{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_46030/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_46030","id":"gutenberg_46030","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46030","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Nature/Gardening/Animals","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Outdoor life","Walking"],"text":"[Transcriber's Note: In the following text underlines are used as\n  delimiter for _italics_ and # as delimiter for #bold#.\n  The original text has been kept, except the following modifications:\n  Page 40 \"inchaote\" has been changed to \"inchoate\".\n  Page 83 \"maestoso\" has been set in italics.\n  Page 123 \"ennui\" has been set in italics.]\n\n\n\n\n  OF WALKS AND\n  WALKING TOURS\n\n  [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n  BY THE SAME AUTHOR\n\n  #GOLDWIN SMITH#\n\n  #His Life and Opinions#\n\n  Illustrated with many Important Portraits\n  Demy 8vo, cloth gilt. #18#s. net\n\n\n  \"A thoroughly readable book.\"--_London Times._\n\n  \"Of its human and literary interest we could hardly speak too\n  highly.\"--_Birmingham Post._\n\n\n  UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE\n\n  #THE CORRESPONDENCE OF GOLDWIN SMITH#\n\n  Illustrated with many Important Portraits\n  Demy 8vo, cloth gilt. #18#s. net.\n\n\n  _All Rights Reserved_\n\n  [Illustration: ON THE BANKS OF THE RHONE.]\n\n\n\n\n  OF WALKS AND\n  WALKING TOURS\n\n  _An Attempt to find a Philosophy\n  and a Creed_\n\n\n  BY\n  ARNOLD HAULTAIN\n\n  Author of \"Hints for Lovers\"\n  \"The Mystery of Golf\"\n  \"Goldwin Smith: His Life and Opinions\"\n  Etc.\n\n\n  [Illustration]\n\n\n  LONDON\n  T. WERNER LAURIE LTD.\n  8 ESSEX STREET, STRAND\n  1914\n\n\n\n\n  \"_De natur\u00e2 Rationis est res sub qu\u00e2dam\n  aeternitatis specie percipere._\"\n\n  --Spinoza, _Ethics_, Part II.,\n  Proposition xliv., Corollary ii.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThe writing of this little book has given me a great deal of pleasure.\nThat is why I hope that, here and there, it may give pleasure to others.\n\nAnd yet it was not an easy task. Nature's lessons are hard to learn.\nHarder still is it to translate Nature's lessons to others. Besides, the\nappeal of Nature is to the Emotions; and words are weak things (save in\nthe hands of a great Poet) by which to convey or to evoke emotion. Words\nseem to be the vehicles rather of ratiocination than of emotion. Is not\neven the Poet driven to link words to music? And always _le mot juste_,\nthe exact word, is so difficult to find! Yet found it must be if the\nappeal is to avail.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nIf, in these pages, there are scattered speculations semi-mystical,\nsemi-intelligible, perhaps even transcending the boundaries of rigid\nlogic, I must simply aver that I put in writing that only which was\ngiven me to say. How or whence it came, I do not know.--And this,\nnotwithstanding (or, perhaps, in a way, corroborative of) my own belief\nthat no thought is autogenous, but has parents and a pedigree.\n\nI have tried, quite humbly, to follow, as motto, the sentence chosen\nfrom Spinoza. Yet, with that sentence always should be read this\nother, taken from Pascal: \"_La derni\u00e8re d\u00e9marche de la raison,\nc'est de reconna\u00eetre qu'il y a une infinit\u00e9 de choses qui la\nsurpassent._\"--Always emotion, imagination, feeling, faith, try to soar\nabove reason; and always they feel the inadequacy of words.\n\nI have incorporated in this book some parts of my \"Two Country Walks in\nCanada\"--now long out of print (itself comprising an article from _The\nNineteenth Century_ and another from _Blackwood's_); also (with the\npermission of the editor) an article in _The Atlantic Monthly Magazine_;\nand Sections 22 and 23 first appeared in _The Canadian Magazine_.\n\nGeneva, 1914.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n  CHAPTER                                  PAGE\n\n       I. Golf and Walking                    1\n\n      II. The Essence of a Walk               5\n\n     III. Notable Walkers                     9\n\n      IV. My Earliest Walks                  15\n\n       V. India                              17\n\n      VI. English Byways                     21\n\n     VII. A Spring Morning in England        25\n\n    VIII. Autumn Reveries                    29\n\n      IX. Spirituality of Nature             34\n\n       X. Practical Transcendentalism        40\n\n      XI. Spring in Canada                   45\n\n     XII. Autumn in Canada                   53\n\n    XIII. Winter in Canada                   59\n\n     XIV. The Mood for Walking               72\n\n      XV. Evening Meditations                78\n\n     XVI. The Unity of Nature                91\n\n    XVII. The Instinct for Walking          103\n\n   XVIII. A Woeful Walk                     105\n\n     XIX. Autumn in Canada again            107\n\n      XX. The Walking Tour                  133\n\n     XXI. The Tramp's Dietary               140\n\n    XXII. Practical Details                 152\n\n   XXIII. The Beauty of Landscape           159\n\n    XXIV. Warnings to the Over-Zealous      180\n\n     XXV. How that all points to the\n          Infinite                          188\n\n    XXVI. The Pleasures of Walking          198\n\n   XXVII. Is Walking Selfish?               216\n\n  XXVIII. The P\u00e6an of Being                 223\n\n          Index                             227\n\n\n\n\nOF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nGolf and Walking\n\n\n\u00a7 1\n\nMany are the indictments which are brought against Golf: that it is a\ndeplorable waster of time; that it depletes the purse; that it divorces\nhusband and wife; that it delays the dinner-hour, freckles fair feminine\nfaces, upsets domestic arrangements, and unhinges generally the mental\nbalance of its devotees. Yet perhaps to each of such charges Golf can\nenter a plea. It repays expenditure of time and money with interest\nin the form of health and good spirits. If it acts the part of\nco-respondent it is always open to the petitioner to espouse the game.\nIf it keeps men and women away from work and home, at least it keeps\nthem out on the breezy links and dispels for a time the cares of the\noffice or the kitchen. If it tans--well, it tans, and a tanned face\nneeds no paint, and is, moreover, beautiful to look upon. Nevertheless,\none indictment there is against which it is not in the power of Golf\nto enter a plea. It has killed the country walk. \"A country walk!\"\nexclaimed a fellow-golfer to me the other day. \"I have not taken a\ncountry walk since I began to play.\"\n\nThere are, I know, who affect to believe that Golf consists of country\nwalks, diversified and embellished by pauses made for the purpose of\nimpelling little round balls into little round holes; that mind and eye\nare occupied chiefly with the beauties of Nature, and that the impulsion\nof the insignificant sphere into the insignificant void is, as it were,\nbut a sop to Cerberus, or a cock sacrificed to the \u00c6sculapius of\nthis sporting age. \"How greatly,\" said to me once a fair and innocent\nstranger to my links--\"how greatly this beautiful landscape must enhance\nthe pleasure of your game!\" _O sancta simplicitas!_ Far be it from me to\nexplain that as a rule the horrid golfer only drank in the beauties of\nthat landscape when the game was over, and he was, perchance, occupied\nin performing a similar operation upon the contents of a tumbler at his\nelbow as he reclined in an arm-chair on the verandah.--And yet, and yet,\nour links _are_ beautiful, and one and all of us their frequenters know\nand appreciate to the full their beauty; but _not_, I think, at the\nmoment of \"addressing the ball.\"--No; Golf is Golf; a country walk is\nquite another thing; and the one, I maintain, has killed the other.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nThe Essence of a Walk\n\n\n\u00a7 2\n\nFor, mark you, the essence of a country walk is that you shall have no\nobject or aim whatsoever. The frame of mind in which one ought to set\nout upon a rural peregrination should be one of absolute mental vacuity.\nAlmost one ought to rid oneself, if so be that were possible, even of\nthe categories of time and place: for to start with a determination to\ncover a certain distance within a specified time is to take, not a walk,\nbut a \"constitutional\"; and of all abortions or monstrosities of country\nwalks, commend me to the constitutional. The proper frame of mind is\nthat of absolute and secure passivity; an openness to impressions; a\ngiving-up of ourselves to the great and guiding influences of benignant\nNature; a humble receptivity of soul; a wondering and childlike\neagerness--not a restless and too inquisitive eagerness--to learn all\nthat great Nature may like to teach, and to learn it in the way that\ngreat Nature would have us learn.\n\nYet, true, though we take with us a vacuous mind, it must be a plenable\nmind (if I may coin the word), a serenely responsive mind; otherwise we\nshall not reap the harvest of a quiet eye.\n\n  \"How bountiful is Nature! he shall find\n  Who seeks not; and to him who hath not asked\n  Large measure shall be dealt,\"\n\nsings Wordsworth; and of Nature and of Nature's ways no one had a\ngreater right to sing. Wordsworth must have been an ideal country\nwalker. \"The Excursion\" is the harvest of innumerable walks, and when\nWordsworth depicts the Wanderer he depicts himself:\n\n                        \"In the woods\n  A lone Enthusiast, and among the fields,\n  Itinerant in this labour, he had passed\n  The better portion of his time; and there\n  Spontaneously had his affections thriven\n  Amid the bounties of the year, the peace\n  And liberty of Nature; there he kept,\n  In solitude and solitary thought,\n  His mind in a just equipoise of love.\"\n\nOnly, \"the w . . . w . . . worst of W . . . W . . . Wordsworth is,\" as a\nstammering friend of mine once remarked, \"is, he is so d . . . d . . .\nd . . . desperate p . . . pensive.\" (I was expecting a past participle,\nnot an ungrammatical adverb for the \"d.\")--He is; and like, yet unlike,\nFalstaff, he is not only pensive in himself, but he is the cause of\npensiveness in other things--to wit, his \"stars,\" his \"citadels,\" and\nwhat not; and certainly his diary of \"A Tour in Scotland\" makes the\ndriest reading I know.--Nevertheless, Wordsworth must have been an ideal\ncountry walker. He was\n\n  \"A lover of the meadows and the woods,\n  And mountains; and of all that we behold\n  From this green earth\";\n\nand if we would understand him, we ourselves must\n\n                          \"Let the moon\n  Shine on us in our solitary walk;\n  And let the misty mountain winds be free\n  To blow against us.\"\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nNotable Walkers\n\n\n\u00a7 3\n\nAll great souls, I venture to think, were at some period of their\nlives walkers in the country. Jesus of Nazareth spent forty days in the\nwilderness, and the three years of his mission were, we know, spent\nin unceasing wandering. And whose heart does not burn within him as he\nreads the moving narrative of that seven-mile country walk which he took\nwith two of his disciples to the village called Emmaus? It was after a\nforty days' solitary sojourn on Mount Sinai, too, so we are told, that\nMoses came down armed with the Decalogue; and was it not after a similar\nRamadan retreat that Mohammed returned with the novel doctrine that\nthere was no God but God? Enoch, we know, walked with God; and it is a\nchildish fancy of mine which I am loath to relinquish that God took him,\nand that he was not, for because he was so delectable a companion. Of a\nsurety the Sweet Singer of Israel must have wandered much in the green\npastures and by the still waters; he who kept his father's sheep; who\nslew both the lion and the bear; who sang the high hills, a refuge for\nthe wild goats, and the rocks for the conies.--Indeed, if one comes to\nthink of it, how much literature owes to the country walk! It was to\nthat long walk outside the wall of Athens, and to the long talk that\nSocrates held with Ph\u00e6drus under the plane-tree by the banks of the\nIlissus, that we owe one of the most beautiful of the Dialogues of\nPlato. There had been no Georgics had not Virgil loved the country.\nHorace must as often have circumambulated his Sabine farm as he\nperambulated the Via Sacra. Chaucer must sometimes have pilgrimed afoot,\nand Spenser, trod as well as pricked o'er the plain. Shakespeare's\npoaching episode gives us a glimpse into his youthful pursuits. Milton\n\"oft the woods among wooed Philomel to hear her evensong\"; and even\nafter his blindness \"not the more ceased he to wander where the Muses\nhaunt clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill.\" \"The Traveller\"\nof Goldsmith was the outcome of a walking tour; so was Robert Louis\nStevenson's \"Travels in the C\u00e9vennes with a Donkey\". To how many minds\nwalks about the green flat meads of Oxford have been a quiet stimulant\nwe may get a hint from more than one of Matthew Arnold's poems. Was\nit to Newman that Jowett, meeting him alone and afoot, put the query:\n\"_Nunquam minus solus quam quum solus?_\" Of Jowett's walks many a tale\nis told. Of De Quincey, who spent his youth in wanderings; of William\nCowper, the gentle singer of the \"Winter Walk\"; of Thoreau[1]; of\nMr John Burroughs[2]; of Richard Jefferies[3]; of Mr Hamilton Wright\nMabie,[4] the discoverer of the Forest of Arden; of Mr Henry Van Dyke[5]\nwho would be, I warrant me, an incomparable companion for a walk,\nand whose books make the pent-up sigh for the open; of \"A Son of the\nMarshes\"[6]; of Dr Charles C. Abbott,[7] that indefatigable Wasteland\nWanderer; of Mr Charles Goodrich Whiting,[8] the Saunterer; of that\nprince of walkers, of whom _The Spectator_ said it was \"half a pity\nthat such a man could not go walking about for ever, for the benefit of\npeople who are not gifted with legs so stout and eyes so discerning,\"\nI mean that erudite nomad, George Borrow[9]; of Senancour, who in his\njourneys afoot experienced _illusions imposantes_[10]; of Sir Leslie\nStephen[11]--of these and many another lover of outdoor Nature it is\nneedless to speak.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nMy Earliest Walks\n\n\n\u00a7 4\n\nThe earliest walks which my own memory recalls were rather curious ones.\nWe were in Burma, a country in which, in the dry season, exercise must\nbe taken about daybreak or sundown, or not at all. We walked--and before\nbreakfast; and always we were accompanied by a pet cat, a sharp-nosed\n\"toddy-cat\" (so they called him), indigenous to the country, and not\nunlike the American raccoon, very affectionate and very cleanly. But\nthe cat was not our only companion, for just overhead, screaming\nthreateningly, were always also, and all the way, a flock of kites--the\nmortal enemies, so I must suppose, of Hokey-Pokey (thus was named our\n'coon-cat pet).--Now I come to think of it, it must have been a funny\nsight: a family afoot; in the rear an impudent cat with tail erect;\noverhead irate and clamorous kites.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nIndia\n\n\n\u00a7 5\n\nMy next walks were on the Nilgiris, the Blue Mountains of India.\nAh, they were beautiful! The seven or eight thousand feet of\naltitude tempered the tropical sun, the mornings were fresh and\ninvigorating--your cold bath was really cold, and spring seemed\nperennial. Hedges of cluster-roses bloomed the whole year round; on the\norange-trees were leaf, bud, bloom and ripening fruit, also the whole\nyear round. Heliotrope grew in gigantic bushes that were pruned with\ngarden clippers. Through the grounds about the house flowed a babbling\nbrook, widening here and there into quiet ponds, from the sedgy edges\nof which green-stemmed arums raised their graceful cups. In the deep\nvalleys grew the tree-fern; here and there a playful waterfall gushed\nfrom the hill; and everything was green.--No; two things were not green:\nthe one, the hot and hazy plains, shimmering in yellow dust as seen from\nthe shoulder of a hill; the other, the gigantic Droog, a mighty mountain\nmass rearing its head, sombre and silent, on the other side of a deep\nravine. The Droog was purple: not with the pellucid purple of a petal,\nbut with the misty blue-black purple of the bloom of a plum.--Ah, it was\nall very good. Never shall I forget the convolvulus that decorated\nthe northern verandah before the heat of day shrivelled the delicate\ncorollas. There were rich bass purples that stirred one like the tones\nof an organ. There were soprano pinks so exquisite that a _pianissimo_\ntrill on a violin seemed crude in comparison. Their beauty was all but\naudible: it penetrated the senses and reached in to some inner subtile\npsychic centre, there to move emotions which must remain unsaid.--This\nwas in India.--There is something perfervid in the fascination of the\nEast. The West may clutch the thrilled heart with a steely clasp; the\nEast holds the soul in a passionate embrace.--Ah, India, beloved\nIndia, my first nurse and I trust my last; \"not were that submarine,\ngem-lighted city mine\" would I relinquish hope of seeing thee again,\nadored India: old majestic land; land of ancient castes and alien\ncreeds; land of custom, myth, and magic; land of pungent odours,\nstinging tastes, and colours dazzling as the sun; land of mystery, of\npageant, and of pain! Ah, subtile, thralling, luring India!--India\nis like Samson's lion: it has been conquered by the young and lusty\nOccident, and in its old carcass its conqueror finds both meat and\nsweetness;--and it serves for a riddle to others. To complete the\nanalogy, there are those who are trying to plough with Samson's heifer.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nEnglish Byways\n\n\n\u00a7 6\n\nMy next walks were in England. For their size, the British Isles\nprobably afford the most varied tramping ground of any country in the\nworld. Within a few hundred miles of radius you get infinite variety:\nthe rolling downs; the quiet weald; hilly Derbyshire; mountainous Wales;\nDevonshire's lanes; the Westmorland or the Cumberland lakes--these for\nthe seeker of quiet. For the more emprising there is the wild and broken\nscenery of the northern isles; and the lover of the homeless sea can\nchoose any shore to his liking.\n\n\n\u00a7 7\n\nThere is an impression abroad that in England you must confine your\nsteps to the high-road. That has not been my experience. True, you\nmust not expect everywhere to be allowed to stalk anywhere across\ncountry--unless you are following the beagles; but, so numerous are the\nbyways and bridle-paths; so easy has access been made, through centuries\nof hereditary ownership, from one field or stile or farm to another; so\ngenerous, too, are so many landlords, that one can travel for many and\nmany a mile without doing more than cross and recross the road. But true\nit is also that, in order to do this, you must know something of the\nlocality.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nOne much-hidden entrance to a most sequestered spot I hope I do no wrong\nin revealing here.--London stretches out north-west almost to Uxbridge,\nnearly twenty miles out--that is, habitations line almost every inch\nof the way. After Uxbridge, the road is hard, dry, and comparatively\nuninteresting. But, near a cross-road, where is a house on either side,\nif you look carefully to the right you will dimly discern, beneath\nthe shade of low-bending boughs, and almost hidden by these, a simple,\nunpretending stile. I recommend you to climb over it, for it is the\nentrance to a great, quiet, secluded spot, several acres in extent,\nthickly wooded with superb beeches and firs, so thickly wooded that\nthe sky is invisible and the earth wholly in shade. But for the extreme\nkemptness of the underbrush (and the fact that you have just stepped out\nof the London road), you might be in a prim\u00e6val forest of the West. Nor\nis this the sum of its beauty. High though it is above the surrounding\ncountry, embosomed in this forest is a lovely lake, exquisite in its\ncolouring, reflecting, as it does, the cloud-flecked sky, and, all round\nits rim, the bending boughs of the beech. Typical of England are this\nlake and park. They are private property, of course; but the owner gives\nevery wayfarer leave of access. Typical of England: tenacious of rights,\nyet just, nay, generous, to all.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nA Spring Morning in England\n\n\n\u00a7 8\n\nHe who knows not England I will here permit to peep into a page of a\ndiary giving a glimpse of a morning dawdle on the Sussex Downs:\n\n  \"Royal Oak Inn,\n  \"Village of Poynings,\n  \"_27th March 18--_, 11.30 A.M.\n\n\"The little maid is laying the other half of this table to supply me\nwith eggs and bacon....\n\n\"I got me out of Brighton early, walked through Hassocks and\nHurstpierpoint, and strolled on in any direction that invited (for I had\nthe whole lovely day to myself), choosing chiefly byways and sequestered\npaths approached by stiles.\n\n\"The day was superb. The sky, after a rainy night, was a rich deep\nblue, and across it sailed great white-grey clouds, the shadows of which\nchased each other--albeit solemnly and with dignity--over field\nand meadow. The fields, sown with corn already tall, were burnished\ngreen--they shone in the sunlight. The meadows were deeper in colour.\nThe slopes of the downs changed their hues every moment; every acre\nchanged, according as it caught the light direct, or through a thin\ncloud, or was immersed in shade by a big and thick one. The ditches and\nthe little banks by the road, out of which the trim hedgerows sprang,\nwere green with a hundred little plants and weeds--the dock, the nettle,\ngroundsel, stick-a-bobs, ivy of every hue and shape, mullein, the alder\nwell in leaf, and the hawthorn here and there in flower.--\n\n\"Breakfast over. The most delicious bacon, the freshest of eggs, milk\nthat might have masqueraded as cream; and all served with the extremity\nof respectful civility. A fire smouldering in the hearth; a terrier\nlonging to make friends; otherwise they shut the door and leave me to\nquiet privacy.\n\n\"The greenness of the hedges was exquisite. And here and there the\nprimroses in profusion--and the violets--and birds. England teems with\nlife. I heard the thrush--'It _is_ Spring! It _is_ Spring! O the joy!\nI tell you it is--is--is!' And the blackbirds screaming out of a bush,\npretending to be frightened, but only looking for an excuse to shout.\nThe ring-doves, really disturbed and rising with noisy wings. The rooks,\nlost in real wonderment that anyone should stop and look at them for\nfive minutes, and 'cawing' and 'cahing' in vociferous interrogation.\nQuerulous tits, chirping hedge-sparrows, cheeping linnets and\nfinches--by the hundreds and hundreds.\"\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nA mere peep (but a peep photographed on the spot), and giving but a poor\nglimpse of a scene the exact like of which you will not get elsewhere\nthe wide world over.--And, by the way, shouldst ever find thyself\nat this self-same village of Poynings, omit not to examine the Early\nPerpendicular church;--the alms-box is an ancient thurible.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nAutumn Reveries\n\n\n\u00a7 9\n\nThis was in the spring. Autumn in England is equally lovely. In the new\nworld--at least in the northern regions--there is a chill in the fall of\nthe year. The cold north-western winds, cradled amidst pal\u00e6ocrystic ice,\nand blowing over tundra and prairie, are untempered by Gulf Stream or\nocean. Untempered, too, by cloud and moisture, they cut keen, and reveal\nthe leafless landscape in all its bareness. And it may be that they\nbring with them the thought that for many months to come that landscape\nwill be bare indeed--unless covered with a shroud of snow.\n\nFar different is autumn in England--I write (this time) situate in the\nbasin of the Thames, and for many weeks I have been watching summer\nslowly give up its glowing glories in order that other glories, not\nless wonderful in colour, may take their place. For England is never\ncolourless; nay, in England, all through the year, the colours are warm\nand sweet and comforting. The very trunks and twigs of the trees are\nwarm with browns and greens and purples, the result of the mosses and\nlichens, minute epiphytic and parasitic vegetation which the humid\nclimate so greatly fosters. Even brick walls, the stepping-stones in\nbrooks, wooden palings--everything constructed by man, Nature soon\nmellows with a gentle hand; so that, in place of stark and staring\nedifices where the bare boards or the dull paint form blotches on the\nscene, you have everywhere a great harmony of colour--violets shading\ninto green; greens gliding into softest yellows; and these again\ndeepening into warm and beautiful orange and gold and red.\n\nA long, long tramp through beechy Buckinghamshire one day revealed at\nevery step beauties that filled the eye--and filled the heart. No pen\ncould do them justice; and, among painters, only the brush of a Corot\ncould attempt their depicture without depriving them of their exquisite,\ntheir almost evanescent, softness. A great mist lay over the land;\na gentle, noiseless mist that hid from you the horizon and the outer\nworld; that shut you in from the outer world; lured you into that mood\nof quiet reverence in the presence of quiet, wonder-working Nature;\nand revealed to you ... I cannot tell all that was revealed. I can only\npoint to this and that beautiful little thing or vision, themselves but\nemblems of a Beauty and a Mystery invisible.\n\nAgain I saw the little ivies in the ditches. Again I saw unnumbered\nlittle leaves and stalks and tendrils in the hedges; all, of shape and\ntexture and colour actually and positively divine. The hedges, a tangle\nof twigs thick with a hundred growths, were mighty marvels that no human\nclipping and pruning and trimming could diminish. And at every few paces\nrose out of these hedges, on either hand, old majestic elms, great in\ngirth, tall of stature, interlacing their branches high overhead and\nmaking for pygmy me, who walked that winding lane, a wondrous fane in\nwhich to worship.--It was not exactly what one saw with one's bodily eye\nthat roused worship in that fane. What was it?...\n\nAs morning grew towards noon, and the sun gained power, that gentle\nmist--so noiseless, like an angel's hand laid soothingly on me and on\nall that hemmed me in--the mist mysteriously withdrew itself. But only\nto show fresh loveliness. On either hand were meadows, still lush with\ngrass; or brown and furrowed fields, shot through with the myriad tips\nof growing corn; and here and there in scattered heaps lay the rich\nleaves of the oak and the elm and the beech, brilliant in their orange\nand russet, and here and there lit up, like burnished gold, by glints of\nsunshine from between the clouds.\n\nFor miles, quiet little scenes like this filled the eye and the\nheart--entrancing, exalting, humbling.\n\nWherein lay the secret of their appeal? Why is it that field and\nhedgerow, winding lane and interlacing boughs, strike upon the emotions\nof man?\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nSpirituality of Nature\n\n\n\u00a7 10\n\nOne thing at least is certain. Of this human race, of which each of us\nfrail and wailing mortals is a fragment, this kindly or unkindly thing\nwe call \"external Nature\" is at once the mother, the cradle, and the\nhome: out of it we came; in it we play; from it we delve our livelihood;\nand--to it we go. For it is also our grave. But, unlike the mournful\nmounds, so pitilessly ranged in regular rows--as if, 'fore God, to\naccentuate the fact that in Death this impotent thing called sapient\nman meets at last a uniforming and levelling foe--unlike those mournful\nmounds we see in cemeteries, external Nature is a grave out of which\nthere is a perpetual and unceasing resurrection. Nature is at once the\ntomb and the womb of life. What was once soil and rain and sunshine\nbecomes grass--then hay--then beef or mutton or milk--and, in time,\nthe very bone and muscle, the very laughter and tears of the child that\nplays in those fields. And when bone and muscle lay down that subtle\nthing called Life, give up the spirit and lie inert, they enter once\nagain into the tomb and womb of Nature, and the mighty cycle begins\nafresh.\n\n\n\u00a7 11\n\nAnd this \"spirit\" is not a thing apart, a thing outside Nature; breathed\ninto man at his birth, and wafted to some mythical heaven--or hell--at\nhis death. Actually and actively in great Nature, manifesting itself as\nsoil and herb and sunshine, is immanent that which, when metamorphosed\ninto so-called human Life, manifests itself as feeling, imagination,\nemotion, faith. There cannot be anything _in esse_ in Man that was not\naforetime _in posse_ in Nature.\n\n\n\u00a7 12\n\nNever shall I forget the day upon which--and the walk during\nwhich--there flared upon me like a great and sudden light the fact that\nthe whole cosmos was _alive_--was Life; that it was not composed of\ntwo dissimilar things: (_a_) a gross and ponderable \"matter\"; and (_b_)\nan immaterial imponderable \"mind.\" There is no such dichotomy in Nature.\nAll is immaterial, spiritual, living. Every particle in me is alive;\nbut every particle in me came from Nature; and, as I cannot create\nlife, life must have existed potentially in those particles. My bodily\nmechanism is merely a transmutation of one form of life into another.\n\nWhat we call \"life\" is a process; a process kept agoing by (_a_) the\ningestion of surrounding material; and (_b_) the reproduction of the\nindividual which so ingests.\n\nLook at that field of oats growing there to the right. You will admit,\nwill you not, that those little green blades just springing from the\nsoil are actually and veritably the matter of the field in which they\ngrow? The silicon and phosphorus and oxygen and nitrogen and carbon and\nwhat-not, which were in the air or soil, will by next July be gluten\nand protein. If you and I should haggle over the origin of the first\noat-seed, at least if it did not spring from this particular field, it\nhad not, I take it, any ultra-terrestrial origin.--Or granted it had,\nas, I think, Arrhenius argues, that origin was not extra-cosmic: it\ncame, certainly, from somewhere within this our visible universe. Good!\nLet us go back.--The oats then--that is, the gluten and the protein--are\nbut the matter of soil and air and sunshine in another form. So, then,\nis the porridge in your plate. So, then, are _you_, surely. You and I\n_are_ this external Nature in another shape; and if we had _n_ senses\nand a mind endowed with powers of discernment and of comprehension\n_n_thly more powerful than at present, we might be able, not only to\nsee the process of transformation in its every stage, but--to understand\nthat matter is immaterial, is spiritual (whatever that word may\nconnote); and that ourselves, the porridge, the oats, the soil, the\nearth--the Cosmos, are, is ... one and a Mystery. In Nature, as in\nMan, resides that Spirit of Eternal Things which we call Life: a thing\nincomprehensible and divine; transcending thought; one and a unit; one\nwith the thing that is, and one with that which asks itself what it\nis and whence it came; revealing itself under the aspects of time and\nspace, yet unbounded by time or space; manifesting itself under an\ninfinitude of forms, yet remaining one and the same; at once the\nrevealer and the revealed; the thing thought of and the thing that\nthinks.\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nPractical Transcendentalism\n\n\n\u00a7 13\n\nBut of what avail are transcendental themes like these for the conduct\nand comfort of life? What light are they to our path? To what goal do\nthey point?\n\nIt is not a question that needs to be asked. Were no investigation to be\nundertaken, no theories formed, save for some definite and preconceived\npurpose, it may be that no new path would be found, no more distant goal\ndiscerned.\n\nAnd yet these meditations, such as they were, crude in matter, inchoate\nin form, mere adumbrations of a truth all too dimly perceived, brought\ncomfort. Once more they took me away from the trivial and the ephemeral.\nAbove all, they took me away from the geocentric. So many creeds, so\nmany religions, pin me down to this little planet. How many earths are\nthere in the visible heavens? Are there terrestrial sinners on each and\nall? If so, for how many deaths did the vicarious mercy of the Almighty\ncall? And even if we travel outside the realm of Christendom, still we\nfind our little earth regarded as the centre of thought, the only scene\nupon which the great drama of Being is enacted: for so many philosophies\nand religions accentuate the isolated existence of individual human\nbeings, and limit their application to the periphery of this speck in\nspace.\n\nI like the larger aspect. When we look up to the stars and remember that\nthey are suns about which probably revolve an infinitude of habitable\nearths--earths of every conceivable and inconceivable kind, and peopled\nprobably with an infinitude of beings--also of every conceivable and\ninconceivable kind--some perhaps as gross as we, others breathing airs\nof heaven, requiring neither senses nor anatomical organs, enjoying \"the\ncommunion of saints\" by powers and processes outside the ken of touch or\nspeech or vision ... we link ourselves with the immensity of Being;\nwe are not separate little entities trudging a few miles of earth, but\nparticles of Omnipresent Life, partakers in the history and destiny of\nAll that Is.\n\n\n\u00a7 14\n\nThere is a practical side, too, to these transcendental themes. For what\nis Conscience, that inward monitor which, whatever your creed, bids you\nwalk thus and not otherwise, that applauds you when you do right, and\nshames you when you go wrong? From one point of view, Conscience is the\nevolved consensus of mankind, that inherited instinct which declares\nthat only such actions as subserve the welfare of the race are right,\nand that all others are wrong; and that distributes its sanctions\naccordingly. From another, and perhaps a rather fanciful, point of view\n(and yet one that may appeal to those who look forward to a life after\ndeath and cling to a possibility of communication between dead and\nliving)--from another point of view, Conscience may be the inaudible\nvoice of myriads of fellow-creatures like unto ourselves, who, having\npassed through the trials and temptations of this life, and viewing this\nlife from the plane of a life supernal, shout spiritually, warningly,\nin our psychic ears when they see us doing the things that brought them\nill. But from another and cosmic point of view, it is that absolute and\ncategorical imperative which dictates that each attenuated portion of\nthe All shall act in Unison with the All, in the history and destiny of\nwhich each attenuated portion partakes.\n\nBut I digress.\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nSpring in Canada\n\n\n\u00a7 15\n\nMy next walks were in quite another hemisphere--to wit, in the great and\ngrowing colony of Canada.--From many points of view Canada is one of\nthe most interesting of countries. From the rank of a somewhat humble\ndependency, made up of a heterogeneous collection of provinces, she\nhas sprung within the last few decades into the rank of a proud and\nself-conscious nation. The contrast is notable. Indeed the country is\none of contrasts. Her climate, her scenery, her sentiments, her people,\nher politics, all exhibit extremes the most extraordinary. A winter\nof Arctic severity is followed by a tropical summer. Within sight of\nluxuriant pastures glide stupendous glaciers. Flattest prairies spread\nto the feet of mountain ranges the rivals of the Alps; prim fields,\norchards, and vineyards encroach upon prim\u00e6val forests. Along with the\nhardy apple and the far-famed No. 1 Manitoba wheat, this land produces\nstrawberries, peaches, grapes, and melons. Constitutionally content with\nBritish connexion, her people are intimately influenced by ideas and\nmanners American. Indeed, her people are as heterogeneous as herself.\nThe Maritime Provinces of the extreme east hardly call themselves\nCanadian; Quebec is French; Ontario is Canadian to the core; so is\nManitoba; in the North-West Territories are settlers from almost every\nnationality in Europe; British Columbia, in the extreme west,\nagain, fights shy of the cognomen Canadian. Newfoundland holds aloof\naltogether. A rude and toilsome social life goes hand in hand with\npatches of refinement and culture unmistakable. Canadian cheese took\nthe prize at Chicago; Canadian poetry has been crowned by the Academy.\nLauding democratic institutions to the skies, Radical to the last\ndegree, Canada nevertheless contains within herself castes and cliques\nin their horror of such principles almost rabid. With a political\nsystem the counterpart of the British, her politics are rife with\npersonalities, election protests, corruption trials.\n\nHowever, I am not here concerned with political or social tendencies or\ndelinquencies.\n\n\n\u00a7 16\n\nSoon after I arrived I betook me, one spring, in my canoe, down the\nbanks of the River Otonabee. Pitching a tent, I made this a focus from\nwhich I radiated in any direction I chose--dawdling and sauntering and\nlounging and seeing what there was to be seen.\n\nAnd what is there to be seen? Well, let me give you here another little\nphotograph.\n\nI write, sitting ensconced, sheltered from sun and wind, between two\nhuge roots of the stump of a burned pine on a bare hill overlooking the\nriver. Not a place in which to see much, you would say. Pardon me,\nyou are wrong. You, shut in between four superficies of wall-paper,\na whitewashed ceiling, and a carpet, know absolutely nothing of the\nclouded sky as I know it, gazing at it unconfined from horizon to\nzenith. Far overhead, the delicatest vapoury cirri fleck the purest\nblue; in the distance, bold, rounded, white cumuli rise above a misty\nhaze of grey, against which as a background rise in points and\ncurves and lines dark green firs and round-topped birches and emerald\nhill-sides; and below these, and nearer, comes the water--in no two\nspots the same--ruffled and unruffled, wavy and still, dark blue and\nlead-grey, in eddies and in currents; here dimpled, there like a\nmirror; now dazzling you with a thousand flashing, floating stars; there\nsullenly bearing up the reflections and shadows of the great, dark trees\nabove it--at one moment thus, and while you say it, otherwise.--For\na symbol of God--serene, shapeless, profound, in eternal repose,\nunchanging, all-embracing, majestic--give me the blue sky; for a\nsymbol of Man--tossed, shapen, ever at strife, changeful, unresting,\nevanescent, with dark depths and foul weeds, sombre and woeful when\ndeprived of the light of heaven, and beautiful only when beautified by\nskyey tints--give me the water. And after the water, and closer, comes\nmy foreground--tufted grass and brown soil, with dandelions and clover\nand mullein, and here and there a piece of glistering granite or a\nquaint-shaped, rotting tree trunk. Amongst these hops fearless, while I\nsit still and silent with half-closed eyes, the thrush or the grey-bird,\nchasing insects a few feet from my foot; while above me, on the\nvery stump against which I lean, perches the various-coloured\nhigh-holder.--Truly, it seems as if Nature had taken me to be one with\nher, recognised me as part of her manifold immensity, looked upon me as\na consort, a co-mate.\n\nAnd am I not a part of her? It needs not to comprehend the harmonious\nworkings of mighty natural laws to perceive the unity of all things.\nEach minutest spot on this earth verifies the truth. I need not move a\nstep to find evidences of it. I look at my blackened stump, and not\none square inch can I find which is not instinct with evidences of life\nwithin life; life interfused with, dependent on, correlated with other\nlife, with signs of the ceaseless being born, growing, dying--with\nprocesses interlinked with processes. It is a universe of processes,\nthis in which we live; not a universe _in which_ this, that, and\nthe other separate thing exists for a time, but a universe _of_\nsubsistences, made up wholly of interdependent existences. Wherever I\nlook on my trunk I see mosses and lichens and creeping ants and beetles,\nand the holes of boring worms, and the marks of woodpeckers' beaks,\nchrysalises, seeds, twigs. To each of these the stump is its universe:\nthey regard it as we do the solar system, as a place, a locality, made\nfor them to inhabit. They do not understand that the tree is itself but\npart of a greater whole of life, of thought; a link in an endless chain\nof existence. And so we often forget that this infinitely various\nand changing universe which we call ours, which we look upon as our\nhabitation, our dwelling-house, in which we move about as lords and\nmasters, is after all but an infinitesimal fragment of the real demesne\nof the true Lord of the Manor. And what if after all we were not even\nbailiffs of this manor? What if we were but the furniture in some small\nattic--mirrors, it may be--and that what we call our universe prove to\nbe nothing more than the small part of this attic which is reflected in\nus!\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\nAutumn in Canada\n\n\n\u00a7 17\n\nThis was in the spring. But I remember an autumn walk in Canada that was\nvery different from this, both in the locality chosen and in the scenes\nviewed.\n\nLate in October once, a friend and myself had three whole days'\nholiday!--rare and joyous boon! We took a train to the little Ontarian\ntown of Stayner. From Stayner to the shores of the Georgian Bay was a\nlittle trudge of about three miles. But a trudge it was; for the train\nhad been late; our knapsacks were heavy; the sun had set; and both\ndarkness and hunger came on apace. But at last the shore was reached.\nAnd what a shore it was! For, beating on it from far away to the north\nwas a wealth of waters--oceanic in magnitude, sombre as the sea and, as\nthe sea, mysterious.\n\nAs we walked, the night closed in, the northern night, so beautiful,\nso clear, so immense. But it was chill and dark, and either we must\nadvance, or we must seek shelter where we were. Shall it be a leafy\n\"lean-to\" under a pine, constructed of heaped-up boughs, or shall it be\na trudge to a civilised hostelry? Such were the problems discussed over\nsandwiches and hard-boiled eggs (washed down with sandy water from the\nbay), as we sat on a wave-washed log, the wind blowing strong in our\nfaces. The ground was damp as damp; the pines seemed lugubriously\nincompetent to shelter from the growing gale. Blankets we had none;\nnight was upon us.--We decided to walk.\n\nOn the left was this rolling Georgian ocean, seemingly illimitable. In\nits northern stretches it reached up to Hudson's Bay, to the Arctic;\nand by its southern streams it drave down to Lake Ontario, to the St\nLawrence, to the Atlantic. It was one with this Atlantic; it was one\nwith the Pacific; it was first cousin to the Indian Ocean, and but once\nor twice removed from all the waters of the world, since they and it had\na common origin.\n\nThe walking was superb. The sand was firm as asphalt: on the right was\ndimly visible a friendly fringe of trees--pine and scrub and brushwood;\non the left there was ever that never-ceasing roll of waves--waves once\nmore linking me with Ostend and Hove, Rotterdam and Rangoon, St John\nin New Brunswick, Ascension Isle, the Cape of Good Hope, and the\npalm-fringed coast of Malabar.\n\nWe walked. And we walked fast. But not too fast to notice. There was no\nmoon. The stars came out, and in that pellucid northern air, where was\nno dust of road nor smoke of chimney, those stars shone as assuredly\nnever can they shine elsewhere. It is a literal fact that, in order to\ndetermine whether or not the great luminous patches which I gazed at\noverhead were the veritable Milky Way or only drifting clouds lit up by\nstarlight, I had to look again and again, and to take note as to whether\nthere was perceptible any change of shape. There was not. It was the\nGalaxy itself; but so revealed, so clearly seen, so unremote, as it\nwere, that once again the great portals of the Infinite seemed to open,\nand to permit a glimpse into the mysterious abode of Being--inadequate\nterm by which we feebly connote the supreme unity of all that is. To\npermit a glimpse, too, into that puzzle of puzzles, the not impossible\nidentification or unification or intussusception of that All with\nthe smallest of its integral contents. For was not that assemblage\nof suns--those masses of solar systems, so numerous as to seem but a\nmist--was it not actually depicted on the tiny retina of the eye? It\nwas; and, through this depicture, it was, as it were, intellectually\nembraced in the thinking mind behind; a fact symbolical of the truth, as\nyet but dimly comprehended, that in very deed the infinitesimal unit and\nthe mighty All are one and identical.\n\nHowever, ontological speculations under an autumnal sky have their\nlimit; and glad indeed were we, after long search among the pines and\nthe hemlocks, to find, albeit it was late, a hostel in which were warmth\nand shelter for the night.\n\n\n\n\nXIII\n\nWinter in Canada\n\n\n\u00a7 18\n\nI remember me, too, of a notable winter's walk in Canada.\n\nFor some reason, one night in mid-January, Sleep forsook me. After\nwooing her in vain, I rose at three and lighted an ungainly but highly\nsatisfactory stove. It had a draught like a Bessemer furnace, drawing\nthrough an ugly stove-pipe which ran bolt upright, turned sharp before\nit reached the ceiling, and disappeared in a hole in the wall--an\napparatus quite the most conspicuous article of furniture in the room\n(it was in a hotel). On this I warmed a cup of tea, then donned all the\nwarm clothing I could find; and in some forty minutes was afoot.\n\nMy point of departure was a little Ontarian country town of some ten\nthousand inhabitants--we will call it Dummer. Dummer stood in a slightly\nhigher latitude than the parallels which run through the belt of country\nskirting the northern shore of the Great Lakes, along which are dotted\nmost of the centres of population; and accordingly it was exposed to\na slightly severer wintry climate. At the time of my visit it was\nenveloped in snow. Snow lay deep over the whole land, thick on\nevery roof, over the edges of which it protruded itself in irregular\ncurves--solid cataracts suspended in air, and vainly endeavouring to\ncomplete their descent by long six-foot icicles. Snow-white was every\nroad, save for the two dirty grooves beaten down by the hoofs of horses.\nSnow covered the country, far as the eye could reach; glistening like\nglaciers on the hill-sides, deep purple and blue in the patches shaded\nby the pines; only the woods showing black against the dazzling white,\nthe perpendicular walls of the wooden farm buildings, the solitary trees\nand shrubs, and the straggling snake-fences--long, unshaped logs of\nsplit timber, their ends placed zigzag the one over the other, to keep\nthe structure erect--relieved the white monotony. And yet this belt of\ncountry is almost in the same latitude with the south of France, with\nthe Riviera, whence but a few days before I had received in a letter a\nviolet!\n\nWhen I started, there was no moon, there were no stars; my sole light\nwas the skyey reflection of the electric lamps of the city; and only\nthis for many miles enabled me to distinguish the grooves in which I had\nto walk from the high ridge of snow between them which I had to avoid.\nWhen I skirted the lee side of a high hill, or passed the distal edge of\na thick wood, I floundered from one to other in the dark. The landscape,\nsuch of it as could be seen under a leaden-grey sky, was a vast\nmonochrome, an expanse of dull white picked out with blotches and points\nand lines of black. Not a living thing was to be seen. Not a sound was\nto be heard. And, what particularly struck a lover of country walks,\nnot the faintest suspicion of any kind of a scent was to be detected.\nEverything seemed to be dumb and dead; and the tiny flakes which fell in\nmyriads, fell so silently, so pitilessly, had seemingly for their object\nthe making of all things, if possible, still more dumb and dead.--There\nis always something poetic about snow in England. There is something\nplayful and jocular in the way in which lusty standard rose-trees, stout\nshrubs, and sturdy hedges don aged Winter's garb, as a laughing maid\nwill half demurely wear her grand-dam's cap. In the Western Hemisphere,\naway from the genial influences of the Gulf Stream, even in the same\nlatitudes, winter is a more serious matter. The snow comes \"to stay.\"\nThere is little jocosity about it. It lies several feet thick. If it\ndisappears during a temporary thaw, it comes again very soon. Here the\ntrees do not sport with it. They put up with it. They stand knee-deep in\nit, leafless, motionless, scentless, soundless. If there is a wind, it\nsweeps through them with a long thin swish, like the wail of a host\nof lost spirits seeking shelter. Not a branch falls--the autumn blasts\nbrought down all that was frangible. Only frozen tears fall, fall from\nthe ice-encrusted twigs. For miles on either side of me stood these\npatient trees; thick, black, heavy-boughed cedars, their stout trunks\nburied in snow, squatting, like Mr Kipling's Djinn of All Deserts, on\ntheir haunches and vainly \"thinking a Magic\" to make idling Winter \"hump\nhimself\"; beech-trees, naked but for a few scattered sere and yellow\nleaves fluttering about their waists; the drooping-branched elm, not\nhalf so graceful as when full-leafed; elegant maples with a tracery of\ntwigs far too fine to be compared to lace. These trees formed often the\noutermost fringe of thick woods. Into these I penetrated. A profound\nsilence pervaded them, a silence so intense, so all-embracing, it seemed\nto overflow the forest, to go out into space, to enwrap the world in\nits grasp. Not a thing stirs. To be alive in that shrine of death-like\nsoundlessness seems desecration. It is supreme, infinite, absolute; you,\nthe living, moving onlooker, are finite and relative, a thing of time\nand space. To think is to disturb the serenity of its repose, for to\nthink is to attempt to limit it, to reduce it to the level of yourself,\nand no thought is large enough to compass it. Only some shaggy elk,\nhoofed and horned, diabolically crashing through crust upon crust of\nsuperimposed layers of frozen snow; and only demoniacal little troops of\nwolves, pattering fiendishly, are fit to defy or to disturb this deity\nof Quiet. It is large, expansive, in its influence. Summer sights\nand sounds bind you to a spot, limit your attention to a locality,\naccentuate the petty, the individual, the trivial. The wintry woods, the\nwhite unfurrowed fields, stimulate no sense. The soul of man seems bared\nto the soul of Nature, and human thought and the universal mind seem\ncontiguous and conterminous.--Silence affects the mind as darkness\naffects the senses: both in their impressiveness quicken the faculties\nto the utmost; and yet, as no sense can perceive the impalpability of\ndarkness, so no thought can pierce the impenetrability of silence.--One\nmust visit a wintry clime to experience emotions such as these.\n\nAs I walked, the wind rose, and its noise in the convolutions of\nthe ear, so still was everything else, became almost annoying in its\nresounding roar. I had followed devious and untravelled ways in the\nsemi-darkness, and this wind it was that told me when again I reached\na high-road--namely, by the whistling of the telegraph wires. I\nnever heard such obstreperous wires. They made an \u00c6olian harp truly\nhyperborean in timbre and volume. Every note in the scale of audible\nhuman sound seemed struck; and were there such a thing as an acoustical\nspectroscope, it would have shown, not only every tone and semitone in\nthe gamut, but ultra-treble and infra-bass notes also. And it was played\n_fortissimo_. Those wires shrieked, bellowed. Whether at that early hour\nthey were carrying messages, I do not know; but all the intensity of\nhuman anguish, human happiness, and human woe seemed to be flowing\nthrough their scrannel lengths; and the thin hapless things plained of\ntheir freight to the unheeding winds. It was a weird sound far out there\nin the desolate wild, with not a soul to hear or sympathise--for I, what\nwas I in all that huge expanse? They wotted not of me.\n\nThen the great sky by degrees broke up into masses of cloud, and here\nand there between them shone out the steady stars--imperturbable,\npiercing, shaken not by the slightest twinkle. One rich and brilliant\nplanet in the west glowed argent in the blue--a blue into which the\neye penetrated far, far into infinity. The Canadian sky is ever lofty,\npellucid, profound; very different from the close canopy so common in\ncloudy England.\n\nBut it was high time to turn homewards. A faint light overspread the\neast; things began to take shape; houses, instead of appearing as dark\nblotches against the white, now looked like habitable dwellings; the\nseparate boughs were distinguishable on the trees. As one neared the\ntown signs of life were seen--and smelled; the pungent odour of the\n\"coal-oil\" with which the impatient and unthrifty housewife coaxed\nher wood fire more rapidly to catch, smote almost smartingly upon\nthe nostril. Sleepy-eyed mechanics, buttoned to the throat, heavily\n\"overshoed,\" and with hands bepocketed, strode sullenly workwards. Later\non \"cutters\"--so are called the comfortable little one-horsed sleighs\njust seating a couple--sped hither and thither. Then a milk-cart or two\nglided past, the cans wrapped in furs, the hairs on the horses' muzzles\nshowing white with cleaving ice. Later still, and when within the\nprecincts of the town proper, children were met espying sleighs on which\nto get \"rides\" to school. It was a different world now. A dazzling\nsun transformed the dull dead landscape of the night into a blinding\nspangled sheet of purest white. Involuntarily the eyes half closed\nagainst that glare. No wonder the sub-Arctic eye lacks the large frank\nopenness of those of softer realms; against even the summer sunshine the\nprotection of approximated eyelids is needed, as the crow's-feet of the\nfarmers' features prove. If Canada has earned the title of Our Lady of\nthe Snows, she certainly equally deserves the title of Our Lady of the\nSunshine; nowhere is sunshine so bright or so abundant; so bright and\nabundant that it is not unreasonable to suppose that it has not a little\nto do with the elimination of that \"phlegm\" from the descendants of the\nimmigrant of that land to the folk of which the French attribute that\ncharacteristic. \"There are few, if any, places in England,\" says the\nDirector of the Meteorological Service of Canada, \"that have a larger\nnormal annual percentage [of bright sunshine] than thirty-six, and there\nare many as low as twenty-five; whereas in Canada most stations exceed\nforty, and some few have as high a percentage as forty-six.\"[12]\n\"Weather permitting\" is a phrase but rarely heard in Canada.\n\nBut my early morning walk was over. It was one I would not have\nexchanged for many another taken under more genial skies.\n\n\n\n\nXIV\n\nThe Mood for Walking\n\n\n\u00a7 19\n\nA morning walk is worth the effort of getting up. Much would I give\nto have been of that party which, in sixteen hundred and something,\n\"stretched their legs up Tottenham Hill towards the Thatched House in\nHoddesdon on that fine fresh May morning\"--I mean Messrs _Piscator_,\n_Venator_, and _Auceps_. I should have been _Peregrinator_; and whereas\n_Piscator_ praised the water, and _Venator_ the land, and _Auceps_ the\nair, as the element in which each respectively traded, I should have\npraised all three, for the pedestrian's pleasures derive from no single\none. And to walking I should have applied dear old Izaak Walton's own\nphrase, that it, like angling, was \"most honest, ingenious, quiet, and\nharmless.\"[13] Upon quiet, Walton sets extraordinary stress. Quoting\nwith approbation the learned Peter du Moulin, he tells us that \"when God\nintended to reveal any future events or high notions to his prophets, he\nthen carried them either to the deserts or the sea-shore, that having\nso separated them from amidst the press of people and business, and the\ncares of the world, he might settle their mind in a quiet repose, and\nthere make them fit for revelation.\"[14]\n\nIt is strange that Izaak Walton, himself apparently a most quiet and\ncontented old man (he lived to be ninety-one), should, writing at sixty\nyears of age, and two hundred and fifty years ago--when I suppose\nthere was no faster or noisier thing than a galloping horse--should so\ninsistently preach and teach quiet. Yet, perhaps we must remember that\nhe lived through the Great Rebellion. The last words of his book--and he\nputs them into his own, _Piscator's_, mouth--are:\n\n  \"And [let the blessing of St Peter's Master be] upon all that are\n  lovers of virtue, and dare trust in his providence, and be quiet,\n  and go a-angling. Study to be Quiet.--1 Thess. iv. 11.\"\n\nWhy, I do not exactly know, but there is to me something\nstraightforward, honest, and simple-minded in the idea of ending a book\nwith the words \"and go a-angling.\" This and the quotation from 1 Thess.\niv. 11 sum up for me the character of the man and the book.\n\n\n\u00a7 20\n\nWalking rivals angling in demanding and engendering quiet. \"To make a\nwalk successful,\" says another dear old gentleman, writing at the same\ntime of life but in modern times, \"mind and body should be free of\nburthen.\"[15] The true and abiding joy of walking is in calm. \"The\nmood,\" says John Burroughs, \"in which you set out on a spring or autumn\nramble or a sturdy winter walk ... is the mood in which your best\nthoughts and impulses come to you.... Life is sweet in such moods,\nthe Universe is complete, and there is no failure or imperfection\nanywhere.\"[16] Only Nature can induce such moods--\n\n  \"Dear Nature is the kindest mother still,\"\n\nsays the soul-tossed, self-torturing Byron. Books, music, art, the\ndrama, philosophy, science--at bottom there seems to be something\ndisquieting in these. They come in such questionable shape. They are the\nworks of man; and we never altogether trust the works of man. We never\nfeel, even with the first of those who know, that our fellow-man, who\nis, after all, like unto ourselves, has answered every question, allayed\nevery doubt, stilled every fear. Was something of this in Matthew\nArnold's mind when he cried:\n\n  \"One lesson, _Nature_, let me learn of thee,\"\n\nand prayed her to calm, to compose him to the end?--But enough in praise\nof calm. Calm is compatible with the highest and most exuberant spirits.\nIndeed, high and exuberant spirits are the first and natural outcome of\na mind at peace with itself. Good old Walton is continually breaking out\ninto pious or pastoral song--and making milkmaids and milkmaids' mothers\nbreak out into song, too.\n\n\n\n\nXV\n\nEvening Meditations\n\n\n\u00a7 21\n\nIf, as Messieurs _Piscator_, _Venator_, and _Auceps_, and their tuneful\nmilkmaids, show, early morning walks tend to blithesomeness of heart,\nevening walks tend perhaps to meditation of mind. As day wears on--I\ndo not know, I may be wrong, but to me it seems that as day wears on\nit takes a more sombre aspect. It was at dusk that Gray's Elegy was\nwritten. In the very sound of Milton's simple words,\n\n  \"Then came still evening on,\"\n\nthere is to me an echo of quietness, perhaps of melancholy.--Many a\nlesson I have learned by quiet meditation in quiet scenes, prolonged far\ninto the night.--Indeed, he is a wise walker who chooses for himself one\nor more secluded spots, sequestered deep, whither he may go, there to\ncommune with himself; or to hold high converse with the mighty dead;\nor to lend an expectant ear for the dryads of the woods; or, if nothing\nmore, to rid him of the petty perturbations incident to a life lived\nbetween four walls, a floor, and a ceiling, and broken into fragments by\nclocks which strike the hours and watches which point to the minute.\n\n\n\u00a7 22\n\nOne such spot I have, and from it many a lesson I have learned.--It is\na great amphitheatre, Nature-made, vast and open. It slopes to the north\nand west, and all about it and about are green trees--green trees and\nshrubs and lowly plants. In the whole space I am the one spectator--save\nfor little grasses that stand on tiptoe to look and listen; save for\nlittle weeds that nod their heads; and a beetle crawling heedless over\ndry and shining grains of sand. In the orchestral centre, where, in\nancient Greece, should stand the lighted altar, there chances to be a\nlittle crimson maple; and behind and beyond rise verdant hills. Before\nme, as where should be the stage, stand, in green habiliments, beech\nand elm and fir; oak and cedar; lithe and virginal saplings;\nbroad-shouldered pines, staid and stalwart--a goodly company, goodly\nand green, wondrous green; and for me they act and pose and sing.... The\ndrama opens.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nThere is no fanfaronade. On the left, against a dove-grey cloud, the\ntopmost twigs of a silver poplar rustle, the signal to commence. Gently,\nand with grace supreme, the boughs begin a cosmic song, and sway the\nwhile they chant. They dip and fall, and lightly rise; take hands and\ntouch, and smile, and sing again. Troop after troop takes up the measure\nas the wind sweeps through the trees, and there is revealed to the eye\nand to the ear sound and motion obedient to an unseen power.... The\nmovement deepens. Great masses join the dance, swell the vespertinal\nhymn. Huge and cumbrous boughs sweep back and forth, melodious,\neloquent; and from tremulous leaf to swaying limb rises a choric song,\nbeautiful, wonderful.... Of what is it that they speak?\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nPresently, beneath the dove-grey cloud, the red sun momentarily shows.\nGleams strike the amphitheatre, the stage. My neighbour grasses glint in\nthe sheen, the beetle's wing-sheaths glow; the sand grains glisten,\nand, overhead, the veined leaves of the larch, which before were black\nagainst the sky, become translucent to the light. The massed greens grow\nradiant; solitary boughs shake sunshine from their locks; the shrubs\nstand out overt; a divine gleesomeness fills all the wood.... Whence\ncomes the mystic impulse?\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nThen slowly evening falls. The wind dies down. A fitful breeze, now\nwarm with Summer's breath, now chill, strays aimless; and the major song\nsinks to a key in flats.--The sun sinks. The green shadows grow black;\nand where before was great leafage, is now a great gloom, in which even\nthe white-stemmed birches lose their tapering limbs. Gone are the leaves\nof the larch; the shrubs hide; the beetle creeps out of sight. A far-off\nrill mingles a bass _maestoso_ sob with its treble trill; and slowly, very\nslowly, a thin thin mist creates itself in every cranny of the dell.\nOnly I am left, dull of hearing, miscomprehending, obtuse.\n\nOnly a little scene in an unending play; for all through the night, and\nfor endless days and nights, before man was, and long after man will be,\nthese leafy persons uplift that solemn chant, enact that choric\ndance: now frolicsome and free; now plaintive: now expectant, patient,\nstill.... What is it that they hymn?\n\n\n\u00a7 23\n\nIt is but little that I, I and the heedless beetle, comprehend of this\nmighty but mystical drama. Some supernal power impels them, so it seems,\nand they hymn and praise this power; some hidden force, emanating in\nregions far beyond the sun, yet immanent in the grass blade, in\nthe leaflet, in the sand grains at my feet. Often a darksome power,\nruthless, blind; slaying horde on horde; spilling blood like water;\nscattering real pain and poignant agony like hail; yet often thrilling,\njoyous, tremulous with bliss--inscrutable, recondite, dark. It is formed\nand transformed into myriad shapes, out-running time, out-living life;\nmuted and re-muted, here into gross and ponderable matter, there into\nfilmiest air; anon revealing itself as exuberant life; again vanishing\nin so-called death; a breath; a spirit; the soul of eternal things....\nSome hidden power they hymn.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nThe darkness deepens. The mist grows thick apace, heavy and sombre. The\nkeen jagged edge that cut the horizon is blunted. The mystic play is\nwithdrawn; the persons of the drama vanish; and spectators and\nstage, proscenium and scene, the ampitheatre, the open earth, and the\nillimitable sky, are blent into one dark and invisible whole.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nThen in the silence of night I heard the soundless voice of that Spirit\nof Eternal Things: that Mystery, impenetrable as the dark, impalpable:\nrevealing itself as one with the shapes it took and one with the impulse\nthey obeyed; in the grass blade and the leaf, and in the wind to which\nthey swayed; in the ponderous earth that, darkling, rolls through space,\nand in the subtle mind that holds this earth in fee. The vast and the\nfar-off were embraced in the vision, for from the remotest star came\nrays that united me with it. The minute and the trivial were summoned\nfrom their hiding to prove themselves near and akin. Magnitude\nand proportion were swallowed up in unity; number and computation\ndisappeared in a stupendous integer. Not a leaf shook, not a bud burst,\nbut was moved to motion and to life by forces infinite and remote,\nante-dating sun or star, one with sun and star, older than the Milky\nWay, vaster than the limits of vision. For in each leaflet of the\nboscage ran a sap ancient as ocean; and but yesterday, in the history of\nTime, that whole assemblage was something far other than it is. Bud and\nleaf were but manifestations of a something supreme--a Force, a Spirit,\na God; a mysterious Thing that took hold of dew and sunshine and soil\nand transformed them into shape and perfume. And sunshine and dew and\nsoil were in turn themselves but mutations of things, chemical elements\nor movements of molecules; and these again but mutations of things\nmore subtle still--atoms or electrons, infinitesimal and innominate\nparticles; till ultimately, surely, we arrive at something immense,\nimmutable.--Something there must be behind all change; behind all\nappearances Something that Appears. And the last appearance, and the\nsum-total of appearances, must be potential in the first, as in the\nacorn is contained a potential forest. Given one acorn, and enough of\nspace and time, and there is actually possible a cosmos of oaks; and\nevery oak different, and no two twigs alike. So, could we explain the\nelectron, we should comprehend the inane; in the moment lies concealed\nthe \u00e6on. Indeed, it is only to time-fettered space-bound man that these\nare not one and identical. And, if in leaf and bud, then in perceiving\nmind. For somehow mind, this wondering mind of man, arose upon this\nplanet; uprose, appeared, became. No trailing comet, surely, in wanton\nsport, showered mind upon this world. Whencesoever it arose, being\nhere, and fed and nurtured by all things here, emergent from matter, a\nfragment of earth and sea and sky, surely in this mind of man must also\nbe that self-same hidden power....\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nI, too, then, was one of a mystic band, was in the hands of the\nself-same power, was indeed but a mutation amid its mutations, and had\na part to play on my little stage, a part without which the mighty drama\nwould be incomplete, however lowly it were. For, as by inexorable law\nthe youngest leaflet in that dell was potentially existent from before\nall time, could not help but be and sway and flutter in the breeze, so\nI in my little world. But what the mighty drama portended or portrayed\nI knew as little as did the heedless beetle that had crept out of sight;\nand surely, he, poor little soul, had as much right to know as I--not\nmany mutations, on this paltry planet, separated me from him. Only\nI saw, behind all, some ineffable power enacting an ineffable drama:\nplaywright and protagonist in one; conceiving and enacting an endless\nplot; manifesting itself to itself, yet ever remaining the thing\nunmanifest; sundering itself into innumerable myriads, yet remaining one\nand a whole--incomprehensible--divine.[17]\n\nBy degrees the great sky broke up into clouds. A half moon, cut into\nfantastic shapes by the twigs, peered through the trees; and as I\nthridded the boles--I miscomprehending, obtuse, merely a larger atom in\na small inane, finding my devious way by a doubly reflected light--the\nscene was shifted, fresh actors called, and the great drama went on,\nunfolding for ever a tale without end.\n\n\n\n\nXVI\n\nThe Unity of Nature\n\n\n\u00a7 24\n\nThe lesson I learned was this: Nature is vast. Nature knows nothing\nof Time. Nor does Nature know anything of Space. It is we who import\nspatial and temporal limitations into Nature. Because we look up with\ntwo eyes, and feel forth with two arms, and walk about with two legs,\nwe think, not only that _our_, but that _the_, universe is an infinite\nsphere!--an actual objective sphere of which each stupidly assumes that\n_he_ is the centre! Which means that there are, supposedly, millions\nof centres, and each centre changing its place by millions of miles a\nday!--positive proof of the preposterousness of the assumption.--To\nan animalcule born and bred inside an old garden hose, the universe, I\nsuppose, is an endless tunnel. To a baby cockroach hatched between floor\nand carpet, the universe is a limitless plane. Well, we are animalcules\non a little rolling clod; and this clod may bear the same relation to\nsome supernal, _n_-dimensional mansion and garden--and gardeners and\nOwner, as does my supposititious caoutchouc hose or patterned carpet to\nsome terrestrial demesne.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nAnd so with Time. Time is a matter of individual memory, of remembering\npast events and of anticipating (which is memory reversed, as it were;\nmemory projected) events to come. And memory, as we know it, is purely\na matter of this or that sort of nerve-substance in the brain. Had we no\nmemory, we should know nothing whatsoever of time; an event would be\na point, and no past point could be recalled, nor any future one\nconjectured. So, could an infinite number of memories coalesce, there\nwould be no time either, for in that case all events would occur here\nand now.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nNature--the Cosmos--the All--the Deity ... _He_ is not limited by\ncubical contents nor by clocks striking the hours.\n\n\n\u00a7 25\n\nHow convey a notion of this mysterious Unity? Shall we essay a gross and\ninadequate analogy?\n\nThere are in the blood of man little things called white corpuscles.\nThey are alive; they are, in fact, little living personages. Indeed,\nit would be hard to deny that they possess a certain sort of\n\"intelligence\"; for, according to the phagocytic theory, they attack\ntheir foes and help their friends. Now, if these white corpuscles ever\nreason about the world which they inhabit, they must think that it\nconsists of an immense red ocean in a perpetual flux, limitless and\nrestless, and peopled with myriads of beings like unto themselves. Yet\nthey are an integral part of the human frame; indeed without them the\nhuman frame could not be what it is. Well, man's place in _his_ universe\nmay be very similar to that of the white corpuscle in its; and the\nintelligence and nature of the Being of which man forms an integral\npart may be as inconceivable to man--to bewildered man, buried 'neath an\nocean of air, and blown about space without even a \"by your leave\"--as\nare man's to the leucocytes of the blood.\n\nIf there is no such thing as Space objectively existing outside our\ngroping human selves; and if there is no such thing as Time, also\nobjectively existing independent of our remembering and anticipating\nhuman selves; if also Death is but Life undergoing Change (for Life is\nnot a thing extraneous to the cosmos, and there is nothing in the cosmos\nthat can ever go out of it); if even Change itself is but a process so\nnamed because of the necessities of our temporal and spatial conditions;\nand what we call \"multiplicity\" or \"manifoldness\" merely a word coined\nby our incompetence to perceive the interdependence of all that is\n... why, then, surely, one with and interpenetrating our own little\nspace-bound, time-fettered lives, there must be an Absolute Life,\nindiscerptible because coherent; immutable, because unspatial;\ninexorable, because timeless; not to be gainsaid, because all-embracing;\nwhose behests the human spirit, because identical with and contained in\nit, must and cannot but obey.\n\n\n\u00a7 26\n\nHowever, that there is a flaw in my Philosophy and a flaw in my Creed, I\ndo not conceal from myself.--If, underlying and upholding all phenomenal\nmultiplicity, there is a noumenal unity, how it comes about that there\nis evil and suffering and injustice and pain I do not know. Nor do I\nknow how, if that Unity (including man) is governed by infrangible law,\nit comes about that we obtain notions of Responsibility and Will; how we\nfeel that we ought to act thus and not otherwise, and have the power to\nchoose the good from the evil.\n\nYet I comfort myself thus:--Human reason, after all, is inadequate\nfor the explanation of anything superhuman. But there may be in man a\nfaculty of imagination or feeling or emotion or faith--call it what you\nlike--that _insists_ upon our trying to act thus and not otherwise; upon\nour helping on the good and eradicating the bad; and that leaves the\nproblem of the Origin of Evil and the problem of the Freedom of the Will\nto another sphere and another stage in the upward emergence of mind.\n\n\n\u00a7 27\n\nOf the Origin of Evil I have no solution whatsoever. Why it is that not\na single human being can go through his short threescore years and ten\nwithout pain, anguish, disappointment, the heartache, and the thousand\nnatural shocks that flesh is heir to; why\n\n  \"But to think is to be full of sorrow\n    And leaden-eyed despairs\";\n\nwhy this solid earth is drenched with blood, and on every square inch of\nits surface are creatures slaughtering and stuffing creatures into their\nmaws; why torture and agony--mental and physical--should be rampant;\nwhy innocent little babies should suffer lingering deaths--racked with\npain--weak--gasping ... upon this heart-rending enigma I dare not dwell.\nBut I cannot accept the incredible solution that an Almighty Being\ncreated this cosmos out of nothing thus, and, having created it thus,\nlooks on at this his appalling creation unmoved.\n\n\n\u00a7 28\n\nOn the Freedom of the Will may I quote myself? Matthew Arnold has given\nme precedent.[18]\n\n  \"There are just two misleading terms in that little phrase, the\n  Freedom of the Will, and these are just the words 'freedom' and\n  'will.' There is no such thing in the bodily frame as a separate\n  entity or faculty called a 'will' walking about like a pilot on deck\n  and directing the course; and, if there were, such pilot would not\n  be 'free' from the influences of wind and tide. The bodily frame is\n  like a ship, with its captain and crew. The captain has to go by the\n  chart (that is, by his knowledge and experience of life), and\n  the crew have to trim the sails (that is, adapt actions to\n  circumstances). The captain (that is, the higher coordinating\n  centres) is not 'free,' for he is dependent on his crew (to which\n  we may compare the nerves and the ganglia)--which, in turn, are\n  dependent upon weather (that is, our surroundings). The captain may\n  'will' as much as he likes, but if his crew are mutinous, or the\n  winds contrary, he will not make port. 'Will power' at bottom\n  merely means an intelligent captain and an obedient crew; and\n  'putting-forth' or 'exercising' will power merely means that captain\n  and crew must work in harmony. So that, if attention, if virtue, if\n  conduct and character depend upon will power (as of course they do),\n  Aristotle seems to be perfectly right in saying that the secret of\n  these is \u1f11\u03be\u03b9\u03c2, or habit or practice: only a trained crew\n  can work the ship.\"[19]\n\n\n\u00a7 29\n\nOne thing only is certain--and whether the certainty derives from a\nrational or an emotional, a social or a cosmic, an evolutionary or an\nintuitive, a political or an ecclesiastical source, I do not stay to\nask--one thing only is certain: _The evil that there is, it is our\nbounden duty to alleviate_; \"le monde subsiste pour exercer mis\u00e9ricorde\net jugement\"[20]; and I care not a fig that I have no metaphysical,\nphilosophical, ethical, or religious basis of argument to adduce for\nthis untransferable onus of Duty.\n\nAnd I take comfort, also, in the thought that, after all, Reason has had\nvery little to do with the moral progress of mankind. \"C'est le c\u0153ur\nqui sent Dieu, et non raison.\"[21] Answer me this one question: Which\nhave exercised the greater influence for good: reasoned-out systems of\nphilosophy; or religious evangels whose tenets no one could prove? How\nmany pious followers has Spinoza or Leibnitz or Nietzsche? And how many\nBuddha or Confucius or Mohammed or--with all reverence be added his\nname--Jesus of Nazareth?\n\nBut the critic will say: If the religious tenet is incapable of\nproof, by what criterion can we judge of the authenticity of any\nevangel?--Well, if it teaches to alleviate suffering and to do the\nRight, that is criterion enough for me.\n\nReturn we to the humble topic of walking.\n\n\n\n\nXVII\n\nThe Instinct for Walking\n\n\n\u00a7 30\n\nFor many reasons, walking seems to be an ingrained instinct of mankind.\nI cling to the perhaps fanciful theory that no primitive instinct of\nman is altogether lost. It is modified, amplified, refined; that is all.\nWith all our culture, we are barbarians still. Man is a clothed savage.\nAnd now and again he delights in doffing the clothing and returning\nheartily to savagery. How delightful the feel of the briny breeze and\nthe boisterous wave on the bare pelt! Mr Edward Carpenter rails at the\n(I think) eleven layers of clothing that intervene between our skins and\nthe airs of heaven. Walt Whitman revelled nude in his sun bath. What a\ntreat too, sometimes, to get away from the multi-coursed dinner and to\nbite downright audibly into simple food in the fresh air, and to lap\nwater noisily from the brook! Well, walking, perhaps, is the primal\ninstinct, ancient as Eden, where the Lord God walked in the garden in\nthe cool of the day. And, if my theory is correct, walking will persist\ntill in recovered Paradise man walks with his Maker again. No mechanical\ncontrivance for locomotion will extirpate the tribe of tramps, of those\nwho walk from love of walking.\n\n\n\n\nXVIII\n\nA Woeful Walk\n\n\n\u00a7 31\n\nBut not all walks are occasions of unmitigated pleasure. By no means. A\ncertain trudge, which particularly lives in my memory, was one of almost\nunmitigated pain.--No; I will not say that, for wert not thou, L----,\ncheeriest of companions, with me? What a walk that was! It rained the\nlong day through, and as we strode westward, a cold, wet wind from\nthe east blew hard. The roads were impassable for mud; the trees were\nleafless; the fields bare. Inns there were none, and at the thirteenth\nmile I broke a nice big flask of port wine or e'er a blessed sip of\nthe liquid (I mean a sip of the blessed liquid) had passed our lips. A\nwoeful walk was that, and woeful pedestrians were we.--Yet, somehow, it\nis with the extremest pleasure that now I recall that trudge. To beguile\nthe time, and to try to forget the rain, we improvised a play, and\nshouted dialogues as we strode. We covered forty miles at a stretch; and\nwhether it was the play, or the fresh air, or the exercise, or L----'s\nindomitable Mark Tapleyism, we limped (no, we lamely ran the last few\nyards) into our destination, in spirits, at least, buoyant, jubilant,\nand secure.--How mad and bad and sad it was! And oh, how we were stiff!\n\n\n\n\nXIX\n\nAutumn in Canada Again\n\n\n\u00a7 32\n\nYet another country walk taken in England's North American dominions\nlives most pleasantly in my memory.\n\nTwo of the clock one autumn afternoon found me free. I had hoped to have\nlost no time in beginning to put enormous stretches of space between me\nand my desk. Not that this desk had not its pleasures, and many of them;\nbut one craves a change of mental atmosphere, however salubrious\nthat usually respired. The temptation, however, of calmly and in\nself-righteously indolent manner enjoying the sweets of freedom was too\nstrong, so I lounged a whole afternoon, and not till daybreak on the\nfollowing morning was I booted, knapsacked, and afoot.\n\nThe task of putting space between me and my desk was not one as easy as\nI had anticipated. It was hours before the dust of the city was shaken\noff, and the mud of the country allowed to take its place; the tedium\nof the streets at that unfrequented hour of the day made them seem\ninterminable. For was I not craving and in search of country sights\nand sounds? And yet for miles not one met the eye or ear. Yes, I am\nforgetting: there was one which made up for much monotony. On a humble\ncottage wall facing the south, far out in the suburbs, was a wealth of\nflowering convolvulus such as I had rarely or only in India seen before.\nThe sight was entrancing. The various-hued blossoms seemed blatantly to\ntrumpet forth their beauty to the sun, to borrow the terms of sound and\nto apply them to colour. And what colour was there! That deep, soft,\nvelvet purple, powdered with snowy pollen--what a profound, what an\nacute sense it produced of something altogether beyond the limitations\nof time and space, of something mysterious, beneficent, divine. Never\nbefore did I see so deep a meaning in those words: \"Consider the lilies\nof the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and\nyet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed\nlike one of these.\" How paltry, how tainted, seemed all human greatness\nbeside those simple petals; how marred, how deformed! And why? Why\nshould Nature alone be able to smile openly before her Maker's eyes, and\nman be ever hiding himself from the presence of the Lord God? Ah! there\nis more than one interpretation of the text, \"All have sinned, and come\nshort of the glory of God.\" ... Those brilliant blossoms aroused many\na thought. How earnestly have all poets of Nature striven to find\nexpression for the emotions that natural beauty evokes! And yet none has\ncompletely succeeded, and none will succeed till the hidden links are\ndiscovered between the beautiful thing, the mind that perceives it, and\nthe Hand that fashions it. How is it that a sunset, a landscape, a green\nfield even, or a growing fern, will sometimes in a moment of time\ncause to blaze up in a man a thrill, a joy, so intense that under\nits influence one feels dazed and dumb? A great power is, as it were,\nsuddenly let loose; beauty incarnated momentarily reveals its divine\npresence, and one feels an all but overwhelming impulse to yield oneself\nto it and be rapt away whithersoever it leads. But--whither it leads we\ncannot go.\n\nOf all poets who have given utterance to this deep and mystical emotion,\nWordsworth perhaps has best succeeded. What can rival the following\nlines?--which will bear constant quotation:--\n\n            \"For I have learned\n  To look on Nature, not as in the hour\n  Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes\n  The still, sad music of humanity,\n  Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power\n  To chasten and subdue. And I have felt\n  A presence that disturbs me with the joy\n  Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime\n  Of something far more deeply interfused,\n  Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,\n  And the round ocean, and the living air,\n  And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:\n  A motion and a spirit, that impels\n  All thinking things, all objects of all thought,\n  And rolls through all things.\"\n\nIf only Wordsworth had written oftener in that strain of higher mood! To\nme this passage, even with just such narrow meaning as one not worthy to\ncall himself a Wordsworthian can read into it, has been invaluable. In\nthe mass of that hidden, cloudy, inner signification with which (I think\nit is Mr Ruskin who insists that) all poetry should be instinct, these\nlines are marvellous. They more nearly reach the goal of that \"struggle\nto conceive the inconceivable, to utter the unutterable, that longing\nafter the Infinite, that love of God,\" which Professor Max M\u00fcller\ndescribes as the basis of all religions, than all the creeds such\nreligions have constructed.\n\nWordsworth saw, as perhaps no one before him ever quite so clearly\nsaw, the Spiritual Unity underlying those two things:--the one called\nExternal Nature; the other, this spark of life called the Human\nSoul--the product of, and burning in, that External Nature, as a flame\nfeeds upon the air which it illumines.--But to return to my walk.\n\n\n\u00a7 33\n\nCuriously enough, I had hardly reached the confines of the town which\nI was leaving before I fell in with a youth apparently possessed of the\nsame motive as myself--namely, to enjoy to the full the delights of the\ncountry after a year's inclusion in a thronged city; and, in order the\nbetter to do so, to use as means of locomotion his own two legs, and\na stout stick. I say \"apparently,\" for very short converse with him\nrevealed the fact that he was utterly blind to the charms of Nature. He\nwas nice-mannered and polite to a degree; but as a companion to aid in\ndiscovering rural beauty he was simply worse than none at all. His two\nnegative or denominatorial eyes and ears completely cancelled, made\nuseless, and altogether put out of existence my two positive or\nnumeratorial senses. I was prepared to take infinite delight in the\nmost trivial and insignificant of Nature's works, to extol her most\ncommonplace manifestations, to find the longest sermons in the tiniest\npebbles; but to do this by the side of the most antipathetic of, to all\nintents and purposes, blind and deaf of fellow-pedestrians--it was out\nof the question. I nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice when\nI say that that utterance of his most pregnant with observation of the\npassing scene was contained in the words, \"That's a potato-patch!\" The\nearly morning sun fought its way between dense grey clouds, and fell in\ncheering light on the tops of the trees, and in silver showers on the\ngleaming lake below; the rich green meadows caught the rays, the very\nair seemed laden with treasures of sunlight; young and graceful maples,\nin crimson autumn tints, like M\u00e6nads at vintage-time, flung flaming\ntorches towards the sky, unmindful of the morn; the sumach and the\ngorgeous virginia-creeper were ablaze with beauty; yet of all this\nhe saw nothing; a brown potato-patch by the highway rim a brown\npotato-patch was to him, and it was nothing more. Yes, by the by, it was\nsomething more: it was an appreciable piece of property, a prospective\ntown lot at so much per foot frontage, one-third cash down and the\nbalance in half-yearly instalments to suit the purchaser, all local\nimprovements paid by.... At least some such jargon caught my inattentive\near. Real estate is, I gladly grant, a topic of (often too) absorbing\ninterest; but one does not exactly wish to be confronted with intricate\nmonetary calculations, connected with barter and commerce, when engaged\nin the not very kindred and decidedly delicate task of wooing\nNature. Barter and commerce when Wordsworth is ringing in one's ears,\nincorporated companies and syndicates when bird and bush ask your\nattention--these things, in the language of the pharmacop\u0153ia, are\nincompatibles.\n\n\n\u00a7 34\n\nI had thus two causes of complaint against my companion. So I left him:\nI took a bypath; he kept to the highway. Nor was I sorry. It is pleasant\nnow and again for short periods to get away from one's fellow-men.\nFamiliarity breeds contempt, it is said; perhaps it is as true of\naggregations of men as of individuals. At all events, one comes back\nfrom a temporary seclusion with a sweeter temper, a more kindly and\ntolerant regard for those about one. Nor was I sorry. The main road\ncontained too many curious starers. To walk for pleasure was a thing\nwholly outside the limits of their comprehension. \"'Tisn't 'cause\n'tis cheaper?\" asked one irrepressible inquirer (always this matter of\nmoney!); and he was still more puzzled at the explanation that hotel\nbills largely exceeded railway fare....\n\n\n\u00a7 35\n\nYet one seeks entertainment when travelling long alone. The mind becomes\noverfull, it gathers from every sight and sound and scent, and craves\nanother mind as depositary for the surplus, as sharer of the spoils. In\ntime also it wearies of constant observation, and would give much for a\ncompanion. In lieu of a concrete one, I found myself quite unconsciously\nimitating Macaulay, and substituting an abstract one by quoting Milton;\nand never did his ponderous yet marvellously poised lines sound to me\nso grand as when rolled _ore rotundo_ to the accompaniment of Ontario's\nrolling wave. M. Henri Cochin, Matthew Arnold tells us, speaks of \"the\nmajestic English iambic.\" It is to Milton surely that the English iambic\nowes the praise of majesty. To me, I confess, the exceeding beauty of\nmuch of Milton's verse is a snare--as is also much of Mr Ruskin's prose:\nthe ear is so captivated by the sound that the mind strays from the\nsense.\n\n\n\u00a7 36\n\nToronto was my starting point, and my course lay eastwards on the\nnorthern shore of great Lake Ontario by what is always known as the\nKingston Road, one of the oldest in the country, the precursor of the\nGrand Trunk Railway, the track of which, indeed, it closely follows.\nThe country through which it runs varies but little in scenery, being a\ngreat undulating stretch of fertile land thickly settled with farms\nand orchards, and as thickly wooded with pine, maple, larch, elm, fir,\nbeech, hickory, and other trees common in Canada. Here and there a small\nriver runs to the lake, and here and there the shore rises into cliffs\nof eighty or a hundred feet. Cows and sheep, and pigs and poultry, meet\none all along the road, showing us the occupations of the inhabitants;\nas do also the fields of barley and wheat, and the great orchards gay\nwith the unrivalled Canadian apple, which gleams at us from the boughs\nwith every hue and size. The Kingston Road is a king's highway with a\nvengeance; hard, well-travelled, and dotted, I should say, along its\nwhole length, with comfortable, often elaborate, habitations standing in\nthe midst of fields and trees. At every ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty\nmiles these habitations cluster into villages or towns; sometimes\nwhere road and railway intersect, when there spring up factories and\nwarehouses; sometimes down by the shore, when there rise elevators\nand wharves. I cannot pretend to say that these are interesting. They\nconsist for the most part each of one straggling main street, itself\na part of the Kingston Road, and differentiated from it only by the\nunkempt habitations that line its length, and by the inevitable wooden\npavements, broad in the central portions, but narrowing to a single\nplank in the outskirts--where, no doubt, it was in reality, if not\nin name, the \"Lovers' Walk.\" They were not quaint, no ancient and few\nhistorical traditions clung to them, neither did they appear to me to\npossess any distinguishing characteristics.\n\n\n\u00a7 37\n\nI have spoken of a quiet country town. A country town of a Sunday\nafternoon in Canada is the quietest of existing things. Everything in\nit seems lifeless. Not a sound is heard from any side. One's own\ncough startles one in the very streets. Two cows slowly wend their\nway homewards; an over-ripe apple falls heavily in an unkempt front\ngarden--even these signs of semi-life are a relief. Rows of youths,\nall dressed in sombre black, and all smoking cigars fearfully if not\nwonderfully made, lean against the walls of the inn at the corner, or\nstand in silent knots about the horse-gnawed \"hitching-post.\" The jaded\nafternoon sunlight falls slantingly and weariedly on untidy plots in\nwhich weeds strive for mastery successfully with flowers, on empty\nverandahs with blistered paint, on the dusty grass encroaching ever on\nthe street. I enter the inn. It is chilly, and in the common room which\nserves many purposes a battered stove lacking two-thirds of its mica\nradiates a dry and suffocating heat. On deal chairs, mostly tipped up,\nsit the youths but just now lounging without. They say nothing; only\nthey sit and smoke, and spit--how they spit! They themselves probably\nare all unconscious of the incessant salivary sharp-shooting; but I--I\nsit in terror, like a nervous woman dreading the pistol shots on the\nstage. Soon church bells begin to clang. None heeds them, nor are they\nover-inviting; one is cracked, they are not in harmony, and they seem to\nbe ringing a race in which the hindmost is to win. In the space of about\nan hour, however, the youths begin to move, as if with the feeling that\nat last will come a small relief from the awful _ennui_ which they cannot\nexpress. Church is coming out. They go out and draw up before the doors.\nA heavy yellow light streams across the street, and with it issues an\nodour, perhaps, of sanctity, but much disguised by kerosene. Greetings\nfollow between the out-coming damsels and the waiting youths, and\ncurious raucous laughs intended to be tender are heard disappearing into\ndarkened ways. Soon all is again hushed, and but for here and there the\nslow and lugubrious sounds of hymn tunes played on old and middle-aged\norgans, the little town might be a buried city of the East.\n\n\n\u00a7 38\n\nYet no doubt it had its tragedies, this seemingly peaceful and\nsequestered spot: indeed signs of most pathetic tragedies came under my\nown eyes, few as were the hours which I spent in it. Hanging about the\nunpretentious hostelry about which those uncouth youths gathered, were\ntwo specimens of what was once humanity that made the heart ache to look\non. One was a case, I think, hopeless: a gaunt and dirty figure, his\nlast drink still dripping from his beard, clothed in the vilest of\nshirts, and in things that were once trousers, which last hung loose\nover large and faded carpet slippers, he moved disgust as well as pity.\nThe other was of a different class. Drink had been his bane also,\nbut there was not in his face that absence of all shame, that despair\nmerging into careless defiance, which stamped his fellow-sufferer's case\nas beyond the cure of man. They called him \"Doc,\" and there were still\nevidences of birth and education upon his bloated features. What had\ndriven him thus far? I could not help but conjecture. Was there a\nwoman at the bottom of it? If so, where and what was she now? Somebody\nelse's.... But this was idle guesswork. There was yet another case,\na woman herself this time, still more tragic. Her motto, stamped upon\nevery feature, expressed in every gesture, was \"The heart knoweth its\nown bitterness.\" A tall, dark, and once handsome spinster, a _femme de\ntrente ans_, she waited upon us at table; but with such an air of utter\nindifference, with such complete abstraction from things material and\nephemeral, that she awed the very persons to whose wants she ministered.\nHer face wore a settled and unaltering expression of something missed\nyet never to that day for one moment forgotten. A machine could not\nhave carried plates and moved dishes with more unfailing stolidity. Her\nthoughts were remotely away in the past, and it seemed as if nothing,\nnothing upon all this earth, could fetch them back. Cato's statue would\nhave smiled as soon as she. It was pathetic in the extreme. One longed\nto give her if but one moment's peace of mind. Did she _never_ forget?\nWhat was it she brooded on? How long would the feminine heart and\nbrain stand that strain? Tragedies! Yes, there were tragedies there, as\neverywhere else.\n\n\n\u00a7 39\n\nSuch is Sunday in a country town. But in truth, after the rush and hurry\nof city life, in the country it seems always Sunday. There is a leisure,\na calm, a restfulness, and, away by the fields, a quiet sanctity\nwhich pervades its every part and unconsciously influences its every\ninhabitant. By degrees, too, on the traveller through the country this\ncalming influence comes. The still green meadows, the gently swaying\nboughs, the sunshine sleeping pillowed on the clouds--all tend to\nmeditative and restful peace, and one reaps the harvest of a quiet eye.\nAnd if one yields to this beneficent mood there is much, very much, to\nbe gained. Alone with Nature, all around the spacious earth, above the\nimmeasurable heavens, alone in a vast expanse, one finds oneself, in\nAmiel's fine phrase, _t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate_ with the Infinite. At such times\nthe great problem of Life flares upon us like a flash of lightning, so\nsudden, so intense, so vivid is its irruption on the mental vision. Time\nand space, like the darkness of night, are annihilated, earthly bounds\nare burst, and there is revealed a realm of Being beyond the confines\nof the relative, the limited, the finite. We recognise the infinity of\nunity, the brotherhood of all things. Terms of proportion and comparison\nlose their significance: there is no great or little, important or\ntrivial, for the minutest object is an essential part of the All,\nwithout which this All would cease to be.\n\n\n\u00a7 40\n\nCurious thoughts, or \"half-embodyings of thoughts\" as Coleridge called\nthem, that lonely walk aroused. What _was_ this All? And what portion of\nthis All was I--I, this tiny biped crawling ant-like between earth and\nsky? I looked over the flat earth, and remembered that it was not flat\nbut round, and but one of myriads like itself, and among them, perhaps,\nas paltry as, upon it, I. I looked up at the sky, filled with the\nradiance of the sun, and again remembered that, sown through space like\nseed, were countless other suns, and ours perhaps the least in all that\nhost. And when night came, and the stars shone, I remembered that even\nthen I saw only what came in at the pin-prick of the eye, and that to\nthe mighty All that myriad-studded sky was perhaps as trivial as to it\nwas earth or sun. Yet, trivial as we were, we were not naught--not quite\nnothing. That was the wonder of it. So far from naught, indeed, that\nto me, this tiny biped crawling, himself was very important; his\nlittle pains, his aches, even these his questionings were very real. If\nincommensurable suns swung high overhead, he at least was the centre of\nhis own little world, and not the most astounding facts of science could\nalter or remove that egocentric view.--And, if not nothing, if something\nin all that vast inane, then what? How came it that, prompted by what\nentered at that pin-prick eye, something within him could fling itself,\nfling itself faster than light, far beyond the outermost boundary of\nvision, and put to the immensity of Being questions which, could Being\nhear, would surely put it to the blush? Those pains, those aches, were\nthey nothing to the All? To the tiny mighty atom they were much.--But\nthe world spun round, and the sun set, and darkness was upon the face of\nthe deep.\n\n\n\u00a7 41\n\nIt is well now and again, I think, to withdraw into the holy of holies\nof one's own self, \"where dwells the Nameless,\"[22] in its shapeless and\nvague impenetrability, \"as a cloud.\" The world is too much with us. The\nmyriad trivial details of everyday life hide from us that of which they\nought in reality perpetually to remind us. For, after all, what is all\naction, even as manifested in these trivial details, but a struggle to\novercome space and time, the limitations of the finite; and what, again,\nis all thought but a struggle to conceive the infinite?\n\n\n\u00a7 42\n\nYet another thought this spacious prospect gave me. The endless green\nfields and the endless blue lake seemed a symbol of the unrealisability\nof the ideal. With both I was enamoured, and with the beauty of both I\ncraved in some dim and unknown way to take my fill of delight: both were\nat my feet, but both stretched away and away until they met the eternal\nand unapproachable heavens at the horizon. Yes, the fields were green,\nbut not the spot on which I stood; the water was blue, but not in the\ncup with which I tried to assuage my thirst.--But there is a limit to\nontological and psychological speculations of sombre hue.\n\n\n\n\nXX\n\nThe Walking Tour\n\n\n\u00a7 43\n\nUp to the present we have considered the country walk only. The walking\ntrip or tour is a more serious affair. If it requires as vacuous a frame\nof mind, it necessitates a more deliberate preparation. Much depends\nupon the country and the locality chosen. If inviting hostelries abound,\none needs to weight oneself with little; if they are infrequent, or\nnonexistent, food and clothing become matters of moment. This may sound\na truism; but it is a truism that many a tripper wishes he had laid more\nearnestly to heart when, miles from house and home, he finds himself\nwet, hungry, and fatigued. It is better to carry a few extra pounds far\nthan to run short soon; for a worn-out body means a useless mind, and\nhunger and cold, with their attendant depression of spirits, not only\nrob the tour of its pleasure, but rob the tourist of his zest.\nStart, therefore, comfortable, and comfortably provided. This is not\nSybaritism; it is common-sense.\n\nFor an extended trip, send on some luggage ahead, if you can; and some\nmoney (I speak of civilised regions). It is impossible, if you are\nalone--unless, like Stevenson, you hire a donkey--to transport on your\nown back food and clothing to keep you going for more than a few days\nat a stretch--unless you shoot, or fish, or trap--which is sport or\nprospecting, not walking.\n\nYour first care should be for your feet--another truism not seldom\nneglected. See that your boots fit--_fit_, remembering that the feet\nswell (I speak to tenderfoots).\n\nIf you are unaccustomed to walking, a good plan is to start with an\nextra pair of leather soles inside your boots. These can be taken out\nwhen the feet swell.\n\nIf you prefer shoes to boots, wear gaiters or putties--to keep out the\nwet in winter, to keep out the dust in summer. The only occasion upon\nwhich I suffered from blisters was on a sixty-mile walk in tennis shoes\non a dusty road in August. Take two or three changes of socks. If you\nwalk in a populous region, carry a pair of light shoes. These will come\nin handy if you run across a friend who asks you to dinner. Carry also\na collar or two; not only hosts and hostesses, but landlords and\nlandladies look askance at too trampish an appearance. I once felt\nrather uncomfortable sitting at the head of a table d'h\u00f4te at the\nexcellent H\u00f4tel Kaltenbach on the American side at Niagara (the\nlandlord knew me well), for I was in rough flannels and tweeds, and\nmy fellow-guests were dressed like (and some of them probably were)\nmillionaires and millionairesses. _Verbum sapientibus satis._--Do not\nrefuse an invitation to dinner. Follow Napoleon's advice and let\nthe country you pass through support you, falling back upon your own\nfood-supply when necessary. Help yourself to as much fruit as you can,\nor as the owners thereof and their dogs permit. A too concentrated diet\nis unwholesome. Expatiate upon this to the owners of orchards, and--back\nyour theories with a dole.\n\n\n\u00a7 44\n\nBut nothing equals the evening meal cooked over your own fire--if you\nare not too tired to cook it. Of the cookery I shall speak later;\nbut the fire is as invigorating as the food. Would you taste the\nconsummation of human masculine contentment, stretch your tired legs\nbefore your own fire after a long, long walk followed by a full meal:\nyour chamber, the forest prim\u00e6val, green, indistinct in the twilight;\nyour couch, the scented earth; your canopy, the heavens, curtained with\nclouds; in your nostrils the incense of burning wood; in your heart the\npeace which the world giveth not.--The elaborately ornamented modern\nhearth, with its carved oak or its sculptured marble, is the direct\nlineal descendant of the nomad fire--the earliest institution of man,\nthe first promoter of civilisation, the binder-together of troglodytic\nfamilies into tribes. \"Hearth and Home\" is an ancient, a very ancient,\nsentiment. It dates back, I take it, to the Glacial Epoch--far enough,\nin all conscience.--In my mind's eye I see the shivering Cave-man,\nappalled at the encroaching ice, the deepening cold. He gathers wood,\nhuddles him in caves, the drops from his furry, ill-smelling\nclothing (there was no tanning then) sputtering in the flames. For\nself-protection, and from lack of fuel, family makes alliance with\nfamily, and the first-formed human community squats silent about\nthe first-formed human hearth. What friendships must have there been\ncemented, what tales told; what a strange first unburthening of human\nheart to human heart! What ecstatic love-making, too, must have been\nenacted in the darksome corners of the sooty cave, the while the grey\ngorged hunters snored, and toothless beldames gesticulated dumb-crambo\nscandal by the smouldering brands!--No wonder pr\u00e6historic associations\ncluster even now about what is too often represented by a flamboyant\nmantelpiece with immaculate tiles and polished brasses. _Pro Aris et\nFocis!_ The smoking altar is the consecrated symbol of the lowly hearth.\n\n\n\n\nXXI\n\nThe Tramp's Dietary\n\n\n\u00a7 45\n\nAs to food--bacon, flour, and beans are the stand-by. The curious in\nthe matter of concentrated and portable foods will do well to consult\nNansen's elaborate and carefully calculated lists of these.[23] Carry\nsome chocolate: it staves off hunger and is nourishing. Milk, if you\ncan get it, has wonderful staying powers, and by most people--especially\nunder stress of prolonged exertion--is easily digested. Wear wool next\nthe skin, and wear it loose. Let everything be loose. And see that\nyour tailor puts pockets--deep and wide ones--in every conceivable and\ninconceivable part of your costume. As to books, sketching or writing\nmaterials, or a camera--every tramp has his hobby: indulge yours to\nthe full; what are you walking for if not to enjoy life? Lastly, do not\nforget that, if you are not far from the haunts of men, you will over\nand over again be indebted to your fellow-men for little kindnesses and\ncivilities. A pocketful of small change will make many a rough place\nsmooth. I might mention also _sotto voce_ that so will a flask of good\nwhisky. To these you may add a couple of bandages, some chlorodyne, a\nfew ounces of cognac, a small styptic, a needle and some thread, a small\nrazor, and a cake of soap. Also, if you wear an eye-glass or glasses,\nby no means forget to carry some extra ones. As for the rest, a pipe,\na very big pouch of tobacco (many will dip into it), a stout stick, and\nabundance of matches ought to make you independent of everything and\neverybody for days together.\n\n\n\u00a7 46\n\nA word, too, on beverages, which are as important as is food.--Eschew\nalcohol in every shape or form, unless you are dog-tired at the end of a\nlong day and must make a few miles ere nightfall. Alcoholic stimulation\nspells ruination to muscular exertion the moment the stimulus has passed\noff. It was said that on the march to the relief of Ladysmith in the\nSouth African War the drinkers could be told as plainly as if they had\nbeen labelled.\n\nThe best example I know of the wise and efficacious use of alcohol is in\nEdith Elmer Wood's \"An Oberland Chalet.\" The author, her sister-in-law,\nand her brother, with a guide, were climbing the Strahlegg Pass.\n\n                                  \"All the way up that eight hundred\n  feet of rock wall, there was never a ledge large enough to rest on\n  with the entire two feet at once!... The numbness of my hands was so\n  great that my control over them was most uncertain. My life and\n  that of my companions depended on the grip I should keep with those\n  cramped, aching fingers, but though I concentrated my will power on\n  them I felt no certainty that the next minute they would not become\n  rigid and refuse to obey me.... After the first few minutes, I never\n  looked downward. I was not inclined to dizziness, but the drop was\n  too appalling.... Once we got all four on a little ledge not as\n  wide as the length of our feet, but solid enough to stand on\n  without balancing. We paused there to take breath, and somebody said\n  'Cognac.' Now our experience in the Alpine hut the night before had\n  nearly made teetotalers of us. But at this moment we decided that\n  stimulants might have a legitimate use. Frater produced his silver\n  pocket flask and handed it round. We took a swallow in turn, and it\n  was like liquid life running down our throats. I never experienced\n  anything so magical.... I was at the very last point of endurance.\n  I had lost faith in ever reaching the summit of the cliff. I had no\n  more physical force with which to lift my sagging weight upward. I\n  had lost the will power that lashes on an exhausted body. My numb\n  hands were stiffening. My lungs were choked and labouring. I\n  could neither go on nor go back. Then those two teaspoonfuls, or\n  thereabouts, of fiery cognac that burned down my throat sufficed\n  to give me back my grip on myself, physical and mental. I moved my\n  cramped fingers and they answered. I took a deep long breath and\n  felt strengthened. A hope, almost a confidence, crept into\n  my heart that we might reach the top alive.\"[24]\n\n\n\u00a7 47\n\nThe best all-round stimulant is tea. I say it advisedly, knowing full\nwell that to Dr Alexander Haig and the anti-uric-acid dietists tea\nis Anathema Maranatha. But every mining prospector, every railroad\nconstructor, every lumberman, every out-in-the-wilds worker throughout\nAustralia and America drinks tea--proof, surely, that it is efficacious,\neven if it be in a sense deleterious. In huge quantities, and constantly\ntaken, I dare say it is deleterious. But personally I know of no\npick-me-up preferable to tea, when, cold, hungry, and tired at the end\nof a long day's tramp, you find yourself \"all in\" and unable to eat.\n\nI recall an instance of the extraordinary efficacy of tea--quite weak,\nbut hot. It was at the end of a forty-mile walk through a monotonous\ncountry in cold, wind, and rain. We arrived tired out; and although we\nknew we were hungry (for we had had precious little to eat all day),\nthe thought of food was repulsive, though the restaurant we had reached\ndisplayed a variety of viands. I ordered hot tea in the biggest teapot\nprocurable. It was brought. We sipped I forget how many cups each. Then\nwe supped indeed; and after supper one of the party proposed to walk the\nforty miles back!\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nPerhaps Dr Haig will say that plain hot water would have done just as\nwell. Humph! Give me weak, but good, tea.\n\nHot milk, of course, is an incomparable pick-me-up. But who, on a\ntrudge, can always, by demanding it, obtain hot milk? If you can get it,\nmilk, in any shape or form, is unrivalled. More than once it has raised\nme from the depths of low spirits, produced by hunger and thirst and\nfatigue, to the most contented of moods.--I was walking once on a hot\nsummer's day along a barren and dusty road where was no habitation nor\nsigns of men. My knapsack was empty, so was my water-bottle. Not a brook\nor a stream could I find. It was late in the day. I was heart-sick and\nweary. But the miracle happened. Did I believe my eyes, or was that a\nman there milking cows over yonder in that field? I made straight for\nhim, and, after passing the time of day and being generally polite (the\nwhile my tongue clave to my palate), I presently asked if I might have\nsome of his priceless liquid--I called it simply \"milk.\" Genially he\npointed to a pail--_a pail_, and bade me help myself. I put that vessel\nto my lips, and I rather think that the vertical arc described by any\ngiven point on the periphery of the bottom of that utensil during the\nprocess of deglutition was not a small one! When I put that pail down\n(and a twenty-five-cent piece beside it) I was a new man, and laughed at\nmiles and melancholy.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nVery often, when walking, especially in hot weather, one finds oneself\ntired when only a few miles have been covered. It is not real fatigue;\nit is want of fluid. The skin exudes moisture; the blood thickens; the\nserums and synovial fluids run short; waste matter is not excreted; the\nmuscles and tendons require lubrication. A copious draught of water will\nput all to rights. Not everyone knows this. I myself owe the hint to a\nfriend.[25]\n\n\n\u00a7 48\n\nEach walker must, however, discover for himself what is the food best\nsuited to his needs--remembering always that it is quite possible to\nspoil a whole day by even trivial dietetic mistakes. If you walk to see\nand to enjoy, unless you possess that youth which can digest anything,\nand that vitality which can attack anything, take heed as to what you\neat and what you attempt.--Most unfortunate is the remembrance of an\notherwise lovely walk I took one day over one of the most lovely of\nthe passes of the Jura. The day was superb; the road by the soft green\npastures was superb; and superb was the climb through the tangled\nbrushwood of the slopes. Filmy clouds formed themselves to leeward of\nthe peaks and hid the tops of the pines; above, I gazed into a deep blue\nsky; beneath, I gazed into a deep green vale; and a tumbling brook sent\nits music up the heights. But--I had started foodless, and had stuffed\ninto my pockets only a stodgy roll and a box of sardines. By noon I was\nhungry. I finished the roll _and_ the sardines. With deplorable result.\nThe pancreas rebelled, the senses were dulled, and all the beauties of\nthe Jura were lost upon _heu me miserum_!--Fellow-tramp, take thought\nfor your provender--and \"provender\" good old Dr Johnson defines as \"dry\nfood for brutes.\"--_That_ is the diet to walk on.\n\n\n\u00a7 49\n\nBut, after all, one's impedimenta must be chosen according to one's\ntastes. Mr Hilaire Belloc equipped himself for his seven-hundred-mile\nwalk from Toul to Rome with \"a large piece of bread, half-a-pound of\nsmoked ham, a sketch-book, two Nationalist papers, and a quart of the\nwine of Brul\u00e9\"[26] (but one halfpennyworth of bread to this intolerable\ndeal of sack!); though farther on he tells us he also carried \"a needle,\nsome thread, and a flute.\"[27] But then Mr Belloc's path lay through\nthickly-peopled districts; he rarely slept in the open; travelled\nin summer-time; and not once, I think, lighted a fire: and certes he\nreached Rome in sorry plight.\n\n\n\n\nXXII\n\nPractical Details\n\n\n\u00a7 50\n\nAnd now for some hints on the practical details of walking tours of more\narduous character and more extended length.[28]--Suit the weight of your\nknapsack or pack to your strength, leaving a large margin for comfort.\nIf you travel in regions uninhabited by man, and the climate is\nrigorous, a shelter at night is all-important. Therefore carry a light\nblanket: a warm head and face induce sleep; so does a change to dry\nunderclothing at the end of the day. For really hard trips, when you\nwalk all day and walk far, you will need, to replace used-up muscular\ntissue, each day:\n\n  3/4 lb. of flour;\n  3/4 lb. of bacon;\n  1/2 lb. of beans;\n\n--and to these you should add dried fruit or rice. The best dried fruit\nis a mixture in equal parts of apricots and prunes. Take an abundance\nof tea: nothing takes the place of tea; and supply yourself with pepper,\nsalt, sugar, candles, and soap. Your cooking pots should fit the one\ninto the other. These things, with a small frying-pan, an axe (to\ncut poles for your evening shelter and wood for your fire), a file to\nsharpen this, and some stout wire hooks by which to hang your pots over\nthe fire, complete, I think, the sum-total of your absolutely necessary\nimpedimenta.\n\n\n\u00a7 51\n\nThe sedulous, however sage, have little idea how large a part of active\nlife depends on food. To stay-at-homes, who go down to the dining-room\nwhen the gong sounds, a meal seems a mere incident of life, an\nintermission from work, an opportunity for a family chat. The traveller\non foot soon learns that a meal is of the most vital importance. Every\nreader of Nansen's thrilling narrative must have noticed this. Even in\nMr Belloc's literary \"Path to Rome\" one is struck with the intrusion of\nthis unliterary topic, and the more literary \"Inland Voyage\" of Robert\nLouis Stevenson is not free from it. While even in that delightful, and\ndelightfully feminine, \"An Oberland Chalet,\" which I have already cited,\nalthough the foods were generally cheese or cakes or _petits pains_, and\nthe drinks chocolate or milk or _caf\u00e9 au lait_, the mention of edibles\nand potables is frequent.\n\nThe importance of a supply of food has so often been borne in upon me\nthat I am inclined to believe that the political community is co\u00e6val\nwith the pantry. Even amongst animals, only those form commonwealths\nwhich form common stores of food--as the ant and the bee.\n\nThe pedestrian gains a practical insight into this wide-reaching\ninfluence of a storage of food. Not for half-a-dozen hours can he\nsubsist before its importance is impressed upon him by most painful\npangs. If, therefore, sedulous sage, you set out on a long hard walk\nwithout due provision for the allaying of hunger, you will come to\ngrief. I make no apologies, accordingly, for minute instructions on that\ntopic here.\n\n\n\u00a7 52\n\nThe bread of the Western prospector, my fraternal informant tells me, is\nthe bannock. Dost know how to make a bannock? You must have with you\na bag containing flour (of the highest grade, made from hard wheat),\nbaking powder, and salt, thoroughly mixed beforehand. (Use twice as much\nbaking powder as the instructions on the tin direct. Half a cupful of\nsalt will suffice for ten pounds of flour.) Open this bag, and make a\ndepression in the contents with your fist. Into this pour a cupful of\nwater. Stir the sides of the depression into the water till you get a\nstiff dough. Spread this dough in a clean greased frying-pan. Hold the\npan over the fire till the under side of the dough is slightly browned,\nthen take the pan off the fire and set it up on edge to allow the top of\nthe bannock to toast, and your bannock is made--and very delicious you\nwill find it if you are hungry, and hungry you certainly will be.\n\nBeans are a more troublesome affair, for, unfortunately, they take from\ntwo to four hours to boil. But beans are the mainstay of life on a tour.\nThere are two good varieties: the small white, and the larger brown.\nTake both, and before starting clean them thoroughly from dust and grit\nand stones--thoroughly. As soon as your fire is lighted, put on your\nbeans in cold water with no salt, and keep them boiling. As soon as they\nshow signs of softening, add a piece of bacon or a ham bone and some\npepper and salt. When ready--eat. If they are not ready for you when you\nare ready for them (and this coincidence is, alas, rare with beans), the\npot should be filled up with water, the remains of the fire raked into\na circle, in the centre of which the pot should be kept for the night:\nthey will then make a dish for breakfast, when they may be eaten as they\nare, or can be fried. If drained fairly dry, they may be carried as they\nare and used for luncheon.--But the best thing is to make a bannock of\nthem. Take a clean frying-pan with plenty of bacon fat in it, and mash\nthe already boiled beans in this with a fork. Heat, with stirring, till\nthe mass is dry enough to set; then fry on both sides. This will keep\nfor days, \"and is,\" says my authority, \"the finest food I know of for\nemergency trips.\"\n\n\n\n\nXXIII\n\nThe Beauty of Landscape\n\n\n\u00a7 53\n\nMay I here request the reader to accompany me in a short\ndigression?--Few things are pleasanter than a walk in which one turns\ndown any lane that invites.\n\nOne of the first delights of walking is the pleasure derived from\nthe passing scene.--What is the secret of the pleasure derived from a\nbeautiful landscape--or, as a matter of fact, from almost any landscape?\nFor apparently a landscape need not be actually beautiful in order to\ngive pleasure. \"I wouldn't give a mile of the dear old Sierras,\" says\nBret Harte, \"with their honesty, sincerity, and magnificent uncouthness,\nfor 100,000 kilom\u00e8tres of the picturesque Vaud.\"[29] And even Mary\nMacLane, rail as she did at the barren sands of Butte, Montana, in her\n\"Story,\"[30] when she left them wrote, \"I love those things the best of\nall.\"[31]--Bret Harte and Mary MacLane may give us a clue to the secret.\nIt is not merely the contour or the colours of a landscape that delight;\nit is the associations that cling to it.--But what of a scene which\nis quite new to the eyes? Still, I think, association. \"Scenery soon\npalls,\" says George Borrow, \"unless it is associated with remarkable\nevents, and the names of remarkable men.\"[32] And Ruskin, you will\nremember, when gazing at the broken masses of pine forest which skirt\nthe course of the Ain above the village of Champignole, in the Jura,\nfound that the impressiveness of the scene owed its source to the fact\nthat \"those ever-springing flowers and ever-flowing streams had been\ndyed by the deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue.\"[33]\n\nPacked away in the brain and mind of man must be subtle and secret\nmemories dating back through unknown ages of time.--A gaseous theory,\nperhaps, but one which Senancour has liquefied into the pellucid\nsentence:--\"La nature sentie n'est que dans les rapports humains, et\nl'\u00e9loquence des choses n'est rien que l'\u00e9loquence de l'homme.\"[34] The\ngreat fight for life, the stern joys of life--the ferocious combat, the\nthrilling love match, the myriad sensations and emotions evoked by man's\nphysical environment, and his struggle for existence therein--surely\nthese live somehow somewhere packed away in his brain to-day--just as\nsome migratory and nidificatory memories must be packed away in the\nbrain of a bird. It is these dormant cosmic memories that a landscape\nrevives. On how many a plain to-day does there not flow veritable human\nblood remuted into sap!--Terrene Nature was man's ancestral home and no\nman can gaze upon it unmoved.\n\n\n\u00a7 54\n\nThe freedom of a great expanse seems to arouse primitive instincts.\nIdylls are not enacted in drawing-rooms. It is the odorous glades are\nHymen's haunts. In the meads of Enna Proserpine was wooed. Zephir won\nAurora a-maying. On Latmos top Endymion was nightly kissed. In the\nboscage Daphnis proposed--and was there and then accepted.[35] If only\nFashion would decree that honeymoons should be spent under Jove! Lovers\nken the banks where amaranths blow, and poets build their altars in the\nfields. How actually physically exhilarating sometimes is\n\n  \"The champaign with its endless fleece\n    Of feathery grasses everywhere!\n  Silence and passion, joy and peace,\n       .    .     .     .     .     .\n  Such life there, through such lengths of hours,\n    Such miracles performed in play,\n  Such primal naked forms of flowers,\n    Such letting Nature have her way.\"[36]\n\nThere must survive in the cosmic consciousness of the race, deep-seated\nand ineradicable memories of prim\u00e6val nuptials. What a pity it is that\nthat supreme, that sacred drama called \"Love\" should be enacted by\nyouths and damsels, not in secluded groves amidst perfumed and amorous\nblooms, but in ball-rooms and boudoirs.[37]\n\n\n\u00a7 55\n\nIt is a complex, it is a profound enigma, this of the appeal of the\nbeauty of nature to the senses and emotions of man. For Beauty, we must\nremember, is not an attribute of the external thing. Beauty is in the\nsoul that feels, the mind that thinks, the memory that remembers. _That_\nis beautiful which brings to mind and memory and soul, ecstatic thrill,\nexalted feeling. _That_ is beautiful which makes for the preservation\nand propagation and (which should make for the) elevation of the\nrace.--And this is why Beauty is of various kinds. There is a Beauty of\nthe senses, and there is a beauty of the soul--as there is a terrestrial\nAphrodite, and an Aphrodite uranian.[38] Though why the earthly and the\nheavenly Aphrodites should not join hands, I do not know. Perhaps it is\nonly when they do join hands--when there is at one and the same time\na spiritual obsession and a physical oblation--that Beauty becomes\ntransfigured before us, reveals her divine nature radiant through\nfleshly vestments. Ah! this occurs only when we are on the Mount.\n\n\n\u00a7 56\n\nAfter all, did John Ruskin really get to the bottom of this matter\nof the appeal of Nature to the heart of man? Is the beauty of any\nparticular scene due to the generic fact that \"those ever-springing\nflowers and ever-flowing streams had been dyed by the deep colours of\nhuman endurance, valour, and virtue\"? If my theory is right that beauty\nis subjective, not objective; that the connecting link between the\nnatural object and the emotion which it evokes is that of memory or\nassociation, surely we must seek for a more particular, a more personal\nexplanation than this of Ruskin his \"human endurance, valour, and\nvirtue.\" Well, I too have lounged a whole morning on a mountain top not\nfar from the spot of which Ruskin wrote. Before me was the valley of\nthe Arve; behind me, the valley of the Rh\u00f4ne: both, from that height of\nvision, and on that perfect day, breathing prosperity and peace. Square\nmile after square mile of fertile land lay under my eyes: farms and\nvineyards, fields and meadows, all watered by winding streams. Dotted\nabout, here in groups, there discrete, were the tiled roofs of cottages;\nand all through the verdure, in long white curves with an occasional\ntangent, here hidden by boscage, there emerging in the sunlight, ran the\ngood white roads of France. The sweet grass on which I lay was thickly\nstrewn with flowers, and the air brought scents sweet as softest\nmusic heard afar. To right and left in the middle distance rose Alpine\npeaks--light green at their bases, dark green in the zone of the pines,\nlifting grey or green or purple masses towards the clouds; and\nstraight in front, some seven leagues away, stretched the rugged jagged\nsnow-capped chain of Mont Blanc.\n\nIt was early morning, and it was one of those perfect summer days when,\nas one lay supine, one could actually perceive the filmy clouds vanish\ninto invisibility; while, as an addition to the blessings of the scene,\nthere came to my ear the tinkling bells of the cattle.\n\nAnd the region was thick with the memories of human endurance, valour,\nand virtue. C\u00e6sar's legions strode that soil. Long before C\u00e6sar came,\nmarauding bands had met and fought. And, since C\u00e6sar's time, owing\nto the fortunes of war, war in which man fought hand-to-hand with\nman--opposed shield to javelin, discharged the feathered arrow, or\npointed arquebus and carronade--the very ground on which I walked had\nchanged owners innumerable.\n\nIt would be difficult to choose a more appealing scene.--And yet, if\nI probe my own heart to the core, if I tell my inmost thought, to me\na sunny--or even, for that matter, a misty--scene in pastoral\nEngland--Surrey or Bucks or Berks, Kent or Devon, Sussex or Herts, where\nyou will--rouses more poignant emotions than all the plain of Haute\nSavoie backed by the Chaine du Mont Blanc.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nMr Kipling, in his simple language, has come nearer to the truth than\nhas Ruskin with all his felicity of phrase. It is not the associations\nconnected with human endeavour _in the mass_ that make any particular\nscene to appeal, it is the associations connected with our own little\nselves; it is because \"our hearts are small\" that God has\n\n  \"Ordained for each one spot should prove\n  Beloved over all.\"[39]\n\nBut, indeed, I think that the great Darwin long ago, quite\nincidentally--and quite unwittingly--put his finger upon the crux of the\nproblem. Speaking of the beauties of the landscape of the East Indian\nArchipelago he says: \"These scenes of the tropics are in themselves so\ndelicious, that they almost equal those dearer ones at home, to which\nwe are bound by each best feeling of the mind.\"[40] The sublime and\nbeautiful in Nature call forth our admiration, reverence, awe; it is the\nsimple scenes, to which associations cling, that call forth our love.\n\nNature--the sun, the sky, the earth, the sea--is always beautiful,\nbecause Nature, as Man's prim\u00e6val habitat, has embedded in the memory\nof Man prim\u00e6val associations; but for any one particular scene to arouse\nemotions deeper than those evoked by mere form and colour, that scene\nmust arouse associations embedded in one's own memory or in those of\none's forbears. It may be that this is a generalisation shallow and\njejune. Yet I make it, remembering torrid India; wide Canadian snows;\nthe Alps and the Jura; the Rh\u00f4ne; the Rhine; the Irawadi; lovely,\nlovable England; and those perfumed slopes of le Grand Sal\u00e8ve, inhabited\non that early morning only by myself and those grazing cows.\n\n\n\u00a7 57\n\nThose mild-eyed cattle interested me. They were very gentle, very sleek,\nvery quiet and patient; large of bone, lactiferous; and, beneath all\ntheir passivity, I should imagine they possessed potentialities of\nheroism and endurance unknown to their bovine fellows of the plains. And\nif I may judge from the features, figures, and expressions of the women\nof this same region, too, I should be inclined to conjecture that they\nwere not dissimilar in character to their kine. They too are quiet-eyed,\ndeep-bosomed, large-framed, heavy-buttocked; and in the expression of\ntheir faces there is something patient and heroic. And the youthful\ntender of those cattle--he too was interesting. He lay prone on the\ngrass, his back to Mont Blanc. If he exercised his own limbs but little,\nhe faithfully performed all the duties appertaining to that state of\nlife into which it had pleased God to call him by springing every twenty\nminutes to his feet and shouting orders to his dog--the faithful sub\nor deputy herdsman, who kept the cattle from straying too far. I envied\nthat youthful herdsman his pleasant occupation. Life in that mountain\nair must be sweet to the senses, as companionship with those gentle kine\nmust be quieting to the mind.\n\n\n\u00a7 58\n\nIt was a wonderful morning, that. How quiet it was, how peaceful! Those\nmighty mountains were so still, so soundless. When I was out of sight of\nthe cattle, the only noise that reached my ear was the hum of the bee at\nmy elbow, the song of the lark overhead. Nature seemed at peace. Nature\nseemed to fraternise with Man. A great comradeship was abroad. With my\nown eyes I saw three cows come to their keeper's side, close up to him,\nand he, kind soul, stroked their soft and wrinkled cheeks. With my own\neyes I saw a young and curious heifer walk up to the recumbent dog--her\ndeputy-herdsman--and sniff his hide; and he, good creature, never\ntwitched an ear!--though presently he did move off, moving somewhat\nstiffly, as if his dignity had been ruffled.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nAnd the flowers at my feet, on every side! It was not grass I lay on; it\nwas blossoms--lovely scented blossoms; and as I looked along the slopes\nit was flowers I saw, not blades of grass: it was on a purfled plain I\nlay, a plain of blue and green and yellow and purple.--At first I could\nhardly bring myself to crush these buds. I kept to cart tracks, to\ncattle-paths. But in time these ceased, and I could not choose but\ncrush. And then ... came a curious thought; one I hardly like to put\non paper. Yet of itself it came, and some perhaps will interpret it\nas reverently as did I.--Nature was in repentant mood, and, like\nthe Magdalen, was once again bedewing Man's feet with her tears, and\nbescenting them with her spikenard. She made amends, as it were, for her\ntreatment of Man.--Fickle, feminine Nature, from whose loins we come,\nfrom whose breast we suck our livelihood; from whom we wrest our\npleasure--with much cost--much cost and strife....\n\n\n\u00a7 59\n\nStrife! The very word was like a bell to toll me back. Those very\nflowers were fighting for their lives. Their very scents and colours\nwere but enticements for the bee--for the bee which, in turn, with toil,\ngarnered honey against chimenal famine. And those still, stupendous\nmountains--silent, superb--immobile, massive; their very crags bespoke\ntremendous struggle, immense upheaval, and the grinding of ice and\nglacier. Indeed the solid earth and all about me was unrestful,\nrushing.--I lay on my back on the grass and thrust my finger towards\nthe sky. It seemed steady enough in all conscience. Yet I knew that as\na matter of fact that fingertip of mine was performing most astounding\nfeats. It was rushing through space. And in its rush it was pursuing a\npath would take an expert astronomer to determine. With the rotation of\nthe earth, it was flying eastwards at more than a dozen miles a minute.\nWith the revolution of the earth, it was rushing round the sun some two\nor three miles in that minute. And with the whole solar system, it was\nleaping towards the constellation of Hercules with leaps of more\nthan seven hundred miles in each minute![41]--Seven hundred miles a\nminute![42] It is inconceivable. That enormous mass, the sun, into a\nspot on which, hundreds of our earths could be dropped like a handful\nof pebbles into a puddle, it and the farthermost of its planets, three\nthousand million miles away--all rushing through space ... twenty\nmiles while I sneeze; thirty thousand miles while I sit at dinner;\nhalf-a-million miles between going to bed and getting up.... What a\nstupendous journey! What a mighty company! Where to? What for? Why this\nterrific expenditure of energy?--Think of the _ergs_ necessary to propel\nthat mass! What is being _done_? Who does it? And for whom?\n\nNothing is immobile in Nature. Nothing is stationary in Life. To exist,\nto be, to live, is to become, to change, to strive, to achieve. The\nseeming peace about me was outcome of infinite struggle. Only by\nstruggle does life evolve, does man aspire.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nReturn we to my theme.\n\n\n\n\nXXIV\n\nWarnings to the Over-Zealous\n\n\n\u00a7 60\n\nNow, I know precisely what will happen. Some epimethean enthusiast,\ncarried away by the anticipated delights of a walk, will suddenly make\nup his mind to take one; will hastily stuff some things into a bag,\nand will start off at four o'clock in the morning with some vague and\ndistant goal in view. He will think to roll John Burroughs and Richard\nJefferies into one in his minute observation of Nature, and to outdo\nWordsworth and Amiel combined in his philosophico-poetical disquisitions\non the same; he will rid his mind of the world and the worldly, and\nfloat in themes transcendental and abstruse. But I think I know what\nwill happen. By the afternoon of that selfsame day he will be hungry,\nthirsty, footsore, and tired. His boots will be tight; his bag as heavy\nas his spirits; his head as empty as his craw. Instead of observing\nNature he will find Nature--in the shape of the rustics (and the\nrustics' dogs)--very narrowly observing him, not always with sympathetic\nor benignant gaze. Instead of deep and transcendental meditations rising\nspontaneously to his mind, he will find curt and practical questions\nassailing his ear as to who he is and what he is doing there.--My\ndear but epimethean enthusiast, you must know that Nature is a jealous\nmistress. If so be you are sedulously engaged for fifty weeks in the\nyear in the pursuit of pelf, think not to woo her by a half day's\nworship at her shrine. Even if your courtship be sincere, it must be\nslow. Not in forty-eight hours will you brush away the cobwebs of the\nworkaday world and prepare for the reception of sweet Nature's\ninfluence a mind free from all uncharitableness: their skies, not their\ncharacters, they change who sail over-seas. From all blindness of heart,\nfrom pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy, you must seek to be delivered,\nelse you will walk in vain. For most men walk in a vain show, and\nthe perpetual perambulation of the streets of Vanity Fair is a poor\npreparation for the Delectable Mountains.--But take heart. If you will\nkeep but a corner of your mind free from the carking cares of barter and\ncommerce--if only by half-holiday jaunts and Sabbath-day journeys, great\nwill be your reward. By the end of the third or fourth day's tramp, what\nwith the exhilarating exercise, the fresh air, the peace and loneliness,\nthe long hours of mental quietude, the freedom from the petty\ndistractions of social and official life, if you are humble and\nchildlike, the world forgetting by the world forgot--the scales will\nfall from your eyes; then indeed you will see--and feel--and think. The\ntrivial little objects at your feet, equally with the immense expanses\nof earth and sky, will lift you high above themselves; the wet and\ndrooping high-road weed, the tender green of a curled frond, the soft\nooziness of a summer marsh--the sense of beauty--of the fitness of\nthings--of their immense incomprehensibility--the wonder of it all ...\nwords seem useless to say how such things sink into the soul, plough up\nits foundations, sow there seeds which, like the Indian juggler's plant,\nspring up at once and blossom into worship, reverence, awe.--Believe me,\nI am not extravagant or hyperbolic, nor do I beguile with empty words.\nIf you will not hear me, hear the simple-minded Richard Jefferies:\n\n  \"I linger in the midst of the long grass, the luxury of the leaves,\n  and the song in the very air. I seem as if I could feel all the\n  glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind calls to being.\n  The endless grass, the endless leaves, the immense strength of the\n  oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird; from all\n  of them I receive a little.... In the blackbird's melody one note\n  is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me,\n  though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have\n  collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with them, I receive\n  some, at least, of their fulness of life. Never could I have enough;\n  never stay long enough.... The hours when the mind is absorbed by\n  beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer\n  we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched\n  from inevitable Time.... These are the only hours that are not\n  wasted--these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty.\n  This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. To\n  be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of\n  Nature. If I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it.\"[43]\n\nWhich passage has received the _imprimatur_ of quotation by no less\nan authority than Lord Avebury (better known, perhaps, as Sir John\nLubbock), himself not only a man of science, but a statesman and a man\nof affairs as well. Listen:\n\n\"The exquisite beauty and delight of a fine summer day in the country\nhas never perhaps been more truly, and therefore more beautifully,\ndescribed.\"[44]\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nBut surely, with all deference to the learned quoter, there is something\ndeeper in Richard Jefferies, these his dithyrambs, than a description of\na fine summer day. Surely Jefferies finds himself here, in Amiel's fine\nphrase, _t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate_ with the Infinite, and tries, poor soul, in vain\nto find vent for his thoughts. It is not a picture, it is a poem.\nNor needed it the Pageant of Summer to transport this poet thither.\nJefferies was here viewing Nature through a seventh sense--a sense more\ndelicate than that of sight or sound, the sense that Maurice de Gu\u00e9rin\nhas defined as,--\n\n  \"Un sens que nous avons tous, mais voil\u00e9, vague, et priv\u00e9 presque de\n  toute activit\u00e9, le sens qui recueille les beaut\u00e9s physiques et les\n  livre \u00e0 l'\u00e2me, qui les spiritualise, les harmonie, les combine\n  avec les beaut\u00e9s id\u00e9ales, et agrandit ainsi sa sph\u00e8re d'amour et\n  d'adoration\"[45]\n\nIt is not Richard Jefferies his catalogue of the things he saw which\nmoves us to admiration and delight, it is his sense sublime which\nenabled him to rise from the things which are seen to the things which\nare unseen, to rise above the _hic et nunc_ of the parochial and to\npeer into the _illuc et tunc_ of the eternal. He saw \"into the life of\nthings,\" and in him the finite stirred emotions which savoured of the\ninfinite.\n\n\n\n\nXXV\n\nHow that all points to the Infinite\n\n\n\u00a7 61\n\nOf a sober truth, could we only realise it, all things point to the\ninfinite. Not a cobweb, not a wisp of morning mist, not a toadstool, not\na gnat, but has a life-history dating back to the dark womb of Time,\nor ere even meteoritic dust or incandescent nebul\u00e6 were born; dating\nforward too, could we trace it, to the dark doom of Time, if for Time\nthere be a doom. Who can understand it? Who shall explain it?--any part\nof it? Take Burns his simple line,--\n\n  \"Green grow the rashes, O.\"\n\nTo explain \"green\" is not within the power of profoundest oculist\nand physicist combined: on the question of the colour-sense alone the\nscientific world is divided and has for years been divided; and of the\nprecise action of chlorophyll--the green colouring-matter of plants--it\nis almost equally ignorant; while of the train of connected ph\u00e6nomena,\nfrom the chemic and catalytic action in the leaf, through the\nstimulation of the retina, the transmission along the optic nerve, the\nsensation in the corpora quadrigemina of the brain, to the concept in\nthe mind, we know absolutely nothing. To define and classify the rushes,\nalso; to know exactly their place in the vegetable kingdom and how they\ncame there--their evolution from lower forms, the modifications wrought\nin their structure by environment and internecine strife--that is beyond\nthe wit of botanist and pal\u00e6ophytologist in one. And as to that simple\nverb, \"to grow,\" dealing, as it does, with life itself in its inmost\npenetralia, that has baffled, and probably will for ever baffle, the\nwhole host of physical and metaphysical experimenters and speculators\nworld without end. When we can explain Life, we shall be within\nmeasurable distance of explaining the Life-Giver.--Tennyson saw this:\n\n  \"Flower in the crannied wall,\n  I pluck you out of your crannies,\n  I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,\n  Little flower, but _if_ I could understand\n  What you are, root and all, and all in all,\n  I should know what God and man is.\"\n\n\n\u00a7 62\n\nBut my song has grown too advent'rous. Let us descend th'Aonian\nmount.--This, however, let me say: If to somewhat abstruse ontological\nspeculations such as these you like to add scientific or other knowledge\nof the region of your walk--something of the geology, pal\u00e6ontology,\nmineralogy, zoology, botany, arch\u00e6ology, history, well and good. No sort\nof knowledge but is profitable for doctrine. The interest and pleasure\nof walking are greatly enhanced by noting and being able to account for\nthe thousand and one natural ph\u00e6nomena which greet the eye even in the\nshortest stroll; and few things sooner oust petty worries from the mind\nthan such occupation. Happy is the man who can do this. I, alas, cannot\nhelp you here. I have but a bowing acquaintance with Science, though it\nis always with a deep reverence that I doff my hat to her. Nevertheless,\nwith this I console myself; it seems to matter but little with what sort\nof eyes you look on Nature, provided you really look. Give her but\nthe seeing eye and the understanding heart, and she is lavish of\nher gifts.--And (let me roun this in thine ear) perhaps she prefers\n(woman-like) the understanding heart to the seeing eye; though\n(woman-like again) she likes to be admired as well as understood--though\nnever (and here most woman-like) does she like to be too curiously\nregarded.--Sometimes, I confess, I have envied him gifted with the\nscientific eye: him in whom a granite boulder in a grassy mead rouses\nlong geological trains of thought; to whom the dwarfed horse-tails by\nlacustrine shores paint pictures of dense equisetaceous forests; for\nwhom a fossil trilobite calls up visions of Silurian seas; him too have\nI envied who can classify common plants or recognise and name the stones\nat his feet: can tell us why the lowly daisy is superior to the lordly\noak; can expatiate on crystallographic angles; and learnedly descant on\namphibole or pyroxene. For myself, I am not versed in the mechanism of\nNature. I have never asked to see the wheels go round. I like to see her\nsmile, and am not careful as to what oral or buccal muscles are brought\ninto play for that smile. That she has an anatomy I suppose. But I\nbethink me of Act\u00e6on's fate, he who saw Dian's naked loveliness\ntoo near. So thou, beware lest thine eye see so much that thy heart\nunderstand too little. Keep thy mind \"in a just equipoise of love.\"\nAccomplish that, and no knowledge is too high for thee.\n\n\n\u00a7 63\n\nHere, however, it is but right to enter a _caveat_. It must be admitted\nthat it is not given to everyone to hold high converse with Nature.\nNature speaks a cryptic tongue, and unless one has paid some heed to\nher language her accents are apt to fall upon deaf ears. Nor can anyone\ntranslate Nature's language to those unversed in her speech. If you\nthink to hear her voice while the din and clatter of business or\nmercature are ringing in your ears, you will hear nothing. Nor, for that\nmatter, will you see anything. Trees and fields and clouds you may\nsee, or may think you see; but they will say nothing to you, will mean\nnothing to you. To their mere beauty you will be blind; for beauty is a\nthing to be felt, not seen.\n\nGoethe declared that Beauty was a prim\u00e6val ph\u00e6nomenon which had never\nyet made its appearance.[46] To Euripides--~klu\u00f4n men aud\u00ean,\nomma douch hor\u00f4n to son~.[47]\n\nAnd Shelley declares--\n\n  \"Fair are others; none beholds thee,\n       .     .     .     .     .     .\n  And all feel, yet see thee never.\"[48]\n\nBeauty is _felt_. That is the clue to the secret. The appeal of natural\nbeauty is to the heart, to the emotions, not to the intellect. The eyes\nof the wisest savant may miss what Nature will reveal to the veriest\nbabe. This is what Mr Edward Carpenter means when he says, albeit in\nsomewhat extravagant language--\n\n  \"As to you, O Moon--\n\n  I know very well that when the astronomers look at you through their\n  telescopes they see only an aged and wrinkled body;\n\n  But though they measure your wrinkles never so carefully they do not\n  see you personal and close--\n\n  As you disclosed yourself among the chimney-tops last night to the\n  eyes of a child--\n\n  When you thought no one else was looking.\n\n         *     *     *     *     *\n\n  Anyhow I see plainly that like all created things you do not yield\n  yourself up as to what you are at the first or the thousandth onset,\n\n  And that the scientific people for all their telescopes know as\n  little about you as any one--\n\n  Perhaps less than most.\n\n  How curious the mystery of creation.\"[49]\n\nThe poet, bereft of words whereby to give vent to his emotion, falls\nback on \"the mystery of creation.\"--Not dissimilarly says Carlyle,\n\"The rudest mind has still some intimation of the greatness there is\nin Mystery.\"[50] And again, \"The _mystical_ enjoyment of an object goes\ninfinitely farther than the _intellectual_.\"[51]--It is not alone the\nindescribable colour of the delicate corolla, nor is it the minute\nknowledge of its astonishing structure, that causes to blaze up in the\nbeholder a sense of something profound; it is not alone the majestic\nheap of the cloud, nor the piercing radiance of the quiet stars, known\nto be incomputably distant, that lifts one to the contemplation of\nthe lofty; it is the immanent, the permanent Mystery that pervades and\nunifies all that ever was or is or shall be.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n\n\nXXVI\n\nThe Pleasures of Walking\n\n\u00a7 64\n\n\n\"But what possible pleasure, what possible profit,\" I can hear the\npractical and common-sensible man asking, \"is to be gained from\nwalking--_walking_? Surely walking is the paltriest of sports. Why not\nwrite of riding, driving, rowing, bicycling, motoring, aeroplaning--any\nmode of locomotion rather than that of mere trudging?\"--Well, in a\ntechnical and paronomasiacal phrase, the question really _solvitur\nambulando_. For one thing, horses have to be baited, boats caulked,\nbicycles pumped up, balloons inflated, and motor cars eternally tinkered\nat--aeroplanes fly far beyond my welkin. For another thing, not the\nleast of the practical blessings incident to a walk is that you are\nbeyond the reach of letters and telegrams and telephones. You are\nnot likely to be served with a writ when walking; you can laugh at\n_capiases_ and injunctions; drafts at sight and judgment summonses\ncannot easily overtake you on a trudge. \"I have generally found,\" says\nDe Quincey, \"that, if you are in quest of some certain escape from\nPhilistines of whatsoever class--sheriff-officers, bores, no\nmatter what--the surest refuge is to be found amongst hedgerows and\nfields.\"[52] (Had De Quincey lived in the twentieth century, truly he\nmight have added that it is amongst the fields and hedgerows also\nthat one gets away from that pest of civilisation, the pene-ubiquitous\nadvertisement.--And not always even amongst fields and hedgerows, as\nthe landscape-spoiling hoardings along the routes of our railways prove.\nLike Nero, I sometimes wish that the erectors of sky-signs and the\ndaubers of barns and fences had but one neck that I might ... that I\nmight--lay upon it a heavy yoke of taxation.--I throw out that hint to\nany Finance Minister or Chancellor of the Exchequer that may care to act\nupon it.)\n\nBut far rather would I reply to my qu\u00e6rist in other words than\nmine.--\"I went to the woods,\" says Thoreau, \"because I wished to live\ndeliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.... I wanted to\nlive deep and suck out all the marrow of life.... Our life is frittered\naway by detail.... In the midst of this chopping sea of civilised life,\nsuch are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand and one items\nto be allowed for that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go\nto the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, he must\nbe a great calculator indeed who succeeds.\"[53]\n\nHear, too, Henri-Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Amiel:\n\n  \"_1st February 1854._--A walk. The atmosphere incredibly pure--a\n  warm, caressing gentleness in the sunshine--joy in one's whole\n  being.... I became young again, wondering, and simple, as candour\n  and ignorance are simple. I abandoned myself to life and to nature,\n  and they cradled me with an infinite gentleness. To open one's heart\n  in purity to this ever-pure nature, to allow this immortal life of\n  things to penetrate into one's soul, is at the same time to listen\n  to the voice of God. Sensation may be a prayer, and self-abandonment\n  an act of devotion.\"[54]\n\nOr hear a greater man than these--hear the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau,\nhe who divided with Voltaire the intellectual realm of the eighteenth\ncentury:\n\n  \"What I regret most in the details of my life which I have forgotten\n  is that I did not keep a diary of my travels. Never have I thought\n  so much, never have I realised my own existence so much, been\n  so much alive, been so much myself if I may so say, as in those\n  journeys which I have made alone and afoot. Walking has something in\n  it which animates and heightens my ideas: I can scarcely think when\n  I stay in one place; my body must be set a-going if my mind is to\n  work. The sight of the country, the succession of beautiful scenes,\n  the great breeze, the good appetite, the health which I gain by\n  walking, the getting away from inns, the escape from everything\n  which reminds me of my lack of independence, from everything which\n  reminds me of my unlucky fate--all this releases my soul, gives me\n  greater courage of thought, throws me as it were into the midst of\n  the immensity of the objects of Nature, which I may combine, from\n  which I may choose at will, which I may make my own carelessly and\n  without fear. I make use of all Nature as her master; my heart,\n  surveying one object after another, unites itself, identifies itself\n  with those in sympathy with it, surrounds itself with delightful\n  images, intoxicates itself with emotions the most exquisite. If, in\n  order to seize these, I amuse myself by describing them to myself,\n  what a vigorous pencil, what bright colours, what energy of\n  expression they need! Some have, so they say, discerned something\n  of these influences in my writings, though composed in my declining\n  years. Ah! if only those of my early youth had been seen! those\n  which I have composed but never written down!\"[55]\n\nThus wrote the great Jean-Jacques in the calm of his declining years.\nThose walking inspirations must have been potent indeed to have left so\nlasting an impression.[56]\n\n\n\u00a7 65\n\nBut Thoreau and Amiel and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are perhaps counsellors\nof perfection; exemplars too remote for our purpose. Permit me then to\nresort to an _argumentum ad hominem_.--I knew a man who one summer tried\nto do two and a half men's work in one. For five days in the week it\ntook him from early in the morning of one day till early in the morning\nof the next. On Saturday afternoon he was free, and on Saturday he took\nthe boat to a village twenty-one miles distant. Sunday afternoon was\ndevoted (alas, necessarily) again to work,--but in the open air. At\ntwo-thirty on Monday morning he started on his return journey--afoot;\nbreakfasted halfway in; and was at his desk in as good time as\nspirits.--Profit? That early morning walk picked him up for the week.\nPleasure? My dear practical sir, would you had been with him! Would you\nhad felt the quiet, the serenity, the calming influence of unsullied\nNature; the supreme repose in those early morning hours, the solitude,\nthe vastness, the expansion of soul and spirit beneath the silent stars,\nthe quiet morn. He saw the full moon pale and set; he saw great Nature\nslowly wake; the sleepy cows knee-deep in clover; the fields begemmed\nwith dew; the little pools--pools which at noon would be muddy\npuddles--glistening like emeralds and garnets in the dawn. By degrees,\ngrowing things were individualised. Each shrub, each creeping thing,\nhad a life of its own. The veriest weed was exalted into a vegetable\npersonality which had dealings with the Infinite and the Divine: and\n\"all flowers in field or forest which unclose their trembling eyelids\nto the kiss of day\" spake to him.--He was alone--alone with unhurrying,\nuncareful Nature. The peace of untold \u00e6ons entered his soul and couraged\nhim to battle with the petty and the trivial for five more wearing days\nwithout a qualm.--Profit? Pleasure?--What nag, what buggy, what skiff,\nwhat bike, what motor, what dirigible balloon, or hydro-aeroplane would\nhave got him that? In simple truth, of all that he learned and did\nduring those arduous weeks, only those lovely lonely walks live in that\nman's memory to-day.--Would that oftener we bathed our thirsty souls in\nthe dews of the dawn! Would that oftener men gat them away from offices\nand counters and desks--nay, from balls and bats and cleeks--away into\nthe quiet country, where nor strife nor struggle, noble or ignoble,\nhas place or worth! The world is too much with us. Call-loans--narrow\nmargins, with a slump in the market--killing races with a dark\nhorse--quickly changing quotations--prolonged ill luck--unstable\ntariffs--strikes and rumours of strikes--such things perturb the human\nmind. Well, I know few more efficacious antidotes to mental perturbation\nthan an early morning walk. It is a psychic as well as a sanitary\ninvestment.\n\n\n\u00a7 66\n\nIt is also a mental tonic--even in hom\u0153opathic doses.--I took last\nSunday a little four-mile stroll before breakfast, and its calming and\nbeneficent influence is with me still. No one was about; I had the whole\ncountry to myself, and I bathed a tired head in the spacious quietude of\nearth and sky. From a height I looked over a great and restful country,\nacross the sleeping town, and far away over the peaceful lake. Above\nit all stretched the benevolent heavens, brooding over this pendent\nworld.--I thought I saw fixity in the midst of motion; substance beneath\nevanescence; unity in multiplicity; a sort of goal where everything was\ncyclical; an end where all things seemed only means; infinity lurking\nin finitude; a divine inhering in the human. After the treadmill of the\nweek it was uplifting, exalting. I inhaled great draughts of air from\nultra-planetary spaces; I fed on manna fallen from the highest heavens.\nThis tiny planet, with its trivial cares and duties, vanished from my\neyes, and I cooled my brow in the clouds of the holy of holies.--But\nnone the less did I recognise the all-importance, to it and to me, of\nearth's small cares and duties. Were they not part of that infinite\nmultiplicity in which lurked that infinite unity? Did they not go to\nmake up the \"spiritual economy\"[57] of the cosmos? But I saw them in a\nnewer light--a larger light than merely solar, and they took on a new\naspect, and declared themselves integral portions of that divine All\nwithout which that divine All would cease to be.\n\nThere is something strangely pure and purifying about early morning air.\nIt is Nature's great steriliser. It is aseptic; and none breathes it\nbut is more or less cleansed of the taint of noontide life. The noxious\ngerms of care and anxiety cannot live in it. It is a magnificent\nbactericide. Nature is herself then. Even the denizens of Nature seem to\nknow this, for never is bird or beast more blithesome than at dawn.\n\n\n\u00a7 67\n\nFor lonely souls, for luckless souls, there is, perhaps, after all is\nsaid and done, but one source of solace. \"Nothing human,\" said Eug\u00e9nie\nde Gu\u00e9rin, \"nothing human comforts the soul, nothing human supports\nit:--\n\n  '\u00c0 l'enfant il faut sa m\u00e8re,\n  \u00c0 mon \u00e2me il faut mon Dieu.'\"[58]\n\nWell, those who think their God has revealed himself in the Canonical\nBooks will go to their Bible; those who think he has chosen the\nchannel of a Church will derive ghostly strength from their spiritual\ncounsellors; but those who think the Nameless has nowhere so plainly\nshown himself as in his works, will seek in the face and lineaments of\nNature that consoling smile which every lonely soul so miserably craves;\nand fortunate it is that not over his works, but only over his words,\ntheologians so wrathfully wrangle.--Art thou cast down, and is thy soul\ndisquieted within thee? Dost distrust thyself? Has love grown cold? And\nhast thou caught on thy leman's lips a sigh not meant for thee? Is there\nnone to whom thou canst go, on whose bosom to rain out the heavy mist\nof tears?--Go thou to Pan; betake thee to the fields; betake thee to\nthe woods; pour out thy contrite heart at the altar of the universe, and\nthou shalt be comforted. What matters it the petty perturbations of the\nmind? What signify the paltry upheavings of the heart? Lay thy tired\nhead on Nature's breast. Friendship may fade, ideals vanish, passion\nwane, the darling desire upon which thou hast staked thine all may\nprove to have been snatched from thee before thy very eyes.--Take heart.\nAlways there is at hand the Infinite and the Eternal: about thee, above\nthee, in presence of which the petty and the paltry flee away.\n\nI know no more comfortable medicament than the quiet companionship of\nNature. The trees breathe a salutary air. The fields invite to repose.\nA calming influence pervades unwalled, unceilinged earth, and there\nthe crumpled soul has room in which to smooth itself out: the noxious\nbacilli which infest its folds are swept away; ill-natured thoughts take\nflight. How paltry seems a passing quarrel beneath the boughs of a hoary\noak that has witnessed a hundred fights! How puny a callous rage beneath\nthe capacious sky!\n\nFor, believe me, Great Pan is _not_ dead. Nor, believe me, are any that\ngo to him in any wise cast out. He cares not of what Church thou art a\nchild, nor does he fence his tables. Worship at whatsoever shrine thou\nchoosest, always he will welcome thee to his, for Pan is beloved of all\nthe gods.\n\nAch! There comes a time when nothing seems worth while; when gaiety\npalls, and even sorrow dulls instead of stirs; when nothing seems of\nany use, and one feels inclined to give up, to give up.--To such I would\nsay, pull on thick boots, clutch a stout stick, and go for a country\nwalk--rain or shine.--It sounds a preposterous remedy, but try it.\nNature never gives up. Not a pygmy weed, trodden under foot of man, and\ncovered up and overwhelmed with rival growths, but battles for its life\nwith vim. Nor does it ask for what it battles. Neither does it question\nwhy more favoured plants are so carefully nurtured, and it, poor thing,\nis dragged up by the roots.--Take a country walk, and look at the weeds\nif at nothing else.\n\nAnd remember, this is a legitimate remedy, preposterous though\nit may sound. So many prescriptions for the heartache are\nillegitimate--stimulants, or narcotics, or stimulant-narcotics: sport,\nwork, play, hazardous adventure, the gaming-table or the betting-ring,\nto say nothing of the cup that inebriates but does not cheer. A country\nwalk is but \"letting Nature have her way,\" is but giving an opportunity\nfor the _vis medicatrix natur\u00e6_. Try it; do not, like Naaman, prate\nof Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, but go wash in Jordan seven\ntimes.\n\n\n\n\nXXVII\n\nIs Walking Selfish?\n\n\n\u00a7 68\n\nBut is it not a selfish pleasure, this that is to be gained by rural\nperegrination, I shall be asked. Bluntly I answer, No. A country walk\nmakes one blithesome; and than blithesomeness there is no greater foe\nto selfishness. Had Bacon not declared that gardening was the purest of\nhuman pleasures, I should be inclined to give the palm to walking.\n\nWe are too gregarious. We live too much in herds, and we consider too\nmuch what the herd will think of our petty individual ways. Civilisation\nis not an unmixed boon, and artificial combinations of men taint\nthe natural simplicity of the race. In combining together for mutual\nprotection against a common foe we forget that sometimes a man's foes\nare those of his own household. Each feels that the eyes of the world\nare upon him, and always he is subconsciously occupied in conforming\nhimself to the world. A political community not only curtails the\nindividual's freedom of action for the good of the whole, it curtails\nalso his freedom of thought and manner. What is the result? The result\nis that \"self-consciousness\" has taken on a new and sinister meaning.\nInstead of denoting the especial and distinguishing characteristic of\nemancipated reason, self-consciousness has come to denote a painful\ncognisance of the fetters that our fellow-reasoners have put upon\nreason. We are the slaves of ourselves. Only the child and the savage\nare free to \"live deliberately,\" to \"live deep and suck out all the\nmarrow of life.\" Long before the child has developed into the grown, and\nthe savage into the civilised, man, that silent and unseen but tireless\narchitect, Convention, builds about him an invisible but infrangible\nwall of reserve: his spontaneous emotions, his natural affections, his\naspirations and ambitions, must filter through crevices and peepholes\ninstead of exhaling from him as a rich and original aura.\n\nAlready the taint is perceptible in our literature. The centripetal\ntendency is not a purely economic one. Commerce and industry draw the\ncrowds to the cities, and immediately there arises a set of writers who\nwrite only of the city. How large a proportion of our fiction portrays\nonly the wretched drawing-room intrigue, the wretched rivalries of\nwretched citizens. The Epic was buried three hundred years ago. The Ode\nis dead. The Lyric is dying. Now we have the Novel and the Problem Play,\nthe sensational Newspaper and the Picture Magazine. In time, I suppose,\nwe shall come to the Snapshot and the Paperette. Already we are almost\nthere.--Was it for this that the mighty Areopagitical pleader for the\nLiberty of Unlicensed Printing strove?\n\nI wish that whole populations of crowded cities could be turned out\nhebdomadally to take long week-end walks in the country, there to mew\nits mighty youth and kindle its undazzled eyes at the full midday beam;\nthere to slough off the skin of daily toil, cleanse itself from the\ndross of money-getting, and learn that there is something in life more\nworth living for than the weekly wage, and other joys than those\nof _panem et circenses_.--But this is a wild dream. As well try to\nrehabilitate the Bacchic dance and Chian wine in place of Football and\nbeer or Baseball and peanuts.--Yet methinks I have heard of wilder. What\ndid Jean-Jacques and his school really mean by \"back to nature\"?\n\nTo me, I confess, this polipetal or city-seeking tendency in modern life\n(if I may so call it) wears a most serious, a most sinister aspect. So,\nI am inclined to think, it did to Ruskin. \"I had once purposed,\" wrote\nJohn Ruskin half-a-century ago, \"to show what kind of evidence existed\nrespecting the possible influence of country life on men; it seeming to\nme, then, likely that here and there a reader would perceive this to be\na grave question, more than most which we contend about, political\nor social, and might care to follow it out with me earnestly. The day\nwill assuredly come when men will see that it _is_ a grave question.\"[59]\n\nIf we read history aright, always the bloated city succumbs to the pagan\nhorde. It is in the crowded city that all that is in the world, the lust\nof the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,[60] have\nmost free play. And it is in the city, where division of labour is daily\ncarried to greater extremes, that men's activities as a whole have least\nfree play. The result is twofold: the nobler emotions are stunted;\nthe baser passions are stimulated. Socialism (whatever the precise\nprescription so labelled may be) is no remedy for this. Perhaps Rousseau\nreasoned better than he knew.\n\nIn a sense, however--thanks to whatever gods may be!--as a matter of\nfact there is quietly going on a constant recurrence to Nature. The\nUnited States of America, Canada, Australia, South Africa--what but\nwholesale emigration from over-populous or over-pragmatical centres is\nthe source and origin of these? Colonisation is the protest against\nthe social, political, economical, or religious constrictions of the\ncrowd.--It is precisely these constrictions, my practical qu\u00e6rist, that\nI am tempting thee now and again to flee. _De te fabula narratur._\n\n\n\n\nXXVIII\n\nThe P\u00e6an of Being\n\n\n\u00a7 69\n\nHave I too much belauded the country walk? I do not thereby decry\nthe outdoor sport. The thorough sportsman is the noblest work of God\n(apologies to the shade of Alexander Pope!). Athletics, said that\nacute philosophical historian, Goldwin Smith, \"wash the brain.\" Well,\nsometimes I think a really good country walk cleans the soul. You\nget away from rivalries and trivialities; from scandal, gossip, and\npaltriness; you get away from your compeers and your neighbours--perhaps\nyou learn for the first time who your neighbour is--namely, your\nfellow-farer in distress, as the Good Samaritan long ago taught; you get\naway from barter and commerce, from manners and customs, from forms and\nceremonies; from the thousand and one complications that arise when a\nmultitude of hearts that do not beat as one try to live in a too close\ncontiguity. It was only when the inevitable third party appeared upon\nthe scene (as I think someone must have said) that Adam and Eve ceased\nto be good, put on clothes, and hid themselves from the voice of the\nLord God walking in the garden. It is easy to be generous amongst trees\nand grass and running water; one feels good 'neath the blue firmament on\nthe open earth; ghosts vanish that scent the morning air, and glow-worms\npale their uneffectual fire. For to everyone--I care not whether theist,\ndeist, or atheist--to everyone Nature instinctively, spontaneously,\nproclaims herself an infinitely adorable Mystery. If there is anything\nabove and beyond the ephemeral and the fleeting; if there is somewhere\nsome immensity of Being, some source of All, would it not be well\nsometimes to make haste and bow the head towards the earth and\nworship?[61]\n\nSome immensity of Being. It is to this that in reality all Nature\npoints. The clouds, the skies, the greenery of earth, the myriad forms\nof vegetation at our feet, stir as these may the soul to its depths,\nthey are but single chords in the orchestra of Life. It is the great\np\u00e6an of Being that Nature chants. By them it is that we perceive \"the\nimmense circulation of life which throbs in the ample bosom of Nature, a\nlife which surges from an invisible source and swells the veins of\nthis universe.\"[62] Through them it is that we detect the enormous\nbut incomprehensible unity which underlies this incommensurable\nmultiplicity. The wavelet's plash; the purl of the rill; the sough of\nthe wind in the pines--these are but notes in the divine diapason of\nLife, of Life singing its cosmic song, unmindful who may hear.--Alas,\nthat so few hear aught but a thin and scrannel sound!\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\n\n  A\n\n  Abbott, Charles C., 13\n\n  Action, a struggle to overcome space and time, 131\n\n  Advertisements, hint as to taxing, 200\n\n  Alcohol, proper use of, 142 _et seq._\n\n  All, the, 129 _et seq._\n\n  Amiel, Henri-Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric, 128;\n    quoted, 201, 202\n\n  Aphrodites, the two, 165\n\n  Appearance, something behind, 87\n\n  Arve, the river, 167\n\n  Autumn in Canada, 107 _et seq._\n\n  Autumn reveries, 29\n\n  Avebury, Lord, quoted, 185, 186\n\n\n  B\n\n  Bannock, the, 156\n\n  Beans, how to cook, 157, 158\n\n  Beauty, 110;\n    the appeal of, 164 _et seq._;\n    subjective character of, 165;\n    various kinds of, _ibid._;\n    Goethe on, 194;\n    Shelley on, 195\n\n  Being, the p\u00e6an of, 223 _et seq._;\n    immensity of, 225\n\n  Belloc, Hilaire, quoted, 151\n\n  Beverages, 142 _et seq._\n\n  Blood corpuscles, an analogy from, 93 _et seq._\n\n  Boots, 135\n\n  Borrow, George, 14;\n    quoted, 160, 161\n\n  Browning, Robert, quoted, 163, 164\n\n  Buckinghamshire, a walk in, 31 _et seq._\n\n  Burma, 15\n\n  Burroughs, John, 12;\n    quoted, 75, 76\n\n  Byways, English, 21 _et seq._\n\n\n  C\n\n  Calm, Matthew Arnold on, 77\n\n  Campbell, Professor W. W., quoted, 177\n\n  Canada, spring in, 45 _et seq._;\n    autumn in, 107 _et seq._;\n    53 _et seq._;\n    winter in, 59 _et seq._\n\n  Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 196, 197\n\n  Carpenter, Edward, 103;\n    quoted, 195, 196\n\n  Cattle, mountain, 172\n\n  Cave man, the, 138, 139\n\n  Cities, crowded populations of, 218 _et seq._\n\n  Civilisation a mixed boon, 216 _et seq._\n\n  Companion, an uncongenial, 113, 114\n\n  Conscience, 42 _et seq._\n\n  Cosmos, the, 93\n\n  Country, the, calming influence of, 127\n\n\n  D\n\n  Darwin, Charles, quoted, 170, 171\n\n  Death, a change, 95\n\n  De Quincey, Thomas, quoted, 199\n\n  Details, practical, 152 _et seq._\n\n  Dietary, the tramp's, 140 _et seq._\n\n  Downs, the Sussex, 25 _et seq._\n\n  Drama, a natural, 79 _et seq._\n\n\n  E\n\n  East, the fascination of the, 19\n\n  Emigration, 222\n\n  England, byways in, 22 _et seq._;\n    a spring morning in, 25 _et seq._\n\n  Enthusiasts, cautions for, 181 _et seq._\n\n  Euripides, quoted, 194\n\n  Evening walks, 78 _et seq._\n\n  Evil, origin of, 97 _et seq._\n\n\n  F\n\n  Fatigue, a fictitious, 148\n\n  Fire, the nomad, 137 _et seq._\n\n  Food, 140;\n    importance of, 149 _et seq._; 154 _et seq._;\n    details concerning, 153 _et seq._\n\n\n  G\n\n  Georgian Bay, the, 53\n\n  Glacial epoch, the, 138, 139\n\n  Goethe, quoted, 194\n\n  Golf and walking, 1 _et seq._;\n    indictments against, _ibid._;\n    vindication of, 2;\n    misapprehension concerning, 2, 3\n\n  Gu\u00e9rin, Eug\u00e9nie de, quoted, 211\n\n  Gu\u00e9rin, Maurice de, quoted, 186, 187; 225, 226\n\n\n  H\n\n  Haig, Dr Alexander, 145\n\n  Harte, Bret, quoted, 159, 160\n\n  Hassocks, 25\n\n  Hearth, the, 137, 139\n\n  Hurstpierpoint, 25\n\n\n  I\n\n  Ideal, unrealisability of, 132\n\n  Impedimenta, 151\n\n  India, 17 _et seq._\n\n  Infinite, the, 128;\n    how that all things point to the, 188 _et seq._\n\n  Instincts, primitive, 162 _et seq._\n\n\n  J\n\n  Jefferies, Richard, 12;\n    quoted, 184, 185\n\n\n  K\n\n  Kipling, Rudyard, quoted, 170\n\n  Kingston Road, the, 119, 120\n\n  Knapsack, contents of, 152 _et seq._\n\n\n  L\n\n  Landscape, the beauty of, 159 _et seq._\n\n  Life, a process, 37 _et seq._;\n    omnipresent, 42; 95;\n    an absolute, 96\n\n  Literature, modern, 218, 219\n\n\n  M\n\n  Mabie, Hamilton Wright, 12, 13\n\n  MacLane, Mary, quoted, 160\n\n  Meditations, evening, 78 _et seq._\n\n  Memories, cosmic, 162\n\n  Memory, idea of time dependent on, 92, 93\n\n  Milk, value of, 147\n\n  Milky Way, the, 56\n\n  Morning air, a steriliser, 210\n\n  Morning walk, an early, 205; 208\n\n  Morning walks, 72 _et seq._\n\n  Mountains, peacefulness of, 173, 174\n\n  M\u00fcller, Max, 112\n\n  Multiplicity, subjective character of, 95\n\n  Mystery, the, of nature, 39; 85;\n    Carlyle on, 196, 197\n\n\n  N\n\n  Nature, spirituality of, 34 _et seq._;\n    a universe of subsistences, 51;\n    unity of, 91; 93;\n    beauty of, 164 _et seq._;\n    man's prim\u00e6val habitat, 171;\n    the language of, 193, 194;\n    companionship of, 213\n\n  Neo-Platonists, 90\n\n  Nilgiris, the, 17\n\n\n  O\n\n  \"Oberland Chalet, An,\" quoted, 143\n\n  Ontario, lake, 118, 119\n\n  Otonabee, river, 48\n\n\n  P\n\n  Pantry, the antiquity of the, 155\n\n  Pascal, quoted, 101\n\n  Plato, quoted, 165\n\n  Plotinus, 89, 90\n\n  Poynings, village, 25\n\n\n  R\n\n  Reason, inadequacy of, 97;\n    and moral progress, 101, 102\n\n  Religious tenets, criterion of, 102\n\n  Responsibility, 96, 97\n\n  Rh\u00f4ne, the, 167\n\n  Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, quoted, 202-204\n\n  Ruskin, John, quoted, 161; 220, 221\n\n\n  S\n\n  Sal\u00e8ve, the Grand, 167 _et seq._\n\n  Savoie, Haute, 172\n\n  Science, 191\n\n  Seclusion, benefits of, 117\n\n  Self-consciousness, 217, 218\n\n  S\u00e9nancour, quoted, 161\n\n  Sense, a seventh, 186\n\n  Solar system, motion of, 176, 177\n\n  \"Son of the Marshes, A,\" 13\n\n  Soul, the, 113\n\n  Space, subjective character of, 91; 95\n\n  Spirit of eternal things, the, 39, 85\n\n  Stayner, 53\n\n  Stephen, Sir Leslie, 14\n\n  Strife, universality of, 176\n\n  Sunday in a country town, 121 _et seq._\n\n  Sunshine, Canadian, 70, 71\n\n\n  T\n\n  Tea, as a stimulant, 145 _et seq._\n\n  Tennyson, quoted, 190\n\n  Thatcher, T., quoted, 75\n\n  Thoreau, Henry D., 12;\n    quoted, 200, 201\n\n  Thought, a struggle to conceive the infinite, 131\n\n  Time, subjective character of, 91, 92, 95\n\n  Toronto, 119\n\n  Tragedies, 124 _et seq._\n\n  Transcendentalism, practical, 40 _et seq._\n\n  Troglodytic families, 138\n\n\n  U\n\n  Unity, a spiritual, 112, 113\n\n  Universe, the, imagined as a sphere, 91\n\n  Uxbridge, 23\n\n\n  V\n\n  Van Dyke, Henry, 13\n\n\n  W\n\n  Walk, the essence of a, 5 _et seq._;\n    a woeful, 105 _et seq._\n\n  Walkers, notable, 9 _et seq._\n\n  Walking tour, preparations for a, 133 _et seq._\n\n  Walking tours, 133 _et seq._\n\n  Walks and walking, effects of golf upon, 2 _et seq._;\n    essence of, 5 _et seq._;\n    proper frame of mind for, _ibid._;\n    the mood for, 72 _et seq._;\n    the rivals of angling, 75;\n    instinct for, 103, 104;\n    the pleasures of, 198 _et seq._\n\n  Walks, my earliest, 15 _et seq._;\n    in Burma, _ibid._;\n    in India, 17 _et seq._;\n    in England, 21 _et seq._;\n    on the Sussex Downs, 25 _et seq._;\n    in Buckinghamshire, 31 _et seq._;\n    in Canada, 45 _et seq._;\n    on the banks of the Otonabee, 47 _et seq._;\n    by the Georgian Bay, 53 _et seq._;\n    on the outskirts of an Ontarian country town, 59 _et seq._;\n    a woeful walk, 105, 106;\n    from Toronto, along the Kingston Road, 107 _et seq._;\n    over one of the Passes of the Jura, 149, 150;\n    on the Grand Sal\u00e8ve, 167 _et seq._;\n    early on Monday mornings, 205, 206;\n    of a Sunday before breakfast, 208 _et seq._\n\n  Walton, Izaak, quoted, 72, 73, 74\n\n  Warnings, 180\n\n  Whiting, Charles Goodrich, 13\n\n  Will, 96, 97;\n    freedom of the, 99 _et seq._\n\n  Winter in Canada, 62 _et seq._\n\n  Wood, Edith Elmer, quoted, 143 _et seq._\n\n  Woods, Canadian, 63 _et seq._\n\n  Wordsworth, William, quoted, 7, 111, 112\n\n\nTHE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH\n\n\n\n\n\n[1] See Henry D. Thoreau's \"Walden\"; \"A Week on the Concord and\nMerrimack Rivers\"; \"Winter\"; etc.\n\n[2] See John Burroughs, his \"Birds and Poets\"; \"Locusts and Wild Honey\";\n\"Pepacton\"; \"Signs and Seasons\"; \"Wake Robin\"; \"Winter Sunshine\"; etc.\n\n[3] See Richard Jefferies, his \"Amateur Poaching\"; \"Field and Hedgerow\";\n\"Wild Life in a Southern County\"; \"Nature near London\"; \"Round about a\nGreat Estate\"; \"Wood Magic\"; \"The Story of my Heart.\"\n\n[4] See Hamilton Wright Mabie's \"In the Forest of Arden\"; \"Under the\nTrees and Elsewhere\"; etc.\n\n[5] See Henry Van Dyke's \"Fisherman's Luck, and some other Uncertain\nThings\"; \"Little Rivers: A Book of Essays in Profitable Idleness\"; \"Days\nOff, and other Digressions\"; etc.\n\n[6] See \"In the Green Leaf and the Sere,\" by \"A Son of the Marshes.\"\nEdited by J. A. Owen. Illustrated by G. C. Ha\u00eft\u00e9 and D. C. Nicholl. Also\n\"Drift from Longshore,\" by the same author and editor.\n\n[7] See Charles C. Abbott's \"Upland and Meadow\"; \"Wasteland Wanderings\";\n\"The Birds About Us\"; \"A Naturalist's Rambles about Home\"; \"Outings at\nOdd Times\"; \"Recent Rambles, or, In Touch with Nature\"; \"Travels in a\nTree Top\"; \"Birdland Echoes\"; \"Notes of the Night, and other Outdoor\nSketches\"; etc.\n\n[8] See Charles Goodrich Whiting's \"Walks in New England\"; etc.\n\n[9] See George Borrow's \"Wild Wales: Its People, Language and Scenery.\"\n\n[10] \"Obermann,\" lettre ii.\n\n[11] See his \"In Praise of Walking,\" in _The Monthly Review_ (London:\nMurray) of August, 1901.\n\n[12] Mr Robert F. Stupart, in the \"Handbook of Canada,\" published by the\nPublication Committee of the Local Executive [of the British Association\nfor the Advancement of Science], Toronto: 1897, p. 78.\n\n[13] See \"The Compleat Angler,\" chapter i.\n\n[14] _Ibid._\n\n[15] See a delightful letter to _The Publishers' Circular_ of September\nthe 27th, 1902; vol. lxxvii., p. 325, on \"A Plea for a Long Walk,\" by T.\nThatcher, of 44 College Green, Bristol, England. Also another letter by\nthe same writer on \"42 Miles on 2d. at the Age of 64,\" in the same\nperiodical in its issue of April the 25th, 1903; vol. lxxviii., p. 457.\nThe \"2d.\" means that his food consisted of dry brown-bread crusts only,\nthe cost of which he computes at twopence.\n\n[16] \"Pepacton,\" Foot Paths, p. 205.\n\n[17] _Confer._--\"The primal One, from which all things are, is\neverywhere and nowhere. As being the cause of all things, it is\neverywhere. As being other than all things, it is nowhere.... No\npredicate of Being can be properly applied to it.... It is greatest of\nall, not by magnitude, but by potency.... It is to be regarded as\ninfinite, not because of the impossibility of measuring or counting it,\nbut because of the impossibility of comprehending its power. It is\nperfectly all-sufficing.\"--\"The Neo-Platonists: A Study in the History\nof Hellenism.\" By Thomas Whittaker. Cambridge, 1901. Chapter v., pp. 58,\n59.\n\n[18] See his General Introduction to Ward's \"English Poets,\" vol. i., p.\nxvii. London and New York: Macmillan, 1880.\n\n[19] \"The Mystery of Golf.\" By Arnold Haultain. Second Edition. Pp. 153,\n154. London and New York: Macmillan, 1910.\n\n[20] Pascal, \"Pensees,\" XVI. iv.\n\n[21] _Ibid._ iii.\n\n[22] Tennyson, \"The Ancient Sage.\"\n\n[23] See his \"Farthest North,\" ii. 73 _et seq._; 76 _et seq._; _et\npassim_.\n\n[24] \"An Oberland Chalet.\" By Edith Elmer Wood. London: T. Werner\nLaurie. No date, but probably _circa_ 1912. Pp. 256-260.\n\n[25] And I thank you, C.B.L.\n\n[26] \"The Path to Rome,\" p. 16.\n\n[27] _Ibid._, p. 341.\n\n[28] For these I am entirely indebted to my younger brother, Professor\nHerbert E. T. Haultain, A.M.Inst.C.E., etc.\n\n[29] Quoted in _The Academy and Literature_ (London) of October the 4th,\n1902, p. 340.\n\n[30] \"The Story of Mary MacLane,\" by Herself. Chicago: Herbert S. Stone\n& Company, 1902.\n\n[31] In _The New York World_ of September the 14th, 1902, p. 7.\n\n[32] \"Wild Wales,\" Introduction.\n\n[33] \"The Seven Lamps of Architecture,\" chapter vi., The Lamp of\nMemory, \u00a7i.\n\n[34] Obermann, Lettre XXXVI.\n\n[35] And his bride complained of the damp! (\u03b2\u03b1\u03bb\u03bb\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 \u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 \u1f01\u03bc\u03b1\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd \u03bc\u03b5,\n\u03ba\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b5\u03b9\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1 \u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u03b1 \u03bc\u03b9\u03b1\u03b9\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2.--Theocritus, Idyll XXVII. 52).\n\n[36] Browning, \"Two in the Campagna.\"\n\n[37] _Confer_ Edward Carpenter: \"The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of\nHuman Evolution and Transfiguration,\" page 51. London: George Allen,\n1912. Also Mr Havelock Ellis, his \"Studies in the Psychology of Sex,\"\nvol. vi., p. 558.\n\n[38] See Plato, Symposium, 180:--\"\u03c0\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c2 \u03b3\u03b1\u03c1 \u1f31\u03c3\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd, \u1f41\u03c4\u03b9 \u03bf\u03c5\u03ba \u1f11\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03bd \u1f01\u03bd\u03b5\u03c5\n\u1f19\u03c1\u03c9\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f09\u03c6\u03c1\u03bf\u03b4\u03b9\u03c4\u03b7, \u03ba. \u03c4. \u03bb.\"\n\n[39] \"Sussex,\" first stanza.--\"The Five Nations,\" p. 69. New York:\nDoubleday, Page & Co., 1903.\n\n[40] \"The Voyage of the _Beagle_,\" chapter xx.\n\n[41] Professor W. W. Campbell, of the Lick Observatory, California,\ncomputes the velocity of the Solar System through space at approximately\nnineteen kilom\u00e8tres per second (see Lick Observatory Bulletin, No. 195,\nvol. vi. (1910-1911), p. 123. See also Bulletin No. 196, vol. vi., pp.\n125 _et seq._). What, in interstellar space, the precise curve described\nby my finger nail was, especially if to rotation, revolution, and the\napproach to Hercules, we add nutation, tidal drag, and the precession of\nthe equinoxes, to say nothing of earth tremours, I should much like to\nknow.\n\n[42] All my figures are, of course, rough in the extreme; and I give\nProfessor Campbell the benefit of about fifty miles a minute because he\nsays \"approximately.\"\n\n[43] \"The Pageant of Summer.\"\n\n[44] \"The Pleasures of Life,\" Part II., chapter viii.\n\n[45] \"Journal, Lettres, et Poemes,\" p. 17. Paris, 1880.\n\n[46] \"Das Sch\u00f6ne ist ein Urph\u00e4nomen, das zwar nie selber zur Erscheinung\nkommt.\"--\"Dichtung und Wahrheit.\"\n\n[47] \"Hippolytus.\"\n\n[48] \"Prometheus Unbound.\"\n\n[49] \"Towards Democracy.\" Third Edition, pp. 149, 151. London: Fisher\nUnwin, 1892.\n\n[50] Essay on Characteristics. Works (Shilling Edition), ix. 15.\n\n[51] Essay on Diderot. Works, x. 26. The italics are Carlyle's.\n\n[52] Additions to the \"Confessions of an Opium-Eater,\" p. 381. Boston:\nHoughton, Mifflin & Co., 1876.\n\n[53] \"Walden,\" pp. 98, 99, in David Douglas's Edinburgh Edition, 1884.\n\n[54] \"Journal Intime,\" p. 45. London: The Macmillan Co., 1890.--I avail\nmyself of Mrs Humphry Ward's admirable translation.\n\n[55] \"Confessions,\" Partie I. Livre IV. Paris: Lefevre's Edition; 1819,\nvol. i., pp. 259, 260.\n\n[56] Thirty-four years separated the tour of which he speaks from the\ndate when he penned these words.\n\n[57] The fine phrase of Mrs Humphry Ward. See her preface to her\ntranslation of Amiel's \"Journal,\" last paragraph.\n\n[58] Eug\u00e9nie de Gu\u00e9rin, \"Journal et Fragments,\" p. 181. Twenty-fourth\nEdition. Paris: Didier et Cie, 1879.\n\n[59] \"Modern Painters,\" Part VI., chapter i., paragraph 7.--Vol. v., pp.\n5 and 6 of Messrs George Allen & Sons' edition.\n\n[60] 1 John ii. 16.\n\n[61] Exodus xxxiv. 8.\n\n[62] \"Cette immense circulation de vie qui s'op\u00e8re dans l'ample sein de\nla nature; ... cette vie qui sourd d'une fontaine invisible et gonfle\nles veines de cet univers.\"--Maurice de Gu\u00e9rin, \"Journal,\" p. 22. Paris,\n1880.","title":"Of Walks and Walking Tours: An Attempt to find a Philosophy and a Creed","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":30976}