper than a man's\narms could reach, and wedge-shaped--made for fighting. I saw that the\nbeams of the high roof, which the firelight hardly caught, were black\noak and squared enormously, like the ribs of a master-galley, and in the\nleaves and garden things that hung from them, in the mighty stones of\nthe wall, and the beaten earth of the floor, the strong simplicity of\nour past, and the promise of our endurance, came upon me.\n\nThe peasants sitting about the board and fire had risen, looking at the\ndoor; for strangers were rare, and it was very late as I came out of the\nempty cold into that human room. Their dress was ancestral; the master,\nas he spoke to me, mixed new words with old. He had phrases that the\nBlack Prince used when he went riding at arms across the Margeride. He\nspoke also of modern things, of the news in the valley from which I had\ncome, and the railway and Puy below us. They put before me bread and\nwine, which I most needed. I sat right up against the blaze. We all\ntalked high together of the things we knew. For when I had told them\nwhat news there was in the valley, they also answered my questions, into\nwhich I wove as best I could those still living ancient words I had\ncaught from their mouths. I asked them whose was that great tomb under\nthe moonlight, at which I had shuddered as I entered their doors. They\ntold me it was Duguesclin's tomb; for he got his death-wound here under\nthe walls of the town above them five hundred years ago, and in this\nhouse he had died. Then I asked what stream that was which trickled from\nthe half-frozen moss, and led down the valley of my next day's journey.\nThey told me it was called the River Red-cap, and they said that it was\nFa\u00ebry. I asked them also what was the name of the height over which I\nhad come; they answered, that the shepherds called it \"The King's\nHouse,\" and that hence, in clear weather, under an eastern wind, one\ncould see far off, beyond the Velay, that lonely height which is called\n\"The Chair of God.\"\n\nSo we talked together, drinking wine and telling each other of many\nthings, I of the world to which I was compelled to return, and they of\nthe pastures and the streams, and all the story of Loz\u00e8re. And, all the\nwhile, not the antiquity alone, but the endurance of Christendom poured\ninto me from every influence around.\n\nThey rose to go to the homes which were their own, without a lord. We\nexchanged the last salutations. The wooden soles of their shoes\nclattered upon the stone threshold of the door.\n\nThe master also rose and left me. I sat there for perhaps an hour,\nalone, with the falling fire before me and a vision in my heart.\n\nThough I was here on the very roof and centre of the western land, I\nheard the surge of the inner and the roll of the outer sea; the foam\nbroke against the Hebrides, and made a white margin to the cliffs of\nHoly Ireland. The tide poured up beyond our islands to the darkness in\nthe north. I saw the German towns, and Lombardy, and the light on Rome.\nAnd the great landscape I saw from the summit to which I was exalted was\nnot of to-day only, but also of yesterday, and perhaps of to-morrow.\n\nOur Europe cannot perish. Her religion--which is also mine--has in it\nthose victorious energies of defence which neither merchants nor\nphilosophers can understand, and which are yet the prime condition of\nestablishment. Europe, though she must always repel attacks from within\nand from without, is always secure; the soul of her is a certain spirit,\nat once reasonable and chivalric. And the gates of Hell shall not\nprevail against it.\n\nShe will not dissolve by expansion, nor be broken by internal strains.\nShe will not suffer that loss of unity which would be for all her\nmembers death, and for her history and meaning and self an utter\noblivion. She will certainly remain.\n\nHer component peoples have merged and have remerged. Her particular,\nfamous cities have fallen down. Her soldiers have believed the world to\nhave lost all, because a battle turned against them, Hittin or Leipsic.\nHer best has at times grown poor, and her worst rich. Her colonies have\nseemed dangerous for a moment from the insolence of their power, and\nthen again (for a moment) from the contamination of their decline. She\nhas suffered invasion of every sort; the East has wounded her in arms\nand has corrupted her with ideas; her vigorous blood has healed the\nwounds at once, and her permanent sanity has turned such corruptions\ninto innocuous follies. She will certainly remain.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo that old room, by its very age, reminded me, not of decay, but of\nunchangeable things.\n\nAll this came to me out of the fire; and upon such a scene passed the\npageantry of our astounding history. The armies marching perpetually,\nthe guns and ring of bronze; I heard the chant of our prayers; and,\nthough so great a host went by from the Baltic to the passes of the\nPyrenees, the myriads were contained in one figure common to them all.\n\nI was refreshed, as though by the resurrection of something loved and\nthought dead. I was no longer afraid of Time.\n\nThat night I slept ten hours. Next day, as I swung out into the air, I\nknew that whatever Power comforts men had thrown wide open the gates of\nmorning; and a gale sang strong and clean across that pale blue sky\nwhich mountains have for a neighbour.\n\nI could see the further valley broadening among woods, to the warmer\nplaces; and I went down beside the River Red-cap onwards, whither it\npleased me to go.\n\n\n\n\nA FAMILY OF THE FENS\n\n\nUpon the very limit of the Fens, not a hundred feet in height, but very\nsharp against the level, there is a lonely little hill. From the edge of\nthat hill the land seems very vague; the flat line of the horizon is the\nonly boundary, and that horizon mixes into watery clouds. No countryside\nis so formless until one has seen the plan of it set down in a map, but\non studying such a map one understands the scheme of the Fens.\n\nThe Wash is in the shape of a keystone with the narrow side towards the\nsea and the broad side towards the land. Imagine the Wash prolonged for\ntwenty or thirty miles inland and broadened considerably as it proceeded\nas would a curving fan, or better still, a horseshoe, and you have the\nFens: a horseshoe whose points, as Dugdale says, are the corners of\nLincolnshire and Norfolk.\n\nAll around them is land of some little height, and quite dry. It is\no\u00f6litic on the east, chalky on the south, and the old towns and the old\nroads look from all round this amphitheatre of dry land down upon the\nalluvial flats beneath. Peterboro', Cambridge, Lynn, are all just off\nthe Fens, and the Ermine street runs on the bank which forms their\neastern frontier.\n\nThis plain has suffered very various fortunes. How good the land was and\nhow well inhabited before the ruin of the monasteries is not yet\ncompletely grasped, even by these who love these marshes and who have\nwritten their history. Yet there is physical evidence of what was once\nhere: masses of trees but just buried, grass lying mown in swathes\nbeneath the moss-land, the implements of men where now no men can live,\nthe great buried causeway running right across from east to west.\n\nBeyond such proofs there are the writers who, rare as are the\ndescriptions of medieval scenery, manage to speak of this. For Henry of\nHuntingdon it was a kind of garden. There were many meres in it, but\nthere were also islands and woods and orchards. William of Malmesbury\nwrites of it with delight, and mentions even its vines. The meres were\nnot impassable marshes; for instance, in _Domesday_ you find the Abbot\nof Ramsay owning a vessel upon Whittlesea Mere. The whole impression one\ngets from the earlier time is that of something like the upper waters of\nthe rivers in the Broads: much draining and a good many ponds, but most\nof the land firm with good deep pastures and a great diversity of woods.\n\nGreat catastrophes have certainly overcome this countryside. The\ngreatest was the anarchy of the sixteenth century; but it is probable\nthat, coincidently with every grave lesion in the continuity of our\ncivilisation, the Fens suffered, for they always needed the perpetual\nattention of man to keep them (as they so long were, and may be again if\never our people get back their land and restore a communal life) fully\ninhabited, afforested, and cultured.\n\nIt is probable that the break-up of the ninth century saw the Fens\npartly drowned, and that after the Black Death something of the same\nsort happened again, for it is in the latter fourteenth and fifteenth\ncenturies that you begin to hear of a necessity for reclaiming them.\nJohn of Gaunt had a scheme, and Morton dug a ditch which is still called\n\"Morton's Leam.\" I say, every defeat of our civilisation was inflicted\nhere in the Fens, but it is certain that the principal disaster followed\nthe suppression of the monasteries.\n\nThese great foundations--nourishing hundreds and governing thousands,\nbased upon the populace, drawn from the populace, and living by the\ncommon life--were scattered throughout the Fens. They were founded on\nthe \"islands\" nearest the good land: Thorney, Ramsay, Croyland, Ely--the\nnuns of Chatteris.\n\nThey dated from the very beginning. Ely was founded within sight of our\nconversion, 672. Croyland came even before that, before civilisation and\nreligion were truly re-established in Britain; Penda's great-nephew gave\nit its charter; St Augustine had been dead for little more than a\ncentury when the charter was signed. Even as the monks came to claim\ntheir land they discovered hermits long settled there. Thorney--Ancarig\nit was then--was even fifty years older than Croyland. The roots of all\nthese go back to the beginning of the nation.\n\nRamsay and Charteris cannot be traced beyond the gulf of the Danish\ninvasion, but they are members of the group or ring of houses which\nclustered round the edge of the dry land and sent out its industry\ntowards the Wash, making new land; for this ring sent out feelers\neastward, draining the land and recovering it every way, founding cells,\nestablishing villages. Holbeach, Spalding, Freiston, Holland, and I know\nnot how much more was their land.\n\nWhen the monasteries were destroyed their lordship fell into the hands\nof that high class--now old, then new--the Cromwells and Russells and\nthe rest, upon whom has since depended the greatness of the country. The\nintensive spirit proper to a teeming but humble population was\nforgotten. The extensive economics of the great owners, their love of\ndistances and of isolation took the place of the old agriculture. Within\na generation the whole land was drowned.\n\nThe isolated villages forgot the general civilisation of England; they\ncame to depend for their living upon the wildfowl of the marshes; here\nand there was a little summer pasturing, more rarely a little ploughing\nof the rare patches of dry land; but the whole place soon ran wild, and\nthere Englishmen soon grew to cause an endless trouble to the new\nlandlords. These, all the while on from the death of Henry to that of\nElizabeth, pursued their vigilance and their accumulations. Their power\nrose above the marshes like a slow sun and dried them up at last.\n\nIn every inch of England you can find the history of England. You find\nit very typically here. The growth of that leisured class which we still\nenjoy--the class that in the seventeenth century destroyed the central\ngovernment of the Crown, penetrated and refreshed the universities,\nacquired for its use and reformed the endowed primary education of the\nEnglish, and began a thorough occupation of our public land--the growth\nof that leisured class is nowhere more clearly to be seen than in the\nhistory of the Fens, since the Fens had their faith removed from them.\n\nHere is the story of one such family, a family without whose privileges\nand public services it would be difficult to conceive modern England.\nTheir wealth is rooted in the Fens; the growth of that wealth is\nparallel to the growth of every fortune by which we are governed.\n\nWhen the monasteries were despoiled and their farms thrown open to a\ngamble, when the water ran in again, the countryside and all its\ngenerations of human effort were drowned, there was raised up for the\nrestoration of this land the family of Russell.\n\nThe Abbey of Thorney had been given to these little squires. They were\nin possession when, towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, in 1600, was\npassed the General Draining Act. It was a generous and a broad Act: it\nwas to apply not only to the Great Level, but to all the marshes of the\nrealm. It was soon bent to apply to the family.\n\nSeven years later a Dutchman of the name of Cornelius Vermuyden was sent\nfor, that the work might be begun. For fifty years this man dug and\nintrigued. He was called in to be the engineer; he had the temerity to\ncompete with the new landlords; he boasted a desire--less legitimate in\nan alien than in a courtier--to make a great fortune rapidly. He was\nruined.\n\nAll the adventurers who first attempted the draining of the Fens were\nruined--but not that permanent Russell-Francis, the Earl of Bedford,\nsurnamed \"the Incomparable.\"\n\nThe story of Vermuyden by him is intricate, but every Englishman now\nliving on another man's land should study it. Vermuyden was to drain the\nGreat Level and to have 95,000 acres for his pains. These acres were in\nthe occupation--for the matter of that, in great part the ownership--of\na number of English families. It is true the land had lain derelict for\nseventy years, bereft of capital since the Reformation, and swamped. It\nis true that the occupiers (and owners) were very poor. It is true,\ntherefore, that they could not properly comprehend a policy that was\ndesigned for the general advantage of the country. They only understood\nthat the hunting and fishing by which they lived were to stop; that\ntheir land was to be very considerably improved and taken from them. In\ntheir ignorance of ultimate political good they began to show some\nconsiderable impatience.\n\nThe cry of the multitude has a way of taking on the forms of stupidity.\nThe multitude in this case cried out against Vermuyden. They objected to\na foreigner being given so much freehold. \"In an anguish of despair\"--to\nuse one chronicler's words--they threw themselves under the protection\nof a leader. \"That leader was, of course, Francis, Earl of Bedford,\nsurnamed 'the Incomparable.' He could not hear unmoved the cry of his\nfellow-citizens. He yielded to their petition, took means to oust the\nDutchmen, and immediately obtained for himself the grant of the 95,000\nacres, by a royal order of 13 January, 1630/1, known as 'the Lynn Law.'\"\n\nWhen he saw the extent of the land and of the water upon it, even his\ntenacious spirit was alarmed. He therefore associated with himself in\nthe expenses thirteen others, all persons of rank and fortune, as was\nfitting: alone of the fourteen he preserved his fortune.\n\nThe fourteen, then, began the digging of nine drains (if we include the\nrepair of Morton's Leam); the largest was that fine twenty-one miles\ncalled the old Bedford River, and Charles I, though all in favour of so\ngreat a work, was all in dread of the power it might give to the class\nwhich--as his prophetic conscience told him--was destined to be his\nruin.\n\nThere was a contract that the work should be finished in six years: when\nthe six years were ended it was very far from finished. The King\ngrumbled; but Francis, Earl of Bedford, belonged to a clique already\nhalf as powerful as the Crown. He threatened, and a new royal order gave\nhim an extension of time. It was the second of his many victories.\n\nThe King refused to forget his defeat, and Francis, Earl of Bedford,\nbegan to show that hatred of absolute government which has made of his\nkind the leaders of a happy England. The King did a Stuart thing--he\nlost his temper. He said, \"You may keep your 95,000 acres, but I shall\ntax them\"; and he did. Francis, Earl of Bedford, felt in him a growing\npassion for just government. He already spoke of freedom; but he had no\nleisure wherein to enjoy it, for within two years he departed this life,\nof the smallpox, leaving to his son William the legacy of the great\nbattle for liberty and for the public land.\n\nThis change in the Bedford dynasty coincided with the Civil Wars.\nWilliam Russell, having led some of the Parliamentary forces at Edge\nHill, was so uncertain which side might ultimately be victorious as to\nopen secret negotiations with the King. Nothing happened to him, nor\neven to his brother, who intrigued later against Cromwell's life. He was\nat liberty to return once more and to survey from the walls of the old\nabbey the drowned land upon which he had set his heart.\n\nThe work of digging could not be carried on during the turmoil of the\ntime; William, Earl of Bedford, filled his leisure in the framing of an\nelaborate bill of costs. It was dated 20 May, 1646, and showed the sums\nwhich he had spent and which had been wasted in the failure to reclaim\nthe Fens. He stated them at over \u00a390,000, and to this he added, like a\ngood business man, interest at the rate of 8 per cent, for so many years\nas to amount to more than another \u00a330,000.\n\nAs against the King, the trick was a good one; but, like many another\nfinancier, William, Earl of Bedford, was shortsighted. The more anxious\nthe King grew to pay out public money to the Russells, the less able he\ngrew to do so, till at last he lost not only the shadow of power over\nthe treasury, but life itself; and William, Earl of Bedford, brought in\nhis bill to the Commonwealth.\n\nCromwell was of the same class, and knew the trick too well. He gave\nthe family leave to prosecute their digging to forget their demand for\nmoney. The Act was passed at noon. Bedford was sent for at seven o'clock\nthe next morning and ordered to attend upon Cromwell, \"and make thankful\nacknowledgments.\" He did so.\n\nThe works began once more. The common people, in their simplicity, rose\nas they had so often risen before, against a benefit they could not\ncomprehend; but they no longer had a Stuart to deal with. To their\nextreme surprise they were put down \"with the aid of the military.\"\nThen, for all the world as in the promotion of a modern company, the\nconsulting engineer of the original promotors reappears. The Russells\nhad patched it up with Vermuyden, and the work was resumed a third time.\n\nThere was, however, this difficulty, that though Englishmen might\nproperly be constrained at this moment to love an orderly and godly\nlife, and to relinquish their property when it was to the public good\nthat they should do so, yet it would have been abhorrent to the whole\nspirit of the Commonwealth to enslave them even for a work of national\nadvantage. A labour difficulty arose, and the works were in grave peril.\n\nThose whose petty envy may be pleased at the entanglement of William,\nEarl of Bedford, have forgotten the destiny which maintains our great\nfamilies. In the worst of the crisis the battle of Dunbar was fought;\n166 Scotch prisoners (and later 500 more) were indentured out to dig the\nditches, and it was printed and posted in the end of 1651 that it was\n\"death without mercy\" for any to attempt to escape.\n\nThe respite was not for long. Heaven, as though to try the patience of\nits chosen agent, raised up a new obstacle before the great patriot.\nPeace was made, and the Scotch prisoners were sent home. It was but the\npassing frown which makes the succeeding smiles of the Deity more\ngracious. At that very moment Blake was defeating the Dutch upon the\nseas, and these excellent prisoners, laborious, and (by an accident\nwhich clearly shows the finger of Divine providence) especially\nacquainted with the digging of ditches, arrived in considerable\nnumbers, chained, and were handed over to the Premier House. At the same\ntime it was ordered by the Lord Protector that when the 95,000 acres\nshould at last be dry, any Protestant, even though he were a foreigner,\nmight buy. Two years later an unfortunate peace compelled the return of\nthe Dutch prisoners; but the work was done, and the Earl of Bedford\nreturned thanks in his cathedral.\n\nRestored to the leisure which is necessary for political action, the\nRussells actively intrigued for the return of the Stuarts, and pointed\nout (when Charles II was well upon his throne) how necessary it was for\nthe Fens that their old, if irregular, privileges should be confirmed.\nIt was argued for the Crown that 10,000 acres of land had been quietly\nabsorbed by the Family while there was no king in England: but there\nhappened in this case what happened in every other since the upper\nclass, the natural leaders of the people, had curbed the tyranny of the\nKing--Charles capitulated. Then followed (of course) popular rising; it\nwas quelled. Before their long struggle for freedom against the Stuart\ndynasty was ended, the peasants had been taught their place, Vermuyden\nwas out of the way, the ditches were all dug, the land acquired.\n\nAll the world knows the great part played by the House in the\nemancipation of England from the yoke of James II. The martyrdom of Lord\nWilliam may have cast upon the Family a passing cloud; but whatever\ncompensation the perishable things of this world can afford, they\nreceived and accepted. In 1694, having assisted at the destruction of\nyet another form of government, the Earl of Bedford was made Duke, and\non 7 September, 1700, his great work now entirely accomplished, he\ndeparted this life peacefully in his eighty-seventh year. It was once\nmore in their cathedral that the funeral service was preached by a Dr.\nFreeman, chaplain of no less than the King himself. I have read the\nsermon in its entirety. It closes with the fine phrase that William the\nfifth Earl and the first Duke of Bedford had sought throughout the whole\nof a laborious and patriotic life a crown not corruptible but\nincorruptible.\n\nIt was precisely a century since the Family had set out in its quest\nfor that hundred square miles of land. Through four reigns, a bloody\ncivil war, three revolutions and innumerable treasons, it had maintained\nits purpose, and at last it reached its goal.\n\n     \"_Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem_.\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE ELECTION\n\n\nThe other day as I was going out upon my travels, I came upon a plain so\nbroad that it greatly wearied me. This plain was grown in parts with\nbarley, but as it stood high in foreign mountains and was arid, very\nlittle was grown. Small runnels, long run dry under the heat, made the\nplace look like a desert--almost like Africa; nor was there anything to\nrelieve my gaze except a huddle of small grey houses far away; but when\nI reached them I found, to my inexpressible joy, a railway running by\nand a station to receive me.\n\nFor those who complain of railways talk folly, and prove themselves\neither rich or, more probably, the hangers-on of the rich. A railway is\nan excellent thing; it takes one quickly through the world for next to\nnothing, and if in many countries the people it takes are brutes, and\ndisfigure all they visit, that is not the fault of the railway, but of\nthe Government and religion of these people, which, between them, have\nruined the citizens of the State.\n\nSo was it not in this place of which I speak, for all the people were\nindustrious, wealthy, kind, amenable, and free.\n\nI took a ticket for the only town on the railway list whose history I\nknew, and then in a third-class carriage made entirely of wood I settled\ndown to a conversation with my kind; for though these people were not of\nmy blood--indeed, I am certain that for some hundreds of years not a\ndrop of their blood has mingled with my own--yet we understood each\nother by a common tongue called Lingua Franca, of which I have spoken in\nanother place and am a past master.\n\nAs all the people round began their talk of cattle, land, and weather,\ntwo men next me, or rather the one next me and the other opposite me,\nbegan to talk of the election which had been held in that delightful\nplain: by which, as I learnt, a dealer in herds had been defeated by a\nsomewhat usurious and perhaps insignificant attorney. In this election\nmore than half the voters--that is, a good third of the families in the\nplain--had gone up to the little huts of wood and had made a mark upon a\nbit of paper, some on one part, some on the other. About a sixth of the\nfamilies had desired the dealer in herds to make their laws, and about a\nsixth the attorney. Of the rest some could not, some would not, go and\nmake the little mark of which I speak. Many more could by law make it,\nand would have made it, if they had thought it useful to any possible\npurpose under the sun. One-sixth, I say, had made their mark for the\naged and money-lending attorney, and one-sixth for the venerable but\navaricious dealer in herds, and since the first sixth was imperceptibly\nlarger than the second it was the lawyer, not the merchant, who stood to\nmake the laws for the people. But not only to make laws: he was also in\nsome mystic way the Persona and Representative of all the plain. The\nlong sun-lit fields; the infinite past--Carolingian, enormous; the\ndelicate fronds of young trees; the distant sight of the mountains,\nwhich is the note of all that land; the invasions it had suffered, the\nconquests it might yet achieve; its soul and its material self, were all\nsummed up in the solicitor, not in the farmer, and he was to vote on\npeace or war, on wine or water, on God or no God in the schools. For the\npeople of the plain were self-governing; they had no lords.\n\nOf my two companions, the one had voted for the cow-buyer, but the other\nfor the scribbler upon parchment, and they discussed their action\nwithout heat, gently and with many reasons.\n\nThe one said: \"It cannot be doubted that the solidarity of society\ndemands that the homogeneity of economic interests should be recognised\nby the magistrate.\" The other said: \"The first need is rather that the\nhistoric continuity of society should be affirmed by the momentary\ndepositaries of the executive.\"\n\nFor these two men were of some education, and saw things from a higher\nstandpoint than the peasants around us, who continued to discourse, now\nangrily, now merrily, but always loudly and rapidly, upon the\ninsignificant matter of their lives: that is, strong, red, bubbling\nwine, healthy and well-fed beef, rich land and housing, the marriage of\ndaughters, and the putting forward of sons.\n\nThen one of the two, who had long guessed by my dress and face from what\ncountry I came, said to me: \"And you, how is it in your country?\" I told\nhim we met from time to time, upon occasions not less often than seven\nyears apart, and did just as they had done. That one-sixth of us voted\none way and one-sixth the other; the first, let us say, for a\nmoneylender, and the second for a man remarkable for motor-cars or\nfamous for the wealth of his mother; and whichever sixth was\nimperceptibly larger than the other, that sixth carried its man, and he\nstood for the flats of the Wash or for the clear hills of Cumberland, or\nfor Devon, which is all one great and lonely hill.\n\n\"This man,\" said I, \"in some very mystic way is _Ourselves_--he is our\npast and our great national memory. By his vote he decides what shall be\ndone; but he is controlled.\"\n\n\"By what is he controlled?\" said my companions eagerly. Evidently they\nhad a sneaking love of seeing representatives controlled.\n\n\"By a committee of the rich,\" said I promptly.\n\nAt this they shrugged their shoulders and said: \"It is a bad system!\"\n\n\"And by what are yours?\" said I.\n\nAt this the gravest and oldest of them, looking as it were far away with\nhis eyes, answered: \"By the name of our country and a wholesome terror\nof the people.\"\n\n\"Your system,\" said I, shrugging my shoulders in turn, but a little\nawkwardly, \"is different from ours.\"\n\nAfter this, we were silent all three. We remembered, all three of us,\nthe times when no such things were done in Europe, and yet men hung\nwell together, and a nation was vaguer and yet more instinctive and\nready. We remembered also--for it was in our common faith--the gross,\npermanent, and irremediable imperfection of human affairs. There arose\nperhaps in their minds a sight of the man they had sent to be the spirit\nand spokesman, or rather the very self, of that golden plateau which the\ntrain was crawling through, and certainly in my mind there rose the\npicture of a man--small, false, and vile--who was, by some fiction, the\nvoice of a certain valley in my own land.\n\nThen I said to them as I left the train at the town I spoke of: \"Days,\nknights!\"--for so one addresses strangers in that country. And they\nanswered: \"Your grace, we commend you to God.\"\n\n\n\n\nARLES\n\n\nThe use and the pleasure of travel are closely mingled, because the use\nof it is fulfilment, and in fulfilling oneself a great pleasure is\nenjoyed. Every man bears within him not only his own direct experience,\nbut all the past of his blood: the things his own race has done are part\nof himself, and in him also is what his race will do when he is dead.\nThis is why men will always read _records_, and why, even when letters\nare at their lowest, _records_ still remain. Thus, if a diary be known\nto be true, then it seems vivid and becomes famous where if it were\nfiction no one would find any merit in it. History, therefore, once a\nman has begun to know it, becomes a necessary food for the mind, without\nwhich it cannot sustain its new dimension. It is an aggregate of\nuniversal experience, nor, other things being equal, is any man's\njudgment so thin and weak as the judgment of a man who knows nothing of\nthe past. But history, if it is to be kept just and true and not to\nbecome a set of airy scenes, fantastically coloured by our later time,\nmust be continually corrected and moderated by the seeing and handling\nof _things_.\n\nIf the West of Europe be one place and one people separate from all the\nrest of the world, then that unity is of the last importance to us; and\nthat it is so, the wider our learning the more certain we are. All our\nreligion and custom and mode of thought are European. A European State\nis only a State because it is a State of Europe; and the demarcations\nbetween the ever-shifting States of Europe are only dotted lines, but\nbetween the Christian and the non-Christian the boundary is hard and\nfull.\n\nNow, a man who recognises this truth will ask, \"Where could I find a\nmodel of the past of that Europe? In what place could I find the best\nsingle collection of all the forms which European energy has created,\nand of all the outward symbols in which its soul has been made manifest?\nTo such a man the answer should be given, 'You will find these things\nbetter in the town of _Arles_ than in any other place.'\" A man asking\nsuch a question would mean to travel. He ought to travel to _Arles_.\n\nLong before men could write, this hill (which was the first dry land at\nthe head of the Rhone delta, beyond the early mud-flats which the river\nwas pushing out into the sea) was inhabited by our ancestors. Their\nbarbaric huts were grouped round the shelving shore; their axes and\ntheir spindles remain.\n\nWhen thousands of years later the Greeks pushed northward from Massilia,\nArles was the first great corner in their road and the first\nhalting-place after the useless deserts that separated their port from\nthe highway of the Rhone valley.\n\nAt the close of Antiquity Rome came to Arles in the beginning of her\nexpansion, and the strong memories of Rome which Arles still holds are\nfamous. Every traveller has heard of the vast unbroken amphitheatre and\nthe ruined temple in a market square that is still called the Forum;\nthey are famous--but when you see them it seems to you that they should\nbe more famous still. They have something about them so familiar and yet\nso unexpected that the centuries in which they were built come actively\nbefore you.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe city of Arles is small and packed. A man may spend an hour in it\ninstead of a day or a year, but in that hour he can receive full\ncommunion with antiquity. For as you walk along the tortuous lane\nbetween high houses, passing on either hand as you go the ornaments of\nevery age, you turn some dirty little corner or other and come suddenly\nupon the titanic arches of Rome. There are the huge stones which appal\nyou with the Roman weight and perpetuate in their arrangement an order\nthat has modelled the world. They lie exact and mighty; they are\nunmoved, clamped with metal, a little worn, enduring. They are none the\nless a domestic and native part of the living town in which they stand.\nYou pass from the garden of a house that was built in your grandfather's\ntime, and you see familiarly before you in the street a pedestal and a\ncolumn. They are two thousand years old. You read a placard idly upon\nthe wall; the placard interests you; it deals with the politics of the\nplace or with the army, but the wall might be meaningless. You look more\nclosely, and you see that that wall was raised in a fashion that has\nbeen forgotten since the Antonines, and these realities still press upon\nyou, revealed and lost again with every few steps you walk within the\nlimited circuit of the town.\n\nRome slowly fell asleep. The sculpture lost its power; something\nbarbaric returned. You may see that decline in capitals and masks still\nembedded in buildings of the fifth century. The sleep grew deeper. There\ncame five hundred years of which so little is left in Europe that Paris\nhas but one doubtful tower and London nothing. Arles still preserves its\nrelics. When Charlemagne was dead and Christendom almost extinguished\nthe barbarian and the Saracen alternately built, and broke against, a\nkeep that still stands and that is still so strong that one might still\ndefend it. It is unlit. It is a dungeon; a ponderous menace above the\nmain street of the city, blind and enormous. It is the very time it\ncomes from.\n\nWhen all that fear and anarchy of the mind had passed, and when it was\ndiscovered that the West still lived, a dawn broke. The medieval\ncivilisation began to sprout vigorously through the eleventh and twelfth\ncenturies, as an old tree sprouts before March is out. The memorials of\nthat transition are common enough. We have them here in England in great\nquantity; we call them the \"Norman\" architecture. A peculiarly vivid\nrelic of that springtime remains at Arles. It is the door of what was\nthen the cathedral--the door of St. Trophimus. It perpetuates the\nbeginning of the civilisation of the Middle Ages. And of that\ncivilisation an accident which has all the force of a particular design\nhas preserved here, attached to this same church, another complete type.\nThe cloisters of this same Church of St. Trophimus are not only the\nMiddle Ages caught and made eternal, they are also a progression of that\ngreat experiment from its youth to its sharp close.\n\nYou come into these cloisters from a little side street and a neglected\nyard, which give you no hint of what you are going to see. You find\nyourself cut off at once and put separately by. Silence inhabits the\nplace; you see nothing but the sky beyond the border of the low roofs.\nOne old man there, who cannot read or write and is all but blind, will\ntalk to you of the Rhone. Then as you go round the arches, \"withershins\"\nagainst the sun (in which way lucky progression has always been made in\nsacred places), there pass you one after the other the epochs of the\nMiddle Ages. For each group of arches come later than the last in the\norder of sculpture, and the sculptors during those 300 years went\nwithershins as should you.\n\nYou have first the solemn purpose of the early work. This takes on\nneatness of detail, then fineness; a great maturity dignifies all the\nnorthern side. Upon the western you already see that spell beneath which\nthe Middle Ages died. The mystery of the fifteenth century; none of its\nwickedness but all its final vitality is there. You see in fifty details\nthe last attempt of our race to grasp and permanently to retain the\nbeautiful.\n\nWhen the circuit is completed the series ends abruptly--as the medieval\nstory itself ended.\n\nThere is no way of writing or of telling history which could be so true\nas these visions are. Arles, at a corner of the great main road of the\nEmpire, never so strong as to destroy nor so insignificant as to cease\nfrom building, catching the earliest Roman march into the north, the\nChristian advance, the full experience of the invasions; retaining in a\nvague legend the memory of St. Paul; drawing in, after the long trouble,\nthe new life that followed the Crusades, can show such visions better, I\nthink, than Rome herself can show them.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GRIFFIN\n\n\nA specialist told me once in Ealing that no inn could compare with the\nGriffin, a Fenland inn. \"It is painted green\" he said, \"and stands in\nthe town of March. If you would enjoy the Griffin, you must ask your way\nto that town, and as you go ask also for the Griffin, for many who may\nnot have heard of March will certainly have heard of the Griffin.\"\n\nSo I set out at once for the Fens and came at the very beginning of them\nto a great ditch, which barred all further progress. I wandered up and\ndown the banks for an hour thinking of the inn, when I met a man who was\nsadder and more silent even than the vast level and lonely land in which\nhe lived. I asked him how I should cross the great dyke. He shook his\nhead, and said he did not know. I asked him if he had heard of the\nGriffin, but he said no. I broke away from him and went for miles along\nthe bank eastward, seeing the rare trees of the marshes dwindling in the\ndistance, and up against the horizon a distant spire, which I thought\nmight be the Spire of March. For March and the Griffin were not twenty\nmiles away. And still the great ditch stood between me and my\npilgrimage.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThese dykes of the Fens are accursed things: they are the separation of\nfriends and lovers. Here is a man whose crony would come and sit by his\nfireside at evening and drink with him, a custom perhaps of twenty\nyears' standing, when there comes another man from another part armed\nwith public power, and digs between them a trench too wide to leap and\ntoo soft to ford. The Fens are full of such tragedies.\n\nOne may march up and down the banks all day without finding a boat, and\nas for bridges there are none, except, indeed, the bridges which the\nrailway makes; for the railways have grown to be as powerful as the\nlandlords or the brewers, and can go across this country where they\nchoose. And here the Fens are typical, for it may be said that these\nthree monopolies--the landlords, the railways, and the brewers--govern\nEngland.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut at last, at a place called Oxlode, I found a boat, and the news that\njust beyond lay another dyke. I asked where that could be crossed, but\nthe ferryman of Oxlode did not know. He pointed two houses out, however,\nstanding close together out of the plain, and said they were called\n\"Purles' Bridge,\" and that I would do well to try there. But when I\nreached them I found that the water was between me and them and, what is\nmore, that there was no bridge there and never had been one since the\nbeginning of time. Of these jests the Fens are full.\n\nIn half an hour a man came out of one of the houses and ferried me\nacross in silence. I asked him also if he had heard of the Griffin. He\nlaughed and shook his head as the first one had done, but he showed me a\nlittle way off the village of Monea, saying that the people of that\nplace knew every house for a day's walk around. So I trudged to Monea,\nwhich is a village on one of the old dry islands of the marsh; but no\none at Monea knew. There was, none the less, one old man who told me he\nhad heard the name, and his advice to me was to go to the cross roads\nand past them towards March, and then to ask again. So I went outwards\nto the cross roads, and from the cross roads outward again it seemed\nwithout end, a similar land repeating itself for ever. There was the\nsame silence, the same completely even soil, the same deep little\ntrenches, the same rare distant and regular rows of trees.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSince it was useless to continue thus for you--one yard was as good as\ntwenty miles--and since you could know nothing more of these silences,\neven if I were to give you every inch of the road, I will pass at once\nto the moment in which I saw a baker's cart catching me up at great\nspeed. The man inside had an expression of irritable poverty. I did not\npromise him money, but gave it him. Then he took me aboard and rattled\non, with me by his side.\n\nI had by this time a suspicion that the Griffin was a claustral thing\nand a mystery not to be blurted out. I knew that all the secrets of\nHermes may be reached by careful and long-drawn words, and that the\nsimplest of things will not be told one if one asks too precipitately;\nso I began to lay siege to his mind by the method of dialogue. The words\nwere these:--\n\nMYSELF: This land wanted draining, didn't it?\n\nTHE OTHER MAN: Ah!\n\nMYSELF: It seems to be pretty well drained now.\n\nTHE OTHER MAN: Ugh!\n\nMYSELF: I mean it seems dry enough.\n\nTHE OTHER MAN: It was drownded only last winter.\n\nMYSELF: It looks to be good land.\n\nTHE OTHER MAN: It's lousy land; it's worth nowt.\n\nMYSELF: Still, there are dark bits--black, you may say--and thereabouts\nit will be good.\n\nTHE OTHER MAN: That's where you're wrong; the lighter it is the better\nit is ... ah! that's where many of 'em go wrong. (_Short silence_.)\n\nMYSELF: (_cheerfully_): A sort of loam?\n\nTHE OTHER MAN (_calvinistically_): Ugh!--sand!... (_shaking his head_).\nIt blaws away with a blast of wind. (_A longer silence_.)\n\nMYSELF (_as though full of interest_): Then you set your drills to sow\ndeep about here?\n\nTHE OTHER MAN (_with a gesture of fatigue_): Shoal. (_Here he sighed\ndeeply_.)\n\nAfter this we ceased to speak to each other for several miles. Then:\n\nMYSELF: Who owns the land about here?\n\nTHE OTHER MAN: Some owns parts and some others.\n\nMYSELF (_angrily pointing to an enormous field with a little new house\nin the middle_): Who owns that?\n\nTHE OTHER MAN (_startled by my tone_): A Frenchman. He grows onions.\n\nNow if you know little of England and of the temper of the English (I\nmean of 0.999 of the English people and not of the 0.001 with which you\nassociate), if, I say, you know little or nothing of your\nfellow-countrymen, you may imagine that all this conversation was\nwasted. \"It was not to the point,\" you say. \"You got no nearer the\nGriffin.\" You are wrong. Such conversation is like the kneading of dough\nor the mixing of mortar; it mollifies and makes ready; it is\nthree-quarters of the work; for if you will let your fellow-citizen\ncurse you and grunt at you, and if you will but talk to him on matters\nwhich he knows far better than you, then you have him ready at the end.\n\nSo had I this man, for I asked him point-blank at the end of all this:\n\"_What about the Griffin?_\" He looked at me for a moment almost with\nintelligence, and told me that he would hand me over in the next village\nto a man who was going through March. So he did, and the horse of this\nsecond man was even faster than that of the baker. The horses of the\nFens are like no horses in the world for speed.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis horse was twenty-three years old, yet it went as fast as though all\nthat tomfoolery men talk about progress were true, and as though things\ngot better by the process of time. It went so fast that one might\nimagine it at forty-six winning many races, and at eighty standing\nbeyond all comparison or competition; and because it went so fast I went\nhammering right through the town of March before I had time to learn its\nname or to know whither I was driving; it whirled me past the houses and\nout into the country beyond; only when I had pulled up two miles beyond\ndid I know what I had done and did I realise that I had missed for ever\none of those pleasures which, fleeting as they are, are all that is to\nbe discovered in human life. It went so fast, that before I knew what\nhad happened the Griffin had flashed by me and was gone.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nYet I will affirm with the tongue of faith that it is the noblest house\nof call in the Fens.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is better to believe than to handle or to see. I will affirm with the\ntongue of faith that the Griffin is, as it were, the captain and chief\nof these plains, and has just managed to touch perfection in all the\nqualities that an inn should achieve. I am speaking not of what I know\nby the doubtful light of physical experience, but of what I have seen\nwith the inward eye and felt by something that transcends gross taste\nand touch.\n\nLow rooms of my repose! Beams of comfort and great age; drowsy and\ninhabiting fires; ingle-nooks made for companionship. You also, beer\nmuch better, much more soft, than the beer of lesser towns; beans,\nbacon, and chicken cooked to the very limit of excellence; port drawn\nfrom barrels which the simple Portuguese had sent to Lynn over the\ncloud-shadowed sea, and honourable Lynn without admixture had sent upon\na cart to you, port undefined, port homogeneous, entirely made of wine:\nyou also beds! Wooden beds with curtains around them, feathers for\nsleeping on, and every decent thing which the accursed would attempt to\ndestroy; candles (I trust)--and trust is more perfect than proof--bread\nmade (if it be possible) out of English wheat; milk drawn most certainly\nfrom English cows, and butter worthy of the pastures of England all\naround. Oh, glory to the Fens, Griffin, it shall not be said that I have\nnot enjoyed you!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is a modern habit, I know, of gloom, and men without faith upon\nevery side recount the things that they have not enjoyed. For my part I\nwill yield to no such habit. I will consider that I have more perfectly\ntasted in the mind that which may have been denied to my mere body, and\nI will produce for myself and others a greater pleasure than any\npleasure of the sense. I will do what the poets and the prophets have\nalways done, and satisfy myself with vision, and (who knows?) perhaps by\nthis the Griffin of the Idea has been made a better thing (if that were\npossible!) than the Griffin as it is--as it materially stands in this\nevil and uncertain world.\n\nSo let the old horse go by and snatch me from this chance of joy: he has\nnot taken everything in his flight, and there remains something in spite\nof time, which eats us all up.\n\nAnd yet ... what is that in me which makes me regret the Griffin, the\nreal Griffin at which they would not let me stay? The Griffin painted\ngreen: the real rooms, the real fire ... the material beer? Alas for\nmortality! Something in me still clings to affections temporal and\nmundane. England, my desire, what have you not refused me!\n\n\n\n\nTHE FIRST DAY'S MARCH\n\n\nI very well remember the spring breaking ten years ago in Lorraine. I\nremember it better far than I shall ever remember another spring,\nbecause one of those petty summits of emotion that seem in boyhood like\nthe peaks of the world was before me. We were going off to camp.\n\nSince every man that fires guns or drives them in France--that is, some\nhundred thousand and more at any one time, and taking in reserves, half\na million--must go to camp in his time, and that more than once, it\nseems monstrous that a boy should make so much of it; but then to a boy\nsix months is a little lifetime, and for six months I had passed through\nthat great annealing fire of drill which stamps and moulds the French\npeople to-day, putting too much knowledge and bitterness into their\neyes, but a great determination into their gestures and a trained\ntenacity into the methods of their thought.\n\nTo me also this fire seemed fiercer and more transforming because, until\nthe day when they had marched me up to barracks in the dark and the rain\nwith a batch of recruits, I had known nothing but the easy illusions and\nthe comfort of an English village, and had had but journeys or short\nvisits to teach me that enduring mystery of Europe, the French temper:\nwhose aims and reticence, whose hidden enthusiasms, great range of\neffort, divisions, defeats, and resurrections must now remain the\nprincipal problem before my mind; for the few who have seen this sight\nknow that the French mind is the pivot on which Europe turns.\n\nI had come into the regiment faulty in my grammar and doubtful in\naccent, ignorant especially of those things which in every civilisation\nare taken for granted but never explained in full; I was ignorant,\ntherefore, of the key which alone can open that civilisation to a\nstranger. Things irksome or a heavy burden to the young men of my age,\nborn and brought up in the French air, were to me, brought up with\nEnglishmen an Englishman, odious and bewildering. Orders that I but half\ncomprehended; simple phrases that seemed charged with menace; boasting\n(a habit of which I knew little), coupled with a fierce and, as it were,\nexpected courage that seemed ill suited to boasting--and certainly\nunknown outside this army; enormous powers of endurance in men whose\nstature my English training had taught me to despise; a habit of\nfighting with the fists, coupled with a curious contempt for the\naccident of individual superiority--all these things amazed me and put\nme into a topsy-turvy world where I was weeks in finding my feet.\n\nBut strangest of all, and (as I now especially believe) most pregnant\nwith meaning for the future, was to find the inherited experience in me\nof so much teaching and careful habit--instinct of command, if you\nwill--all that goes to make what we call in Western Europe a\n\"gentleman,\" put at the orders and the occasional insult of a hierarchy\nof office, many of whose functionaries were peasants and artisans.\nStripes on the arm, symbols, suddenly became of overwhelming value; what\nI had been made with so much care in an English public school was here\nthought nothing but a hindrance and an absurdity. This had seemed to me\nfirst a miracle, then a grievous injustice, then most unpractical, and\nat last, like one that sees the answer to a riddle, I saw (when I had\nlong lost my manners and ceased to care for refinements) that the French\nwere attempting, a generation before any others in the world, to\nestablish an army that should be a mere army, and in which a living man\ncounted only as one numbered man.\n\nWhether that experiment will hold or not I cannot tell; it shocks the\nrefinement of the whole West of Europe; it seems monstrous to the\naristocratic organisation of Germany; it jars in France also with the\ntraditions of that decent elder class of whom so many still remain to\nguide the Republic, and in whose social philosophy the segregation of a\n\"directing class\" has been hitherto a dogma. But soon I cared little\nwhether that experiment was to succeed or no in its final effort, or\nwhether the French were to perfect a democracy where wealth has one vast\nexperience of its own artificiality, or to fail. The intellectual\ninterest of such an experiment, when once I seized it, drove out every\nother feeling.\n\nI became like a man who has thoroughly awaked from a long sleep and\nfinds that in sleep he has been taken overseas. I merged into the great\nsystem whose wheels and grindings had at first astonished or disgusted\nme, and I found that they had made of me what they meant to make. I\ncared more for guns than for books; I now obeyed by instinct not men,\nbut symbols of authority. No comfortable fallacy remained; it no longer\nseemed strange that my captain was a man promoted from the ranks; that\none of my lieutenants was an Alsatian charity boy and the other a rich\nfellow mixed up with sugar-broking; that the sergeant of my piece should\nbe a poor young noble, the wheeler of No. 5 a wealthy and very vulgar\nchemist's son, the man in the next bed (\"my ancient,\" as they say in\nthat service) a cook of some skill, and my bombardier a mild young\nfarmer. I thought only in terms of the artillery: I could judge men from\ntheir aptitude alone, and in me, I suppose, were accomplished many\nthings--one of Danton's dreams, one of St. Just's prophecies, the\nfulfilment also of what a hundred brains had silently determined twenty\nyears before when the staff gave up their swords outside Metz; the army\nand the kind of army of which Chanzy had said in the first breath of the\narmistice, \"A man who forgets it should be hanged, but a man who speaks\nof it before its time should be shot with the honours of his rank.\"\n\nAll this had happened to me in especial in that melting-pot up in the\neastern hills, and to thirty thousand others that year in their separate\ncrucibles.\n\nIn the process things had passed which would seem to you incredible if I\nwrote them all down. I cared little in what vessel I ate, or whether I\nhad to tear meat with my fingers. I could march in reserve more than\ntwenty miles a day for day upon day. I knew all about my horses; I could\nsweep, wash, make a bed, clean kit, cook a little, tidy a stable, turn\nto entrenching for emplacement, take a place at lifting a gun or\nchanging a wheel. I took change with a gunner, and could point well. And\nall this was not learnt save under a grinding pressure of authority and\nharshness, without which in one's whole life I suppose one would never\nproperly have learnt a half of these things--at least, not to do them so\nreadily, or in such unison, or on so definite a plan. But (what will\nseem astonishing to our critics and verbalists), with all this there\nincreased the power, or perhaps it was but the desire, to express the\ngreatest thoughts--newer and keener things. I began to understand De\nVigny when he wrote, \"If a man despairs of becoming a poet, let him\ncarry his pack and march in the ranks.\"\n\nThus the great hills that border the Moselle, the distant frontier, the\nvast plain which is (they say) to be a battlefield, and which lay five\nhundred feet sheer below me, the far guns when they were practising at\nMetz, the awful strength of columns on the march moved me. The sky also\ngrew more wonderful, and I noticed living things. The Middle Ages, of\nwhich till then I had had but troubling visions, rose up and took flesh\nin the old town, on the rare winter evenings when I had purchased the\nleisure to leave quarters by some excessive toil. A man could feel\nFrance going by.\n\nIt was at the end of these six months, when there was no more darkness\nat roll-call, and when the bitter cold (that had frozen us all winter)\nwas half forgotten, that the spring brought me this excellent news,\nearlier than I had dared to expect it--the news that sounds to a recruit\nhalf as good as active service. We were going to march and go off right\naway westward over half a dozen horizons, till we could see the real\nthing at Chalons, and with this news the world seemed recreated.\n\nSeven times that winter we had been mobilised: four times in the dead of\nthe night; once at midday, once at evening, and once at dawn. Seven\ntimes we had started down the wide Metz road, hoping in some vague way\nthat they would do something with us and give us at least some\nmanoeuvres, and seven times we had marched back to barracks to undo all\nthat serious packing and to return to routine.\n\nOnce, for a week in February, the French and German Governments, or,\nmore probably, two minor permanent officials, took it into their silly\nheads that there was some danger of war. We packed our campaign saddles\nevery night and put them on the pegs behind the stalls; we had the\nemergency rations served out, and for two days in the middle of that\ntime we had slept ready. But nothing came of it. Now at least we were\noff to play a little at the game whose theory we had learnt so wearily.\n\nAnd the way I first knew it would easily fill a book if it were told as\nit should be, with every detail and its meaning unrolled and with every\njoy described: as it is, I must put it in ten lines. Garnon (a\nsergeant), three others, and I were sent out (one patrol out of fifty)\nto go round and see the reserve horses on the farms. That was delight\nenough, to have a vigorous windy morning with the clouds large and white\nand in a clear sky, and to mix with the first grain of the year, \"out of\nthe loose-box.\"\n\nWe took the round they gave us along the base of the high hills, we got\nour papers signed at the different stables, we noted the hoofs of the\nhorses and their numbers; a good woman at a large farm gave us food of\neggs and onions, and at noon we turned to get back to quarters for the\ngrooming. Everything then was very well--to have ridden out alone\nwithout the second horse and with no horrible great pole to crush one's\nleg, and be free--though we missed it--of the clank of the guns. We felt\nlike gentlemen at ease, and were speaking grandly to each other, when I\nheard Garnon say to the senior of us a word that made things seem better\nstill, for he pointed out to a long blue line beyond Domremy and\noverhanging the house of Joan of Arc, saying that the town lay there.\n\"What town?\" said I to my Ancient; and my Ancient, instead of answering\nsimply, took five minutes to explain to me how a recruit could not know\nthat the round of the reserve horses came next before camp, and that\nthis town away on the western ridge was the first halting-place upon the\nroad. Then my mind filled with distances, and I was overjoyed, saving\nfor this one thing, that I had but two francs and a few coppers left,\nand that I was not in reach of more.\n\nWhen we had ridden in, saluted, and reported at the guard, we saw the\nguns drawn up in line at the end of the yard, and we went into grooming\nand ate and slept, hardly waiting for the morning and the long\nregimental call before the r\u00e9veill\u00e9; the notes that always mean the high\nroad for an army, and that are as old as Fontenoy.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThat next morning they woke us all before dawn--long before dawn. The\nsky was still keen, and there was not even a promise of morning in the\nair, nor the least faintness in the eastern stars. They twinkled right\non the edges of the world over the far woods of Lorraine, beyond the\nhollow wherein lay the town; it was even cold like winter as we\nharnessed; and I remember the night air catching me in the face as I\nstaggered from the harness-room, with my campaign saddle and the traces\nand the girths and the saddle cloth, and all the great weight that I had\nto put upon my horses.\n\nWe stood in the long stables all together, very hurriedly saddling and\nbridling and knotting up the traces behind. A few lanterns gave us an\nimperfect light. We hurried because it was a pride to be the first\nbattery, and in the French service, rightly or wrongly, everything in\nthe artillery is made for speed, and to speed everything is sacrificed.\nSo we made ready in the stable and brought our horses out in order\nbefore the guns in the open square of quarters. The high plateau on\nwhich the barracks stood was touched with a last late frost, and the\nhorses coming out of the warm stables bore the change ill, lifting their\nheads and stamping. A man could not leave the leaders for a moment, and,\nwhile the chains were hooked on, even my middle horses were restive and\nhad to be held. My hands stiffened at the reins, and I tried to soothe\nboth my beasts, as the lantern went up and down wherever the work was\nbeing done. They quieted when the light was taken round behind by the\ntumbrils, where two men were tying on the great sack of oats exactly as\nthough we were going on campaign.\n\nThese two horses of mine were called Pacte and Basilique. Basilique was\nsaddled; a slow beast, full of strength and sympathy, but stupid and\ngiven to sudden fears. Pacte was the led horse, and had never heard\nguns. It was prophesied that when first I should have to hold him in\ncamp when we were practising he would break everything near him, and\neither kill me or get me cells. But I did not believe these prophecies,\nhaving found my Ancient and all third-year men too often to be liars,\nfond of frightening the younger recruits. Meanwhile Pacte stood in the\nsharp night, impatient, and shook his harness. Everything had been\nquickly ordered.\n\nWe filed out of quarters, passed the lamp of the guard, and saw huddled\nthere the dozen or so that were left behind while we were off to better\nthings. Then a drawn-out cry at the head of the column was caught up all\nalong its length, and we trotted; the metal of shoes and wheel-rims rang\nupon the road, and I felt as a man feels on a ship when it leaves\nharbour for great discoveries.\n\nWe had climbed the steep bank above St. Martin, and were on the highest\nridge of land dominating the plain, when the sky first felt the approach\nof the sun. Our backs were to the east, but the horizon before us caught\na reflection of the dawn; the woods lost their mystery, and one found\noneself marching in a partly cultivated open space with a forest all\naround. The road ran straight for miles like an arrow, and stretched\nswarmingly along it was the interminable line of guns. But with the full\ndaylight, and after the sun had risen in a mist, they deployed us out of\ncolumn into a wide front on a great heath in the forest, and we halted.\nThere we brewed coffee, not by batteries, but gun by gun.\n\nWarmed by this little meal, mere coffee without sugar or milk, but with\na hunk left over from yesterday's bread and drawn stale from one's\nhaversack (the armies of the Republic and of Napoleon often fought all\nday upon such sustenance, and even now, as you will see, the French do\nnot really eat till a march is over--and this may be a great advantage\nin warfare)--warmed, I say, by this little meal, and very much refreshed\nby the sun and the increasing merriment of morning, we heard the first\ntrumpet-call and then the shouted order to mount.\n\nWe did not form one column again. We went off at intervals, by\nbatteries; and the reason of this was soon clear, for on getting to a\nplace where four roads met, some took one and some took another, the\nobject being to split up the unwieldy train of thirty-six guns, with all\ntheir waggons and forges, into a number of smaller groups, marching by\nways more or less parallel towards the same goal; and my battery was\nleft separate, and went at last along a lane that ran through pasture\nland in a valley.\n\nThe villages were already awake, and the mist was all but lifted from\nthe meadows when we heard men singing in chorus in front of us some way\noff. These were the gunners that had left long before us and had gone on\nforward afoot. For in the French artillery it is a maxim (for all I\nknow, common to all others--if other artilleries are wise) that you\nshould weight your limber (and therefore your horses) with useful things\nalone; and as gunners are useful only to fire guns, they are not\ncarried, save into action or when some great rapidity of movement is\ndesired. I do, indeed, remember one case when it was thought necessary\nto send a group of batteries during the manoeuvres right over from the\nleft to the right of a very long position which our division was\noccupying on the crest of the Argonne. There was the greatest need for\nhaste, and we packed the gunners on to the limber (there were no seats\non the gun in the old type--there are now) and galloped all the way down\nthe road, and put the guns in action with the horses still panting and\nexhausted by that extra weight carried at such a speed and for such a\ndistance. But on the march, I say again, we send the gunners forward,\nand not only the gunners, but as you shall hear when we come to\nCommercy, a reserve of drivers also. We send them forward an hour or\ntwo before the guns start; we catch them up with the guns on the road;\nthey file up to let us pass, and commonly salute us by way of formality\nand ceremony. Then they come into the town of the halt an hour or two\nafter we have reached it.\n\nSo here in this silent and delightful valley, through which ran a river,\nwhich may have been the Meuse or may have been a tributary only, we\ncaught up our gunners. Their song ceased, they were lined up along the\nroad, and not till we were passed were they given a little halt and\nrepose. But when we had gone past with a huge clattering and dust, the\nbombardier of my piece, who was a very kindly man, a young farmer, and\nwho happened to be riding abreast of my horses, pointed them out to me\nbehind us at a turning in the road. They were taking that five minutes'\nrest which the French have borrowed from the Germans, and which comes at\nthe end of every hour on the march. They had thrown down their knapsacks\nand were lying flat taking their ease, I could not long look backwards,\nbut a very little time after, when we had already gained nearly half a\nmile upon them, we again heard the noise of their singing, and knew that\nthey had reshouldered their heavy packs. And this pack is the same in\nevery unmounted branch of the service, and is the heaviest thing, I\nbelieve, that has been carried by infantry since the Romans.\n\nIt was not yet noon, and extremely hot for the time of year and for the\ncoldness of the preceding night, when they halted us at a place where\nthe road bent round in a curve and went down a little hollow. There we\ndismounted and cleaned things up a little before getting into the town,\nwhere we were to find what the French call an _\u00e9tape_; that is, the town\nat which one halts at the end of one's march, and the word is also used\nfor the length of a march itself. It is not in general orders to clean\nup in this way before coming in, and there were some commanders who were\nnever more pleased than when they could bring their battery into town\ncovered with dust and the horses steaming and the men haggard, for this\nthey thought to be evidence of a workmanlike spirit. But our colonel had\ngiven very contrary orders, to the annoyance of our captain, a man\nrisen from the ranks who loved the guns and hated finery.\n\nThen we went at a walk, the two trumpets of the battery sounding the\ncall which is known among French gunners as \"the eighty hunters,\"\nbecause the words to it are, \"_quatre-vingt, quatre-vingt, quatre-vingt,\nquatre-vingt, quatre-vingt, quatre-vingt, quatre-vingt, chasseurs_,\"\nwhich words, by their metallic noise and monotony, exactly express the\nlong call that announces the approach of guns. We went right through the\ntown, the name of which is Commercy, and the boys looked at us with\npride, not knowing how hateful they would find the service when once\nthey were in for its grind and hopelessness. But then, for that matter,\nI did not know myself with what great pleasure I should look back upon\nit ten years after. Moreover, nobody knows beforehand whether he will\nlike a thing or not; and there is the end of it.\n\nWe formed a park in the principal place of the town; there were\nappointed two sentinels to do duty until the arrival of the gunners who\nshould relieve them and mount a proper guard, and then we were marched\noff to be shown our various quarters. For before a French regiment\narrives at a town others have ridden forward and have marked in chalk\nupon the doors how many men and how many horses are to be quartered here\nor there, and my quarters were in a great barn with a very high roof;\nbut my Ancient, upon whom I depended for advice, was quartered in a\nhouse, and I was therefore lonely.\n\nWe groomed our horses, ate our great midday meal, and were free for a\ncouple of hours to wander about the place. It is a garrison, and, at\nthat time, it was full of cavalry, with whom we fraternised; but the\nexperiment was a trifle dangerous, for there is always a risk of a\nquarrel when regiments meet as there is with two dogs, or two of any\nother kind of lively things.\n\nThen came the evening, and very early, before it was dark, I was asleep\nin my clothes in some straw, very warm; but I was so lazy that I had not\neven taken off my belt or sword. And that was the end of the first day's\nmarching.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SEA-WALL OF THE WASH\n\n\nThe town of Wisbeach is very like the town of Boston. It stands upon a\nriver which is very narrow and which curves, and in which there rises\nand falls a most considerable tide, and which is bounded by slimy wooden\nsides. Here, as at Boston, the boats cannot turn round; if they come in\nfrontways they have to go out backwards, like Mevagissey bees: an\nawkward harbour.\n\nAs I sat there in the White Hart, waiting for steak and onions, I read\nin a book descriptive of the place that a whale had come to Wisbeach\nonce, and I considered that a whale coming up to Wisbeach on a tide\nwould certainly stay there; not indeed for the delights of the town (of\nwhich I say nothing), but because there would be no room to turn round;\nand a whale cannot swim backwards. The only fish that can swim backwards\nis an eel. This I have proved by observation, and I challenge any\nfisherman to deny it.\n\nSo much for Wisbeach, which stands upon the River Nene or Nen, which is\nthe last of the towns defended by the old sea-wall--which is the third\nof the Fen ports--the other two being Boston and Lynn, which is served\nby two lines of railway and which has two stations.\n\nVery early next morning, and by one of these stations, another man and I\ntook train to a bridge called Sutton Bridge, where one can cross the\nRiver Nen, and where (according to the map) one can see both the\nsea-walls, the old and the new. It was my plan to walk along the shore\nof the Wash right across the flats to Lynn, and so at last perhaps\ncomprehend the nature of this curious land.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen I got to Sutton Bridge I discovered it to be a monstrous thing of\niron standing poised upon a huge pivot in mid-stream. It bore the\nrailway and the road together. It was that kind of triumphant\nengineering which once you saw only in England, but which now you will\nsee all over the world. It was designed to swing open on its central\npivot to let boats go up the River Nen, and then to come back exactly to\nits place with a clang; but when we got to it we found it neither one\nthing nor the other. It was twisted just so much that the two parts of\nthe roads (the road on the bridge and the road on land) did not join.\n\nWas a boat about to pass? No. Why was it open thus? A man was cleaning\nit. The bridge is not as big as the Tower Bridge, but it is very big,\nand the man was cleaning it with a little rag. He was cleaning the under\npart, the mechanisms and contraptions that can only be got at when the\nbridge is thus ajar. He cleaned without haste and without exertion, and\nas I watched him I considered the mightiness of the works of Man\ncontrasted with His Puny Frame. I also asked him when I should pass, but\nhe answered nothing.\n\nAs we thus waited men gathered upon either side--men of all characters\nand kinds, men holding bicycles, men in carts, afoot, on horseback,\nvigorous men and feeble, old men, women also and little children, and\nyouths witless of life, and innocent young girls; they gathered and\nincreased, they became as numerous as leaves, they stretched out their\nhands in a desire for the further shore: but the river ran between.\n\nThen, as being next the gate, I again called out: When might we pass? A\nFenland man who was on duty there doing nothing said, I could pass when\nthe bridge was shut again. I said: When would that be? He said: Could I\nnot see that the man was cleaning the bridge? I said that, contrasting\nthe bridge with him and his little rag, he might go on from now to the\nDisestablishment of the English Church before he had done; but as for\nme, I desired to cross, and so did all that multitude.\n\nWithout grace they shut the bridge for us, the gate opened of itself,\nand in a great clamorous flood, like an army released from a siege, we\npoured over, all of us, rejoicing into Wringland; for so is called this\nflat, reclaimed land, which stands isolated between the Nen and the\nOuse.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWas I not right in saying when I wrote about Ely that the corner of a\ncorner of England is infinite, and can never be exhausted?\n\nAlong the cut which takes the Nen out to sea, then across some level\nfields, and jumping a ditch or two, one gets to the straight, steep, and\nhigh dyke which protects the dry land and cuts off the plough from the\nsea marshes. When I had climbed it and looked out over endless flats to\nthe sails under the brune of the horizon I understood the Fens.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNowhere that I have been to in the world does the land fade into the sea\nso inconspicuously.\n\nThe coasts of western England are like the death of a western man in\nbattle--violent and heroic. The land dares all, and plunges into a noisy\nsea. This coast of Eastern England is like the death of one of these\neastern merchants here--lethargic, ill-contented, drugged with ease. The\ndry land slips, and wallows into a quiet, very shallow water, confused\nwith a yellow thickness and brackish with the weight of inland water\nbehind.\n\nI have heard of the great lakes, especially of the marshes at the mouth\nof the Volga, in the Caspian, where the two elements are for miles\nindistinguishable, and where no one can speak of a shore; but here the\nthing is more marvellous, because it is the true sea. You have, I say,\nthe true sea, with great tides, and bearing ships, and seaports to which\nthe ships can go; and on the other side you have, inhabited, an ancient\nland. There should be a demarcation between them, a tide mark or limit.\nThere is nothing. You cannot say where one begins and the other ends.\nOne does not understand the Fens until one has seen that shore.\n\nThe sand and the mud commingle. The mud takes on little tufts of salt\ngrass barely growing under the harsh wind. The marsh is cut and wasted\ninto little islands covered at every high tide, except, perhaps, the\nextreme of the neaps. Down on that level, out from the dyke to the\nuncertain line of the water, you cannot walk a hundred yards without\nhaving to cross a channel more or less deep, a channel which the working\nof the muddy tides has scoured up into the silt and ooze of the sodden\nland. These channels are yards deep in slime, and they ramify like the\ntwisted shoots of an old vine. Were you to make a map of them as they\nengrave this desolate waste it would look like the fine tortuous cracks\nthat show upon antique enamel, or the wandering of threads blown at\nrandom on a woman's work-table by the wind.\n\nThere are miles and miles of it right up to the EMBANKMENT, the great\nand old SEA-WALL, which protects the houses of men. You have but to\neliminate that embankment to imagine what the whole countryside must\nhave been like before it was raised, and the meaning of the Fens becomes\nclear to you. The Fens were long ago but the continuation inland of this\nsea-morass. The tide channels of the marsh were all of one kind, though\nthey differed so much in size. Some of these channels were small without\nname; some a little larger, and these had a local name; others were a\nlittle larger again, and worthy to be called rivers--the Ouse, the Nen,\nthe Welland, the Glen, the Witham. But, large or small, they were\nnothing, all of them, but the scouring of tide-channels in the light and\nsodden slime. It was the high tide that drowned all this land, the low\ntide that drained it; and wherever a patch could be found just above the\ninfluence of the tide or near enough to some main channel for the rush\nand swirl of the water to drain the island, there the villages grew.\nWherever such a patch could be found men built their first homes.\nSometimes, before men civic, came the holy hermits. But man, religious,\nor greedy, or just wandering, crept in after each inundation and began\nto tame the water and spread out even here his slow, interminable\nconquest. So Wisbeach, so March, so Boston grew, and so--the oldest of\nthem all--the Isle of Ely.\n\nThe nature of the country (a nature at which I had but guessed whenever\nbefore this I had wandered through it, and which I had puzzled at as I\nviewed its mere history) was quite clear, now that I stood upon the wall\nthat fenced it in from the salt water. It was easy to see not only what\njudgments had been mistaken, but also in what way they had erred. One\ncould see why and how the homelessness of the place had been\nexaggerated. One could see how the level was just above (not, as in\nHolland, below) the mean of the tides. One could discover the manner in\nwhich communication from the open sea was possible. The deeps lead out\nthrough the sand; they are but continuations under water of that\ntide-scouring which is the note of all the place inland, and out, far\nout, we could see the continuation of the river-beds, and at their\nmouths far into the sea, the sails.\n\nA man sounding as he went before the north-east wind was led by force\ninto the main channels. He was \"shepherded\" into Lynn River or Wisbeach\nRiver or Boston River, according as he found the water shoaler to one\nside or other of his boat. So must have come the first Saxon pirates\nfrom the mainland: so (hundreds of years later) came here our portion of\nthat swarm of Pagans, which all but destroyed Europe; so centuries\nbefore either of them, in a time of which there is no record, the\nignorant seafaring men from the east and the north must have come right\nup into our island, as the sea itself creeps right up into the land\nthrough these curious crevices and draughts in the Fenland wall.\n\nMen--at least the men of our race--have made everything for themselves;\nand they will never cease. They continue to extend and possess. It is\nnot only the architecture; it is the very landscape of Europe which has\nbeen made by Europeans. In what way did we begin to form this difficult\nplace, which is neither earth nor water, and in which we might have\ndespaired? It was conquered by human artifice, of course, somewhat as\nFrisia and the Netherlands, and, as we may believe, the great bay of the\nCotentin were conquered; but it has certain special characters of its\nown, and these again are due to the value in this place of the tides,\nand to the absence of those natural dykes of sand which were, a thousand\nyears ago, the beginnings of Holland.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTwo methods, working side by side, have from the beginning of human\nhabitation reclaimed the Fens. The first has been the canalisation, the\nfencing in of the tideways; the second has been the banking out of the\ngeneral sea. The spring tides covered much of this land, and when they\nretired left it drowned. Against their universal advancing sheet of\nwater a bank could be made. Such a bank cut off the invasion of the\nhundreds of runnels, small and great, by which the more ordinary tides\nthat could not cover the surface had yet crept into the soil and soaked\nit through.\n\nWhen such a bank had been built, gates, as it were, permitted the water\nto spend its force and also to use its ebb and flow for the draining of\nthe land beyond. The gates which let the tide pour up and down the main\nways became the new mouths of the main rivers; inland the courses of the\nrivers (which now took all the sea and thus became prodigious) were\ncarefully guarded. Even before trenches were dug to drain the fields\naround, earth was thrown up on either side of the rivers to confine them\neach to one permanent channel; nor did the level of the rivers rise, or\ntheir beds gets clogged; the strength of the tide sufficed for the\ndeepening of their channels. Into the rivers so fortified the other\nwaterways of the Fens were conducted.\n\nBy these methods alone much of the land was rendered habitable and\nsubject to the plough. Probably these methods were enough to make it all\nit was in the Middle Ages. It was only far later, almost in our own\ntime, that water was gathered by trenches in the lowland beneath the\nrivers and pumped out artificially with mills; nor is it quite certain\neven now that this method (borrowed from Holland) is the best; for the\nland, as I have said, is above and not below the sea.\n\nOf these words, whose tradition is immemorial, the greatest, of course,\nare the sea-walls.\n\nPerhaps the river-walls came first, but the great bank which limited\nand protected the land against the sea is also older than any history.\n\nIt is called Roman, and relics of Rome have been found in it, but it has\nnot the characteristic of Roman work. It runs upon no regular lines; its\ncontour is curved and variable. It is surely far older than the Roman\noccupation. Earth, heaped and beaten hard, is the most enduring of\nthings; the tumuli all over England have outlasted even the monoliths,\nand the great defensive mounds at Norwich and at Oxford are stronger and\nclearer cut than anything that the Middle Ages have left. This bank,\nwhich first made Fenland, still stands most conspicuous. You may follow\nit from the Nene above Sutton Bridge right over to Lynn River, and again\nnorthward from Sutton Bridge (or rather, from the ferry above it) right\nround _outside_ Long Sutton and Holbeach, and by Forsdyke Bridge and\n_outside_ Swyneshead; everywhere it encloses and protects the old\nparishes, and everywhere seaward of it the names of the fields mark the\nnewest of endeavours.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe returned from a long wandering upon the desolate edges of the sea to\nthe bank which we proposed to follow right round to the mouth of the\nOuse: a bank that runs not straight, but in great broken lines, as in\nold-fashioned fortification, and from which far off upon the right one\nsees the famous churches of the Wringland, far off upon the left a hint\nbeyond the marshes and the sands of the very distant open sea.\n\nA gale had risen with the morning, and while it invigorated the\ntravellers in these wastes it seemed to increase their loneliness, for\nit broke upon nothing, and it removed the interest of the eye from the\nmonotonous sad land to the charge and change of the torn sky above, but\nin a sense also it impelled us, as though we were sailing before it as\nit swept along the edge of the bank and helped us to forget the\ninterminable hours.\n\nThe birds for whom this estuary is a kind of sanctuary and a place of\nsecure food in all weathers, the birds swept out in great flocks over\nthe flats towards the sea. They were the only companionship afforded to\nus upon this long day, and they had, or I fancied they had, in their\ndemeanour a kind of contempt for the rare human beings they might see,\nas though knowing how little man could do upon those sands. They fed all\ntogether upon the edge of the water, upon the edge of the falling tide,\nvery far off, making long bands of white that mixed with the tiny\nbreaking wavelets. Now and then they rose in bodies, and so rising\ndisappeared; but as they would turn and wheel against the wind, seeking\nsome other ground, they sent from moment to moment flashes of delicate\nand rare light from the great multitude of their wings. I know of\nnothing to which one may compare these glimpses of evanescent shining\nbut these two things--the flash of a sword edge and the rapid turning in\nhuman hands of a diaphanous veil held in the light. It shone or glinted\nfor a moment, then they would all wheel together and it disappeared.\n\nSo, watching them as a kind of marvel, we saw distant across the sea a\nfaint blue tower, and recognised it for Boston Stump, so many, many\nmiles away.\n\nBut for the birds and this landmark, which never left us, all the length\nof the dyke was empty of any sight save the mixing of the sea and the\nland. Then gradually the heights in Norfolk beyond grew clearer, a\nfurther shore narrowed the expanse of waters, and we came to the river\nmouth of the Ouse, and caught sight, up the stream, of the houses of a\ntown.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CERDAGNE\n\n\nThere is a part of Europe of which for the moment most people have not\nheard, but which in a few years everybody will know; so it is well worth\ntelling before it is changed what it is like to-day. It is called the\nCerdagne. It is a very broad valley, stretching out between hills whose\nheight is so incredible--or at least, whose appearance of height is so\nincredible--that when they are properly painted no one will believe them\nto be true. Indeed, I know a man who painted them just as they are, and\nthose who saw the picture said it was fantastic and out of Nature, like\nTurner's drawings. But those who had been with him and had seen the\nplace, said that somehow he had just missed the effect of height.\n\nIt is remarkable that in any country, even if one does not know that\ncountry well, what is unusual to the country strikes the traveller at\nonce. And so it is with the Cerdagne. For all the valleys of the\nPyrenees except this one are built upon the same plan. They are deep\ngorges, narrowing in two places to gates or profound corridors, one of\nthese places being near the crest and one near the plain; and down these\nvalleys fall violent torrents, and in them there is only room for tiny\nvillages or very little towns, squeezed in between the sheer surfaces of\nthe rock or the steep forests.\n\nSo it is with the Valley of Laruns, and with that of Meul\u00e9on, and with\nthat of Luz, and with those of the two Bagn\u00e8res, and with the Val\nd'Aran, and with the Val d'Esera, and with the very famous Valley of\nAndorra.\n\nWith valleys so made the mountains are indeed more awful than they might\nbe in the Alps: but you never see them standing out and apart, and the\nmastering elevation of the Pyrenees is not apprehended until you come to\nthe cirque or hollow at the end of each valley just underneath the main\nridge; by that time you have climbed so far that you have halved the\nheight of the barrier.\n\nBut the Cerdagne, unlike all the other valleys, is as broad as half a\ncounty, and is full of towns and fields and men and mules and slow\nrivulets and corn; so, standing upon either side and looking to the\nother, you see all together and in the large its mountain boundaries. It\nis like the sight of the Grampians from beyond Strathmore, but very much\nmore grand. Moreover, as no one has written sufficiently about it to\nprepare the traveller for what he is to see (and in attempting to do so\nhere I am probably doing wrong, but a man must write down what he has\nseen), the Cerdagne breaks upon him quite unexpectedly, and his descent\ninto that wealthy plain is the entry into a new world. He may have\nlearnt the mountains by heart, as we had, in many stumbling marches and\nmany nights slept out beneath the trees, and many crossings of the main\nchain by those precipitous cols which make the ridge of the Pyrenees\nmore like a paling than a mountain crest, but though he should know them\nthoroughly all the way from the Atlantic for two hundred miles, the\nCerdagne will only appear to him the more astonishing. It renews in any\nman however familiar he may be with great mountains, the impressions of\nthat day when he first saw the distant summits and thought them to be\nclouds.\n\nApart from all this, the Cerdagne is full of a lively interest, because\nit preserves far better than any other Pyrenean valley those two\nPyrenean things--the memory of European history and the intense local\nspirit of the Vals.\n\nThe memory of European history is to be seen in the odd tricks which the\nfrontier plays. It was laid down by the commissioners of Mazarin two\nhundred and fifty years ago, and instead of following the watershed\n(which would leave the Cerdagne all Spanish politically as it is Catalan\nby language and position) it crosses the valley from one side to\nanother, leaving the top end of it and the sources of its rivers under\nFrench control.\n\nThat endless debate as to whether race or government will most affect a\npeople can here be tested, though hardly decided. The villages are\nSpanish, the hour of meals is Spanish, and the wine is Spanish wine. But\nthe clocks keep time, and the streets are swept, and, oddest of all, the\ncooking is French cooking. The people are Spanish in that they are slow\nto serve you or to find you a mount or to show you the way, but they are\nFrench in that they are punctual in the hour at which they have promised\nto do these things; and they are Spanish in the shapes of their ricks\nand the nature of their implements, but French in the aspect of their\nfields. One might also discuss--it would be most profitable of\nall--where they are Spanish and where they are French in their\nobservance of religion.\n\nThis freak which the frontier plays in cutting so united a countryside\ninto two by an imaginary line is further emphasised by an island of\nSpanish territory which has been left stranded, as it were, in the midst\nof the valley. It is called Llivia, and is about as large as a large\nEnglish country parish, with a small country town in the middle.\n\nOne comes across the fields from villages where the signs and villagers\nand the very look of the surface of the road are French; one suddenly\nnotices Spanish soldiers, Spanish signs, and Spanish prices in the\nstreets of the little place; one leaves it, and in five minutes one is\nin France again. It is connected with its own country by a neutral road,\nbut it is an island of territory all the same, and the reason that it\nwas so left isolated is very typical of the old regime, with its solemn\nlegal pedantry, which we in England alone preserve in all Western\nEurope. For the treaty which marked the limits here ceded to the French\n\"the valley and all its villages.\" The Spaniards pleaded that Llivia was\nnot a village but a town, and their plea was admitted.\n\nI began by saying that this wide basin of land, with its strong people\nand its isolated traditions, though it was so little known to-day, would\nsoon be too well known. So it will be, and the reason is this, that the\nvery low pass at one end of it will soon be crossed by a railway. It is\nthe only low pass in the Pyrenees, and it is so gradual and even (upon\nthe Spanish side) that the railway will everywhere be above ground.\nWithin perhaps five years it will be for the Pyrenees what the Brenner\nis for the Alps, and when that is done any one who has read this may go\nand see for himself whether it is not true that from that plain at\nevening the frontier ridge of Andorra seems to be the highest thing in\nthe world.\n\n\n\n\nCARCASSONNE\n\n\nCarcassonne differs from other monumental towns in this: that it\npreserves exactly the aspect of many centuries up to a certain moment,\nand from that moment has \"set,\" and has suffered no further change. You\nsee and touch, as you walk along its ramparts, all the generations from\nthat crisis in the fifth century when the public power was finally\ndespaired of--and after which each group of the Western Empire began to\nsee to its own preservation--down to that last achievement of the\nthirteenth, when medieval civilisation had reached its full flower and\nwas ready for the decline that followed the death of St. Louis and the\nextinction of the German phantasy of empire.\n\nNo other town can present so vivid and clean-cut a fossil of the seven\nhundred years into which poured and melted all the dissolution of\nantiquity, and out of which was formed or chrystallised the highly\nspecialised diversity of our modern Europe.\n\nIn the fascination of extreme age many English sites are richer;\nWinchester and Canterbury may be quoted from among a hundred. In the\nsuperimposition of age upon age of human history, Arles and Rome are far\nmore surprising. In historic continuity most European towns surpass it,\nfrom Paris, whose public justice, worship, and market have kept to the\nsame site for quite sixteen centuries, to London, of which the city at\nleast preserves upon three sides the Roman limit. But no town can of its\nnature give as does Carcassonne this overwhelming impression of survival\nor resurrection.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe attitude and position of Carcassonne enforce its character. Up\nabove the river, but a little set back from the valley, right against\nthe dawn as you come to it from Toulouse through the morning, stands a\nlong, steep, and isolated rock, the whole summit of which from the sharp\ncliff on the north to that other on the south is doubled in height by\nwhat seems one vast wall--and more than twenty towers. Indeed, it is at\nsuch a time, in early morning, and best in winter when the frost defines\nand chisels every outline, that Carcassonne should be drawn. You then\nsee it in a band of dark blue-grey, all even in texture, serrated and\nbattlemented and towered, with the metallic shining of the dawn behind\nit.\n\nSo to have seen it makes it very difficult to write of it or even to\npaint; what one wishes to do is rather to work it out in enamel upon a\nsurface of bronze. This rock, wholly covered with the works of the city,\nstands looking at the Pyrenees and holding the only level valley between\nthe Mediterranean and the Garonne, and even if one had read nothing\nconcerning it one would understand why it has filled all the legends of\nthe return of armies from Spain, why Victor Hugo could not rest from the\nmemory of it, and why it is so strongly woven in with the story of\nCharlemagne.\n\nThere is another and better reason for the quality of Carcassonne, and\nthat is the act, to which I can recall no perfect parallel in Christian\nhistory, by which St. Louis turned what had been a living town into a\nmere stronghold. Every inhabitant of Carcassonne was transferred, not to\nsuburbs, but right beyond the river, a mile and more away, to the site\nof that delightful town which is the Carcassonne of maps and railways,\nthe place where the seventeenth century meets you in graceful ornaments,\nand where is, to my certain knowledge, the best inn south of parallel\n45. St. Louis turned the rock into a mere stronghold, strengthened it,\nbuilt new towers, and curtained them into that unsurpassable masonry of\nthe central Middle Ages which you may yet admire in Aigues-Mortes and in\nCarnarvon.\n\nThis political act, the removal of a whole city, may have been\naccomplished in many other places; it is certainly recorded of many:\nbut, for the moment at least, I can remember none except Carcassonne in\nwhich its consequences have remained. To this many causes have\ncontributed, but chiefly this, that the new town was transferred to the\nopen plain from the trammels of a narrow plateau, just at the moment\nwhen all the towns of Western Europe were growing and breaking their\nbonds; just after the principal cities of north-western Europe had got\ntheir charters, and when Paris (the typical municipality of that age as\nof our own) was trebling its area and its population.\n\nThe transference of the population once accomplished, the rock and\ntowers of Carcassonne ceased to change and to grow. Humanity was gone.\nThe fortress was still of great value in war; the Black Prince attempted\nits destruction, and it is only within living memory that it ceased to\nbe set down on maps (and in Government offices!) as a fortified place:\nbut the necessity for immediate defence, and the labour which would have\nremodelled it, had disappeared. There had disappeared also that eager\nand destructive activity which accompanies any permanent gathering of\nFrench families. The new town on the plain changed perpetually, and is\nchanging still. It has lost almost everything of the Middle Ages; it\ncarries, by a sort of momentum, a flavour of Louis XIV, but the masons\nare at it as they are everywhere, from the Channel to the Mediterranean;\nfor to pull down and rebuild is the permanent recreation of the French.\nThe rock remains. It is put in order whenever a stone falls out of\nplace--no one of weight has talked nonsense here against restoration,\nfor the sense of the past is too strong--but though it is minutely and\ncontinually repaired, Old Carcassonne does not change. There is no other\nset of walls in Europe of which this is true.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWalking round the circuit of these walls and watching from their height\nthe long line of the mountains, one is first held by that modern\nsubject, the landscape, or that still more modern fascination of great\nhills. Next one feels what the Middle Ages designed of mass and weight\nand height, and wonders by what accident of the mind they so succeeded\nin suggesting infinity: one remembers Beauvais, which is infinitely high\nat evening, and the tower of Portrut, which seems bigger than any hill.\n\nBut when these commoner emotions are passed, one comes upon a very\ndifferent thing. A little tower there, jutting out perilously from the\nwall, shows three courses of a _small red brick_ set in a mortar-like\nstone. When I saw this kind of building I went close up and touched it\nwith my hand. It was Roman. I knew the signal well. I had seen that\nbrick, and picked it loose from an Arab stable on the edge of the\nSahara, and I had seen it jutting through moss on the high moors of\nNorthumberland. I know a man who reverently brought home to Sussex such\nanother, which he had found unbroken far beyond Damascus upon the Syrian\nsand.\n\nIt is easy to speak of the Empire and to say that it established its\norder from the Tyne to the Euphrates; but when one has travelled alone\nand on foot up and down the world and seen its vastness and its\ncomplexity, and yet everywhere the unity even of bricks in their\ncourses, then one begins to understand the name of Rome.\n\n\n\n\nLYNN\n\n\nEvery man that lands in Lynn feels all through him the antiquity and the\ncall of the town; but especially if he comes, as I came in with another\nman in springtime, from the miles and miles of emptiness and miles of\nbending grass and the shouting of the wind. After that morning, in which\none had been a little point on an immense plane, with the gale not only\nabove one, as it commonly is, but all around one as it is at sea; and\nafter having steeped one's mind in the peculiar loneliness which haunts\na stretch of ill-defined and wasted shore, the narrow, varied, and\nunordered streets of the port enhance the creations of man and emphasise\nhis presence.\n\nWords so few are necessarily obscure. Let me expand them. I mean that\nthe unexpected turning of the ways in such a port is perpetually\nrevealing something new; that the little spaces frame, as it were, each\nunexpected sight: thus at the end of a street one will catch a patch of\nthe Fens beyond the river, a great moving sail, a cloud, or the\nsculptured corner of an excellent house.\n\nThe same history also that permitted continual encroachment upon the\npublic thoroughfares and that built up a gradual High Street upon the\nline of some cow-track leading from the fields to the ferry, the spirit\nthat everywhere permitted the powerful or the cunning to withstand\nauthority--that history (which is the history of all our little English\ntowns) has endowed Lynn with an endless diversity.\n\nIt is not only that the separate things in such towns are delightful,\nnor only that one comes upon them suddenly, but also that these separate\nthings are so many. They have characters as men have. There is nothing\nof that repetition which must accompany the love of order and the\npresence of strong laws. The similar insistent forms which go with a\nstrong civilisation, as they give it majesty, so they give it also\ngloom, and a heavy feeling of finality: these are quite lacking here in\nEngland, where the poor have for so long submitted to the domination of\nthe rich, and the rich have dreaded and refused a central government.\nEverything that goes with the power of individuals has added peculiarity\nand meaning to all the stones of Lynn. Moreover, a quality whose absence\nall men now deplore was once higher in England than anywhere else, save,\nperhaps, in the northern Italian hills. I mean ownership, and what comes\nfrom ownership--the love of home.\n\nYou can see the past effect of ownership and individuality in Lynn as\nclearly as you can catch affection or menace in a human voice. The\noutward expression is most manifest, and to pass in and out along the\nlanes in front of the old houses inspires in one precisely those\nemotions which are aroused by a human crowd.\n\nAll the roofs of Lynn and all its pavements are worthy (as though they\nwere living beings) of individual names.\n\nAlong the river shore, from the race of the ebb that had so nearly\ndrowned me many years before, I watched the walls that mark the edge of\nthe town against the Ouse, and especially that group towards which the\nferry-boat was struggling against the eddy and tumble of the tide.\n\nThey were walls of every age, not high, brick of a dozen harmonious\ntones, with the accidents, corners, and breaches of perhaps seven\nhundred years. Beyond, to the left, down the river, stood the masts in\nthe new docks that were built to preserve the trade of this difficult\nport. Up-river, great new works of I know not what kind stood like a\nbastion against the plain; and in between ran these oldest bits of Lynn,\nsomnolescent and refreshing--permanent.\n\nThe lanes up from the Ouse when I landed I found to be of a slow and\nnatural growth, with that slight bend to them that comes, I believe,\nfrom the drying of fishing-nets. For it is said that courts of this\nkind grew up in our sea-towns all round our eastern and the southern\ncoast in such a manner. It happened thus.\n\nThe town would begin upon the highest of the bank, for it was flatter\nfor building, drier and easier to defend than that part next to the\nwater. Down from the town to the shore the fishermen would lay out their\nnets to dry. How nets look when they are so laid, their narrowness and\nthe curve they take, everybody knows. Then on the spaces between the\nnets shanties would be built, or old boats turned upside down for\nshelter, so that the curing of fish and the boiling of tar and the\nserving and parcelling of ropes could be done under cover. Then as the\nnumber of people grew, the squatters' land got value, and houses were\nraised (you will find many small freeholds in such rows to this day),\nbut the lines of the net remained in the alley-ways between the houses.\n\nAll this I was once told by an old man who helped me to take my boat\ndown Breydon. He wore trousers of a brick red, and the stuff of them as\nthick as boards, and had on also a very thick jersey and a cap of fur.\nHe was shaved upon his lips and chin, but all round the rest of his face\nwas a beard. He smoked a tiny pipe, quite black, and upon matters within\nhis own experience he was a great liar; but upon matters of tradition I\nwas willing to believe him.\n\nWithin the town, when I had gained it from that lane which has been the\nferry-lane, I suppose, since the ferry began, age and distinction were\neverywhere.\n\nWhere else, thought I, in England could you say that nine years would\nmake no change? Whether, indeed, the Globe had that same wine of the\nnineties I could not tell, for the hour was not congenial to wine; but\nif it has some store of its Burgundy left from those days it must be\nbetter still by now, for Burgundy wine takes nine years to mature, for\nnine years remains in the plenitude of its powers, and for nine years\nmore declines into an honourable age; and this is also true of claret,\nbut in claret it goes by sevens.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe open square of the town, which one looks at from the Globe, gives\none a mingled pleasure of reminiscence and discovery. It breaks on one\nabruptly. It is as wide as the pasture field, and all the houses are\nample and largely founded. Indeed, throughout this country,\nelbow-room--the sense that there is space enough and to spare in such\nflats and under an open sky--has filled the minds of builders. You may\nsee it in all the inland towns of the Fens; and one found it again here\nupon the further bank, upon the edge of the Fens; for though Lynn is\njust off the Fens, yet it looks upon their horizon and their sky, and\nbelongs to them in spirit.\n\nIn this large and comfortable square a very steadfast and most\nconsiderable English bank is to be discovered. It is of honest brown\nbrick! its architecture is of the plainest; its appearance is such that\nits credit could never fail, and that the house alone by its presence\ncould conduct a dignified business for ever. The rooms in it are so many\nand so great that the owners of such a bank (having become princes by\nits success) could inhabit them with a majesty worthy of their new\ntitle. But who lives above his shop since Richardson died? And did old\nRichardson? Lord knows!... Anyhow, the bank is glorious, and it is but\none of the fifty houses that I saw in Lynn.\n\nThus, in the same street as the Globe, was a fa\u00e7ade of stone. If it was\nGeorgian, it was very early Georgian, for it was relieved with ornaments\nof a delicate and accurate sort, and the proportions were exactly\nsatisfying to the eye that looked on it. The stone also was of that kind\n(Portland stone, I think) which goes black and white with age, and which\nis better suited than any other to the English climate.\n\nIn another house near the church I saw a roof that might have been a\nroof for a town. It covered the living part and the stables, and the\nouthouse and the brewhouse, and the barns, and for all I know the\npig-pens and the pigeons' as well. It was a benediction of a roof--a\nroof traditional, a roof patriarchal, a roof customary, a roof of\npermanence and unity, a roof that physically sheltered and spiritually\nsustained, a roof majestic, a roof eternal. In a word, it was a roof\ncatholic.\n\nAnd what, thought I, is paid yearly in this town for such a roof as\nthat? I do not know; but I know of another roof at Goudhurst, in Kent,\nwhich would have cost me less than \u00a3100 a year, only I could not get it\nfor love or money.\n\nThen is also in Lynn a Custom House not very English, but very\nbeautiful. The faces carved upon it were so vivid that I could not but\nbelieve them to have been carved in the Netherlands, and from this\nCustom House looks down the pinched, unhappy face of that narrow\ngentleman whom the great families destroyed--James II.\n\nThere is also in Lynn what I did not know was to be seen out of\nSussex--a Tudor building of chipped flints, and on it the mouldering\narms of Elizabeth.\n\nThe last Gothic of this Bishop's borough which the King seized from the\nChurch clings to chance houses in little carven masks and occasional\nogives: there is everywhere a feast for whatever in the mind is curious,\nsearching, and reverent, and over the town, as over all the failing\nports of our silting eastern seaboard, hangs the air of a great past\ntime, the influence of the Baltic and the Lowlands.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFor these ancient places do not change, they permit themselves to stand\napart and to repose and--by paying that price--almost alone of all\nthings in England they preserve some historic continuity, and satisfy\nthe memories in one's blood.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo having come round to the Ouse again, and to the edge of the Fens at\nLynn, I went off at random whither next it pleased me to go.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GUNS\n\n\nI had slept perhaps seven hours when a lantern woke me, flashed in my\nface, and I wondered confusedly why there was straw in my bed; then I\nremembered that I was not in bed at all, but on manoeuvres. I looked up\nand saw a sergeant with a bit of paper in his hand. He was giving out\norders, and the little light he carried sparkled on the gold of his\ngreat dark-blue coat.\n\n\"You, the Englishman,\" he said (for that was what they called me as a\nnickname), \"go with the gunners to-day. Where is Labb\u00e9?\"\n\nLabb\u00e9 (that man by profession a cook, by inclination a marquis, and now\nby destiny a very good driver of guns) the day before had gone on foot.\nTo-day he was to ride. I pointed him out where he still lay sleeping.\nThe sergeant stirred him about with his foot, and said, \"Pacte and\nBasilique\"; and Labb\u00e9 grunted. In this simple way every one knew his\nduty--Labb\u00e9 that he had another hour's sleep and more, and that he was\nto take my horses: I, that I must rise and get off to the square.\n\nThen the sergeant went out of the barn, cursing the straw on his spurs,\nand I lit a match and brushed down my clothes and ran off to the square.\nIt was not yet two in the morning.\n\nThe gunners were drawn up in a double line, and we reserve drivers stood\nseparate (there were only a dozen of us), and when they formed fours we\nwere at the tail. There was a lieutenant with us and a sergeant, also\ntwo bombardiers--all mounted; and so we went off, keeping step till we\nwere out of the town, and then marching as we chose and thanking God for\nthe change. For it is no easy matter for drivers to march with gunners;\ntheir swords impede them, and though the French drivers have not the\nridiculous top-boots that theatricalise other armies, yet even their\nsimple boots are not well suited for the road.\n\nThis custom of sending forward reserve drivers on foot, in rotation, has\na fine name to it. It is called \"Haut-le-pied,\" \"High-the-foot,\" and\nmust therefore be old.\n\nA little way out of the town we had leave to sing, and we began, all\ntogether, one of those long and charming songs with which the French\nsoldiery make-believe to forget the tedium of the road and the hardship\nof arms.\n\nNow, if a man desired to answer once and for all those pedants who\nrefuse to understand the nature of military training (both those who\nmake a silly theatre-show of it and those who make it hideous and\ndiabolical), there could be no better way than to let him hear the songs\nof soldiers. In the French service, at least, these songs are a whole\nexpression of the barrack-room; its extreme coarseness, its steady and\nperpetual humour, its hatred of the hard conditions of discipline; and\nalso these songs continually portray the distant but delightful picture\nof things--I mean of things rare and far off--which must lie at the back\nof men's minds when they have much work to do with their hands and much\nliving in the open air and no women to pour out their wine.\n\nMoreover, these songs have another excellent quality. They show all\nthrough that splendid unconsciousness of the soldier, that inability in\nhim to see himself from without, or to pose as civilians always think\nand say he poses.\n\nWe sang that morning first, the chief and oldest of the songs. It dates\nfrom the Flemish wars of Louis XIV, and is called \"Aupr\u00e8s de ma Blonde.\"\nEvery one knows the tune. Then we sang \"The Song of the Miller,\" and\nthen many other songs, each longer than the last. For these songs, like\nother lyrics, have it for an object to string out as many verses as\npossible in order to kill the endless straight roads and the weariness.\n\nWe had need to sing. No sun rose, but the day broke over an ugly plain\nwith hardly any trees, and that grey and wretched dawn came in with a\ncold and dispiriting rain unrefreshed by wind. Colson, who was a foolish\nlittle man (the son of a squire), marching by my side, wondered where\nand how we should be dried that day. The army was for ever producing\nproblems for Colson, and I was often his comforter. He liked to talk to\nme and hear about England, and the rich people and their security, and\nhow they never served as soldiers (from luxury), and how (what he could\nnot understand) the poor had a bargain struck with them by the rich\nwhereby they also need not serve. I could learn from him the meaning of\nmany French words which I did not yet know. He had some little\neducation; had I asked the more ignorant men of my battery, they would\nonly have laughed, but he had read, in common books, of the differences\nbetween nations, and could explain many things to me.\n\nColson, then, complaining of the rain, and wondering where he should get\ndried, I told him to consider not so much the happy English, but rather\nhis poor scabbard and how he should clean it after the march, and his\npoor clothes, all coated with mud, and needing an hour's brushing, and\nhis poor temper, which, if he did not take great care, would make him\ngrow up to be an anti-militarist and a byword.\n\nSo we wrangled, and it still rained. Our songs grew rarer, and there was\nat last no noise but the slush of all those feet beating the muddy road,\nand the occasional clank of metal as a scabbard touched some other\nsteel, or a slung carbine struck the hilt of a bayonet. It was well on\nin the morning when the guns caught us up and passed us; the drivers all\nshrouded in their coats and bending forward in the rain; the guns coated\nand splashed with thick mud, and the horses also threatened hours of\ngrooming. I looked mine up and down as Labb\u00e9 passed on them, and I\ngroaned, for it is a rule that a man grooms his own horses whether he\nhas ridden them or no, and after all, day in and day out, it works fair.\nThe guns disappeared into the mist of rain, and we went on through more\nhours of miserable tramping, seeing no spire ahead of us, and unable to\ncount on a long halt.\n\nStill, as we went, I noticed that we were on some great division,\nbetween provinces perhaps, or between river valleys, for in France there\nare many bare upland plateaus dividing separate districts; and it is a\nfeature of the country that the districts so divided have either formed\nseparate provinces in the past or, at any rate (even if they have not\nhad political recognition), have stood, and do still stand, for separate\nunits in French society. It was more apparent with every mile as we went\non that we were approaching new things. The plain was naked save for\nrare planted trees, and here and there, a long way off (on the horizon,\nit seemed) a farm or two, unprotected and alone.\n\nThe rain ceased, and the steady grey sky broke a little as we marched\non, still in silence, and by this time thirsty and a little dazed. A\nravine opened in a bare plateau, and we saw that it held a little\nvillage. They led us into it, down a short steep bit of road, and lined\nus up by a great basin of sparkling water, and every man was mad to\nbreak ranks and drink; but no one dared. The children of the village\ngathered in a little group and looked at us, and we envied their\nfreedom. When we had stood thus for a quarter of an hour or so, an\norderly came riding in all splashed, and his horse's coat rough with the\nrain and steaming up into the air. He came up to the lieutenant in\ncommand and delivered an order; then he rode away fast northward along\nthe ravine and out of the village. The lieutenant, when he had gone,\nformed us into a little column, and we, who had expected to dismiss at\nany moment, were full of anger, and were sullen to find that by some\nwretched order or other we had to take another hour of the road: first\nwe had to go back four miles along the road we had already come, and\nthen to branch off perpendicular to our general line of march, and (as\nit seemed to us) quite out of our way.\n\nIt is a difficult thing to move a great mass of men through a desolate\ncountry by small units and leave them dependent on the country, and it\nis rather wonderful that they do it so neatly and effect the junctions\nso well; but the private soldier, who stands for those little black\nblocks on the military map, has a boy's impatience in him; and a very\nwise man, if he wishes to keep an army in spirit, will avoid\ncounter-marching as much as he can, for--I cannot tell why--nothing\ntakes the heart out of a man like having to plod over again the very way\nhe has just come. So, when we had come to a very small village in the\nwaste and halted there, finding our guns and drivers already long\narrived, we made an end of a dull and meaningless day--very difficult to\ntell of, because the story is merely a record of fatigue. But in a diary\nof route everything must be set down faithfully; and so I have set down\nall this sodden and empty day.\n\nThat night I sat at a peasant's table and heard my four\nstable-companions understanding everything, and evidently in their world\nand at home, although they were conscripts. This turned me silent, and I\nsat away from the light, looking at the fire and drying myself by its\nlogs. As I heard their laughter I remembered Sussex and the woods above\nArun, and I felt myself to be in exile. Then we slept in beds, and the\ngoodwife had our tunics dry by morning, for she also had a son in the\nservice, who was a long way off at Lyons, and was not to return for two\nyears.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere are days in a long march when a man is made to do too much, and\nothers when he is made to do what seems meaningless, doubling backward\non his road, as we had done; there are days when he seems to advance\nvery little; but they are not days of repose, for they are full of\nhalting and doubts and special bits of work. Such a day had come to us\nwith the next dawn.\n\nThe reason of all these things--I mean, of the over-long marches, of the\ncounter-marches, and of the short days--was the complexity of the only\nplan by which a great number of men and guns can be taken from one large\nplace to another without confusion by the way--living, as they must do,\nupon the country, and finding at the end of every march water and hay\nfor the horses, food and some kind of shelter for the men. And this\nplan, as I have said before, consists (in a European country) in\ndividing your force, marching by roads more or less parallel, and\nconverging, after some days, on the object of the march.\n\nIt is evident that in a somewhat desolate region of small and distant\nhamlets the front will be broader and the columns smaller, but when a\nlarge town stands in the line of march, advantage will be taken of it to\nmass one's men.\n\nSuch a town was Bar-le-Duc, and it was because our battery was so near\nto it that this fourth day was a short march of less than eight miles.\n\nThey sent the gunners in early; we drivers started later than usual, and\nthe pace was smart at first under a happy morning sun, but still around\nus were the bare fields, all but treeless, and the road was part of the\nplain, not divided by hedges. The bombardier trotted by my side and told\nme of the glories of Rheims, which was his native town. He was a mild\nman, genial and good, and little apt for promotion. He interlarded his\nconversation with official remarks to show a zeal he never felt, telling\none man that his tracks were slack, and another that his led-horse was\nshirking, and after each official remark he returned up abeam of me to\ntell me more of the riches and splendour of Rheims. He chose me out for\nthis favour because I already knew the countryside of the upper\nChampagne, and had twice seen his city. He promised me that when we got\nour first leave from camp he would show me many sights in the town; but\nthis he said hoping that I would pay for the entertainment, as indeed I\ndid.\n\nWe did not halt, nor did we pass the gunners that morning; but when we\nhad gone about four miles or so the road began to descend through a wide\ngully, and we saw before us the secluded and fruitful valley of the\nMeuse. It is here of an even width for miles, bounded by regular low\nhills. We were coming down the eastern wall of that valley, and on the\nparallel western side a similar height, with similar ravines and\ngullies leading down to the river, bounded our narrow view. I caught the\ndistant sound of trumpets up there beyond us, and nearer was the\nunmistakable rumble of the guns. The clatter of horses below in the\nvalley road and the shouting of commands were the signs that the\nregiment was meeting. The road turned. On a kind of platform, just\nbefore it joined the main highway, a few feet above it, we halted to\nwait our order--and we saw the guns go by!\n\nOnly half the regiment was to halt at Bar-le-Duc. But six batteries,\nthirty-six guns, their men, horses, apparatus, forges, and waggons\noccupying and advancing in streams over a valley are a wonderful sight.\nClouds of dust and the noise of the metal woke the silent places of the\nMeuse, and sometimes river birds would rise and wheel in the air as the\nclamour neared them. Far off a lonely battery was coming down the\nwestern slope to join the throng in its order, and for some reason their\ntwo trumpets were still playing the march and lending to this great\ndisplay the unity of music. We dismounted and watched from the turf of\nthe roadside a pageant which the accident of an ordered and servile life\nafforded us; for it is true of armies that the compensation of their\ndrudgery and miserable subjection is the continual opportunity of these\nlarge emotions; and not only by their vastness and arrangement, but by\nthe very fact that they merge us into themselves, do armies widen the\nspirit of a man and give it communion with the majesty of great numbers.\nOne becomes a part of many men.\n\nThe seventh battery, with which we had little to do (for in quarters\nthey belonged to the furthest corner from our own), first came by and\npassed us, with that interminable repetition of similar things which is\nthe note of a force on the march, and makes it seem like a river\nflowing. We recognised it by the figure of one Chevalier, a major\nattached to them. He was an absent-minded man of whom many stories were\ntold--kindly, with a round face; and he wore eyeglasses, either for the\ndistinction they afforded or because he was short of sight. The seventh\npassed us, and their forge and waggon ended the long train. A\nregulation space between them and the next allowed the dust to lie a\nlittle, and then the ninth came by; we knew them well, because in\nquarters they were our neighbours. At their head was their captain,\nwhose name was Levy. He was a Jew, small, very sharp-featured, and a man\nwho worked astonishingly hard. He was very popular with his men, and his\nbattery was happy and boasted. He cared especially for their food, and\nwould go into their kitchen daily to taste the soup. He was also a\nsilent man. He sat his horse badly, bent and crouched, but his eyes were\nvery keen; and he again was a character of whom the men talked and told\nstories. I believe he was something of a mathematician; but we knew\nlittle of such things where our superiors were concerned.\n\nAs the ninth battery passed us we were given the order to mount, and\nknew that our place came next. The long-drawn _Ha-a-lte!_ and the lifted\nswords down the road contained for a while the batteries that were to\nfollow, and we filed out of our side road into the long gap they had\nleft us. Then, taking up the trot, ourselves, we heard the order passing\ndown infinitely till it was lost in the length of the road; the trumpets\ngalloped past us and formed at the head of the column; a much more\ntriumphant noise of brass than we had yet heard heralded us with a kind\nof insolence, and the whole train with its two miles and more of noisy\npower gloried into the old town of Bar-le-Duc, to the great joy of its\nyoung men and women at the windows, to the annoyance of the\nhouseholders, to the stupefaction of the old, and doubtless to the\nultimate advantage of the Republic.\n\nWhen we had formed park in the grey market-square, ridden our horses off\nto water at the river and to their quarters, cleaned kit and harness,\nand at last were free--that is, when it was already evening--Matthieu, a\nfriend of mine who had come by another road with his battery, met me\nstrolling on the bridge. Matthieu was of my kind, he had such a lineage\nas I had and such an education. We were glad to meet. He told me of his\nlast halting-place--Pagny--hidden on the upper river. It is the place\nwhere the houses of Luxembourg were buried, and some also of the great\nmen who fell when Henry V of England was fighting in the North, and when\non this flank the Eastern dukes were waging the Burgundian wars. It was\nnot the first time that the tumult of men in arms had made echoes along\nthe valley. Matthieu and I went off together to dine. He lent me a pin\nof his, a pin with a worked head, to pin my tunic with where it was\ntorn, and he begged me to give it back to him. But I have it still, for\nI have never seen him since; nor shall I see him, nor he me, till the\nGreat Day.\n\n\n\n\nTHE LOOE STREAM\n\n\nOf the complexity of the sea, and of how it is manifold, and of how it\nmixes up with a man, and may broaden or perfect him, it would be very\ntempting to write; but if one once began on this, one would be immeshed\nand drowned in the metaphysic, which never yet did good to man nor\nbeast. For no one can eat or drink the metaphysic, or take any\nsustenance out of it, and it has no movement or colour, and it does not\ngive one joy or sorrow; one cannot paint it or hear it, and it is too\nthin to swim about in. Leaving, then, all these general things, though\nthey haunt me and tempt me, at least I can deal little by little and\npicture by picture with that sea which is perpetually in my mind, and\nlet those who will draw what philosophies they choose. And the first\nthing I would like to describe is that of a place called the Looe\nStream, through which in a boat only the other day I sailed for the\nfirst time, noticing many things. When St. Wilfrid went through those\nbare heaths and coppices, which were called the forest of Anderida, and\nwhich lay all along under the Surrey Downs, and through which there was\na long, deserted Roman road, and on this road a number of little brutish\nfarms and settlements (for this was twelve hundred years ago), he came\nout into the open under the South Downs, and crossed my hills and came\nto the sea plain, and there he found a kind of Englishman more savage\nthan the rest, though Heaven knows there were none of them particularly\nrefined or gay. From these Englishmen the noble people of Sussex are\ndescended.\n\nAlready the rest of England had been Christian a hundred years when St.\nWilfrid came down into the sea plain, and found, to his astonishment,\nthis sparse and ignorant tribe. They were living in the ruins of the\nRoman palaces; they were too stupid to be able to use any one of the\nRoman things they had destroyed. They had kept, perhaps, some few of the\nRoman women, certainly all the Roman slaves. They had, therefore, vague\nmemories of how the Romans tilled the land.\n\nBut those memories were getting worse and worse, for it was nearly two\nhundred years since the ships of Aella had sailed into Shoreham (which\nshowed him to be a man of immense determination, for it is a most\ndifficult harbour, and there were then no piers and lights)--it was\nnearly two hundred years, and there was only the least little glimmering\ntwilight left of the old day. These barbarians were going utterly to\npieces, as barbarians ever will when they are cut off from the life and\nsplendour of the south. They had become so cretinous and idiotic, that\nwhen St. Wilfrid came wandering among them they did not know how to get\nfood. There was a famine, and as their miserable religion, such as it\nwas (probably it was very like these little twopenny-halfpenny modern\nheresies of their cousins, the German pessimists)--their religion, I\nsay, not giving them the jolly energy which all decent Western religion\ngives a man, they being also by the wrath of God deprived of the use of\nwine (though tuns upon tuns of it were waiting for them over the sea a\nlittle way off, but probably they thought their horizon was the end of\nthe world)--their religion, I say, being of this nature, they had\ndetermined, under the pressure of that famine which drove them so hard,\nto put an end to themselves, and St. Wilfrid saw them tying themselves\ntogether in bands (which shows that they knew at least how to make rope)\nand jumping off the cliffs into the sea. This practice he determined to\noppose.\n\nHe went to their King--who lived in Chichester, I suppose, or possibly\nat Bramber--and asked him why the people were going on in this fashion,\nwho said to him: \"It is because of the famine.\"\n\nSt. Wilfrid, shrugging his shoulders, said: \"Why do they not eat fish?\"\n\n\"Because,\" said the King, \"fish, swimming about in the water, are\nalmost impossible to catch. We have tried it in our hunger a hundred\ntimes, but even when we had the good luck to grasp one of them, the\nslippery thing would glide from our fingers.\"\n\nSt. Wilfrid then in some contempt said again:\n\n\"Why do you not make nets?\"\n\nAnd he explained the use of nets to the whole Court, preaching, as it\nwere, a sermon upon nets to them, and craftily introducing St. Peter and\nthat great net which they hang outside his tomb in Rome upon his feast\nday--which is the 29th of June. The King and his Court made a net and\nthrew it into the sea, and brought out a great mass of fish. They were\nso pleased that they told St. Wilfrid they would do anything he asked.\nHe baptised them and they made him their first bishop; and he took up\nhis residence in Selsey, and since then the people of Sussex have gone\nsteadily forward, increasing in every good thing, until they are now by\nfar the first and most noble of all the people in the world.\n\nThere is I know not what in history, or in the way in which it is\ntaught, which makes people imagine that it is something separate from\nthe life they are living, and because of this modern error, you may very\nwell be wondering what on earth this true story of the foundation of our\ncountry has to do with the Looe Stream. It has everything to do with it.\nThe sea, being governed by a pagan god, made war at once, and began\neating up all those fields which had specially been consecrated to the\nChurch, civilisation, common sense, and human happiness. It is still\ndoing so, and I know an old man who can remember a forty-acre field all\nalong by Clymping having been eaten up by the sea; and out along past\nRustington there is, about a quarter of a mile from the shore, a rock,\ncalled the Church Rock, the remains of a church which quite a little\ntime ago people used for all the ordinary purposes of a church.\n\nThe sea then began to eat up Selsey. Before the Conquest--though I\ncannot remember exactly when--the whole town had gone, and they had to\nremove the cathedral to Chichester. In Henry VIII's time there was still\na park left out of the old estates, a park with trees in it; but this\nalso the sea has eaten up; and here it is that I come to the Looe\nStream. The Looe Stream is a little dell that used to run through the\npark, and which to-day,--right out at sea, furnishes the only gate by\nwhich ships can pass through the great maze of banks and rocks which go\nright out to sea from Selsey Bill, miles and miles, and are called the\nOwers.\n\nOn the chart that district is still called \"The Park,\" and at very low\ntides stumps of the old trees can be seen; and for myself I believe,\nthough I don't think it can be proved, that in among the masses of sand\nand shingle which go together to make the confused dangers of the Owers,\nyou would find the walls of Roman palaces, and heads of bronze and\nmarble, and fragments of mosaic and coins of gold.\n\nThe tide coming up from the Channel finds, rising straight out of the\nbottom of the sea, the shelf of this old land, and it has no avenue by\nwhich to pour through save this Looe Stream, which therefore bubbles and\nruns like a mill-race, though it is in the middle of the sea.\n\nIf you did not know what was underneath you, you could not understand\nwhy this river should run separate from the sea all round, but when you\nhave noticed the depths on the chart, you see a kind of picture in your\nmind: the wall of that old mass of land standing feet above the floor of\nthe Channel, and the top of what was once its fields and its villas, and\nits great church almost awash at low tides, and through it a cleft,\nwhich was, I say, a dell in the old park, but is now that Looe Stream\nbuoyed up on either side, and making a river by itself running in the\nsea.\n\nSailing over it, and remembering all these things at evening, I got out\nof the boil and tumble into deep water. It got darker, and the light on\nthe _Nab_ ship showed clearly a long way off, and purple against the\nwest stood the solemn height of the island. I set a course for this\nlight, being alone at the tiller, while my two companions slept down\nbelow. When the night was full the little variable air freshened into a\nbreeze from the south-east; it grew stronger and stronger, and lifted\nlittle hearty following seas, and blowing on my quarter drove me\nquickly to the west, whither I was bound. The night was very warm and\nvery silent, although little patches of foam murmured perpetually, and\nthough the wind could be heard lightly in the weather shrouds.\n\nThe star Jupiter shone brightly just above my wake, and over Selsey\nBill, through a flat band of mist, the red moon rose slowly, enormous.\n\n\n\n\nRONCESVALLES\n\n\nSitting one day in Pampeluna, which occupies the plain just below the\nsouthern and Spanish escarpment of the Pyrenees, I and another\nremembered with an equal desire that we had all our lives desired to see\nRoncesvalles and the place where Roland died. This town (we said) was\nthat which Charlemagne destroyed upon his march to the Pass, and I, for\nmy part, desired here, as in every other part of Europe where I had been\nable to find his footsteps, to follow them, and so to re-create his\ntime.\n\nThe road leads slantwise through the upper valleys of Navarre, crossing\nby passes the various spurs of the mountains, but each pass higher than\nthe last and less frequented, for each is nearer the main range. As you\nleave Pampeluna the road grows more and more deserted, and the country\nthrough which it cuts more wild. The advantages of wealth which are\nconferred by the neighbourhood of the capital of Navarre are rapidly\nlost as one proceeds; the houses grow rarer, the shrines more ruinous\nand more aged, until one comes at last upon the bleak valley which\nintroduces the final approach to Roncesvalles.\n\nThe wealth and order everywhere associated with the Basque blood have\nwholly disappeared. This people is not receding--it holds its own, as it\ndeserves to do; but as there are new fields which it has occupied within\nthe present century upon the more western hills, so there are others to\nthe east, and this valley among them, from whence it has disappeared.\nThe Basque names remain, but the people are no longer of the Basque\ntype, and the tongue is forgotten.\n\nSo gradual is the ascent and so continual the little cols which have to\nbe surmounted, that a man does not notice how much upward he is being\nled towards the crest of the ridge. And when he comes at last upon the\ngrove from which he sees the plateau of Roncesvalles spread before him,\nhe wonders that the chain of the Pyrenees (which here lie out along in\ncliffs like sharp sunward walls, stretching in a strict perspective to\nthe distant horizon) should seem so low. The reason that this white wall\nof cliffs seems so low is that the traveller is standing upon the last\nof a series of great steps which have led him up towards the frontier,\nmuch as the prairie leads one up towards the Rockies in Colorado. When\nhe has passed through the very pleasant wood which lies directly beneath\nthe cliffs, and reaches the little village of Roncesvalles itself, he\nwonders still more that so famous a pass should be so small a thing. The\npass from this side is so broad, with so low a saddle of grass, that it\nseems more like the crossing of the Sussex Downs than the crossing of an\nawful range of mountains. It is a rounded gap, up to which there lifts a\npretty little wooded combe; and no one could be certain, during the\nhalf-hour spent in climbing such a petty summit, that he was, in so\nclimbing, conquering Los Altos, the high Pyrenees.\n\nBut when the summit is reached, then the meaning of the \"_Imus\nPyrenaeus_,\" and the place that passage has taken in history, is\ncomprehended in a moment. One sees at what a height one was in that\nplain of Roncesvalles, and one sees how the main range dominates the\nworld; for down below one an enormous cleft into the stuff of the\nmountains falls suddenly and almost sheer, and you see unexpectedly\nbeneath you the approach from France into Spain. The gulf at its\nnarrowest is tremendous; but, more than that, when the floor of the\nvalley is reached, that floor itself slopes away down and down by runs\nand by cascades towards the very distant plains of the north, upon which\nthe funnel debouches. Moreover, it was up this gulf, and from the north,\nthat the armies came; it was this vision of a precipice that seized them\nwhen their leaders had determined to invade the Peninsula. This also\nwas what, for so many generations, so many wanderers must have seen who\ncame to wonder at the place where the rearguard of Charlemagne had been\ndestroyed.\n\nThe whole of the slope is covered with an ancient wood, and this wood is\nso steep that it would be impossible or dangerous to venture down it.\nThe old Carolingian road skirts the mountain-side with difficulty,\nclinging well up upon its flank; the great modern road, which is\nexcellent and made for artillery, has to go even nearer the summit;\nbelow them there falls away a slant or edge to which the huge beech\ntrees cling almost parallel to the steep earth, running their\nperpendicular lines so high and close against the hill that they look\nlike pines. As you peer down in among the trunks, you see the darkness\nincreasing until the eye can penetrate no more, and dead, enormous trees\nthat have lived their centuries, and have fallen perhaps for decades,\nlie across the aisles of the wood, propped up against their living\nfellows; for, by one of those political accidents which are common\nthroughout the whole length of the Pyrenees, both sides of the watershed\nbelong to Spain, so that no Government or modern energy has come to\ndisturb the silence. One would swear that the last to order this wood\nwere the Romans.\n\nI had thought to find so famous a valley peopled, or at least visited. I\nfound it utterly alone, and even free from travellers, as though the\nwealthier part of Europe had forgotten the most famous of Christian\nepics. I saw no motor-cars, nor any women--only at last, in the very\ndepths of the valley, a boy cutting grass in a tiny patch of open land.\nAnd it was hereabouts, so far as I could make out, that the Peers were\nkilled.\n\nThe song, of course, makes them fall on the far side of the summit, upon\nthe fields of Roncesvalles, with the sun setting right at them along the\nhills. And that is as it should be, for it is evident that (in a poem)\nthe hero fighting among hills should die upon the enemy's side of the\nhills. But that is not the place where Roland really died. The place\nwhere he really died, he and Oliver and Turpin and all the others, was\nhere in the very recess of the Northern Valley. It was here only that\nrocks could have been rolled down upon an army, and here is that narrow,\nstrangling gorge where the line of march could most easily have been cut\nin two by the fury of the mountaineers. Also Eginhard says very clearly\nthat they had already passed the hills and seen France, and that is\nfinal. It was from these cliffs, then, that such an echo was made by the\nhorn of Roland, and it was down that funnel of a valley that the noise\ngrew until it filled Christendom; and it was up that gorge that there\ncame, as it says in the song--\n\n     The host in a tide returning:\n     Charles the King and his Barony.\n\nThis was the place. And any man who may yet believe (I know such a\ndiscussion is pedantry)--any man who may yet believe the song of Roland\nto have been a Northern legend had better come to this place and drink\nthe mountains in. For whoever to-day\n\n     High are the hills and huge and dim with cloud,\n     Down in the deeps, the living streams are loud,\n\nhad certainly himself stood in the silence and majesty of this valley.\n\nIt was already nearly dark when we two men had clambered down to that\nplace, and up between the walls of the valley we had already seen the\nearly stars. We pushed on to the French frontier in an eager appetite\nfor cleanliness and human food.\n\nThe last Spanish town is called Val Carlos, as it ought to be,\nconsidering that Charlemagne himself had once come roaring by. When we\nreached it in the darkness we had completed a forced march of forty-two\nmiles, going light, it is true, and carrying nothing each of us but a\ngourd of wine and a sack, but we were very tired. There, at the goal of\nour effort, one faint sign of Government and of men at last appeared. It\nwas in character with all the rest. One might not cross the frontier\nupon the road without a written leave. The written leave was given us,\nand in half an hour Spain was free.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SLANT OFF THE LAND\n\n\nWe live a very little time. Before we have reached the middle of our\ntime perhaps, but not long before, we discover the magnitude of our\ninheritance. Consider England. How many men, I should like to know, have\ndiscovered before thirty what treasures they may work in her air? She\nmagnifies us inwards and outwards; her fields can lead the mind down\ntowards the subtle beginning of things; the tiny irridescence of\ninsects; the play of light upon the facets of a blade of grass. Her\nskies can lead the mind up infinitely into regions where it seems to\nexpand and fill, no matter what immensities.\n\nIt was the wind off the land that made me think of all this possession\nin which I am to enjoy so short a usufruct. I sat in my boat holding\nthat tiller of mine, which is not over firm, and is but a rough bar of\niron. There was no breeze in the air, and the little deep vessel swung\nslightly to the breathing of the sea. Her great mainsail and her\nbaloon-jib came over lazily as she swung, and filled themselves with the\ncheating semblance of a wind. The boom creaked in the goose-neck, and at\nevery roll the slack of the mainsheet tautened with a kind of little\nthud which thrilled the deck behind me. I saw under the curve of my\nheadsail the long and hazy line, which is the only frontier of England;\nthe plain that rather marries with than defies her peculiar seas. For it\nwas in the Channel, and not ten miles from the coastline of my own\ncountry, that these thoughts rose in me during the calm at the end of\nwinter, and the boat was drifting down more swiftly than I knew upon the\nebb of the outer tide. Far off to the south sunlight played upon the\nwater, and was gone again. The great ships did not pass near me, and so\nI sat under a hazy sky restraining the slight vibration of the helm and\nwaiting for the wind.\n\nIn whatever place a man may be the spring will come to him. I have heard\nof men in prison who would note the day when its influence passed\nthrough the narrow window that was their only communion with their kind.\nIt comes even to men in cities; men of the stupid political sort, who\nthink in maps and whose interest is in the addition of numbers. Indeed,\nI have heard such men in London itself expressing pleasure when a\nsouth-west gale came up in April from over the pines of Hampshire and of\nSurrey and mixed the Atlantic with the air of the fields. To me this\nyear the spring came suddenly, like a voice speaking, though a low\none--the voice of a person subtle, remembered, little known, and always\ndesired. For a wind blew off the land.\n\nThe surface of the sea northward between me and the coast of Sussex had\nbeen for so many hours elastic, smooth, and dull, that I had come to\nforget the indications of a change. But here and there, a long way off,\nlittle lines began to show, which were indeed broad spaces of ruffled\nwater, seen edgeways from the low free-board of my boat. These joined\nand made a surface all the way out towards me, but a surface not yet\nrevealed for what it was, nor showing the movement and life and grace of\nwaves. For no light shone upon it, and it was not yet near enough to be\ndistinguished. It grew rapidly, but the haze and silence had put me into\nso dreamy a state that I had forgotten the ordinary anxiety and\nirritation of a calm, nor had I at the moment that eager expectancy of\nmovement which should accompany the sight of that dark line upon the\nsea.\n\nOther things possessed me, the memory of home and of the Downs. There\nwent before this breeze, as it were, attendant servants, outriders who\nbrought with them the scent of those first flowers in the North Wood or\nbeyond Gumber Corner, and the fragrance of our grass, the savour which\nthe sheep know at least, however much the visitors to my dear home\nignore it. A deeper sympathy even than that of the senses came with\nthose messengers and brought me the beeches and the yew trees also,\nalthough I was so far out at sea, for the loneliness of this great water\nrecalled the loneliness of the woods, and both those solitudes--the real\nand the imaginary--mixed in my mind together as they might in the mind\nof a sleeping man.\n\nBefore this wind as it approached, the sky also cleared: not of clouds,\nfor there were none, but of that impalpable and warm mist which seems to\nus, who know the south country and the Channel, to be so often part of\nthe sky, and to shroud without obscuring the empty distances of our\nseas. There was a hard clear light to the north; and even over the\nDowns, low as they were upon the horizon, there was a sharp belt of\nblue. I saw the sun strike the white walls of Lady Newburgh's Folly, and\nI saw, what had hitherto been all confused, the long line of the Arundel\nWoods contrasting with the plain. Then the boom went over to port, the\njib filled, I felt the helm pulling steadily for the first time in so\nmany hours, and the boat responded. The wind was on me; and though it\nwas from the north, that wind was warm, for it came from the sheltered\nhills.\n\nThen, indeed, I quite forgot those first few moments, which had so\nlittle to do with the art of sailing, and which were perhaps unworthy of\nthe full life that goes with the governing of sails and rudders. For one\nthing, I was no longer alone; a man is never alone with the wind--and\nthe boat made three. There was work to be done in pressing against the\ntiller and in bringing her up to meet the seas, small though they were,\nfor my boat was also small. Life came into everything; the Channel leapt\nand (because the wind was across the tide) the little waves broke in\nsmall white tips: in their movement and my own, in the dance of the boat\nand the noise of the shrouds, in the curtsy of the long sprit that\ncaught the ridges of foam and lifted them in spray, even in the free\nstreaming of that loose untidy end of line which played in the air from\nthe leach, as young things play from wantonness, in the rush of the\nwater, just up to and sometimes through the lee scuppers, and in the\nhumming tautness of the sheet, in everything about me there was\nexuberance and joy. The sun upon the twenty million faces of the waves\nmade, music rather than laughter, and the energy which this first warmth\nof the year had spread all over the Channel and shore, while it made\nlife one, seemed also to make it innumerable. We were now not only\nthree, the wind and my boat and I; we were all part (and masters for the\nmoment) of a great throng. I knew them all by their names, which I had\nlearnt a long time ago, and had sung of them in the North Sea. I have\noften written them down. I will not be ashamed to repeat them here, for\ngood things never grow old. There was the Wave that brings good tidings,\nand the Wave that breaks on the shore, and the Wave of the island, and\nthe Wave that helps, and the Wave that lifts forrard, the kindly Wave\nand the youngest Wave, and Amathea the Wave with bright hair, all the\nwaves that come up round Thetis in her train when she rises from the\nside of the old man, her father, where he sits on his throne in the\ndepth of the sea; when she comes up cleaving the water and appears to\nher sons in the upper world.\n\nThe Wight showed clear before me. I was certain with the tide of making\nthe Horse Buoy and Spithead while it was yet afternoon, and before the\nplenitude of that light and movement should have left me. I settled down\nto so much and such exalted delight as to a settled task. I lit my pipe\nfor a further companion (since it was good to add even to so many). I\nkept my right shoulder only against the tiller, for the pressure was now\nsteady and sound. I felt the wind grow heavy and equable, and I caught\nover my shoulder the merry wake of this very honest moving home of mine\nas she breasted and hissed through the sea.\n\nHere, then, was the proper end of a long cruise. It was springtime, and\nthe season for work on land. I had been told so by the heartening wind.\nAnd as I went still westward, remembering the duties of the land, the\nsails still held full, the sheets and the weather shrouds still stood\ntaut and straining, and the little clatter of the broken water spoke\nalong the lee rail. And so the ship sailed on.\n\n\n     [Greek: 'En d thnemos pr\u00easen mxson istion, thmphi de kuma]\n     [Greek: Sseir\u00ea porphureon megal' iache, n\u00eaos ious\u00eas.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE CANIGOU\n\n\nA man might discuss with himself what it was that made certain great\nsights of the world famous, and what it is that keeps others hidden.\nThis would be especially interesting in the case of mountains. For there\nis no doubt that there is a modern attraction in mountains which may not\nendure, but which is almost as intense in our generation as it was in\nthat of our fathers. The emotion produced by great height and by the\nsomething unique and inspiring which distinguishes a mountain from a\nhill has bitten deeply into the modern mind. Yet there are some of the\nmost astounding visions of this sort in Europe which are, and will\nprobably remain, unemphasised for travellers.\n\nThe vision of the Berenese Oberland when it breaks upon one from the\ncrest of Jura has been impressed--upon English people, at least--in two\nfine passages: the one written by Ruskin, the other, if I remember\nright, in a book called _A Cruise upon Wheels_. The French have, I\nbelieve, no classical presentment of that view, nor perhaps have the\nGermans. The line of the Alps as one sees it upon very clear days from\nthe last of the Apennines--this, I think, has never been properly\npraised in any modern book--not even an Italian. The great red\nmountain-face which St. Bruno called \"the desert\" I do not remember to\nhave read of anywhere nor to have heard described; for it stands above\nan unfrequented valley, and the regular approach to the Chartreuse is\nfrom the other side. Yet it is something which remains as vivid to those\nfew who have suddenly caught sight of it from a turn of the Old Lyons\nroad as though they had seen it in a fantastic dream. That astonishing\ncircle of cliffs which surrounds Bourg d'Oisans, though it has been\nwritten of now and then, has not, so to speak, taken root in people's\nimagination.\n\nEven in this country there are twenty great effects which, though they\nhave, of course, suffered record, are still secure from general praise;\nfor instance, that awful trench which opens under your feet, as it were,\nup north and beyond Plynlimmon. It is a valley as unexpected and as\nincredible in its steepness and complete isolation as any one may see in\nthe drawings of the romantic generation of English water-colour, yet\nperhaps no one has drawn it; there is certainly no familiar picture of\nit anywhere.\n\nWhen one comes to think of it, the reason of such exceptions to fame as\nare these is usually that such and such an unknown but great sight lies\noff the few general roads of travel. It is a vulgar reason, but the true\none. Unless men go to a mountain to climb because it is difficult to\nclimb, or unless it often appears before them along one of their main\njourneys, it will remain quiet. Among such masses is the Canigou.\n\nHere is a mountain which may be compared to Etna. It is lower, indeed,\nin the proportion of nine to eleven; but when great isolated heights of\nthis sort are in question, such a difference hardly counts. It can be\nseen, as Etna can, from the sea, though it stands a good deal more\ninland; it dominates, as Etna does, a very famous plain, but modern\ntravel does nothing to bring it into the general consciousness of the\nworld. If Spain were wealthy, or if the Spanish harbours naturally led\nto any place which all the rich desired to visit, the name of the\nCanigou would begin to grow. Where the railway skirts the sea from\nNarbonne to Barcelona, it is your permanent companion for a good hour in\nthe express, and for any time you like in the ordinary trains. During at\nleast three months in the year, its isolation is peculiarly relieved and\nmarked by the snow, which lies above an even line all along its vast\nbulk. It is also one of those mountains in which one can recognise the\ncurious regularity of the \"belts\" which text-books talk of. There are\ngreat forests at the base of it, just above the hot Mediterranean\nplain; the beech comes higher than the olive, the pines last of all;\nafter them the pastures and the rocks. In the end of February a man\nclimbs up from a spring that is as southern as Africa to a winter that\nis as northern as the highlands of Scotland, and all the while he feels\nthat he is climbing nothing confused or vague, but one individual peak\nwhich is the genius of the whole countryside.\n\nThis countryside is the Roussillon, a lordship as united as the\nCerdagne; it speaks one language, shows one type of face, and is\napproached by but a small group of roads, and each road passes through a\nmountain gap. For centuries it went with Barcelona. It needed the\nRevolution to make it French, and it is full of Spanish memories to this\nday.\n\nFor the Roussillon depends upon the Canigou just as the Bay of Syracuse\ndepends upon Etna, or that of Naples upon Vesuvius, and its familiar\npresence has sunk into the patriotism of the Roussillon people, as those\nmore famous mountains have into the art and legends of their neighbours.\nThere are I know not how many monographs upon the Canigou, but not one\nhas been translated, I would wager, into any foreign language.\n\nYet it is the mountain which very many men who have hardly heard its\nname have been looking for all their lives. It gives as good camping as\nis to be had in the whole of the Pyrenees. I believe there is fishing,\nand perhaps one can shoot. Properly speaking, there is no climbing in\nit; at least, one can walk up it all the way if one chooses the right\npath, but there is everything else men look for when they escape from\ncities. It is so big that you would never learn it in any number of\ncamps, and the change of its impressions is perpetual. From the summit\nthe view has two interests--of colour and of the past. You have below\nyou a plain like an inlaid work of chosen stones: the whole field is an\narrangement of different culture and of bright rocks and sand; and below\nyou, also, in a curve, is all that coast which at the close of the Roman\nEmpire was, perhaps, the wealthiest in Europe. In the extreme north a\nman might make out upon a clear day the bulk of Narbonne. Perpignan is\nclose by; the little rock harbour of Venus, Port Vendres, is to the\nsouth. From the plain below one, which has always been crammed with\nriches, sprang the chief influences of Southern Gaul. It was here that\nthe family of Charlemagne took its origin, and it was perhaps from here\nthat he saw, through the windows of a palace, that fleet of pirates\nwhich moved him to his sad prophecy. That plain, moreover, will\nre-arise; it is still rich, and all the Catalan province of Spain below\nit, of which it is the highway and the approach, must increase in value\nbefore Europe from year to year. The vast development of the French\nAfrican territory is reacting upon that coast: all it needs is a central\nharbour, and if that harbour were formed it would do what Narbo did for\nthe Romans at the end of their occupation;--it would tap, much better\nthan does Cette, the wealth of Gascony, perhaps, also, an Atlantic\ntrade, and its exchanges towards Africa and the Levant. The\nMediterranean, which is perpetually increasing in wealth and in\nimportance to-day, would have a second Marseilles, and should such a\nport arise--then, when our ships and our travellers are familiar with\nit, the Canigou (if it cares for that sort of thing) will be as happy as\nthe Matterhorn. For the present it is all alone.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MAN AND HIS WOOD\n\n\nI knew a man once that was a territorial magnate and had an estate in\nthe county of Berkshire. I will not conceal his name. It was William\nFrederick Charles Hermann-Postlethwaite.\n\nOn his estate was a large family mansion, surrounded by tasteful gardens\nof a charming old kind, and next outside these a great park, well\ntimbered. But the thing I am going to talk about was a certain wood of\nwhich he was rightly very proud. It stood on the slope of a grass down,\njust above the valley, and beneath it was a clean white road, and a\nlittle way along that a town, part of which belonged to Mr.\nHermann-Postlethwaite, part to a local solicitor and moneylender,\nseveral bits to a brewer in Reading, and a few houses to the\ninhabitants. The people in the town were also fond of the wood, and\ncalled it \"The Old Wood.\" It was not very large, but, as I have said\nbefore, it was very beautiful, and contained all manner of trees, but\nespecially beeches, under which nothing will grow--as the poet puts it\nin Sussex:\n\n\n\n     Unner t' beech and t' yow Nowt 'll grow.\n\nWell, as years passed, Mr. Hermann-Postlethwaite became fonder and\nfonder of the wood. He began towards 1885 to think it the nicest thing\non his estate--which it was; and he would often ride out to look at it\nof a morning on his grey mare \"Betsy.\" When he rode out like this of a\nmorning his mount was well groomed, and so was he, however early it\nmight be, and he would carry a little cane to hit the mare with and also\nas a symbol of authority. The people who met him would touch their\nforeheads, and he would wave his hand genially in reply. He was a good\nfellow. But the principal thing about him was his care for the old wood;\nand when he rode out to look at it, as I say, he would speak to any one\naround so early--his bailiff, as might be, or sometimes his agent, or\neven the foreman of the workshop or the carpenter, or any hedger or\nditcher that might be there, and point out bits of the wood, and say,\n\"That branch looks pretty dicky. No harm to cut that off short and\nparcel and serve the end and cap it with a zinc cap;\" or, \"Better be\ncutting the Yartle Bush for the next fallow, it chokes the gammon-rings,\nand I don't like to see so much standard ivy about, it's the death of\ntrees.\" I am not sure that I have got the technical words right, but at\nany rate they were more or less like that, for I have heard him myself\ntime and again. I often used to go out with him on another horse, called\nSultan, which he lent me to ride upon.\n\nWell, he got fonder and fonder of this wood, and kept on asking people\nwhat he should do, and how one could make most use of it, and he worried\na good deal about it. He reads books about woods, and in the opening of\n1891 he had down to stay with him for a few days a man called Churt, who\nhad made a great success with woods on the Warra-Warra. But Churt was a\nvulgar fellow, and so Hermann-Postlethwaite's wife, Lady Gywnnys\nHermann-Postlethwaite, would not have him in the house again, which was\na bother. Her husband then rode over to see another man, and the upshot\nof it was that he put up a great board saying \"Trespassers in this wood\nwill be prosecuted,\" and it might as well not have been put up, for no\none ever went into the wood, not even from the little town, because it\nwas too far for them to walk, and, anyhow, they did not care for\nwalking. And as for the doctor's son, a boy of thirteen, who went in\nthere with an air-gun to shoot things, he paid no attention to the\nboard.\n\nThe next thing my friend did was to have a fine strong paling put all\nround the wood in March, 1894. This paling was of oak; it was seven feet\nhigh; it had iron spikes along the top. There were six gates in it, and\nstout posts at intervals of ten yards. The boards overlapped very\nexactly. It was as good a bit of work as ever I saw. He had it\nvarnished, and it looked splendid. All this took two years.\n\nJust then he was elected to Parliament, not for Berkshire, as you might\nhave imagined, but for a slum division of Birmingham. He was very proud\nof this, and quite rightly too. He said: \"I am the one Conservative\nmember in the Midlands.\" It almost made him forget about his wood. He\nshut up the Berkshire place and took a house in town, and as he could\nnot afford Mayfair, and did not understand such things very well, the\nhouse he took was an enormous empty house in Bayswater, and he had no\npeace until he gave it up for a set of rooms off Piccadilly; and then\nhis mother thought that looked so odd that he did the right thing, and\ngot into a nice old-fashioned furnished house in Westminster,\noverlooking the Green Park.\n\nBut all this cost him a mint of money, and politics made him angrier and\nangrier. They never let him speak, and they made him vote for things he\nthought perfectly detestable. Then he did speak, and as he was an honest\nEnglish gentleman the papers called him ridiculous names and said he had\nno brains. So he just jolly well threw the whole thing up and went back\nto Berkshire, and everybody welcomed him, and he did a thing he had\nnever done before: he put a flag up over his house to show he was at\nhome. Then he began to think of his wood again.\n\nThe very first time he rode out to look at it he found the paling had\ngiven way in places from the fall of trees, and that some leaned inwards\nand some outwards, and that one of the gates was off its hinges. There\nwere also two cows walking about in the wood, and what annoyed him most\nof all, the iron spikes were rusty and the varnish had all gone rotten\nand white and streaky on the palings. He spoke to the bailiff about\nthis, and hauled him out to look at it. The bailiff rubbed the varnish\nwith his finger, smelt it, and said that it had perished. He also said\nthere was no such thing as good varnish nowadays, and he added there\nwasn't any varnish, not the very best, but wouldn't go like that with\nrain and all. Mr. Hermann-Postlethwaite grumbled a good deal, but he\nsupposed the bailiff knew best; so he told him to see what could be\ndone, and for several weeks he heard no more about it.\n\nI forgot to tell you that about this time the South African War\nhad broken out, and as things were getting pretty tangled,\nHermann-Postlethwaite went out with his regiment, the eighth battalion,\nnot of the Berkshire, but of the Orkney regiment. While he was out\nthere, his brother, in Dr. Charlbury's home, died, and he succeeded to\nthe baronetcy. As he already had a V.C. and was now given a D.S.O., as\nwell as being one of the people mentioned in dispatches, he was pretty\nimportant by the time he came home, when the war was over, just before\nthe elections of 1900.\n\nWhen he got home he had a splendid welcome, both from his tenants in\nBerkshire in passing through and from those of his late brother in the\nbig place in Worcestershire. He preferred his Berkshire place, however,\nand, letting the big place to an American of the name of Hendrik K.\nBoulge, he went back to his first home. When he got there he thought of\nthe old wood, and went out to look at it. The palings were mended, but\nthey were covered all over with tar! He was exceedingly angry, and\nordered them to be painted at once; but the bailiff assured him one\ncould not paint over tar, and so did the carpenter and the foreman. At\nthis he had a fit of rage, and ordered the whole damned thing to be\npulled down, and swore he would be damned if he ever had a damned stick\nor a rail round the damned wood again. He was no longer young; he was\ngetting stout and rather puffy; he was not so reasonable as of old.\nAnyhow, he had the whole thing pulled down. Next year (that is, in 1901)\nhis wife died.\n\nI wish I had the space to tell you all the other things he did to the\nwood. How a friend of his having sold a similar wood on the Thames in\nbuilding lots at \u00a3500 an acre, he put up the whole wood at the same\nrate. How, the whole wood being 200 acres in extent, he hoped to make\n\u00a3100,000 out of it. How he thought this a tidy sum. How he got no offers\nat this price, nor at \u00a3100, nor at \u00a350. How an artist offered him \u00a320\nfor half an acre to put up a red tin bungalow upon. How he lost his\ntemper with the artist. How at last he left the whole thing alone and\ntried to forget all about it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe old wood to-day is just like what it was when I wandered in it as a\nboy. The doctor's son is a man now, and is keeping a bar in Sydney; so\nhe is gone. The townspeople don't come any more than before. I am the\nonly person who goes near the place. The trees are a trifle grander. I\nhappen now and then, when I visit this Berkshire parish, upon a stump of\na post or an old spike in the grass of this wood, but otherwise it is as\nthough all this had not been.\n\nA solemn thought: How enduring are the works of Nature--how perishable\nthose of Man!\n\n\n\n\nTHE CHANNEL\n\n\nFriends of mine, friends all, and you also, publishers, colonials and\ncritics, do you know that particular experience for which I am trying to\nfind words? Do you know that glamour in the mind which arises and\ntransforms our thought when we see the things that the men who made us\nsaw--the things of a long time ago, the origins? I think everybody knows\nthat glamour, but very few people know where to find it.\n\nEvery man knows that he has in him the power for such revelations, and\nevery man wonders in what strange place he may come upon them. There are\nmen also (very rich) who have considered all the world and wandered over\nit, seeking those first experiences and trying to feel as felt the\nearlier men in a happier time--yet these few rich men have not felt and\nhave not so found the things which they desire. I have known men who\nhave thought to find them in the mountains, but would not climb them\nsimply enough and refused to leave their luxuries behind, and so lost\neverything, and might as well have been walking in a dirty town at home\nfor all the little good that the mountains did to them. And I know men\nwho have thought to find this memory and desire in foreign countries, in\nAfrica, hunting great beasts such as our fathers hunted; yet even these\nhave not relit those old embers, which if they lie dead and dark in a\nman make his whole soul dusty and useless, but which if they be once\nrekindled can make him part of all the centuries.\n\nYet there is a simple and an easy way to find what the men who made us\nfound, and to see the world as they saw it, and to take a bath, as it\nwere, in the freshness of beginnings; and that is to go to work as\ncheaply and as hardly as you can, and only as much away from men as they\nwere away from men, and not to read or to write or to think, but to eat\nand drink and use the body in many immediate ways, which are at the feet\nof every man. Every man who will walk for some days carelessly,\nsleeping, rough when he must, or in poor inns, and making for some one\nplace direct because he desires to see it, will know the thing I mean.\nAnd there is a better way still of which I shall now speak: I mean, to\ntry the seas in a little boat not more than twenty-five feet long,\npreferably decked, of shallow draught, such as can enter into all creeks\nand havens, and so simply rigged that by oneself, or with a friend at\nmost, one can wander all over the world.\n\nCertainly every man that goes to sea in a little boat of this kind\nlearns terror and salvation, happy living, air, danger, exultation,\nglory, and repose at the end; and they are not words to him, but, on the\ncontrary, realities which will afterwards throughout his life give the\nmere words a full meaning. And for this experiment there lies at our\nfeet, I say, the Channel.\n\nIt is the most marvellous sea in the world--the most suited for these\nlittle adventures; it is crammed with strange towns, differing one from\nthe other; it has two opposite people upon either side, and hills and\nvarying climates, and the hundred shapes and colours of the earth, here\nrocks, there sand, there cliffs, and there marshy shores. It is a little\nworld. And what is more, it is a kind of inland sea.\n\nPeople will not understand how narrow it is, crossing it hurriedly in\ngreat steamships; nor will they make it a home for pleasure unless they\nare rich and can have great boats; yet they should, for on its water\nlies the best stage for playing out the old drama by which the soul of a\nhealthy man is kept alive. For instance, listen to this story:--\n\nThe sea being calm, and the wind hot, uncertain, and light from the\neast, leaving oily gaps on the water, and continually dying down, I\ndrifted one morning in the strong ebb to the South Goodwin Lightship,\nwondering what to do. There was a haze over the land and over the sea,\nand through the haze great ships a long way off showed, one or two of\nthem, like oblong targets which one fires at with guns. They hardly\nmoved in spite of all their canvas set, there was so little breeze. So I\ndrifted in the slow ebb past the South Goodwin, and I thought: \"What is\nall this drifting and doing nothing? Let us play the fool, and see if\nthere are no adventures left.\"\n\nSo I put my little boat about until the wind took her from forward, such\nas it was, and she crawled out to sea.\n\nIt was a dull, uneasy morning, hot and silent, and the wind, I say, was\nhardly a wind, and most of the time the sails flapped uselessly.\n\nBut after eleven o'clock the wind first rose, and then shifted a little,\nand then blew light but steady; and then at last she heeled and the\nwater spoke under her bows, and still she heeled and ran, until in the\nhaze I could see no more land; but ever so far out there were no seas,\nfor the light full breeze was with the tide, the tide ebbing out as a\nstrong, and silent as a man in anger, down the hidden parallel valleys\nof the narrow sea. And I held this little wind till about two o'clock,\nwhen I drank wine and ate bread and meat at the tiller, for I had them\nby me, and just afterwards, still through a thick haze of heat, I saw\nGris-nez, a huge ghost, right up against and above me; and I wondered,\nfor I had crossed the Channel, now for the first time, and knew now what\nit felt like to see new land.\n\nThough I knew nothing of the place, I had this much sense, that I said\nto myself: \"The tide is right-down Channel, racing through the hidden\nvalleys under the narrow sea, so it will all go down together and all\ncome up together, and the flood will come on this foreign side much at\nthe same hour that it does on the home side.\" My boat lay to the east\nand the ebb tide held her down, and I lit a pipe and looked at the\nFrench hills and thought about them and the people in them, and England\nwhich I had left behind, and I was delighted with the loneliness of the\nsea; and still I waited for the flood.\n\nBut in a little while the chain made a rattling noise, and she lay\nquite slack and swung oddly; and then there were little boiling and\neddying places in the water, and the water seemed to come up from\nunderneath sometimes, and altogether it behaved very strangely, and this\nwas the turn of the tide. Then the wind dropped also, and for a moment\nshe lollopped about, till at last, after I had gone below and\nstraightened things, I came on deck to see that she had turned\ncompletely round, and that the tide at last was making up my way,\ntowards Calais, and her chain was taut and her nose pointed down\nChannel, and a little westerly breeze, a little draught of air, came up\ncool along the tide.\n\nWhen this came I was very glad, for I saw that I could end my adventure\nbefore night. So I pulled up the anchor and fished it, and then turned\nwith the tide under me, and the slight half-felt breeze just barely\nfilling the mainsail (the sheet was slack, so powerless was the wind),\nand I ran up along that high coast, watching eagerly every new thing;\nbut I kept some way out for fear of shoals, till after three good hours\nunder the reclining sun of afternoon, which glorified the mist, I saw,\nfar off, the roofs and spires of a town, and a low pier running well out\nto sea, and I knew that it must be Calais. And I ran for these piers,\ncareless of how I went, for it was already half of the spring flood\ntide, and everything was surely well covered for so small a boat, and I\nran up the fairway in between the piers, and saw Frenchmen walking about\nand a great gun peeping up over its earthwork, and plenty of clean new\nmasonry. And a man came along and showed me where I could lie; but I was\nso strange to the place that I would not take a berth, but lay that\nnight moored to an English ship.\n\nAnd when I had eaten and drunk and everything was stowed away and\ndarkness had fallen, I went on deck, and for a long time sat silent,\nsmoking a pipe and watching the enormous lighthouse of Calais, which is\nbuilt right in the town, and which turns round and round above one all\nnight long.\n\nAnd I thought: \"Here is a wonderful thing! I have crossed the Channel in\nthis little boat, and I know now what the sea means that separates\nFrance from England. I have strained my eyes for shore through a haze. I\nhave seen new lands, and I feel as men do who have dreamt dreams.\"\n\nBut in reality I had had very great luck indeed, and had had no right to\ncross, for my coming back was to be far more difficult and dreadful, and\nI was to suffer many things before again I could see tall England, close\nby me, out of the sea.\n\nBut how I came back, and of the storm, and of its majesty, and of how\nthe boat and I survived, I will tell you another time, only imploring\nyou to do the same; not to tell of it, I mean, but to sail it in a\nlittle boat.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MOWING OF A FIELD\n\n\nThere is a valley in South England remote from ambition and from fear,\nwhere the passage of strangers is rare and unperceived, and where the\nscent of the grass in summer is breathed only by those who are native to\nthat unvisited land. The roads to the Channel do not traverse it; they\nchoose upon either side easier passes over the range. One track alone\nleads up through it to the hills, and this is changeable: now green\nwhere men have little occasion to go, now a good road where it nears the\nhomesteads and the barns. The woods grow steep above the slopes; they\nreach sometimes the very summit of the heights, or, when they cannot\nattain them, fill in and clothe the coombes. And, in between, along the\nfloor of the valley, deep pastures and their silence are bordered by\nlawns of chalky grass and the small yew trees of the Downs.\n\nThe clouds that visit its sky reveal themselves beyond the one great\nrise, and sail, white and enormous, to the other, and sink beyond that\nother. But the plains above which they have travelled and the Weald to\nwhich they go, the people of the valley cannot see and hardly recall.\nThe wind, when it reaches such fields, is no longer a gale from the\nsalt, but fruitful and soft, an inland breeze; and those whose blood was\nnourished here, feel in that wind the fruitfulness of our orchards and\nall the life that all things draw from the air.\n\nIn this place, when I was a boy, I pushed through a fringe of beeches\nthat made a complete screen between me and the world, and I came to a\nglade called No Man's Land. I climbed beyond it, and I was surprised and\nglad, because from the ridge of that glade I saw the sea. To this place\nvery lately I returned.\n\nThe many things that I recovered as I came up the countryside were not\nless charming than when a distant memory had enshrined them, but much\nmore. Whatever veil is thrown by a longing recollection had not\nintensified nor even made more mysterious the beauty of that happy\nground; not in my very dreams of morning had I, in exile, seen it more\nbeloved or more rare. Much also that I had forgotten now returned to me\nas I approached--a group of elms, a little turn of the parson's wall, a\nsmall paddock beyond the graveyard close, cherished by one man, with a\nlow wall of very old stone guarding it all round. And all these things\nfulfilled and amplified my delight, till even the good vision of the\nplace, which I had kept so many years, left me and was replaced by its\nbetter reality. \"Here,\" I said to myself, \"is a symbol of what some say\nis reserved for the soul: pleasure of a kind which cannot be imagined\nsave in a moment when at last it is attained.\"\n\nWhen I came to my own gate and my own field, and had before me the house\nI knew, I looked around a little (though it was already evening), and I\nsaw that the grass was standing as it should stand when it is ready for\nthe scythe. For in this, as in everything that a man can do--of those\nthings at least which are very old--there is an exact moment when they\nare done best. And it has been remarked of whatever rules us that it\nworks blunderingly, seeing that the good things given to a man are not\ngiven at the precise moment when they would have filled him with\ndelight. But, whether this be true or false, we can choose the just turn\nof the seasons in everything we do of our own will, and especially in\nthe making of hay. Many think that hay is best made when the grass is\nthickest; and so they delay until it is rank and in flower, and has\nalready heavily pulled the ground. And there is another false reason for\ndelay, which is wet weather. For very few will understand (though it\ncomes year after year) that we have rain always in South England between\nthe sickle and the scythe, or say just after the weeks of east wind are\nover. First we have a week of sudden warmth, as though the south had\ncome to see us all; then we have the weeks of east and south-east wind;\nand then we have more or less of that rain of which I spoke, and which\nalways astonishes the world. Now it is just before, or during, or at the\nvery end of that rain--but not later--that grass should be cut for hay.\nTrue, upland grass, which is always thin, should be cut earlier than the\ngrass in the bottoms and along the water meadows; but not even the\nlatest, even in the wettest seasons, should be left (as it is) to flower\nand even to seed. For what we get when we store our grass is not a\nharvest of something ripe, but a thing just caught in its prime before\nmaturity: as witness that our corn and straw are best yellow, but our\nhay is best green. So also Death should be represented with a scythe and\nTime with a sickle; for Time can take only what is ripe, but Death comes\nalways too soon. In a word, then, it is always much easier to cut grass\ntoo late than too early; and I, under that evening and come back to\nthese pleasant fields, looked at the grass and knew that it was time.\nJune was in full advance: it was the beginning of that season when the\nnight has already lost her foothold of the earth and hovers over it,\nnever quite descending, but mixing sunset with the dawn.\n\nNext morning, before it was yet broad day, I awoke, and thought of the\nmowing. The birds were already chattering in the trees beside my window,\nall except the nightingale, which had left and flown away to the Weald,\nwhere he sings all summer by day as well as by night in the oaks and the\nhazel spinneys, and especially along the little river Adur, one of the\nrivers of the Weald. The birds and the thought of the mowing had\nawakened me, and I went down the stairs and along the stone floors to\nwhere I could find a scythe; and when I took it from its nail, I\nremembered how, fourteen years ago, I had last gone out with my scythe,\njust so, into the fields at morning. In between that day and this were\nmany things, cities and armies, and a confusion of books, mountains and\nthe desert, and horrible great breadths of sea.\n\nWhen I got out into the long grass the sun was not yet risen, but there\nwere already many colours in the eastern sky, and I made haste to\nsharpen my scythe, so that I might get to the cutting before the dew\nshould dry. Some say that it is best to wait till all the dew has risen,\nso as to get the grass quite dry from the very first. But, though it is\nan advantage to get the grass quite dry, yet it is not worth while to\nwait till the dew has risen. For, in the first place, you lose many\nhours of work (and those the coolest), and next--which is more\nimportant--you lose that great ease and thickness in cutting which comes\nof the dew. So I at once began to sharpen my scythe.\n\nThere is an art also in the sharpening of a scythe, and it is worth\ndescribing carefully. Your blade must be dry, and that is why you will\nsee men rubbing the scythe-blade with grass before they whet it. Then\nalso your rubber must be quite dry, and on this account it is a good\nthing to lay it on your coat and keep it there during all your day's\nmowing. The scythe you stand upright, with the blade pointing away from\nyou, and you put your left hand firmly on the back of the blade,\ngrasping it: then you pass the rubber first down one side of the\nblade-edge and then down the other, beginning near the handle and going\non to the point and working quickly and hard. When you first do this you\nwill, perhaps, cut your hand; but it is only at first that such an\naccident will happen to you.\n\nTo tell when the scythe is sharp enough this is the rule. First the\nstone clangs and grinds against the iron harshly; then it rings\nmusically to one note; then, at last, it purrs as though the iron and\nstone were exactly suited. When you hear this, your scythe is sharp\nenough; and I, when I heard it that June dawn, with everything quite\nsilent except the birds, let down the scythe and bent myself to mow.\n\nWhen one does anything anew, after so many years, one fears very much\nfor one's trick or habit. But all things once learnt are easily\nrecoverable, and I very soon recovered the swing and power of the mower.\nMowing well and mowing badly--or rather not mowing at all--are separated\nby very little; as is also true of writing verse, of playing the\nfiddle, and of dozens of other things, but of nothing more than of\nbelieving. For the bad or young or untaught mower without tradition, the\nmower Promethean, the mower original and contemptuous of the past, does\nall these things: He leaves great crescents of grass uncut. He digs the\npoint of the scythe hard into the ground with a jerk. He loosens the\nhandles and even the fastening of the blade. He twists the blade with\nhis blunders, he blunts the blade, he chips it, dulls it, or breaks it\nclean off at the tip. If any one is standing by he cuts him in the\nankle. He sweeps up into the air wildly, with nothing to resist his\nstroke. He drags up earth with the grass, which is like making the\nmeadow bleed. But the good mower who does things just as they should be\ndone and have been for a hundred thousand years, falls into none of\nthese fooleries. He goes forward very steadily, his scythe-blade just\nbarely missing the ground, every grass falling; the swish and rhythm of\nhis mowing are always the same.\n\nSo great an art can only be learnt by continual practice; but this much\nis worth writing down, that, as in all good work, to know the thing with\nwhich you work is the core of the affair. Good verse is best written on\ngood paper with an easy pen, not with a lump of coal on a whitewashed\nwall. The pen thinks for you; and so does the scythe mow for you if you\ntreat it honourably and in a manner that makes it recognise its service.\nThe manner is this. You must regard the scythe as a pendulum that\nswings, not as a knife that cuts. A good mower puts no more strength\ninto his stroke than into his lifting. Again, stand up to your work. The\nbad mower, eager and full of pain, leans forward and tries to force the\nscythe through the grass. The good mower, serene and able, stands as\nnearly straight as the shape of the scythe will let him, and follows up\nevery stroke closely, moving his left foot forward. Then also let every\nstroke get well away. Mowing is a thing of ample gestures, like drawing\na cartoon. Then, again, get yourself into a mechanical and repetitive\nmood: be thinking of anything at all but your mowing, and be anxious\nonly when there seems some interruption to the monotony of the sound.\nIn this mowing should be like one's prayers--all of a sort and always\nthe same, and so made that you can establish a monotony and work them,\nas it were, with half your mind: that happier half, the half that does\nnot bother.\n\nIn this way, when I had recovered the art after so many years, I went\nforward over the field, cutting lane after lane through the grass, and\nbringing out its most secret essences with the sweep of the scythe until\nthe air was full of odours. At the end of every lane I sharpened my\nscythe and looked back at the work done, and then carried my scythe down\nagain upon my shoulder to begin another. So, long before the bell rang\nin the chapel above me--that is, long before six o'clock, which is the\ntime for the _Angelus_--I had many swathes already lying in order\nparallel like soldiery; and the high grass yet standing, making a great\ncontrast with the shaven part, looked dense and high. As it says in the\n_Ballad of Val-\u00e8s-Dunes,_ where--\n\n     The tall son of the Seven Winds\n     Came riding out of Hither-hythe,\n\nand his horse-hoofs (you will remember) trampled into the press and made\na gap in it, and his sword (as you know)\n\n       ... was like a scythe\n     In Arcus when the grass is high\n     And all the swathes in order lie,\n     And there's the bailiff standing by\n       A-gathering of the tithe.\n\n\nSo I mowed all that morning, till the houses awoke in the valley, and\nfrom some of them rose a little fragrant smoke, and men began to be\nseen.\n\nI stood still and rested on my scythe to watch the awakening of the\nvillage, when I saw coming up to my field a man whom I had known in\nolder times, before I had left the Valley.\n\nHe was of that dark silent race upon which all the learned quarrel, but\nwhich, by whatever meaningless name it may be called--Iberian, or\nCeltic, or what you will--is the permanent root of all England, and\nmakes England wealthy and preserves it everywhere, except perhaps in\nthe Fens and in a part of Yorkshire. Everywhere else you will find it\nactive and strong. These people are intensive; their thoughts and their\nlabours turn inward. It is on account of their presence in these islands\nthat our gardens are the richest in the world. They also love low rooms\nand ample fires and great warm slopes of thatch. They have, as I\nbelieve, an older acquaintance with the English air than any other of\nall the strains that make up England. They hunted in the Weald with\nstones, and camped in the pines of the green-sand. They lurked under the\noaks of the upper rivers, and saw the legionaries go up, up the straight\npaved road from the sea. They helped the few pirates to destroy the\ntowns, and mixed with those pirates and shared the spoils of the Roman\nvillas, and were glad to see the captains and the priests destroyed.\nThey remain; and no admixture of the Frisian pirates, or the Breton, or\nthe Angevin and Norman conquerors, has very much affected their cunning\neyes.\n\nTo this race, I say, belonged the man who now approached me. And he said\nto me, \"Mowing?\" And I answered, \"Ar.\" Then he also said \"Ar,\" as in\nduty bound; for so we speak to each other in the Stenes of the Downs.\n\nNext he told me that, as he had nothing to do, he would lend me a hand;\nand I thanked him warmly, or, as we say, \"kindly.\" For it is a good\ncustom of ours always to treat bargaining as though it were a courteous\npastime; and though what he was after was money, and what I wanted was\nhis labour at the least pay, yet we both played the comedy that we were\nfree men, the one granting a grace and the other accepting it. For the\ndry bones of commerce, avarice and method and need, are odious to the\nValley; and we cover them up with a pretty body of fiction and\nobservances. Thus, when it comes to buying pigs, the buyer does not\nbegin to decry the pig and the vendor to praise it, as is the custom\nwith lesser men; but tradition makes them do business in this fashion:--\n\nFirst the buyer will go up to the seller when he sees him in his own\nsteading, and, looking at the pig with admiration, the buyer will say\nthat rain may or may not fall, or that we shall have snow or thunder,\naccording to the time of year. Then the seller, looking critically at\nthe pig, will agree that the weather is as his friend maintains. There\nis no haste at all; great leisure marks the dignity of their exchange.\nAnd the next step is, that the buyer says: \"That's a fine pig you have\nthere, Mr. ----\" (giving the seller's name). \"Ar, powerful fine pig.\"\nThen the seller, saying also \"Mr.\" (for twin brothers rocked in one\ncradle give each other ceremonious observance here), the seller, I say,\nadmits, as though with reluctance, the strength and beauty of the pig,\nand falls into deep thought. Then the buyer says, as though moved by a\ngreat desire, that he is ready to give so much for the pig, naming half\nthe proper price, or a little less. Then the seller remains in silence\nfor some moments; and at last begins to shake his head slowly, till he\nsays: \"I don't be thinking of selling the pig, anyways.\" He will also\nadd that a party only Wednesday offered him so much for the pig--and he\nnames about double the proper price. Thus all ritual is duly\naccomplished; and the solemn act is entered upon with reverence and in a\nspirit of truth. For when the buyer uses this phrase: \"I'll tell you\nwhat I _will_ do,\" and offers within half a crown of the pig's value,\nthe seller replies that he can refuse him nothing, and names half a\ncrown above its value; the difference is split, the pig is sold, and in\nthe quiet soul of each runs the peace of something accomplished.\n\nThus do we buy a pig or land or labour or malt or lime, always with\nelaboration and set forms; and many a London man has paid double and\nmore for his violence and his greedy haste and very unchivalrous\nhiggling. As happened with the land at Underwaltham, which the\nmortgagees had begged and implored the estate to take at twelve hundred,\nand had privately offered to all the world at a thousand, but which a\nsharp direct man, of the kind that makes great fortunes, a man in a\nmotor-car, a man in a fur coat, a man of few words, bought for two\nthousand three hundred before my very eyes, protesting that they might\ntake his offer or leave it; and all because he did not begin by praising\nthe land.\n\nWell then, this man I spoke of offered to help me, and he went to get\nhis scythe. But I went into the house and brought out a gallon jar of\nsmall ale for him and for me; for the sun was now very warm, and small\nale goes well with mowing. When we had drunk some of this ale in mugs\ncalled \"I see you,\" we took each a swathe, he a little behind me because\nhe was the better mower; and so for many hours we swung, one before the\nother, mowing and mowing at the tall grass of the field. And the sun\nrose to noon and we were still at our mowing; and we ate food, but only\nfor a little while, and we took again to our mowing. And at last there\nwas nothing left but a small square of grass, standing like a square of\nlinesmen who keep their formation, tall and unbroken, with all the dead\nlying around them when the battle is over and done.\n\nThen for some little time I rested after all those hours; and the man\nand I talked together, and a long way off we heard in another field the\nmusical sharpening of a scythe.\n\nThe sunlight slanted powdered and mellow over the breadth of the valley;\nfor day was nearing its end. I went to fetch rakes from the steading;\nand when I had come back the last of the grass had fallen, and all the\nfield lay flat and smooth, with the very green short grass in lanes\nbetween the dead and yellow swathes.\n\nThese swathes we raked into cocks to keep them from the dew against our\nreturn at daybreak; and we made the cocks as tall and steep as we could,\nfor in that shape they best keep off the dew, and it is easier also to\nspread them after the sun has risen. Then we raked up every straggling\nblade, till the whole field was a clean floor for the tedding and the\ncarrying of the hay next morning. The grass we had mown was but a little\nover two acres; for that is all the pasture on my little tiny farm.\n\nWhen we had done all this, there fell upon us the beneficent and\ndeliberate evening; so that as we sat a little while together near the\nrakes, we saw the valley more solemn and dim around us, and all the\ntrees and hedgerows quite still, and held by a complete silence. Then I\npaid my companion his wage, and bade him a good night, till we should\nmeet in the same place before sunrise.\n\nHe went off with a slow and steady progress, as all our peasants do,\nmaking their walking a part of the easy but continual labour of their\nlives. But I sat on, watching the light creep around towards the north\nand change, and the waning moon coming up as though by stealth behind\nthe woods of No Man's Land.\n\n\n\n\nTHE ROMAN ROAD\n\n\nThe other day (it was Wednesday, and the air was very pure) I went into\nthe stable upon my way toward the wood, and there I saw my horse Monster\nstanding by himself, regarding nothingness. And when I had considered\nwhat a shame it was to take one's pleasure in a wood and leave one's\nhelpless horse at home, I bridled him and saddled him and took him out,\nand rode him the way that I had meant to go alone. So we went together\nalong the Stene under the North Wood until we got to the edge of the\nforest, and then we took the green Ride to the right, for it was my\nintention to go and look at the Roman road.\n\nBehind my house, behind my little farm, there are as many miles of turf\nas one cares to count, and then behind it also, but the other way, there\ngoes this deep and lonely forest. It is principally of beech, which is\nthe tree of the chalk, and no one has cut it or fenced it or thought\nabout it (except to love it), since the parts about my village took\ntheir names: Gumber and Fairmile Bay Combe, the Nore, and the stretch\ncalled No Man's Land.\n\nInto the darkness of these trees I rode very quietly with Monster, my\nhorse, but whether the autumn air were pleasanter to him or to me\nneither of us could decide, for there is no bridge between two souls.\nThat is, if horses have a soul, which I suppose they have, for they are\nboth stupid and kindly, and they fear death as though a part, and but a\npart, of them were immortal. Also they see things in the dark and are\ncognisant of evil.\n\nWhen I had gone some hundred yards towards the Roman road I saw, bending\nlower than the rest on the tree from which it hung, a golden bough, and\nI said to myself that I had had good luck, for such a thing has always\nbeen the sign of an unusual experience and of a voyage among the dead.\nAll the other leaves of the tree were green, but the turn of the year,\nwhich sends out foragers just as the spring does, marking the way it is\nto go, had come and touched this bough and changed it, so that it shone\nout by itself in the recesses of the forest and gleamed before and\nbehind. I did not ask what way it led me, for I knew; and so I went\nonwards, riding my horse, until I came to that long bank of earth which\nruns like a sort of challenge through this ancient land to prove what\nour origins were, and who first brought us merry people into the circuit\nof the world.\n\nWhen I saw the Roman road the sharper influence which it had had upon my\nboyhood returned to me, and I got off my horse and took his bit out of\nhis mouth so that he could play the fool with the grass and leaves\n(which are bad for him), and I hitched the snaffle to a little broken\npeg of bough so that he could not wander. And then I looked up and down\nalong the boles of the great North Wood, taking in the straight line of\nthe way.\n\nI have heard it said that certain professors, the most learned of their\nday, did once deny that this was a Roman road. I can well believe it,\nand it is delightful to believe that they did. For this road startles\nand controls a true man, presenting an eternal example of what Rome\ncould do. The peasants around have always called it the \"Street.\" It\nleads from what was certainly one Roman town to what was certainly\nanother. That sign of Roman occupation, the modern word \"Cold Harbour,\"\nis scattered up and down it. There are Roman pavements on it. It goes\nplumb straight for miles, and at times, wherever it crosses undisturbed\nland, it is three or four feet above the level of the down. Here, then,\nwas a feast for the learned: since certainly the more obvious a thing\nis, the more glory there must be in denying it. And deny it they did (or\nat least, so I am told), just as they will deny that Thomas \u00e0 Becket was\na Papist, or that Austerlitz was fought in spite of Trafalgar, or that\nthe Gospel of St. John is the Gospel of St. John.\n\nHere then, sitting upon this Roman road I considered the nature of such\nmen, and when I had thought out carefully where the nearest Don might be\nat that moment, I decided that he was at least twenty-three miles away,\nand I was very glad: for it permitted me to contemplate the road with\ncommon sense and with Faith, which is Common Sense transfigured; and I\ncould see the Legionaries climbing the hill. I remembered also what a\nsight there was upon the down above, and I got upon my horse again to go\nand see it.\n\nWhen one has pushed one's way through the brambles and the rounded great\nroots which have grown upon this street--where no man has walked perhaps\nfor about a thousand years--one gets to the place where it tops the\nhill, and here one sees the way in which the line of it was first struck\nout. From where one stands, right away like a beam, leading from rise to\nrise, it runs to the cathedral town. You see the spot where it enters\nthe eastern gate of the Roman walls; you see at the end of it, like the\ndot upon an \"i,\" the mass of the cathedral. Then, if you turn and look\nnorthward, you see from point to point its taut stretch across the weald\nto where, at the very limit of the horizon, there is a gap in the chain\nof hills that bars your view.\n\nThe strict design of such a thing weighs upon one as might weigh upon\none four great lines of Virgil, or the sight of those enormous stones\nwhich one comes upon, Roman also, in the Algerian sands. The plan of\nsuch an avenue by which to lead great armies and along which to drive\ncommands argues a mixture of unity and of power as intimate as the lime\nand the sand of which these conquerors welded their imperishable cement.\nAnd it does more than this. It suggests swiftness and certitude of aim\nand a sort of eager determination which we are slow to connect with\nGovernment, but which certainly underlay the triumph of this people. A\nroad will give one less trouble if it winds about and feels the contours\nof the land. It will pay better if it is of earth and broken stones\ninstead of being paved, nor would any one aiming at wealth or comfort\nalone laboriously raise its level, as the level of this road is raised.\nBut in all that the Romans did there was something of a monument. Where\nthey might have taken pipes down a valley and up the opposing side they\npreferred the broad shoulders of an arcade, and where a seven-foot door\nwould have done well enough to enter their houses by they were content\nwith nothing less than an arch of fifty. In all their work they were\nconscious of some business other than that immediately to hand, and\ntherefore it is possible that their ruins will survive the establishment\nof our own time as they have survived that of the Middle Ages. In this\nwild place, at least, nothing remained of all that was done between\ntheir time and ours.\n\nThese things did the sight on either side of the summit suggest to me,\nbut chiefly there returned as I gazed the delicious thought that learned\nmen, laborious and heavily endowed, had denied the _existence_ of this\nRoman road.\n\nSee with what manifold uses every accident of human life is crammed!\nHere was a piece of pedantry and scepticism, which might make some men\nweep and some men stamp with irritation, and some men, from sheer\nboredom, fall asleep, but which fed in my own spirit a fountain of pure\njoy, as I considered carefully what kind of man it is who denies these\nthings; the kind of way he walks; the kind of face he has; the kind of\nbook he writes; the kind of publisher who chisels him; and the kind of\nway in which his works are bound. With every moment my elation grew\ngreater and more impetuous, until at last I could not bear to sit any\nlonger still, even upon so admirable a beast, nor to look down even at\nso rich a plain (though that was seen through the air of Southern\nEngland), but turning over the downs I galloped home, and came in\nstraight from the turf to my own ground--for what man would live upon a\nhigh road who could go through a gate right off the turf to his own\nsteading and let the world go hang?\n\nAnd so did I. But as they brought me beer and bacon at evening, and I\ntoasted the memory of things past, I said to myself: \"Oxford,\nCambridge, Dublin, Durham--you four great universities--you terrors of\nEurope--that road is older than you: and meanwhile I drink to your\ncontinued healths, but let us have a little room ... air, there, give us\nair, good people. I stifle when I think of you.\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE ONION-EATER\n\n\nThere is a hill not far from my home whence it is possible to see\nnorthward and southward such a stretch of land as is not to be seen from\nany eminence among those I know in Western Europe. Southward the\nsea-plain and the sea standing up in a belt of light against the sky,\nand northward all the weald.\n\nFrom this summit the eye is disturbed by no great cities of the modern\nsort, but a dozen at least of those small market towns which are the\ndelight of South England hold the view from point to point, from the\npale blue downs of the island over, eastward, to the Kentish hills.\n\nA very long way off, and near the sea-line, the high faint spire of that\ncathedral which was once the mother of all my county goes up without\nweight into the air and gathers round it the delicate and distant\noutlines of the landscape--as, indeed, its builders meant that it should\ndo. In such a spot, on such a high watch-tower of England, I met, three\ndays ago, a man.\n\nI had been riding my kind and honourable horse for two hours, broken,\nindeed, by a long rest in a deserted barn.\n\nI had been his companion, I say, for two hours, and had told him a\nhundred interesting things--to which he had answered nothing at\nall--when I took him along a path that neither of us yet had trod. I had\nnot, I know; he had not (I think), for he went snorting and doubtfully.\nThis path broke up from the kennels near Waltham, and made for the High\nWood between Gumber and No Man's Land. It went over dead leaves and\nquite lonely to the thick of the forest; there it died out into a\nvaguer and a vaguer trail. At last it ceased altogether, and for half an\nhour or so I pushed carefully, always climbing upwards, through the\nbranches, and picked my way along the bramble-shoots, until at last I\ncame out upon that open space of which I had spoken, and which I have\nknown since my childhood. As I came out of the wood the south-west wind\nmet me, full of the Atlantic, and it seemed to me to blow from Paradise.\n\nI remembered, as I halted and so gazed north and south to the weald\nbelow me, and then again to the sea, the story of that Sultan who\npublicly proclaimed that he had possessed all power on earth, and had\nnumbered on a tablet with his own hand each of his happy days, and had\nfound them, when he came to die, to be seventeen. I knew what that\nheathen had meant, and I looked into my heart as I remembered the story,\nbut I came back from the examination satisfied, for \"So far,\" I said to\nmyself, \"this day is among my number, and the light is falling. I will\ncount it for one.\" It was then that I saw before me, going easily and\nslowly across the downs, the figure of a man.\n\nHe was powerful, full of health and easy; his clothes were rags; his\nface was open and bronzed. I came at once off my horse to speak with\nhim, and, holding my horse by the bridle, I led it forward till we met.\nThen I asked him whither he was going, and whether, as I knew these open\nhills by heart, I could not help him on his way.\n\nHe answered me that he was in no need of help, for he was bound nowhere,\nbut that he had come up off the high road on to the hills in order to\nget his pleasure and also to see what there was on the other side. He\nsaid to me also, with evident enjoyment (and in the accent of a lettered\nman), \"This is indeed a day to be alive!\"\n\nI saw that I had here some chance of an adventure, since it is not every\nday that one meets upon a lonely down a man of culture, in rags and\nhappy. I therefore took the bridle right off my horse and let him\nnibble, and I sat down on the bank of the Roman road holding the\nleather of the bridle in my hand, and wiping the bit with plucked grass.\nThe stranger sat down beside me, and drew from his pocket a piece of\nbread and a large onion. We then talked of those things which should\nchiefly occupy mankind: I mean, of happiness and of the destiny of the\nsoul. Upon these matters I found him to be exact, thoughtful, and just.\n\nFirst, then, I said to him: \"I also have been full of gladness all this\nday, and, what is more, as I came up the hill from Waltham I was\ninspired to verse, and wrote it inside my mind, completing a passage I\nhad been working at for two years, upon joy. But it was easy for me to\nbe happy, since I was on a horse and warm and well fed; yet even for me\nsuch days are capricious. I have known but few in my life. They are each\nof them distinct and clear, so rare are they, and (what is more) so\ndifferent are they in their very quality from all other days.\"\n\n\"You are right,\" he said, \"in this last phrase of yours.... They are\nindeed quite other from all the common days of our lives. But you were\nwrong, I think, in saying that your horse and clothes and good feeding\nand the rest had to do with these curious intervals of content. Wealth\nmakes the run of our days somewhat more easy, poverty makes them more\nhard--or very hard. But no poverty has ever yet brought of itself\ndespair into the soul--the men who kill themselves are neither rich nor\npoor. Still less has wealth ever purchased those peculiar hours. I also\nam filled with their spirit to-day, and God knows,\" said he, cutting his\nonion in two, so that it gave out a strong savour, \"God knows I can\npurchase nothing.\"\n\n\"Then tell me,\" I said, \"whence do you believe these moments come? And\nwill you give me half your onion?\"\n\n\"With pleasure,\" he replied, \"for no man can eat a whole onion; and as\nfor that other matter, why I think the door of heaven is ajar from time\nto time, and that light shines out upon us for a moment between its\nopening and closing.\" He said this in a merry, sober manner; his black\neyes sparkled, and his large beard was blown about a little by the\nwind. Then he added: \"If a man is a slave to the rich in the great\ncities (the most miserable of mankind), yet these days come to him. To\nthe vicious wealthy and privileged men, whose faces are stamped hard\nwith degradation, these days come; they come to you, you say, working (I\nsuppose) in anxiety like most of men. They come to me who neither work\nnor am anxious so long as South England may freely import onions.\"\n\n\"I believe you are right,\" I said. \"And I especially commend you for\neating onions; they contain all health; they induce sleep; they may be\ncalled the apples of content, or, again, the companion fruits of\nmankind.\"\n\n\"I have always said,\" he answered gravely, \"that when the couple of them\nleft Eden they hid and took away with them an onion. I am moved in my\nsoul to have known a man who reveres and loves them in the due measure,\nfor such men are rare.\"\n\nThen he asked, with evident anxiety: \"Is there no inn about here where a\nman like me will be taken in?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I told him. \"Down under the Combe at Duncton is a very good inn.\nHave you money to pay? Will you take some of my money?\"\n\n\"I will take all you can possibly afford me,\" he answered in a cheerful,\nmanly fashion. I counted out my money and found I had on me but 3s.7d.\n\"Here is 3s. 7d.,\" I said.\n\n\"Thank you, indeed,\" he answered, taking the coins and wrapping them in\na little rag (for he had no pockets, but only holes).\n\n\"I wish,\" I said with regret, \"we might meet and talk more often of many\nthings. So much do we agree, and men like you and me are often lonely.\"\n\nHe shrugged his shoulders and put his head on one side, quizzing at me\nwith his eyes. Then he shook his head decidedly, and said: \"No, no--it\nis certain that we shall never meet again.\" And thanking me with great\nfervour, but briefly, he went largely and strongly down the escarpment\nof the Combe to Duncton and the weald; and I shall never see him again\ntill the Great Day....\n\n\n\n\nTHE RETURN TO ENGLAND\n\n\nIn Calais harbour, it being still very early in the morning, about\nhalf-past five, I peered out to see how things were looking, for if that\ncoast corresponded at all to ours, the tide should be making westerly by\nsix o'clock that day--the ebb tide--and it was on the first of that tide\nthat I should make the passage to England, for at sea you never can\ntell. At sea you never can tell, and you must take every inch the gods\nallow you. You will need that and more very often before evening. Now,\nas I put my head out I saw that I could not yet start, for there was a\nthick white mist over everything, so that I could not even see the\nbowsprit of my own boat. Everything was damp: the decks smelt of fog,\nand from the shore came sounds whose cause I could not see. Looking over\nthe iron bulwarks of the big English cargo ship, alongside of which I\nwas moored, was a man with his head upon his folded arms. He told me\nthat he thought the fog would lift; and so I waited, seeking no more\nsleep, but sitting up there in the drifting fog, and taking pleasure in\na bugle call which the French call \"La Diane,\" and which they play to\nwake the soldiers. But in summer it wakes nobody, for all the world is\nwaking long before.\n\nTowards six the mist blew clean away before a little air from the\nnorth-east; it had come sharp over those miles and miles of sand dunes\nand flats which stretched away from Gris-nez on to Denmark. From\nGris-nez all the way to the Sound there is no other hill; but coarse\ngrass, wind-swept and flying sand. Finding this wind, I very quickly set\nsail, and as I did not know the harbour I let down the peak of the\nmainsail that she might sail slowly, and crept along close to the\neastern pier, for fear that when I got to the open work the westerly\ntide should drive me against the western pier; but there was no need for\nall this caution, since the tide was not yet making strongly. Yet was I\nwise to beware, for if you give the strange gods of the sea one little\nchance they will take a hundred, and drown you for their pleasure. And\nsailing, if you sail in all weathers, is a perpetual game of skill\nagainst them, the heartiest and most hazardous game in the world.\n\nSo then, when I had got well outside, I found what is called \"a lump.\"\nThe sea was jumbling up and down irregularly, as though great animals\nhad just stopped fighting there. But whatever was the cause of it, this\nlump made it difficult to manage the boat I was in, for the air was\nstill light and somewhat unsteady; sometimes within a point of north,\nand then again dropping and rising free within a point of east: on the\nwhole, north-east. To windward the sea was very clear, but down towards\nthe land there was a haze, and when I got to the black buoy which is\nthree miles from Calais, and marks the place where you should turn to go\ninto the harbour, I could barely see the high land glooming through the\nweather, and Calais belfry and lighthouse tower I could not see at all.\nI looked at my watch and saw it was seven, and immediately afterwards\nthe wind became steady and true, and somewhat stronger, and work began.\n\nShe would point very nearly north, and so I laid her for that course,\nthough that would have taken me right outside the Goodwins, for I knew\nthat the tide was making westerly down the Channel, ebbing away faster\nand faster, and that, like a man crossing a rapid river in a ferry-boat,\nI had to point up far above where I wanted to land, which was at Dover,\nthe nearest harbour. I sailed her, therefore, I say, as close as she\nwould lie, and the wind rose.\n\nThe wind rose, and for half an hour I kept her to it. She had no more\nsail than she needed; she heeled beautifully and strongly to the wind;\nshe took the seas, as they ran more regular, with a motion of mastery.\nIt was like the gesture of a horse when he bends his head back to his\nchest, arching his neck with pride as he springs upon our Downs at\nmorning. So set had the surging of the sea become that she rose and fell\nto it with rhythm, and the helm could be kept quite steady, and the\nregular splash of the rising bows and the little wisps of foam came in\nceaseless exactitude like the marching of men, and in all this one mixed\nwith the life of the sea.\n\nBut before it was eight o'clock (and I had eaten nothing) the wind got\nstronger still, and I was anxious and gazed continuously into it, up to\nwindward, seeing the white caps beginning on the tops of the seas,\nalthough the wind and tide were together. She heeled also much more, and\nmy anxiety hardened with the wind, for the wind had strengthened by\nabout half-past eight, so that it was very strong indeed, and she was\nplainly over-canvased, her lee rail under all the time and all the\ncordage humming; there it stood, and by the grace and mercy of God the\nwind increased no more, for its caprice might have been very different.\n\nThen began that excellent game which it is so hard to play, but so good\nto remember, and in which all men, whether they admit it or not, are\nfull of fear, but it is a fear so steeped in exhilaration that one would\nthink the personal spirit of the sea was mingled with the noise of the\nair.\n\nFor a whole great hour she roared and lifted through it still, taking\nthe larger seas grandly, with disdain, as she had taken the smaller, and\nstill over the buried lee rail the stream of the sea went by rejoicing\nand pouring, and the sheets and the weather runner trembled with the\nvigour of the charge, and on she went, and on. I was weary of the seas\nahead (for each and individually they struck my soul as they came, even\nmore strongly than they struck the bows--steep, curling, unintermittent,\nrank upon rank upon rank, as innumerable cavalry); still watching them,\nI say, I groped round with my hand behind the cabin door and pulled out\nbrandy and bread, and drank brandy and ate bread, still watching the\nseas. And, as men are proud of their companions in danger, so I was\nproud to see the admirable lift and swing of that good boat, and to note\nhow, if she slowed for a moment under the pounding, she recovered with\na stride, rejoicing; and as for my fears, which were now fixed and\nconsiderable, I found this argument against them: that, though I could\nsee nothing round me but the sea, yet soon I should be under the lee of\nthe Goodwins, for, though I could not exactly calculate my speed, and\nthough in the haze beyond nothing appeared, it was certain that I was\nroaring very quickly towards the further shore.\n\nWhen, later, the sea grew confused and full of swirls and boiling, I\nsaid to myself: \"This must be the tail of the Goodwins.\" But it was,\nnot. For, though I did not know it, the ebb of the great spring tide had\ncarried me right away down Channel, and there was not twelve feet of\nwater under the keel, for the seething of the sea that I noticed came\nfrom the Varne--the Varne, that curious, long, steep hill, with its twin\nridge close by, the Colbert; they stand right up in the Channel between\nFrance and England; they very nearly lift their heads above the waves. I\npassed over the crest of them, unknowing, into the deep beyond, and\nstill the ship raced on. Then, somewhat suddenly, so suddenly that I\ngave a cry, I saw right up above me, through what was now a thick haze,\nthe cliffs of England, perhaps two miles away, and showing very faintly\nindeed, a bare outline upon the white weather. A thought ran into my\nmind with violence, how, one behind the other, beyond known things,\nbeyond history, the men from whom I came had greeted this sight after\nwinds like these and danger and the crossing of the narrow seas. I\nlooked at my watch; it was ten o'clock, so that this crossing had taken\nthree hours, and to see the land again like that was better than any\nharbour, and I knew that all those hours my mind had been at strain. I\nlooked again at the vague cliffs narrowly, thinking them the South\nForeland, but as they cleared I saw to my astonishment that I had blown\nall down the Straits, and that Folkestone and the last walls of the\nchalk were before me.'\n\nThe wind dropped; the sea went on uneasily, tumbling and rolling, but\nwithin a very little while--before eleven, I think--there was no breeze\nat all; and there I lay, with Folkestone harbour not a mile away, but\nnever any chance of getting there; and I whistled, but no wind came. I\nsat idle and admired the loneliness of the sea. Till, towards one, a\nlittle draught of air blew slantwise from the land, and under it I crept\nto the smooth water within the stone arm of the breakwater, and here I\nlet the anchor go, and settling everything, I slept.\n\nIt is pleasant to remember these things.\n\n\n\n\nTHE VALLEY OF THE ROTHER\n\n\nThere is in that part of England which is very properly called her Eden\n(that centre of all good things and home of happy men, the county of\nSussex), there is, I say, in that exalted county a valley which I shall\npraise for your greater pleasure, because I know that it is too\njealously guarded for any run of strangers to make it common, and\nbecause I am very sure that you may go and only make it the more\ndelightful by your presence. It is the valley of the River Rother; the\nsacred and fruitful river between the downs and the weald.\n\nNow, here many travelling men, bicyclists even and some who visit for a\nlivelihood, will think I mean the famous River Rother that almost\nreaches the sea. The Rother into which the foreigners sailed for so many\nhundred years, the River of the Marshes, the river on which stands Rye;\nthe easy Rother along whose deep meadows are the sloping kilns, the\nbright-tilted towns and the steep roads; the red Rother that is fed by\nstreams from the ironstone. This Rother also all good men know and love,\nboth those that come in for pleasure, strangers of Kent, and those that\nhave a distant birthright in East Sussex, being born beyond Ouse in the\nRape of Bramber.\n\nBut it is not this Rother that I am telling of, though I would love to\ntell of it also--as indeed I would love to tell at length of all the\nrivers of Sussex--the Brede, the Ouse, the Adur, the Cuckmere; all the\nstreams that cut the chalk hills. But for this I have no space and you\nno patience. Neither can I tell you of a thousand adventures and\nwonderful hazards along the hills and valley of this eastern Rother; of\nhow I once through a telescope on Brightling Hill saw the meet at\nBattle, and of how it looked quite near; of how I leapt the River Rother\nonce, landing on the far side safely (which argues the river narrow or\nthe leap tremendous); of how I poached in the wood of a friend who is\nstill my friend; of how I rode a horse into Robertsbridge; of the inn.\nAll these things could I tell with growing fervour, and to all these\nwould you listen with an increasing delight. But I must write of the\nRiver Rother under Petworth, the other Rother in the West. Why? Because\nI started out so to do, and no man should let himself be led away by a\nword, or by any such little thing.\n\nLet me therefore have done with this eastern river, far away from my\nhome, a river at the end of long journeys, and speak of that other noble\nRother, the Rother of quiet men, the valley that is like a shrine in\nEngland.\n\nMany famous towns and villages stand in the valley of this river and\neven (some of them) upon its very banks. Thus there are the three\nprincipal towns of this part, Midhurst and Petworth and Pulborough: but\nthese have been dealt with and written of in so many great books and by\nsuch a swarm of new men that I have no business further to describe\ntheir merits and antiquity. But this I will add to all that is known of\nthem. Midhurst takes its name from standing in the middle, for it is\nhalf-way between the open downs and the thick woods on the borders of\nSurrey. Petworth has a steeple that slopes to one side; not so much as\nChesterfield, but somewhat more than most steeples. Pulborough stands\nupon a hill, and is famous for its corn-market, to which people come\nfrom far and near, from as far off as Burpham or as close by as Bury.\nAll these noble towns have (as I said before) been written of in books,\nonly no book that I know puts them all together and calls them \"the\nValley of the Rother.\" That is the title that such a book should have if\nit is to treat of the heart of West Sussex, and I make no doubt that\nsuch a book would be read lovingly by many men.\n\nFor the Valley of the Rother breeds men and is the cause of many\ndelightful villages, all the homes of men. I know that Cobden was born\nthere, the last of the yeomen: I hope that Cobbett lived here too.\nManning was here in his short married life; he lived at Barlton (which\nfoolish men call Barlavington), under the old Downs, where the steep\nwoods make a hollow. In this valley also are Fittleworth (the only place\nin England that rhymes with Little Worth); Duncton, about which there is\nnothing to be said; Burton, which is very old and has its church right\nin the grounds of the house; Westburton, where the racehorses were;\nGraffham, Bignor, Sutton, and I know not how many delightful hamlets.\n\nIn the Valley of the River Rother no hurried men ever come, for it leads\nnowhere. They cross it now and then, and they forget it; but who, unless\nhe be a son or a lover, has really known that plain? It leads nowhere:\nto the no man's land, the broken country by Liss. It has in it no\ncurious sight, but only beauty. The rich men in it (and thank Heaven\nthey are few) are of a reticent and homing kind, or (when the worst\ncomes to the worst) they have estates elsewhere, and go north for their\npleasure.\n\nFoxes are hunted in the Valley of the Rother, but there are not very\nmany. Pheasants and partridges are shot, but I never heard of great\nbags; one animal indeed there is in profusion. The rabbit swarms and\nexults in this life of Southern England. Do you stalk him? He sits and\nwatches you. Do you hunt him with dogs? He thinks it a vast bother about\na very little matter. Do you ferret him? He dies, and rejoices to know\nthat so many more will take his place. The rabbit is the sacred emblem\nof my river, and when we have a symbol, he shall be our symbol. He loves\nmen and eats the things they plant, especially the tender shoots of\nyoung trees, wheat, and the choice roots in gardens. He only remains,\nand is happy all his little life in the valley from which we depart when\nour boyhood ends.\n\nThe Valley of the Rother is made of many parts. There is the chalk of\nthe Southern Down-land, the belt of the loam beneath it; then the\ncurious country of sand, full of dells and dark with pine woods; then\nthe luxurious meadows, which are open and full of cattle, colts, and\neven sheep; then the woods. It is, in a few miles, a little England.\nThere are also large heaths--larger, you would think, than such a corner\nof the earth could contain; old elms and oaks; many wide parks; fish\nponds; one trout stream and half a score of mills. There are men of many\ncharacters, but all happy, honest, good, witty, and hale. And when I\nhave said all I could say of this delightful place (which indeed I think\nis set apart for the reward of virtue) I should not have given you a\ntithe of its prosperity and peace and beneficence. There is the picture\nof the Valley of the River Rother. It flows in a short and happy murmur\nfrom the confined hills by Hindhead to the Arun itself; but of the Arun\nno one could write with any justice except at the expense of far more\nspace and time than I have given me.\n\nIf ever again we have a religion in the South Country, we will have a\ntemple to my darling valley. It shall be round, with columns and a wall,\nand there I will hang a wreath in thanksgiving for having known the\nriver.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CORONATION\n\n\nMy companion said to me that there was a doom over the day and the reign\nand the times, and that the turn of the nation had come. He felt it in\nthe sky.\n\nThe day had been troubled: from the forest ridge to the sea there was\nneither wind nor sun, but a dull, even heat oppressed the fields and the\nhigh downs under the uncertain, half-luminous confusion of grey clouds.\nIt was as though a relief was being denied, and as though something\ninexorable had come into that air which is normally the softest and most\ntender in the world. The hours of the low tide were too silent. The\nlittle inland river was quite dead, the reeds beside it dry and\nmotionless; even in the trees about it no leaves stirred.\n\nIn the late afternoon, as the heat grew more masterful, a slight wind\ncame out of the east. It was so faint and doubtful in quantity that one\ncould not be certain, as one stood on the deserted shore, whether it\nblew from just off the land or from the sullen level of the sea. It\nfollowed along the line of the coast without refreshment and without\nvigour, even hotter than had been the still air out of which it was\nengendered. It did not do more than ruffle here and there the uneasy\nsurface of our sea; that surface moved a little, but with a motion\nborrowed from nothing so living or so natural as the wind. It was a dull\nmemory of past storms, or perhaps that mysterious heaving from the lower\nsands which sailors know, but which no silence has yet explained.\n\nIn such an influence of expectation and of presage--an influence having\nin it that quality which seemed to the ancients only Fate, but to us\nmoderns a something evil--in the strained attention for necessary and\nimmovable things that cannot hear and cannot pity--the hour came for me\nto reascend the valley to my home. Already upon the far and confused\nhorizon two or three motionless sails that had been invisible began to\nshow white against a rising cloud. This cloud had not the definition of\nsudden conquering storms, proper to the summer, and leaving a blessing\nbehind their fury. The edge of it against the misty and brooding sky had\nall the vagueness of smoke, and as it rose up out of the sea its growth\nwas so methodical and regular as to disconnect it wholly in one's mind\nfrom the little fainting breeze that still blew, from rain, or from any\ndaily thing. It advanced with the fall of the evening till it held half\nthe sky. There it seemed halted for a while, and lent by contrast an\nunnatural brightness to the parched hills beneath it; for now the sun\nhaving set, we had come north of the gap, and were looking southward\nupon that spectacle as upon the climax of a tragedy. But there was\nnothing of movement or of sound. No lightning, no thunder; and soon the\nhot breath of the afternoon had itself disappeared before the advance of\nthis silent pall. The night of June to the north was brighter than\ntwilight, and still southward, a deliberate spectacle, stood this great\nrange of vague and menacing cloud, shutting off the sky and towering\nabove the downs, so that it seemed permissible to ascribe to those\nprotecting gods of our valley a burden of fear.\n\nJust when all that scene had been arranged to an adjustment that no art\ncould have attained, the first great fire blazed out miles and miles to\nthe west, somewhere above Midhurst: I think near No Man's Land. Then we\nsaw, miles to the east again, a glare over Mount Harry, the signal of\nLewes, and one after another all the heights took it up in a\nchain--above Bramber, above Poynings, above Wiston, on Amberley Mount (I\nthink), certainly on the noble sweep of Bury. Even in those greater\ndistances which the horizon concealed they were burning and answering\neach other into Hampshire: perhaps on the beaten grass of the high forts\nabove Portsmouth, and to the left away to the flat Rye level, and to\nthe eastern Rother; for we saw the line of red angry upon that cloud\nwhich had come to receive it, an endless line which suddenly called up\nwhat one had heard old men say of the prairie fires.\n\nIt was easy, without covering the face and without abstracting the mind\nfrom the whirl of modern circumstance, it was easy, merely looking at\nthe thing, to be seized with an impression of disaster. The stars were\nso pale on the lingering white light of the pure north, the smoky cloud\nso deep and heavy and steadfast and low above the hills, the fire so\nnear to it, so sharp against it, and so huge, that the awe and sinister\nmeaning of conflagrations dominated the impression of all the scene.\nThere arose in the mind that memory which associates such a glare and\nthe rising and falling fury of flames with sacrifice or with vengeance,\nor with the warning of an enemy's approach, or with the mark of his\nconquest; for with such things our race (for how many thousand years!)\nhas watched the fires upon the hills far off. It touched one as does the\nreiterated note of a chaunt; if not with an impression of doom, at least\nwith that of calamity.\n\nWhen the fires had died down to a sullen glow, and the men watching them\nhad gone home under the weight of what they had seen, the storm broke\nand occupied the whole sky. A very low wind rose and a furious rain\nfell. It became suddenly cold; there was thunder all over the weald, and\nthe lightning along the unseen crest of the downs answered the lightning\nabove the forest.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MAN OF THE DESERT\n\n\nI lay once alone upon the crest of a range whose name I have never seen\nspelt, but which is pronounced \"Haueedja,\" from whence a man can see\nright away for ever the expanse of the Sahara.\n\nIt is well known that Mount Atlas and those inhabited lands where there\nis a sufficient rainfall and every evidence of man's activity, the\nProvince of Africa, the plateaux which are full of the memories of Rome,\nend abruptly towards the sun, and are bounded by a sort of cliff which\nfalls sheer upon the desert. On the summit of this cliff I lay and\nlooked down upon the sand. It was impressed upon my mind that here was\nan influence quite peculiar, not to be discovered in any other climate\nof the world; that all Europe received that influence, and yet that no\none in Europe had accepted it save for his hurt.\n\nGod forbid that any man should pretend that the material environment of\nmankind determines the destiny of mankind. Those who say such things\nhave abandoned the domain of intelligence. But it is true that the soul\neagerly seeks for and receives the impressions of the world about it,\nand will be moved to a different creed or to a different poetry,\naccording as the body perceives the sea or the hills or the rainless and\ninhuman places which lie to the south of Europe; and certainly the souls\nof those races which have inhabited the great zone of calms between the\ntrade winds and the tropics, those races which have felt nothing\nbeneficent, but only something awful and unfamiliar in the earth and\nsky, have produced a peculiar philosophy.\n\nIt is to be remarked that this philosophy is not atheist; those races\ncalled Semitic have never denied either the presence or the personality\nof God. It is, on the contrary, their boast that they have felt His\npresence, His unity, and His personality in a manner more pointed than\nhave the rest of mankind; and those of us who pretend to find in the\nDesert a mere negation, are checked by the thought that within the\nDesert the most positive of religions have appeared. Indeed, to deny God\nhas been the sad privilege of very few in any society of men; and those\nfew, if it be examined, have invariably been men in whom the power to\nexperience was deadened, usually by luxury, sometimes by distress.\n\nIt is not atheist; but whatever it is, it is hurtful, and has about it\nsomething of the despair and strength of atheism. Consider the Book of\nJob; consider the Arab Mohammedan; consider the fierce heresies which\nbesieged the last of the Romans in this Province of Africa, and which\ntortured the short history of the Vandals; consider the modern tragedies\nwhich develop among the French soldiers to the north and to the south of\nthis wide belt of sand; and you will see that the thing which the Sahara\nand its prolongation produce is something evil, or at least to us evil.\nThere is in the idea running through the mind of the Desert an intensity\nwhich may be of some value to us if it be diluted by a large admixture\nof European tradition, or if it be mellowed and transformed by a long\nprocess of time, but which, if we take it at its source and inspire\nourselves directly from it, warps and does hurt to our European sense.\n\nIt may be taken that whatever form truth takes among men will be the\nmore perfect in proportion as the men who receive that form are more\nfully men. The whole of truth can never be comprehended by anything\nfinite; and truth as it appears to this species or to that is most true\nwhen the type which receives it is the healthiest and the most normal of\nits own kind. The truth as it is to men is most true when the men who\nreceive it are the healthiest and the most normal of men. We in Europe\nare the healthiest and most normal of our kind. It is to us that the\nworld must look for its headship; we have the harbours, the continual\npresence of the sea through all our polities; we have that high\ndifferentiation between the various parts of our unity which makes the\nwhole of Europe so marvellous an organism; we alone change without\nsuffering decay. To the truth as Europe accepts it I cannot but bow\ndown; for if that is not the truth, then the truth is not to be found\nupon earth. But there conies upon us perpetually that \"wind of Africa\";\nand it disturbs us. As I lay that day, a year ago, upon the crest of the\nmountain, my whole mind was possessed with the influence of such a gale.\n\nDay after day, after day, the silent men of the Desert go forward across\nits monotonous horizons; their mouths are flanked with those two deep\nlines of patience and of sorrow which you may note to-day in all the\nghettoes of Europe; their smile, when they smile, is restrained by a\nsort of ironic strength in the muscles of the face. Their eyes are more\nbright than should be eyes of happy men; they are, as it were, inured to\nsterility; there is nothing in them of that repose which we Westerners\nacquire from a continual contemplation of deep pastures and of\ninnumerable leaves; they are at war, not only among themselves, but\nagainst the good earth; in a silent and powerful way they are also\n_afraid_.\n\nYou may note that their morals are an angry series of unexplained\ncommands, and that their worship does not include that fringe of\nhalf-reasonable, wholly pleasant things which the true worship of a true\nGod must surely contain. All is as clear-cut as their rocks, and as\nunfruitful as their dry valleys, and as dreadful as their brazen sky;\n\"thou shalt not\" this, that, and the other. Their God is jealous; he is\nvengeful; he is (awfully present and real to them!) a vision of that\ndemon of which we in our happier countries make a quaint legend. He\ncatches men out and trips them up; he has but little relation to the\nFather of Christian men, who made the downs of South England and the\nhigh clouds above them.\n\nThe good uses of the world are forgotten in the Desert, or fiercely\ndenied. Love is impure; so are birth, and death, and eating, and every\nother necessary part in the life of a man. And yet, though all these\nthings are impure, there is no lustration. We also feel in a genial\nmanner that this merry body of ours requires apology; but those others\nto south of us have no toleration in their attitude; they are awfully\nafraid.\n\nI have continually considered, as I have read my history, the special\npoints in which their influence is to be observed in the development of\nEurope. It takes the form of the great heresies; the denial of the\nimportance of matter (sometimes of its existence); the denial that\nanything but matter exists; the denial of the family; the denial of\nownership; the over-simplicity which is peculiarly a Desert product runs\nthrough all such follies, as does the rejection of a central and\ngoverning power upon earth, which is again just such a rebellion as the\nDesert would bring. I say the great heresies are the main signs of that\ninfluence; but it is in small and particular matters that you may see\nits effect most clearly.\n\nFor instance, the men of the Desert are afraid of wine. They have good\nreason; if you drink wine in the Desert you die. In the Desert, a man\ncan drink only water; and, when he gets it, it is like diamonds to him,\nor, better still, it is like rejuvenation. All our long European legends\nwhich denounce and bring a curse upon the men who are the enemies of\nwine, are legends inspired by our hatred of the thing which is not\nEurope, and that bounds Europe, and is the enemy of Europe.\n\nSo also with their attachment to numbers. For instance, the seventh day\nmust have about it something awful and oppressive; the fast must be\nseven times seven days, and so forth. We Europeans have always smiled in\nour hearts at these things. We would take this day or that, and make up\na scheme of great and natural complexity, full of interlacing seasons;\nand nearly all our special days were days of rejoicing. We carried\nimages about our fields further to develop and enhance the nature of our\nreligion; we dedicated trees and caves; and the feasts of one place were\nnot the feasts of another. But to the men of the Desert mere unfruitful\nnumber was a god.\n\nThen again, the word, especially the written word, the document,\novershadows their mind. It has always had for them a power of something\nmysterious. To engrave characters was to cast a spell; and when they\nseek for some infallible authority upon earth, they can only discover it\nin the written characters traced in a sacred book. All their expression\nof worship is wrought through symbols. With us, the symbol is clearly\nretained separate from that for which it stands, though hallowed by that\nfor which it stands. With them the symbol is the whole object of\naffection.\n\nOn this account you will find in the men of the Desert a curious panic\nin the presence of statues, which is even more severe than the panic\nthey suffer in the presence of wine. It is as though they said to\nthemselves: \"Take this away; if you leave it here I shall worship it.\"\nThey are subject to possession.\n\nSide by side with this fear of the graphic representation of men or of\nanimals, you will find in them an incapacity to represent them well. The\nart of the iconoclasts is either childish, weak, or, at its strongest,\nevil.\n\nAnd especially among all these symptoms of the philosophy from which\nthey suffer is their manner of comprehending the nature of creation. Of\ncreation in any form they are afraid; and the infinite Creator is on\nthat account present to them almost as though He were a man, for when we\nare afraid of things we see them very vividly indeed. On this account\nyou will find in the legends of the men of the Desert all manner of\nfantastic tales incomprehensible to us Europeans, wherein God walks,\ntalks, eats, and wrestles. Nor is there any trace in this attitude of\ntheirs of parable or of allegory. That mixture of the truth, and of a\nsubtle unreal glamour which expands and confirms the truth, is a mixture\nproper to our hazy landscapes, to our drowsy woods, and to our large\nvision. We, who so often see from our high village squares soft and\ndistant horizons, mountains now near, now very far, according as the\nweather changes: we, who are perpetually feeling the transformation of\nthe seasons, and who are immersed in a very ocean of manifold and\nmysterious life, we need, create, and live by legends. The line between\nthe real and imaginary is vague and penumbral to us. We are justly\ninfluenced by our twilights, and our imagination teaches us. How many\ndeities have we not summoned up to inhabit groves and lakes--special\ndeities who are never seen, but yet have never died?\n\nTo the men of the Desert, doubt and beauty mingled in this fashion\nseemed meaningless. That which they worship they see and almost handle.\nIn the dreadful silence which surrounds them, their illusions turn into\nconvictions--the haunting voices are heard; the forms are seen.\n\nOf two further things, native to us, their starved experience has no\nhold; of nationality (or if the term be preferred, of \"The City\") and of\nwhat we have come to call \"chivalry.\" The two are but aspects of one\nthing without a name; but that thing all Europeans possess, nor is it\npossible for us to conceive of a patriotism unless it is a patriotism\nwhich is chivalric. In our earliest stories, we honour men fighting\nodds. Our epics are of small numbers against great; humility and charity\nare in them, lending a kind of magic strength to the sword. The Faith\ndid not bring in that spirit, but rather completed it. Our boundaries\nhave always been intensely sacred to us. We are not passionate to cross\nthem save for the sake of adventure; but we are passionate to defend\nthem. In all that enormous story of Rome, from the dim Etrurian origins\nright up to the end of her thousand years, the Wall of the Town was more\nsacred than the limits of the Empire.\n\nThe men of the Desert do not understand these things. They are by\ncompulsion nomad, and for ever wandering; they strike no root; their\npride is in mere expansion; they must colonise or fail; nor does any man\ndie for a city.\n\nAs I looked from the mountain I thought the Desert which I had come so\nfar to see had explained to me what hitherto I had not understood in the\nmischances of Europe. I remained for a long while looking out upon the\nglare.\n\nBut when I came down again, northward from the high sandstone hill, and\nwas in the fields again near running water, and drinking wine from a cup\ncarved with Roman emblems, I began to wonder whether the Desert had not\nput before my mind, as they say it can do before the eye of the\ntraveller, a mirage. Is there such an influence? Are there such men?\n\n\n\n\nTHE DEPARTURE\n\n\nOnce, in Barbary, I grew tired of unusual things, especially of palms,\nand desired to return to Europe and the things I knew; so I went down\nfrom the hills to the sea coast, and when after two days I had reached\nthe railway, I took a train for Algiers and reached that port at\nevening.\n\nFrom Algiers it is possible to go at once and for almost any sum one\nchooses to any part of the world. The town is on a sharp slope of a\ntheatre of hills, and in the quiet harbour below it there are all sorts\nof ships, but mostly steamships, moored with their sterns towards the\nquay. For there is no tide here, and the ships can lie quite still.\n\nI sat upon a wall of the upper town and considered how each of these\nships were going to some different place, and how pleasant it was to\nroam about the world. Behind the ships, along the stone quays, were a\ngreat number of wooden huts, of offices built, into archways, of little\nhouses, booths, and dens, in each of which you could take your passage\nto some place or other.\n\n\"Now,\" said I to myself, \"now is the time to be free.\" For one never\nfeels master of oneself unless one is obeying no law, plan, custom,\ntrend, or necessity, but simply spreading out at ease and occupying the\nworld. In this also Aristotle was misled by fashion, or was ill-informed\nby some friend of his, or was, perhaps, lying for money when he said\nthat liberty was obedience to a self-made law; for the most distant hint\nof law is odious to liberty. True, it is more free to obey a law of\none's own making than of some one else's; just as if a man should give\nhimself a punch in the eye it would be less hurtful and far less\nangering than one given by a passer-by; yet to suffer either would not\nbe a benefit of freedom. Liberty cannot breathe where the faintest odour\nof regulation is to be discovered, but only in that ether whose very\nnature is largeness. Oh! Diviner Air! how few have drunk you, and in\nwhat deep draughts have I!\n\nI had a great weight of coined, golden, metallic money all loose in my\npocket. There was no call upon me nor any purpose before me. I spent an\nhour looking down upon the sea and the steamships, and taking my pick\nout of all the world.\n\nOne thing, however, guided me, which was this: that desire, to be\nsatisfied at all, must be satisfied at once; and of the many new\ncountries I might seek that would most attract me whose ship was\nstarting soonest. So I looked round for mooring cables in the place of\nanchor chains, for Blue Peter, for smoke from funnels, for little boats\ncoming and going, and for all that shows a steamboat to be off; when I\nsaw, just behind a large new boat in such a condition of bustle, a sign\nin huge yellow letters staring on a bright black ground, which said, \"To\nthe Balearic Islands, eight shillings\"; underneath, in smaller yellow\nletters, was written: \"Gentlemen The Honourable Travellers are warned\nthat they must pay for any food they consume.\" When I had read this\nnotice I said to myself: \"I will go to the Balearic Islands, of which\nthe rich have never heard. I, poor and unencumbered, will go and visit\nthese remote places, which have in their time received all the\ninfluences of the world, and which yet have no history; for I am tired\nof this Africa, where so many men are different from me.\" As I said this\nto myself I saw a little picture in my mind of three small islands\nstanding in the middle of the sea, quite alone, and inhabited by happy\nmen; but this picture, as it always is with such pictures, was not at\nall the same as what I saw when next morning the islands rose along the\nnorth to which we steered.\n\nI went down to the quay by some large stone steps which an Englishman\nhad built many years ago, and I entered the office above which this\ngreat sign was raised. Within was a tall man of doubtful race, smoking\na cigarette made of loose paper, and gazing kindly at the air. He was\nfull of reveries. Of this man I asked when the boat would be starting.\nHe told me it started in half an hour, a little before the setting of\nthe sun. So I bought a ticket for eight shillings, upon which it was\nclearly printed in two languages that I had bound myself to all manner\nof things by the purchase, and especially that I might not go below, but\nmust sit upon deck all night; nevertheless, I was glad to hold that\nlittle bit of printed prose, for it would enable me to reach the\nBalearic Islands, which for all other men are names in a dream. I then\nwent up into the town of Algiers, and was careful to buy some ham from a\nJew, some wine from a Mohammedan, and some bread and chocolate from a\nvery indifferent Christian. After that I got aboard. As I came over the\nside I heard the sailors, stokers, and people all talking to each other\nin low tones, and I at once recognised the tongue called Catalan.\n\nI had heard this sort of Latin in many places, some lonely and some\npopulous. I had heard it once from a chemist at Perpignan who dressed a\nwound of mine, and this was the first time I heard it. Very often after\nin the valleys of the Pyrenees, in the Cerdagne, and especially in\nAndorra, hundreds of men had spoken to me in Catalan. At Urgel, that\nnotable city where there is only one shop and where the streets are\nquite narrow and Moorish, a woman and six or seven men had spoken\nCatalan to me for nearly one hour: it was in a cellar surrounded by\ngreat barrels, and I remember it well. So, also, on the River Noguera,\ncoming up again into the hills, a girl who took the toll at the wooden\nbridge had spoken Catalan to me. But none of these had I ever answered\nso that they could understand, and on this account I was very grieved to\nhear the Catalan tongue, though I remembered that if I spoke to them\nwith ordinary Spanish words or in French with a strong Southern accent\nthey would usually have some idea of what I was saying.\n\nAs the evening fell the cables were slipped without songs, and with\ngreat dignity, rapidity, and order the ship was got away.\n\nI knew a man once, a seafaring man, a Scotchman, with whom I travelled\non a very slow old boat in the Atlantic, who told me that the Northern\npeople of Europe were bravest in a unexpected danger, but the Southern\nin a danger long foreseen. He said he had known many of both kinds, and\nhad served under them and commanded them. He said that in sudden\naccident the Northerner was the more reliable man, but that if an act of\ngreat danger had to be planned and coolly achieved, then the Southerner\nwas strongest in doing what he had to do. He said that in taking the\nground he would rather have a Northern, but in bringing in a short ship\na Southern crew.\n\nHe was a man who observed closely, and never said a thing because he had\nread it. Indeed, he did not read, and he had in a little hanging shelf\nabove his bunk only four or five tattered books, and even these were\nmagazines. I remembered his testimony now as I watched these Catalans\nletting the ship go free, and I believed it, comparing it with history\nand the things I had myself seen. They did everything with such\nregularity and so silently that it was a different deck from what one\nwould have had in the heave of the Channel. With Normans or Bretons, or\nCornishmen or men of Kent, but especially with men from London river,\nthere would have been all sorts of cursing and bellowing, and they could\nnot have touched a rope without throwing themselves into attitudes of\nviolence. But these men took the sea quite quietly, nor could you tell\nfrom their faces which was rich and which was poor.\n\nIt was not till the ship was out throbbing swiftly Over the smooth sea\nand darkness had fallen that they began to sing. Then those of them who\nwere not working gathered together with a stringed instrument forward\nand sang of pity and of death. One of them said to me, \"Knight, can your\ngrace sing?\" I told him that I could sing, certainly, but that my\nsinging was unpleasing, and that I only knew foreign songs. He said that\nsinging was a great solace, and desired to hear a song of my own\ncountry. So I sang them a song out of Sussex, to which they listened in\ndeep silence, and when it was concluded their leader snapped and twanged\nat the strings again and began another song about the riding of horses\nin the hills.\n\nSo we passed the short night until the sky upon our quarter grew faintly\npale and the little wind that rises before morning awakened the sea.\n\n\n\n\nTHE IDEA OF A PILGRIMAGE\n\n\nA pilgrimage is, of course, an expedition to some venerated place to\nwhich a vivid memory of sacred things experienced, or a long and\nwonderful history of human experience in divine matters, or a personal\nattraction affecting the soul impels one. This is, I say, its essence.\nSo a pilgrimage may be made to the tomb of Descartes, in Paris, or it\nmay be a little walk uphill to a neighbouring and beloved grave, or a\nmodern travel, even in luxury, on the impulse to see something that\ngreatly calls one.\n\nBut there has always hung round the idea of a pilgrimage, with all\npeople and at all times--I except those very rare and highly decadent\ngenerations of history in which no pilgrimages are made, nor any\njourneys, save for curiosity or greed--there has always hung round it, I\nsay, something more than the mere objective. Just as in general worship\nyou will have noble gowns, vivid colour, and majestic music (symbols,\nbut necessary symbols of the great business you are at); so, in this\nparticular case of worship, clothes, as it were, and accoutrements,\ngather round one's principal action. I will visit the grave of a saint\nor of a man whom I venerate privately for his virtues and deeds, but on\nmy way I wish to do something a little difficult to show at what a price\nI hold communion with his resting-place, and also on toy way I will see\nall I can of men and things; for anything great and worthy is but an\nordinary thing transfigured, and if I am about to venerate a humanity\nabsorbed into the divine, so it behoves me on my journey to it to enter\ninto and delight in the divine that is hidden in everything. Thus I may\ngo upon a pilgrimage with no pack and nothing but a stick and my\nclothes, but I must get myself into the frame of mind that carries an\ninvisible burden, an eye for happiness and suffering, humour, gladness\nat the beauty of the world, a readiness for raising the heart at the\nvastness of a wide view, and especially a readiness to give\nmultitudinous praise to God; for a man that goes on a pilgrimage does\nbest of all if he starts out (I say it of his temporal object only) with\nthe heart of a wanderer, eager for the world as it is, forgetful of maps\nor descriptions, but hungry for real colours and men and the seeming of\nthings. This desire for reality and contact is a kind of humility, this\npleasure in it a kind of charity.\n\nIt is surely in the essence of a pilgrimage that all vain imaginations\nare controlled by the greatness of our object. Thus, if a man should go\nto see the place where (as they say) St. Peter met our Lord on the\nAppian Way at dawn, he will not care very much for the niggling of\npedants about this or that building, or for the rhetoric of posers about\nthis or that beautiful picture. If a thing in his way seem to him\nfrankly ugly he will easily treat it as a neutral, forget it and pass it\nby. If, on the contrary, he find a beautiful thing, whether done by God\nor by man, he will remember and love it. This is what children do, and\nto get the heart of a child is the end surely of any act of religion. In\nsuch a temper he will observe rather than read, and though on his way he\ncannot do other than remember the names of places, saying, \"Why, these\nare the Alps of which I have read! Here is Florence, of which I have\nheard so many rich women talk!\" yet he will never let himself argue and\ndecide or put himself, so to speak, before an audience in his own\nmind--for that is pride which all of us moderns always fall into. He\nwill, on the contrary, go into everything with curiosity and pleasure,\nand be a brother to the streets and trees and to all the new world he\nfinds. The Alps that he sees with his eyes will be as much more than the\nnames he reads about, the Florence of his desires as much more than the\nFlorence of sickly-drawing-rooms; as beauty loved is more than beauty\nheard of, or as our own taste, smell, hearing, touch and sight are more\nthan the vague relations of others. Nor does religion exercise in our\ncommon life any function more temporarily valuable than this, that it\nmakes us be sure at least of realities, and look very much askance at\nphilosophies and imaginaries and academic whimsies.\n\nLook, then, how a pilgrimage ought to be nothing but a nobler kind of\ntravel, in which, according to our age and inclination, we tell our\ntales, or draw our pictures, or compose our songs. It is a very great\nerror, and one unknown before our most recent corruptions, that the\nreligious spirit should be so superficial and so self-conscious as to\ndominate our method of action at special times and to be absent at\nothers. It is better occasionally to travel in one way or another to\nsome beloved place (or to some place wonderful and desired for its\nassociations), haunted by our mission, yet falling into every ordinary\nlevity, than to go about a common voyage in a chastened and devout\nspirit. I fear this is bad theology, and I propound it subject to\nauthority. But, surely, if a man should say, \"I will go to Redditch to\nbuy needles cheap,\" and all the way take care to speak no evil of his\nneighbour, to keep very sober, to be punctual in his accounts, and to\nsay his regular prayers with exactitude, though that would be a good\nwork, yet if he is to be a _pilgrim_ (and the Church has a hundred\ngates), I would rather for the moment that he went off in a gay,\ntramping spirit, not oversure of his expenses, not very careful of all\nhe said or did, but illuminated and increasingly informed by the great\nobject of his voyage, which is here not to buy or sell needles, or what\nnot, but to loose the mind and purge it in the ultimate contemplation of\nsomething divine.\n\nThere is, indeed, that kind of pilgrimage which some few sad men\nundertake because their minds are overburdened by a sin or tortured with\nsome great care that is not of their own fault. These are excepted from\nthe general rule, though even to these a very human spirit comes by the\nway, and the adventures of inns and foreign conversations broaden the\nworld for them and lighten their burden. But this kind of pilgrimage is\nrare and special, having its peculiar virtues. The common sort (which\nhow many men undertake under another name!) is a separate and human\nsatisfaction of a need, the fulfilling of an instinct in us, the\nrealisation of imagined horizons, the reaching of a goal. For whoever\nyet that was alive reached an end and could say he was satisfied? Yet\nwho has not desired so to reach an end and to be satisfied? Well,\npilgrimage is for the most a sort of prefiguring or rehearsal. A man\nsays: \"I will play in show (but a show stiffened with a real and just\nobject) at that great part which is all we can ever play. Here I start\nfrom home, and there I reach a goal, and on the way I laugh and watch,\nsing and work. Now I am at ease and again hampered; now poor, now rich,\nweary towards the end and at last arrived at that end. So my great life\nis, and so this little chapter shall be.\" Thus he packs up the meaning\nof life into a little space to be able to look at it closely, as men\ncarry with them small locket portraits of their birthplace or of those\nthey love.\n\nIf a pilgrimage is all this, it is evident that however careless, it\nmust not be untroublesome. It would be a contradiction of pilgrimage to\nseek to make the journey short and rapid, merely consuming the mind for\nnothing, as is our modern habit; for they seem to think nowadays that to\nremain as near as possible to what one was at starting, and to one's\nusual rut, is the great good of travel (as though a man should run\nthrough the _Iliad_ only to note the barbarous absurdity of the Greek\ncharacters, or through Catullus for the sake of discovering such words\nas were like enough to English). That is not the spirit of a pilgrimage\nat all. The pilgrim is humble and devout, and human and charitable, and\nready to smile and admire; therefore he should comprehend the whole of\nhis way, the people in it, and the hills and the clouds, and the habits\nof the various cities. And as to the method of doing this, we may go\nbicycling (though that is a little flurried) or driving (though that is\nluxurious and dangerous, because it brings us constantly against\nservants and flattery); but the best way of all is on foot, where one\nis a man like any other man, with the sky above one, and the road\nbeneath, and the world on every side, and time to see all.\n\nSo also I designed to walk, and did, when I visited the tombs of the\nApostles.\n\n\n\n\nTHE ARENA\n\n\nIt was in Paris, in his room on the hill of the University, that a\ntraveller woke and wondered what he should do with his day. In some\nway--I cannot tell how--ephemeral things had captured his mind in the\nfew hours he had already spent in the city. There is no civilisation\nwhere the various parts stand so separate as they do with the French.\nYou may live in Paris all your life and never suspect that there is a\ngarrison of eighty thousand men within call. You may spend a year in a\nprovincial town and never hear that the large building you see daily is\na bishop's palace. Or you may be the guest of the bishop for a month,\nand remain under the impression that somewhere, hidden away in the\nplace, there is a powerful clique of governing atheists whom, somehow,\nyou never run across. And so this traveller, who knew Paris like his\npocket, and had known it since he could speak plain, had managed to\ngather up in this particular visit all the impressions which are least\ncharacteristic of the town. He had dined with a friend at Pousset's; he\nhad passed the evening at the Exhibition, and he had had a bare touch of\nthe real thing in the Rue de Tournon; but even there it was in the\ncompany of foreigners. Therefore, I repeat, he woke up next morning\nwondering what he should do, for the veneer of Paris is the thinnest in\nthe world, and he had exhausted it in one feverish day.\n\nLuckily for him, the room in which he lay was French, and had been\nFrench for a hundred years. You looked out of the window into a sky cut\nby the tall Mansard roofs of the eighteenth century; and over the stones\nof what had been the Scotch College you could see below you at the foot\nof the hill all the higher points of the island--especially the Sainte\nChapelle and the vast towers of the Cathedral. Then it suddenly struck\nhim that the air was full of bells. Now, it is a curious thing, and one\nthat every traveller will bear me out in, that you associate a country\nplace with the sound of bells, but a capital never. Caen is noisy enough\nand Rouen big enough, one would think, to drown the memory of music; yet\nany one who has lived in his Normandy remembers their perpetual bells;\nand as for the admirable town of Chinon, where no one ever goes, I\nbelieve it is Ringing Island itself. But Paris one never thinks of as a\nplace of bells. And yet there are bells enough there to take a man right\ninto the past, and from there through fairyland to hell and out and back\nagain.\n\nIf I were writing of the bells, I could make you a list of all the\nfamous bells, living and dead, that haunt the city, and the tale of what\nthey have done would be a history of France. The bell of the St.\nBartholomew over against the Louvre, the tocsin of the Hotel de Ville\nthat rang the knell of the Monarchy, the bell of St. Julien that is as\nold as the University, the old Bourdon of Notre Dame that first rang\nwhen St. Louis brought in the crown of thorns, and the peal that saluted\nNapoleon, and the new Bourdon that is made of the guns of Sebastopol,\nand the Savoyarde up on Montmartre, a new bell much larger than the\nrest. This morning the air was full of them. They came up to the height\non which the traveller lay listening; they came clear and innumerable\nover the distant surge of the streets; he spent an hour wondering at\nsuch an unusual Parliament and General Council of Bells. Then he said to\nhimself: \"It must be some great feast of the Church.\" He was in a world\nhe had never known before. He was like a man who gets into a strange\ncountry in a dream and follows his own imagination instead of suffering\nthe pressure of outer things; or like a boy who wanders by a known river\ntill he comes to unknown gardens.\n\nSo anxious was he to take possession at once of this discovery of his\nthat he went off hurriedly without eating or drinking, thinking only of\nwhat he might find. He desired to embrace at one sight all that Paris\nwas doing on a day which was full of St. Louis and of resurrection. The\nthoughts upon thoughts that flow into the mind from its impression, as\nwater creams up out of a stone fountain at a river head, disturbed him,\nswelling beyond the possibility of fulfilment. He wished to see at once\nthe fashionables in St. Clotilde and the Greek Uniates at St. Julien,\nand the empty Sorbonne and the great crowd of boys at Stanislas; but\nwhat he was going to see never occurred to him, for he thought he knew\nParis too well to approach the cathedral.\n\nNotre Dame is jealously set apart for special and well-advertised\nofficial things. If you know the official world you know the great\nchurch, and unless some great man had died, or some victory had been\nwon, you would never go there to see how Paris took its religion. No\nmidnight Mass is said in it; for the lovely carols of the Middle Ages\nyou must go to St. Gervais, and for the pomp of the Counter-Reformation\nto the Madeleine, for soldiers to St. Augustin, for pilgrims to St.\nEtienne. Therefore no one would, ever have thought of going to the\ncathedral on this day, when an instinct and revelation of Paris at\nprayer filled the mind. Nevertheless, the traveller's feet went, of\ntheir own accord, towards the seven bridges, because the Island draws\nall Paris to it, and was drawing him along with the rest. He had meant\nperhaps to go the way that all the world has gone since men began to\nlive on this river, and to follow up the Roman way across the Seine--a\nvague intention of getting a Mass at St. Merry or St. Laurent. But he\nwas going as a dream sent him, without purpose or direction.\n\nThe sun was already very hot and the Parvis was blinding with light when\nhe crossed the little bridge. Then he noticed that the open place had\ndotted about it little groups of people making eastward. The Parvis is\nso large that you could have a multitude scattered in it and only notice\nthat the square was not deserted. There were no more than a thousand,\nperhaps, going separately to Notre Dame, and a thousand made no show in\nsuch a square. But when he went in through the doors he saw there\nsomething he had never seen before, and that he thought did not exist.\nIt was as though the vague interior visions of which the morning had\nbeen so full had taken on reality.\n\nYou may sometimes see in modern picture galleries an attempt to combine\nthe story from which proceeds the nourishing flame of Christianity with\nthe crudities and the shameful ugliness of our decline. Thus, with\nothers, a picture of our Lord and Mary Magdalen; all the figures except\nthat of our Lord were dressed in the modern way. I remember another of\nour Lord and the little children, where the scene is put into a village\nschool. Now, if you can imagine (which it is not easy to do) such an\nattempt to be successful, untouched by the love of display and\neccentricity, and informing--as it commonly pretends to inform--our time\nwith an idea, then you will understand what the traveller saw that\nmorning in Notre Dame. The church seemed the vastest cavern that had\never been built for worship. Coming in from the high morning, the\nhalf-light alone, with which we always connect a certain majesty and\npresence, seemed to have taken on amplitude as well. The incense veiled\nwhat appeared to be an infinite lift of roof, and the third great\nmeasurement--the length of nave that leads like a forest ride to the\nlights of the choir--were drawn out into an immeasurable perspective by\nreason of a countless crowd of men and women divided by the narrow path\nof the procession. So full was this great place that a man moved slowly\nand with difficulty, edging through such a mass of folk as you may find\nat holiday time in a railway station, or outside a theatre--never surely\nbefore was a church like this, unless, indeed, some very rich or very\nfamous man happened to be gracing it. But here to-day, for nothing but\nthe function proper to the feast, the cathedral was paved and floored\nwith human beings. In the galilee there was a kind of movement so that a\nman could get up further, and at last the traveller found a place to\nstand in just on the edge of the open gangway, at the very end of the\nnave. He peered up this, and saw from the further end, near the altar,\nthe head of the procession approaching, which was (in his fancy of that\nmorning) like the line of the Faith, still living and returning in a\nperpetual circle to revivify the world. Moreover, there was in the\nadvent of the procession a kind of climax. As it came nearer, the great\ncrowd moved more quickly towards it; children were lifted up, and by one\nof Sully's wide pillars a group of three young soldiers climbed on a\nrail to see the great sight better. The Cardinal-Archbishop, very old\nand supported by his priests, half walked and half tottered down the\nlength of the people; his head, grown weary with age, barely supported\nthe mitre, from which great jewels, false or true, were flashing. In his\nhand he had a crozier that was studded in the same way with gems, and\nthat seemed to be made of gold; the same hands had twisted the metal of\nit as had hammered the hinges of the cathedral doors. Certainly there\nhere appeared one of the resurrections of Europe. The matter of life\nseemed to take on a fuller stuff and to lift into a dimension above that\nin which it ordinarily moves. The thin, narrow, and unfruitful\nexperience of to-day and yesterday was amplified by all the lives that\nhad made our life, and the blood of which we are only a last expression,\nthe race that is older even than Rome seemed in this revelation of\ncontinuity to be gathered up into one intense and passionate moment. The\npagan altar of Tiberius, the legend of Dionysius, the whole circle of\nthe wars came into this one pageant, and the old man in his office and\nhis blessing was understood by all the crowd before him to transmit the\ncenturies. A rich woman thrust a young child forward, and he stopped and\nstooped with difficulty to touch its hair. As he approached the\ntraveller it was as though there had come great and sudden news to him,\nor the sound of unexpected and absorbing music.\n\nThe procession went on and closed; the High Mass followed; it lasted a\nvery long time, and the traveller went out before the crowd had moved\nand found himself again in the glare of the sun on the Parvis.\n\nHe went over the bridge to find his eating-shop near the archives, and\neat the first food of that day, thinking as he went that certainly there\nare an infinity of lives side by side in our cities, and each ignores\nthe rest; and yet, that to pass from what we know of these to what we do\nnot--though it is the most wonderful journey in the world--is one that\nno one undertakes unless accident or a good fortune pushes him on. He\ndesired to make another such journey.\n\nHe came back to find me in London, and spoke to me of Paris as of a city\nnewly discovered: as I listened I thought I saw an arena.\n\nIn a plain of the north, undistinguished by great hills, open to the\ntorment of the sky, the gods had traced an arena wherein were to be\nfought out the principal battles of a later age.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSpirits lower than the divine, spirits intermediate, have been imagined\nby men wiser than ourselves to have some power over the world--a power\nwhich we might vanquish in a special manner, but still a power. To such\nconceptions the best races of Europe cling; upon such a soil are grown\nthe legends that tell us most about our dark, and yet enormous, human\nfate. These intermediate spirits have been called in all the older\ncreeds \"the gods.\" It is in the nature of the Church to frown upon these\ndreams; but I, as I listened to him, saw clearly that plain wherein the\ngods had marked out an arena for mankind.\n\nIt was oval, as should be a theatre for any show, with heights around it\ninsignificant, but offering a vantage ground whence could be watched the\nstruggle in the midst. There was a sacred centre--an island and a\nmount--and, within the lines, so great a concourse of gladiatorial souls\nas befits the greatest of spectacles. I say, I do not know how far such\nvisions are permitted, nor how far the right reason of the Church\ncondemns them; but the dream returned to me very powerfully, recalling\nmy boyhood, when the traveller told me his story. I also therefore went\nand caught the fresh gale of the stream of the Seine in flood, and saw\nthe many roofs of Paris quite clear after the rain, and read the\nwritings of the men I mixed with and heard the noise of the city.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is not upon the paltry level of negations or of decent philosophies,\nit is in the action and hot mood of creative certitudes that the French\nbattle is engaged. The little sophists are dumb and terrified, their\nbooks are quite forgotten. I myself forgot (in those few days by that\nwater and in that city) the thin and ineffectual bodies of ignorant men\nwho live quite beyond any knowledge of such fires. The printed things\nwhich tired and poor writers put down for pay no longer even disturbed\nme; the reflections, the mere phantasms of reality, with which in a\nsecluded measure we please our intellect, faded. I was like a man who\nwas in the centre of two lines that meet in war; to such a man this\nfellow's prose on fighting and that one's verse, this theory of\nstrategy, or that essay upon arms, are not for one moment remembered.\nHere (in the narrow street which I knew and was now following) St.\nBernard had upheld the sacrament in the shock of the first awakening--in\nthat twelfth century, when Julian stirred in his sleep. Beyond the\nbridge, in Roman walls that still stand carefully preserved, the Church\nof Gaul had sustained Athanasius, and determined the course of the\nChristian centuries. I had passed upon my way the vast and empty room\nwhere had been established the Terror; where had been forced by an angry\nand compelling force the full return of equal laws upon Europe. Who\ncould remember in such an air the follies and the pottering of men who\nanalyse and put in categories and explain the follies of wealth and of\nold age?\n\nGood Lord, how little the academies became! I remembered the phrases\nupon one side and upon the other which still live in the stones of the\ncity, carved and deep, but more lasting than are even the letters of\ntheir inscription. I remembered the defiant sentence of Mad Dolet on his\nstatue there in the Quarter, the deliberate perversion of Plato, \"And\nwhen you are dead you shall no more be anything at all.\" I remembered\nthe \"Ave Crux spes Unica\"; and St. Just's \"The words that we have spoken\nwill never be lost on earth\"; and Danton's \"Continual Daring,\" and the\nscribbled Greek on the walls of the cathedral towers. For not only are\nthe air and the voice, but the very material of this town is filled with\nwords that remain. Certainly the philosophies and the negations dwindled\nto be so small as at last to disappear, and to leave only the two\nantagonists. Passion brooded over the silence of the morning; there was\ngreat energy in the cool of the spring air, and up above, the forms the\nclouds were taking were forms of gigantic powers.\n\nI came, as the traveller had come, into the cathedral. It was not yet\nwithin half an hour of the feast. There was still room to be found,\nthough with every moment the nave and the aisles grew fuller, until one\ndoubted how at the end so great a throng could be dismissed. They were\nof all kinds. Some few were strangers holding in their hands books about\nthe building. Some few were devout men on travel, and praying at this\ngreat office on the way: men from the islands, men from the places that\nSpain has redeemed for the future in the new world. I saw an Irishman\nnear me, and two West Indians also, half negro, like the third of the\nkings that came to worship at the manger where Our Lord was born. For\ntwo hours and nearly three I saw and wondered at that immense concourse.\nThe tribunes were full, the whole choir was black, moving with the\ncelebrants, and all the church floor beyond and around me was covered\nand dark with expectant men.\n\nThe Bourdon that had summoned the traveller and driven mad so many\ndespairs, sounded above me upon this day with amplitude and yet with\nmenace. The silence was a solace when it ceased to boom. The Creed, the\noldest of our chaunts, filled and completed those walls; it was as\nthough at last a battle had been joined, and in that issue a great\nrelief ran through the crowd.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFrom such a temple I came out at last. They had thrown the western doors\nwide open, the doors whose hinges man scarcely could have hammered and\nto whose miracle legend has lent its aid; the midday, now captured by\nthe sun, came right into the hollow simplicity of the nave, and caught\nthe river of people as they flowed outwards; but even that and the cry\nof the Benediction from the altar gave no greater peace than an appeal\nto combat. In the air outside that other power stood waiting to conquer\nor to fail.\n\nI came out, as from a camp, into the civilian debate, the atmosphere of\nthe spectators. The permanent and toppling influence against which this\nbulwark of ours, the Faith, was reared (as we say) by God Himself,\nshouted in half the prints, in half the houses. I sat down to read and\ncompare (as it should be one's custom when one is among real and\ndetermining things) the writings of the extreme, that is of the leading\nmen. I chose the two pamphleteers who are of equal weight in this war,\nbut of whom one only is known as yet to us in England, and that the\nleast.\n\nI read their battle-cries. Their style was excellent; their good faith\nshone even in their style.\n\nSince I had been upon phrases all these hours I separated and remembered\nthe principal words of each. One said: \"They will break their teeth\nagainst it. The Catholic Church is not to perish, for she has allies\nfrom outside Time.\" The other said: \"How long will the death of this\ncrucified god linger? How long will his agony crush men with its\ndespair?\"\n\nBut I read these two writers for my entertainment only, and in order to\nbe acquainted with men around me; for on the quarrel between them I had\nlong ago made up my mind.\n\n\n\n\nAT THE SIGN OF THE LION\n\n\nIt was late, and the day was already falling when I came, sitting my\nhorse Monster, to a rise of land. We were at a walk, for we had gone\nvery far since early morning, and were now off the turf upon the hard\nroad; moreover, the hill, though gentle, had been prolonged. From its\nsummit I saw before me, as I had seen it a hundred times, the whole of\nthe weald.\n\nBut now that landscape was transfigured, because many influences had met\nto make it, for the moment, an enchanted land. The autumn, coming late,\nhad crowded it with colours; a slight mist drew out the distances, and\nalong the horizon stood out, quite even and grey like mountains, the\nsolemn presence of the Downs. Over all this the sky was full of storm.\n\nIn some manner which language cannot express, and hardly music, the\nvision was unearthly. All the lesser heights of the plain ministered to\none effect, a picture which was to other pictures what the marvellous is\nto the experience of common things. The distant mills, the edges of\nheath and the pine trees, were as though they had not before been caught\nby the eyes of travellers, and would not, after the brief space of their\napparition, be seen again. Here was a countryside whose every outline\nwas familiar; and yet it was pervaded by a general quality of the\nuplifted and the strange. And for that one hour under the sunset the\ncounty did not seem to me a thing well known, but rather adored.\n\nThe glow of evening, which had seemed to put this horizon into another\nplace and time than ours, warned me of darkness; and I made off the road\nto the right for an inn I knew of, that stands close to the upper Arun\nand is very good. Here an old man and his wife live easily, and have so\nlived for at least thirty years, proving how accessible is content.\nTheir children are in service beyond the boundaries of the county, and\nare thus provided with sufficiency; and they themselves, the old people,\nenjoy a small possession which at least does not diminish, for, thank\nGod, their land is free. It is a square of pasture bordered by great\nelms upon three sides of it, but on the fourth, towards the water, a\nline of pollard willows; and off a little way before the house runs\nArun, sliding as smooth as Mincius, and still so young that he can\nremember the lake in the forest where he rose.\n\nOn such ancestral land these two people await without anxiety what they\nbelieve will be a kindly death. Nor is their piety of that violent and\ntortured kind which is associated with fear and with distress of earlier\nlife; but they remain peasants, drawing from the earth they have always\nknown as much sustenance for the soul as even their religion can afford\nthem, and mixing that religion so intimately with their experience of\nthe soil that, were they not isolated in an evil time, they would have\nset up some shrine about the place to sanctify it.\n\nThe passion and the strain which must accompany (even in the happiest\nand most secluded) the working years of life, have so far disappeared\nfrom them, that now they can no longer recall any circumstances other\nthan those which they enjoy; so that their presence in a room about one,\nas they set rood before one or meet one at the door, is in itself an\ninfluence of peace.\n\nIn such a place, and with such hosts to serve him, be wears of the world\nretire for a little time, from an evening to a morning; and a man can\nenjoy a great refreshment. In such a place he will eat strongly and\ndrink largely, and sleep well and deeply, and, when he saddles again for\nhis journey, he will take the whole world new; nor are those intervals\nwithout their future value, for the memory of a complete repose is a\nsort of sacrament, and a viaticum for the weary lengths of the way.\n\nThe stable of this place is made of oak entirely, and, after more than\na hundred years, the woodwork is still sound, save that the roof now\nfalls in waves where the great beams have sagged a little under the\npressure of the tiles. And these tiles are of that old hand-made kind\nwhich, whenever you find them, you will do well to buy; for they have a\nslight downward curve to them, and so they fit closer and shed the rain\nbetter than if they were flat. Also they do not slip, and thus they put\nless strain upon the timber. This excellent stable has no flooring but a\npacked layer of chalk laid on the ground; and the wooden manger is all\npolished and shining, where it has been rubbed by the noses of ten\nthousand horses since the great war. That polishing was helped, perhaps,\nby the nose of Percy's horse, and perhaps by the nose of some wheeler\nwho in his time had dragged the guns back aboard, retreating through the\nnight after Corunna. It is in every way a stable that a small peasant\nshould put up for himself, without seeking money from other men. It is,\ntherefore, a stable which your gaping scientists would condemn; and\nthough as yet they have not got their ugly hands upon the dwellings of\nbeasts as they have upon those of men, yet I often fear for this stable,\nand am always glad when I come back and find it there. For the men who\nmake our laws are the same as those that sell us our bricks and our land\nand our metals; and they make the laws so that rebuilding shall go on:\nand vile rebuilding too.\n\nAnyhow, this stable yet stands; and in none does the horse, Monster,\ntake a greater delight, for he also is open to the influence of\nholiness. So I led him in, and tied him by the ancient headstall, and I\nrubbed him down, and I washed his feet and covered him with the rough\nrug that lay there. And when I had done all that, I got him oats from\nthe neighbouring bin; for the place knew me well, and I could always\ntend to my own beast when I came there. And as he ate his oats, I said\nto him: \"Monster, my horse, is there any place on earth where a man,\neven for a little time, can be as happy as the brutes? If there is, it\nis here at the Sign of The Lion.\" And Monster answered: \"There is a\ntradition among us that, of all creatures that creep upon the earth, man\nis the fullest of sorrow.\"\n\nI left him then, and went towards the house. It was quite dark, and the\nwindows, with their square, large panes and true proportions, shone out\nand made it home. The room within received me like a friend. The open\nchimney at its end, round which the house is built, was filled with\nbeech logs burning; and the candles, which were set in brass, mixed\ntheir yellow light with that of the fire. The long ceiling was low, as\nare the ceilings of Heaven. And oak was here everywhere also: in the\nbeams and the shelves and the mighty table. For oak was, and will be\nagain, the chief wood of the weald.\n\nWhen they put food and ale before me, it was of the kind which has been\nEnglish ever since England began, and which perhaps good fortune will\npreserve over the breakdown of our generation, until we have England\nback again. One could see the hops in the tankard, and one could taste\nthe barley, until, more and more sunk into the plenitude of this good\nhouse, one could dare to contemplate, as though from a distant\nstandpoint, the corruption and the imminent danger of the time through\nwhich we must lead our lives. And, as I so considered the ruin of the\ngreat cities and their slime, I felt as though I were in a fortress of\nvirtue and of health, which could hold out through the pressure of the\nwar. And I thought to myself: \"Perhaps even before our children are men,\nthese parts which survive from a better order will be accepted as\nmodels, and England will be built again.\"\n\nThis fantasy had not time, tenuous as it was, to disappear, before there\ncame into that room a man whose gesture and bearing promised him to be\nan excellent companion, but in whose eyes I also perceived some light\nnot ordinary. He was of middle age, fifty or more; his hair was crisp\nand grey, his face brown, as though he had been much upon the sea. He\nwas tall in stature, and of some strength. He saluted me, and, when he\nhad eaten, asked me if I also were familiar with this inn.\n\n\"Very familiar,\" I said; \"and since I can enter it at any hour freely,\nit is now more familiar to me even than the houses that were once my\nhomes. For nowadays we, who work in the State and are not idle, must be\ndriven from one place to another; and only the very rich have certitude\nand continuity. But to them it is of no service; for they are too idle\nto take root in the soil.\"\n\n\"Yet I was of their blood,\" he said; \"and there is in this county a home\nwhich should be mine. But nothing to-day is capable of endurance. I have\nnot seen my home (though it is but ten miles from here) since I left it\nin my thirtieth year; and I too would rather come to this inn, which I\nknow as you know it, than to any house in England; because I am certain\nof entry, and because I know what I shall find, and because what I find\nis what any man of this county should find, if the soul of it is not to\ndisappear.\"\n\n\"You, then,\" I answered (we were now seated side by side before the fire\nwith but one flickering candle behind us, and on the floor between us a\nport just younger than the host), \"you, then, come here for much the\nsame reason as do I?\"\n\n\"And what is that?\" said he.\n\n\"Why,\" said I, \"to enjoy the illusion that Change can somewhere be\narrested, and that, in some shape, a part at least of the things we love\nremains. For, since I was a boy and almost since I can remember,\neverything in this house has been the same; and here I escape from the\nthreats of the society we know.\"\n\nWhen I had said this, he was grave and silent for a little while; and\nthen he answered:\n\n\"It is impossible, I think, after many years to recover any such\nillusion. Just as a young man can no longer think himself (as children\ndo) the actor in any drama of his own choosing, so a man growing old (as\nam I) can no longer expect of any society--and least of all of his\nown--the gladness that comes from an illusion of permanence.\"\n\n\"For my part,\" I answered in turn, \"I know very well, though I can\nconjure up this feeling of security, that it is very flimsy stuff; and\nI take it rather as men take symbols. For though these good people will\nat last perish, and some brewer--a Colonel of Volunteers as like as\nnot--will buy this little field, and though for the port we are drinking\nthere will be imperial port, and for the beer we have just drunk\nsomething as noisome as that port, and though thistles will grow up in\nthe good pasture ground, and though, in a word, this inn will become a\nhotel and will perish, nevertheless I cannot but believe that England\nremains, and I do not think it the taking of a drug or a deliberate\ncheating of oneself to come and steep one's soul in what has already\nendured so long because it was proper to our country.\"\n\n\"All that you say,\" he answered, \"is but part of the attempt to escape\nNecessity. Your very frame is of that substance for which permanence\nmeans death; and every one of all the emotions that you know is of its\nnature momentary, and must be so if it is to be alive.\"\n\n\"Yet there is a divine thirst,\" I said, \"for something that will not so\nperish. If there were no such thirst, why should you and I debate such\nthings, or come here to The Lion either of us, to taste antiquity? And\nif that thirst is there, it is a proof that there is for us some End and\nsome such satisfaction. For my part, as I know of nothing else, I cannot\nbut seek it in this visible good world. I seek it in Sussex, in the\nnature of my home, and in the tradition of my blood.\"\n\nBut he answered: \"No; it is not thus to be attained, the end of which\nyou speak. And that thirst, which surely is divine, is to be quenched in\nno stream that we can find by journeying, not even in the little rivers\nthat run here under the combes of home.\"\n\nMYSELF: \"Well, then, what is the End?\"\n\nHE: \"I have sometimes seen it clearly, that when the disappointed quest\nwas over, all this journeying would turn out to be but the beginning of\na much greater adventure, and that I should set out towards another\nplace where every sense should be fulfilled, and where the fear of\nmutation should be set at rest.\"\n\nMYSELF: \"No one denies that such a picture in the mind haunts men their\nwhole lives through, though, after they have once experienced loss and\nincompletion, and especially when they have caught sight a long way off\nof the Barrier which ends all our experience, they recognise that\npicture for a cheat; and surely nothing can save it? That which reasons\nin us may be absolute and undying; for it is outside Time. It escapes\nthe gropings of the learned, and it has nothing to do with material\nthings. But as for all those functions which we but half fulfil in life,\nsurely elsewhere they cannot be fulfilled at all? Colour is for the eyes\nand music is for the ears; and all that we love so much comes in by\nchannels that do not remain.\"\n\nHe: \"Yet the Desire can only be for things that we have known; and the\nDesire, as you have said, is a proof of the thing desired, and, but for\nthese things which we know, the words 'joy' and 'contentment' and\n'fulfilment' would have no meaning.\"\n\nMYSELF: \"Why yes; but, though desires are the strongest evidence of\ntruth, yet there is also desire for illusions, as there is a waking\ndemand for things attainable, and a demand in dreams for things\nfantastic and unreal. Every analogy increasingly persuades us, and so\ndoes the whole scheme of things as we learn it, that, with our passing,\nthere shall also pass speech and comfortable fires and fields and the\nvoices of our children, and that, when they pass, we lose them for\never.\"\n\nHe: \"Yet these things would not be, but for the mind which receives\nthem; and how can we make sure what channels are necessary for the mind?\nand may not the mind stretch on? And you, since you reject my guess at\nwhat may be reserved for us, tell me, what is the End which we shall\nattain?\"\n\nMYSELF: \"_Salva fide_, I cannot tell.\"\n\nThen he continued and said: \"I have too long considered these matters\nfor any opposition between one experience and another to affect my\nspirit, and I know that a long and careful inquiry into any matter must\nlead the same man to opposing conclusions; but, for my part, I shall\nconfidently expect throughout that old age, which is not far from me,\nthat, when it ceases, I shall find beyond it things similar to those\nwhich I have known. For all I here enjoy is of one nature; and if the\nlife of a man be bereft of them at last, then it is falsehood or\nmetaphor to use the word 'eternal.'\"\n\n\"You think, then,\" said I, \"that some immortal part in us is concerned\nnot only with our knowledge, but with our every feeling, and that our\nfinal satisfaction will include a sensual pleasure: fragrance, and\nlandscape, and a visible home that shall be dearer even than these dear\nhills?\"\n\n\"Something of the sort,\" he said, and slightly shrugged his shoulders.\nThey were broad, as he sat beside me staring at the fire. They conveyed\nin their attitude that effect of mingled strength and weariness which is\ncommon to all who have travelled far and with great purpose, perpetually\nseeking some worthy thing which they could never find.\n\nThe fire had fallen. Flames no longer leapt from the beech logs; but on\ntheir under side, where a glow still lingered, embers fell.\n\n\n\n\nTHE AUTUMN AND THE FALL OF LEAVES\n\n\nIt is not true that the close of a life which ends in a natural\nfashion--life which is permitted to put on the pomp of death and to go\nout in glory--inclines the mind to repose. It is not true of a day\nending nor the passing of the year, nor of the fall of leaves. Whatever\npermanent, uneasy question is native to men, comes forward most\ninsistent and most loud at such times.\n\nThere is a house in my own county which is built of stone, whose gardens\nare fitted to the autumn. It has level alleys standing high and banked\nwith stone. Their ornaments were carved under the influence of that\nrestraint which marked the Stuarts. They stand above old ponds, and are\nstrewn at this moment with the leaves of elms. These walks are like the\nMailles of the Flemish cities, the walls of the French towns or the\nterraces of the Loire. They are enjoyed to-day by whoever has seen all\nour time go racing by; they are the proper resting-places of the aged,\nand their spirit is felt especially in the fall of leaves.\n\nAt this season a sky which is of so delicate and faint a blue as to\ncontain something of gentle mockery, and certainly more of tenderness,\npresides at the fall of leaves. There is no air, no breath at all. The\nleaves are so light that they sidle on their going downward, hesitating\nin that which is not void to them, and touching at last so imperceptibly\nthe earth with which they are to mingle, that the gesture is much\ngentler than a salutation, and even more discreet than a discreet\ncaress.\n\nThey make a little sound, less than the least of sounds. No bird at\nnight in the marshes rustles so slightly; no man, though men are the\nsubtlest of living beings, put so evanescent a stress upon their sacred\nwhispers or their prayers. The leaves are hardly heard, but they are\nheard just so much that men also, who are destined at the end to grow\nglorious and to die, look up and hear them falling.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWith what a pageantry of every sort is not that troubling symbol\nsurrounded! The scent of life is never fuller in the woods than now, for\nthe ground is yielding up its memories. The spring when it comes will\nnot restore this fullness, nor these deep and ample recollections of the\nearth. For the earth seems now to remember the drive of the ploughshare\nand its harrying; the seed, and the full bursting of it, the swelling\nand the completion of the harvest. Up to the edge of the woods\nthroughout the weald the earth has borne fruit; the barns are full, and\nthe wheat is standing stacked in the fields, and there are orchards all\naround. It is upon such a mood of parentage and of fruition that the\ndead leaves fall.\n\nThe colour is not a mere splendour: it is intricate. The same unbounded\npower, never at fault and never in calculation, which comprehends all\nthe landscape, and which has made the woods, has worked in each one\nseparate leaf as well; they are inconceivably varied. Take up one leaf\nand see. How many kinds of boundary are there here between the stain\nwhich ends in a sharp edge against the gold, and the sweep in which the\npurple and red mingle more evenly than they do in shot-silk or in\nflames? Nor are the boundaries to be measured only by degrees of\ndefinition. They have also their characters of line. Here in this leaf\nare boundaries intermittent, boundaries rugged, boundaries curved, and\nboundaries broken. Nor do shape and definition ever begin to exhaust the\nlist. For there are softness and hardness too: the agreement and\ndisagreement with the scheme of veins; the grotesque and the simple in\nline; the sharp and the broad, the smooth, and raised in boundaries. So\nin this one matter of boundaries might you discover for ever new things;\nthere is no end to them. Their qualities are infinite. And beside\nboundaries you have hues and tints, shades also, varying thicknesses of\nstuff, and endless choice of surface; that list also is infinite, and\nthe divisions of each item in it are infinite; nor is it of any use to\nanalyse the thing, for everywhere the depth and the meaning of so much\ncreation are beyond our powers. And all this is true of but one dead\nleaf; and yet every dead leaf will differ from its fellow.\n\nThat which has delighted to excel in boundlessness within the bounds of\nthis one leaf, has also transformed the whole forest. There is no number\nto the particular colour of the one leaf. The forest is like a thing so\nchangeful of its nature that change clings to it as a quality, apparent\neven during the glance of a moment. This forest makes a picture which is\ndesigned, but not seizable. It is a scheme, but a scheme you cannot set\ndown. It is of those things which can best be retained by mere copying\nwith a pencil or a brush. It is of those things which a man cannot fully\nreceive, and which he cannot fully re-express to other men.\n\nIt is no wonder, then, that at this peculiar time, this week (or moment)\nof the year, the desires which if they do not prove at least\ndemand--perhaps remember--our destiny, come strongest. They are proper\nto the time of autumn, and all men feel them. The air is at once new and\nold; the morning (if one rises early enough to welcome its leisurely\nadvance) contains something in it of profound reminiscence. The evenings\nhardly yet suggest (as they soon will) friends and security, and the\nfires of home. The thoughts awakened in us by their bands of light\nfading along the downs are thoughts which go with loneliness and prepare\nme for the isolation of the soul.\n\nIt is on this account that tradition has set, at the entering of autumn,\nfor a watch at the gate of the season, the Archangel; and at its close\nthe day and the night of All-Hallows on which the dead return.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GOOD WOMAN\n\n\nUpon a hill that overlooks a western plain and is conspicuous at the\napproach of evening, there still stands a house of faded brick faced\nwith cornerings of stone. It is quite empty, but yet not deserted. In\neach room some little furniture remains; all the pictures are upon the\nwalls; the deep red damask of the panels is not faded, or if faded,\nshows no contrast of brighter patches, for nothing has been removed from\nthe walls. Here it is possible to linger for many hours alone, and to\nwatch the slope of the hill under the level light as the sun descends.\nHere passes a woman of such nobility that, though she is dead, the\nlandscape and the vines are hers.\n\nIt was in September, during a silence of the air, that I first saw her\nas she moved among her possessions; she was smiling to herself as though\nat a memory, but her smile was so slight and so dignified, so genial,\nand yet so restrained, that you would have thought it part of everything\naround and married (as she was) to the land which was now her own. She\nwandered down the garden paths ruling the flowers upon either side, and\nreceiving as she went autumn and the fruition of her fields; plenitude\nand completion surrounded her; the benediction of Almighty God must have\nbeen upon her, for she was the fulfilment of her world.\n\nThree fountains played in that garden--two, next to the northern and the\nsouthern walls, were small and low; they rather flowed than rose. Two\ncones of marble received their fall, and over these they spread in an\neven sheet with little noise, making (as it were) a sheath of water\nwhich covered all the stone; but the third sprang into the air with\ndelicate triumph, fine and high, satisfied, tenuous and exultant. This\none tossed its summit into the light, and, alone of the things in the\ngarden, the plash of its waters recalled and suggested activity--though\nthat in so discreet a way that it was to be heard rather than regarded.\nThe birds flew off in circles over the roofs of the town below us. Very\nsoon they went to their rest.\n\nThe slow transfiguration of the light by which the air became full of\ncolours and every outline merged into the evening, made of all I saw, as\nI came up towards her, a soft and united vision wherein her advancing\nfigure stood up central and gave a meaning to the whole. I will not\nswear that she did not as she came bestow as well as receive an\ninfluence of the sunset. It was said by the ancients that virtue is\nactive, an agent, and has power to control created things; for, they\nsaid, it is in a direct relation with whatever orders and has ordained\nthe general scheme. Such power, perhaps, resided in her hands. It would\nhave awed me but hardly astonished if, as the twilight deepened, the\ninclination of the stems had obeyed her gesture and she had put the\nplace to sleep.\n\nAs I came near I saw her plainly. Her face was young although she was so\nwise, but its youth had the aspect of a divine survival. Time adorned\nit.\n\nMusic survives. Whatever is eternal in the grace of simple airs or in\nthe Christian innocence of Mozart was apparent, nay, had increased, in\nher features as the days in passing had added to them not only\nexperience but also revelation and security. She was serene. The posture\nof her head was high, and her body, which was visibly informed by an\nimmortal spirit, had in its carriage a large, a regal, an uplifted\nbearing which even now as I write of it, after so many years, turns\ncommon every other sight that has encountered me. This was the way in\nwhich I first saw her upon her own hillside at evening.\n\nWith every season I returned. And with every season she greeted my\ncoming with a more generous and a more vivacious air. I think the years\nslipped off and did not add themselves upon her mind: the common doom\nof mortality escaped her until, perhaps, its sign was imposed upon her\nhair--for this at last was touched all through with that appearance or\ngleam which might be morning or which might be snow.\n\nShe was able to conjure all evil. Those desperate enemies of mankind\nwhich lie in siege of us all around grew feeble and were silent when she\ncame. Nor has any other force than hers dared to enter the rooms where\nshe had lived: it is her influence alone which inhabits them to-day.\nThere is a vessel of copper, enamelled in green and gilded, which she\ngave with her own hands to a friend overseas. I have twice touched it in\nan evil hour.\n\nStrength, sustenance, and a sacramental justice are permanent in such\nlives, and such lives also attain before their close to so general a\nsurvey of the world that their appreciations are at once accurate and\nuniversal.\n\nOn this account she did not fail in any human conversation, nor was she\never for a moment less than herself; but always and throughout her moods\nher laughter was unexpected and full, her fear natural, her indignation\nglorious.\n\nAbove all, her charity extended like a breeze: it enveloped everything\nshe knew. The sense of destiny faded from me as the warmth of that\ncharity fell upon my soul; the foreknowledge of death retreated, as did\nevery other unworthy panic.\n\nShe drew the objects of her friendship into something new; they breathed\nan air from another country, so that those whom she deigned to regard\nwere, compared with other men, like the living compared with the dead;\nor, better still, they were like men awake while the rest were tortured\nby dreams and haunted of the unreal. Indeed, she had a word given to her\nwhich saved all the souls of her acquaintance.\n\nIt is not true that influence of this sort decays or passes into vaguer\nand vaguer depths of memory. It does not dissipate. It is not dissolved.\nIt does not only spread and broaden: it also increases with the passage\nof time. The musicians bequeath their spirit, notably those who have\nloved delightful themes and easy melodies. The poets are read for ever;\nbut those who resemble her do more, for they grow out upon the\ncenturies--they themselves and not their arts continue. There is stuff\nin their legend. They are a tangible inheritance for the hurrying\ngenerations of men.\n\nShe was of this kind. She was certainly of this kind. She died upon this\nday[1] in the year 1892. In these lines I perpetuate her memory.\n\n[Footnote 1: The 22nd of December.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE HARBOUR IN THE NORTH\n\n\nUpon that shore of Europe which looks out towards no further shore, I\ncame once by accident upon a certain man.\n\nThe day had been warm and almost calm, but a little breeze from the\nsouth-east had all day long given life to the sea. The seas had run very\nsmall and brilliant, yet without violence, before the wind, and had\nbroken upon the granite cliffs to leeward, not in spouts of foam, but in\na white even line that was thin, and from which one heard no sound of\nsurge. Moreover, as I was running dead north along the coast, the noise\nabout the bows was very slight and pleasant. The regular and gentle wind\ncame upon the quarter without change, and the heel of the boat was\nsteady. No calm came with the late sunset; the breeze still held, and so\ntill nearly midnight I could hold a course and hardly feel the pulling\nof the helm. Meanwhile the arch of the sunset endured, for I was far to\nthe northward, and all those colours which belong to June above the\nArctic Sea shone and changed in the slow progress of that arch as it\nadvanced before me and mingled at last with the dawn. Throughout the\nhours of that journey I could see clearly the seams of the deck forward,\nthe texture of the canvas and the natural hues of the woodwork and the\nrigging, the glint of the brasswork, and even the letters painted round\nthe little capstain-head, so continually did the light endure. The\nsilence which properly belongs to darkness, and which accompanies the\nsleep of birds upon the sea, appeared to be the more intense because of\nsuch a continuance of the light, and what with a long vigil and new\nwater, it was as though I had passed the edge of all known maps and had\ncrossed the boundary of new land.\n\nIn such a mood I saw before me the dark band of a stone jetty running\nsome miles off from the shore into the sea, and at the end of it a fixed\nbeacon whose gleam showed against the translucent sky (and its broken\nreflection in the pale sea) as a candle shows when one pulls the\ncurtains of one's room and lets in the beginnings of the day.\n\nFor this point I ran, and as I turned it I discovered a little harbour\nquite silent under the growing light; there was not a man upon its\nwharves, and there was no smoke rising from its slate roofs. It was\nabsolutely still. The boat swung easily round in the calm water, the\npier-head slipped by, the screen of the pier-head beacon suddenly cut\noff its glare, and she went slowly with no air in her canvas towards the\npatch of darkness under the quay. There, as I did not know the place, I\nwould not pick up moorings which another man might own and need, but as\nmy boat still crept along with what was left of her way I let go the\nlittle anchor, for it was within an hour of low tide, and I was sure of\nwater.\n\nWhen I had done this she soon tugged at the chain and I slackened all\nthe halyards. I put the cover on the mainsail, and as I did so, looking\naft, I noted the high mountain-side behind the town standing clear in\nthe dawn. I turned eastward to receive it. The light still lifted, and\nthough I had not slept I could not but stay up and watch the glory\ngrowing over heaven. It was just then, when I had stowed everything\naway, that I heard to the right of me the crooning of a man.\n\nA few moments before I should not have seen him under the darkness of\nthe sea-wall, but the light was so largely advanced (it was nearly two\no'clock) that I now clearly made out both his craft and him.\n\nShe was sturdy and high, and I should think of slight draught. She was\nof great beam. She carried but one sail, and that was brown. He had it\nloose, with the peak dipped ready for hoisting, and he himself was busy\nat some work upon the floor, stowing and fitting his bundles, and as he\nworked he crooned gently to himself. It was then that I hailed him, but\nin a low voice, so much did the silence of that place impress itself\nupon all living beings who were strange to it. He looked up and told me\nthat he had not seen me come in nor heard the rattling of the chain. I\nasked him what he would do so early, whether he was off fishing at that\nhour or whether he was taking parcels down the coast for hire or goods\nto sell at some other port. He answered me that he was doing none of\nthose things.\n\n\"What cruise, then, are you about to take?\" I said.\n\n\"I am off,\" he answered in a low and happy voice, \"to find what is\nbeyond the sea.\"\n\n\"And to what shore,\" said I, \"do you mean to sail?\"\n\nHe answered: \"I am out upon this sea northward to where they say there\nis no further shore.\"\n\nAs he spoke he looked towards that horizon which now stood quite clean\nand clear between the pier-heads: his eyes were full of the broad\ndaylight, and he breathed the rising wind as though it were a promise of\nnew life and of unexpected things. I asked him then what his security\nwas and had he formed a plan, and why he was setting out from this small\nplace, unless, perhaps, it was his home, of which he might be tired.\n\n\"No,\" he answered, and smiled; \"this is not my home; and I have come to\nit as you may have come to it, for the first time; and, like you, I came\nin after the whole place slept; but as I neared I noticed certain shore\nmarks and signs which had been given me, and then I knew that I had come\nto the starting-place of a long voyage.\"\n\n\"Of what voyage?\" I asked.\n\nHe answered:\n\n\"This is that harbour in the North of which a Breton priest once told me\nthat I should reach it, and when I had moored in it and laid my stores\non board in order, I should set sail before morning and reach at last a\ncomplete repose.\" Then he went on with eagerness, though still talking\nlow: \"The voyage which I was born to make in the end, and to which my\ndesire has driven me, is towards a place in which everything we have\nknown is forgotten, except those things which, as we knew them,\nreminded us of an original joy. In that place I shall discover again\nsuch full moments of content as I have known, and I shall preserve them\nwithout failing. It is in some country beyond this sea, and it has a\nharbour like this harbour, only set towards the South, as this is\ntowards the North; but like this harbour it looks out over an unknown\nsea, and like this harbour it enjoys a perpetual light. Of what the\nhappy people in this country are, or of how they speak, no one has told\nme, but they will receive me well, for I am of one kind with themselves.\nBut as to how I shall know this harbour, I can tell you: there is a\nrange of hills, broken by a valley through which one sees a further and\na higher range, and steering for this hollow in the hills one sees a\ntower out to sea upon a rock, and high up inland a white quarry on a\nhill-top; and these two in line are the leading marks by which one gets\nclear into the mouth of the river, and so to the wharves of the town.\nAnd there,\" he ended, \"I shall come off the sea for ever, and every one\nwill call me by my name.\"\n\nThe sun was now near the horizon, but not yet risen, and for a little\ntime he said nothing to me nor I to him, for he was at work sweating up\nthe halyard and setting the peak. He let go the mooring knot also, but\nhe held the end of the rope in his hand and paid it out, standing and\nlooking upward, as the sail slowly filled and his craft drifted towards\nme. He pressed the tiller with his knee to keep her full.\n\nI now knew by his eyes and voice that he was from the West, and I could\nnot see him leave me without asking him from what place he came that he\nshould set out for such another place. So I asked him: \"Are you from\nIreland, or from Brittany, or from the Islands?\" He answered me: \"I am\nfrom none of these, but from Cornwall.\" And as he answered me thus\nshortly he still watched the sail and still pressed the tiller with his\nknee, and still paid out the mooring rope without turning round.\n\n\"You cannot make the harbour,\" I said to him. \"It is not of this world.\"\n\nJust at that moment the breeze caught the peak of his jolly brown sail;\nhe dropped the tail of the rope: it slipped and splashed into the\nharbour slime. His large boat heeled, shot up, just missed my cable; and\nthen he let her go free, and she ran clear away. As she ran he looked\nover his shoulder and laughed most cheerily; he greeted me with his\neyes, and he waved his hand to me in the morning light.\n\nHe held her well. A clean wake ran behind her. He put her straight for\nthe harbour-mouth and passed the pier-heads and took the sea outside.\n\nWhether in honest truth he was a fisherman out for fishes who chose to\nfence with me, or whether in that cruise of his he landed up in a\nNorwegian bay, or thought better of it in Orkney, or went through the\nsea and through death to the place he desired, I have never known.\n\nI watched him holding on, and certainly he kept a course. The sun rose,\nthe town awoke, but I would not cease from watching him. His sail still\nshowed a smaller and a smaller point upon the sea; he did not waver. For\nan hour I caught it and lost it, and caught it again, as it dwindled;\nfor half another hour I could not swear to it in the blaze. Before I had\nwearied it was gone.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOh! my companions, both you to whom I dedicate this book and you who\nhave accompanied me over other hills and across other waters or before\nthe guns in Burgundy, or you others who were with me when I seemed\nalone--that ulterior shore was the place we were seeking in every cruise\nand march and the place we thought at last to see. We, too, had in mind\nthat Town of which this man spoke to me in the Scottish harbour before\nhe sailed out northward to find what he could find. But I did not follow\nhim, for even if I had followed him I should not have found the Town.","title":"Hills and the Sea","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":75202}