HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 PARIS 
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE 
 
HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 BY 
 
 HILAIRE BELLOC, M.P. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 1906 
 
13 4-2,1 
 
 First Published in igob 
 

 TO 
 
 THE OTHER MAN 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 The North Sea . 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 The Singer 
 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 ' On " Mailles " . 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 The Pyrenean Hive 
 
 
 
 
 19 
 
 Delft . . . . 
 
 
 
 
 25 
 
 The Wing of Dalua 
 
 
 
 
 31 
 
 On Ely . . . . 
 
 
 
 
 44 
 
 The Inn of the Margeride . 
 
 
 
 
 55 
 
 A Family of the Fens . 
 
 
 
 
 69 
 
 The Election 
 
 
 
 
 82 
 
 Arles 
 
 
 
 
 87 
 
 The Griffin 
 
 
 
 
 . 93 
 
 • The First Day's March 
 
 
 
 
 102 
 
 The Sea-Wall of the Wash 
 
 
 
 
 . 118 
 
 The Cerdagne 
 
 
 
 
 130 
 
 Carcassonne 
 
 
 
 
 • 135 
 
 Lynn 
 
 
 
 
 . 141 
 
 The Guns . ' . 
 
 
 
 
 . 149 
 
 The Looe Stream 
 
 
 
 
 . 162 
 
 ' Roncesvalles 
 
 
 
 
 . 169 
 
 The Slant off the Land 
 
 
 
 
 . 175 
 
 The Canigou 
 
 
 
 . 182 
 
 The Man and his Wood 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 , 188 
 
Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 The Channel 
 
 The Mowing of a Field 
 
 The Roman Road 
 
 The Onion-eater 
 
 The Return to England 
 
 The Valley of the Rother 
 
 The Coronation . 
 
 The Men of the Desert 
 
 The Departure . 
 
 The Idea of a Pilgrimage 
 
 The Arena 
 
 At the Sign of the Lion 
 
 The Autumn and the Fall of Leaves 
 
 The Good Woman 
 
 The Harbour in the North 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 . 
 
 195 
 
 , 
 
 202 
 
 • 
 
 217 
 
 . 
 
 224 
 
 . 
 
 230 
 
 . 
 
 237 
 
 
 243 
 
 . 
 
 247 
 
 
 257 
 
 . 
 
 264 
 
 
 271 
 
 . 
 
 . 285 
 
 F Leaves 
 
 297 
 
 . 
 
 302 
 
 . 
 
 307 
 
 Many of these pages have appeared in the " Speaker," 
 the " Pilot," the " Morning Post," the " Daily News," 
 the "Pall Mall Magazine," the "Evening Standard," 
 the "Morning Leader," and the "Westminster Gazette," 
 to whose editors the author's best thanks are due for 
 the permission to reprint them. 
 
THERE were once two men. They were men 
 of might and breeding. They were young, 
 they were intolerant, they were hale. Were there 
 for humans as there is for dogs a tribunal to deter- 
 mine excellence ; were there judges of anthropoidal 
 points and juries to give prizes for manly race, 
 vigour, and the rest, undoubtedly these two men 
 would have gained the gold and the pewter medals. 
 They were men absolute. 
 
 They loved each other like brothers, yet they 
 quarrelled like Socialists. They loved each other 
 because they had in common the bond of man- 
 kind; they quarrelled because they differed upon 
 nearly all other things. The one was of the Faith, 
 the other most certainly was not. The one sang 
 loudly, the other sweetly. The one was stronger, 
 the other more cunning. The one rode horses 
 with a long stirrup, the other with a short. The 
 one was indifferent to danger, the other forced 
 himself at it. The one could write verse, the other 
 was quite incapable thereof. The one could read 
 and quote Theocritus, the other read and quoted 
 
X HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 himself alone. The high gods had given to one 
 judgment, to the other valour; but to both that 
 measure of misfortune which is their Gift to those 
 whom they cherish. 
 
 From this last proceeded in them both a great 
 knowledge of truth and a defence of it, to the 
 tedium of their friends : a devotion to the beauty 
 of women and of this world ; an outspoken hatred 
 of certain things and men, and, alas! a permanent 
 sadness also. All these things the gods gave 
 them in the day when the decision was taken upon 
 Olympus that these two men should not profit by 
 any great good except Friendship, and that all 
 their lives through Necessity should jerk her bit 
 between their teeth, and even at moments goad 
 their honour. 
 
 The high gods, which are names only to the 
 multitude, visited these men. Dionysius came to 
 them with all his company once, at dawn, 
 upon the Surrey hills, and drove them in his car 
 from a suburb whose name I forget right out into 
 the Weald. Pallas Athene taught them by word 
 of mouth, and the Cytherean was their rosy, warm, 
 unfailing friend. Apollo loved them. He 
 bestowed upon them under his own hand the 
 power not only of remembering all songs, but 
 even of composing light airs of their own ; and 
 
HILLS AND THE SEA xi 
 
 Pan, who is hairy by nature and a lurking fellow 
 afraid of others, was reconciled to their easy com- 
 radeship, and would accompany them into the 
 mountains when they were remote from mankind. 
 Upon these occasions he revealed to them the life 
 of trees and the spirits that haunt the cataracts, so 
 that they heard voices calling where no one else 
 had ever heard them, and that they saw stones 
 turned into animals and men. 
 
 Many things came to them in common. Once 
 in the Hills, a thousand miles from home, when 
 they had not seen men for a very long time, Dalua 
 touched them with his wing, and they went mad 
 for the space of thirty hours. It was by a stream 
 in a profound gorge at evening and under a fretful 
 moon. The next morning they lustrated them- 
 selves with water, and immediately they were 
 healed. 
 
 At another time they took a rotten old leaky 
 boat (they were poor and could afford no other) — 
 they took, I say, a rotten old leaky boat whose 
 tiller was loose and whose sails mouldy, and whose 
 blocks were jammed and creaking, and whose 
 rigging frayed, and they boldly set out together 
 into the great North Sea. 
 
 It blew a capful, it blew half a gale, it blew a 
 gale : little they cared, these sons of Ares, these 
 
xii HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 cousins of the broad daylight ! There were no 
 men on earth save these two who would not have 
 got her under a trysail and a rag of a storm-jib 
 with fifteen reefs and another : not so the heroes. 
 Not a stitch would they take in. They carried all 
 her canvas, and cried out to the north-east wind : 
 '*We know her better than you! She'll carry 
 away before she capsizes, and she'll burst long 
 before she'll carry away." So they ran before it 
 largely till the bows were pressed right under, and 
 it was no human power that saved the gybe. They 
 went tearing and foaming before it, singing a 
 Saga as befitted the place and time. For it was 
 their habit to sing in every place its proper song — 
 in Italy a Ritornella, in Spain a Segeduilla, in 
 Provence a Pastourou, in Sussex a Glee, but on 
 the great North Sea a Saga. And they rolled at 
 last into Orford Haven on the very tiptop of the 
 highest tide that ever has run since the Noachic 
 Deluge ; and even so, as they crossed the bar they 
 heard the grating of the keel. That night they 
 sacrificed oysters to Poseidon. 
 
 And when they slept the Sea Lady, the silver- 
 footed one, came up through the waves and kissed 
 them in their sleep; for she had seen no such men 
 since Achilles. Then she went back through the 
 waves with all her Nereids around her to where 
 
HILLS AND THE SEA xiii 
 
 her throne is, beside her old father in the depths 
 of the sea. 
 
 In their errantry they did great good. It was 
 they that rescued Andromeda, though she lied, as 
 a woman will, and gave the praise to her lover. 
 It was they, also, who slew the Tarasque on his 
 second appearance, when he came in a thunder- 
 storm across the broad bridge of Beaucaire, all 
 scaled in crimson and gold, forty foot long and 
 twenty foot high, galloping like an angry dog 
 and belching forth flames and smoke. They also 
 hunted down the Bactrian Bear, who had claws 
 like the horns of a cow, and of whom it is written 
 in the Sacred Books of the East that : 
 
 A Bear out of Bactria came, 
 
 And he wandered all over the world, 
 And his eyes were aglint and aflame, 
 And the tip of his caudal was curled. 
 
 Oh ! they hunted him down and they cut him up, 
 and they cured one of his hams and ate it, thereby 
 acquiring something of his mighty spirit. . . . 
 And they it was who caught the great Devil of 
 Dax and tied him up and swinged him with an 
 ash-plant till he swore that he would haunt the 
 woods no more. 
 
 And here it is that you ask me for their names. 
 Their names ! Their names? Why, they gave them- 
 
xiv HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 selves a hundred names : now this, now that, but 
 always names of power. Thus upon that great 
 march of theirs from Gascony into Navarre, one, 
 on the crest of the mountains, cut himself a huge 
 staff and cried loudly : 
 
 ** My name is URSUS, and this is my staff dread- 
 nought : let the people in the Valley be afraid ! " 
 
 Whereat the other cut himself a yet huger staff, 
 and cried out in a yet louder voice : 
 
 **My name is TAURUS, and this is my staff 
 CRACK-SKULL : let them tremble who live in the 
 Dales ! " 
 
 And when they had said this they strode shouting 
 down the mountain-side and conquered the town 
 of Elizondo, where they are worshipped as gods to 
 this day. Their names ? They gave themselves a 
 hundred names ! 
 
 ** Well, w^ell," you say to me then, ** no matter 
 about the names : what are names ? The men 
 themselves concern me! . . . Tell me," you go^ 
 on, ** tell me where I am to find them in the flesh, 
 and converse with them. I am in haste to see 
 them with my own eyes." 
 
 It is useless to ask. They are dead. They will 
 never again be heard upon the heaths at morning 
 singing their happy songs : they will never more 
 drink with their peers in the deep ingle-nooks of 
 
HILLS AND THE SEA xv 
 
 home. They are perished. They have disap- 
 peared. Alas ! The valiant fellows ! 
 
 But lest some list of their proud deeds and 
 notable excursions should be lost on earth, and 
 turn perhaps into legend, or what is worse, fade 
 away unrecorded, this book has been got together ; 
 in which will be found now a sight they saw 
 together, and now a sight one saw by himself, and 
 now a sight seen only by the other. As also certain 
 thoughts and admirations which the second or 
 the first enjoyed, or both together : and indeed 
 many other towns, seas, places, mountains, rivers, 
 and men — whatever could be crammed between 
 the covers. 
 
 And there is an end of it. 
 
HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 THE NORTH SEA 
 
 IT was on or about a Tuesday (I speak without 
 boasting) that my companion and I crept in 
 by darkness to the unpleasant harbour of Lowestoft. 
 And I say ^* unpleasant " because, however charm- 
 ing for the large Colonial yacht, it is the very devil 
 for the little English craft that tries to lie there. 
 Great boats are moored in the Southern Basin, 
 each with two head ropes to a buoy, so that the 
 front of them makes a kind of entanglement such 
 as is used to defend the front of a position in war- 
 fare. Through this entanglement you are told to 
 creep as best you can, and if you cannot (who 
 could ?) a man comes off in a boat and moors you, 
 not head and stern, but, as it were, criss-cross, or 
 slant-ways, so that you are really foul of the next 
 berth alongside, and that in our case was a little 
 steamer. 
 
 Then when you protest that there may be a 
 collision at midnight, the man in the boat says 
 
 B 
 
2 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 merrily, '^Oh, the wind will keep you off," as 
 though winds never changed or dropped. 
 
 I should like to see moorings done that way, at 
 Cowes, say, or in Southampton Water. I should 
 like to see a lot of craft laid head and tail to the 
 wind with a yard between each, and, when Lord 
 Isaacs protested, I should like to hear the harbour 
 man say in a distant voice, ^^ Sic volo, sicjuheo " (a 
 classical quotation misquoted, as is the South- 
 country way), *'the wind never changes here." 
 
 Such as it was, there it was, and trusting in the 
 wind and God's providence we lay criss-cross in 
 Lowestoft South Basin. The Great Bear shuffled 
 round the pole and streaks of wispy clouds lay out 
 in heaven. 
 
 The next morning there was a jolly great breeze 
 from the East, and my companion said, *'Let us 
 put out to sea." But before I go further, let me , 
 explain to you and to the whole world what vast 
 courage and meaning underlay these simple words. 
 In what were we to put to sea? 
 
 This little boat was but twenty-five feet over all. 
 She had lived since 1864 i^^ inland waters, mous- 
 ing about rivers, and lying comfortably in mud- 
 banks. She had a sprit seventeen foot outboard, 
 and I appeal to the Trinity Brothers to explain what 
 that means ; a sprit dangerous and horrible where 
 there are waves ; a sprit that will catch every sea 
 and wet the foot of your jib in the best of weathers ; 
 
THE NORTH SEA 8 
 
 a sprit that weighs down already over-weighted 
 bows and buries them with every plunge. Quid 
 dkam? A Sprit of Erebus. And why had the 
 boat such a sprit? Because her mast was so far 
 aft, her forefoot so deep and narrow, her helm so 
 insufficient, that but for this gigantic sprit she 
 would never come round, and even as it was she 
 hung in stays and had to have her weather jib- 
 sheet hauled in for about five minutes before she 
 would come round. So much for the sprit. 
 
 This is not all, nor nearly all. She had about 
 six inches of free-board. She did not rise at the 
 bows : not she ! Her mast was dependent upon a 
 fore-stay (spliced) and was not stepped, but worked 
 in a tabernacle. She was a hundred and two years 
 old. Her counter was all but awash. Her helm 
 — I will describe her helm. It waggled back and 
 forth without effect unless you jerked it suddenly 
 over. Then it ^*bit," as it were, into the rudder- 
 post, and she just felt it — but only just — the 
 ronyon ! 
 
 She did not reef as you and I do by sane reefing 
 points, but in a gimcrack fashion with a long lace, 
 so that it took half an hour to take in sail. She 
 had not a jib and foresail, but just one big head- 
 sail as high as the peak, and if one wanted to 
 shorten sail after the enormous labour of reefing 
 the mainsail (which no man could do alone) one 
 had to change jibs forward and put up a storm 
 
4 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 sail — under which (by the way) she was harder to 
 put round than ever. 
 
 Did she leak? No, I think not. It is a pious 
 opinion. I think she was tight under the compo- 
 sition, but above that and between wind and 
 water she positively showed daylight. She was a 
 basket. Glory be to God that such a boat should 
 swim at all ! 
 
 But she drew little water ? The devil she did ! 
 There was a legend in the yard where she was 
 built that she drew five feet four, but on a close 
 examination of her (on the third time she was 
 wrecked), I calculated with my companion that she 
 drew little if anything under six feet. All this I 
 say knowing well that I shall soon put her up for 
 sale ; but that is neither here nor there. I shall 
 not divulge her name. 
 
 So we put to sea, intending to run to Harwich. 
 There was a strong flood down the coast, and the 
 wind was to the north of north-east. But the 
 wind was with the tide — to that you owe the lives 
 of the two men and the lection of this delightful 
 story ; for had the tide been against the wind 
 and the water steep and mutinous, you would 
 never have seen either of us again : indeed we 
 should have trembled out of sight for ever. 
 
 The wind was with the tide, and in a following 
 lump of a sea, without combers and with a rising 
 glass, we valorously set out, and, missing the 
 
THE NORTH SEA 5 
 
 South Pier by four inches, we occupied the 
 deep. 
 
 For one short half-hour things went more or less 
 well. I noted a white horse or two to windward, 
 but my companion said it was only the sea break- 
 ing over the outer sands. She plunged a lot, but 
 I flattered myself she was carrying Ccesar, and 
 thought it no great harm. We had started with- 
 out food, meaning to cook a breakfast when we 
 were well outside : but men's plans are on the 
 knees of the gods. The god called ^olus, that 
 blows from the north-east of the world (you may 
 see him on old maps — it is a pity they don't put 
 him on the modern), said to his friends : *' I see a 
 little boat. It is long since I sank one " ; and 
 all together they gave chase, like Imperialists, to 
 destroy what was infinitely weak. 
 
 I looked to windward and saw the sea tumbling, 
 and a great number of white waves. My heart was 
 still so high that I gave them the names of the 
 waves in the eighteenth Iliad \ The long-haired 
 wave, the graceful wave, the wave that breaks on 
 an island a long way off, the sandy wave, the 
 wave before us, the wave that brings good tidings. 
 But they were in no mood for poetry. They began 
 to be great, angry, roaring waves, like the chiefs 
 of charging clans, and though I tried to keep up 
 my courage with an excellent song by Mr. New- 
 bolt, ** Slung between the round shot in Nombre 
 
6 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 Dios Bay," I soon found it useless, and pinned 
 my soul to the tiller. Every sea following caught 
 my helm and battered it. I hung on like a 
 stout gentleman, and prayed to the seven gods 
 of the land. My companion said things were no 
 worse than when we started. God forgive him 
 the courageous lie. The wind and the sea rose. 
 
 It was about opposite Southwold that the danger 
 became intolerable, and that I thought it could 
 only end one way. Which way? The way out, 
 my honest Jingoes, which you are more afraid of 
 than of anything else in the world. We ran before 
 it ; we were already over-canvased, and she buried 
 her nose every time, so that I feared I should next 
 be cold in the water, seeing England from the top 
 of a wave. Every time she rose the jib let out a 
 hundredweight of sea water ; the sprit buckled and 
 cracked, and I looked at the splice in the forestay 
 to see if it yet held. I looked a thousand times, 
 and a thousand times the honest splice that I had 
 poked together in a pleasant shelter under Bungay 
 Woods (in the old times of peace, before ever the 
 sons of the Achaians came to the land) stood the 
 strain. The sea roared over the fore-peak, and 
 gurgled out of the scuppers, and still we held on. 
 Till (^olus blowing much more loudly, and, what 
 you may think a lie, singing through the rigging, 
 though we were before the wind) opposite Alde- 
 burgh I thought she could not bear it any more. 
 
THE NORTH SEA 7 
 
 I turned to my companion and said : ** Let us 
 drive her for the shore and have done with it ; she 
 cannot live in this. We will jump when she 
 touches." But he, having a chest of oak, and 
 bein^ bound three times with brass, said : '' Drive 
 her through it. B is not often we ham such a fair 
 -wind:' With these words he went below ; I hung 
 on for Orfordness. The people on the strand at 
 Aldeburgh saw us. An old man desired to put 
 out in a boat to our aid. He danced with fear. 
 The scene still stands in their hollow minds. 
 
 As Orfordness came near, the seas that had 
 hitherto followed like giants in battle now took 
 to a mad scrimmage. They leapt pyramidically, 
 they heaved up horribly under her ; she hardly 
 obeyed her helm, and even in that gale her canvas 
 flapped in the troughs. Then in despair I prayed 
 to the boat itself (since nothing else could hear me), 
 *'Oh, Boat," for so I was taught the vocative, 
 ** bear me safe round this corner, and I will scatter 
 wine over your decks. " She heard me and rounded 
 the point, and so terrified was I that (believe me if 
 you will) I had not even the soul to remember how 
 ridiculous and laughable it was that sailors should 
 call this Cape of Storms *Hhe Onion." 
 
 Once round it, for some reason I will not explain, 
 but that I believe connected with my prayer, the 
 sea grew tolerable. It still came onto the land (we 
 could sail with the wind starboard), and the wind 
 
8 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 blew harder yet ; but we ran before it more easily, 
 because the water was less steep. We were racing 
 down the long drear shingle bank of Orford, past 
 what they call ^* the life-boat house" on the chart 
 (there is no life-boat there, nor ever was), past the 
 look-out of the coastguard, till we saw white water 
 breaking on the bar of the Aide. 
 
 Then I said to my companion, *^ There are, I 
 know, two mouths to this harbour, a northern and 
 a southern ; which shall we take ? " But he said, 
 ** Take the nearest." 
 
 I then, reciting my firm beliefs and remember- 
 ing my religion, ran for the white water. Before 
 I knew well that she was round, the sea was yellow 
 like a pond, the waves no longer heaved, but 
 raced and broke as they do upon a beach. One 
 greener, kindly and roaring, a messenger of the 
 gale grown friendly after its play with us, took us 
 up on its crest and ran us into the deep and calm 
 beyond the bar, but as we crossed, the gravel 
 ground beneath our keel. So the boat made 
 harbour. Then, without hesitation, she cast her- 
 self upon the mud, and I, sitting at the tiller, my 
 companion ashore, and pushing at her inordinate 
 sprit, but both revelling in safety, we gave thanks 
 and praise. That night we scattered her decks 
 with wine as I had promised, and lay easy in deep 
 water within. 
 
 But which of you who talk so loudly about the 
 
THE NORTH SEA 9 
 
 island race and the command of the sea have had 
 such a day ? I say to you all it does not make one 
 boastful, but fills one with humility and right 
 vision. Go out some day and run before it in a 
 gale. You will talk less and think more ; I dis- 
 like the memory of your faces. I have written 
 for your correction. Read less, good people, and 
 sail more ; and above all, leave us in peace. 
 
THE SINGER 
 
 THE other day as I was taking my pleasure 
 along a river called ^'The River of Gold," 
 from which one can faintly see the enormous 
 mountains which shut off Spain from Europe, as 
 I walked, I say, along the Maille, or ordered and 
 planted quay of the town, I heard, a long way off, 
 a man singing. His singing was of that very 
 deep and vibrating kind which Gascons take for 
 natural singing, and which makes one think of 
 hollow metal and of well-tuned bells, for it sounds 
 through the air in waves ; the further it is the 
 more it booms, and it occupies the whole place in 
 which it rises. There is no other singing like it in 
 the world. He was too far off for any words to be 
 heard, and I confess I was too occupied in listening 
 to the sound of the music to turn round at first and 
 notice who it was that sang ; but as he gradually 
 approached between the houses towards the river 
 upon that happy summer morning, I left the sight 
 of the houses, and myself sauntered nearer to him 
 to learn more about him and his song. 
 
 I saw a man of fifty or thereabouts, not a moun- 
 taineer, but a man of the plains — tall and square, 
 
 10 
 
THE SINGER 11 
 
 large and full of travel. His face was brown like 
 chestnut wood, his eyes were grey but ardent ; his 
 brows were fierce, strong, and of the colour of 
 shining metal, half way between iron and silver. 
 He bore himself as though he were still well able 
 to wrestle with younger men in the fairs, and his 
 step, though extremely slow (for he was intent 
 upon his song), was determined as it was deliber- 
 ate. I came yet nearer and saw that he carried a 
 few pots and pans and also a kind of kit in a bag : 
 in his right hand was a long and polished staff of 
 ashwood, shod with iron ; and still as he went he 
 sang. The song now rose nearer me and more 
 loud, and at last I could distinguish the words, 
 which were, in English, these : 
 
 **Men that cook in copper know well how 
 difficult is the cleaning of copper. All cooking is a 
 double labour unless the copper is properly tinned." 
 
 This couplet rhymed well in the tongue he used, 
 which was not Languedoc nor even Bearnais, 
 but ordinary French of the north, well chosen, 
 rhythmical and sure. When he had sung this 
 couplet once, glancing, as he sang it, nobly up- 
 wards to the left and the right at the people in 
 their houses, he paused a little, set down his kit 
 and his pots and his pans, and leant upon his stick 
 to rest. A man in white clothes with a white 
 square cap on his head ran out of a neighbouring 
 door and gave him a saucepan, which he accepted 
 with a solemn salute, and then, as though invigor- 
 
12 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 ated by such good fortune, he lifted his burdens 
 again and made a dignified progress of some few 
 steps forward, nearer to the place in which I stood. 
 He halted again and resumed his song. 
 
 It had a quality in it which savoured at once of 
 the pathetic and of the steadfast ; its few notes re- 
 called to me those classical themes which conceal 
 something of dreadful fate and of necessity, but 
 are yet instinct with dignity and with the majestic 
 purpose of the human will, and Athens would 
 have envied such a song. The words were these : 
 
 **A11 kinds of game, Izard, Quails and Wild 
 Pigeon, are best roasted upon a spit ; but what 
 spit is so clean and fresh as a spit that has been 
 newly tinned ? " 
 
 When he had sung this verse by way of chal- 
 lenge to the world, he halted once more and 
 mopped his face with a great handkerchief, wait- 
 ing, perhaps, for a spit to be brought ; but none 
 came. The spits of the town were new, and 
 though the people loved his singing, yet they 
 were of too active and sensible a kind to waste 
 pence for nothing. When he saw that spits were 
 not forthcoming he lifted up his kit again and 
 changed his subject just by so much as might 
 attract another sort of need. He sang— but now 
 more violently, and as though with a worthy 
 
 protest : Le li^vre et le lapln, 
 
 Quand c'est bien cuit, 9a fait du bien. 
 
 That is: **Hare and rabbit, properly cooked, 
 
THE SINGER 13 
 
 do one great good," and then added after the 
 necessary pause and with a gesture half of offering 
 and half of disdain: '^But who can call them 
 well cooked if the tinning of the pot has been 
 neglected?" And into this last phrase he added 
 notes which hinted of sadness and of disillusion. 
 It was very fine. 
 
 As he was now quite near me and ready, through 
 the slackness of trade, to enter into a conversation, 
 I came quite close and said to him, ^ ' I wish you good 
 day," to which he answered, ''And I to you and 
 the company," though there was no company. 
 
 Then I said, ''You sing and so advertise your 
 trade?" 
 
 He answered, " I do. It lifts the heart, it 
 shortens the way, it attracts the attention of the 
 citizens, it guarantees good work." 
 
 " In what way," said I, " does it guarantee good 
 work?" 
 
 "The man," he answered, " who sings loudly, 
 clearly, and well, is a man in good health. He is 
 master of himself. He is strict and well-managed. 
 When people hear him they say, ' Here is a 
 prompt, ready and serviceable man. He is not 
 afraid. There is no rudeness in him. He is 
 urbane, swift and to the point. There is method 
 in this fellow.* All these things may be in the 
 man who does not sing, but singing makes them 
 apparent. Therefore in our trade we sing." 
 
14 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 ^* But there must be some," I said, ** who do not 
 sing and who yet are good tinners." 
 
 At this he gave a little shrug of his shoulders 
 and spread down his hands slightly but impera- 
 tively. '* There are such," said he. ^^They are 
 even numerous. But while they get less trade 
 they are also less happy men. For I would have 
 you note (saving your respect and that of the 
 company) that this singing has a quality. It does 
 good within as well as without. It pleases the 
 singer in his very self as well as brings him 
 work and clients." 
 
 Then I said, ** You are right, and I wish to God 
 I had something to tin ; let me however tell you 
 something in place of the trade I cannot offer you. 
 All things are trine, as you have heard " (here he 
 nodded), ^*and your singing does, therefore, not a 
 double but a triple good. For it gives you pleasure 
 within, it brings in trade and content from others, 
 and it delights the world around you. It is an 
 admirable thing." 
 
 When he heard this he was very pleased. He 
 took off his enormous hat, which was of straw and 
 as big as a wheel, and said, ** Sir, to the next 
 meeting ! " and went off singing with a happier 
 and more triumphant note, *' Carrots, onions, 
 lentils, and beans, depend upon the tinner for their 
 worth to mankind." 
 
ON "MAILLES" 
 
 A^^MAILLE" is a place set with trees in 
 regular order so as to form alleys ; sand and 
 gravel are laid on the earth beneath the trees, 
 masonry of great solidity, grey, and exquisitely 
 worked, surround the whole except on one side, 
 where strong stone pillars carry heavy chains 
 across the entrance. A '^Maille" takes about two 
 hundred years to mature, remains in perfection for 
 about a hundred more, and then, for all I know, 
 begins to go off. But neither the exact moment 
 at which it fails nor the length of its decline is 
 yet fixed, for all ^^Mailles" date from the seven- 
 teenth century at earliest, and the time when most 
 were constructed was that of Charles IPs youth 
 and Louis XIV's maturity — or am I wrong? 
 Were these two men not much of an age? 
 
 I am far from books ; I am up in the Pyrenees. 
 Let me consider dates and reconstruct my formula. 
 I take it that Charles II was more than a boy 
 when Worcester was fought and when he drank 
 that glass of ale at Houghton, at the ** George 
 and Dragon " there, and crept along under the 
 Downs to Bramber and so to Shoreham, where he 
 
 15 
 
16 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 took ship and was free. I take it, therefore, that 
 when he came back in 1660 he must have been in 
 the thirties, more or less, but how far in the 
 thirties I dare not affirm. 
 
 Now, in 1659, the year before Charles II came 
 back, Mazarin signed the treaty with Spain. At 
 that time Louis XIV must have been quite a 
 young man. Again, he died about thirty years 
 after Charles II, and he was seventy something 
 when he died. 
 
 I am increasingly certain that Charles II was 
 older than Louis XIV. ... I affirm it. I feel no 
 hesitation. . . . 
 
 Lord ! How dependent is mortal man upon 
 books of reference ! An editor or a minister of the 
 Crown with books of reference at his elbow will 
 seem more learned than Erasmus himself in the 
 wilds. But let any man who reads this (and I ani 
 certain five out of six have books of reference by 
 them as they read), I say, let any man who reads 
 this ask himself whether he would rather be where 
 he is, in London, on this August day (for it is 
 August) or where I am, which is up in Los Altos, 
 the very high Pyrenees, far from every sort of 
 derivative and secondary thing and close to all 
 things primary? 
 
 I will describe this place. It is a forest of beech 
 and pine ; it grows upon a mountain-side so steep 
 that only here and there is there a ledge on which 
 
ON "MAILLES " 17 
 
 to camp. Great precipices of limestone diversify 
 the wood and show through the trees, tall and 
 white beyond them. One has to pick one's way 
 very carefully along the steep from one night's 
 camp to another, and often one spends whole 
 hours seeking up and down to turn a face of rock 
 one cannot cross. 
 
 It seems dead silent. There are few birds, and 
 even at dawn one only hears a twittering here and 
 there. Swirls of cloud form and pass beneath one 
 in the gorge and hurry up the opposing face of the 
 ravine ; they add to this impression of silence : and 
 the awful height of the pines and the utter remote- 
 ness from men in some way enhance it. Yet, 
 though it seems dead silent, it is not really so, and 
 if you were suddenly put here from the midst 
 of London, you would be confused by a noise 
 which we who know the place continually forget — 
 and that is the waterfalls. 
 
 All the way down the gorge for miles, sawing 
 its. cut in sheer surfaces through the rock, crashes 
 a violent stream, and all the valley is full of its 
 thunder. But it is so continuous, so sedulous, 
 that it becomes part of oneself. One does not lose 
 it at night as one falls asleep, nor does one recover 
 it in the morning, when dreams are disturbed by 
 a little stir of life in the undergrowth and one 
 opens one's eyes to see above one the bronze of the 
 dawn, 
 c 
 
18 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 It possesses one, does this noise of the torrent, 
 and when, after many days in such a wood, I pick 
 my way back by marks I know to a ford, and 
 thence to an old shelter long abandoned, and 
 thence to the faint beginnings of a path, and thence 
 to the high road and so to men ; when I come 
 down into the plains I shall miss the torrent and 
 feel ill at ease, hardly knowing what I miss, 
 and I shall recall Los Altos, the high places, and 
 remember nothing but their loneliness and silence. 
 
 I shall saunter in one of the towns of the plain, 
 St. Girons or another, along the riverside and 
 under the lime trees . . . which reminds me of 
 **Mailles"! Little pen, little fountain pen, little 
 vagulous, blandulous pen, companion and friend, 
 whither have you led me, and why cannot you 
 learn the plodding of your trade ? 
 
THE PYRENEAN HIVE 
 
 SHUT in between two of the greatest hills in 
 Europe — hills almost as high as Etna, and 
 covering with their huge bases half a county of 
 land — there lies, in the Spanish Pyrenees, a little 
 town. It has been mentioned in books very rarely, 
 and visited perhaps more rarely. Of three men 
 whom in my life I have heard speak its name, two 
 only had written of it, and but one had seen it. 
 Yet to see it is to learn a hundred things. 
 
 There is no road to it. No wheeled thing has 
 ever been seen in its streets. The crest of the 
 Pyrenees (which are here both precipitous and 
 extremely high) is not a ridge nor an edge, but a 
 great wall of slabs, as it were, leaning up against 
 the sky. Through a crack in this wall, between 
 two of these huge slabs, the mountaineers for 
 many thousand years have wormed their way across 
 the hills, but the height and the extreme steepness 
 of the last four thousand feet have kept that 
 passage isolated and ill-known. Upon the French 
 side the path has recently been renewed ; within a 
 few yards upon the southern slope it dwindles and 
 almost disappears. 
 
 19 
 
20 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 As one so passes from the one country to the 
 other, it is for all the world like the shutting of a 
 door between oneself and the world. For some 
 reason or other the impression of a civilization 
 active to the point of distress, follows one all up 
 the pass from the French railway to the summit of 
 the range ; but when that summit is passed the 
 new and brilliant sun upon the enormous glaciers 
 before one, the absence of human signs and of 
 water, impress one suddenly with silence. 
 
 From that point one scrambles down and down 
 for hours into a deserted valley — all noon and 
 afternoon and evening : on the first flats a rude 
 path at last appears. A river begins to flow ; great 
 waterfalls pour across one's way, and for miles 
 upon miles one limps along and down the valley 
 across sharp boulders such as mules go best on, 
 and often along the bed of a stream, until at night-, 
 fall — if one has started early and has put energy 
 into one's going, and if it is a long summer day — 
 then at nightfall one first sees cultivated fields — 
 patches of oats not half an acre large hanging 
 upon the sides of the ravine wherever a little shelf 
 of soil has formed. 
 
 So went the Two Men upon an August evening, 
 till they came in the half-light upon something 
 which might have been rocks or might have been 
 ruins — grey lumps against the moon : they were 
 the houses of a little town. A sort of gulf, winding 
 
THE PYRENEAN HIVE 21 
 
 like a river gorge, and narrower than a column of 
 men, was the street that brought us in. But just 
 as we feared that we should have to grope our way 
 to find companionship we saw that great surprise 
 of modern mountain villages (but not of our own 
 in England) — a little row of electric lamps hang- 
 ing from walls of an incalculable age. 
 
 Here, in this heap of mountain stones, and led 
 by this last of inventions, we heard at last the 
 sound of music, and knew that we were near an 
 inn. The Moors called (and call) an inn Fundouk ; 
 the Spaniards call it a Fonda. To this Fonda, 
 therefore, we went, and as we went the sound of 
 music grew louder, till we came to a door of oak 
 studded with gigantic nails and swung upon 
 hinges which, by their careful workmanship and 
 the nature of their grotesques, were certainly of 
 the Renaissance. Indeed, the whole of this 
 strange hive of mountain men was a mixture — 
 ignorance, sharp modernity, utter reclusion : bar- 
 baric. Christian ; ruinous and enduring things. 
 The more recent houses had for the most part their 
 dates marked above their doors. There were some 
 of the sixteenth century, and many of the seven- 
 teenth, but the rest were far older, and bore no 
 marks at all. There was but one house of our own 
 time, and as for the church, it was fortified with 
 narrow windows made for arrows. 
 
 Not only did the Moors call an inn a Fundouk, 
 
22 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 but also they lived (and live) not on the ground 
 floor, but on the first floor of their houses : so after 
 them the Spaniards. We came in from the street 
 through those great oaken doors, not into a room, 
 but into a sort of barn, with a floor of beaten earth ; 
 from this a stair (every banister of which was 
 separately carved in a dark wood) led up to the 
 storey upon which the inn was held. There was 
 no hour for the meal. Some were beginning to 
 eat, some had ended. When we asked for food it 
 was prepared, but an hour was taken to prepare it, 
 and it was very vile ; the wine also was a wine 
 that tasted as much of leather as of grapes, and 
 reminded a man more of an old saddle than of 
 vineyards. 
 
 The people who put this before us had in their 
 faces courage, complete innocence, carelessness, 
 and sleep. They spoke to us in their language 
 (I understood it very ill) of far countries^ which 
 they did not clearly know — they hardly knew 
 the French beyond the hills. As no road led into 
 their ageless village, so did no road lead out of it. 
 To reach the great cities in the plain, and the 
 railway eighty miles away, why, there was the 
 telephone. They slept at such late hours as they 
 chose ; by midnight many were still clattering 
 through the lane below. No order and no law 
 compelled them in anything. 
 
 The Two Men were asleep after this first astonish- 
 
THE PYRENEAN HIVE 23 
 
 ing glimpse of forgotten men and of a strange 
 country. In the stifling air outside there was a 
 clattering of the hoofs of mules and an argument 
 of drivers. A long way off a man was playing a 
 little stringed instrument, and there was also in 
 the air a noise of insects buzzing in the night heat. 
 When all of a sudden the whole place awoke to 
 the noise of a piercing cry which but for its 
 exquisite tone might have been the cry of pain, so 
 shrill was it and so coercing to the ear. It was 
 maintained, and before it fell was followed by a 
 succession of those quarter-tones which only the 
 Arabs have, and which I had thought finally 
 banished from Europe. To this inhuman and 
 appalling song were set loud open vowels rather 
 than words. 
 
 Of the Two Men, one leapt at once from his bed 
 crying out, **This is the music ! This is what I 
 have desired to hear ! " For this is what he had 
 once been told could be heard in the desert, when 
 first he looked out over the sand from Atlas : but 
 though he had travelled far, he had never heard it, 
 and now he heard it here, in the very root of 
 these European hills. It was on this account that 
 he cried out, ''This is the music ! " And when he 
 had said this he put on a great rough cloak and 
 ran to the room from which the song or cry pro- 
 ceeded, and after him ran his companion. 
 
 The Two Men stood at the door behind a great 
 
24 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 mass of muleteers, who all craned forward to where, 
 upon a dais at the end of the room, sat a Jewess 
 who still continued for some five minutes this 
 intense and terrible effort of the voice. Beside her 
 a man who was not of her race urged her on as 
 one urges an animal to further effort, crying out, 
 **Hap! Hap!" and beating his palms together 
 rhythmically and driving and goading her to the 
 full limit of her power. 
 
 The sound ceased suddenly as though it had 
 been stabbed and killed, and the woman whose 
 eyes had been strained and lifted throughout as in 
 a trance, and whose body had been rigid and 
 quivering, sank down upon herself and let her eye- 
 lids fall, and her head bent forward. 
 
 There was complete silence from that moment 
 till the dawn, and the second of the Two Men said 
 to the first that they had had an experience not so . 
 much of music as of fire. 
 
DELFT 
 
 DELFT is the most charming town in the 
 world. It is one of the neat cities : trim, 
 small, packed, self-contained. A good woman in 
 early middle age, careful of her dress, combed, 
 orderly, not without a sober beauty — such a woman 
 on her way to church of a Sunday morning is not 
 more pleasing than Delft. It is on the verge of 
 monotony, yet still individual ; in one style, yet 
 suggesting many centuries of activity. There is 
 a full harmony of many colours, yet the memory 
 the place leaves is of a united, warm and generous 
 tone. Were you suddenly put down in Delft you 
 would know very well that the vast and luxuriant 
 meadows of Holland surrounded it, so much are 
 its air, houses, and habits those of men inspired 
 by the fields. 
 
 Delft is very quiet, as befits a town so many 
 of whose streets are ordered lanes of water, yet 
 one is inspired all the while by the voices of 
 children, and the place is strongly alive. Over 
 its sky there follow in stately order the great white 
 clouds of summer, and at evening the haze is lit 
 
 25 
 
26 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 just barely from below with that transforming 
 level light which is the joy and inspiration of the 
 Netherlands. Against such an expanse stands up 
 for ever one of the gigantic but delicate belfries, 
 round which these towns are gathered For 
 Holland, it seems, is not a country of villages, 
 but of compact, clean towns, standing scattered 
 over a great waste of grass like the sea. 
 
 This belfry of Delft is a thing by itself in 
 Europe, and all these truths can be said of it by a 
 man who sees it for the first time : first, that its 
 enormous height is drawn up, as it were, and 
 enhanced by every chance stroke that the instinct 
 of its slow builders lit upon ; for these men of the 
 infinite flats love the contrast of such pinnacles, 
 and they have made in the labour of about a 
 thousand years a landscape of their own by build- 
 ing, just as they have made by ceaseless labour a 
 rich pasture and home out of those solitary marshes 
 of the delta. 
 
 Secondly, that height is enhanced by something 
 which you will not see, save in the low countries 
 between the hills of Ardennes and the yellow seas 
 — I mean brick Gothic ; for the Gothic which you 
 and I know is built up of stone, and, even so, 
 produces every effect of depth and distance ; but 
 the Gothic of the Netherlands is often built 
 curiously of bricks, and the bricks are so thin 
 that it needs a whole host of them in an infinity 
 
DELFT 27 
 
 of fine lines to cover a hundred feet of wall. They 
 fill the blank spaces with their repeated detail ; 
 they make the style (which even in stone is full 
 of chances and particular corners) most intricate, 
 and — if one may use so exaggerated a metaphor — 
 '* populous." Above all, they lead the eye up 
 and up, making a comparison and measure of 
 their tiny bands until the domination of a buttress 
 or a tower is exaggerated to the enormous. Now 
 the belfry of Delft, though all the upper part is of 
 stone, yet stands on a great pedestal (as it were) 
 of brick — a pedestal higher than the houses. And 
 in this base are pierced two towering, broad and 
 single ogives, empty and wonderful and full 
 of that untragic sadness which you may find 
 also in the drooping and wide eyes of extreme 
 old age. 
 
 Thirdly, the very structure of the thing is bells. 
 Here the bells are more than the soul of a Chris- 
 tian spire ; they are its body too, its whole self. 
 An army of them fills up all the space between the 
 delicate supports and framework of the upper 
 parts ; for I know not how many feet, in order, 
 diminishing in actual size and in the perspective 
 also of that triumphant elevation, stand ranks on 
 ranks of bells from the solemn to the wild, from 
 the large to the small ; a hundred or two hundred 
 or a thousand. There is here the prodigality 
 of Brabant and Hainaut and the Batavian blood, 
 
28 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 a generosity and a productivity in bells without 
 stint, the man who designed it saying: ''Since 
 we are to have bells, let us have bells : not measured 
 out, calculated, expensive, and prudent bells, but 
 careless bells, self-answering multitudinous bells; 
 bells without fear, bells excessive and bells innumer- 
 able ; bells worthy of the ecstasies that are best 
 thrown out and published in the clashing of bells. 
 For bells are single, like real pleasures, and we 
 will combine such a great number that they shall 
 be like the happy and complex life of a man. In 
 a word, let us be noble and scatter our bells 
 and reap a harvest till our town is famous for its 
 bells." So now all the spire is more than clothed 
 with them ; they are more than stuff' or ornament ; 
 they are an outer and yet sensitive armour, all 
 of bells. 
 
 Nor is the wealth of these bells in their number 
 only, but also in their use ; for they are not reserved 
 in any way, but ring tunes and add harmonies at 
 every half and quarter and at all the hours both by 
 night and by day. Nor must you imagine that 
 there is any obsession of noise through this ; they 
 are far too high and melodious, and, what is more, 
 too thoroughly a part of all the spirit of Delft to 
 be more than a perpetual and half-forgotten im- 
 pression of continual music ; they render its air 
 sacred and fill it with something so akin to an 
 uplifted silence as to leave one — when one has 
 
DELFT 29 
 
 passed from their influence — asking what balm 
 that was which soothed all the harshness of sound 
 about one. 
 
 Round that tower and that voice the town hangs 
 industrious and subdued — a family. Its waters, 
 its intimate canals, its boats for travel, and its 
 slight plashing of bows in the place of wheels, 
 entered the spirit of the traveller and gave him for 
 one long day the Right of Burgess. In autumn, 
 in the early afternoon — the very season for those 
 walls — it was easy for him to be filled with a 
 restrained but united chorus, the under-voices 
 of the city, droning and murmuring perpetually 
 of Peace and of Labour and of the wild rose — 
 Content. . . . 
 
 Peace, labour, and content — three very good 
 words, and summing up, perhaps, the goal of all 
 mankind. Of course, there is a problem every- 
 where, and it would be heresy to say that the 
 people of Delft have solved it. It is Matter of 
 Breviary that the progress of our lives is but 
 asymptotic to true joy ; we can approach it nearer 
 and nearer, but we can never reach it. 
 
 Nevertheless, I say that in this excellent city, 
 though it is outside Eden, you may, when the 
 wind is in the right quarter, receive in distant and 
 rare appeals the scent and air of Paradise ; the 
 soul is filled. 
 
 To this emotion there corresponds and shall here 
 
30 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 be quoted a very noble verse, which runs — or 
 rather glides — as follows : — 
 
 Satiety, that momentary flower 
 
 Stretched to an hour — 
 
 These are her gifts which all mankind may use, 
 
 And all refuse. 
 
 Or words to that effect. And to think that you 
 can get to a place like that for less than a pound ! 
 
THE WING OF DALUA 
 
 TIME was, and that not so long ago, when the 
 Two Men had revealed to them by their 
 Genius a corner of Europe wherein they were 
 promised more surprises and delights than in any 
 other. 
 
 It was secretly made known to them that in this 
 place there were no pictures, and that no one had 
 praised its people, and further that no Saint had 
 ever troubled it ; and the rich and all their evils (so 
 the two men were assured) had never known the 
 place at all. 
 
 It was under the influence of such a message 
 that they at once began walking at great speed 
 for the river which is called the River of Gold, and 
 for the valleys of Andorra ; and since it seemed 
 that other men had dared to cross the Pyrenees 
 and to see the Republic, and since it seemed also, 
 according to books, records and what not, that 
 may have been truth or may have been lies, that 
 common men so doing went always by one way, 
 called the Way of Hospitalet, the Two Men deter- 
 mined to go by no such common path, but to march, 
 
 31 
 
32 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 all clothed with power, in a straight line, and to 
 take the main range of the mountains just where 
 they chose, and to come down upon the Andorrans 
 unexpectedly and to deserve their admiration and 
 perhaps their fear. 
 
 They chose, therefore, upon the map the valley 
 of that torrent called the Aston, and before it was 
 evening, but at an hour when the light of the 
 sun was already very ripe and low they stood 
 under a great rock called Guie, which was all of 
 bare limestone with fa9ades as bare as the Yose- 
 mite, and almost as clean. They looked up at this 
 great rock of Guie and made it the terminal of 
 their attempt. I was one and my companion was 
 the other : these were the two men who started out 
 before a sunset in August to conquer the high 
 Pyrenees. Before me was a very deep valley full of 
 woods, and reaching higher and higher perpetu- 
 ally so that it reminded me of Hyperion ; but as for 
 my companion, it reminded him of nothing, for he 
 said loudly that he had never seen any such things 
 before and had never believed that summits of so 
 astonishing a height were to be found on earth. 
 Not even at night had he imagined such appal- 
 ling upward and upward into the sky, and this he 
 said though he had seen the Alps, of which it is 
 true that when you are close to them they are very 
 middling affairs ; but not so the Pyrenees, which 
 are not only great but also terrible, for they are 
 
THE WING OF DALUA 33 
 
 haunted, as you shall hear. But before I begin to 
 write of the spirits that inhabit the deserts of the 
 Aston, I must first explain, for the sake of those 
 who have not seen them, how the awful valleys of 
 the Pyrenees are made. 
 
 All the high valleys of mountains go in steps, 
 but those of the Pyrenees in a manner more 
 regular even than those of the Sierra Nevada out 
 in California, which the Pyrenees so greatly re- 
 semble. For the steps here are nearly always 
 three in number between the plain and the main 
 chain, and each is entered by a regular gate of 
 rock. So it is in the valley of the Ariege, and so 
 it is in that of the Aston, and so it is in every other 
 valley until you get to the far end where live the 
 cleanly but incomprehensible Basques. Each of 
 these steps is perfectly level, somewhat oval in 
 shape, a mile or two or sometimes five miles long, 
 but not often a mile broad. Through each will run 
 the river of the valley, and upon either side of it 
 there will be rich pastures, and a high plain of this 
 sort is called SLjasse, the same as in California is 
 called a ^^flat": as ** Dutch Flat," ^'Poverty 
 Flat," and other famous flats. 
 
 First then will come a great gorge through 
 which one marches up from the plain, and then at 
 the head of it very often a waterfall of some kind, 
 along the side of which one forces one's way up 
 painfully through a narrow chasm of rock and finds 
 
 D 
 
34 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 above one the great green level of the first jasse 
 with the mountains standing solemnly around it. 
 And then when one has marched all along this 
 level one will come to another gorge and another 
 chasm, and when one has climbed over the barrier 
 of rock and risen up another 2000 feet or so, one 
 comes to a second jasse, smaller as a rule than the 
 lower one ; but so high are the mountains that all 
 this climbing into the heart of them does not seem 
 to have reduced their height at all. And then 
 one marches along this second jasse and one comes 
 to yet another gorge and climbs up just as one did 
 the two others, ' through a chasm where there will 
 be a little waterfall or a large one, and one finds at 
 the top the smallest and most lonely of the jasses. 
 This often has a lake in it. The mountains round 
 it will usually be cliffs, forming sometimes a perfect 
 ring, and so called cirques, or, by the Spaniards, 
 cooking-pots ; and as one stands on the level floor 
 of one such last highest jasse and looks up at the 
 summit of the cliffs, one knows that one is looking 
 at the ridge of the main chain. Then it is one's 
 business, if one desires to conquer the high 
 Pyrenees, to find a sloping place up the cliffs to 
 reach their summits and to go down into the 
 further Spanish valleys. This is the order of the 
 Pyrenean dale, and this was the order of that of 
 the Aston. 
 
 Up the gorge then we went, my companion and 
 
THE WING OF DALUA 35 
 
 I ; the day fell as we marched, and there was a 
 great moon out, filling the still air, when we came 
 to the first chasm, and climbing through it saw 
 before us, spread with a light mist over its pastures, 
 the first jasse under the moonlight. And up we 
 went, and up again, to the end of the second jasse, 
 having before us the vast wall of the main range, 
 and in our hearts a fear that there was something 
 unblessed in the sight of it. For though neither I 
 told it to my companion nor he to me, we had both 
 begun to feel a fear which the shepherds of these 
 mountains know very well. It was perhaps mid- 
 night or a little more when we made our camp, 
 after looking in vain for a hut which may once 
 have stood there, but now stood no longer. We 
 lit a fire, but did not overcome the cold, which 
 tormented us throughout the night, for the wind 
 blew off the summits ; and at last we woke from 
 our half-sleep and spent the miserable hours in 
 watching the Great Bear creeping round the pole, 
 and in trying to feed the dying embers with damp 
 fuel. And there it was that I discovered what I 
 now make known to the world, namely, that gorse 
 and holly will burn of themselves, even while they 
 are yet rooted in the ground. So we sat sleepless 
 and exhausted, and not without misgiving, for we 
 had meant that night before camping to be right 
 under the foot of the last cliffs, and we were yet 
 many miles away. We were glad to see the river 
 
36 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 at last in the meadows show plainly under the 
 growing light, the rocks turning red upon the sky- 
 Kne, and the extinction of the stars. As we so 
 looked north and eastward the great rock of Guie 
 stood up all its thousands of feet enormous against 
 the rising of the sun. 
 
 We were very weary, and invigorated by nothing 
 but the light, but, having that at least to strengthen 
 us, we made at once for the main range, knowing 
 very well that, once we were over it, it would be 
 downhill all the way, and seeing upon our maps 
 that there were houses and living men high in the 
 further Andorran valley, which was not deserted 
 like this vale of the Aston, but inhabited : full, that 
 is, of Catalans, who would soon make us forget the 
 inhuman loneliness of the heights, for by this time 
 we were both convinced, though still neither of us 
 said it to the other, that there was an evil brooding 
 over all this place. 
 
 It was noon when, after many hours of broken 
 marching and stumbling, which betrayed our weak- 
 ness, we stood at last beside the tarn in which the 
 last cliffs of the ridge are reflected, and here was a 
 steep slope up which a man could scramble. We 
 drank at the foot of it the last of our wine and ate 
 the last of our bread, promising ourselves refresh- 
 ment, light, and peace immediately upon the 
 further side, and thus lightened of our provisions, 
 and with more heart in us, we assaulted the final 
 
THE WING OF DALUA 37 
 
 hill ; but just at the summit, where there should 
 have greeted us a great view over Spain, there 
 lowered upon us the angry folds of a black cloud, 
 and the first of the accidents that were set in order 
 by some enemy to ruin us fell upon my companion 
 and me. 
 
 For a storm broke, and that with such violence 
 that we thought it would have shattered the bare 
 hills, for an infernal thunder crashed from one 
 precipice to another, and there flashed, now close 
 to us, now vividly but far off, in the thickness of 
 the cloud, great useless and blinding glares of 
 lightning, and hailstones of great size fell about 
 us also, leaping from the bare rocks like marbles. 
 And when the rain fell it was just as though it had 
 been from a hose, forced at one by a pressure 
 instead of falling, and we two on that height were 
 the sole objects of so much fury, until at last my 
 companion cried out from the rock beneath which 
 he was cowering, **This is intolerable !" And I 
 answered him, from the rock which barely covered 
 me, ^' It is not to be borne ! " So in the midst of 
 the storm we groped our way down into the valley 
 beneath, and got below the cloud ; and when we 
 were there we thought we had saved the day, for 
 surely we were upon the southern side of the hills, 
 and in a very little while we should see the first 
 roofs of the Andorrans. 
 
 For two doubtful hours we trudged down that 
 
38 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 higher valley, but there were no men, nor any 
 trace of men except this, that here and there the 
 semblance of a path appeared, especially where the 
 valley fell rapidly from one stage to another over 
 smooth rocks, which, in their least dangerous 
 descent, showed by smooth scratches the passage 
 of some lost animal. For the rest, nothing human 
 nor the memory of it was there to comfort us, 
 though in one place we found a group of cattle 
 browsing alone without a master. There we sat 
 down in our exhaustion and confessed at last what 
 every hour had inwardly convinced us of with 
 greater strength, that we were not our own masters, 
 that there was trouble and fate all round us, that 
 we did not know what valley this might be, and 
 that the storm had been but the beginning of an 
 unholy adventure. We had been snared into 
 Fairyland. 
 
 We did not speak much together, for fear of 
 lowering our hearts yet more by the confession one 
 to the other of the things we knew to be true. We 
 did not tell each other what reserve of courage 
 remained to us, or of strength. We sat and looked 
 at the peaks immeasurably above us, and at the 
 veils of rain between them, and at the black back- 
 ground of the sky. Nor was there anything in the 
 landscape which did not seem to us unearthly and 
 forlorn. 
 
 It was, in a manner, more lonely than had been 
 
THE WING OF DALUA 39 
 
 the very silence of the further slope : there was 
 less to comfort and support the soul of a man ; 
 but with every step downward we were penetrated 
 more and more with the presence of things not 
 mortal and of influences to which any desolation 
 was preferable. At one moment voices called to 
 us from the water, at another we heard our names, 
 but pronounced in a whisper so slight and so 
 exact that the more certain we were of hearing 
 them the less did we dare to admit the reality of 
 what we had heard. In a third place we saw 
 twice in succession, though we were still going 
 forward, the same tree standing by the same stone : 
 for neither tree nor stone was natural to the good 
 world, but each had been put there by whatever 
 was mocking us and drawing us on. 
 
 Already had we stumbled twice and thrice the 
 distance that should have separated us from the 
 first Andorran village, but we had seen nothing, 
 not a wall, nor smoke from a fire, let alone the 
 tower of a Christian church, or the houses of 
 men. Nor did any length of the way now make 
 us wonder more than we had already wondered, 
 nor did we hope, however far we might proceed, 
 that we should be saved unless some other influ- 
 ence could be found to save us from the unseen 
 masters of this place. For by this time we had 
 need of mutual comfort, and openly said it to 
 one another — but in low tones — that the valley 
 
40 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 was Faery. The river went on calling to us all 
 the while. In places it was full of distant cheering, 
 in others crowded with the laughter of a present 
 multitude of tiny things, and always mocking us 
 with innumerable tenuous voices. It grew to be 
 evening. It was nearly two days since we had 
 seen a man. 
 
 There stood in the broader and lower part of 
 the valley to which we had now come, numerous 
 rocks and boulders ; for our deception some one 
 of them or another would seem to be a man. I heard 
 my companion call suddenly, as though to a 
 stranger, and as he called I thought that he had 
 indeed perceived the face of a human being, and 
 I felt a sort of sudden health in me when I heard 
 the tone of his voice ; and when I looked up I 
 also saw a man. We came towards him and he 
 did not move. Close up beside his form we put 
 out our hands : but what we touched was a rough 
 and silent stone. 
 
 After that we spoke no more. We went on 
 through the gathering twilight, determined to 
 march downwards to the end, but knowing pretty 
 well what the end would be. Once only did we 
 again fall into the traps that were laid about us, 
 when we went and knocked at the hillside where 
 we thought we had seen a cottage and its oaken 
 door, and after the mockery of that disappointment 
 we would not be deceived again, nor make our- 
 
THE WING OF DALUA 41 
 
 selves again the victims of the laughter that per- 
 petually proceeded from the torrent. 
 
 The path led us onwards in a manner that was 
 all one with the plot now woven round our feet. 
 We could but follow the path, though we knew with 
 what an evil purpose it was made: that it was as 
 phantom as the rest. At one place it invited us to 
 cross, upon two shaking pine trunks, the abyss of a 
 cataract ; in another it invited us to climb, in spite 
 of our final weariness, a great barrier of rock that 
 lay between an upper and a lower jasse. We 
 continued upon it determinedly, with heads bent, 
 barely hoping that perhaps at last we should emerge 
 from this haunted ground, but the illusions which 
 had first mocked us we resolutely refused. So much 
 so, that where at one place there stood plainly before 
 us in the gathering darkness a farm-house with its 
 trees and its close, its orchard and its garden gate, 
 I said to my companion, ** All this place is cursed, 
 and I will not go near." And he applauded me, 
 for he knew as well as I that if we had gone a few 
 steps towards that orchard and that garden close, 
 they would have turned into the bracken of the hill- 
 side, bare granite and unfruitful scree. 
 
 The main range, where it appeared in revela- 
 tions behind us through the clouds, was far higher 
 than mountains ever seem to waking men, and 
 it stood quite sheer as might a precipice in a 
 dream. The forests upon either side ran up until 
 
42 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 they were lost miles and miles above us in the 
 
 storm. 
 
 Night fell and we still went onward, the one 
 
 never daring to fall far behind the other, and once 
 
 or twice in an hour calling to each other to make 
 
 sure that another man was near ; but this we did 
 
 not continue, because as we went on each of us 
 
 became aware under the midnight of the presence 
 
 of a Third. 
 
 • . • . . • ' 
 
 There was a place where the path, now broad 
 and plain, approached a sort of little sandy bay 
 going down towards the stream, and there I saw, 
 by a sudden glimpse of the moon through the 
 clouds, a large cave standing wide. We went 
 down to it in silence, we gathered brushwood, we 
 lit a fire, and we lay down in the cave. But before 
 we lay down I said to my companion: **I have 
 seen the moon — she is in the north. Into what 
 place have we come? " He said to me in answer : 
 ** Nothing here is earthly," and after he had said 
 this we both fell into a profound sleep in which 
 we forgot not only cold, great hunger and fatigue, 
 but our own names and our very souls, and passed, 
 as it were, into a deep bath of forgetful n ess. 
 
 When we woke at the same moment, it was dawn. 
 
 We stood up in the clear and happy light and 
 
 found that everything was changed. We poured 
 
 water upon our faces and our hands, strode out a 
 
THE WING OF DALUA 43 
 
 hundred yards and saw again the features of a 
 man. He had a kind face of some age, and eyes 
 such as are the eyes of mountaineers, which seem 
 to have constantly contemplated distant horizons 
 and wide plains beneath their homes. We heard 
 as he came up the sound of a bell in a Christian 
 church below, and we exchanged with him the 
 salutations of living men. Then I said to him : 
 ** What day is this?" He said *' Sunday," and a 
 sort of memory of our fear came on us, for we had 
 lost a day. 
 
 Then I said to him : ** What river are we upon, 
 and what valley is this ? " 
 
 He answered : ** The river and the valley of the 
 Aston." And what he said was true, for as we 
 rounded a corner we perceived right before us a 
 barrier, that rock of Guie from which we had set 
 out. We had come down again into France, and 
 into the very dale by which we had begun our 
 ascent. 
 
 But what that valley was which had led us from 
 the summits round backward to our starting-place, 
 forcing upon us the refusal of whatever powers 
 protect this passage of the chain, I have never been 
 able to tell. It is not upon the maps ; by our 
 description the peasants knew nothing of it. No 
 book tells of it. No men except ourselves have 
 seen it, and I am willing to believe that it is not of 
 this world. 
 
ON ELY 
 
 THERE are two ways by which a man may 
 acquire any kind of learning or profit, and 
 this is especially true of travel. 
 
 Everybody knows that one can increase what 
 one has of knowledge or of any other possession 
 by going outwards and outwards ; but what is 
 also true, and what people know less, is that one 
 can increase it by going inwards and inwards. 
 There is no goal to either of these directions, nor 
 any term to your advantage as you travel in them. 
 
 If you will be extensive, take it easy; the infi- 
 nite is always well ahead of you, and its symbol is 
 the sky. 
 
 If you will be intensive, hurry as much as you 
 like you will never exhaust the complexity of 
 things ; and the truth of this is very evident in a 
 garden, or even more in the nature of insects ; of 
 which beasts I have heard it said that the most 
 stolid man in the longest of lives would acquire 
 only a cursory knowledge of even one kind, as, 
 for instance, of the horned beetle, which sings so 
 angrily at evening. 
 
ON ELY 45 
 
 You may travel for the sake of great horizons, 
 and travel all your life, and fill your memory with 
 nothing but views from mountain-tops, and yet 
 not have seen a tenth of the world. Or you may 
 spend ;your life upon the religious history of East 
 Rutland, and plan the most enormous book upon 
 it, and yet find that you have continually to excise 
 and select from the growing mass of your material. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 A wise man having told me this some days 
 before (and I having believed it), it seemed to me 
 as though a new entertainment had been invented 
 for me, or rather as though I had found a bottom- 
 less purse ; since by this doctrine there was mani- 
 festly no end to the number of my pleasures, and 
 to each of this infinite number no possibility of 
 exhaustion ; but I thought I would put it to the 
 test in this way : putting aside but three days, I 
 determined in that space to explore a little corner 
 of this country. 
 
 Now, although I saw not one-hundredth of the 
 buildings or the people in this very small space, 
 and though I knew nothing of the birds or the 
 beasts or the method of tillage, or of anything of 
 all that makes up a land, yet I saw enough to fill 
 a book. And the pleasure of my thoughts was so 
 great that I determined to pick out a bit here and 
 a bit there, and to put down the notes almost with- 
 out arrangement, in order that those who cannot 
 
46 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 do these things (whether from lack of leisure or 
 for some other reason) may get some part of my 
 pleasure without loss to me (on the contrary, with 
 profit) ; and in order that every one may be con- 
 vinced of what this little journey finally taught me, 
 and which I repeat — that there is an inexhaust- 
 ible treasure everywhere, not only outwards, but 
 inwards. 
 
 I had known the Ouse — (how many years ago !) 
 — I had looked up at those towers of Ely from my 
 boat ; but a town from a river and a town from the 
 street are two different things. Moreover, in that 
 time I speak of, the day years ago, it was blowing 
 very hard from the south, and I was anxious to be 
 away before it, and away I went down to Lynn at 
 one stretch ; for in those days the wind and the 
 water seemed of more moment than old stones. 
 Now (after how many years !) it was my business 
 to go up by land, and as I went, the weight of the 
 Cathedral filled the sky before me. 
 
 Impressions of this sort are explained by every 
 man in his own way — for my part I felt the Norman. 
 
 I know not by what accident it was, but never 
 had I come so nearly into the presence of the men 
 who founded England. The isolation of the hill, 
 the absence of clamour and false noise and every- 
 thing modern, the smallness of the village, the 
 solidity and amplitude of the homes and their 
 security, all recalled an origin. 
 
ON ELY 47 
 
 I went into the door of the Cathedral under the 
 high tower. I noted the ponderous simplicity of 
 the great squat pillars, the rough capitals — plain 
 bulges of stone without so much as a pattern cut 
 upon them — the round arch and the low aisles ; 
 but in one corner remaining near the door — a 
 baptistery, I suppose — was a crowd of ornament 
 which (like everything of that age) bore the mark 
 of simplicity, for it was an endless heap of the 
 arch and the column and the zigzag ornament-r- 
 the broken line. Its richness was due to nothing 
 but the repetition of similar forms, and everywhere 
 the low stature, the muscles, the broad shoulders 
 of the thing, proved and reawoke the memory of 
 the Norman soldiers. 
 
 They have been written of enough to-day, but 
 who has seen them from close by or understood 
 that brilliant interlude of power? 
 
 The little bullet-headed men, vivacious, and 
 splendidly brave, we know that they awoke all 
 Europe, that they first provided settled financial 
 systems and settled governments of land, and that 
 everywhere, from the Grampians to Mesopotamia, 
 they were like steel when all other Christians were 
 like wood or like lead. 
 
 We know that they were a flash. They were 
 not formed or definable at all before the year looo ; 
 by the year 1200 they were gone. Some odd 
 transitory phenomenon of cross-breeding, a very 
 
48 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 lucky freak in the history of the European family, 
 produced the only body of men who all were lords 
 and who in their collective action showed con- 
 tinually nothing but genius. 
 
 We know that they were the spear-head, as it 
 were, of the Gallic spirit : the vanguard of that 
 one of the Gallic expansions which we associate 
 with the opening of the Middle Ages and with 
 the Crusades. . . . We know all this and write 
 about it ; nevertheless, we do not make enough of 
 the Normans in England. 
 
 Here and there a man who really knows his 
 subject and who disdains the market of the school 
 books, puts as it should be put their conquest of 
 this island and their bringing into our blood what- 
 ever is still strongest in it. Many (descended 
 from their leaders) have remarked their magical 
 ride through South Italy, their ordering of Sicily, 
 their hand in Palestine. As for the Normans in 
 Normandy, of their exchequer there, of what 
 Rouen was — all that has never been properly 
 written down at all. Their great adventure here 
 in England has been most written of by far ; but I 
 say again no one has made enough of them ; no 
 one has brought them back out of their graves. 
 The character of what they did has been lost in 
 these silly little modern quarrels about races, 
 which are but the unscholarly expression of a 
 deeper hypocritical quarrel about religion. 
 
ON ELY 49 
 
 Yet it is in England that the Norman can be 
 studied as he can be studied nowhere else. He 
 did not write here (as in Sicily) upon a palimpsest. 
 He was not merged here (as in the Orient) with the 
 rest of the French. He was segregated here ; he 
 can be studied in isolation ; for though so many 
 that crossed the sea on that September night with 
 William, the big leader of them, held no Norman 
 tenure, yet the spirit of the whole thing was 
 Norman : the regularity, the suddenness, the 
 achievement, and, when the short fighting was 
 over, the creation of a new society. It was the 
 Norman who began everything over again — the 
 first fresh influence since Rome. 
 
 The riot of building has not been seized. The 
 island was conquered in 1070. It was a place of 
 heavy foolish men with random laws, pale eyes, 
 and a slow manner ; their houses were of wood : 
 sometimes they built (but how painfully, and how 
 childishly !) with stone. There was no height, 
 there was no dignity, there was no sense of perma- 
 nence. The Norman Government was established. 
 At once rapidity, energy, the clear object of a 
 united and organized power followed. And see 
 what followed in architecture alone, and in what a 
 little space of the earth, and in what a little stretch 
 of time — less than the time that separates us to- 
 day from the year of Disraeli's death or the occu- 
 pation of Egypt. 
 
50 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 The Conquest was achieved in 1070. In that 
 same year they pulled down the wooden shed at 
 Bury St. Edmunds, '* unworthy," they said, ''of a 
 great saint," and began the great shrine of stone. 
 Next year it was the castle at Oxford, in 1075 
 Monkswearmouth, Jarrow, and the church at 
 Chester ; in 1077 Rochester and St. Albans ; in 
 1079 Winchester. Ely, Worcester, Thorney, Hur- 
 ley, Lincoln followed with the next years ; by 1089 
 they had tackled Gloucester, by 1092 Carlisle, by 
 1093 Lindisfarne, Christchurch— tall Durham. . . . 
 And this is but a short and random list of some 
 of their greatest works in the space of one boy- 
 hood. Hundreds of castles, houses, village churches 
 are unrecorded. 
 
 Were they not indeed a people? . . . And all 
 that effort realized itself before Pope Urban had 
 made the speech which launched the armies against 
 the Holy Land. The Norman had created and 
 founded all this before the Mass of Europe was 
 urged against the flame of the Arab, to grow 
 fruitful and to be transformed. 
 
 One may say of the Norman preceding the 
 Gothic what Dante said of Virgil preceding the 
 Faith : Would that they had been born in a time 
 when they could have known it ! But the East 
 was not yet open. The mind of Europe had not 
 yet received the great experience of the Crusades ; 
 the Normans had no medium wherein to express 
 
ON ELY 51 
 
 their mighty soul, save the round arch and the 
 straight line, the capital barbaric or naked, the 
 sullen round shaft of the pillar — more like a drum 
 than like a column. They could build, as it were, 
 with nothing but the last ruins of Rome. They 
 were given no forms but the forms which the 
 fatigue and lethargy of the Dark Ages had repeated 
 for six hundred years. They were capable, even 
 in the north, of impressing even these forms with 
 a superhuman majesty. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 Was I not right in saying that everywhere in 
 the world one can look in and in and never find an 
 end to one's delight? I began to explore but a 
 tiny corner of England, and here in one corner 
 of that corner and in but one thought arising 
 from this corner of a corner I have found these 
 
 things. 
 
 • • • • • • 
 
 But England is especially a garden of this sort, 
 or a storehouse ; and in nothing more than in this 
 matter of the old architecture which perpetuates 
 the barbaric grandeur of the eleventh century — the 
 time before it was full day. 
 
 When the Gothic came the whole of northern 
 Europe was so enamoured of it that common men, 
 bishops, and kings pulled down and rebuilt every- 
 where. Old crumbling walls of the Romanesque 
 
52 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 fell at Amiens ; you can still see them cowering at 
 Beauvais ; only an accident of fire destroyed them in 
 No+1-e Dame. In England the transition survived; 
 nowhere save in England is the northern Roman- 
 esque triumphant, not even at Caen. Elsewhere 
 the Gothic has conquered. Only here in England 
 can you see the Romanesque facing, like an equal, 
 newer things, because here only was there a great 
 outburst of building — a kind of false spring before 
 the Gothic came, because here only in Europe had 
 a great political change and a great flood of wealth 
 come in before the expansion of the twelfth century 
 began. 
 
 There, is one little corner of England ; here is 
 another. 
 
 The Isle of Ely lying on the fens is like a star- 
 fish lying on a flat shore at low tide. Southward, 
 westward, and northward from the head or centre 
 of the clump (which is where the Cathedral stands) 
 it throws out arms every way, and these arms have 
 each short tentacles of their own. In between the 
 spurs runs the even fen like a calm sea, and on the 
 crest of the spurs, radiating also from Ely, run 
 the roads. Long ago there was but one road of 
 these that linked up the Isle with the rest of 
 England. It was the road from the south, and 
 there the Romans had a station ; the others led 
 only to the farms and villages dependent upon the 
 
ON ELY 53 
 
 city. Now they are prolonged by artifice into the 
 modern causeways which run over the lower and 
 new-made land. 
 
 The Isle has always stood like a fortress, and 
 has always had a title and a commandership, 
 which once were very real things ; the people told 
 me that the King of England's third title was 
 Marquis of Ely, and I knew of myself that just 
 before the civil wars the commandership of the 
 Isle gave the power of raising men. 
 
 The ends of many wars drifted to this place to 
 die. Here was the last tur.i of the Saxon lords, 
 and the last rally of the feudal rebellions of the 
 thirteenth century. 
 
 Not that the fens were impassable or homeless, 
 but they were difficult in patches ; their paths were 
 rare and laid upon no general system. Their 
 inhabited fields were isolated, their waters tidal, 
 with great banks of treacherous mud, intricate 
 and unbridged ; such conditions are amply suffi- 
 cient for a defensive war. The flight of a small 
 body in such a land can always baffle an army 
 until that small body is thrust into some one 
 refuge so well defended by marsh or river that the 
 very defence cuts off retreat : and a small body so 
 brought to bay in such a place has this further 
 advantage, that from the bits of higher land, the 
 * islands," one of the first requirements of defence 
 is afforded— an unbroken view of every avenue 
 
54 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 by which attack can come. There is no surprising 
 such forts. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 So much is in Ely to-day and a great deal more. 
 For instance (a third and last idea out of the 
 thousand that Ely arouses), Ely is dumb and yet 
 oracular. The town and the hill tell you nothing 
 till you have studied them in silence and for some 
 considerable time. This boast is made by many 
 towns, that they hold a secret. But Ely, which is 
 rather a village than a town, has alone a true 
 claim. The proof of which is this, that no one 
 comes to Ely for a few hours and carries anything 
 away, whereas no man lives in Ely for a year 
 without beginning to write a book. I do not say 
 that all are published, but I swear that all are 
 begun. 
 
THE INN OF THE MARGERIDE 
 
 WHATEVER, keeping its proportion and 
 form, is designed upon a scale much 
 greater or much less than that of our general 
 experience, produces upon the mind an effect of 
 phantasy. 
 
 A little perfect model of an engine or a ship 
 does not only amuse or surprise. It rather casts 
 over the imagination something of that veil through 
 which the world is transfigured, and which I have 
 called ^'the wing of Dalua"; the medium of appre- 
 ciations beyond experience ; the medium of vision, 
 of original passion and of dreams. The principal 
 spell of childhood returns as we bend over the 
 astonishing details. We are giants — or there is 
 no secure standard left in our intelligence. 
 
 So it is with the common thing built much 
 larger than the million examples upon which we 
 had based our petty security. It has been always 
 in the nature of worship that heroes, or the gods 
 made manifest, should be men, but larger than 
 men. Not tall men or men grander, but men 
 transcendent : men only in their form ; in their 
 dimension so much superior as to be lifted out 
 
 55 
 
56 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 of our world. An arch as old as Rome but not 
 yet ruined, found on the sands of Africa, arrests 
 the traveller in this fashion. In his modern cities 
 he has seen greater things ; but here in Africa, 
 where men build so squat and punily, cowering 
 under the heat upon the parched ground, so noble 
 and so considerable a span, carved as men can 
 carve under sober and temperate skies, catches the 
 mind, and clothes it with a sense of the strange. 
 And of these emotions the strongest, perhaps, is 
 that which most of those who travel to-day go 
 seeking ; the enchantment of mountains : the air 
 by which we know them for something utterly 
 different from high hills. Accustomed to the con- 
 tour of downs and tors, or to the valleys and long 
 slopes that introduce a range, we come to some 
 wider horizon and see, far off, a further line of 
 hills. To hills all the mind is attuned : a mod'^^rate 
 ecstasy. The clouds are above the hills, lying 
 level in the empty sky ; men and their ploughs 
 have visited, it seems, all the land about us. Till, 
 suddenly, faint but hard, a cloud less varied, a 
 greyer portion of the infinite sky itself, is seen to 
 be permanent above the world. Then all our 
 grasp of the wide view breaks down. We change. 
 The valleys and the tiny towns, the unseen mites 
 of men, the gleams or threads of roads, are pros- 
 trate, covering a little watching space before the 
 shrine of this dominant and towering presence. 
 
THE INN OF THE MARGERIDE 57 
 
 It is as though humanity were permitted to 
 break through the vulgar illusion of daily sense, 
 and to learn in a physical experience how unreal 
 are all the absolute standards by which we build. 
 It is as though the vast and the unexpected had a 
 purpose, and that purpose were the showing to 
 mankind in rare glimpses what places are de- 
 signed for the soul— those ultimate places where 
 things common become shadows and fail, and the 
 divine part in us, which adores and desires, 
 breathes its own air, and is at last alive. 
 
 • ••«•• 
 
 This awful charm which attaches to the enormous 
 envelops the Causse of Mende ; for its attributes 
 are all of them pushed beyond the ordinary limit. 
 
 Each of the four Gausses is a waste ; but the 
 Causse of Mende is utterly bereft of men. Each 
 is a high plateau ; but this, I believe, the highest 
 in feet, and certainly in impression. You stand 
 there as it were upon the summit of a lonely 
 pedestal, with nothing but a rocky edge around 
 you. Each is dried up ; but the Causse of Mende 
 is without so much as a dew-pan or a well ; it is 
 wrinkled, horny, and cauterized under the alter- 
 nate frost and flame of its fierce open sky, as are 
 the deserts of the moon. Each of the Causses is 
 silent ; but the silence of the Causse of Mende is 
 scorched and frozen into its stones, and is as old as 
 they; all around, the torrents which have sawn 
 
58 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 their black canons upon every side of the block 
 frame this silence with their rumble. Each of the 
 Gausses casts up above its plain fantastic heaps of 
 rock consonant to the wild spirit of its isolation ; 
 but the Causse of Mende holds a kind of fortress — 
 a medley so like the ghost of a dead town that, 
 even in full daylight, you expect the footsteps of 
 men ; and by night, as you go gently, in fear of 
 waking the sleepers, you tread quite certainly 
 among built houses and spires. This place the 
 peasants of the canons have called **The Old 
 City " ; and no one living will go near it who 
 knows it well. 
 
 The Gausses have also this peculiar to them : 
 that the ravines by which each is cut off are steep 
 and sudden. But the cliffs of the Gausse of Mende 
 are walls. That the chief of these walls may seem 
 the more terrible, it is turned northward, so that 
 by day and night it is in shadow, and falls sheer. 
 
 • m • • • • 
 
 It was when I had abandoned this desolate won- 
 der (but with its influence strong upon me) that I 
 left the town of Mende, down on the noise of its 
 river, and began to climb the opposing mountain 
 of the Margeride. 
 
 It was already evening, though as yet there 
 were no stars. The air was fresh, because the 
 year was at that season when it is summer in the 
 vineyard plains, but winter in the hills. A twi- 
 
THE INN OF THE MARGERIDE 59 
 
 light so coloured and translucent as to suggest 
 cold spanned like an Aurora the western mouth of 
 the gully. Upon my eastward and upward way 
 the full moon, not yet risen, began to throw an 
 uncertain glory over the sky. 
 
 This road was made by the French Kings when 
 their influence had crept so far south as to control 
 these mountains. They became despots, and their 
 despotism, which was everywhere magnificent, 
 engraved itself upon these untenanted bare rocks. 
 They strengthened and fortified the road. Its 
 grandeur in so empty and impoverished a land was 
 a boast or a threat of their power. The Republic 
 succeeded the kings, the Armies succeeded the 
 Republic, and every experiment succeeded the vic- 
 tories and the breakdown of the Armies. The road 
 grew stronger all the while, bridging this desert, 
 and giving pledge that the brain of Paris was 
 able, and more able, to order the whole of the 
 soil. So then, as I followed it, it seemed to me to 
 bear in itself, and in its contrast with untamed 
 surroundings, the history and the character of this 
 one nation out of the many which live by the 
 tradition of Europe. As I followed it and saw its 
 exact gradient, its hard and even surface, its square 
 border stones, and, every hundred yards, its carved 
 mark of the distance done, these elaborations, 
 standing quite new among the tumbled rocks of a 
 vague upland, made one certain that Paris had 
 
60 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 been at work. Very far back (how far was marked 
 on the milestone) the road had left the swarming 
 gate of Toulouse. Very far on (how far was 
 marked on the milestone) it was to cross the Saone 
 by its own bridge, and feed the life of Lyons. In 
 between it met and surmounted (still civilized, 
 easy, and complete) this barbaric watershed of the 
 Margeride. 
 
 As I followed it, law — good law and evil — seemed 
 to go with me up the mountain side. 
 
 There was more sound than on the arid wastes 
 of the Causse. There were trees, and birds in the 
 trees, moving faintly. The great moon, which had 
 now risen, shone also upon scanty grass and (from 
 time to time) upon the trickle of water passing in 
 runnels beneath the road. 
 
 The torrent in the depth below roared openly 
 and strong, and, beyond it, the black wall of the 
 Causse, immense and battlemented above me under 
 the moon, made what poor life this mountain sup- 
 ported seem for a moment gracious by comparison. 
 I remembered that sheep and goats and men cQuld 
 live on the Margeride. 
 
 But the Margeride has rightly compelled its very 
 few historians to melancholy or fear. 
 
 It is a district, or a mountain range, or a single 
 summit, which cuts off the east from the west, the 
 Loire from the Gironde : a long even barrow of 
 dark stone. Its people are one, suspicious of the 
 
THE INN OF THE MARGERIDE 61 
 
 plains. Its line against the sky is also one : no 
 critical height in Europe is so strict and unbroken. 
 You may see it from a long way east — from the 
 Velay, or even from the last of the Forez, and 
 wonder whether it is land or a sullen bar of black 
 cloud. 
 
 All the world knows how snow, even in mere 
 gullies and streaks, uplifts a mountain. Well, I 
 have seen the dull roof-tile of the Margeride from 
 above Puy in spring, when patches of snow still 
 clung to it, and the snow did no more than it would 
 have done to a plain. It neither raised nor dis- 
 tinguished this brooding thing. 
 
 But it is indeed a barrier. Its rounded top is 
 more formidable than if it were a ridge of rock ; 
 its saddle, broad and indeterminate, deceives the 
 traveller, with new slight slopes following one upon 
 the other when the sharp first of the ascent is done. 
 
 Already the last edge of the Causse beyond the 
 valley had disappeared, and already had the great 
 road taken me higher than the buttress which holds 
 up that table-land, when, thinking I had gained 
 the summit, I turned a corner in the way and found 
 a vague roll of rising land before me. Upon this 
 also, under the strong moonlight, I saw the ruin 
 of a mill. Water, therefore, must have risen 
 behind it. I expected and found yet another un- 
 certain height, and beyond it a third, and, a mile 
 beyond, another. This summit was like those 
 
62 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 random marshy steps which rise continually and 
 wearily between the sluggish rivers of the prairies. 
 
 I passed the fields that gave his title to La Pey- 
 rouse. The cold, which with every hundred feet 
 had increased unnoticed, now first disturbed me. 
 The wind had risen (for I had come to that last 
 stretch of the glacis, over which from beyond the 
 final height, an eastern wind can blow), and this 
 wind carried I know not what dust of ice, that did 
 not make a perceptible fall, yet in an hour covered 
 my clothes with tiny spangles, and stung upon the 
 face like Highland snow in a gale. With that 
 wind and that fine powdery frost went no apparent 
 clouds. The sky was still clear above me. Such 
 rare stars as can conquer the full moon shone 
 palely ; but round the moon herself bent an 
 evanescent halo, like those one sees over the 
 Channel upon clear nights before a stormy morur 
 ing. The spindrift of fine ice had, I think, defined 
 this halo. 
 
 How long I climbed through the night I do not 
 know. The summit was but a slight accident 
 upon a tumbled plain. The ponds stood thick 
 with ice, the sound of running water had ceased, 
 when the slight downward of the road through a 
 barren moor and past broad undrained films of 
 frozen bog, told me that I was on the further 
 northern slope. The wind also was now roaring 
 over the platform of the watershed, and great 
 
THE INN OF THE MARGERIDE 63 
 
 patches of whirling snow lay to the right and left 
 like sand upon the grassy dunes of a coast. 
 
 Through all this loneliness and cold I went 
 down, with the great road for a companion. 
 Majesty and power were imposed by it upon these 
 savage wilds. The hours uncalculated, and the 
 long arrears of the night, had confused my atten- 
 tion ; the wind, the little arrows of the ice, the 
 absence of ploughlands and of men. Those 
 standards of measure which (I have said) the 
 Gausses so easily disturb would not return to me. 
 I took mile after mile almost unheeding, numbed 
 with cold, demanding sleep, but ignorant of where 
 might be found the next habitation. 
 
 It was in this mood that I noted on a distant 
 swirl of rocks before me what might have been 
 roofs and walls ; but in that haunted country the 
 rocks play such tricks as I have told. The moon- 
 light also, which seems so much too bright upon a 
 lonely heath, fails one altogether when distinction 
 must be made between distant things, and when 
 men are near. I did not know that these rocks (or 
 houses) were the high group of Chateauneuf till I 
 came suddenly upon the long and low house 
 which stands below it on the road, and is the 
 highway inn for the mountain town beyond. 
 
 I halted for a moment, because no light came 
 from the windows. Just opposite the house a 
 great tomb marked the fall of some hero. The 
 
64 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 wind seemed less violent. The waters of the marshy 
 plain had gathered. They were no longer frozen, 
 and a little brook ran by. As I waited there, hesi- 
 tating, my fatigue came upon me, and I knocked at 
 their great door. They opened, and light poured 
 upon the road, and the noise of peasants talking 
 loudly, and the roaring welcome of a fire. In this 
 way I ended my crossing of these sombre and un- 
 recorded hills. 
 
 • •**•• 
 
 I that had lost count of hours and of heights in 
 the glamour of the midnight and of the huge 
 abandoned places of my climb, stepped now into 
 a hall where the centuries also mingled and lost 
 their order. The dancing fire filled one of those 
 great pent-house chimneys that witness to the 
 communal life of the Middle Ages. Around and 
 above it, ironwork of a hundred years branched, 
 from the inglenooks to support the drying meats 
 of the winter provision. A wide board, rude, over- 
 massive, and shining with long usage, reflected 
 the stone ware and the wine. Chairs, carved gro- 
 tesquely, and as old almost as the walls about me, 
 stood round the comfort of the fire. I saw that 
 the windows were deeper than a man's arms could 
 reach, and wedge-shaped — made for fighting. I 
 saw that the beams of the high roof, which the fire- 
 light hardly caught, were black oak and squared 
 enormously, like the ribs of a master-galley, and in 
 
THE INN OF THE MARGERIDE 65 
 
 the leaves and garden things that hung from them, 
 in the mighty stones of the wall, and the beaten 
 earth of the floor, the strong simplicity of our past, 
 and the promise of our endurance, came upon me. 
 The peasants sitting about the board and fire 
 had risen, looking at the door ; for strangers were 
 rare, and it was very late as I came out of the 
 empty cold into that human room. Their dress 
 was ancestral ; the master, as he spoke to me, 
 mixed new words with old. He had phrases that 
 the Black Prince used when he went riding at 
 arms across the Margeride. He spoke also of 
 modern things, of the news in the valley from 
 which I had come, and the railway and Puy below 
 us. They put before me bread and wine, which I 
 most needed. I sat right up against the blaze. 
 We all talked high together of the things we 
 knew. For when I had told them what news there 
 was in the valley, they also answered my questions, 
 into which I wove as best I could those still living 
 ancient words I had caught from their mouths. I 
 asked them whose was that great tomb under the 
 moonlight, at which I had shuddered as I entered 
 their doors. They told me it was Duguesclin's 
 tomb ; for he got his death-wound here under the 
 walls of the town above us five hundred years ago, 
 and in this house he had died. Then I asked 
 what stream that was which trickled from the half- 
 frozen moss, and led down the valley of my next 
 
66 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 day's journey. They told me it was called the 
 River Red-cap, and they said that it was Faery. 
 I asked them also what was the name of the height 
 over which I had come ; they answered, that the 
 shepherds called it ^^The King's House," and that 
 hence, in clear weather, under an eastern wind, 
 one could see far off, beyond the Velay, that 
 lonely height which is called *^ The Chair of God." 
 
 So we talked together, drinking wine and 
 telling each other of many things, I of the world 
 to which I was compelled to return, and they of 
 the pastures and the streams, and all the story of 
 Lozere. And, all the while, not the antiquity 
 alone, but the endurance, of Christendom poured 
 into me from every influence around. 
 
 They rose to go to the homes which were their 
 own, without a lord. We exchanged the last 
 salutations. The wooden soles of their shoes 
 clattered upon the stone threshold of the door. 
 
 The master also rose and left me. I sat there 
 for perhaps an hour, alone, with the falling fire 
 before me and a vision in my heart. 
 
 Though I was here on the very roof and centre 
 of the western land, I heard the surge of the inner 
 and the roll of the outer sea; the foam broke 
 against the Hebrides, and made a white margin 
 to the cliffs of Holy Ireland. The tide poured up 
 beyond our islands to the darkness in the north. 
 I saw the German towns, and Lombardy, and the 
 
THE INN OF THE MARGERIDE 67 
 
 light on Rome. And the great landscape I saw 
 from the summit to which I was exalted was not 
 of to-day only, but also of yesterday, and perhaps 
 of to-morrow. 
 
 Our Europe cannot perish. Her religion — which 
 is also mine — has in it those victorious energies of 
 defence which neither merchants nor philosophers 
 can understand, and which are yet the prime 
 condition of establishment. Europe, though she 
 must always repel attacks from within and from 
 without, is always secure; the soul of her is a 
 certain spirit, at once reasonable and chivalric. 
 And the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. 
 
 She will not dissolve by expansion, nor be 
 broken by internal strains. She will not sufifer 
 that loss of unity which would be for all her 
 members death, and for her history and meaning 
 and self an utter oblivion. She will certainly 
 remain. 
 
 Her component peoples have merged and have 
 remerged. Her particular, famous cities have 
 fallen down. Her soldiers have believed the 
 world to have lost all, because a battle turned 
 against them, Hittin or Leipsic. Her best has at 
 times grown poor, and her worst rich. Her colo- 
 nies have seemed dangerous for a moment from 
 the insolence of their power, and then again (for 
 a moment) from the contamination of their de- 
 cline. She has suffered invasion of every sort; 
 
68 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 the East has wounded her in arms and has 
 corrupted her with ideas; her vigorous blood has 
 healed the wounds at once, and her permanent 
 sanity has turned such corruptions into innocuous 
 follies. She will certainly remain. 
 
 • • . • • ' • 
 
 So that old room, by its very age, reminded me, 
 not of decay, but of unchangeable things. 
 
 All this came to me out of the fire; and upon 
 such a scene passed the pageantry of our astounding 
 history. The armies marching perpetually, the 
 guns and ring of bronze; I heard the chaunt of 
 our prayers. And, though so great a host went 
 by from the Baltic to the passes of the Pyrenees, 
 the myriads were contained in one figure common 
 to them all. 
 
 I was refreshed, as though by the resurrection 
 of something loved and thought dead. I was no 
 longer afraid of Time. 
 
 That night I slept ten hours. Next day, as 1 
 swung out into the air, I knew that whatever Power 
 comforts men had thrown wide open the gates of 
 morning ; and a gale sang strong and clean across 
 that pale blue sky which mountains have for a 
 neighbour. 
 
 I could see the further valley broadening among 
 woods, to the warmer places; and I went down 
 beside the River Red-cap onwards, whither it 
 pleased me to go. 
 
A FAMILY OF THE FENS 
 
 UPON the very limit of the Fens, not a hundred 
 feet in height, but very sharp against the 
 level, there is a lonely little hill. From the edge 
 of that hill the land seems very vague ; the flat 
 line of the horizon is the only boundary, and that 
 horizon mixes into watery clouds. No country- 
 side is so formless until one has seen the plan of 
 it set down in a map, but on studying such a map 
 one understands the scheme of the Fens. 
 
 The Wash is in the shape of a keystone with 
 the narrow side towards the sea and the broad side 
 towards the land. Imagine the Wash prolonged 
 for twenty or thirty miles inland and broadened 
 considerably as it proceeded as would a curving 
 fan, or better still, a horseshoe, and you have the 
 Fens : a horseshoe whose points, as Dugdale says^ 
 are the corners of Lincolnshire and Norfolk. 
 
 All around them is land of some little height, 
 and quite dry. It is oolitic on the east, chalky on 
 the south ; and the old towns and the old roads 
 look from all round this amphitheatre of dry land 
 down upon the alluvial flats beneath. Peterboro*, 
 
 69 
 
70 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 Cambridge, Lynn, are all just off the Fens, and the 
 Ermine street runs on the bank which forms their 
 eastern frontier. 
 
 This plain has suffered very various fortunes. 
 How good the land was and how well inhabited 
 before the ruin of the monasteries is not yet 
 completely grasped, even by those who love these 
 marshes and who have written their history. Yet 
 there is physical evidence of what was once here ; 
 masses of trees but just buried, grass lying mown 
 in swathes beneath the moss-land, the implements 
 of men where now no men can live, the great 
 buried causeway running right across from east to 
 west. 
 
 Beyond such proofs there are the writers who, 
 rare as are the descriptions of medieval scenery, 
 manage to speak of this. For Henry of Hunting- 
 don it was a kind of garden. There were many 
 meres in it, but there were also islands and woods 
 and orchards. William of Malmesbury writes of 
 it with delight, and mentions even its vines. 
 The meres were not impassable marshes ; for 
 instance, in Domesday you find the Abbot of 
 Ramsey owning a vessel upon Whittlesea Mere. 
 The whole impression one gets from the earlier 
 time is that of something like the upper waters of 
 the rivers in the Broads : much draining and a 
 good many ponds, but most of the land firm with 
 good deep pastures and a great diversity of woods. 
 
A FAMILY OF THE FENS 71 
 
 Great catastrophes have certainly overcome this 
 countryside. The greatest was the anarchy of the 
 sixteenth century ; but it is probable that, coinci- 
 dently with every grave lesion in the continuity 
 of our civilization, the Fens suffered, for they 
 always needed the perpetual attention of man to 
 keep them (as they so long were, and may be again 
 if ever our people get back their land and restore 
 a communal life) fully inhabited, afforested, and 
 cultured. 
 
 It is probable that the break-up of the ninth 
 century saw the Fens partly drowned, and that 
 after the Black Death something of the same 
 sort happened again, for it is in the latter fourteenth 
 and fifteenth centuries that you begin to hear of a 
 necessity for reclaiming them. John of Gaunt had 
 a scheme, and Morton dug a ditch which is still 
 called * * Morton's Leam. " I say, every defeat of our 
 civilization was inflicted here in the Fens, but it is 
 certain that the principal disaster followed the sup- 
 pression of the monasteries. 
 
 These great foundations — nourishing hundreds 
 and governing thousands, based upon the popu- 
 lace, drawn from the populace, and living by the 
 common life — were scattered throughout the Fens. 
 They were founded on the ** islands" nearest the 
 good land : Thorney, Ramsay, Croyland, Ely — the 
 nuns of Chatteris. 
 
 They dated from the very beginning. Ely was 
 
72 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 founded within sight of our conversion, 672. Croy- 
 land came even before that, before civilization and 
 religion were truly re-established in Britain ; 
 Penda's great-nephew gave it its charter ; St. 
 Augustine had been dead for little more than 
 a century when the charter was signed. Even as 
 the monks came to claim their land they discovered 
 hermits long settled there. Thorney — Ancarig it 
 was then — was even fifty years older than Croyland. 
 The roots of all these go back to the beginning 
 of the nation. 
 
 Ramsay and Chatteris cannot be traced beyond 
 the gulf of the Danish invasion, but they are 
 members of the group or ring of houses which 
 clustered round the edge of the dry land and sent 
 out its industry towards the Wash, making new 
 land ; for this ring sent out feelers eastward, drain- 
 ing the land and recovering it every way, founding 
 cells, establishing villages. Holbeach, Spalding, 
 Freiston, Holland, and I know not how much 
 more was their land. 
 
 When the monasteries were destroyed their 
 lordship fell into the hands of that high class — 
 now old, then new — the Cromwells and Russells 
 and the rest, upon whom has since depended the 
 greatness of the country. The intensive spirit 
 proper to a teeming but humble population was 
 forgotten. The extensive economics of the great 
 owners, their love of distances and of isolation 
 
A FAMILY OF THE FENS 73 
 
 took the place of the old agriculture. Within a 
 generation the whole land was drowned. 
 
 The isolated villages forgot the general civiliza- 
 tion of England ; they came to depend for their 
 living upon the wildfowl of the marshes ; here and 
 there was a little summer pasturing, more rarely a 
 little ploughing of the rare patches of dry land ; but 
 the whole place soon ran wild, and there English- 
 men soon grew to cause an endless trouble to the 
 new landlords. These, all the while on from the 
 death of Henry to that of Elizabeth, pursued their 
 vigilance and their accumulations. Their power 
 rose above the marshes like a slow sun and dried 
 them up at last. 
 
 In every inch of England you can find the 
 history of England. You find it very typically 
 here. The growth of that leisured class which we 
 still enjoy — the class that in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury destroyed the central government of the 
 Crown, penetrated and refreshed the universities, 
 acquired for its use and reformed the endowed 
 primary education of the English, and began a 
 thorough occupation of our public land — the 
 growth of that leisured class is nowhere more 
 clearly to be seen than in the history of the Fens, 
 since the Fens had their faith removed from them. 
 
 Here is the story of one such family, a family 
 without whose privileges and public services it 
 would be difficult to conceive modern England. 
 
74 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 Their wealth is rooted in the Fens ; the growth of 
 that wealth is parallel to the growth of every for- 
 tune by which we are governed. 
 
 When the monasteries were despoiled and their 
 farms thrown open to a gamble, when the water ran 
 in again, the countryside and all its generations of 
 human effort were drowned, there was raised up 
 for the restoration of this land the family of 
 Russell. 
 
 The Abbey of Thorney had been given to these 
 little squires. They were in possession when, 
 towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, in 1600, was 
 passed the General Draining Act. It was a gener- 
 ous and a broad Act : it was to apply not only to 
 the Great Level, but to all the marshes of the 
 realm. It was soon bent to apply to the family. 
 
 Seven years later a Dutchman of the name of 
 Cornelius Vermuyden was sent for, that the work . 
 might be begun. For fifty years this man dug and 
 intrigued. He was called in to be the engineer ; 
 he had the temerity to compete with the new land- 
 lords ; he boasted a desire — less legitimate in an 
 alien than in a courtier — to make a great fortune 
 rapidly. He was ruined. 
 
 All the adventurers who first attempted the 
 draining of the Fens were ruined — but not that 
 permanent Russell-Francis, the Earl of Bedford, 
 surnamed **the Incomparable." 
 
 The story of Vermuyden by him is intricate, 
 
A FAMILY OF THE FENS 75 
 
 but every Englishman now living on another man's 
 land should study it. Vermuyden was to drain 
 the Great Level and to have 95,000 acres for his 
 pains. These acres were in the occupation — for 
 the matter of that, in great part the ownership— of 
 a number of English families. It is true the land 
 had lain derelict for seventy years, bereft of capital 
 since the Reformation, and swamped. It is true 
 that the occupiers (and owners) were very poor. 
 It is true, therefore, that they could not properly 
 comprehend a policy that was designed for the 
 general advantage of the country. They only un- 
 derstood that the hunting and fishing by which 
 they lived were to stop ; that their land was to be 
 very considerably improved and taken from them. 
 In their ignorance of ultimate political good they 
 began to show some considerable impatience. 
 
 The cry of the multitude has a way of taking on 
 the forms of stupidity. The multitude in this case 
 cried out against Vermuyden. They objected to 
 a foreigner being given so much freehold. ** In 
 an anguish of despair" — to use one chronicler's 
 words — *'they threw themselves under the protec- 
 tion of a leader." That leader was, of course, 
 Francis, Earl of Bedford, surnamed **the Incom- 
 parable." He could not hear unmoved the cry of 
 his fellow-citizens. He yielded to their petition, 
 took means to oust the Dutchmen, and imme- 
 diately obtained for himself the grant of the 
 
76 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 95,000 acres, by a royal order of 13 January, 
 1630-31, known as **the Lynn Law." 
 
 When he saw the extent of the land and of the 
 water upon it, even his tenacious spirit was 
 alarmed. He therefore associated with himself in 
 the expenses thirteen others, all persons of rank 
 and fortune, as was fitting : alone of the fourteen 
 he preserved his fortune. 
 
 The fourteen, then, began the digging of nine 
 drains (if we include the repair of Morton's 
 Leam) ; the largest was that fine twenty-one miles 
 called the old Bedford River, and Charles I, 
 tliough all in favour of so great a work, was all in 
 dread of the power it might give to the class 
 which — as his prophetic conscience told him — was 
 destined to be his ruin. 
 
 There was a contract that the work should be 
 finished in six years : when the six years were 
 ended it was very far from finished. The King 
 grumbled ; but Francis, Earl of Bedford, belonged 
 to a clique already half as powerful as the Crown. 
 He threatened, and a new royal order gave him 
 an extension of time. It was the second of his 
 many victories. 
 
 The King refused to forget his defeat, and 
 Francis, Earl of Bedford, began to show that 
 hatred of absolute government which has made of 
 his kind the leaders of a happy England. The 
 King did a Stuart thing — he lost his temper. He 
 
A FAMILY OF THE FENS 77 
 
 said, **You may keep your 95,000 acres, but I 
 shall tax them '* ; and he did. Francis, Earl of 
 Bedford, felt in him a growing passion for just 
 government. He already spoke of freedom ; but 
 he had no leisure wherein to enjoy it, for within 
 two years he departed this life, of the small-pox, 
 leaving to his son William the legacy of the great 
 battle for liberty and for the public land. 
 
 This change in the Bedford dynasty coincided 
 with the Civil Wars. William Russell, having 
 led some of the Parliamentary forces at Edge 
 Hill, was so uncertain which side might ulti- 
 mately be victorious as to open secret negotia- 
 tions with the King. Nothing happened to him, 
 nor even to his brother, who intrigued later 
 against Cromwell's life. He was at liberty to 
 return once more and to survey from the walls of 
 the old abbey the drowned land upon which he 
 had set his heart. 
 
 The work of digging could not be carried on 
 during the turmoil of the time; William, Earl of 
 Bedford, filled his leisure in the framing of an 
 elaborate bill of costs. It was dated 20 May, 
 1646, and showed the sums which he had spent 
 and which had been wasted in the failure to re- 
 claim the Fens. He stated them at over ^^90,000, 
 and to this he added, like a good business man, 
 interest at the rate of 8 per cent, for so many 
 years as to amount to more than another ;f30,ooo. 
 
78 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 As against the King, the trick was a good one ; 
 but, like many another financier, William, Earl 
 of Bedford, was shortsighted. The more anxious 
 the King grew to pay out public money to the 
 Russells, the less able he grew to do so, till at last 
 he lost not only the shadow of power over the 
 treasury, but life itself; and William, Earl of 
 Bedford, brought in his bill to the Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 Cromwell was of the same class, and knew the 
 trick too well. He gave the family leave to pro- 
 secute their digging to forget their demand for 
 money. The Act was passed at noon. Bedford 
 was sent for at seven o'clock the next morning 
 and ordered to attend upon Cromwell "and make 
 thankful acknowledgments." He did so. 
 
 The works began once more. The common 
 people, in their simplicity, rose as they had so 
 often risen before, against a benefit they could not 
 comprehend ; but they no longer had a Stuart to 
 deal with. To their extreme surprise they were 
 put down ** with the aid of the military." Then, 
 for all the world as in the promotion of a modern 
 company, the consulting engineer of the original 
 promoters reappears. The Russells had patched 
 it up with Vermuyden, and the work was resumed 
 a third time. 
 
 There was, however, this difficulty, that though 
 Englishmen might properly be constrained at this 
 
A FAMILY OF THE FENS 79 
 
 moment to love an orderly and godly life, and to 
 relinquish their property when it was to the public 
 good that they should do so, yet it would have 
 been abhorrent to the whole spirit of the Com- 
 monwealth to enslave them even for a work of 
 national advantage. A labour difficulty arose, 
 and the works were in grave peril. 
 
 Those whose petty envy may be pleased at the 
 entanglement of William, Earl of Bedford, have 
 forgotten the destiny which maintains our great 
 families. In the worst of the crisis, the battle of 
 Dunbar was fought ; i66 Scotch prisoners (and 
 later 500 more) were indentured out to dig the 
 ditches, and it was printed and posted in the end 
 of 165 1 that it was ** death without mercy" for any 
 to attempt to escape. 
 
 The respite was not for long. Heaven, as 
 though to try the patience of its chosen agent, 
 raised up a new obstacle before the great patriot. 
 Peace was made, and the Scotch prisoners were 
 sent home. It was but the passing frown which 
 makes the succeeding smiles of the Deity more 
 gracious. At that very moment Blake was defeat- 
 ing the Dutch upon the seas, and these excellent 
 prisoners, laborious, and (by an accident which 
 clearly shows the finger of Divine providence) 
 especially acquainted with the digging of ditches, 
 arrived in considerable numbers, chained, and 
 handed over to the service of the Premier House. 
 
80 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 At the same time it was ordered by the Lord Pro- 
 tector that when the 95,000 acres should at last 
 be dry, any Protestant, even though he were a 
 foreigner, might buy. Two years later an unfor- 
 tunate peace compelled the return of the Dutch 
 prisoners ; but the work was done, and the Earl of 
 Bedford returned thanks in his cathedral. 
 
 Restored to the leisure which is necessary for 
 political action, the Russells actively intrigued for 
 the return of the Stuarts, and pointed out (when 
 Charles II was well upon his throne) how neces- 
 sary it was for the Fens that their old, if irregular, 
 privileges should be confirmed. It was argued 
 for the Crown that 10,000 acres of land had been 
 quietly absorbed by the Family while there was no 
 king in England : but there happened in this case, 
 what happened in every other since the upper 
 class, the natural leaders of the people, had curbed 
 the tyranny of the King — Charles capitulated. 
 Then followed (of course) popular rising ; it was 
 quelled. Before their long struggle for freedom 
 against the Stuart dynasty was ended, the peasants 
 had been taught their place, Vermuyden was out 
 of the way, the ditches were all dug, the land 
 acquired. 
 
 All the world knows the great part played by 
 the House in the emancipation of England from 
 the yoke of James II. The martyrdom of Lord 
 William may have cast upon the Family a passing 
 
A FAMILY OF THE FENS 81 
 
 cloud ; but whatever compensation the perishable 
 things of this world can afford, they received and 
 accepted. In 1694, having assisted at the destruc- 
 tion of yet another form of government, the Earl 
 of Bedford was made Duke, and on 7 September, 
 1700, his great work now entirely accomplished, 
 he departed this life peacefully in his eighty-seventh 
 year. It was once more in their cathedral that the 
 funeral sermon was preached by a Dr. Freeman, 
 chaplain to no less than the King himself. I have 
 read the sermon in its entirety. It closes with the 
 fine phrase that William the fifth Earl and the 
 first Duke of Bedford had sought throughout the 
 whole of a laborious and patriotic life a crown not 
 corruptible but incorruptible. 
 
 It was precisely a century since the Family had 
 set out in its quest for that hundred square miles 
 of land. Through four reigns, a bloody civil war, 
 three revolutions and innumerable treasons, it had 
 maintained its purpose, and at last it reached its 
 goal. 
 
 " Tantce molts erat Romanam condere gentem,^* 
 
 G 
 
THE ELECTION 
 
 THE Other day as I was going out upon my 
 travels, I came upon a plain so broad that it 
 greatly wearied me. This plain was grown in 
 parts with barley, but as it stood high in foreign 
 mountains and was arid very little was grown. 
 Small runnels, long run dry under the heat, made 
 the place look like a desert — almost like Africa ; 
 nor was there anything to relieve my gaze except 
 a huddle of small grey houses far away ; but when 
 I reached them I found, to my inexpressible joy, 
 a railway running by and a station to receive me. 
 
 For those who complain of railways talk folly, 
 and prove themselves either rich or, more probably, 
 the hangers-on of the rich. A railway is an excel- 
 lent thing ; it takes one quickly through the world 
 for next to nothing, and if in many countries the 
 people it takes are brutes, and disfigure all they 
 visit, that is not the fault of the railway, but of the 
 Government and religion of these people, which, 
 between them, have ruined the citizens of the State. 
 
 So was it not in this place of which I speak, for 
 all the people were industrious, wealthy, kind, 
 amenable and free. 
 
 82 
 
THE ELECTION 83 
 
 I took a ticket for the only town on the railway 
 list whose history I knew, and then in a third-class 
 carriage made entirely of wood I settled down to a 
 conversation with my kind ; for though these 
 people were not of my blood — indeed, I am certain 
 that for some hundreds of years not a drop of their 
 blood has mingled with my own — yet we under- 
 stood each other by a common tongue called 
 Lingua Franca, of which I have spoken in another 
 place and am a past master. 
 
 As all the people round began their talk of 
 cattle, land, and weather, two men next me, or 
 rather the one next me and the other opposite me, 
 began to talk of the election which had been held 
 in that delightful plain : by which, as I learnt, a 
 dealer in herds had been defeated by a somewhat 
 usurious and perhaps insignificant attorney. In 
 this election more than half the voters — that is, a 
 good third of the families in the plain— had gone 
 up to the little huts of wood and had made a 
 mark upon a bit of paper, some on one part, some 
 on the other. About a sixth of the families had 
 desired the dealer in herds to make their laws, 
 and about a sixth the attorney. Of the rest some 
 could not, some would not, go and make the little 
 mark of which I speak. Many more could by 
 law make it, and would have made it, if they had 
 thought it useful to any possible purpose under 
 the sun. One-sixth, I say, had made their mark 
 
84 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 for the aged and money-lending attorney, and 
 one-sixth for the venerable but avaricious dealer 
 in herds, and since the first sixth was imperceptibly 
 larger than the second it was the lawyer, not the 
 merchant, who stood to make the laws for the 
 people. But not only to make laws : he was also 
 in some mystic way the Persona and Representa- 
 tive of all the plain. The long sun-lit fields ; the 
 infinite past — Carolingian, enormous ; the delicate 
 fronds of young trees ; the distant sight of the 
 mountains, which is the note of all that land ; the 
 invasions it had suffered, the conquests it might 
 yet achieve ; its soul and its material self, were all 
 summed up in the solicitor, not in the farmer, and 
 he was to vote on peace or war, on wine or water, 
 on God or no God in the schools. For the people 
 of the plain were self-governing ; they had no lords. 
 
 Of my two companions, the one had voted for 
 the cow-buyer, but the other for the scribbler upon 
 parchment, and they discussed their action without 
 heat, gently and with many reasons. 
 
 The one said: **It cannot be doubted that the 
 solidarity of society demands that the homogeneity 
 of economic interests should be recognized by the 
 magistrate." The other said : ** The first need is 
 rather that the historic continuity of society should 
 be affirmed by the momentary depositaries of the 
 executive." 
 
 For these two men were of some education, and 
 
THE ELECTION 85 
 
 saw things from a higher standpoint than the 
 peasants around us, who continued to discourse, 
 now angrily, now merrily, but always loudly and 
 rapidly, upon the insignificant matter of their lives: 
 that is, strong, red, bubbling wine, healthy and 
 well-fed beef, rich land and housing, the marriage 
 of daughters, and the putting forward of sons. 
 
 Then one of the two, who had long guessed by 
 my dress and face from what country I came, said 
 to me : ** And you, how is it in your country ? " I 
 told him we met from time to time, upon occasions 
 not less often than seven years apart, and did just 
 as they had done. That one-sixth of us voted one 
 way and one-sixth the other ; the first, let us say 
 for a money-lender, and the second for a man 
 remarkable for motor-cars or famous for the wealth 
 of his mother ; and whichever sixth was imper- 
 ceptibly larger than the other, that sixth carried its 
 man, and he stood for the flats of the Wash or for 
 the clear hills of Cumberland, or for Devon, which 
 is all one great and lonely hill. 
 
 **This man," said I, **in some very mystic way 
 is Ourselves — he is our past and our great national 
 memory. By his vote he decides what shall be 
 done ; but he is controlled." 
 
 ** By what is he controlled ? " said my companions 
 eagerly. Evidently they had a sneaking love of 
 seeing representatives controlled. 
 
 << By a committee of the rich," said I promptly. 
 
86 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 At this they shrugged their shoulders and said : 
 ** It is a bad system !" 
 
 ** And by what are yours ? '' said I. 
 
 At this the gravest and oldest of them, looking 
 as it were far away with his eyes, answered : ** By 
 the name of our country and a wholesome terror of 
 the people." 
 
 ** Your system," said I, shrugging my shoulders 
 in turn, but a little awkwardly, **is different from 
 ours." 
 
 After this, we were silent all three. We remem- 
 bered, all three of us, the times when no such things 
 were done in Europe, and yet men hung well 
 together, and a nation was vaguer and yet more 
 instinctive and ready. We remembered also — for 
 it was in our common faith — the gross, permanent, 
 and irremediable imperfection of human affairs. 
 There arose perhaps in their minds a sight of the 
 man they had sent to be the spirit and spokesman, 
 or rather the very self, of that golden plateau 
 which the train was crawling through, and certainly 
 in my mind there rose the picture of a man — small, 
 false, and vile — who was, by some fiction, the voice 
 of a certain valley in my own land. 
 
 Then I said to them as I left the train at the 
 town I spoke of: *^Days, knights I" — for so one 
 addresses strangers in that country. And they 
 answered: **Your grace, we commend you to 
 God." 
 
ARLES 
 
 THE use and the pleasure of travel are closely 
 mingled, because the use of it is fulfil- 
 ment, and in fulfilling oneself a great pleasure is 
 enjoyed. Every man bears within him not only 
 his own direct experience, but all the past of his 
 blood : the things his own race has done are part 
 of himself, and in him also is what his race will 
 do when he is dead. This is why men will always 
 read records^ and why, even when letters are at 
 their lowest, records still remain. Thus, if a diary 
 be known to be true, then it seems vivid and 
 becomes famous where if it were fiction no one 
 would find any merit in it. History, therefore, 
 once a man has begun to know it, becomes a 
 necessary food for the mind, without which it 
 cannot sustain its new dimension. It is an aggre- 
 gate of universal experience, nor, other things 
 being equal, is any man's judgment so thin and 
 weak as the judgment of a man who knows 
 nothing of the past. But history, if it is to be 
 kept just and true and not to become a set of airy 
 scenes, fantastically coloured by our later time, 
 must be continually corrected and moderated by 
 the seeing and handling of things. ,^ 
 
 87 
 
88 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 If the West of Europe be one place and one 
 people separate from all the rest of the world, 
 then that unity is of the last importance to us ; 
 and that it is so, the wider our learning the more 
 certain we are. All our religion and custom and 
 mode of thought are European. A European 
 State is only a State because it is a State of 
 Europe ; and the demarcations between the ever- 
 shifting States of Europe are only dotted lines, 
 but between the Christian and the non-Christian 
 the boundary is hard and full. 
 
 Now, a man who recognizes this truth will ask, 
 ** Where could I find a model of the past of that 
 Europe? In what place could I find the best 
 single collection of all the forms which European 
 energy has created, and of all the outward sym- 
 bols in which its soul has been made manifest? 
 To such a man the answer should be given, **You 
 will find these things better in the town of Aries 
 than in any other place." A man asking such 
 a question would mean to travel. He ought to 
 travel to Aries » 
 
 Long before men could write, this hill (which 
 was the first dry land at the head of the Rhone 
 delta, beyond the early mud-flats which the river 
 was pushing out into the sea) was inhabited by 
 our ancestors. Their barbaric huts were grouped 
 round the shelving shore ; their axes and their 
 spindles remain. 
 
ARLES 89 
 
 When thousands of years later the Greeks 
 pushed northward from Massilia, Aries was the 
 first great corner in their road, and the first halting- 
 place after the useless deserts that separated their 
 port from the highway of the Rhone valley. 
 
 At the close of Antiquity Rome came to Aries 
 in the beginning of her expansion, and the strong 
 memories of Rome which Aries still holds are 
 famous. Every traveller has heard of the vast 
 unbroken amphitheatre and the ruined temple in 
 a market square that is still called the Forum ; they 
 are famous — but when you see them it seems to 
 you that they should be more famous still. They 
 have something about them so familiar and yet so 
 unexpected that the centuries in which they were 
 built come actively before you. 
 
 The city of Aries is small and packed. A man 
 may spend an hour in it instead of a day or a 
 year, but in that hour he can receive full communion 
 with antiquity. For as you walk along the tor- 
 tuous lane between high houses, passing on either 
 hand as you go the ornaments of every age, you 
 turn some dirty little corner or other and come 
 suddenly upon the titanic arches of Rome. There 
 are the huge stones which appal you with the 
 Roman weight and perpetuate in their arrange- 
 ment an order that has modelled the world. They 
 lie exact and mighty ; they are unmoved, clamped 
 
90 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 with metal, a little worn, enduring. They are 
 none the less a domestic and native part of the 
 living town in which they stand. You pass from 
 the garden of a house that was built in your 
 grandfather's time, and you see familiarly before 
 you in the street a pedestal and a column. They 
 are two thousand years old. You read a placard 
 idly upon the wall; the placard interests you; it 
 deals with the politics of the place or with the 
 army, but the wall might be meaningless. You 
 look more closely, and you see that that wall was 
 raised in a fashion that has been forgotten since 
 the Antonines, and these realities still press upon 
 you, revealed and lost again with every few steps 
 you walk within the limited circuit of the town. 
 
 Rome slowly fell asleep. The sculpture lost 
 its power; something barbaric returned. You 
 may see that decline in capitals and masks still 
 embedded in buildings of the fifth century. The 
 sleep grew deeper. There came five hundred 
 years of which so little is left in Europe that Paris 
 has but one doubtful tower and London nothing. 
 Aries still preserves its relics. When Charlemagne 
 was dead and Christendom almost extinguished 
 the barbarian and the Saracen alternately built, and 
 broke against, a keep that still stands and that is 
 still so strong that one might still defend it. It is 
 unlit. It is a dungeon ; a ponderous menace above 
 the main street of the city, blind and enormous. 
 It is the very time it comes from. 
 
ARLES 91 
 
 When all that fear and anarchy of the mind had 
 passed, and when it was discovered that the West 
 still lived, a dawn broke. The medieval civiliza- 
 tion began to sprout vigorously through the 
 eleventh and twelfth centuries, as an old tree 
 sprouts before March is out. The memorials of 
 that transition are common enough. We have 
 them here in England in great quantity; we call 
 them the ** Norman" architecture. A peculiarly 
 vivid relic of that spring-time remains at Aries. 
 It is the door of what was then the cathedral— the 
 door of St. Trophimus. It perpetuates the be- 
 ginning of the civilization of the Middle Ages. 
 And of that civilization an accident which has all 
 the force of a particular design has preserved here, 
 attached to this same church, another complete 
 type. The cloisters of this same Church of St. 
 Trophimus are not only the Middle Ages caught 
 and made eternal, they are also a progression of that 
 great experiment from its youth to its sharp close. 
 
 You come into these cloisters from a little side 
 street and a neglected yard, which give you no 
 hint of what you are going to see. You find your- 
 self cut off at once and put separately by. Silence 
 inhabits the place ; you see nothing but the sky 
 beyond the border of the low roofs. One old man 
 there, who cannot read or write and is all but 
 blind, will talk to you of the Rhone. Then as you go 
 round the arches, '* withershins" against the sun 
 
92 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 (in which way lucky progression has always been 
 made in sacred places), there pass you one after 
 the other the epochs of the Middle Ages. For 
 each group of arches comes later than the last in 
 the order of its sculpture, and the sculptors during 
 those 300 years went withershins as should you. 
 
 You have first the solemn purpose of the early 
 work. This takes on neatness of detail, then 
 fineness ; a great maturity dignifies all the northern 
 side. Upon the western you already see that 
 spell beneath which the Middle Ages died. The 
 mystery of the fifteenth century ; none of its 
 wickedness but all its final vitality, is there. You 
 see in fifty details the last attempt of our race to 
 grasp and permanently to retain the beautiful. 
 
 When the circuit is completed the series ends 
 abruptly — as the medieval story itself ended. 
 
 There is no way of writing or of telling history 
 which could be so true as these visions are. Aries, 
 at a corner of the great main road of the Empire, 
 never so strong as to destroy nor so insignificant 
 as to cease from building, catching the earliest 
 Roman march into the north, the Christian 
 advance, the full experience of the invasions ; 
 retaining in a vague legend the memory of 
 St. Paul ; drawing in, after the long trouble, the 
 new life that followed the Crusades, can show 
 such visions better, I think, than Rome herself 
 can show them. 
 
THE GRIFFIN 
 
 A SPECIALIST told me once in Ealing that no 
 inn could compare with the Griffin, a Fenland 
 inn. ** It is painted green," he said, "and stands 
 in the town of March. If you would enjoy the 
 Griffin, you must ask your way to that town, and 
 as you go ask also for the Griffin, for many who 
 may not have heard of March will certainly have 
 heard of the Griffin." 
 
 So I set out at once for the Fens and came at 
 the very beginning of them to a great ditch, 
 which barred all further progress. I wandered 
 up and down the banks for an hour thinking of 
 the inn, when I met a man who was sadder and 
 more silent even than the vast level and lonely 
 land in which he lived. I asked him how I should 
 cross the great dyke. He shook his head, and said 
 he did not know. I asked him if he had heard of 
 the Griffin, but he said no. I broke away from 
 him and went for miles along the bank eastward, 
 seeing the rare trees of the marshes dwindling in 
 the distance, and up against the horizon a distant 
 spire, which I thought might be the Spire of 
 
 93 
 
94 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 March. For March and the Griffin were not twenty 
 miles away. And still the great ditch stood between 
 me and my pilgrimage. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 These dykes of the Fens are accursed things : 
 they are the separation of friends and lovers. 
 Here is a man whose crony would come and sit by 
 his fireside at evening and drink with him, a 
 custom perhaps of twenty years' standing, when 
 there comes another man from another part armed 
 with public power, and digs between them a trench 
 too wide to leap and too soft to ford. The Fens 
 are full of such tragedies. 
 
 One may march up and down the banks all day 
 without finding a boat, and as for bridges there 
 are none, except, indeed, the bridges which the 
 railway makes ; for the railways have grown to be 
 as powerful as the landlords or the brewers, and 
 can go across this country where they choose. 
 And here the Fens are typical, for it may be said 
 that these three monopolies — the landlords, the 
 railways, and the brewers — govern England. 
 
 But at last, at a place called Oxlode, I found 
 a boat, and the news that just beyond lay another 
 dyke. I asked where that could be crossed, but 
 the ferryman of Oxlode did not know. He pointed 
 two houses out, however, standing close together 
 out of the plain, and said that they were called 
 
THE GRIFFIN 95 
 
 *'Purles' Bridge/' and that I would do well to try 
 there. But when I reached them I found that the 
 water was between me and them and, what is 
 more, that there was no bridge there and never 
 had been one since the beginning of time. Of these 
 jests the Fens are full. 
 
 In half an hour a man came out of one of the 
 houses and ferried me across in silence. I asked 
 him also if he had heard of the Griffin. He 
 laughed and shook his head as the first one had 
 done, but he showed me a little way off the village 
 of Monea, saying that the people of that place 
 knew every house for a day's walk around. So 
 I trudged to Monea, which is a village on one 
 of the old dry islands of the marsh ; but no one ajt 
 Monea knew. There was, none the less, one old 
 man who told me he had heard the name, and his 
 advice to me was to go to the cross roads and past 
 them towards March, and then to ask again. So 
 I went outwards to the cross roads, and from the 
 cross roads outward again it seemed without end, a 
 similar land repeating itself for ever. There was 
 the same silence, the same completely even soil, 
 the same deep little trenches, the same rare distant 
 and regular rows of trees. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 Since it was useless to continue thus for you — 
 one yard was as good as twenty miles — and since 
 you could know nothing more of these silences, 
 
96 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 even if I were to give you every inch of the road, 
 I will pass at once to the moment in which I saw 
 a baker's cart catching me up at great speed. The 
 man inside had an expression of irritable poverty. 
 I did not promise him money, but gave it him. 
 Then he took me aboard and rattled on, with me 
 by his side. 
 
 I had by this time a suspicion that the Griffin 
 was a claustral thing and a mystery not to be 
 blurted out. I knew that all the secrets of 
 Hermes may be reached by careful and long-drawn 
 words, and that the simplest of things will not be 
 told one if one asks too precipitately ; so I began to 
 lay siege to his mind by the method of dialogue. 
 The words were these : — 
 
 Myself: This land wanted draining, didn't it? 
 
 The Other Man : Ah ! 
 
 Myself : It seems to be pretty well drained 
 now. 
 
 The Other Man : Ugh I 
 
 Myself : I mean it seems dry enough. 
 
 The Other Man : It was drownded only last 
 winter. 
 
 Myself : It looks to be good land. 
 
 The Other Man : It's lousy land ; it's worth 
 nowt. 
 
 Myself : Still, there are dark bits — black, you 
 may say — and thereabouts it will be good. 
 
 The Other Man : That's where you're wrong ; 
 
THE GRIFFIN 97 
 
 the lighter it is the better it is ... ah ! that's 
 where many of 'em go wrong. {Short silence,) 
 Myself {cheerfully) : A sort of loam ? 
 The Other Man {Calmnistically)\ Ugh !— sand ! 
 . . . {shaking his head). It blaws away with a 
 blast of wind. {A longer silence,) 
 
 Myself {as though full of interest) : Then you 
 set your drills to sow deep about here ? 
 
 The Other Man {with a gesture of fatigue) : 
 Shoal. {Here he sighed deeply,) 
 
 After this we ceased to speak to each other for 
 several miles. Then : 
 
 Myself : Who owns the land about here ? 
 The Other Man : Some owns parts and some 
 others. 
 
 Myself {angrily pointing to an enormous field 
 with a little new house in the middle) : Who owns 
 that? 
 
 The Other Man {startled by my tone) : A 
 Frenchman. He grows onions. 
 
 Now if you know little of England and of the 
 temper of the English (I mean of -999 of the English 
 people and not of the '001 with which you asso- 
 ciate), if, I say, you know little or nothing of your 
 fellow-countrymen, you may imagine that all this 
 conversation was wasted. ** It was not to the 
 point," you say. **You got no nearer the Griffin." 
 You are wrong. Such conversation is like the 
 kneading of dough or the mixing of mortar ; it 
 
 H 
 
98 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 mollifies and makes ready ; it is three-quarters 
 of the work ; for if you will let your fellow-citizen 
 curse you and grunt at you, and if you will but 
 talk to him on matters which he knows far better 
 than you, then you have him ready at the end. 
 
 So had I this man, for I asked him point-blank 
 at the end of all this : *^ W/iai^ about the Griffin?^^ 
 He looked at me for a moment almost with intelli- 
 gence, and told me that he would hand me over in 
 the next village to a man who was going through 
 March. So he did, and the horse of this second 
 man was even faster than that of the baker. The 
 horses of the Fens are like no horses in the world 
 for speed. 
 
 This horse was twenty-three years old, yet it 
 went as fast as though all that tomfoolery men 
 talk about progress were true, and as though 
 things got better by the process of time. It went 
 so fast that one might imagine it at forty-six 
 winning many races, and at eighty standing be- 
 yond all comparison or competition ; and because 
 it went so fast I went hammering right through 
 the town of March before I had time to learn its 
 name or to know whither I was driving ; it whirled 
 me past the houses and out into the country 
 beyond : only when I had pulled up two miles 
 beyond did I know what I had done and did I 
 realize that I had missed for ever one of those 
 
THE GRIFFIN 99 
 
 pleasures which, fleeting as they are, are all that is 
 to be discovered in human life. It went so fast, 
 that before I knew what had happened the Griffin 
 
 had flashed by me and was gone. 
 
 • • • • • • 
 
 Yet I will affirm with the tongue of faith that 
 
 it is the noblest house of call in the Fens. 
 
 • • • . • . 
 
 It is better to believe than to handle or to see. 
 I will affirm with the tongue of faith that the 
 Griffin is, as it were, the captain and chief of these 
 plains, and has just managed to touch perfection 
 in all the qualities that an inn should achieve. I 
 am speaking not of what I know by the doubtful 
 light of physical experience, but of what I have 
 seen with the inward eye and felt by something 
 that transcends gross taste and touch. 
 
 Low rooms of my repose ! Beams of comfort 
 and great age ; drowsy and inhabiting fires ; 
 ingle-nooks made for companionship. Yqu also, 
 beer much better, much more soft, than the beer of 
 lesser towns ; beans, bacon, and chicken cooked to 
 the very limit of excellence ; port drawn from 
 barrels which the simple Portuguese had sent to 
 Lynn over the cloud-shadowed sea, and honour- 
 able Lynn without admixture had sent upon a cart 
 to you, port undefiled, port homogeneous, entirely 
 made of wine : you also beds ! Wooden beds 
 with curtains around them, feathers for sleeping 
 
 LOFC 
 
100 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 on, and every decent thing which the accursed 
 
 would attempt to destroy ; candles (I trust) — and 
 
 trust is more perfect than proof — bread made (if it 
 
 be possible) out of English wheat ; milk drawn 
 
 most certainly from English cows, and butter 
 
 worthy of the pastures of England all around. 
 
 Oh, glory of the Fens, Griffin, it shall not be said 
 
 that I have not enjoyed you ! 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 There is a modern habit, I know, of gloom, and 
 men without faith upon every side recount the 
 things that they have not enjoyed. For my part 
 I will yield to no such habit. I will consider that 
 I have more perfectly tasted in the mind that 
 which may have been denied to my mere body, 
 and I will produce for myself and others a greater 
 pleasure than any pleasure of the sense. I will do 
 what the poets and the prophets have always done, 
 and satisfy myself with vision, and (who knows ?) 
 perhaps by this the Griffin of the Idea has been 
 made a better thing (if that were possible !) than 
 the Griffin as it is — as it materially stands in this 
 evil and uncertain world. 
 
 So let the old horse go by and snatch me from 
 this chance of joy : he has not taken everything 
 in his flight, and there remains something in spite 
 of time, which eats us all up. 
 
 And yet , . . what is that in me which makes 
 me regret the Griffin, the real Griffin at which 
 
THE GRIFFIN 101 
 
 they would not let me stay ? The Griffin painted 
 green : the real rooms, the real fire . . . the 
 material beer? Alas for mortality! Something 
 in me still clings to affections temporal and mun- 
 dane. England, my desire, what have you not 
 refused me ! 
 
THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH 
 
 I VERY well remember the spring ' breaking 
 ten years ago in Lorraine. I remember it 
 better far than I shall ever remember another 
 spring, because one of those petty summits of 
 emotion that seem in boyhood like the peaks of 
 the world was before me. We were going off to 
 camp. 
 
 Since every man that fires guns or drives them 
 in France — that is, some hundred thousand and 
 more at any one time, and taking in reserves, half a 
 million — must go to camp in his time, and that 
 more than once, it seems monstrous that a boy 
 should make so much of it ; but then to a boy 
 six months is a little lifetime, and for six months 
 I had passed through that great annealing fire of 
 drill which stamps and moulds the French people 
 to-day, putting too much knowledge and bitter- 
 ness into their eyes, but a great determination 
 into their gestures and a trained tenacity into the 
 methods of their thought. 
 
 To me also this fire seemed fiercer and more 
 transforming because, until the day when they 
 
 102 
 
THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH 103 
 
 had marched me up to barracks in the dark and 
 the rain with the batch of recruits, I had known 
 nothing but the easy illusions and the comfort of 
 an English village, and had had but journeys or 
 short visits to teach me that enduring mystery of 
 Europe, the French temper : whose aims and reti- 
 cence, whose hidden enthusiasms, great range of 
 effort, divisions, defeats, and resurrections must 
 now remain the principal problem before my mind ; 
 for the few who had seen this sight know that 
 the French mind is the pivot on which Europe 
 turns. 
 
 I had come into the regiment faulty in my 
 grammar and doubtful in accent, ignorant especi- 
 ally of those things which in every civilization 
 are taken for granted but never explained in full ; 
 I was ignorant, therefore, of the key which alone 
 can open that civilization to a stranger. Things 
 irksome or a heavy burden to the young men of 
 my age, born and brought up in the French air, 
 were to me, brought up with Englishmen an 
 Englishman, odious and bewildering. Orders 
 that I but half comprehended ; simple phrases that 
 seemed charged with menace ; boasting (a habit 
 of which I knew little), coupled with a fierce and, 
 as it were, expected courage that seemed ill-suited 
 to boasting— and certainly unknown outside this 
 army ; enormous powers of endurance in men 
 whose stature my English training had taught me 
 
104 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 to despise ; a habit of fighting with the fists, 
 coupled with a curious contempt for the accident 
 of individual superiority — all these things amazed 
 me and put me into a topsy-turvy world where 
 I was weeks in finding my feet. 
 
 But strangest of all, and (as I now especially 
 believe) most pregnant with meaning for the 
 future, was to find the inherited experience in me 
 of so much teaching and careful habit — instinct of 
 command, if you will — all that goes to make what 
 we call in Western Europe a *^ gentleman," put at 
 the orders and the occasional insult of a hierarchy 
 of office, many of whose functionaries were peasants 
 and artisans. Stripes on the arm, symbols, sud- 
 denly became of overwhelming value ; what I had 
 been made with so much care in an English public 
 school was here thought nothing but a hindrance 
 and an absurdity. This had seemed to me first a 
 miracle, then a grievous injustice, then most un- 
 practical, and at last, like one that sees the answer 
 to a riddle, I saw (when I had long lost my man- 
 ners and ceased to care for refinements) that the 
 French were attempting, a generation before any 
 others in the world, to establish an army that 
 should be a mere army, and in which a living 
 man counted only as one numbered man. 
 
 Whether that experiment will hold or not I can- 
 not tell ; it shocks the refinement of the whole 
 West of Europe ; it seems monstrous to the aristo- 
 
THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH 105 
 
 cratic organization of Germany ; it jars in France 
 also with the traditions of that decent elder class 
 of whom so many still remain to guide the Re- 
 public, and in whose social philosophy the segre- 
 gation of a * directing class" has been hitherto a 
 dogma. But soon I cared little whether that ex- 
 periment was to succeed or no in its final effort, or 
 whether the French were to perfect a democracy 
 where wealth has one vast experience of its own 
 artificiality, or to fail. The intellectual interest of 
 such an experiment, when once I seized it, drove 
 out every other feeling. 
 
 I became like a man who has thoroughly 
 awaked from a long sleep and finds that in sleep 
 he has been taken overseas. I merged into the 
 great system whose wheels and grindings had at 
 first astonished or disgusted me, and I found that 
 they had made of me what they meant to make. I 
 cared more for guns than for books ; I now obeyed 
 by instinct not men, but symbols of authority. 
 No comfortable fallacy remained ; it no longer 
 seemed strange that my captain was a man pro- 
 moted from the ranks ; that one of my lieutenants 
 was an Alsatian charity boy and the other a rich 
 fellow mixed up with sugar-broking ; that the 
 sergeant of my piece should be a poor young 
 noble, the wheeler of No. 5 a wealthy and very 
 vulgar chemist's son, the man in the next bed (my 
 ** ancient," as they say in that service) a cook of 
 
106 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 some skill, and my bombardier a mild young 
 farmer. I thought only in terms of the artillery : 
 I could judge men for their aptitude alone, and in 
 me, I suppose, were accomplished many things — 
 one of Danton's dreams, one of St. Just's prophe- 
 cies, the fulfilment also of what a hundred brains 
 had silently determined twenty years before when 
 the staff gave up their swords outside Metz ; the 
 army and the kind of army of which Chanzy had 
 said in the first breath of the armistice, ** A man 
 who forgets it should be hanged, but a man who 
 speaks of it before its time should be shot with the 
 honours of his rank." 
 
 All this had happened to me in especial in that 
 melting-pot up in the eastern hills, and to thirty 
 thousand others that year in their separate cru- 
 cibles. 
 
 In the process things had passed which would 
 seem to you incredible if I wrote them all down. 
 I cared little in what vessel I ate, or whether I had 
 to tear meat with my fingers. I could march in 
 reserve more than twenty miles a day for day 
 upon day. I knew all about my horses ; I could 
 sweep, wash, make a bed, clean kit, cook a little, 
 tidy a stable, turn to entrenching for emplace- 
 ment, take a place at lifting a gun or changing a 
 wheel. I took change with a gunner, and could 
 point well. And all this was not learnt save under 
 a grinding pressure of authority and harshness, 
 
THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH 107 
 
 without which in one's whole life I suppose one 
 would never properly have learnt a half of these 
 things — at least, not to do them so readily, or in 
 such unison, or on so definite a plan. But (what 
 will seem astonishing to our critics and verbalists) 
 with all this there increased the power, or perhaps 
 it was but the desire, to express the greatest 
 thoughts — newer and keener things. I began to 
 understand De Vigny when he wrote, ** If a man 
 despairs of becoming a poet, let him carry his pack 
 and march in the ranks." 
 
 Thus the great hills that border the Moselle, the 
 distant frontier, the vast plain which is (they say) 
 to be a battlefield, and which lay five hundred feet 
 sheer below me; the far guns when they were 
 practising at Metz, the awful strength of columns 
 on the march moved me. The sky also grew more 
 wonderful, and I noticed living things. The Middle 
 Ages, of which till then I had had but troubling 
 visions, rose up and took flesh in the old town, on 
 the rare winter evenings when I had purchased the 
 leisure to leave quarters by some excessive toil. A 
 man could feel France going by. 
 
 It was at the end of these six months, when 
 there was no more darkness at roll-call, and when 
 the bitter cold (that had frozen us all winter) was half 
 forgotten, that the spring brought me this excellent 
 news, earlier than I had dared to expect it—the 
 news that sounds to a recruit half as good as active 
 
108 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 service. We were going to march and go off right 
 away westward over half a dozen horizons, till we 
 could see the real thing at Chalons, and with this 
 news the world seemed recreated. 
 
 Seven times that winter we had been mobilized ; 
 four times in the dead of the night, once at mid- 
 day, once at evening, and once at dawn. Seven 
 times we had started down the wide Metz road, 
 hoping in some vague way that they would do 
 something with us and give us at least some 
 manoeuvres, and seven times we had marched back 
 to barracks to undo all that serious packing and to 
 return to routine. 
 
 Once, for a week in February, the French and 
 German Governments, or, more probably, two 
 minor permanent officials, took it into their silly 
 heads that there was some danger of war. We 
 packed our campaign saddles every night and put 
 them on the pegs behind the stalls ; we had the 
 emergency rations served out, and for two days in 
 the middle of that time we had slept ready. But 
 nothing came of it. Now at least we were off to 
 play a little at the game whose theory we had 
 learnt so wearily. 
 
 And the way I first knew it would easily fill a 
 book if it were told as it should be, with every 
 detail and its meaning unrolled and with every joy 
 described: as it is, I must put it in ten lines. 
 Garnon (a sergeant), three others, and I were sent 
 
THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH 109 
 
 out (one patrol out of fifty) to go round and see 
 the reserve horses on the farms. That was delight 
 enough, to have a vigorous windy morning with 
 the clouds large and white and in a clear sky, and 
 to mix with the first grain of the year, *^out of the 
 loose-box." 
 
 We took the round they gave us along the base 
 of the high hills, we got our papers signed at the 
 different stables, we noted the hoofs of the horses 
 and their numbers; a good woman at a large farm 
 gave us food of eggs and onions, and at noon we 
 turned to get back to quarters for the grooming. 
 Everything then was very well — to have ridden 
 out alone without the second horse and with no 
 horrible great pole to crush one's leg, and be 
 free — though we missed it— of the clank of the 
 guns. We felt like gentlemen at ease, and were 
 speaking grandly to each other, when I heard 
 Garnon say to the senior of us a word that made 
 things seem better still, for he pointed out to a 
 long blue line beyond Domremyand overhanging 
 the house of Joan of Arc, saying that the town lay 
 there. "What town?" said I to my Ancient ; and 
 my Ancient, instead of answering simply, took five 
 minutes to explain to me how a recruit could 
 not know that the round of the reserve horses 
 came next before camp, and that this town away 
 on the western ridge was the first halting-place 
 upon the road. Then my mind filled with distances, 
 
110 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 and I was overjoyed, saving for this one thing, 
 that I had but two francs and a few coppers left, 
 and that I was not in reach of more. 
 
 When we had ridden in, saluted and reported 
 at the guard, we saw the guns drawn up in line at 
 the end of the yard, and we went into grooming 
 and ate and slept, hardly waiting for the morning 
 and the long regimental call before the reveille; 
 the notes that always mean the high road for an 
 army, and that are as old as Fontenoy. 
 
 That next morning they woke us all before 
 dawn — long before dawn. The sky was still keen, 
 and there was not even a promise of morning in 
 the air, nor the least faintness in the eastern stars. 
 They twinkled right on the edges of the world 
 over the far woods of Lorraine, beyond the hollow 
 wherein lay the town ; it was even cold like winter 
 as we harnessed ; and I remember the night air 
 catching me in the face as I staggered from the 
 harness-room, with my campaign saddle and the 
 traces and the girths and the saddle cloth, and 
 all the great weight that I had to put upon my 
 horses. 
 
 We stood in the long stables all together, very 
 hurriedly saddling and bridling and knotting up 
 the traces behind. A few lanterns gave us an im- 
 perfect light. We hurried because it was a pride 
 
THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH 111 
 
 to be the first battery, and in the French service, 
 rightly or wrongly, everything in the artillery is 
 made for speed, and to speed everything is sacri- 
 ficed. So we made ready in the stable and brought 
 our horses out in order before the guns in the open 
 square of quarters. The high plateau on which 
 the barracks stood was touched with a last late 
 frost, and the horses coming out of the warm 
 stables bore the change ill, lifting their heads and 
 stamping. A man could not leave the leaders for 
 a moment, and, while the chains were hooked on, 
 even my middle horses were restive and had to be 
 held. My hands stiffened at the reins, and I tried 
 to soothe both my beasts, as the lantern went 
 up and down wherever the work was being done. 
 They quieted when the light was taken round 
 behind by the tumbrils, where two men were 
 tying on the great sack of oats exactly as though 
 we were going on campaign. 
 
 These two horses of mine were called Facte and 
 Basilique. Basilique was saddled : a slow beast, 
 full of strength and sympathy, but stupid and 
 given to sudden fears. Facte was the led horse, 
 and had never heard guns. It was prophesied 
 that when first I should have to hold him in camp 
 when we were practising he would break every- 
 thing near him, and either kill me or get me cells. 
 But I did not believe these prophecies, having 
 found my Ancient and all third-year men too 
 
112 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 often to be liars, fond of frightening the younger 
 recruits. Meanwhile Facte stood in the sharp 
 night, impatient, and shook his harness. Every- 
 thing had been quickly ordered. 
 
 We filed out of quarters, passed the lamp of the 
 guard, and saw huddled there the dozen or so that 
 were left behind while we were off to better things. 
 Then a drawn-out cry at the head of the column 
 was caught up all along its length, and we trotted ; 
 the metal of shoes and wheel-rims rang upon the 
 road, and I felt as a man feels on a ship when it 
 leaves harbour for great discoveries. 
 
 We had climbed the steep bank above St. 
 Martin, and were on the highest ridge of land 
 dominating the plain, when the sky first felt the 
 approach of the sun. Our backs were to the east, 
 but the horizon before us caught a reflection of the 
 dawn ; the woods lost their mystery, and one 
 found oneself marching in a partly cultivated open 
 space with a forest all around. The road ran 
 straight for miles like an arrow, and stretched 
 swarmingly along it was the interminable line of 
 guns. But with the full daylight, and after the 
 sun had risen in a mist, they deployed us out of 
 column into a wide front on a great heath in the 
 forest, and we halted. There we brewed coffee, 
 not by batteries, but gun by gun. 
 
 Warmed by this little meal, mere coffee without 
 sugar or milk, but with a hunk left over from yes- 
 
THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH 113 
 
 terday's bread and drawn stale from one's haver- 
 sack (the armies of the Republic and of Napoleon 
 often fought all day upon such sustenance, and 
 even now, as you will see, the French do not 
 really eat till a march is over — and this may be a 
 great advantage in warfare) — warmed, I say, by 
 this little meal, and very much refreshed by the 
 sun and the increasing merriment of morning, we 
 heard first the trumpet-call and then the shouted 
 order to mount. 
 
 We did not form one column again. We went 
 off at intervals by batteries ; and the reason of this 
 was soon clear, for on getting to a place where 
 four roads met, some took one and some took 
 another, the object being to split up the unwieldy 
 train of thirty-six guns, with all their waggons 
 and forges, into a number of smaller groups, 
 marching by ways more or less parallel towards 
 the same goal ; and my battery was left separate, 
 and went at last along a lane that ran through 
 pasture land in a valley. 
 
 The villages were already awake, and the mist 
 was all but lifted from the meadows when we 
 heard men singing in chorus in front of us some 
 way off. These were the gunners that had left 
 long before us and had gone on forward afoot. 
 For in the French artillery it is a maxim (for all I 
 know, common to all others— if other artilleries 
 are wise) that you should weight your limber (and 
 I 
 
114 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 therefore your horses) with useful things alone ; 
 and as gunners are useful only to fire guns, they 
 are not carried, save into action or when some 
 great rapidity of movement is desired. I do, in- 
 deed, remember one case when it was thought 
 necessary to send a group of batteries during the 
 manoeuvres right over from the left to the right of 
 a very long position which our division was occu- 
 pying on the crest of the Argonne. There was 
 the greatest need for haste, and we packed the 
 gunners on to the limber (there were no seats on 
 the gun in the old type — there are now) and gal- 
 loped all the way down the road, and put the 
 guns in action with the horses still panting and 
 exhausted by that extra weight carried at such a 
 speed and for such a distance. But on the march, 
 I say again, we send the gunners forward, and 
 not only the gunners, but, as you shall hear when 
 we come to Commercy, a reserve of drivers also. 
 We send them forward an hour or two before the 
 guns start ; we catch them up with the guns on 
 the road ; they file up to let us pass, and com- 
 monly salute us by way of formality and cere- 
 mony. Then they come into the town of the halt 
 an hour or two after we have reached it. 
 
 So here in this silent and delightful valley, 
 through which ran a river, which may have been 
 the Meuse or may have been a tributary only, we 
 caught up our gunners. Their song ceased, they 
 
THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH 115 
 
 were lined up along the road, and not till we were 
 passed were they given a little halt and repose. 
 But when we had gone past with a huge clattering 
 and dust, the bombardier of my piece, who was 
 a very kindly man, a young farmer, and who hap- 
 pened to be riding abreast of my horses, pointed 
 them out to me behind us at a turning in the road. 
 They were taking that five minutes' rest which the 
 French have borrowed from the Germans, and 
 which comes at the end of every hour on the 
 march. They had thrown down their knapsacks 
 and were lying flat taking their ease. I could not 
 long look backwards, but a very little time after, 
 when we had already gained nearly half a mile 
 upon them, we again heard the noise of their sing- 
 ing, and knew that they had re-shouldered the 
 heavy packs. And this pack is the same in every 
 unmounted branch of the service, and is the 
 heaviest thing, I believe, that has been carried by 
 infantry since the Romans. 
 
 It was not yet noon, and extremely hot for the 
 time of year and for the coldness of the preceding 
 night, when they halted us at a place where the 
 road bent round in a curve and went down a little 
 hollow. There we dismounted and cleaned things 
 up a little before getting into the town, where we 
 were to find what the French call an etape; that is, 
 the town at which one halts at the end of one's 
 march, and the word is also used for the length of 
 
116 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 a march itself. It is not in general orders to clean 
 up in this way before coming in, and there were 
 some commanders who were never more pleased 
 than when they could bring their battery into town 
 covered with dust and the horses steaming and the 
 men haggard, for this they thought to be evidence 
 of a workmanlike spirit. But our colonel had given 
 very contrary orders, to the annoyance of our 
 captain, a man risen from the ranks who loved the 
 guns and hated finery. 
 
 Then we went at a walk, the two trumpets of the 
 battery sounding the call which is known among 
 French gunners as **the eighty hunters," because 
 the words to it are, ^^ quatre-vtngty quatre-vingt^ 
 quatre-vingt, quatre-vingt, quatre-vingt, quatre- 
 vingt^ quatre-vingt, chasseurs," which words, by 
 their metallic noise and monotony, exactly express 
 the long call that announces the approach of guns. 
 We went right through the town, the name of 
 which is Commercy, and the boys looked at us 
 with pride, not knowing how hateful they would 
 find the service when once they were in for its 
 grind and hopelessness. But then, for that matter, 
 I did not know myself with what great pleasure I 
 should look back upon it ten years after. More- 
 over, nobody knows beforehand whether he will 
 like a thing or not ; and there is the end of it. 
 
 We formed a park in the principal place of the 
 town ; there were appointed two sentinels to do 
 
THE FIRST DAY'S MARCH 117 
 
 duty until the arrival of the gunners who should 
 relieve them and mount a proper guard, and then 
 we were marched off to be shown our various 
 quarters. For before a French regiment arrives at 
 a town others have ridden forward and have 
 marked in chalk upon the doors how many men 
 and how many horses are to be quartered here or 
 there, and my quarters were in a great barn with a 
 very high roof; but my Ancient, upon whom I 
 depended for advice, was quartered in a house, and 
 I was therefore lonely. 
 
 We groomed our horses, ate our great mid-day 
 meal, and were free for a couple of hours to wander 
 about the place. It is a garrison, and, at that 
 time, it was full of cavalry, with whom we frater- 
 nized ; but the experiment was a trifle dangerous, 
 for there is always a risk of a quarrel when regi- 
 ments meet as there is with two dogs, or two of 
 any other kind of lively things. 
 
 Then came the evening, and very early, before 
 it was dark, I was asleep in my clothes in some 
 straw, very warm ; but I was so lazy that I had 
 not even taken off my belt or sword. And that 
 was the end of the first day's marching. 
 
THE SEA-WALL OF THE WASH 
 
 THE town of Wisbeach is very like the town 
 of Boston. It stands upon a river which is 
 very narrow and which curves, and in which there 
 rises and falls a most considerable tide, and which 
 is bounded by slimy wooden sides. Here, as at 
 Boston, the boats cannot turn round ; if they come 
 in frontways they have to go out backwards, like 
 Mevagissey bees : an awkward harbour. 
 
 As I sat there in the White Hart, waiting for 
 steak and onions, I read in a book descriptive of 
 the place that a whale had come to Wisbeach once, 
 and I considered that a whale coming up to 
 Wisbeach on a tide would certainly stay there ; 
 not indeed for the delights of the town (of which 
 I say nothing), but because there would be no 
 room for it to turn round ; and a whale cannot 
 swim backwards. The only fish that can swim 
 backwards is an eel. This I have proved by 
 observation, and I challenge any fisherman to 
 deny it. 
 
 So much for Wisbeach, which stands upon the 
 River Nene or Nen, which is the last of the towns 
 
 ii8 
 
SEA-WALL OF THE WASH 119 
 
 defended by the old sea-wall — which is the third 
 
 of the Fen ports — the other two being Boston and 
 
 Lynn, which is served by two lines of railway and 
 
 which has two stations. 
 
 Very early next morning, and by one of these 
 
 stations, another man and I took train to a bridge 
 
 called Sutton Bridge, where one can cross the 
 
 River Nen, and where (according to the map) one 
 
 can see both the sea-walls, the old and the new. 
 
 It was my plan to walk along the shore of the 
 
 Wash right across the flats to Lynn, and so at last 
 
 perhaps comprehend the nature of this curious 
 
 land. 
 
 . . * . • • 
 
 When I got to Sutton Bridge I discovered it to 
 be a monstrous thing of iron standing poised upon 
 a huge pivot in mid-stream. It bore the railway 
 and the road together. It was that kind of 
 triumphant engineering which once you saw only in 
 England, but which now you will see all over the 
 world. It was designed to swing open on its 
 central pivot to let boats go up the River Nen, 
 and then to come back exactly to its place with a 
 clang ; but when we got to it we found it neither 
 one thing nor the other. It was twisted just so 
 much that the two parts of the roads (the road on 
 the bridge and the road on land) did not join. 
 
 Was a boat about to pass ? No. Why was it 
 open thus ? A man was cleaning it. The bridge 
 
120 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 is not as big as the Tower Bridge, but it is very- 
 big, and the man was cleaning it with a little rag. 
 He was cleaning the under part, the mechanisms 
 and contraptions that can only be got at when the 
 bridge is thus ajar. He cleaned without haste and 
 without exertion, and as I watched him I considered 
 the mightiness of the works of Man contrasted with 
 His Puny Frame. I also asked him when I should 
 pass, but he answered nothing. 
 
 As we thus waited men gathered upon either 
 side — men of all characters and kinds, men holding 
 bicycles, men in carts, afoot, on horseback, vigorous 
 men and feeble, old men, women also and little 
 children, and youths witless of life, and innocent 
 young girls ; they gathered and increased, they 
 became as numerous as leaves, they stretched out 
 their hands in a desire for the further shore : but 
 the river ran between. 
 
 Then, as being next the gate, I again called 
 out: When might we pass? A Fenland man who 
 was on duty there doing nothing said, I could 
 pass when the bridge was shut again. I said : 
 When would that be? He said : Could I not see 
 that the man was cleaning the bridge? I said that, 
 contrasting the bridge with him and his little rag, 
 he might go on from now to the Disestablishment 
 of the English Church before he had done ; but as 
 for me, I desired to cross, and so did all that 
 multitude. 
 
SEA-WALL OF THE WASH 121 
 
 Without grace they shut the bridge for us, the 
 gate opened of itself, and in a great clamorous 
 flood, like an army released from a siege, we 
 poured over, all of us, rejoicing into Wringland ; 
 for so is called this flat, reclaimed land, which 
 stands isolated between the Nen and the Ouse. 
 
 Was I not right in saying when I wrote about 
 Ely that the corner of a corner of England is 
 infinite, and can never be exhausted ? 
 
 Along the cut which takes the Nen out to sea, 
 then across some level fields, and jumping a ditch 
 or two, one gets to the straight, steep, and high 
 dyke which protects the dry land and cuts off the 
 plough from the sea marshes. When I had 
 climbed it and looked out over endless flats to the 
 sails under the brune of the horizon I understood 
 the Fens. 
 
 Nowhere that I have been to in the world does 
 the land fade into the sea so inconspicuously. 
 
 The coasts of western England are like the death 
 of a western man in battle — violent and heroic. 
 The land dares all, and plunges into a noisy sea. 
 This coast of eastern England is like the death of 
 one of these eastern merchants here — lethargic, ill- 
 contented, drugged with ease. The dry land slips, 
 and wallows into a quiet, very shallow water, con- 
 
122 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 fused with a yellow thickness and brackish with 
 the weight of inland water behind. 
 
 I have heard of the great lakes, especially of the 
 marshes at the mouth of the Volga, in the Caspian, 
 where the two elements are for miles indistinguish- 
 able, and where no one can speak of a shore ; but 
 here the thing is more marvellous, because it is the 
 true sea. You have, I say, the true sea, with 
 great tides, and bearing ships, and seaports to 
 which the ships can go ; and on the other side you 
 have, inhabited, an ancient land. There should 
 be a demarcation between them, a tide mark or 
 limit. There is nothing. You cannot say where 
 one begins and the other ends. One does not un- 
 derstand the Fens until one has seen that shore. 
 
 The sand and the mud commingle. The mud 
 takes on little tufts of salt grass barely growing 
 under the harsh wind. The marsh is cut and 
 wasted into little islands covered at every high 
 tide, except, perhaps, the extreme of the neaps. 
 Down on that level, out from the dyke to the 
 uncertain line of the water, you cannot walk a 
 hundred yards without having to cross a channel 
 more or less deep, a channel which the working of 
 the muddy tides has scoured up into the silt and 
 ooze of the sodden land. These channels are 
 yards deep in slime, and they ramify like the 
 twisted shoots of an old vine. Were you to make 
 a map of them as they engrave this desolate waste 
 
SEA-WALL OF THE WASH 123 
 
 it would look like the fine tortuous cracks that 
 show upon antique enamel, or the wandering of 
 threads blown at random on a woman's work- 
 table by the wind. 
 
 There are miles and miles of it right up to the 
 EMBANKMENT, the great and old sea-wall which 
 protects the houses of men. You have but to 
 eliminate that embankment to imagine what the 
 whole countryside must have been like before it 
 was raised, and the meaning of the Fens becomes 
 clear to you. The Fens were long ago but the 
 continuation inland of this sea-morass. The tide 
 channels of the marsh were all of one kind, though 
 they differed so much in size. Some of these 
 channels were small without name ; some a little 
 larger, and these had a local name ; others were a 
 little larger again, and worthy to be called rivers — 
 the Ouse, the Nen, the Welland, the Glen, the 
 Witham. But, large or small, they were nothing, 
 all of them, but the scouring of tide-channels in 
 the light and sodden slime. It was the high tide 
 that drowned all this land, the low tide that drained 
 it ; and wherever a patch could be found just 
 above the influence of the tide or near enough to 
 some main channel for the rush and swirl of the 
 water to drain the island, there the villages grew. 
 Wherever such a patch could be found men built 
 their first homes. Sometimes, before men civic, 
 came the holy hermits. But man, religious, or 
 
124 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 greedy, or just wandering, crept in after each 
 inundation and began to tame the water and 
 spread out even here his slow, interminable con- 
 quest. So Wisbeach, so March, so Boston grew, 
 and so — the oldest of them all — the Isle of Ely. 
 
 The nature of the country (a nature at which 
 I had but guessed whenever before this I had 
 wandered through it, and which I had puzzled at 
 as I viewed its mere history) was quite clear, now 
 that I stood upon the wall that fenced it in from 
 the salt water. It was easy to see not only what 
 judgments had been mistaken, but also in what 
 way they had erred. One could see how and why 
 the homelessness of the place had been exagger- 
 ated. One could see how the level was just above 
 (not, as in Holland, below) the mean of the tides. 
 One could discover the manner in which communi- 
 cation from the open sea was possible. The deeps 
 lead out through the sand ; they are but continua- 
 tions under water of that tide-scouring which is 
 the note of all the place inland, and out, far out, 
 we could see the continuation of the river-beds, 
 and at their mouths, far into the sea, the sails. 
 
 A man sounding as he went before the north- 
 east wind was led by force into the main channels. 
 He was *^ shepherded" into Lynn River or Wis- 
 beach River or Boston River, according as he 
 found the water shoaler to one side or other of his 
 boat. So must have come the first Saxon pirates 
 
SEA-WALL OF THE WASH 125 
 
 from the mainland ; so (hundreds of years later) 
 came here our portion of that swarm of Pagans, 
 which all but destroyed Europe ; so centuries 
 before either of them, in a time of which there 
 is no record, the ignorant seafaring men from the 
 east and the north must have come right up into 
 our island, as the sea itself creeps right up into the 
 land through these curious crevices and draughts 
 in the Fenland wall. 
 
 Men — at least the men of our race — have made 
 everything for themselves ; and they will never 
 cease. They continue to extend and possess. It 
 is not only the architecture ; it is the very landscape 
 of Europe which has been made by Europeans. 
 In what way did we begin to form this difficult 
 place, which is neither earth nor water, and in 
 which we might have despaired ? It was conquered 
 by human artifice, of course, somewhat as Frisia 
 and the Netherlands, and, as we may believe, the 
 great bay of the Cotentin were conquered ; but it 
 has certain special characters of its own, and 
 these again are due to the value in this place 
 of the tides, and to the absence of those natural 
 dykes of sand which were, a thousand years ago, 
 the beginnings of Holland. 
 
 Two methods, working side by side, have from 
 the beginning of human habitation reclaimed the 
 
126 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 Fens. The first has been the canalization, the 
 fencing in of the tideways ; the second has been 
 the banking out of the general sea. The spring 
 tides covered much of this land, and when they 
 retired left it drowned. Against their universal 
 advancing sheet of water a bank could be made. 
 Such a bank cut off the invasion of the hundreds of 
 runnels, small and great, by which the more 
 ordinary tides that could not cover the surface had 
 yet crept into the soil and soaked it through. 
 
 When such a bank had been built, gates, as it 
 were, permitted the water to spend its force and 
 also to use its ebb and flow for the draining of the 
 land beyond. The gates which let the tide pour 
 up and down the main ways became the new 
 mouths of the main rivers ; inland the course of 
 the rivers (which now took all the sea and thus 
 became prodigious) were carefully guarded. Even 
 before trenches were dug to drain the fields around, 
 earth was thrown up on either side of the rivers to 
 confine them each to one permanent channel ; nor 
 did the level of the rivers rise, or their beds get 
 clogged ; the strength of the tide sufficed for the 
 deepening of their channels. Into the rivers so 
 fortified the other waterways of the Fens were 
 conducted. 
 
 By these methods alone much of the land was 
 rendered habitable and subject to the plough. 
 Probably these methods were enough to make it 
 
SEA-WALL OF THE WASH 127 
 
 all it was in the Middle Ages. It was only far 
 later, almost in our own time, that water was 
 gathered by trenches in the lowland beneath the 
 rivers and pumped out artificially with mills ; nor 
 is it quite certain even now that this method 
 (borrowed from Holland) is the best ; for the land, 
 as I have said, is above and not below the sea. 
 
 Of these works, whose tradition is immemorial, 
 the greatest, of course, are the sea-walls. 
 
 Perhaps the river-walls came first, but the great 
 bank which limited and protected the land against 
 the sea is also older than any history. 
 
 It is called Roman, and relics of Rome have 
 been found in it, but it has not the characteristic 
 of Roman work. It runs upon no regular lines ; 
 its contour is curved and variable. It is surely far 
 older than the Roman occupation. Earth, heaped 
 and beaten hard, is the most enduring of things ; 
 the tumuli all over England have outlasted even 
 the monoliths, and the great defensive mounds at 
 Norwich and at Oxford are stronger and clearer cut 
 than anything that the Middle Ages have left. 
 This bank, which first made Fenland, still stands 
 most conspicuous. You may follow it from the 
 Nene above Sutton Bridge right over to Lynn 
 River, and again northward from Sutton Bridge 
 (or rather, from the ferry above it) right round 
 outside Long Sutton and Holbeach, and by Fors- 
 dyke Bridge and outside Swyneshead ; everywhere 
 
128 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 it encloses and protects the old parishes, and 
 everywhere seaward of it the names of the fields 
 mark the newest of endeavours. 
 
 We returned from a long wandering upon the 
 desolate edges of the sea to the bank which we 
 proposed to follow right round to the mouth of the 
 Ouse : a bank that runs not straight, but in great 
 broken lines, as in old-fashioned fortification, and 
 from which far off upon the right one sees the 
 famous churches of the Wringland, far ofP upon 
 the left a hint beyond the marshes and the sands 
 of the very distant open sea. 
 
 A gale had risen with the morning, and while 
 it invigorated the travellers in these wastes it 
 seemed to increase their loneliness, for it broke 
 upon nothing, and it removed the interest of the 
 eye from the monotonous sad land to the charge 
 and change of the torn sky above, but in a sense 
 also it impelled us, as though we were sailing 
 before it as it swept along the edge of the bank 
 and helped us to forget the interminable hours. 
 
 The birds for whom this estuary is a kind of 
 sanctuary and a place of secure food in all weathers, 
 the birds swept out in great flocks over the flats 
 towards the sea. They were the only companion- 
 ship afforded to us upon this long day, and they 
 had, or I fancied they had, in their demeanour a 
 
SEA-WALL OF THE WASH 129 
 
 kind of contempt for the rare human beings they 
 might see, as though knowing how little man 
 could do upon those sands. They fed all together 
 upon the edge of the water, upon the edge of the 
 falling tide, very far off, making long bands of 
 white that mixed with the tiny breaking wavelets. 
 Now and then they rose in bodies, and so rising 
 disappeared ; but as they would turn and wheel 
 against the wind, seeking some other ground, they 
 sent from moment to moment flashes of delicate and 
 rare light from the great multitude of their wings. 
 I know of nothing to which one may compare these 
 glimpses of evanescent shining but these two things 
 — the flash of a sword edge and the rapid turning in 
 human hands of a diaphanous veil held in the light. 
 It shone or glinted for a moment, then they would 
 all wheel together and it disappeared. 
 
 So, watching them as a kind of marvel, we saw 
 distant across the sea a faint blue tower, and 
 recognized it for Boston Stump, so many, many 
 miles away. 
 
 But for the birds and this landmark, which never 
 left us, all the length of the dyke was empty of any 
 sight save the mixing of the sea and the land. Then 
 gradually the heights in Norfolk beyond grew 
 clearer, a further shore narrowed the expanse of 
 waters, and we came to the river mouth of the Ouse, 
 and caught sight, up the stream, of the houses 
 of a town. 
 
 K 
 
THE CERDAGNE 
 
 THERE is a part of Europe of which for the 
 moment most people have not heard, but 
 which in a few years everybody will know ; so 
 it is well worth telling before it is changed what 
 it is like to-day. It is called the Cerdagne. It is 
 a very broad valley, stretching out between hills 
 whose height is so incredible — or at least, whose 
 appearance of height is so incredible — that when 
 they are properly painted no one will believe them 
 to be true. Indeed, I know a man who painted them 
 just as they are, and those who saw the picture 
 said it was fantastic and out of Nature, like 
 Turner's drawings. But those who had been with 
 him and had seen the place, said that somehow he 
 had just missed the effect of height. 
 
 It is remarkable that in any country, even if 
 one does not know that country well, what is un- 
 usual to the country strikes the traveller at once. 
 And so it is with the Cerdagne. For all the 
 valleys of the Pyrenees except this one are built 
 upon the same plan. They are deep gorges, 
 narrowing in two places to gates or profound 
 
 130 
 
THE CERDAGNE 131 
 
 corridors, one of these places being near the 
 crest and one near the plain ; and down these 
 valleys fall violent torrents, and in them there is 
 only room for tiny villages or very little towns, 
 squeezed in between the sheer surfaces of the rock 
 or the steep forests. 
 
 So it is with the Valley of Laruns, and with 
 that of Meuleon, and with that of Luz, and with 
 those of the two Bagn^res, and with the Val d'Aran, 
 and with the Val d'Esera, and with the very famous 
 Valley of Andorra. 
 
 With valleys so made the mountains are indeed 
 more awful than they might be in the Alps ; but 
 you never see them standing out and apart, and the 
 mastering elevation of the Pyrenees is not appre- 
 hended until you come to the cirque or hollow at 
 the end of each valley just underneath the main 
 ridge ; by that time you have climbed so far that 
 you have halved the height of the barrier. 
 
 But the Cerdagne, unlike all the other valleys, 
 is as broad as half a county, and is full of towns 
 and fields and men and mules and slow rivulets 
 and corn ; so, standing upon either side and look- 
 ing to the other, you see all together and in 
 the large its mountain boundaries. It is like the 
 sight of the Grampians from beyond Strathmore, 
 but very much more grand. Moreover, as no one 
 has written sufficiently about it to prepare the 
 traveller for what he is to see (and in attempting 
 
132 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 to do so here I am probably doing wrong, but 
 a man must write down what he has seen), the 
 Cerdagne breaks upon him quite unexpectedly, and 
 his descent into that wealthy plain is the entry into 
 a new world. He may have learnt the mountains 
 by heart, as we had, in many stumbling marches 
 and many nights slept out beneath the trees, and 
 many crossings of the main chain by those pre- 
 cipitous cols which make the ridge of the Pyrenees 
 more like a paling than a mountain crest. But 
 though he should know them thoroughly all the 
 way from the Atlantic for two hundred miles, the 
 Cerdagne will only appear to him the more aston- 
 ishing. It renews in any man, however familiar 
 he may be with great mountains, the impressions 
 of that day when he first saw the distant summits 
 and thought them to be clouds. 
 
 Apart from all this, the Cerdagne is full of a 
 lively interest, because it preserves far better than 
 any other Pyrenean valley those two Pyrenean 
 things — the memory of European history and the 
 intense local spirit of the Vals. 
 
 The memory of European history is to be seen 
 in the odd tricks which the frontier plays. It was 
 laid down by the commissioners of Mazarin two 
 hundred and fifty years ago, and instead of follow- 
 ing the watershed (which would leave the Cerdagne 
 all Spanish politically as it is Catalan by language 
 and position) it crosses the valley from one side to 
 
THE CERDAGNE 133 
 
 another, leaving the top end of it and the sources 
 of its rivers under French control. 
 
 That endless debate as to whether race or govern- 
 ment will most affect a people can here be tested, 
 though hardly decided. The villages are Spanish, 
 the hour of meals is Spanish, and the wine is 
 Spanish wine. But the clocks keep time, and the 
 streets are swept, and, oddest of all, the cooking 
 is French cooking. The people are Spanish in 
 that they are slow to serve you or to find you a 
 mount or to show you the way, but they are French 
 in that they are punctual in the hour at which they 
 have promised to do these things ; and they are 
 Spanish in the shapes of their ricks and the nature 
 of their implements, but French in the aspect of 
 their fields. One might also discuss — it would be 
 most profitable of all — where they are Spanish 
 and where they are French in their observance of 
 religion. 
 
 This freak which the frontier plays in cutting so 
 united a countryside into two by an imaginary 
 line is further emphasized by an island of Spanish 
 territory which has been left stranded, as it were, 
 in the midst of the valley. It is called Llivia, and 
 is about as large as a large English country parish, 
 with a small country town in the middle. 
 
 One comes across the fields from villages where 
 the signs and villagers and the very look of the 
 surface of the road are French ; one suddenly 
 
134 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 notices Spanish soldiers, Spanish signs, and 
 Spanish prices in the streets of the little place ; 
 one leaves it, and in five minutes one is in France 
 again. It is connected with its own country by a 
 neutral road, but it is an island of territory all the 
 same, and the reason that it was so left isolated is 
 very typical of the spirit of the old regime, with 
 its solemn legal pedantry, which we in England 
 alone preserve in all Western Europe. For the 
 treaty which marked the limits here ceded to the 
 French '^the valley and all its villages." The 
 Spaniards pleaded that Llivia was not a village 
 but a town, and their plea was admitted. 
 
 I began by saying that this wide basin of land, 
 with its strong people and its isolated traditions, 
 though it was so little known to-day, would soon be 
 too well known. So it will be, and the reason is 
 this, that the very low pass at one end of it will soon 
 be crossed by a railway. It is the only low pass in 
 the Pyrenees, and it is so gradual and even (upon 
 the Spanish side) that the railway will everywhere 
 be above ground. Within perhaps five years it 
 will be for the Pyrenees what the Brenner is for 
 the Alps, and when that is done any one who has 
 read this may go and see for himself whether 
 it is not true that from that plain at evening the 
 frontier ridge of Andorra seems to be the highest 
 thing in the world. 
 
CARCASSONNE 
 
 CARCASSONNE differs from other monumen- 
 tal towns in this : that it preserves exactly the 
 aspect of many centuries up to a certain moment, 
 and from that moment has '* set," and has suffered 
 no further change. You see and touch, as you 
 walk along its ramparts, all the generations from 
 that crisis in the fifth century when the public 
 power was finally despaired of — and after which 
 each group of the Western Empire began to see to 
 its own preservation — down to that last achievement 
 of the thirteenth, when medieval civilization had 
 reached its full flower and was ready for the decline 
 that followed the death of St. Louis and the extinc- 
 tion of the German phantasy of empire. 
 
 No other town can present so vivid and clean-cut 
 a fossil of the seven hundred years into which 
 poured and melted all the dissolution of antiquity, 
 and out of which was formed or crystallized the 
 highly specialized diversity of our modern Europe. 
 
 In the fascination of extreme age many English 
 sites are richer ; Winchester and Canterbury may 
 be quoted from among a hundred. In the super- 
 imposition of age upon age of human history, 
 
 I3S 
 
136 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 Aries and Rome are far more surprising. In 
 historic continuity most European towns surpass 
 it, from Paris, whose public justice, worship, and 
 markets have kept to the same site for quite sixteen 
 centuries, to London, of which the city at least 
 preserves upon three sides the Roman limit. But 
 no town can of its nature give as does Carcas- 
 sonne this overwhelming impression of survival or 
 resurrection. 
 
 The attitude and position of Carcassonne en- 
 force its character. Up above the river, but a 
 little set back from the valley, right against the 
 dawn as you come to it from Toulouse through the 
 morning, stands a long, steep, and isolated rock, 
 the whole summit of which from the sharp cliff 
 on the north to that other on the south is doubled 
 in height by what seems one vast wall — and more 
 than twenty towers. Indeed, it is at such a time, 
 in early morning, and best in winter when the 
 frost defines and chisels every outline, that Car- 
 cassonne should be drawn. You then see it in 
 a band of dark blue-grey, all even in texture, 
 serrated and battlemented and towered, with the 
 metallic shining of the dawn behind it. 
 
 So to have seen it makes it very difficult to write 
 of it or even to paint ; what one wishes to do is 
 rather to work it out in enamel upon a surface of 
 bronze. This rock, wholly covered with the works 
 
CARCASSONNE 137 
 
 of the city, stands looking at the Pyrenees and 
 holding the only level valley between the Medi- 
 terranean and the Garonne, and even if one had 
 read nothing concerning it one would understand 
 why it has filled all the legends of the return of 
 armies from Spain, why Victor Hugo could not 
 rest from the memory of it, and why it is so 
 strongly woven in with the story of Charlemagne. 
 
 There is another and better reason for the quality 
 of Carcassonne, and that is the act, to which I 
 can recall no perfect parallel in Christian history, 
 by which St. Louis turned what had been a living 
 town into a mere stronghold. Every inhabitant 
 of Carcassonne was transferred, not to suburbs, but 
 right beyond the river, a mile and more away, to 
 the site of that delightful town which is the 
 Carcassonne of maps and railways, the place where 
 the seventeenth century meets you in graceful 
 ornaments, and where is, to my certain knowledge, 
 the best inn south of parallel 45. St. Louis turned 
 the rock into a mere stronghold, strengthened it, 
 built new towers, and curtained them into that un- 
 surpassable masonry of the central Middle Ages 
 which you may yet admire in Aigues-Mortes and 
 in Carnarvon. 
 
 This political act, the removal of a whole city, 
 may have been accomplished in many other places; 
 it is certainly recorded of many : but, for the 
 moment at least, I can remember none except 
 
138 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 Carcassonne in which its consequences have 
 remained. To this many causes have contributed, 
 but chiefly this, that the new town was transferred 
 to the open plain from the trammels of a narrow 
 plateau, just at the moment when all the towns of 
 Western Europe were growing and breaking their 
 bonds ; just after the principal cities of North- 
 western Europe had got their charters, and when 
 Paris (the typical municipality of that age as of our 
 own) was trebling its area and its population. 
 
 The transference of the population once accom- 
 plished, the rock and towers of Carcassonne ceased 
 to change and to grow. Humanity was gone. 
 The fortress was still of great value in war ; the 
 Black Prince attempted its destruction, and it is 
 only within living memory that it ceased to be set 
 down on maps (and in Government offices !) as a 
 fortified place : but the necessity for immediate 
 defence, and the labour which would have re- 
 modelled it, had disappeared. There had dis- 
 appeared also that eager and destructive activity 
 which accompanies any permanent gathering of 
 French families. The new town on the plain 
 changed perpetually, and is changing still. It has 
 lost almost everything of the Middle Ages ; it 
 carries, by a sort of momentum, a flavour of Louis 
 XIV, but the masons are at it as they are every- 
 where, from the Channel to the Mediterranean ; 
 for to pull down and rebuild is the permanent 
 
CARCASSONNE 139 
 
 recreation of the French. The rock remains. It 
 is put in order whenever a stone falls out of place 
 — no one of weight has talked nonsense here 
 against restoration, for the sense of the past is 
 too strong — but though it is minutely and con- 
 tinually repaired, Old Carcassonne does not 
 change. There is no other set of walls in Europe 
 of which this is true. 
 
 Walking round the circuit of these walls and 
 watching from their height the long line of the 
 mountains, one is first held by that modern subject, 
 the landscape, or that still more modern fascina- 
 tion of great hills. Next one feels what the 
 Middle Ages designed of mass and weight and 
 height, and wonders by what accident of the mind 
 they so succeeded in suggesting infinity : one re- 
 members Beauvais, which is infinitely high at 
 evening, and the tower of Portrut, which seems 
 bigger than any hill. 
 
 But when these commoner emotions are passed, 
 one comes upon a very different thing. A little 
 tower there, jutting out perilously from the wall, 
 shows three courses of a small red brick set in a 
 mortar-like stone. When I saw this kind of 
 building I went close up and touched it with my 
 hand. It was Roman. I knew the signal well. 
 I had seen that brick, and picked it loose from an 
 
140 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 Arab stable on the edge of the Sahara, and I had 
 seen it jutting through moss on the high moors of 
 Northumberland. I know a man who reverently- 
 brought home to Sussex such another, which he 
 had found unbroken far beyond Damascus upon 
 the Syrian sand. 
 
 It is easy to speak of the Empire and to say 
 that it established its order from the Tyne to 
 the Euphrates ; but when one has travelled alone 
 and on foot up and down the world and seen its 
 vastness and its complexity, and yet everywhere 
 the unity even of bricks in their courses, then one 
 begins to understand the name of Rome. 
 
LYNN 
 
 EVERY man that lands in Lynn feels all 
 through him the antiquity and the call of 
 the town ; but especially if he comes, as I came in 
 with another man in springtime, from the miles 
 and miles of emptiness and miles of bending 
 grass and the shouting of the wind. After that 
 morning, in which one had been a little point on 
 an immense plane, with the gale not only above 
 one, as it commonly is, but all around one as it is 
 at sea ; and after having steeped one's mind in the 
 peculiar loneliness which haunts a stretch of ill- 
 defined and wasted shore, the narrow, varied, and 
 unordered streets of the port enhance the creations 
 of man and emphasize his presence. 
 
 Words so few are necessarily obscure. Let me 
 expand them. I mean that the unexpected turning 
 of the ways in such a port is perpetually revealing 
 something new ; that the little spaces frame, as it 
 were, each unexpected sight : thus at the end of a 
 street one will catch a patch of the Fens beyond 
 the river, a great moving sail, a cloud, or the 
 sculptured corner of an excellent house. 
 
 141 
 
142 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 The same history also that permitted continual 
 encroachment upon the public thoroughfares and 
 that built up a gradual High Street upon the line 
 of some cow-track leading from the fields to the 
 ferry, the spirit that everywhere permitted the 
 powerful or the cunning to withstand authority — 
 that history (which is the history of all our little 
 English towns) has endowed Lynn with an endless 
 diversity. 
 
 It is not only that the separate things in such 
 towns are delightful, nor only that one comes 
 upon them suddenly, but also that these separate 
 things are so many. They have characters as men 
 have. There is nothing of that repetition which 
 must accompany the love of order and the presence 
 of strong laws. The similar insistent forms which 
 go with a strong civilization, as they give it 
 majesty, so they give it also gloom, and a heavy 
 feeling of finality : these are quite lacking here in 
 England, where the poor have for so long sub- 
 mitted to the domination of the rich, and the rich 
 have dreaded and refused a central government. 
 Everything that goes with the power of individuals 
 has added peculiarity and meaning to all the stones 
 of Lynn. Moreover, a quality whose absence all 
 men now deplore was once higher in England 
 than anywhere else, save, perhaps, in the northern 
 Italian hills. I mean ownership, and what comes 
 from ownership — the love of home. 
 
LYNN 143 
 
 You can see the past effect of ownership and 
 individuality in Lynn as clearly as you can catch 
 affection or menace in a human voice. The out- 
 ward expression is most manifest, and to pass in 
 and out along the lanes in front of the old houses 
 inspires in one precisely those emotions which are 
 aroused by a human crowd. 
 
 All the roofs of Lynn and all its pavements are 
 worthy (as though they were living beings) of 
 individual names. 
 
 Along the river shore, from the race of the 
 ebb that had so nearly drowned me many years 
 before, I watched the walls that mark the edge of 
 the town against the Ouse, and especially that 
 group towards which the ferry-boat was struggling 
 against the eddy and tumble of the tide. 
 
 They were walls of every age, not high, brick of 
 a dozen harmonious tones, with the accidents, 
 corners, and breaches of perhaps seven hundred 
 years. Beyond, to the left, down the river, stood 
 the masts in the new docks that were built to pre- 
 serve the trade of this difficult port. Up-river, great 
 new works of I know not what kind stood like a 
 bastion against the plain; and in between ran these 
 oldest bits of Lynn, somnolescent and refreshing 
 — permanent. 
 
 The lanes up from the Ouse when I landed I 
 found to be of a slow and natural growth, with that 
 slight bend to them that comes, I believe, from the 
 
144 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 drying of fishing-nets. For it is said that courts 
 of this kind grew up in our sea-towns all round our 
 eastern and the southern coast in such a manner. 
 It happened thus : 
 
 The town would begin upon the highest of the 
 bank, for it was flatter for building, drier and 
 easier to defend than that part next to the water. 
 Down from the town to the shore the fishermen 
 would lay out their nets to dry. How nets look 
 when they are so laid, their narrowness and the 
 curve they take, everybody knows. Then on the 
 spaces between the nets shanties would be built, 
 or old boats turned upside down for shelter, so 
 that the curing of fish and the boiling of tar and 
 the serving and parcelling of ropes could be done 
 under cover. Then as the number of people 
 grew, the squatters' land got value, and houses 
 were raised (you will find many small freeholds 
 in such rows to this day), but the lines of the 
 net remained in the alley -ways between the 
 houses. 
 
 All this I was told once by an old man who 
 helped me to take my boat down Breydon. He 
 wore trousers of a brick-red, and the stuff of them 
 as thick as boards, and had on also a very thick 
 jersey and a cap of fur. He was shaved upon his 
 lips and chin, but all round the rest of his face 
 was a beard. He smoked a tiny pipe, quite black, 
 and upon matters within his own experience he 
 
LYNN 145 
 
 was a great liar ; but upon matters of tradition I 
 was willing to believe him. 
 
 Within the town, when I had gained it from 
 that lane which has been the ferry-lane, I suppose, 
 since the ferry began, age and distinction were 
 everywhere. 
 
 Where else, thought I, in England could you 
 say that nine years would make no change? 
 Whether, indeed, the Globe had that same wine 
 of the nineties I could not tell, for the hour was 
 not congenial to wine ; but if it has some store 
 of its Burgundy left from those days it must 
 be better still by now, for Burgundy wine takes 
 nine years to mature, for nine years remains in the 
 plenitude of its powers, and for nine years more 
 declines into an honourable age ; and this is also 
 true of claret, but in claret it goes by sevens. 
 
 The open square of the town, which one looks 
 at from the Globe, gives one a mingled pleasure 
 of reminiscence and discovery. It breaks on one 
 abruptly. It is as wide as a pasture field, and 
 all the houses are ample and largely founded. 
 Indeed, throughout this country, elbow-room — the 
 sense that there is space enough and to spare in 
 such flats and under an open sky — has filled the 
 minds of builders. You may see it in all the 
 inland towns of the Fens ; and one found it again 
 
146 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 here upon the further bank, upon the edge of the 
 Fens ; for though Lynn is just off the Fens, yet it 
 looks upon their horizon and their sky, and belongs 
 to them in spirit. 
 
 In this large and comfortable square a very 
 steadfast and most considerable English bank is to 
 be discovered. It is of honest brown brick ; its 
 architecture is of the plainest ; its appearance is 
 such that its credit could never fail, and that the 
 house alone by its presence could conduct a digni- 
 fied business for ever. The rooms in it are so 
 many and so great that the owners of such a bank 
 (having become princes by its success) could 
 inhabit them with a majesty worthy of their new 
 title. But who lives above his shop since Richard- 
 son died ? And did old Richardson ? Lord knows ! 
 .... Anyhow, the bank is glorious, and it is 
 but one of the fifty houses that I saw in Lynn. 
 
 Thus, in the same street as the Globe, was a 
 fa9ade of stone. If it was Georgian, it was very 
 early Georgian, for it was relieved with ornaments 
 of a delicate and accurate sort, and the proportions 
 were exactly satisfying to the eye that looked on it. 
 The stone also was of that kind (Portland stone, I 
 think) which goes black and white with age, and 
 which is better suited than any other to the English 
 climate. 
 
 In another house near the church I saw a roof 
 that might have been the roof for a town. It 
 
LYNN 147 
 
 covered the living part and the stables, and the 
 outhouse and the brewhouse, and the barns, and 
 for all I know the pig-pens and the pigeons* as 
 well. It was a benediction of a roof — a roof tra- 
 ditional, a roof patriarchal, a roof customary, a 
 roof of permanence and unity, a roof that physic- 
 ally sheltered and spiritually sustained, a roof 
 majestic, a roof eternal. In a word, it was a roof 
 catholic. 
 
 And what, thought I, is paid yearly in this town 
 for such a roof as that ? I do not know ; but I 
 know of another roof at Goudhurst, in Kent, which 
 would have cost me less than ;^ioo a year, only I 
 could not get it for love or money. 
 
 There is also in Lynn a Custom House not 
 very English, but very beautiful. The faces carved 
 upon it were so vivid that I could not but believe 
 them to have been carved in the Netherlands, and 
 from this Custom House looks down the pinched, 
 unhappy face of that narrow gentleman whom the 
 great families destroyed — James II. 
 
 There is also in Lynn what I did not know was 
 to be seen out of Sussex — a Tudor building of 
 chipped flints, and on it the mouldering arms of 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 The last Gothic of this Bishop's borough which 
 the King seized from the Church clings to chance 
 houses in little carven masks and occasional ogives : 
 there is everywhere a feast for whatever in the 
 
148 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 mind is curious, searching, and reverent, and over 
 the town, as over all the failing ports of our silting 
 eastern seaboard, hangs the air of a great past 
 time, the influence of the Baltic and the Lowlands. 
 
 For these ancient places do not change, they 
 
 permit themselves to stand apart and to repose, 
 
 and — by paying that price — almost alone of all 
 
 things in England they preserve some historic 
 
 continuity, and satisfy the memories in one's 
 
 blood. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 So having come round to the Ouse again, and 
 to the edge of the Fens at Lynn, I went off at 
 random whither next it pleased me to go. 
 
THE GUNS 
 
 I HAD slept perhaps seven hours when a lan- 
 tern woke me, flashed in my face, and I won- 
 dered confusedly why there was straw in my bed ; 
 then I remembered that I was not in bed at all, but 
 on manoeuvres. I looked up and saw a sergeant 
 with a bit of paper in his hand. He was giving 
 out orders, and the little light he carried sparkled 
 on the gold of his great dark-blue coat. 
 
 ** You, the Englishman," he said (for that was 
 what they called me as a nickname), **go with 
 the gunners to-day. Where is Labbe ? " 
 
 Labbe (that man by profession a cook, by in- 
 clination a marquis, and now by destiny a very 
 good driver of guns) the day before had gone on 
 foot. To-day he was to ride. I pointed him out 
 where he lay still sleeping. The sergeant stirred 
 him about with his foot, and said, ** Facte and 
 Basilique"; and Labb6 grunted. In this simple 
 way every one knew his duty — Labbe that he had 
 another hour's sleep and more, and that he was 
 to take my horses : I, that I must rise and get off 
 to the square. 
 
 149 
 
150 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 Then the sergeant went out of the barn, cursing 
 the straw on his spurs, and I lit a match and 
 brushed down my clothes and ran off to the square. 
 It was not yet two in the morning. 
 
 The gunners were drawn up in a double line, 
 and we reserve drivers stood separate (there were 
 only a dozen of us), and when they formed fours 
 we were at the tail. There was a lieutenant with 
 us and a sergeant, also two bombardiers — all 
 mounted ; and so we went off, keeping step till we 
 were out of the town, and then marching as we 
 chose and thanking God for the change. For it is 
 no easy matter for drivers to march with gunners ; 
 their swords impede them, and though the French 
 drivers have not the ridiculous top-boots that 
 theatricalize other armies, yet even their simple 
 boots are not well-suited for the road. 
 
 This custom of sending forward reserve drivers, 
 on foot, in rotation, has a fine name to it. It is 
 called ** Haut-le-pied," *^ High-the-foot," and must 
 therefore be old. 
 
 A little way out of the town we had leave to 
 sing, and we began, all together, one of those 
 long and charming songs with which the French 
 soldiery make-believe to forget the tedium of the 
 road and the hardship of arms. 
 
 Now, if a man desired to answer once and for 
 all those pedants who refuse to understand the 
 nature of military training (both those who make 
 
THE GUNS 151 
 
 a silly theatre-show of it and those who make it 
 hideous and diabolical), there could be no better 
 way than to let him hear the songs of soldiers. In 
 the French service, at least, these songs are a whole 
 expression of the barrack-room ; its extreme coarse- 
 ness, its steady and perpetual humour, its hatred 
 of the hard conditions of discipline ; and also 
 these songs continually portray the distant but 
 delightful picture of things — I mean of things 
 rare and far off— which must lie at the back of 
 men's minds when they have much work to do 
 with their hands and much living in the open air 
 and no women to pour out their wine. 
 
 Moreover, these songs have another excellent 
 quality. They show all through that splendid un- 
 consciousness of the soldier, that inability in him 
 to see himself from without, or to pose as civilians 
 always think and say he poses. 
 
 We sang that morning first, the chief and oldest 
 of the songs. It dates from the Flemish wars of 
 Louis XIV, and is called ** Aupres de ma Blonde." 
 Every one knows the tune. Then we sang ^*The 
 Song of the Miller," and then many other songs, 
 each longer than the last. For these songs, unlike 
 other lyrics, have it for an object to string out as 
 many verses as possible in order to kill the endless 
 straight roads and the weariness. 
 
 We had need to sing. No sun rose, but the 
 day broke over an ugly plain with hardly any 
 
152 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 trees, and that grey and wretched dawn came in 
 with a cold and dispiriting rain unrefreshed by 
 wind. Colson, who was a foolish little man (the 
 son of a squire), marching by my side, wondered 
 where and how we should be dried that day. 
 The army was for ever producing problems for 
 Colson, and I was often his comforter. He liked 
 to talk to me and hear about England, and the rich 
 people and their security, and how they never 
 served as soldiers (from luxury), and how (what he 
 could not understand) the poor had a bargain 
 struck with them by the rich whereby they also 
 need not serve. I could learn from him the mean- 
 ing of many French words which I did not yet 
 know. He had some little education ; had I asked 
 the more ignorant men of my battery, they would 
 only have laughed, but he had read, in common 
 books, of the differences between nations, and 
 could explain many things to me. 
 
 Colson, then, complaining of the rain, and won- 
 dering where he should get dried, I told him to 
 consider not so much the happy English, but 
 rather his poor scabbard and how he should clean 
 it after the march, and his poor clothes, all coated 
 with mud, and needing an hour's brushing, and 
 his poor temper, which, if he did not take great 
 care, would make him grow up to be an anti- 
 militarist and a byword. 
 
 So we wrangled, and it still rained. Our songs 
 
THE GUNS 153 
 
 grew rarer, and there was at last no noise but the 
 slush of all those feet beating the muddy road, and 
 the occasional clank of metal as a scabbard touched 
 some other steel, or a slung carbine struck the hilt 
 of a bayonet. It was well on in the morning when 
 the guns caught us up and passed us ; the drivers 
 all shrouded in their coats and bending forward in 
 the rain ; the guns coated and splashed with 
 thick mud, and the horses also, threatened hours of 
 grooming. I looked mine up and down as Labbe 
 passed on them, and I groaned, for it is a rule that 
 a man grooms his own horses whether he has 
 ridden them or no, and after all, day in and day 
 out, it works fair. The guns disappeared into the 
 mist of rain, and we went on through more hours 
 of miserable tramping, seeing no spire ahead of us, 
 and unable to count on a long halt. 
 
 Still, as we went, I noticed that we were on 
 some great division, between provinces perhaps, 
 or between river valleys, for in France there are 
 many bare upland plateaus dividing separate dis- 
 tricts ; and it is a feature of the country that the 
 districts so divided have either formed separate 
 provinces in the past or, at any rate (even if they 
 have not had political recognition), have stood, 
 and do still stand, for separate units in French 
 society. It was more apparent with every mile as 
 we went on that we were approaching new things. 
 The plain was naked save for rare planted trees. 
 
154 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 and here and there, a long way off (on the horizon, 
 it seemed) a farm or two, unprotected and alone. 
 
 The rain ceased, and the steady grey sky broke 
 a little as we marched on, still in silence, and by 
 this time thirsty and a little dazed. A ravine 
 opened in a bare plateau, and we saw that it held 
 a little village. They led us into it, down a short 
 steep bit of road, and lined us up by a great basin 
 of sparkling water, and every man was mad to 
 break ranks and drink ; but no one dared. The 
 children of the village gathered in a little group 
 and looked at us, and we envied their freedom. 
 When we had stood thus for a quarter of an hour 
 or so, an orderly came riding in all splashed, and 
 his horse's coat rough with the rain and steaming 
 up into the air. He came up to the lieutenant in 
 command and delivered an order ; then he rode 
 away fast northward along the ravine and out of 
 the village. The lieutenant, when he had gone, 
 formed us into a little column, and we, who had 
 expected to dismiss at any moment, were full of 
 anger, and were sullen to find that by some 
 wretched order or other we had to take another 
 hour of the road : first we had to go back four 
 miles along the road we had already come, and 
 then to branch off perpendicular to our general 
 line of march, and (as it seemed to us) quite out of 
 our way. 
 
 It is a difficult thing to move a great mass of 
 
THE GUNS 155 
 
 men through a desolate country by small units 
 and leave them dependent on the country, and it 
 is rather wonderful that they do it so neatly and 
 effect the junctions so well ; but the private soldier, 
 who stands for those little black blocks on the 
 military map, has a boy's impatience in him ; and 
 a very wise man, if he wishes to keep an army in 
 spirit, will avoid counter-marching as much as he 
 can, for — I cannot tell why — nothing takes the 
 heart out of a man like having to plod over again 
 the very way he has just come. So, when we had 
 come to a very small village in the waste and 
 halted there, finding our guns and drivers already 
 long arrived, we made an end of a dull and mean- 
 ingless day — very difficult to tell of, because the 
 story is merely a record of fatigue. But in a 
 diary of route everything must be set down faith- 
 fully ; and so I have set down all this sodden and 
 empty day. 
 
 That night I sat at a peasant's table and heard 
 my four stable-companions understanding every- 
 thing, and evidently in their world and at home, 
 although they were conscripts. This turned me 
 silent, and I sat away from the light, looking at 
 the fire and drying myself by its logs. As I heard 
 their laughter I remembered Sussex and the woods 
 above Arun, and I felt myself to be in exile. 
 Then we slept in beds, and the goodwife had our 
 tunics dry by morning, for she also had a son in 
 
156 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 the service, who was a long way off at Lyons, and 
 
 was not to return for two years. 
 
 • • • • • • • 
 
 There are days in a long march when a man is 
 made to do too much, and others when he is made 
 to do what seems meaningless, doubling backward 
 on his road, as we had done ; there are days when 
 he seems to advance very little ; but they are not 
 days of repose, for they are full of halting and 
 doubts and special bits of work. Such a day had 
 come to us with the next dawn. 
 
 The reason of all these things — I mean, of the 
 over-long marches, of the counter-marches, and of 
 the short days — was the complexity of the only 
 plan by which a great number of men and guns 
 can be taken from one large place to another with- 
 out confusion by the way — living, as they must do, 
 upon the country, and finding at the end of every 
 march water and hay for the horses, food and some 
 kind of shelter for the men. And this plan, as I 
 have said before, consists (in a European country) 
 in dividing your force, marching by roads more or 
 less parallel, and converging, after some days, on 
 the object of the march. 
 
 It is evident that in a somewhat desolate region 
 of small and distant hamlets the front will be 
 broader and the columns smaller, but when a large 
 town stands in the line of march, advantage will be 
 taken of it to mass one's men. 
 
THE GUNS 157 
 
 Such a town was Bar-le-Duc, and it was because 
 our battery was so near to it that this fourth day- 
 was a short march of less than eight miles. 
 
 They sent the gunners in early ; we drivers 
 started later than usual, and the pace was smart at 
 first under a happy morning sun, but still around 
 us were the bare fields, all but treeless, and the 
 road was part of the plain, not divided by hedges. 
 The bombardier trotted by my side and told me of 
 the glories of Rheims, which was his native town. 
 He was a mild man, genial and good, and little 
 apt for promotion. He interlarded his conversation 
 with official remarks to show a zeal he never felt, 
 telling one man that his traces were slack, and 
 another that his led-horse was shirking, and after 
 each official remark he returned up abeam of me 
 to tell me more of the riches and splendour of 
 Rheims. He chose me out for this favour because 
 I already knew the countryside of the upper 
 Champagne, and had twice seen his city. He 
 promised me that when we got our first leave from 
 camp he would show me many sights in the town ; 
 but this he said hoping that I would pay for the 
 entertainment, as indeed I did. 
 
 We did not halt, nor did we pass the gunners 
 that morning; but when we had gone about four 
 miles or so the road began to descend through a 
 wide gully, and we saw before us the secluded 
 and fruitful valley of the Meuse. It is here of an 
 
158 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 even width for miles, bounded by regular low hills. 
 We were coming down the eastern wall of that 
 valley, and on the parallel western side a similar 
 height, with similar ravines and gullies leading 
 down to the river, bounded our narrow view. I 
 caught the distant sound of trumpets up there 
 beyond us, and nearer was the unmistakable 
 rumble of the guns. The clatter of horses below 
 in the valley road and the shouting of commands 
 were the signs that the regiment was meeting. 
 The road turned. On a kind of platform, just 
 before it joined the main highway, a few feet 
 above it, we halted to wait our order — and we saw 
 the guns go by ! 
 
 Only half the regiment was to halt at Bar-le-Duc. 
 But six batteries, thirty-six guns, their men, 
 horses, apparatus, forges, and waggons occupying 
 and advancing in streams over a valley are a 
 wonderful sight. Clouds of dust and the noise of 
 metal woke the silent places of the Meuse, and 
 sometimes river birds would rise and wheel in the 
 air as the clamour neared them. Far off a lonely 
 battery was coming down the western slope to join 
 the throng in its order, and for some reason their 
 two trumpets were still playing the march and 
 lending to this great display the unity of music. 
 We dismounted and watched from the turf of the 
 roadside a pageant which the accident of an 
 ordered and servile life afforded us; for it is true 
 
THE GUNS 159 
 
 of armies that the compensation of their drudgery 
 and miserable subjection is the continual opportu- 
 nity of these large emotions ; and not only by their 
 vastness and arrangement, but by the very fact that 
 they merge us into themselves, do armies widen the 
 spirit of a man and give it communion with the 
 majesty of great numbers. One becomes a part 
 of many men. 
 
 The seventh battery, with which we had little to 
 do (for in quarters they belonged to the furthest 
 corner from our own), first came by and passed 
 us, with that interminable repetition of similar 
 things which is the note of a force on the march, 
 and makes it seem like a river flowing. We 
 recognized it by the figure of one Chevalier, a 
 major attached to them. He was an absent-minded 
 man of whom many stories were told — kindly, with 
 a round face; and he wore eye-glasses, either for 
 the distinction they afforded or because he was 
 short of sight. The seventh passed us, and their 
 forge and waggon ended the long train. A regula- 
 tion space between them and the next allowed the 
 dust to lie a little, and then the ninth came by; we 
 knew them well, because in quarters they were our 
 neighbours. At their head was their captain, 
 whose name was Levy. He was a Jew, small, 
 very sharp-featured, and a man who worked 
 astonishingly hard. He was very popular with 
 his men, and his battery was happy and boasted. 
 
160 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 He cared especially for their food, and would go 
 into their kitchen daily to taste the soup. He was 
 also a silent man. He sat his horse badly, bent 
 and crouched, but his eyes were very keen ; and he 
 again was a character of whom the men talked and 
 told stories. I believe he was something of a 
 mathematician ; but we knew little of such things 
 where our superiors were concerned. 
 
 As the ninth battery passed us we were given 
 the order to mount, and knew that our place came 
 next. The long-drawn Ha-a-lte ! and the lifted 
 swords down the road contained for a while the 
 batteries that were to follow, and we filed out of 
 our side road into the long gap they had left us. 
 Then, taking up the trot ourselves, we heard the 
 order passing down infinitely till it was lost in 
 the length of the road ; the trumpets galloped 
 past us and formed at the head of the column ; a 
 much more triumphant noise of brass than we had 
 yet heard heralded us with a kind of insolence, 
 and the whole train with its two miles and more of 
 noisy power gloried into the old town of Bar-le- 
 Duc, to the great joy of its young men and 
 women at the windows, to the annoyance of the 
 householders, to the stupefaction of the old, and 
 doubtless to the ultimate advantage of the Re- 
 public. 
 
 When we had formed park in the grey market- 
 square, ridden our horses off to water at the 
 
THE GUNS 161 
 
 river and to their quarters, cleaned kit and har- 
 ness, and at last were free — that is, when it was 
 already evening — Matthieu, a friend of mine who 
 had come by another road with his battery, met 
 me strolling on the bridge. Matthieu was of my 
 kind, he had such a lineage as I had and such an 
 education. We were glad to meet. He told me 
 of his last halting-place — Pagny — hidden on the 
 upper river. It is the place where the house of 
 Luxembourg are buried, and some also of the 
 great men who fell when Henry V of England 
 was fighting in the North, and when on this flank 
 the Eastern dukes were waging the Burgundian 
 wars. It was not the first time that the tumult of 
 men in arms had made echoes along the valley. 
 
 Matthieu and I went off together to dine. He 
 lent me a pin of his, a pin with a worked head, to 
 pin my tunic with where it was torn, and he 
 begged me to give it back to him. But I have it 
 still, for I have never seen him since ; nor shall I 
 see him, nor he me, till the Great Day. 
 
 M 
 
THE LOOE STREAM 
 
 OF the complexity of the sea, and of how it is 
 manifold, and of how it mixes up with a 
 man, and may broaden or perfect him, it would be 
 very tempting to write ; but if one once began on 
 this, one would be immeshed and drowned in the 
 metaphysic, which never yet did good to man nor 
 beast. For no one can eat or drink the meta- 
 physic, or take any sustenance out of it, and it has 
 no movement or colour, and it does not give one 
 joy or sorrow ; one cannot paint it or hear it, and 
 it is too thin to swim about in. Leaving, then, all 
 these general things, though they haunt me and 
 tempt me, at least I can deal little by little and 
 picture by picture with that sea which is per- 
 petually in my mind, and let those who will draw 
 what philosophies they choose. And the first 
 thing I would like to describe is that of a place 
 called the Looe Stream, through which in a boat 
 only the other day I sailed for the first time, 
 noticing many things. 
 
 When St. Wilfrid went through those bare 
 heaths and coppices, which were called the forest 
 
 162 
 
THE LOOE STREAM 163 
 
 of Anderida, and which lay all along under the 
 Surrey Downs, and through which there was a 
 long, deserted Roman road, and on this road a 
 number of little brutish farms and settlements (for 
 this was twelve hundred years ago), he came out 
 into the open under the South Downs, and crossed 
 my hills and came to the sea plain, and there he 
 found a kind of Englishman more savage than the 
 rest, though Heaven knows they were none of them 
 particularly refined or gay. From these English- 
 men the noble people of Sussex are descended. 
 
 Already the rest of England had been Christian 
 a hundred years when St. Wilfrid came down into 
 the sea plain, and found, to his astonishment, this 
 sparse and ignorant tribe. They were living in 
 the ruins of the Roman palaces ; they were too 
 stupid to be able to use any one of the Roman 
 things they had destroyed. They had kept, per- 
 haps, some few of the Roman women, certainly all 
 the Roman slaves. They had, therefore, vague 
 memories of how the Romans tilled the land. 
 
 But those memories were getting worse and 
 worse, for it was nearly two hundred years since 
 the ships of Aella had sailed into Shoreham (which 
 showed him to be a man of immense determination, 
 for it is a most difficult harbour, and there were 
 then no piers and lights) — it was nearly two hundred 
 years, and there was only the least little glimmering 
 twilight left of the old day. These barbarians 
 
164 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 were going utterly to pieces, as barbarians ever 
 will when they are cut off from the life and 
 splendour of the South. They had become so 
 cretinous and idiotic, that when St. Wilfrid came 
 wandering among them they did not know how to 
 get food. There was a famine, and as their 
 miserable religion, such as it was (probably it was 
 very like these little twopenny-halfpenny modern 
 heresies of their cousins, the German pessimists) 
 — their religion, I say, not giving them the jolly 
 energy which all decent Western religion gives a 
 man, they being also by the wrath of God deprived 
 of the use of wine (though tuns upon tuns of it 
 were waiting for them over the sea a little way off, 
 but probably they thought their horizon was the 
 end of the world) — their religion, I say, being of 
 this nature, they had determined, under the 
 pressure of that famine which drove them so hard, 
 to put an end to themselves, and St. Wilfrid saw 
 them tying themselves together in bands (which 
 shows that they knew at least how to make rope) 
 and jumping off the cliffs into the sea. This 
 practice he determined to oppose. 
 
 He went to their king — who lived in Chichester, I 
 suppose, or possibly at Bramber — and asked him 
 why the people were going on in this fashion, who 
 said to him : ** It is because of the famine." 
 
 St. Wilfrid, shrugging his shoulders, said: 
 * ' Why do they not eat fish ? " 
 
THE LOOE STREAM 165 
 
 ** Because," said the King, **fish, swimming 
 about in the water, are almost impossible to catch. 
 We have tried it in our hunger a hundred times, 
 but even when we had the good luck to grasp one 
 of them, the slippery thing would glide from our 
 fingers." 
 
 St. Wilfrid then in some contempt said again : 
 
 ^* Why do you not make nets? " 
 
 And he explained the use of nets to the whole 
 Court, preaching, as it were, a sermon upon nets 
 to them, and craftily introducing St. Peter and 
 that great net which they hang outside his tomb in 
 Rome upon his feast day — which is the 29th of 
 June. The King and his Court made a net and 
 threw it into the sea, and brought out a great mass 
 of fish. They were so pleased that they told St. 
 Wilfrid they would do anything he asked. He 
 baptized them and they made him their first bishop ; 
 and he took up his residence in Selsey, and since 
 then the people of Sussex have gone steadily for- 
 ward, increasing in every good thing, until they 
 are now by far the first and most noble of all the 
 people in the world. 
 
 There is I know not what in history, or in the 
 way in which it is taught, which makes people 
 imagine that it is something separate from the life 
 they are living, and because of this modern error, 
 you may very well be wondering what on earth 
 this true story of the foundation of our country has 
 
166 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 to do with the Looe Stream. It has everything to 
 do with it. The sea, being governed by a pagan 
 god, made war at once, and began eating up all 
 those fields which had specially been consecrated 
 to the Church, civilization, common sense, and 
 human happiness. It is still doing so, and I know 
 an old man who can remember a forty-acre field 
 all along by Clymping having been eaten up by 
 the sea; and out along past Rustington there is, 
 about a quarter of a mile from the shore, a rock, 
 called the Church Rock, the remains of a church 
 which quite a little time ago people used for all 
 the ordinary purposes of a church. 
 
 The sea then began to eat up Selsey. Before 
 the Conquest — though I cannot remember exactly 
 when — the whole town had gone, and they 
 had to remove the cathedral to Chichester. In 
 Henry VIII's time there was still a park left out 
 of the old estates, a park with trees in it ; but this 
 also the sea has eaten up ; and here it is that I 
 come to the Looe Stream. The Looe Stream is a 
 little dell that used to run through that park, and 
 which to-day, right out at sea, furnishes the only 
 gate by which ships can pass through the great 
 maze of banks and rocks which go right out to sea 
 from Selsey Bill, miles and miles, and are called 
 the Owers. 
 
 On the chart that district is still called **The 
 Park," and at very low tides stumps of the old 
 
THE LOOE STREAM 167 
 
 trees can be seen ; and for myself I believe, though 
 I don't think it can be proved, that in among the 
 masses of sand and shingle which go together to 
 make the confused dangers of the Owers you 
 would find the walls of Roman palaces, and heads 
 of bronze and marble, and fragments of mosaic and 
 coins of gold. 
 
 The tide coming up from the Channel finds, 
 rising straight out of the bottom of the sea, the 
 shelf of this old land, and it has no avenue by 
 which to pour through save this Looe Stream, 
 which therefore bubbles and runs like a mill-race, 
 though it is in the middle of the sea. 
 
 If you did not know what was underneath you, 
 you could not understand why this river should run 
 separate from the sea all round, but when you have 
 noticed the depths on the chart, you see a kind of 
 picture in your mind : the wall of that old mass of 
 land standing feet above the floor of the Channel, 
 and the top of what was once its fields and its 
 villas, and its great church almost awash at low 
 tides, and through it a cleft, which was, I say, a 
 dell in the old park, but is now that Looe Stream 
 buoyed upon either side, and making a river by 
 itself running in the sea. 
 
 Sailing over it, and remembering all these things 
 at evening, I got out of the boil and tumble into 
 deep water. It got darker, and the light on the Nah 
 ship showed clearly a long way off, and purple 
 
168 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 against the west stood the solemn height of the 
 island. I set a course for this light, being alone at 
 the tiller, while my two companions slept down 
 below. When the night was full the little variable 
 air freshened into a breeze from the south-east ; it 
 grew stronger and stronger, and lifted little hearty- 
 following seas, and blowing on my quarter drove 
 me quickly to the west, whither I was bound. The 
 night was very warm and very silent, although 
 little patches of foam murmured perpetually, and 
 though the wind could be heard lightly in the 
 weather shrouds. 
 
 The star Jupiter shone brightly just above my 
 wake, and over Selsey Bill, through a flat band of 
 mist, the red moon rose slowly, enormous. 
 
RONCESVALLES 
 
 SITTING one day in Pampeluna, which occupies 
 the plain just below the southern and Spanish 
 escarpment of the Pyrenees, I and another remem- 
 bered with an equal desire that we had all our 
 lives desired to see Roncesvalles and the place 
 where Roland died. This town (we said) was that 
 which Charlemagne destroyed upon his march to 
 the Pass, and I, for my part, desired here, as in 
 every other part of Europe where I had been able 
 to find his footsteps, to follow them, and so to 
 re-create his time. 
 
 The road leads slantwise through the upper 
 valleys of Navarre, crossing by passes the various 
 spurs of the mountains, but each pass higher than 
 the last and less frequented, for each is nearer the 
 main range. As you leave Pampeluna the road 
 grows more and more deserted, and the country 
 through which it cuts more wild. The advantages 
 of wealth which are conferred by the neighbour- 
 hood of the capital of Navarre are rapidly lost 
 as one proceeds ; the houses grow rarer, the 
 shrines more ruinous and more aged, until one 
 comes at last upon the bleak valley which intro- 
 duces the final approach to Roncesvalles. 
 
 169 
 
170 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 The wealth and order everywhere associated 
 with the Basque blood have wholly disappeared. 
 This people is not receding — it holds its own, as 
 it deserves to do ; but as there are new fields 
 which it has occupied within the present century 
 upon the more western hills, so there are others to 
 the east, and this valley among them, from whence 
 it has disappeared. The Basque names remain, 
 but the people are no longer of the Basque type, 
 and the tongue is forgotten. 
 
 So gradual is the ascent and so continual the 
 little cols which have to be surmounted, that a 
 man does not notice how much upward he is 
 being led towards the crest of the ridge. And 
 when he comes at last upon the grove from which 
 he sees the plateau of Roncesvalles spread before 
 him, he wonders that the chain of the Pyrenees 
 (which here lie out along in cliffs like sharp sun- 
 ward walls, stretching in a strict perspective to the 
 distant horizon) should seem so low. The reason 
 that this white wall of cliffs seems so low is that 
 the traveller is standing upon the last of a series 
 of great steps which have led him up towards 
 the frontier, much as the prairies lead one up 
 towards the Rockies in Colorado. When he 
 has passed through the very pleasant wood 
 which lies directly beneath the cliffs, and reaches 
 the little village of Roncesvalles itself, he won- 
 ders still more that so famous a pass should 
 
RONCESVALLES 171 
 
 be so small a thing. The pass from this side is 
 so broad, with so low a saddle of grass, that it 
 seems more like the crossing of the Sussex Downs 
 than the crossing of an awful range of mountains. 
 It is a rounded gap, up to which there lifts a pretty- 
 little wooded combe; and no one could be certain, 
 during the half-hour spent in climbing such a 
 petty summit, that he was, in so climbing, con- 
 quering Los Altos, the high Pyrenees. 
 
 But when the summit is reached, then the mean- 
 ing of the ^^ Imus PyrenceuSy^^ and the place that 
 passage has taken in history, is comprehended in 
 a moment. One sees at what a height one was in 
 that plain of Roncesvalles, and one sees how the 
 main range dominates the world ; for down below 
 one an enormous cleft into the stuff of the moun- 
 tains falls suddenly and almost sheer, and you see 
 unexpectedly beneath you the approach from 
 France into Spain. The gulf at its narrowest is 
 tremendous ; but, more than that, when the floor of 
 the valley is reached, that floor itself slopes away 
 down and down by runs and by cascades towards 
 the very distant plains of the north, upon which 
 the funnel debouches. Moreover, it was up this 
 gulf, and from the north, that the armies came ; 
 it was this vision of a precipice that seized them 
 when their leaders had determined to invade the 
 Peninsula. This also was what, for so many 
 generations, so many wanderers must have seen 
 
172 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 who came to wonder at the place where the rear- 
 guard of Charlemagne had been destroyed. 
 
 The whole of the slope is covered with an 
 ancient wood, and this wood is so steep that it 
 would be impossible or dangerous to venture 
 down it. The old Carolingian road skirts the 
 mountain-side with difficulty, clinging well up 
 upon its flank ; the great modern road, which is 
 excellent and made for artillery, has to go even 
 nearer the summit ; below them there falls away a 
 slant or edge to which the huge beech trees cling 
 almost parallel to the steep earth, running their 
 perpendicular lines so high and close against the 
 hill that they look like pines. As you peer down 
 in among the trunks, you see the darkness in- 
 creasing until the eye can penetrate no more, and 
 dead, enormous trees that have lived their centu- 
 ries, and have fallen perhaps for decades, lie 
 across the aisles of the wood, propped up against 
 their living fellows ; for, by one of those political 
 accidents which are common throughout the whole 
 length of the Pyrenees, both sides of the water- 
 shed belong to Spain, so that no Government or 
 modern energy has come to disturb the silence. 
 One would swear that the last to order this wood 
 were the Romans. 
 
 I had thought to find so famous a valley peopled, 
 or at least visited. I found it utterly alone, and 
 even free from travellers, as though the wealthier 
 
RONCESVALLES 173 
 
 part of Europe had forgotten the most famous of 
 Christian epics. I saw no motor-cars, nor any 
 women — only at last, in the very depths of the 
 valley, a boy cutting grass in a tiny patch of open 
 land. And it was hereabouts, so far as I could 
 make out, that the Peers were killed. 
 
 The song, of course, makes them fall on the far 
 side of the summit, upon the fields of Roncesvalles, 
 with the sun setting right at them along the hills. 
 And that is as it should be, for it is evident that 
 (in a poem) the hero fighting among hills should 
 die upon the enemy's side of the hills. But that 
 is not the place where Roland really died. The 
 place where he really died, he and Oliver and 
 Turpin and all the others, was here in the very 
 recess of the Northern Valley. It was here only 
 that rocks could have been rolled down upon an 
 army, and here is that narrow, strangling gorge 
 where the line of march could most easily have 
 been cut in two by the fury of the mountaineers. 
 Also Eginhard says very clearly that they had 
 already passed the hills and seen France, and that 
 is final. It was from these cliffs, then, that such 
 an echo was made by the horn of Roland, and it 
 was down that funnel of a valley that the noise 
 grew until it filled Christendom ; and it was up 
 that gorge that there came, as it says in the 
 
 song — The host in a tide returning- : 
 
 Charles the King and his Barony. 
 
174 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 This was the place. And any man who may yet 
 believe (I know such a discussion is pedantry) — 
 any man who may yet believe the song of Roland 
 to have been a Northern legend had better come to 
 this place and drink the mountains in. For who- 
 ever wrote — 
 
 High are the hills and huge and dim with cloud, 
 Down in the deeps, the living streams are loud, 
 
 had certainly himself stood in the silence and 
 majesty of this valley. 
 
 It was already nearly dark when we two men 
 had clambered down to that place, and up between 
 the walls of the valley we had already seen the 
 early stars. We pushed on to the French frontier 
 in an eager appetite for cleanliness and human 
 food. 
 
 The last Spanish town is called Val Carlos, as it 
 ought to be, considering that Charlemagne him- 
 self had once come roaring by. When we reached 
 it in the darkness we had completed a forced 
 march of forty-two miles, going light, it is true, 
 and carrying nothing each of us but a gourd of 
 wine and a sack, but we were very tired. There, 
 at the goal of our effort, one faint sign of govern- 
 ment and of men at last appeared. It was in 
 character with all the rest. One might not cross 
 the frontier upon the road without a written leave. 
 The written leave was given us, and in half an 
 hour Spain was free. 
 
THE SLANT OFF THE LAND 
 
 W 
 
 E live a very little time. Before we have 
 reached the middle of our time perhaps, 
 but not long before, we discover the magnitude of 
 our inheritance. Consider England. How many 
 men, I should like to know, have discovered before 
 thirty what treasures they may work in her air? 
 She magnifies us inwards and outwards ; her fields 
 can lead the mind down towards the subtle be- 
 ginning of things ; the tiny iridescence of insects ; 
 the play of light upon the facets of a blade of 
 grass. Her skies can lead the mind up infinitely 
 into regions where it seems to expand and fill, no 
 matter what immensities. 
 
 It was the wind off the land that made me think 
 of all this possession in which I am to enjoy so 
 short a usufruct. I sat in my boat holding that 
 tiller of mine, which is not over firm, and is but a 
 rough bar of iron. There was no breeze in the 
 air, and the little deep vessel swung slightly to the 
 breathing of the sea. Her great mainsail and 
 her balloon-jib came over lazily as she swung, 
 and filled themselves with the cheating semblance 
 
 175 
 
176 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 of a wind. The boom creaked in the goose-neck, 
 and at every roll the slack of the mainsheet 
 tautened with a kind of little thud which thrilled 
 the deck behind me. I saw under the curve of 
 my head-sail the long and hazy line, which is the 
 only frontier of England; the plain that rather 
 marries with than defies her peculiar seas. For 
 it was in the Channel, and not ten miles from the 
 coast-line of my own county, that these thoughts 
 rose in me during the calm at the end of winter, 
 and the boat was drifting down more swiftly than 
 I knew upon the ebb of the outer tide. Far off 
 to the south sunlight played upon the water, and 
 was gone again. The great ships did not pass 
 near me, and so I sat under a hazy sky restraining 
 the slight vibration of the helm and waiting for 
 the wind. 
 
 In whatever place a man may be the spring will 
 come to him. I have heard of men in prison who 
 would note the day when its influence passed 
 through the narrow window that was their only 
 communion with their kind. It comes even to 
 men in cities; men of the stupid political sort, 
 who think in maps and whose interest is in the 
 addition of numbers. Indeed, I have heard such 
 men in London itself expressing pleasure when a 
 south-west gale came up in April from over the 
 pines of Hampshire and of Surrey and mixed the 
 Atlantic with the air of the fields. To me this 
 
THE SLANT OFF THE LAND 177 
 
 year the spring came suddenly, like a voice speak- 
 ing, though a low one — the voice of a person 
 subtle, remembered, little-known, and always de- 
 sired. For a wind blew off the land. 
 
 The surface of the sea northward between me 
 and the coast of Sussex had been for so many 
 hours elastic, smooth, and dull, that I had come to 
 forget the indications of a change. But here and 
 there, a long way off, little lines began to show, 
 which were indeed broad spaces of ruffled water, 
 seen edgeways from the low free-board of my 
 boat. These joined and made a surface all the 
 way out towards me, but a surface not yet revealed 
 for what it was, nor showing the movement and 
 life and grace of waves. For no light shone 
 upon it, and it was not yet near enough to be dis- 
 tinguished. It grew rapidly, but the haze and 
 silence had put me into so dreamy a state that 
 I had forgotten the ordinary anxiety and irritation 
 of a calm, nor had I at the moment that eager 
 expectancy of movement which should accompany 
 the sight of that dark line upon the sea. 
 
 Other things possessed me, the memory of 
 home and of the Downs. There went before this 
 breeze, as it were, attendant servants, outriders 
 who brought with them the scent of those first 
 flowers in the North Wood or beyond Cumber 
 Corner, and the fragrance of our grass, the 
 savour which the sheep know at least, however 
 
 N 
 
178 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 much the visitors to my dear home ignore it, A 
 deeper sympathy even than that of the senses 
 came with those messengers and brought me the 
 beeches and the yew trees also, although I was 
 so far out at sea, for the loneliness of this great 
 water recalled the loneliness of the woods, and 
 both those solitudes — the real and the imaginary 
 — mixed in my mind together as they might in 
 the mind of a sleeping man. 
 
 Before this wind as it approached, the sky also 
 cleared : not of clouds, for there were none, but 
 of that impalpable and warm mist which seems to 
 us, who know the south country and the Channel, 
 to be so often part of the sky, and to shroud 
 without obscuring the empty distances of our 
 seas. There was a hard clear light to the north ; 
 and even over the Downs, low as they were upon 
 the horizon, there was a sharp belt of blue. I 
 saw the sun strike the white walls of Lady New- 
 burgh's Folly, and I saw, what had hitherto been 
 all confused, the long line of the Arundel Woods 
 contrasting with the plain. Then the boom went 
 over to port, the jib filled, I felt the helm pulling 
 steadily for the first time in so many hours, and 
 the boat responded. The wind was on me ; and 
 though it was from the north, that wind was 
 warm, for it came from the sheltered hills. 
 
 Then, indeed, I quite forgot those first few 
 moments, which had so little to do with the art of 
 
THE SLANT OFF THE LAND 179 
 
 sailing, and which were perhaps unworthy of the 
 full life that goes with the governing of sails and 
 rudders. For one thing, I was no' longer alone ; a 
 man is never alone with the wind — and the boat 
 made three. There was work to be done in press- 
 ing against the tiller and in bringing her up to 
 meet the seas, small though they were, for my boat 
 was also small. Life came into everything ; the 
 Channel leapt and (because the wind was across 
 the tide) the little waves broke in small white tips: 
 in their movement and my own, in the dance of the 
 boat and the noise of the shrouds, in the curtsy of 
 the long sprit that caught the ridges of foam and 
 lifted them in spray, even in the free streaming of 
 that loose untidy end of line which played in the 
 air from the leech, as young things play from 
 wantonness, in the rush of the water, just up to 
 and sometimes through the lee scuppers, and in 
 the humming tautness of the sheet, in everything 
 about me there was exuberance and joy. The sun 
 upon the twenty million faces of the waves made 
 music rather than laughter, and the energy which 
 this first warmth of the year had spread all over the 
 Channel and shore, while it made life one, seemed 
 also to make it innumerable. We were now not 
 only three, the wind and my boat and I : we were 
 all part (and masters for the moment) of a great 
 throng. I knew them all by their names, which I 
 had learnt a long time ago, and had sung of 
 
180 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 them in the North Sea. I have often written them 
 down. I will not be ashamed to repeat them here, 
 for good things never grow old. There was the 
 Wave that brings good tidings, and the Wave 
 that breaks on the shore, and the Wave of the 
 island, and the Wave that helps, and the Wave 
 that lifts forrard, the kindly Wave and the youngest 
 Wave, and Amathea the Wave with bright hair, all 
 the waves that come up round Thetis in her train 
 when she rises from the side of the old man, her 
 father, where he sits on his throne in the depth of 
 the sea; when she comes up cleaving the water 
 and appears to her sons in the upper world. 
 
 The Wight showed clear before me. I was 
 certain with the tide of making the Horse Buoy and 
 Spithead while it was yet afternoon, and before the 
 plenitude of that light and movement should have 
 left me. I settled down to so much and such 
 exalted delight as to a settled task. I lit my pipe 
 for a further companion (since it was good to add 
 even to so many). I kept my right shoulder only 
 against the tiller, for the pressure was now steady 
 and sound. I felt the wind grow heavy and 
 equable, and I caught over my shoulder the merry 
 wake of this very honest moving home of mine as 
 she breasted and hissed through the sea. 
 
 Here, then, was the proper end of a long cruise. 
 It was spring time, and the season for work on 
 land. I had been told so by the heartening wind. 
 
THE SLANT OFF THE LAND 181 
 
 And as I went still westward, remembering the 
 duties of the land, the sails still held full, the 
 sheets and the weather shrouds still stood taut 
 and straining, and the little clatter of the broken 
 water spoke along the lee rail. And so the ship 
 sailed on. 
 
 'Ej* 5' dvefios trpriaev fiiaov Icrlop, dfJi(f)l d^ KVfia 
 Xrelp-j^ 'irop<pvp€oy fJLeydX' faxc, pribs ioicrrjs. 
 
THE CANIGOU 
 
 A MAN might discuss with himself what it 
 was that made certain great sights of the 
 world famous, and what it is that keeps others 
 hidden. This would be especially interesting in 
 the case of mountains. For there is no doubt that 
 there is a modern attraction in mountains which 
 may not endure, but which is almost as intense in 
 our generation as it was in that of our fathers. 
 The emotion produced by great height and by the 
 something unique and inspiring which distin- 
 guishes a mountain from a hill has bitten deeply 
 into the modern mind. Yet there are some of the 
 most astounding visions of this sort in Europe 
 which are, and will probably remain, unempha- 
 sized for travellers. 
 
 The vision of the Bernese Oberland when it 
 breaks upon one from the crest of Jura has been 
 impressed— upon English people, at least — in two 
 fine passages : the one written by Ruskin, the 
 other, if I remember right, in a book called 
 A Cruise upon Wheels, The French have, I 
 believe, no classical presentment of that view, nor 
 
 182 
 
THE CANIGOU 183 
 
 perhaps have the Germans. The line of the Alps 
 as one sees it upon very clear days from the last of 
 the Apennines — this, I think, has never been 
 properly praised in any modern book — not even 
 an Italian. The great red mountain-face which 
 St. Bruno called **the desert" I do not remember 
 to have read of anywhere nor to have heard 
 described ; for it stands above an unfrequented 
 valley, and the regular approach to the Chartreuse 
 is from the other side. Yet it is something which 
 remains as vivid to those few who have suddenly 
 caught sight of it from a turn of the Old Lyons 
 road as though they had seen it in a fantastic 
 dream. That astonishing circle of cliffs which 
 surrounds Bourg d'Oisans, though it has been 
 written of now and then, has not, so to speak, 
 taken root in people's imagination. 
 
 Even in this country there are twenty great 
 effects which, though they have, of course, suffered 
 record, are still secure from general praise ; for 
 instance, that awful trench which opens under 
 your feet, as it were, up north and beyond Plyn- 
 limmon. It is a valley as unexpected and as 
 incredible in its steepness and complete isolation 
 as any one may see in the drawings of the romantic 
 generation of English water-colour, yet perhaps 
 no one has drawn it ; there is certainly no familiar 
 picture of it anywhere. 
 
 When one comes to think of it, the reason of 
 
184 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 such exceptions to fame as are these is usually that 
 such and such an unknown but great sight lies off 
 the few general roads of travel. It is a vulgar 
 reason, but the true one. Unless men go to a 
 mountain to climb because it is difficult to climb, 
 or unless it often appears before them along one 
 of their main journeys, it will remain quiet. 
 Among such masses is the Canigou. 
 
 Here is a mountain which may be compared to 
 Etna. It is lower, indeed, in the proportion of 
 nine to eleven ; but when great isolated heights 
 of this sort are in question, such a difference 
 hardly counts. It can be seen, as Etna can, from 
 the sea, though it stands a good deal more inland ; 
 it dominates, as Etna does, a very famous plain, 
 but modern travel does nothing to bring it into the 
 general consciousness of the world. If Spain 
 were wealthy, or if the Spanish harbours naturally 
 led to any place which all the rich desired to visit, 
 the name of the Canigou would begin to grow. 
 Where the railway skirts the sea from Narbonne to 
 Barcelona, it is your permanent companion for a 
 good hour in the express, and for any time you 
 like in the ordinary trains. During at least three 
 months in the year, its isolation is peculiarly re- 
 lieved and marked by the snow, which lies above 
 an even line all along its vast bulk. It is also one 
 of those mountains in which one can recognize the 
 curious regularity of the ** belts " which text-books 
 
THE CANIGOU 185 
 
 talk of. There are great forests at the base of it, 
 just above the hot Mediterranean plain ; the beech 
 comes higher than the olive, the pines last of all ; 
 after them the pastures and the rocks. In the end 
 of February a man climbs up from a spring that is 
 as southern as Africa to a winter that is as northern 
 as the highlands of Scotland, and all the while he 
 feels that he is climbing nothing confused or vague, 
 but one individual peak which is the genius of the 
 whole countryside. 
 
 This countryside is the Roussillon, a lordship 
 as united as the Cerdagne ; it speaks one language, 
 shows one type of face, and is approached by but 
 a small group of roads, and each road passes 
 through a mountain gap. For centuries it went 
 with Barcelona. It needed the Revolution to 
 make it French, and it is full of Spanish memories 
 to this day. 
 
 For the Roussillon depends upon the Canigou 
 just as the Bay of Syracuse depends upon Etna, 
 or that of Naples upon Vesuvius, and its familiar 
 presence has sunk into the patriotism of the Rous- 
 sillon people, as those more famous mountains 
 have into the art and legends of their neighbours. 
 There are I know not how many monographs 
 upon the Canigou, but not one has been translated, 
 I would wager, into any foreign language. 
 
 Yet it is the mountain which very many men 
 who have hardly heard its name have been looking 
 
186 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 for all their lives. It gives as good camping as is 
 to be had in the whole of the Pyrenees. I believe 
 there is fishing, and perhaps one can shoot. 
 Properly speaking, there is no climbing in it ; at 
 least, one can walk up it all the way if one chooses 
 the right path, but there is everything else men 
 look for when they escape from cities. It is so 
 big that you would never learn it in any number 
 of camps, and the change of its impressions is 
 perpetual. From the summit the view has two 
 interests — of colour and of the past. You have 
 below you a plain like an inlaid work of chosen 
 stones : the whole field is an arrangement of 
 different culture and of bright rocks and sand ; 
 and below you, also, in a curve, is all that coast 
 which at the close of the Roman Empire was, per- 
 haps, the wealthiest in Europe. In the extreme 
 north a man might make out upon a clear day the 
 bulk of Narbonne. Perpignan is close by ; the 
 little rock harbour of Venus, Port Vendres, is to 
 the south. From the plain below one, which has 
 always been crammed with riches, sprang the chief 
 influences of Southern Gaul. It was here that the 
 family of Charlemagne took its origin, and it was 
 perhaps from here that he saw, through the 
 windows of a palace, that fleet of pirates which 
 moved him to his sad prophecy. That plain, 
 moreover, will re-arise ; it is still rich, and all the 
 Catalan province of Spain below it, of which it is 
 
THE CANIGOU 187 
 
 the highway and the approach, must increase in 
 value before Europe from year to year. The vast 
 development of the French African territory is re- 
 acting upon that coast : all it needs is ^ central 
 harbour, and if that harbour were formed it would 
 do what Narbo did for the Romans at the end of 
 their occupation— it would tap, much better than 
 does Cette, the wealth of Gascony, perhaps, also, 
 an Atlantic trade, and its exchanges towards Africa 
 and the Levant. The Mediterranean, which is 
 perpetually increasing in wealth and in importance 
 to-day, would have a second Marseilles, and should 
 such a port arise— then, when our ships and our 
 travellers are familiar with it, the Canigou (if it 
 cares for that sort of thing) will be as happy as the 
 Matterhorn. For the present it is all alone. 
 
THE MAN AND HIS WOOD 
 
 I KNEW a man once that was a territorial mag- 
 nate and had an estate in the county of Berk- 
 shire. I will not conceal his name. It was William 
 Frederick Charles Hermann-Postlethwaite. 
 
 On his estate was a large family mansion, sur- 
 rounded by tasteful gardens of a charming old 
 kind, and next outside these a great park, well 
 timbered. But the thing I am going to talk 
 about was a certain wood of which he was rightly 
 very proud. It stood on the slope of a grass 
 down, just above the valley, and beneath it was 
 a clean white road, and a little way along that 
 a town, part of which belonged to Mr. Hermann- 
 Postlethwaite, part to a local solicitor and money- 
 lender, several bits to a brewer in Reading, and a 
 few houses to the inhabitants. The people in the 
 town were also fond of the wood, and called it 
 *'The Old Wood." It was not very large, but, as 
 I have said before, it was very beautiful, and con- 
 tained all manner of trees, but especially beeches, 
 under which nothing will grow — as the poet puts 
 
 it in Sussex : Unner t' beech and t' yow 
 Nowt '11 grow. 
 i88 
 
THE MAN AND HIS WOOD 189 
 
 Well, as years passed, Mr. Herman n-Postle- 
 thwaite became fonder and fonder of the wood. 
 He began towards 1885 to think it the nicest thing 
 on his estate — which it was ; and he would often 
 ride out to look at it of a morning on his grey- 
 mare '* Betsy." When he rode out like this of a 
 morning his mount was well groomed, and so was 
 he, however early it might be, and he would carry 
 a little cane to hit the mare with and also as a 
 symbol of authority. The people who met him 
 would touch their foreheads, and he would wave 
 his hand genially in reply. He was a good fellow. 
 But the principal thing about him was his care for 
 the old wood ; and when he rode out to look at 
 it, as I say, he would speak to any one around so 
 early — his bailiff, as might be, or sometimes his 
 agent, or even the foreman of the workshop or the 
 carpenter, or any hedger or ditcher that might be 
 there, and point out bits of the wood, and say, 
 *'That branch looks pretty dicky. No harm to 
 cut that off short and parcel and serve the end and 
 cap it with a zinc cap"; or, '* Better be cutting the 
 Yartle Bush for the next fallow, it chokes the 
 gammon-rings, and I don't like to see so much 
 standard ivy about, it's the death of trees." I am 
 not sure that I have got the technical words right, 
 but at any rate they were more or less like that, 
 for I have heard him myself time and again. 
 I often used to go out with him on another 
 
190 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 horse, called Sultan, which he lent me to ride 
 upon. 
 
 Well, he got fonder and fonder of this wood, 
 and kept on asking people what he should do, and 
 how one could make most use of it, and he wor- 
 ried a good deal about it. He read books about 
 woods, and in the opening of 1891 he had down to 
 stay with him for a few days a man called Churt, 
 who had made a great success with woods on the 
 Warra-Warra. But Churt was a vulgar fellow, 
 and so Hermann - Postlethwaite's wife. Lady 
 Gwynnys Hermann-Postlethwaite, would not have 
 him in the house again, which was a bother. Her 
 husband then rode over to see another man, and 
 the upshot of it was that he put up a great board 
 saying ** Trespassers in this wood will be prose- 
 cuted," and it might as well not have been put up, 
 for no one ever went into the wood, not even from 
 the little town, because it was too far for them to 
 walk, and, anyhow, they did not care for walking. 
 And as for the doctor's son, a boy of thirteen, who 
 went in there with an air-gun to shoot things, he 
 paid no attention to the board. 
 
 The next thing my friend did was to have a fine 
 strong paling put all round the wood in March, 
 1894. This paling was of oak ; it was seven feet 
 high ; it had iron spikes along the top. There 
 were six gates in it, and stout posts at intervals of 
 ten yards. The boards overlapped very exactly. 
 
THE MAN AND HIS WOOD 191 
 
 It was as good a bit of work as ever I saw. He 
 had it varnished, and it looked splendid. All this 
 took two years. 
 
 Just then he was elected to Parliament, not for 
 Berkshire, as you might have imagined, but for a 
 slum division of Birmingham. He was very 
 proud of this, and quite rightly too. He said : 
 ** I am the only Conservative member in the Mid- 
 lands." It almost made him forget about his 
 wood. He shut up the Berkshire place and took a 
 house in town, and as he could not afford Mayfair, 
 and did not understand such things very well, the 
 house he took was an enormous empty house in 
 Bayswater, and he had no peace until he gave it 
 up for a set of rooms off Piccadilly ; and then his 
 mother thought that looked so odd that he did the 
 right thing, and got into a nice old-fashioned fur- 
 nished house in Westminster, overlooking the 
 Green Park. 
 
 But all this cost him a mint of money, and 
 politics made him angrier and angrier. They 
 never let him speak, and they made him vote for 
 things he thought perfectly detestable. Then he 
 did speak, and as he was an honest English gentle- 
 man the papers called him ridiculous names and 
 said he had no brains. So he just jolly well 
 threw the whole thing up and went back to Berk- 
 shire, and everybody welcomed him, and he did a 
 thing he had never done before : he put a flag up 
 
192 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 over his house to show he was at home. Then he 
 began to think of his wood again. 
 
 The very first time he rode out to look at it he 
 found the paling had given way in places from 
 the fall of trees, and that some leaned inwards 
 and some outwards, and that one of the gates was 
 off its hinges. There were also two cows walking 
 about in the wood, and what annoyed him most of 
 all, the iron spikes were rusty and the varnish had 
 all gone rotten and white and streaky on the 
 palings. He spoke to the bailiff about this, and 
 hauled him out to look at it. The bailiff rubbed 
 the varnish with his finger, smelt it, and said that 
 it had perished. He also said that there was no 
 such thing as good varnish nowadays, and he 
 added that there wasn't any varnish, not the very 
 best, but wouldn't go like that with rain and all, 
 Mr. Hermann -Postlethwaite grumbled a good 
 deal, but he supposed the bailiff knew best ; so he 
 told him to see what could be done, and for several 
 weeks he heard no more about it. 
 
 I forgot to tell you that about this time the 
 South African War had broken out, and as things 
 were getting pretty tangled, Hermann-Postle- 
 thwaite went out with his regiment, the eighth 
 battalion, not of the Berkshire, but of the Orkney 
 regiment. While he was out there, his brother, 
 in Dr. Charlbury's home, died, and he succeeded 
 to the baronetcy. As he already had a V.C. and 
 
THE MAN AND HIS WOOD 193 
 
 was now given a D.S.O., as well as being one of 
 the people mentioned in dispatches, he was pretty 
 important by the time he came home, when the 
 war was over, just before the elections of 1900. 
 
 When he got home he had a splendid welcome, 
 both from his tenants in Berkshire in passing 
 through and from those of his late brother in the 
 big place in Worcestershire. He preferred his 
 Berkshire place, however, and, letting the big 
 place to an American of the name of Hendrik K. 
 Boulge, he went back to his first home. When 
 he got there he thought of the old wood, and went 
 out to look at it. The palings were mended, but 
 they were covered all over with tar ! He was ex- 
 ceedingly angry, and ordered them to be painted 
 at once ; but the bailiff assured him one could 
 not paint over tar, and so did the carpenter and 
 the foreman. At this he had a fit of rage, and 
 ordered the whole damned thing to be pulled 
 down, and swore he would be damned if he ever 
 had a damned stick or a rail round the damned 
 wood again. He was no longer young ; he was 
 getting stout and rather puffy; he was not so 
 reasonable as of old. Anyhow, he had the whole 
 thing pulled down. Next year (that is, in 1901) his 
 wife died. 
 
 I wish I had the space to tell you all the other 
 
 things he did to the wood. How a friend of his 
 
 having sold a similar wood on the Thames in 
 o 
 
194 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 building lots at ;f 500 an acre, he put up the old 
 wood at the same rate. How, the old wood being 
 200 acres in extent, he hoped to make ;£"ioo,ooo 
 out of it. How he thought this a tidy sum. How 
 he got no offers at this price, nor at ;£"ioo, nor at 
 ;^5o. How an artist offered him ;£"20 for half an 
 acre to put up a red tin bungalow upon. How he 
 lost his temper with the artist. How at last he 
 left the whole thing alone and tried to forget all 
 about it. 
 
 The old wood to-day is just like what it was when 
 I wandered in it as a boy. The doctor's son is a 
 man now, and is keeping a bar in Sydney ; so he 
 is gone. The townspeople don't come any more 
 than before. I am the only person who goes near 
 the place. The trees are a trifle grander. I happen 
 now and then, when I visit this Berkshire parish, 
 upon a stump of a post or an old spike in the grass 
 of this wood, but otherwise it is as though all this 
 had not been. 
 
 A solemn thought : How enduring are the works 
 of Nature — how perishable those of Man ! 
 
THE CHANNEL 
 
 FRIENDS of mine, friends all, and you also, 
 publishers, colonials and critics, do you 
 know that particular experience for which I am 
 trying to find words? Do you know that glamour 
 in the mind which arises and transforms our 
 thought when we see the things that the men who 
 made us saw— the things of a long time ago, the 
 origins? I think everybody knows that glamour, 
 but very few people know where to find it. 
 
 Every man knows that he has in him the power 
 for such revelations, and every man wonders in 
 what strange place he may come upon them. 
 There are men also (very rich) who have considered 
 all the world and wandered over it, seeking those 
 first experiences and trying to feel as felt the 
 earlier men in a happier time — yet these few rich 
 men have not so felt and have not so found the 
 things which they desire. I have known men who 
 have thought to find them in the mountains, but 
 would not climb them simply enough and refused 
 to leave their luxuries behind, and so lost every- 
 thing, and might as well have been walking in a 
 
 195 
 
196 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 dirty town at home for all the little good that the 
 mountains did to them. And I know men who 
 have thought to find this memory and desire in 
 foreign countries, in Africa, hunting great beasts 
 such as our fathers hunted ; yet even these have 
 not relit those old embers, which if they lie dead 
 and dark in a man make his whole soul dusty and 
 useless, but which if they be once rekindled can 
 make him part of all the centuries. 
 
 Yet there is a simple and an easy way to find 
 what the men who made us found, and to see the 
 world as they saw it, and to take a bath, as it were, 
 in the freshness of beginnings ; and that is to go 
 to work as cheaply and as hardly as you can, and 
 only as much away from men as they were away 
 from men, and not to read or to write or to think, 
 but to eat and drink and use the body in many 
 immediate ways, which are at the feet of every man. 
 Every man who will walk for some days carelessly, 
 sleeping rough when he must, or in poor inns, and 
 making for some one place direct because he desires 
 to see it, will know the thing I mean. And there 
 is a better way still of which I shall now speak : I 
 mean, to try the seas in a little boat not more than 
 twenty- five feet long, preferably decked, of 
 shallow draught, such as can enter into all creeks 
 and havens, and so simply rigged that by oneself, 
 or with a friend at most, one can wander all over 
 the world. 
 
THE CHANNEL 197 
 
 Certainly every man that goes to sea in a little 
 boat of this kind learns terror and salvation, 
 happy living, air, danger, exultation, glory and 
 repose at the end ; and they are not words to him, 
 but, on the contrary, realities which will after- 
 wards throughout his life give the mere words 
 a full meaning. And for this experiment there 
 lies at our feet, I say, the Channel. 
 
 It is the most marvellous sea in the world — the 
 most suited for these little adventures ; it is 
 crammed with strange towns, differing one from 
 the other ; it has two opposite people upon either 
 side, and hills and varying climates, and the 
 hundred shapes and colours of the earth, here 
 rocks, there sand, there cliffs, and there marshy 
 shores. It is a little world. And what is more, it 
 is a kind of inland sea. 
 
 People will not understand how narrow it is, 
 crossing it hurriedly in great steamships ; nor will 
 they make it a home for pleasure unless they are 
 rich and can have great boats ; yet they should, 
 for on its water lies the best stage for playing out 
 the old drama by which the soul of a healthy man 
 is kept alive. For instance, listen to this story : — 
 
 The sea being calm, and the wind hot, uncertain, 
 and light from the east, leaving oily gaps on the 
 water, and continually dying down, I drifted one 
 morning in the strong ebb to the South Goodwin 
 Lightship, wondering what to do. There was 
 
198 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 a haze over the land and over the sea, and through 
 the haze great ships a long way off showed, one 
 or two of them, like oblong targets which one fires 
 at with guns. They hardly moved in spite of all 
 their canvas set, there was so little breeze. So 
 I drifted in the slow ebb past the South Goodwin, 
 and I thought: '^What is all this drifting and 
 doing nothing? Let us play the fool, and see if 
 there are no adventures left." 
 
 So I put my little boat about until the wind took 
 her from forward, such as it was, and she crawled 
 out to sea. 
 
 It was a dull, uneasy morning, hot and silent, 
 and the wind, I say, was hardly a wind, and most 
 of the time the sails flapped uselessly. 
 
 But after eleven o^clock the wind first rose, and 
 then shifted a little, and then blew light but steady ; 
 and then at last she heeled and the water spoke 
 under her bows, and still she heeled and ran, until 
 in the haze I could see no more land; but ever so 
 far out there were no seas, for the light full breeze 
 was with the tide, the tide ebbing out as a strong, 
 and silent as a man in anger, down the hidden 
 parallel valleys of the narrow sea. And I held this 
 little wind till about two o'clock, when I drank wine 
 and ate bread and meat at the tiller, for I had 
 them by me, and just afterwards, still through a 
 thick haze of heat, I saw Griz-nez, a huge ghost, 
 right up against and above me ; and I wondered, 
 
THE CHANNEL 199 
 
 for I had crossed the Channel, now for the first 
 time, and knew now what it felt like to see new 
 land. 
 
 Though I knew nothing of the place, I had this 
 much sense, that I said to myself: *^The tide is 
 right down Channel, racing through the hidden 
 valleys under the narrow sea, so it will all go down 
 together and all come up together, and the flood 
 will come on this foreign side much at the same 
 hour that it does on the home side." My boat lay 
 to the east and the ebb tide held her down, and I 
 lit a pipe and looked at the French hills and 
 thought about them and the people in them, and 
 England which I had left behind, and I was de- 
 lighted with the loneliness of the sea; and still I 
 waited for the flood. 
 
 But in a little while the chain made a rattling 
 noise, and she lay quite slack and swung oddly; 
 and then there were little boiling and eddying 
 places in the water, and the water seemed to come 
 up from underneath sometimes, and altogether it 
 behaved very strangely, and this was the turn of 
 the tide. Then the wind dropped also, and for a 
 moment she lollopped about, till at last, after I 
 had gone below and straightened things, I came 
 on deck to see that she had turned completely 
 round, and that the tide at last was making up 
 my way, towards Calais, and her chain was taut 
 and her nose pointed down Channel, and a little 
 
200 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 westerly breeze, a little draught of air, came up 
 cool along the tide. 
 
 When this came I was very glad, for I saw that 
 I could end my adventure before night. So I 
 pulled up the anchor and fished it, and then turned 
 with the tide under me, and the slight half-felt 
 breeze just barely filling the mainsail (the sheet was 
 slack, so powerless was the wind), and I ran up 
 along that high coast, watching eagerly every new 
 thing ; but I kept some way out for fear of shoals, till 
 after three good hours under the reclining sun of 
 afternoon, which glorified the mist, I saw, far off, 
 the roofs and spires of a town, and a low pier 
 running well out to sea, and I knew that it must 
 be Calais. And I ran for these piers, careless of 
 how I went, for it was already half of the spring 
 flood tide, and everything was surely well covered 
 for so small a boat, and I ran up the fairway in 
 between the piers, and saw Frenchmen walking 
 about and a great gun peeping up over its earth- 
 work, and plenty of clean new masonry. And 
 a man came along and showed me where I could 
 lie ; but I was so strange to the place that I would 
 not take a berth, but lay that night moored to an 
 English ship. 
 
 And when I had eaten and drunk and everything 
 was stowed away and darkness had fallen, I went 
 on deck, and for a long time sat silent, smoking 
 a pipe and watching the enormous lighthouse of 
 
THE CHANNEL 201 
 
 Calais, which is built right in the town, and 
 which turns round and round above one all night 
 long. 
 
 And I thought : ** Here is a wonderful thing I I 
 have crossed the Channel in this little boat, and 
 I know now what the sea means that separates 
 France from England. I have strained my eyes 
 for shore through a haze. I have seen new lands, 
 and I feel as men do who have dreamt dreams." 
 
 But in reality I had had very great luck indeed, 
 and had had no right to cross, for my coming 
 back was to be far more difficult and dreadful, 
 and I was to suffer many things before again I 
 could see tall England, close by me, out of the 
 sea. 
 
 But how I came back, and of the storm, and of 
 its majesty, and of how the boat and I survived, 
 I will tell you another time, only imploring you to 
 do the same ; not to tell of it, I mean, but to sail 
 it in a little boat. 
 
THE MOWING OF A FIELD 
 
 THERE is a valley in South England remote 
 from ambition and from fear, where the 
 passage of strangers is rare and unperceived, and 
 where the scent of the grass in summer is breathed 
 only by those who are native to that unvisited land. 
 The roads to the Channel do not traverse it ; they 
 choose upon either side easier passes over the 
 range. One track alone leads up through it to the 
 hills, and this is changeable : now green where 
 men have little occasion to go, now a good road 
 where it nears the homesteads and the barns. The 
 woods grow steep above the slopes ; they reach 
 sometimes the very summit of the heights, or, 
 when they cannot attain them, fill in and clothe the 
 combes. And, in between, along the floor of the 
 valley, deep pastures and their silence are bordered 
 by lawns of chalky grass and the small yew trees 
 of the Downs. 
 
 The clouds that visit its sky reveal themselves 
 beyond the one great rise, and sail, white and 
 enormous, to the other, and sink beyond that 
 other. But the plains above which they have 
 
 202 
 
THE MOWING OF A FIELD 203 
 
 travelled and the Weald to which they go, the 
 people of the valley cannot see and hardly recall. 
 The wind, when it reaches such fields, is no longer 
 a gale from the salt, but fruitful and soft, an inland 
 breeze ; and those whose blood was nourished here 
 feel in that wind the fruitfulness of our orchards 
 and all the life that all things draw from the air. 
 
 In this place, when I was a boy, I pushed 
 through a fringe of beeches that made a complete 
 screen between me and the world, and I came to a 
 glade called No Man's Land. I climbed beyond 
 it, and I was surprised and glad, because from 
 the ridge of that glade I saw the sea. To this 
 place very lately I returned. 
 
 The many things that I recovered as I came up the 
 countryside were not less charming than when a 
 distant memory had enshrined them, but much 
 more. Whatever veil is thrown by a longing 
 recollection had not intensified nor even made 
 more mysterious the beauty of that happy ground ; 
 not in my very dreams of morning had I, in exile, 
 seen it more beloved or more rare. Much also that 
 I had forgotten now returned to me as I approached 
 — a group of elms, a little turn of the parson's wall, 
 a small paddock beyond the graveyard close, 
 cherished by one man, with a low wall of very old 
 stone guarding it all around. And all these things 
 fulfilled and amplified my delight, till even the 
 good vision of the place, which I had kept so many 
 
204 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 years, left me and was replaced by its better reality. 
 **Here," I said to myself, ^*is a symbol of what 
 some say is reserved for the soul : pleasure of a 
 kind which cannot be imagined save in the moment 
 when at last it is attained." 
 
 When I came to my own gate and my own 
 field, and had before me the house I knew, I 
 looked around a little (though it was already 
 evening), and I saw that the grass was standing 
 as it should stand when it is ready for the scythe. 
 For in this, as in everything that a man can 
 do — of those things at least which are very old — 
 there is an exact moment when they are done 
 best. And it has been remarked of whatever rules 
 us that it works blunderingly, seeing that the good 
 things given to man are not given at the precise 
 moment when they would have filled him with 
 delight. But, whether this be true or false, we 
 can choose the just turn of the seasons in every- 
 thing we do of our own will, and especially in the 
 making of hay. Many think that hay is best made 
 when the grass is thickest ; and so they delay until 
 it is rank and in flower, and has already heavily 
 pulled the ground. And there is another false 
 reason for delay, which is wet weather. For very 
 few will understand (though it comes year after 
 year) that we have rain always in South England 
 between the sickle and the scythe, or say just after 
 the weeks of east wind are over. First we have a 
 
THE MOWING OF A FIELD 205 
 
 week of sudden warmth, as though the South had 
 come to see us all ; then we have the weeks of 
 east and south-east wind ; and then we have more 
 or less of that rain of which I spoke, and which 
 always astonishes the world. Now it is just before, 
 or during, or at the very end of that rain — but not 
 later — that grass should be cut for hay. True, 
 upland grass, which is always thin, should be cut 
 earlier than the grass in the bottoms and along the 
 water meadows ; but not even the latest, even in 
 the wettest seasons, should be left (as it is) to 
 flower and even to seed. For what we get when 
 we store our grass is not a harvest of something 
 ripe, but a thing just caught in its prime before 
 maturity : as witness that our corn and straw are 
 best yellow, but our hay is best green. So also 
 Death should be represented with a scythe and 
 Time with a sickle ; for Time can take only what 
 is ripe, but Death comes always too soon. In a 
 word, then, it is always much easier to cut grass 
 too late than too early ; and I, under that evening 
 and come back to these pleasant fields, looked at 
 the grass and knew that it was time. June was in 
 full advance : it was the beginning of that season 
 when the night has already lost her foothold of 
 the earth and hovers over it, never quite descend- 
 ing, but mixing sunset with the dawn. 
 
 Next morning, before it was yet broad day, I 
 awoke, and thought of the mowing. The birds 
 
206 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 were already chattering in the trees beside my 
 window, all except the nightingale, which had left 
 and flown away to the Weald, where he sings all 
 summer by day as well as by night in the oaks and 
 the hazel spinneys, and especially along the little 
 river Adur, one of the rivers of the Weald. The 
 birds and the thought of the mowing had awakened 
 me, and I went down the stairs and along the stone 
 floors to where I could find a scythe ; and when I 
 took it from its nail, I remembered how, fourteen 
 years ago, I had last gone out with my scythe, 
 just so, into the fields at morning. In between 
 that day and this were many things, cities and 
 armies, and a confusion of books, mountains and 
 the desert, and horrible great breadths of sea. 
 
 When I got out into the long grass the sun was 
 not yet risen, but there were already many colours 
 in the eastern sky, and I made haste to sharpen 
 my scythe, so that I might get to the cutting 
 before the dew should dry. Some say that it is 
 best to wait till all the dew has risen, so as to get 
 the grass quite dry from the very first. But, 
 though it is an advantage to get the grass quite 
 dry, yet it is not worth while to wait till the dew 
 has risen. For, in the first place, you lose many 
 hours of work (and those the coolest), and next — 
 which is more important — you lose that great ease 
 and thickness in cutting which comes of the dew. 
 So I at once began to sharpen my scythe. 
 
THE MOWING OF A FIELD 207 
 
 There is an art also in the sharpening of a 
 scythe, and it is worth describing carefully. Your 
 blade must be dry, and that is why you will see 
 men rubbing the scythe-blade with grass before 
 they whet it. Then also your rubber must be 
 quite dry, and on this account it is a good thing to 
 lay it on your coat and keep it there during all 
 your day's mowing. The scythe you stand up^ 
 right, with the blade pointing away from you, and 
 you put your left hand firmly on the back of the 
 blade, grasping it : then you pass the rubber first 
 down one side of the blade-edge and then down 
 the other, beginning near the handle and going on 
 to the point and working quickly and hard. 
 When you first do this you will^ perhaps, cut 
 your hand ; but it is only at first that such an 
 accident will happen to you. 
 
 To tell when the scythe is sharp enough this is 
 the rule. First the stone clangs and grinds 
 against the iron harshly ; then it rings musically 
 to one note ; then, at last, it purrs as though the 
 iron and stone were exactly suited. When you 
 hear this, your scythe is sharp enough ; and I, 
 when I heard it in that June dawn, with every- 
 thing quite silent except the birds, let down the 
 scythe and bent myself to mow. 
 
 When one does anything anew, after so many 
 years, one fears very much for one's trick or habit. 
 But all things once learnt are easily recoverable, 
 
208 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 and I very soon recovered the swing and power of 
 the mower. Mowing well and mowing badly — or 
 rather not mowing at all — are separated by very 
 little ; as is also true of writing verse, of playing 
 the fiddle, and of dozens of other things, but of 
 nothing more than of believing. For the bad or 
 young or untaught mower without tradition, the 
 mower Promethean, the mower original and con- 
 temptuous of the past, does all these things : He 
 leaves great crescents of grass uncut. He digs 
 the point of the scythe hard into the ground with 
 a jerk. He loosens the handles and even the 
 fastening of the blade. He twists the blade with 
 his blunders, he blunts the blade, he chips it, 
 dulls it, or breaks it clean off at the tip. If any 
 one is standing by he cuts him in the ankle. He 
 sweeps up into the air wildly, with nothing to 
 resist his stroke. He drags up earth with the 
 grass, which is like making the meadow bleed. 
 But the good mower who does things just as they 
 should be done and have been for a hundred 
 thousand years, falls into none of these fooleries. 
 He goes forward very steadily, his scythe-blade 
 just barely missing the ground, every grass 
 falling ; the swish and rhythm of his mowing are 
 always the same. 
 
 So great an art can only be learnt by continual 
 practice ; but this much is worth writing down, 
 that, as in all good work, to know the thing with 
 
THE MOWING OF A FIELD 209 
 
 which you work is the core of the affair. Good 
 verse is best written on good paper with an easy 
 pen, not with a lump of coal on a whitewashed 
 wall. The pen thinks for you ; and so does the 
 scythe mow for you if you treat it honourably and 
 in a manner that makes it recognize its service. 
 The manner is this. You must regard the scythe 
 as a pendulum that swings, not as a knife that 
 cuts. A good mower puts no more strength into 
 his stroke than into his lifting. Again, stand up 
 to your work. The bad mower, eager and full of 
 pain, leans forward and tries to force the scythe 
 through the grass. The good mower, serene and 
 able, stands as nearly straight as the shape of the 
 scythe will let him, and follows up every stroke 
 closely, moving his left foot forward. Then also 
 let every stroke get well away. Mowing is a thing 
 of ample gestures, like drawing a cartoon. Then, 
 again, get yourself into a mechanical and repeti- 
 tive mood : be thinking of anything at all but 
 your mowing, and be anxious only when there 
 seems some ii^terruption to the monotony of the 
 sound. In this mowing should be like one's 
 prayers — all of a sort and always the same, and so 
 made that you can establish a monotony and work 
 them, as it were, with half your mind : that hap- 
 pier half, the half that does not bother. 
 
 In this way, when I had recovered the art after 
 so many years, I went forward over the field, cut- 
 p 
 
210 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 ting lane after lane through the grass, and bring- 
 ing out its most secret essences with the sweep of 
 the scythe until the air was full of odours. At the 
 end of every lane I sharpened my scythe and 
 looked back at the work done, and then carried 
 my scythe down again upon my shoulder to begin 
 another. So, long before the bell rang in the 
 chapel above me — that is, long before six o'clock, 
 which is the time for the Angelus — I had many 
 swathes already lying in order parallel like sol- 
 diery ; and the high grass yet standing, making 
 a great contrast with the shaven part, looked dense 
 and high. As it says in the Ballad of Val-eS" 
 DuneSy where — 
 
 The tall son of the Seven Winds 
 Came riding- out of Hither-hythe, 
 
 and his horse-hoofs (you will remember) trampled 
 into the press and made a gap in it, and his sword 
 (as you know) 
 
 . . . was like a scythe 
 In Arcus when the grass is high 
 And all the swathes in order lie, 
 And there's the bailiff standing by 
 
 A-gathering of the tithe. 
 
 So I mowed all that morning, till the houses 
 awoke in the valley, and from some of them rose a 
 little fragrant smoke, and men began to be seen. 
 
 I stood still and rested on my scythe to watch 
 the awakening of the village, when I saw coming 
 
THE MOWING OF A FIELD 211 
 
 up to my field a man whom I had known in older 
 times, before I had left the Valley. 
 
 He was of that dark silent race upon which all 
 the learned quarrel, but which, by whatever mean- 
 ingless name it may be called — Iberian, or Celtic, 
 or what you will — is the permanent root of all 
 England, and makes England wealthy and pre- 
 serves it everywhere, except perhaps in the Fens 
 and in a part of Yorkshire. Everywhere else you 
 will find it active and strong. These people are 
 intensive ; their thoughts and their labours turn 
 inward. It is on account of their presence in these 
 islands that our gardens are the richest in the 
 world. They also love low rooms and ample fires 
 and great warm slopes of thatch. They have, as I 
 believe, an older acquaintance with the English 
 air than any other of all the strains that make up 
 England. They hunted in the Weald with stones, 
 and camped in the pines of the green-sand. They 
 lurked under the oaks of the upper rivers, and saw 
 the legionaries go up, up the straight paved road 
 from the sea. They helped the few pirates to 
 destroy the towns, and mixed with those pirates 
 and shared the spoils of the Roman villas, and 
 were glad to see the captains and the priests 
 destroyed. They remain ; and no admixture of 
 the Frisian pirates, or the Breton, or the Angevin 
 and Norman conquerors, has very much affected 
 their cunning eyes. 
 
212 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 To this race, I say, belonged the man who now 
 approached me. And he said to me, *' Mowing?" 
 And I answered, ** Ar." Then he also said '^ Ar," 
 as in duty bound ; for so we speak to each other in 
 the Stenes of the Downs. 
 
 Next he told me that, as he had nothing to do, 
 he would lend me a hand ; and I thanked him 
 warmly, or, as we say, ** kindly." For it is a 
 good custom of ours always to treat bargaining as 
 though it were a courteous pastime ; and though 
 what he was after was money, and what I wanted 
 was his labour at the least pay, yet we both played 
 the comedy that we were free men, the one grant- 
 ing a grace and the other accepting it. For the 
 dry bones of commerce, avarice and method and 
 need, are odious to the Valley ; and we cover 
 them up with a pretty body of fiction and observ- 
 ances. Thus, when it comes to buying pigs, the 
 buyer does not begin to decry the pig and the 
 vendor to praise it, as is the custom with lesser 
 men ; but tradition makes them do business in 
 this fashion : — 
 
 First the buyer will go up to the seller when he 
 sees him in his own steading, and, looking at the 
 pig with admiration, the buyer will say that rain 
 may or may not fall, or that we shall have snow 
 or thunder, according to the time of year. Then 
 the seller, looking critically at the pig, will agree 
 that the weather is as his friend maintains. There 
 
THE MOWING OF A FIELD 213 
 
 is no haste at all ; great leisure marks the dignity 
 of their exchange. And the next step is, that the 
 buyer says: ^* That's a fine pig you have there, 
 Mr. " (giving the seller's name). *' Ar, power- 
 ful fine pig." Then the seller, saying also '' Mr." 
 (for twin brothers rocked in one cradle give each 
 other ceremonious observance here), the seller, 
 I say, admits, as though with reluctance, the 
 strength and beauty of the pig, and falls into deep 
 thought. Then the buyer says, as though moved 
 by a great desire, that he is ready to give so much 
 for the pig, naming half the proper price, or a 
 little less. Then the seller remains in silence for 
 some moments ; and at last begins to shake his 
 head slowly, till he says: ^*I don't be thinking 
 of selling the pig, anyways." He will also add 
 that a party only Wednesday offered him so 
 much for the pig — and he names about double the 
 proper price. Thus all ritual is duly accom- 
 plished ; and the solemn act is entered upon with 
 reverence and in a spirit of truth. For when the 
 buyer uses this phrase : *^ I'll tell you what I will 
 do," and offers within half a crown of the pig's 
 value, the seller replies that he can refuse him 
 nothing, and names half a crown above its value ; 
 the difference is split, the pig is sold, and in the 
 quiet soul of each runs the peace of something 
 accomplished. 
 
 Thus do we buy a pig or land or labour or malt 
 
214 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 or lime, always with elaboration and set forms ; 
 and many a London man has paid double and 
 more for his violence and his greedy haste and 
 very unchivalrous higgling. As happened with 
 the land at Underwaltham, which the mortgagees 
 had begged and implored the estate to take at 
 twelve hundred, and had privately offered to all 
 the world at a thousand, but which a sharp direct 
 man, of the kind that makes great fortunes, a 
 man in a motor-car, a man in a fur coat, a man of 
 few words, bought for two thousand three hundred 
 before my very eyes, protesting that they might 
 take his offer or leave it ; and all because he did 
 not begin by praising the land. 
 
 Well then, this man I spoke of offered to help 
 me, and he went to get his scythe. But I went 
 into the house and brought out a gallon jar of 
 small ale for him and for me ; for the sun was now 
 very warm, and small ale goes well with mowing. 
 When we had drunk some of this ale in mugs 
 called **I see you," we took each a swathe, he 
 a little behind me because he was the better 
 mower ; and so for many hours we swung, one 
 before the other, mowing and mowing at the tall 
 grass of the field. And the sun rose to noon and 
 we were still at our mowing ; and we ate food, but 
 only for a little while, and we took again to our 
 mowing. And at last there was nothing left but 
 a small square of grass, standing like a square of 
 
THE MOWING OF A FIELD 215 
 
 linesmen who keep their formation, tall and un- 
 broken, with all the dead lying around them when 
 a battle is over and done. 
 
 Then for some little time I rested after all those 
 hours ; and the man and I talked together, and 
 a long way off we heard in another field the 
 musical sharpening of a scythe. 
 
 The sunlight slanted powdered and mellow over 
 the breadth of the valley ; for day was nearing its 
 end. I went to fetch rakes from the steading ; 
 and when I had come back the last of the grass 
 had fallen, and all the field lay flat and smooth, 
 with the very green short grass in lanes between 
 the dead and yellow swathes. 
 
 These swathes we raked into cocks to keep them 
 from the dew against our return at daybreak ; and 
 we made the cocks as tall and steep as we could, 
 for in that shape they best keep off the dew, and 
 it is easier also to spread them after the sun has 
 risen. Then we raked up every straggling blade, 
 till the whole field was a clean floor for the tedding 
 and the carrying of the hay next morning. The 
 grass we had mown was but a little over two 
 acres ; for that is all the pasture on my little tiny 
 farm. 
 
 When we had done all this, there fell upon us 
 the beneficent and deliberate evening ; so that as 
 we sat a little while together near the rakes, we 
 saw the valley more solemn and dim around us, 
 
216 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 and all the trees and hedgerows quite still, and 
 held by a complete silence. Then I paid my com- 
 panion his wage, and bade him a good night, till 
 we should meet in the same place before sunrise. 
 
 He went off with a slow and steady progress, as 
 all our peasants do, making their walking a part 
 of the easy but continual labour of their lives. 
 But I sat on, watching the light creep around 
 towards the north and change, and the waning 
 moon coming up as though by stealth behind the 
 woods of No Man's Land. 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 THE other day (it was Wednesday, and the 
 air was very pure) I went into the stable 
 upon my way towards the wood, and there I saw 
 my horse Monster standing by himself, regarding 
 nothingness. And when I had considered what 
 a shame it was to take one's pleasure in a wood 
 and leave one's helpless horse at home, I bridled 
 him and saddled him and took him out, and rode 
 him the way that I had meant to go alone. So 
 we went together along the Stene under the North 
 Wood until we got to the edge of the forest, and 
 then we took the green Ride to the right, for it 
 was my intention to go and look at the Roman 
 road. 
 
 Behind my house, behind my little farm, there 
 are as many miles of turf as one cares to count, 
 and then behind it also, but the other way, there 
 goes this deep and lonely forest. It is principally 
 of beech, which is the tree of the chalk, and no 
 one has cut it or fenced it or thought about it 
 (except to love it), since the parts about my 
 village took their names : Gumber and Fairmile 
 
 217 
 
218 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 Bay Combe, the Nore, and the stretch called No 
 Man's Land. 
 
 Into the darkness of these trees I rode very 
 quietly with Monster, my horse, but whether the 
 autumn air were pleasanterto him or to me neither 
 of us could decide, for there is no bridge between 
 two souls. That is, if horses have a soul, which 
 I suppose they have, for they are both stupid and 
 kindly, and they fear death as though a part, and 
 but a part, of them were immortal. Also they see 
 things in the dark and are cognizant of evil. 
 
 When I had gone some hundred yards towards 
 the Roman road I saw, bending lower than the 
 rest on the tree from which it hung, a golden 
 bough, and I said to myself that I had had good 
 luck, for such a thing has always been the sign of 
 an unusual experience and of a voyage among the 
 dead. All the other leaves of the tree were green, 
 but the turn of the year, which sends out forageris 
 just as the spring does, marking the way it is to 
 go, had come and touched this bough and changed 
 it, so that it shone out by itself in the recesses of 
 the forest and gleamed before and behind. I did 
 not ask what way it led me, for I knew ; and so I 
 went onwards, riding my horse, until I came to 
 that long bank of earth which runs like a sort of 
 challenge through this ancient land to prove what 
 our origins were, and who first brought us merry 
 people into the circuit of the world. 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 219 
 
 When I saw the Roman road the sharper 
 influence which it had had upon my boyhood 
 returned to me, and I got off my horse and took 
 his bit out of his mouth so that he could play the 
 fool with the grass and leaves (which are bad for 
 him), and I hitched the snaffle to a little broken 
 peg of bough so that he could not wander. And 
 then I looked up and down along the boles of the 
 great North Wood, taking in the straight line of 
 the way. 
 
 I have heard it said that certain professors, the 
 most learned of their day, did once deny that this 
 was a Roman road. I can well believe it, and it is 
 delightful to believe that they did. For this road 
 startles and controls a true man, presenting an 
 eternal example of what Rome could do. The 
 peasants around have always called it the '* Street." 
 It leads from what was certainly one Roman town to 
 what was certainly another. That sign of Roman 
 occupation, the modern word *'Cold Harbour," is 
 scattered up and down it. There are Roman 
 pavements on it. It goes plumb straight for miles, 
 and at times, wherever it crosses undisturbed land, 
 it is three or four feet above the level of the down. 
 Here, then, was a feast for the learned : since 
 certainly the more obvious a thing is, the more 
 glory there must be in denying it. And deny it 
 they did (or at least, so I am told) just as they will 
 deny that Thomas k Becket was a Papist, or that 
 
220 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 Austerlitz was fought in spite of Trafalgar, or that 
 the Gospel of St. John is the Gospel of St. John. 
 
 Here, then, sitting upon this Roman road I 
 considered the nature of such men, and when I 
 had thought out carefully where the nearest Don 
 might be at that moment, I decided that he was at 
 least twenty-three miles away, and I was very glad : 
 for it permitted me to contemplate the road with 
 common sense and with Faith, which is Common 
 Sense transfigured; and I could see the Legionaries 
 climbing the hill. I remembered also what a 
 sight there was upon the down above, and I got 
 upon my horse again to go and see it. 
 
 When one has pushed one's way through the 
 brambles and the rounded great roots which have 
 grown upon this street — where no man has walked 
 perhaps for about a thousand years — one gets to 
 the place where it tops the hill, and here one sees 
 the way in which the line of it was first struck out. 
 From where one stands, right away like a beam, 
 leading from rise to rise, it runs to the cathedral 
 town. You see the spot where it enters the 
 eastern gate of the Roman walls ; you see at the 
 end of it, like the dot upon an *' i," the mass of the 
 cathedral. Then, if you turn and look northward, 
 you see from point to point its taut stretch across 
 the weald to where, at the very limit of the 
 horizon, there is a gap in the chain of hills that 
 bars your view. 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 221 
 
 The strict design of such a thing weighs upon 
 one as might weigh upon one four great lines of 
 Virgil, or the sight of those enormous stones which 
 one comes upon, Roman also, in the Algerian 
 sands. The plan of such an avenue by which to 
 lead great armies and along which to drive com- 
 mands argues a mixture of unity and of power as 
 intimate as the lime and the sand of which these 
 conquerors welded their imperishable cement. 
 And it does more than this. It suggests swiftness 
 and certitude of aim and a sort of eager determina- 
 tion which we are slow to connect with Govern- 
 ment, but which certainly underlay the triumph of 
 this people. A road will give one less trouble if it 
 winds about and feels the contours of the land. It 
 will pay better if it is of earth and broken stones in- 
 stead of being paved, nor would any one aiming at 
 wealth or comfort alone laboriously raise its level, 
 as the level of this road is raised. But in all that 
 the Romans did there was something of a monu- 
 ment. Where they might have taken pipes down 
 a valley and up the opposing side they preferred 
 the broad shoulders of an arcade, and where a 
 seven-foot door would have done well enough to 
 enter their houses by they were content with 
 nothing less than an arch of fifty. In all their 
 work they were conscious of some business other 
 than that immediately to hand, and therefore it is 
 possible that their ruins will survive the establish- 
 
222 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 ment of our own time as they have survived that 
 of the Middle Ages. In this wild place, at least, 
 nothing remained of all that was done between 
 their time and ours. 
 
 These things did the sight on either side of the 
 summit suggest to me, but chiefly there returned as 
 I gazed the delicious thought that learned men, 
 laborious and heavily endowed, had denied the 
 existence of this Roman road. 
 
 See with what manifold uses every accident 
 of human life is crammed ! Here was a piece of 
 pedantry and scepticism, which might make some 
 men weep and some men stamp with irritation, and 
 some men, from sheer boredom, fall asleep, but 
 which fed in my own spirit a fountain of pure joy, 
 as I considered carefully what kind of man it is who 
 denies these things ; the kind of way he walks ; the 
 kind of face he has; the kind of book he writes; the 
 kind of publisher who chisels him ; and the kind of 
 way in which his works are bound. With every 
 moment my elation grew greater and more im- 
 petuous, until at last I could not bear to sit any 
 longer still, even upon so admirable a beast, nor to 
 look down even at so rich a plain (though that was 
 seen through the air of Southern England), but 
 turning over the downs I galloped home, and came 
 in straight from the turf to my own ground — for 
 what man would live upon a high road who could 
 go through a gate right off the turf to his own 
 steading and let the world go hang ? 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 223 
 
 And so did I. But as they brought me beer 
 and bacon at evening, and I toasted the memory 
 of things past, I said to myself : *' Oxford, Cam- 
 bridge, Dublin, Durham— you four great univer- 
 sities—you terrors of Europe— that road is older 
 than you : and meanwhile I drink to your continued 
 healths, but let us have a little room . . . air, 
 there, give us air, good people. I stifle when I 
 think of you." 
 
THE ONION-EATER 
 
 THERE is a hill not far from my home whence 
 it is possible to see northward and southward 
 such a stretch of land as is not to be seen from any 
 eminence among those I know in Western Europe. 
 Southward the sea-plain and the sea standing up 
 in a belt of light against the sky, and northward 
 all the weald. 
 
 From this summit the eye is disturbed by no 
 great cities of the modern sort, but a dozen at 
 least of those small market towns which are the 
 delight of South England hold the view from 
 point to point, from the pale blue downs of the 
 island over, eastward, to the Kentish hills. 
 
 A very long way off, and near the sea-line, the 
 high faint spire of that cathedral which was once 
 the mother of all my county goes up without 
 weight into the air and gathers round it the delicate 
 and distant outlines of the landscape — as, indeed, 
 its builders meant that it should do. In such a 
 spot, on such a high watch-tower of England, I 
 met, three days ago, a man. 
 
 I had been riding my kind and honourable horse 
 
 224 
 
THE ONION-EATER 225 
 
 for two hours, broken, indeed, by a long rest in a 
 deserted barn. 
 
 I had been his companion, I say, for two hours, 
 and had told him a hundred interesting things— to 
 which he had answered nothing at all — when I took 
 him along a path that neither of us yet had trod. 
 I had not, I know ; he had not (I think), for he went 
 snorting and doubtfully. This path broke up from 
 the kennels near Waltham, and made for the High 
 Wood between Gumber and No Man's Land. It 
 went over dead leaves and quite lonely to the thick 
 of the forest; there it died out into a vaguer and 
 a vaguer trail. At last it ceased altogether, and 
 for half an hour or so I pushed carefully, always 
 climbing upwards, through the branches, and 
 picked my way along the bramble-shoots, until at 
 last I came out upon that open space of which I 
 have spoken, and which I have known since my 
 childhood. As I came out of the wood the south- 
 west wind met me, full of the Atlantic, and it 
 seemed to me to blow from Paradise. 
 
 I remembered, as I halted and so gazed north 
 and south to the weald below me, and then again 
 to the sea, the story of that Sultan who publicly pro- 
 claimed that he had possessed all power on earth, 
 and had numbered on a tablet with his own hand 
 each of his happy days, and had found them, when 
 he came to die, to be seventeen. I knew what that 
 heathen had meant, and I looked into my heart as 
 Q 
 
226 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 I remembered the story, but I came back from the 
 examination satisfied, for **So far," I said to myself, 
 **this day is among my number, and the light is 
 falling. I will count it for one." It was then that 
 I saw before me, going easily and slowly across 
 the downs, the figure of a man. 
 
 He was powerful, full of health and easy ; his 
 clothes were rags ; his face was open and bronzed. 
 I came at once off my horse to speak with him, 
 and, holding my horse by the bridle, I led it for- 
 ward till we met. Then I asked him whither he 
 was going, and whether, as I knew these open 
 hills by heart, I could not help him on his way. 
 
 He answered me that he was in no need of help, 
 for he was bound nowhere, but that he had come 
 up off the high road on to the hills in order to get 
 his pleasuore and also to see what there was on the 
 other side. He said to me also, with evident 
 enjoyment (and in the accent of a lettered man), 
 ** This is indeed a day to be alive ! " 
 
 I saw that I had here some chance of an adven- 
 ture, since it is not every day that one meets upon 
 a lonely down a man of culture, in rags and 
 happy. I therefore took the bridle right off my 
 horse and let him nibble, and I sat down on the 
 bank of the Roman road holding the leather of 
 the bridle in my hand, and wiping the bit with 
 plucked grass. The stranger sat down beside me, 
 and drew from his pocket a piece of bread and a 
 
THE ONION-EATER 227 
 
 large onion. We then talked of those things 
 which should chiefly occupy mankind ; I mean, 
 of happiness and of the destiny of the soul. Upon 
 these matters I found him to be exact, thoughtful, 
 and just. 
 
 First, then, I said to him: **I also have been 
 full of gladness all this day, and, what is more, as 
 I came up the hill from Waltham I was inspired 
 to verse, and wrote it inside my mind, completing 
 a passage I had been working at for two years, 
 upon joy. But it was easy for me to be happy, 
 since I was on a horse and warm and well fed ; 
 yet even for me such days are capricious. I have 
 known but few in my life. They are each of them 
 distinct and clear, so rare are they, and (what is 
 more) so different are they in their very quality 
 from all other days.*' 
 
 ^* You are right," he said, **in this last phrase 
 of yours. . . . They are indeed quite other from 
 all the common days of our lives. But you were 
 wrong, I think, in saying that your horse and 
 clothes and good feeding and the rest had to do 
 with these curious intervals of content. Wealth 
 makes the run of our days somewhat more easy, 
 poverty makes them more hard — or very hard. 
 But no poverty has ever yet brought of itself 
 despair into the soul — the men who kill themselves 
 are neither rich nor poor. Still less has wealth 
 ever purchased those peculiar hours. I also am 
 
228 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 filled with their spirit to-day, and God knows," 
 said he, cutting his onion in two, so that it gave 
 out a strong savour, ** God knows I can purchase 
 nothing." 
 
 **Then tell me," I said, '^whence do you believe 
 these moments come? And will you give me half 
 your onion?" 
 
 ** With pleasure," he replied, **for no man can 
 eat a whole onion ; and as for that other matter, 
 why, I think the door of heaven is ajar from time 
 to time, and that light shines out upon us for a 
 moment between its opening and closing." He 
 said this in a merry, sober manner ; his black eyes 
 sparkled, and his large beard was blown about a 
 little by the wind. Then he added : ** If a man is 
 a slave to the rich in the great cities (the most 
 miserable of mankind), yet these days come to him. 
 To the vicious wealthy and privileged men, whose 
 faces are stamped hard with degradation, these days 
 come ; they come to you, you say, working (I sup- 
 pose) in anxiety like most of men. They come to 
 me who neither work nor am anxious so long as 
 South England may freely import onions." 
 
 **I believe you are right," I said. **And I 
 especially commend you for eating onions ; they 
 contain all health ; they induce sleep ; they may 
 be called the apples of content, or, again, the 
 companion-fruits of mankind." 
 
 **I have always said," he answered gravely, 
 
THE ONION-EATER 229 
 
 ^*that when the couple of them left Eden they hid 
 and took away with them an onion. I am moved 
 in my soul to have known a man who reveres and 
 loves them in the due measure, for such men are 
 
 rare." 
 
 Then he asked, with evident anxiety : ** Is there 
 no inn about here where a man like me will be 
 taken in ? " 
 
 ** Yes," I told him. *^ Down under the Combe 
 at Duncton is a very good inn. Have you money 
 to pay? Will you take some of my money?" 
 
 " I will take all you can possibly afford me," he 
 answered in a cheerful, manly fashion. I counted 
 out my money and found I had on me but 3s. jd, 
 ^* Here is 3s. 7d.," I said. 
 
 ** Thank you, indeed," he answered, taking the 
 coins and wrapping them in a little rag (for he had 
 no pockets, but only holes). 
 
 * * I wish," I said with regret, * ' we might meet and 
 talk more often of many things. So much do we 
 agree, and men like you and me are often lonely." 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders and put his head on 
 one side, quizzing at me with his eyes. Then he 
 shook his head decidedly, and said : '*No, no — it 
 is certain that we shall never meet again." And 
 thanking me with great fervour, but briefly, he 
 went largely and strongly down the escarpment of 
 the Combe to Duncton and the weald ; and I shall 
 never see him again till the Great Day. . . . 
 
THE RETURN TO ENGLAND 
 
 IN Calais harbour, it being still very early in the 
 morning, about half-past five, I peered out to 
 see how things were looking, for if that coast 
 corresponded at all to ours, the tide should be 
 making westerly by six o'clock that day — the ebb 
 tide — and it was on the first of that tide that I 
 should make the passage to England, for at sea 
 you never can tell. At sea you never can tell, and 
 you must take every inch the gods allow you. 
 You will need that and more very often before 
 evening. Now, as I put my head out I saw that I 
 could not yet start, for there was a thick white 
 mist over everything, so that I could not even see 
 the bowsprit of my own boat. Everything was 
 damp : the decks smelt of fog, and from the shore 
 came sounds whose cause I could not see. Look- 
 ing over the iron bulwarks of the big English 
 cargo ship, alongside of which I was moored, was 
 a man with his head upon his folded arms. He 
 told me that he thought the fog would lift ; and so 
 I waited, seeking no more sleep, but sitting up 
 there in the drifting fog, and taking pleasure in a 
 
 230 
 
THE RETURN TO ENGLAND 231 
 
 bugle call which the French call ** La Diane," 
 and which they play to wake the soldiers. But in 
 summer it wakes nobody, for all the world is 
 waking long before. 
 
 Towards six the mist blew clean away before a 
 little air from the north-east ; it had come sharp 
 over those miles and miles of sand dunes and flats 
 which stretch away from Gris-nez on to Denmark. 
 From Gris-nez all the way to the Sound there is 
 no other hill ; but coarse grass, wind-swept and 
 flying sand. Finding this wind, I very quickly set 
 sail, and as I did not know the harbour I let down 
 the peak of the mainsail, that she might sail 
 slowly, and crept along close to the eastern pier, 
 for fear that when I got to the open work the 
 westerly tide should drive me against the western 
 pier ; but there was no need for all this caution, 
 since the tide was not yet making strongly. Yet 
 was I wise to beware, for if you give the strange 
 gods of the sea one little chance they will take a 
 hundred, and drown you for their pleasure. And 
 sailing, if you sail in all weathers, is a perpetual 
 game of skill against them, the heartiest and most 
 hazardous game in the world. 
 
 So then, when I had got well outside, I found 
 what is called *^a lump." The sea was jumbling 
 up and down irregularly, as though great animals 
 had just stopped fighting there. But whatever 
 was the cause of it, this lump made it difficult to 
 
232 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 manage the boat I was in, for the air was still light 
 and somewhat unsteady ; sometimes within a point 
 of north, and then again dropping and rising free 
 within a point of east : on the whole, north-east. 
 To windward the sea was very clear, but down 
 towards the land there was a haze, and when I got 
 to that black buoy which is three miles from 
 Calais, and marks the place where you should turn 
 to go into the harbour, I could barely see the high 
 land glooming through the weather, and Calais 
 belfry and lighthouse tower I could not see at 
 all. I looked at my watch and saw it was seven, 
 and immediately afterwards the wind became 
 steady and true, and somewhat stronger, and the 
 work began. 
 
 She would point very nearly north, and so I laid 
 her for that course, though that would have taken 
 me right outside the Goodwins, for I knew that 
 the tide was making westerly down the Channel, 
 ebbing away faster and faster, and that, like a man 
 crossing a rapid river in a ferry-boat, I had to 
 point up far above where I wanted to land, which 
 was at Dover, the nearest harbour. I sailed her, 
 therefore, I say, as close as she would lie, and the 
 wind rose. 
 
 The wind rose, and for half an hour I kept her 
 to it. She had no more sail than she needed ; she 
 heeled beautifully and strongly to the wind ; she 
 took the seas, as they ran more regular, with a 
 
THE RETURN TO ENGLAND 233 
 
 motion of mastery. It was like the gesture of a 
 horse when he bends his head back to his chest, 
 arching his neck with pride as he springs upon 
 our Downs at morning. So set had the surging 
 of the sea become that she rose and fell to it with 
 rhythm, and the helm could be kept quite steady, 
 and the regular splash of the rising bows and the 
 little wisps of foam came in ceaseless exactitude 
 like the marching of men, and in all this one 
 mixed with the life of the sea. 
 
 But before it was eight o'clock (and I had eaten 
 nothing) the wind got stronger still, and I was 
 anxious and gazed continuously into it, up to 
 windward, seeing the white caps beginning on the 
 tops of the seas, although the wind and tide were 
 together. She heeled also much more, and my 
 anxiety hardened with the wind, for the wind had 
 strengthened by about half past eight, so that it 
 was very strong indeed, and she was plainly over- 
 canvased, her lee rail under all the time and all 
 the cordage humming ; there it stood, and by the 
 grace and mercy of God the wind increased no 
 more, for its caprice might have been very different. 
 
 Then began that excellent game which it is so 
 hard to play, but so good to remember, and in 
 which all men, whether they admit it or not, are 
 full of fear, but it is a fear so steeped in exhilara- 
 tion that one would think the personal spirit of the 
 sea was mingled with the noise of the air. 
 
234 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 For a whole great hour she roared and lifted 
 through it still, taking the larger seas grandly, 
 with disdain, as she had taken the smaller, and 
 still over the buried lee rail the stream of the sea 
 went by rejoicing and pouring, and the sheets and 
 the weather runner trembled with the vigour of the 
 charge, and on she went, and on. I was weary of 
 the seas ahead (for each and individually they 
 struck my soul as they came, even more strongly 
 than they struck the bows — steep, curling, uninter- 
 mittent, rank upon rank upon rank, an innumer- 
 able cavalry) ; still watching them, I say, I groped 
 round with my hand behind the cabin door and 
 pulled out brandy and bread, and drank brandy and 
 ate bread, still watching the seas. And, as men 
 are proud of their companions in danger, so I was 
 proud to see the admirable lift and swing of that 
 good boat, and to note how, if she slowed for a 
 moment under the pounding, she recovered with a 
 stride, rejoicing ; and as for my fears, which were 
 now fixed and considerable, I found this argument 
 against them : that, though I could see nothing 
 round me but the sea, yet soon I should be under 
 the lee of the Goodwins, for, though I could not 
 exactly calculate my speed, and though in the 
 haze beyond nothing appeared, it was certain that 
 I was roaring very quickly towards the further 
 shore. 
 
 When, later, the sea grew confused and full of 
 
THE RETURN TO ENGLAND 235 
 
 swirls and boiling, I said to myself: ^*This must 
 be the tail of the Goodwins." But it was not. 
 For, though I did not know it, the ebb of the 
 great spring tide had carried me right away down 
 Channel, and there was not twelve feet of water 
 under the keel, for the seething of the sea that I 
 noticed came from the Varne — the Varne, that 
 curious, long, steep hill, with its twin ridge close 
 by, the Colbert ; they stand right up in the 
 Channel between France and England ; they very 
 nearly lift their heads above the waves. I passed 
 over the crest of them, unknowing, into the deep 
 beyond, and still the ship raced on. Then, some- 
 what suddenly, so suddenly that I gave a cry, I 
 saw right up above me, through what was now a 
 thick haze, the cliffs of England, perhaps two 
 miles away, and showing very faintly indeed, a 
 bare outline upon the white weather. A thought 
 ran into my mind with violence, how, one behind 
 the other, beyond known things, beyond history, 
 the men from whom I came had greeted this sight 
 after winds like these and danger and the crossing 
 of the narrow seas. I looked at my watch ; it was 
 ten o'clock, so that this crossing had taken three 
 hours, and to see the land again like that was 
 better than any harbour, and I knew that all those 
 hours my mind had been at strain. I looked again 
 at the vague cliffs narrowly, thinking them the 
 South Foreland, but as they cleared I saw to my 
 
236 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 astonishment that I had blown all down the Straits, 
 and that Folkestone and the last walls of the chalk 
 were before me. 
 
 The wind dropped ; the sea went on uneasily, 
 tumbling and rolling, but within a very little 
 while — before eleven, I think — there was no breeze 
 at all ; and there I lay, with Folkestone harbour 
 not a mile away, but never any chance of getting 
 there ; and I whistled, but no wind came. I sat 
 idle and admired the loneliness of the sea. Till, 
 towards one, a little draught of air blew slantwise 
 from the land, and under it I crept to the smooth 
 water within the stone arm of the breakwater, and 
 there I let the anchor go, and, settling everything, 
 I slept. 
 
 It is pleasant to remember these things. 
 
THE VALLEY OF THE ROTHER 
 
 THERE is in that part of England which is 
 very properly called her Eden (that centre of 
 all good things and home of happy men, the 
 county of Sussex), there is, I say, in that exalted 
 county a valley which I shall praise for your 
 greater pleasure, because I know that it is too 
 jealously guarded for any run of strangers to 
 make it common, and because I am very sure that 
 you may go and only make it the more delightful 
 by your presence. It is the valley of the River 
 Rother; the sacred and fruitful river between the 
 downs and the weald. 
 
 Now here many travelling men, bicyclists even 
 and some who visit for a livelihood, will think I 
 mean the famous River Rother that almost reaches 
 the sea. The Rother into which the foreigners 
 sailed for so many hundred years, the River 
 of the Marshes, the river on which stands Rye; 
 the easy Rother along whose deep meadows are 
 the sloping kilns, the bright tiled towns and 
 the steep roads; the red Rother that is fed by 
 streams from the ironstone. This Rother also alj 
 
 237 
 
238 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 good men know and love, both those that come in 
 for pleasure, strangers of Kent, and those that 
 have a distant birthright in East Sussex, being 
 born beyond Ouse in the Rape of Bramber. 
 
 But it is not this Rother that I am telling of, 
 though I would love to tell of it also — as indeed I 
 would love to tell at length of all the rivers of 
 Sussex — the Brede, the Ouse, the Adur, the 
 Cuckmere ; all the streams that cut the chalk hills. 
 But for this I have no space and you no patience. 
 Neither can I tell you of a thousand adventures 
 and wonderful hazards along the hills and valley 
 of this eastern Rother ; of how I once through a 
 telescope on Brightling Hill saw the meet at 
 Battle, and of how it looked quite near ; of how I 
 leapt the River Rother once, landing on the far 
 side safely (which argues the river narrow or the 
 leap tremendous) ; of how I poached in the wood 
 of a friend who is still my friend ; of how I rode a 
 horse into Robertsbridge ; of the inn. All these 
 things could I tell with growing fervour, and to 
 all these would you listen with an increasing 
 delight. But I must write of the River Rother 
 under Petworth, the other Rother in the West. 
 Why? Because I started out so to do, and no 
 man should let himself be led away by a word, or 
 by any other such little thing. 
 
 Let me therefore have done with this eastern 
 river, far away from my home, a river at the end 
 
VALLEY OF THE ROTHER 239 
 
 of long journeys, and speak of that other noble 
 Rother, the Rother of quiet men, the valley that is 
 like a shrine in England. 
 
 Many famous towns and villages stand in the 
 valley of this river and even (some of them) upon 
 its very banks. Thus there are the three principal 
 towns of this part, Midhurst and Petworth and 
 Pulborough : but these have been dealt with and 
 written of in so many great books and by such a 
 swarm of new men, that I have no business further 
 to describe their merits and antiquity. But this I 
 will add to all that is known of them. Midhurst 
 takes its name from standing in the middle, for it 
 is half way between the open downs and the thick 
 woods on the borders of Surrey. Petworth has 
 a steeple that slopes to one side ; not so much 
 as Chesterfield, but somewhat more than most 
 steeples. Pulborough stands upon a hill, and is 
 famous for its corn-market, to which people come 
 from far and near, from as far off as Burpham or 
 as close by as Bury. All these noble towns have 
 (as I said before) been written of in books, only no 
 book that I know puts them all together and calls 
 them *<the Valley of the Rother." That is the 
 title that such a book should have if it is to treat 
 of the heart of West Sussex, and I make no doubt 
 that such a book would be read lovingly by many 
 men. 
 
 For the Valley of the Rother breeds men and is 
 
240 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 the cause of many delightful villages, all the homes 
 of men. I know that Cobden was born there, the 
 last of the yeomen : I hope that Cobbett lived here 
 too. Manning was here in his short married life; 
 he lived at Barlton (which foolish men call Bar- 
 lavington), under the old Downs, where the steep 
 woods make a hollow. In this valley also are 
 Fittleworth (the only place in England that rhymes 
 with Little Worth) ; Duncton, about which there 
 is nothing to be said ; Burton, which is very old 
 and has its church right in the grounds of the 
 house ; West-burton, where the racehorses were ; 
 Graffham, Bignor, Sutton, and I know not how 
 many delightful hamlets. 
 
 In the Valley of the River Rother no hurried 
 men ever come, for it leads nowhere. They cross 
 it now and then, and they forget it ; but who, unless 
 he be a son or a lover, has really known that 
 plain ? It leads nowhere : to the no man*s land, 
 the broken country by Liss. It has in it no curious 
 sight, but only beauty. The rich men in it (and 
 thank Heaven they are few) are of a reticent 
 and homing kind, or (when the worst comes to 
 the worst) they have estates elsewhere, and go north 
 for their pleasure. 
 
 Foxes are hunted in the Valley of the Rother, but 
 there are not very many. Pheasants and partridges 
 are shot, but I never heard of great bags ; one 
 animal indeed there is in profusion. The rabbit 
 
VALLEY OF THE ROTHER 241 
 
 swarms and exults in this life of Southern England, 
 Do you stalk him? He sits and watches you. 
 Do you hunt him with dogs? He thinks it a vast 
 pother about a very little matter. Do you ferret 
 him ? He dies, and rejoices to know that so many 
 more will take his place. The rabbit is the sacred 
 emblem of my river, and when we have a symbol, 
 he shall be our symbol. He loves men and eats 
 the things they plant, especially the tender shoots 
 of young trees, wheat, and the choice roots in 
 gardens. He only remains, and is happy all his 
 little life in the valley from which we depart when 
 our boyhood ends. 
 
 The Valley of the Rother is made of many parts. 
 There is the chalk of the Southern Down-land, 
 the belt of the loam beneath it ; then the curious 
 country of sand, full of dells and dark with pine 
 woods ; then the luxurious meadows, which are 
 open and full of cattle, colts, and even sheep ; 
 then the woods. It is, in a few miles, a little 
 England. There are also large heaths — larger, you 
 would think, than such a corner of the earth could 
 contain ; old elms and oaks ; many wide parks ; 
 fish ponds ; one trout stream and half a score of 
 mills. There are men of many characters, but all 
 happy, honest, good, witty, and hale. And when 
 I have said all I could say of this delightful place 
 (which indeed I think is set apart for the reward of 
 virtue) I should not have given you a tithe of its 
 
242 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 prosperity and peace and beneficence. There is 
 the picture of the Valley of the River Rother. It 
 flows in a short and happy murmur from the 
 confined hills by Hindhead to the Arun itself; but 
 of the Arun no one could write with any justice 
 except at the expense of far more space and time 
 than I have given me. 
 
 If ever again we have a religion in the South 
 Country, we will have a temple to my darling 
 valley. It shall be round, with columns and a 
 wall, and there I will hang a wreath in thanks- 
 giving for having known the river. 
 
THE CORONATION 
 
 MY companion said to me that there was a 
 doom over the day and the reign and the 
 times, and that the turn of the nation had come. 
 He felt it in the sky. 
 
 The day had been troubled : from the forest 
 ridge to the sea there was neither wind nor sun, 
 but a dull, even heat oppressed the fields and the 
 high downs under an uncertain, half-luminous 
 confusion of grey clouds. It was as though a 
 relief was being denied, and as though something 
 inexorable had come into that air which is nor- 
 mally the softest and most tender in the world. 
 The hours of the low tide were too silent. The 
 little inland river was quite dead, the reeds beside 
 it dry and motionless ; even in the trees about it 
 no leaves stirred. 
 
 In the late afternoon, as the heat grew more 
 masterful, a slight wind came out of the east. It 
 was so faint and doubtful in quantity that one 
 could not be certain, as one stood on the deserted 
 shore, whether it blew from just off the land or 
 from the sullen level of the sea. It followed along 
 the line of the coast without refreshment and with- 
 out vigour, even hotter than had been the still air 
 
 243 
 
244 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 out of which it was engendered. It did not do 
 more than ruffle here and there the uneasy surface 
 of our sea ; that surface moved a little, but with a 
 motion borrowed from nothing so living or so 
 natural as the wind. It was a dull memory of 
 past storms, or perhaps that mysterious heaving 
 from the lower sands which sailors know, but 
 which no science has yet explained. 
 
 In such an influence of expectation and of pre- 
 sage — an influence having in it that quality which 
 seemed to the ancients only Fate, but to us 
 moderns a something evil — in the strained atten- 
 tion for necessary and immovable things that can- 
 not hear and cannot pity — the hour came for me to 
 reascend the valley to my home. Already upon 
 the far and confused horizon two or three motion- 
 less sails that had been invisible began to show 
 white against a rising cloud. This cloud had not 
 the definition of sudden conquering storms, proper 
 to the summer, and leaving a blessing behind 
 their fury. The edge of it against the misty and 
 brooding sky had all the vagueness of smoke, and 
 as it rose up out of the sea its growth was so 
 methodical and regular as to disconnect it wholly 
 in one's mind from the little fainting breeze that 
 still blew, from rain, or from any daily thing. It 
 advanced with the fall of the evening till it held 
 half the sky. There it seemed halted for a while, 
 and lent by contrast an unnatural brightness to 
 
THE CORONATION 245 
 
 the parched hills beneath it ; for now the sun hav- 
 ing set, we had come north of the gap, and were 
 looking southward upon that spectacle as upon 
 the climax of a tragedy. But there was nothing of 
 movement or of sound. No lightning, no thunder ; 
 and soon the hot breath of the afternoon had itself 
 disappeared before the advance of this silent pall. 
 The night of June to the north was brighter than 
 twilight, and still southward, a deliberate spectacle, 
 stood this great range of vague and menacing 
 cloud, shutting off the sky and towering above the 
 downs, so that it seemed permissible to ascribe to 
 those protecting gods of our valley a burden of fear. 
 Just when all that scene had been arranged to 
 an adjustment that no art could have attained, the 
 first great fire blazed out miles and miles to the 
 west, somewhere above Midhurst : I think near No 
 Man's Land. Then we saw, miles to the east 
 again, a glare over Mount Harry, the signal of 
 Lewes, and one after another all the heights took 
 it up in a chain — above Bramber, above Poynings, 
 above Wiston, on Amberley Mount (I think), cer- 
 tainly on the noble sweep of Bury. Even in those 
 greater distances which the horizon concealed they 
 were burning and answering each other into 
 Hampshire : perhaps on the beaten grass of the 
 high forts above Portsmouth, and to the left away 
 to the flat Rye level, and to the eastern Rother ; for 
 we saw the line of red angry upon that cloud 
 
246 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 which had come to receive it, an endless line 
 which suddenly called up what one had heard old 
 men. say of the prairie fires. 
 
 It was easy, without covering the face and with- 
 out abstracting the mind from the whirl of modern 
 circumstance, it was easy, merely looking at the 
 thing, to be seized with an impression of disaster. 
 The stars were so pale on the lingering white light 
 of the pure north, the smoky cloud so deep and 
 heavy and steadfast and low above the hills, the 
 fire so near to it, so sharp against it, and so huge, 
 that the awe and sinister meaning of conflagrations 
 dominated the impression of all the scene. There 
 arose in the mind that memory which associates 
 such a glare and the rising and falling fury of 
 flames with sacrifice or with vengeance, or with the 
 warning of an enemy's approach, or with the mark 
 of his conquest ; for with such things our race (for 
 how many thousand years !) has watched the fires 
 upon the hills far off. It touched one as does the 
 reiterated note of a chaunt ; if not with an im- 
 pression of doom, at least with that of calamity. 
 
 When the fires had died down to a sullen glow, 
 and the men watching them had gone home under 
 the weight of what they had seen, the storm broke 
 and occupied the whole sky. A very loud wind 
 rose and a furious rain fell. It became suddenly 
 cold ; there was thunder all over the weald, and the 
 lightning along the unseen crest of the downs 
 answered the lightning above the forest. 
 
THE MEN OF THE DESERT 
 
 I LAY once alone upon the crest of a range 
 whose name I have never seen spelt, but which 
 is pronounced ** Haueedja," from whence a man 
 can see right away for ever the expanse of the 
 Sahara. 
 
 It is well known that Mount Atlas and those 
 inhabited lands where there is a sufficient rainfall 
 and every evidence of man's activity, the Province 
 of Africa, the plateaux which are full of the 
 memories of Rome, end abruptly towards the sun, 
 and are bounded by a sort of cliff which falls sheer 
 upon the desert. On the summit of this cliff I lay 
 and looked down upon the sand. It was impressed 
 upon my mind that here was an influence quite 
 peculiar, not to be discovered in any other climate 
 of the world ; that all Europe received that influ- 
 ence, and yet that no one in Europe had accepted 
 it save for his hurt. 
 
 God forbid that any man should pretend that the 
 material environment of mankind determines the 
 destiny of mankind. Those who say such things 
 have abandoned the domain of intelligence. But 
 
 247 
 
248 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 it is true that the soul eagerly seeks for and receives 
 the impressions of the world about it^ and will be 
 moved to a different creed or to a different poetry, 
 according as the body perceives the sea or the hills 
 or the rainless and inhuman places which lie to the 
 south of Europe ; and certainly the souls of those 
 races which have inhabited the great zone of calms 
 between the trade winds and the tropics, those 
 races which have felt nothing beneficent, but only 
 something awful and unfamiliar in the earth and 
 sky, have produced a peculiar philosophy. 
 
 It is to be remarked that this philosophy is not 
 atheist ; those races called Semitic have never 
 denied either the presence or the personality of 
 God. It is, on the contrary, their boast that they 
 have felt His presence. His unity, and His person- 
 ality in a manner more pointed than have the rest 
 of mankind ; and those of us who pretend to find 
 in the Desert a mere negation, are checked by the 
 thought that within the Desert the most positive of 
 religions have appeared. Indeed, to deny God 
 has been the sad privilege of very few in any 
 society of men ; and those few, if it be examined, 
 have invariably been men in whom the power to 
 experience was deadened, usually by luxury, 
 sometimes by distress. 
 
 It is not atheist ; but whatever it is, it is hurtful, 
 and has about it something of the despair and 
 strength of atheism. Consider the Book of Job ; 
 
THE MEN OF THE DESERT 249 
 
 consider the Arab Mohammedan ; consider the 
 fierce heresies which besieged the last of the 
 Romans in this Province of Africa, and which 
 tortured the short history of the Vandals ; consider 
 the modern tragedies which develop among the 
 French soldiers to the north and to the south of 
 this wide belt of sand ; and you will see that the 
 thing which the Sahara and its prolongation pro- 
 duce is something evil, or at least to us evil. 
 There is in the idea running through the mind 
 of the Desert an intensity which may be of some 
 value to us if it be diluted by a large admixture of 
 European tradition, or if it be mellowed and trans- 
 formed by a long process of time, but which, if 
 we take it at its source and inspire ourselves 
 directly from it, warps and does hurt to our Euro- 
 pean sense. 
 
 It may be taken that whatever form truth takes 
 among men will be the more perfect in proportion 
 as the men who receive that form are more fully 
 men. The whole of truth can never be com- 
 prehended by anything finite ; and truth as it 
 appears to this species or to that is most true when 
 the type which receives it is the healthiest and the 
 most normal of its own kind. The truth as it is to 
 men is most true when the men who receive it are 
 the healthiest and the most normal of men. We 
 in Europe are the healthiest and most normal of 
 our kind. It is to us that the world must look for 
 
250 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 its headship ; we have the harbours, the continual 
 presence of the sea through all our polities ; we 
 have that high differentiation between the various 
 parts of our unity which makes the whole of Europe 
 so marvellous an organism ; we alone change 
 without suffering decay. To the truth as Europe 
 accepts it I cannot but bow down ; for if that is 
 not the truth, then the truth is not to be found 
 upon earth. But there comes upon us perpetually 
 that '* wind of Africa" ; and it disturbs us. As I 
 lay that day, a year ago, upon the crest of the 
 mountain, my whole mind was possessed with the 
 influence of such a gale. 
 
 Day after day, after day, the silent men of the 
 Desert go forward across its monotonous horizons ; 
 their mouths are flanked with those two deep lines 
 of patience and of sorrow which you may note to- 
 day in all the ghettoes of Europe ; their smile, 
 when they smile, is restrained by a sort of ironic 
 strength in the muscles of the face. Their eyes 
 are more bright than should be eyes of happy 
 men ; they are, as it were, inured to sterility ; 
 there is nothing in them of that repose which we 
 Westerners acquire from a continual contempla- 
 tion of deep pastures and of innumerable leaves ; 
 they are at war, not only among themselves, but 
 against the good earth ; in a silent and powerful 
 way they are also afraid. 
 
 You may note that their morals are an angry 
 
THE MEN OF THE DESERT 251 
 
 series of unexplained commands, and that their 
 worship does not include that fringe of half- 
 reasonable, wholly pleasing things which the true 
 worship of a true God must surely contain. All 
 is as clear-cut as their rocks, and as unfruitful as 
 their dry valleys, and as dreadful as their brazen 
 sky; **thou shalt not" this, that, and the other. 
 Their god is jealous ; he is vengeful ; he is (awfully 
 present and real to them !) a vision of that demon 
 of which we in our happier countries make a quaint 
 legend. He catches men out and trips them up ; 
 he has but little relation to the Father of Christian 
 men, who made the downs of South England and 
 the high clouds above them. 
 
 The good uses of the world are forgotten in the 
 Desert, or fiercely denied. Love is impure; so are 
 birth, and death, and eating, and every other 
 necessary part in the life of a man. And yet, 
 though all these things are impure, there is no 
 lustration. We also feel in a genial manner that 
 this merry body of ours requires apology ; but 
 those others to the south of us have no toleration 
 in their attitude ; they are awfully afraid. 
 
 I have continually considered, as I have read 
 my history, the special points in which their in- 
 fluence is to be observed in the development of 
 Europe. It takes the form of the great heresies ; 
 the denial of the importance of matter (sometimes 
 of its existence) ; the denial that anything but 
 
252 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 matter exists ; the denial of the family ; the denial 
 of ownership ; the over-simplicity which is pecu- 
 liarly a Desert product runs through all such 
 follies, as does the rejection of a central and govern- 
 ing power upon earth, which is again just such a 
 rebellion as the Desert would bring. I say the 
 great heresies are the main signs of that in- 
 fluence ; but it is in small and particular matters 
 that you may see its effect most clearly. 
 
 For instance, the men of the Desert are afraid 
 of wine. They have good reason ; if you drink 
 wine in the Desert you die. In the Desert, a man 
 can drink only water ; and, when he gets it, it is 
 like diamonds to him, or, better still, it is like 
 rejuvenation. All our long European legends 
 which denounce and bring a curse upon the men 
 who are the enemies of wine, are legends inspired 
 by our hatred of the thing which is not Europe, 
 and that bounds Europe, and is the enemy of 
 Europe. 
 
 So also with their attachment to numbers. For 
 instance, the seventh day must have about it some- 
 thing awful and oppressive ; the fast must be 
 seven times seven days, and so forth. We Euro- 
 peans have always smiled in our hearts at these 
 things. We would take this day or that, and 
 make up a scheme of great and natural com- 
 plexity, full of interlacing seasons ; and nearly all 
 our special days were days of rejoicing. We 
 
THE MEN OF THE DESERT 253 
 
 carried images about our fields further to develop 
 and enhance the nature of our religion ; we dedi- 
 cated trees and caves ; and the feasts of one place 
 were not the feasts of another. But to the men of 
 the Desert mere unfruitful number was a god. 
 
 Then again, the word, especially the written 
 word, the document, overshadows their mind. It 
 has always had for them a power of something 
 mysterious. To engrave characters was to cast a 
 spell ; and when they seek for some infallible 
 authority upon earth, they can only discover it in 
 the written characters traced in a sacred book. All 
 their expression of worship is wrought through 
 symbols. With us, the symbol is clearly retained 
 separate from that for which it stands, though 
 hallowed by that for which it stands. With them 
 the symbol is the whole object of affection. 
 
 On this account you will find in the men of the 
 Desert a curious panic in the presence of statues, 
 which is even more severe than the panic they 
 suffer in the presence of wine. It is as though 
 they said to themselves : ** Take this away ; if you 
 leave it here I shall worship it." They are subject 
 to possession. 
 
 Side by side with this fear of the graphic repre- 
 sentation of men or of animals, you will find in 
 them an incapacity to represent them well. The 
 art of the iconoclasts is either childish, weak, or, 
 at its strongest, evil. 
 
254 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 And especially among all these symptoms of 
 the philosophy from which they suffer is their 
 manner of comprehending the nature of creation. 
 Of creation in any form they are afraid ; and the 
 infinite Creator is on that account present to them 
 almost as though He were a man, for when we are 
 afraid of things we see them very vividly indeed. 
 On this account you will find in the legends of 
 the men of the Desert all manner of fantastic 
 tales incomprehensible to us Europeans, wherein 
 God walks, talks, eats, and wrestles. Nor is there 
 any trace in this attitude of theirs of parable or of 
 allegory. That mixture of the truth, and of a subtle 
 unreal glamour which expands and confirms the 
 truth, is a mixture proper to our hazy landscapes, 
 to our drowsy woods, and to our large vision. 
 We, who so often see from our high village 
 squares soft and distant horizons, mountains now 
 near, now very far, according as the weather 
 changes : we, who are perpetually feeling the 
 transformation of the seasons, and who are im- 
 mersed in a very ocean of manifold and mysterious 
 life, we need, create, and live by legends. The 
 line between the real and the imaginary is vague 
 and penumbral to us. We are justly influenced 
 by our twilights, and our imagination teaches us. 
 How many deities have we not summoned up to 
 inhabit groves and lakes — special deities who are 
 never seen, but yet have never died ? 
 
THE MEN OF THE DESERT 255 
 
 To the men of the Desert, doubt and beauty 
 mingled in this fashion seemed meaningless. 
 That which they worship they see and almost 
 handle. In the dreadful silence which surrounds 
 them, their illusions turn into convictions — the 
 haunting voices are heard : the forms are seen. 
 
 Of two further things, native to us, their starved 
 experience has no hold ; of nationality (or, if the 
 term be preferred, of *' The City ") and of what we 
 have come to call ** chivalry." The two are but 
 aspects of one thing without a name ; but that thing 
 all Europeans possess, nor is it possible for us to 
 conceive of a patriotism unless it is a patriotism 
 which is chivalric. In our earliest stories, we honour 
 men fighting odds. Our epics are of small numbers 
 against great ; humility and charity are in them, 
 lending a kind of magic strength to the sword. 
 The Faith did not bring in that spirit, but rather 
 completed it. Our boundaries have always been 
 intensely sacred to us. We are not passionate to 
 cross them save for the sake of adventure j but we 
 are passionate to defend them. In all that enor- 
 mous story of Rome, from the dim Etrurian origins 
 right up to the end of her thousand years, the 
 Wall of the Town was more sacred than the limits 
 of the Empire. 
 
 The men of the Desert do not understand these 
 things. They are by compulsion nomad, and for 
 ever wandering ; they strike no root ; their pride 
 
256 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 is in a mere expansion ; they must colonize or fail ; 
 nor does any man die for a city. 
 
 As I looked from the mountain, I thought the 
 Desert which I had come so far to see had ex- 
 plained to me what hitherto I had not understood 
 in the mischances of Europe. I remained for a 
 long while looking out upon the glare. 
 
 But when I came down again, northward from 
 the high sandstone hill, and was in the fields 
 again near running water, and drinking wine from 
 a cup carved with Roman emblems, I began to 
 wonder whether the Desert had not put before my 
 mind, as they say it can do before the eye of the 
 traveller, a mirage. 
 
 Is there such an influence? Are there such 
 men ? 
 
THE DEPARTURE 
 
 /^NCE, in Barbary, I grew tired of unusual 
 ^^ things, especially of palms, and desired to 
 return to Europe and the things I knew ; so I went 
 down from the hills to the sea coast, and when 
 after two days I had reached the railway, I took 
 a train for Algiers and reached that port at 
 evening. 
 
 From Algiers it is possible to go at once and 
 for almost any sum one chooses to any part of the 
 world. The town is on the sharp slope of a 
 theatre of hills, and in the quiet harbour below it 
 there are all sorts of ships, but mostly steamships, 
 moored with their sterns towards the quay. For 
 there is no tide here, and the ships can lie quite 
 still. 
 
 I sat upon a wall of the upper town and con- 
 sidered how each of these ships was going to 
 some different place, and how pleasant it was 
 to roam about the world. Behind the ships, 
 along the stone quays, were a great number of 
 wooden huts, of offices built into archways, of 
 little houses, booths, and dens, in each of which 
 s 257 
 
258 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 you could take your passage to some place or 
 other. 
 
 *^ Now," said I to myself, *^ now is the time to 
 be free." For one never feels master of oneself 
 unless one is obeying no law, plan, custom, trend, 
 or necessity, but simply spreading out at ease and 
 occupying the world. In this also Aristotle was 
 misled by fashion, or was ill-informed by some 
 friend of his, or was, perhaps, lying for money 
 when he said that liberty was obedience to a self- 
 made law ; for the most distant hint of law is 
 odious to liberty. True, it is more free to obey 
 a law of one's own making than of some one 
 else's ; just as if a man should give himself a 
 punch in the eye it would be less hurtful and far 
 less angering than one given by a passer-by ; yet 
 to suffer either would not be a benefit of freedom. 
 Liberty cannot breathe where the faintest odour 
 of regulation is to be discovered, but only in that 
 ether whose very nature is largeness. Oh ! 
 Diviner Air ! how few have drunk you, and in 
 what deep draughts have I ! 
 
 I had a great weight of coined, golden, metallic 
 money all loose in my pocket. There was no call 
 upon me nor any purpose before me. I spent an 
 hour looking down upon the sea and the steam- 
 ships, and taking my pick out of all the world. 
 
 One thing, however, guided me, which was 
 this : that desire, to be satisfied at all, must be 
 
THE DEPARTURE 259 
 
 satisfied at once ; and of the many new countries 
 I might seek that would most attract me whose 
 ship was starting soonest. So I looked round for 
 mooring cables in the place of anchor chains, for 
 Blue Peter, for smoke from funnels, for little boats 
 coming and going, and for all that shows a steam- 
 boat to be off; when I saw, just behind a large 
 new boat in such a condition of bustle, a sign in 
 huge yellow letters staring on a bright black 
 ground, which said: *^To the Balearic Islands, 
 eight shillings " ; underneath, in smaller yellow 
 letters, was written: ** Gentlemen The Honour- 
 able Travellers are warned that they must pay for 
 any food they consume.'* When I had read this 
 notice I said to myself: ** I will go to the Balearic 
 Islands, of which the rich have never heard. I, 
 poor and unencumbered, will go and visit these 
 remote places, which have in their time received 
 all the influences of the world, and which yet have 
 no history ; for I am tired of this Africa, where so 
 many men are different from me." As I said this 
 to myself I saw a little picture in my mind of three 
 small islands standing in the middle of the sea, 
 quite alone, and inhabited by happy men ; but 
 this picture, as it always is with such pictures, 
 was not at all the same as what I saw when next 
 morning the islands rose along the north to which 
 we steered. 
 
 I went down to the quay by some large stone 
 
260 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 steps which an Englishman had built many years 
 ago, and I entered the office above which this 
 great sign was raised. Within was a tall man of 
 doubtful race, smoking a cigarette made of loose 
 paper, and gazing kindly at the air. He was full 
 of reveries. Of this man I asked when the boat 
 would be starting. He told me it started in half 
 an hour, a little before the setting of the sun. So 
 I bought a ticket for eight shillings, upon which 
 it was clearly printed in two languages that I had 
 bound myself to all manner of things by the pur- 
 chase, and especially that I might not go below, 
 but must sit upon deck all night ; nevertheless, 
 I was glad to hold that little bit of printed prose, 
 for it would enable me to reach the Balearic 
 Islands, which for all other men are names in a 
 dream. I then went up into the town of Algiers, 
 and was careful to buy some ham from a Jew, 
 some wine from a Mohammedan, and some bread 
 and chocolate from a very indifferent Christian. 
 After that I got aboard. As I came over the side 
 I heard the sailors, stokers, and people all talking 
 to each other in low tones, and I at once recog- 
 nized the tongue called Catalan. 
 
 I had heard this sort of Latin in many places, 
 some lonely and some populous. I had heard it 
 once from a chemist at Perpignan who dressed a 
 wound of mine, and this was the first time I heard 
 it. Very often after in the valleys of the Pyrenees, 
 
THE DEPARTURE 261 
 
 in the Cerdagne, and especially in Andorra, hun- 
 dreds of men had spoken to me in Catalan. At 
 Urgel, that notable city where there is only one 
 shop and where the streets are quite narrow and 
 Moorish, a woman and six or seven men had 
 spoken Catalan to me for nearly one hour : it was 
 in a cellar surrounded by great barrels, and I 
 remember it well. So, also, on the River Noguera, 
 coming up again into the hills, a girl who took 
 the toll at the wooden bridge had spoken Catalan 
 to me. But none of these had I ever answered so 
 that they could understand, and on this account 
 I was very grieved to hear the Catalan tongue, 
 though I remembered that if I spoke to them with 
 ordinary Spanish words or in French with a 
 strong Southern accent they would usually have 
 some idea of what I was saying. 
 
 As the evening fell the cables were slipped with- 
 out songs, and with great dignity, rapidity, and 
 order the ship was got away. 
 
 I knew a man once, a seafaring man, a Scotch- 
 man, with whom I travelled on a very slow old 
 boat in the Atlantic, who told me that the Northern 
 people of Europe were bravest in an unexpected 
 danger, but the Southern in a danger long fore- 
 seen. He said he had known many of both kinds, 
 and had served under them and commanded them. 
 He said that in sudden accident the Northerner 
 was the more reliable man, but that if an act of 
 
262 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 great danger had to be planned and coolly 
 achieved, then the Southerner was strongest in 
 doing what he had to do. He said that in taking 
 the ground he would rather have a Northern, but 
 in bringing in a short ship a Southern crew. 
 
 He was a man who observed closely, and never 
 said a thing because he had read it. Indeed, he 
 did not read, and he had in a little hanging shelf 
 above his bunk only four or five tattered books, 
 and even these were magazines. I remembered 
 his testimony now as I watched these Catalans 
 letting the ship go free, and I believed it, com- 
 paring it with history and the things I had myself 
 seen. They did everything with such regularity 
 and so silently that it was a different deck from 
 what one would have had in the heave of the 
 Channel. With Normans or Bretons, or Cornish- 
 men or men of Kent, but especially with men 
 from London river, there would have been all 
 sorts of cursing and bellowing, and they could 
 not have touched a rope without throwing them- 
 selves into attitudes of violence. But these men 
 took the sea quite quietly, nor could you tell from 
 their faces which was rich and which was poor. 
 
 It was not till the ship was out throbbing 
 swiftly over the smooth sea and darkness had 
 fallen that they began to sing. Then those of 
 them who were not working gathered together 
 with a stringed instrument forward and sang of 
 
THE DEPARTURE 263 
 
 pity and of death. One of them said to me, 
 ^* Knight, can your grace sing ? " I told him that 
 I could sing, certainly, but that my singing was 
 unpleasing, and that I only knew foreign songs. 
 He said that singing was a great solace, and 
 desired to hear a song of my own country. So I 
 sang them a song out of Sussex, to which they 
 listened in deep silence, and when it was con- 
 cluded their leader snapped and twanged at the 
 strings again and began another song about the 
 riding of horses in the hills. 
 
 So we passed the short night until the sky 
 upon our quarter grew faintly pale and the little 
 wind that rises before morning awakened the sea. 
 
THE IDEA OF A PILGRIMAGE 
 
 A PILGRIMAGE is, of course, an expedition 
 to some venerated place to which a vivid 
 memory of sacred things experienced, or a long 
 and wonderful history of human experience in 
 divine matters, or a personal attraction affecting 
 the soul impels one. This is, I say, its essence. 
 So a pilgrimage may be made to the tomb of 
 Descartes, in Paris, or it may be a little walk 
 uphill to a neighbouring and beloved grave, or a 
 modern travel, even in luxury, on the impulse to 
 see something that greatly calls one. 
 
 But there has always hung round the idea of a 
 pilgrimage, with all people and at all times — I 
 except those very rare and highly decadent genera- 
 tions of history in which no pilgrimages are made, 
 nor any journeys, save for curiosity or greed — 
 there has always hung round it, I say, something 
 more than the mere objective. Just as in general 
 worship you will have noble gowns, vivid colour, 
 and majestic music (symbols, but necessary 
 symbols of the great business you are at) ; so, in 
 this particular case of worship, clothes, as it were, 
 
 264 
 
IDEA OF A PILGRIMAGE 265 
 
 and accoutrements, gather round one's principal 
 action. I will visit the grave of a saint or of a 
 man whom I venerate privately for his virtues and 
 deeds, but on my way I wish to do something a 
 little difficult to show at what a price I hold com- 
 munion with his resting-place, and also on the way 
 I will see all I can of men and things ; for any- 
 thing great and worthy is but an ordinary thing 
 transfigured, and if I am about to venerate a 
 humanity absorbed into the divine, so it behoves 
 me on my journey to it to enter into and delight in 
 the divine that is hidden in everything. Thus I 
 may go upon a pilgrimage with no pack and 
 nothing but a stick and my clothes, but I must get 
 myself into the frame of mind that carries an in- 
 visible burden, an eye for happiness and suffering, 
 humour, gladness at the beauty of the world, a 
 readiness for raising the heart at the vastness of 
 a wide view, and especially a readiness to give 
 multitudinous praise to God ; for a man that goes 
 on a pilgrimage does best of all if he starts out (I 
 say it of his temporal object only) with the heart 
 of a wanderer, eager for the world as it is, forget- 
 ful of maps or descriptions, but hungry for real 
 colours and men and the seeming of things. This 
 desire for reality and contact is a kind of humility, 
 this pleasure in it a kind of charity. 
 
 It is surely in the essence of a pilgrimage that 
 all vain imaginations are controlled by the great- 
 
266 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 ness of our object. Thus, if a man should go to 
 see the place where (as they say) St. Peter met our 
 Lord on the Appian Way at dawn, he will not care 
 very much for the niggling of pedants about this 
 or that building, or for the rhetoric of posers about 
 this or that beautiful picture. If a thing in his 
 way seem to him frankly ugly he will easily treat 
 it as a neutral, forget it and pass it by. If, on the 
 contrary, he find a beautiful thing, whether done 
 by God or by man, he will remember and love it. 
 This is what children do, and to get the heart of a 
 child is the end surely of any act of religion. In 
 such a temper he will observe rather than read, 
 and though on his way he cannot do other than 
 remember the names of places, saying, ** Why, 
 these are the Alps of which I have read ! Here 
 is Florence, of which I have heard so many rich 
 women talk ! " yet he will never let himself argue 
 and decide or put himself, so to speak, before an 
 audience in his own mind — for that is pride which 
 all of us moderns always fall into. He will, on 
 the contrary, go into everything with curiosity 
 and pleasure, and be a brother to the streets and 
 trees and to all the new world he finds. The Alps 
 that he sees with his eyes will be as much more 
 than the names he read about, the Florence of his 
 desires as much more than the Florence of sickly 
 drawing-rooms ; as beauty loved is more than 
 beauty heard of, or as our own taste, smell, hearing. 
 
IDEA OF A PILGRIMAGE 267 
 
 touch and sight are more than the vague relations 
 of others. Nor does religion exercise in our 
 common life any function more temporarily valu- 
 able than this, that it makes us be sure at least 
 of realities, and look very much askance at phil- 
 osophies and imaginaries and academic whimsies. 
 Look, then, how a pilgrimage ought to be 
 nothing but a nobler kind of travel, in which, 
 according to our age and inclination, we tell our 
 tales, or draw our pictures, or compose our songs. 
 It is a very great error, and one unknown before 
 our most recent corruptions, that the religious 
 spirit should be so superficial and so self-conscious 
 as to dominate our method of action at special 
 times and to be absent at others. It is better oc- 
 casionally to travel in one way or another to some 
 beloved place (or to some place wonderful and 
 desired for its associations), haunted by our mission, 
 yet falling into every ordinary levity, than to go 
 about a common voyage in a chastened and devout 
 spirit. I fear this is bad theology, and I pro- 
 pound it subject to authority. But, surely, if a 
 man should say, ** I will go to Redditch to buy 
 needles cheap," and all the way take care to speak 
 no evil of his neighbour, to keep very sober, to be 
 punctual in his accounts, and to say his regular 
 prayers with exactitude, though that would be a 
 good work, yet if he is to be a pilgrim (and th€ 
 Church has a hundred gates), I would rather for 
 
268 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 the moment that he went off in a gay, tramping 
 spirit, not over-sure of his expenses, not very care- 
 ful of all he said or did, but illuminated and in- 
 creasingly informed by the great object of his 
 voyage, which is here not to buy or sell needles, 
 or what not, but to loose the mind and purge it in 
 the ultimate contemplation of something divine. 
 
 There is, indeed, that kind of pilgrimage which 
 some few sad men undertake because their minds 
 are overburdened by a sin or tortured with some 
 great care that is not of their own fault. These are 
 excepted from the general rule, though even to 
 these a very human spirit comes by the way, and 
 the adventures of inns and foreign conversations 
 broaden the world for them and lighten their 
 burden. But this kind of pilgrimage is rare and 
 special, having its peculiar virtues. The common 
 sort (which how many men undertake under 
 another name !) is a separate and human satisfac- 
 tion of a need, the fulfilling of an instinct in us, the 
 realization of imagined horizons, the reaching of 
 a goal. For whoever yet that was alive reached an 
 end and could say he was satisfied ? Yet who has 
 not desired so to reach an end and to be satisfied ? 
 Well, pilgrimage is for the most a sort of pre- 
 figuring or rehearsal. A man says: ^^ I will play 
 in show (but a show stiffened with a real and just 
 object) at that great part which is all we can ever 
 play. Here I start from home, and there I reach a 
 
IDEA OF A PILGRIMAGE 269 
 
 goal, and on the way I laugh and watch, sing and 
 work. Now I am at ease and again hampered ; 
 now poor, now rich, weary towards the end and at 
 last arrived at that end. So my great life is, and 
 so this little chapter shall be." Thus he packs up 
 the meaning of life into a little space to be able to 
 look at it closely, as men carry with them small 
 locket portraits of their birthplace or of those they 
 love. 
 
 If a pilgrimage is all this, it is evident that, how- 
 ever careless, it must not be untroublesome. It 
 would be a contradiction of pilgrimage to seek to 
 make the journey short and vapid, merely con- 
 suming the mind for nothing, as is our modern 
 habit ; for they seem to think nowadays that to 
 remain as near as possible to what one was at 
 starting, and to one's usual rut, is the great good 
 of travel (as though a man should run through the 
 Iliad only to note the barbarous absurdity of 
 the Greek characters, or through Catullus for the 
 sake of discovering such words as were like enough 
 to English). That is not the spirit of a pilgrimage 
 at all. The pilgrim is humble and devout, and 
 human, and charitable, and ready to smile and 
 admire ; therefore he should comprehend the whole 
 of his way, the people in it, and the hills and the 
 clouds, and the habits of the various cities. And 
 as to the method of doing this, we may go 
 bicycling (though that is a little flurried) or driving 
 
270 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 (though that is luxurious and dangerous, because 
 it brings us constantly against servants and 
 flattery) ; but the best way of all is on foot, where 
 one is a man like any other man, with the sky 
 above one, and the road beneath, and the world on 
 every side, and time to see all. 
 
 So also I designed to walk, and did, when I 
 visited the tombs of the Apostles. 
 
THE ARENA 
 
 IT was in Paris, in his room on the hill of the 
 University, that a traveller woke and wondered 
 what he should do with his day. In some way — I 
 cannot tell how — ephemeral things had captured 
 his mind in the few hours he had already spent in 
 the city. There is no civilization where the vari- 
 ous parts stand so separate as they do with the 
 French. You may live in Paris all your life and 
 never suspect that there is a garrison of eighty 
 thousand men within call. You may spend a year 
 in a provincial town and never hear that the large 
 building you see daily is a bishop's palace. Or 
 you may be the guest of the bishop for a month, 
 and remain under the impression that somewhere, 
 hidden away in the place, there is a powerful clique 
 of governing atheists whom, somehow, you never 
 run across. And so this traveller, who knew Paris 
 like his pocket, and had known it since he could 
 speak plain, had managed to gather up in this 
 particular visit all the impressions which are least 
 characteristic of the town. He had dined with a 
 friend at Pousset's ; he had passed the evening at 
 the Exhibition, and he had had a bare touch of the 
 
 271 
 
272 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 real thing in the Rue de Tournon ; but even there 
 it was in the company of foreigners. Therefore, I 
 repeat, he woke up next morning wondering what 
 he should do, for the veneer of Paris is the thin- 
 nest in the world, and he had exhausted it in one 
 feverish day. 
 
 Luckily for him, the room in which he lay was 
 French, and had been French for a hundred years. 
 You looked out of window into a sky cut by the 
 tall Mansard roofs of the eighteenth century ; and 
 over the stones of what had been the Scotch Col- 
 lege you could see below you at the foot of the hill 
 all the higher points of the island — especially the 
 Sainte Chapelle and the vast towers of the cathe- 
 dral. Then it suddenly struck him that the air 
 was full of bells. Now, it is a curious thing, and 
 one that every traveller will bear me out in, that 
 you associate a country place with the sound of 
 bells, but a capital never. Caen is noisy enough 
 and Rouen big enough, one would think, to drown 
 the memory of music ; yet any one who has lived 
 in his Normandy remembers their perpetual bells; 
 and as for the admirable town of Chinon, where 
 no one ever goes, I believe it is Ringing Island 
 itself. But Paris one never thinks of as a place 
 of bells. And yet there are bells enough there 
 to take a man right into the past, and from there 
 through fairyland to hell and out and back again. 
 
THE ARENA 273 
 
 If I were writing of the bells, I could make you 
 a list of all the famous bells, living and dead, that 
 haunt the city, and the tale of what they have 
 done would be a history of France. The bell of 
 the St. Bartholomew over against the Louvre, the 
 tocsin of the Hotel de Ville that rang the knell of 
 the Monarchy, the bell of St. Julien that is as old 
 as the University, the old Bourdon of Notre Dame 
 that first rang when St. Louis brought in the 
 crown of thorns, and the peal that saluted Napo- 
 leon, and the new Bourdon that is made of the 
 guns of Sebastopol, and the Savoyarde up on 
 Montmartre, a new bell much larger than the rest. 
 This morning the air was full of them. They 
 came up to the height on which the traveller lay 
 listening ; they came clear and innumerable over 
 the distant surge of the streets j he spent an hour 
 wondering at such an unusual Parliament and 
 General Council of Bells. Then he said to him- 
 self: *4t must be some great feast of the Church." 
 He was in a world he had never known before. 
 He was like a man who gets into a strange country 
 in a dream and follows his own imagination in- 
 stead of suffering the pressure of outer things ; or 
 like a boy who wanders by a known river till he 
 comes to unknown gardens. 
 
 So anxious was he to take possession at once of 
 this discovery of his that he went off hurriedly 
 without eating or drinking, thinking only of what 
 
274 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 he might find. He desired to embrace at one sight 
 all that Paris was doing on a day which was full 
 of St. Louis and of resurrection. The thoughts 
 upon thoughts that flow into the mind from its 
 impression, as water creams up out of a stone 
 fountain at a river head, disturbed him, swelling 
 beyond the possibility of fulfilment. He wished 
 to see at once the fashionables in St. Clotilde and 
 the Greek Uniates at St. Julien, and the 
 empty Sor bonne and the great crowd of boys at 
 Stanislas ; but what he was going to see never 
 occurred to him, for he thought he knew Paris too 
 well to approach the cathedral. 
 
 Notre Dame is jealously set apart for special and 
 well-advertised official things. If you know the 
 official world you know the great church, and 
 unless some great man had died, or some victory 
 had been won, you would never go there to see 
 how Paris took its religion. No midnight Mass is 
 said in it ; for the lovely carols of the Middle Ages 
 you must go to St. Gervais, and for the pomp 
 of the Counter- Reformation to the Madeleine, 
 for soldiers to St. Augustin, for pilgrims to 
 St. Etienne. Therefore no one would ever have 
 thought of going to the cathedral on this day, 
 when an instinct and revelation of Paris at prayer 
 filled the mind. Nevertheless, the traveller's feet 
 went, of their own accord, towards the seven 
 bridges, because the Island draws all Paris to it, 
 
THE ARENA 275 
 
 and was drawing him along with the rest. He 
 had meant perhaps to go the way that all the world 
 has gone since men began to live on this river, 
 and to follow up the Roman way across the Seine 
 — a vague intention of getting a Mass at St. Merry 
 or St. Laurent. But he was going as a dream 
 sent him, without purpose or direction. 
 
 The sun was already very hot, and the Parvis 
 was blinding with light when he crossed the little 
 bridge. Then he noticed that the open place had 
 dotted about it little groups of people making 
 eastward. The Parvis is so large that you could 
 have a multitude scattered in it and only notice 
 that the square was not deserted. There were no 
 more than a thousand, perhaps, going separately 
 towards Notre Dame, and a thousand made no 
 show in such a square. But when he went in 
 through the doors he saw there something he had 
 never seen before, and that he thought did not 
 exist. It was as though the vague interior visions 
 of which the morning had been so full had taken 
 on reality. 
 
 You may sometimes see in modern picture 
 galleries an attempt to combine the story from 
 which proceeds the nourishing flame of Christi- 
 anity with the crudities and the shameful ugli- 
 ness of our decline. Thus, with others, a picture 
 of our Lord and Mary Magdalen ; all the figures 
 except that of our Lord were dressed in the 
 
276 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 modern way. I remember another of our Lord 
 and the little children, where the scene is put into 
 a village school. Now, if you can imagine (which 
 it is not easy to do) such an attempt to be successful, 
 untouched by the love of display and eccentricity, 
 and informing — as it commonly pretends to inform 
 — our time with an idea, then you will understand 
 what the traveller saw that morning in Notre 
 Dame, The church seemed the vastest cavern that 
 had ever been built for worship. Coming in from 
 the high morning, the half-light alone, with which 
 we always connect a certain majesty and presence, 
 seemed to have taken on amplitude as well. The 
 incense veiled what appeared to be an infinite lift 
 of roof, and the third great measurement — the 
 length of nave that leads like a forest ride to the 
 lights of the choir — was drawn out into an im- 
 measurable perspective by reason of a countless 
 crowd of men and women divided by the narrow 
 path of the procession. So full was this great 
 place that a man moved slowly and with difficulty, 
 edging through such a mass of folk as you may 
 find at holiday time in a railway station, or outside 
 a theatre— never surely before was a church like 
 this, unless, indeed, some very rich or very 
 famous man happened to be gracing it. But here 
 to-day, for nothing but the function proper to the 
 feast, the cathedral was paved and floored with 
 human beings. In the galilee there was a kind of 
 
THE ARENA 277 
 
 movement so that a man could get up further, and 
 at last the traveller found a place to stand in just 
 on the edge of the open gangway, at the very end 
 of the nave. He peered up this, and saw from the 
 further end, near the altar, the head of the proces- 
 sion approaching, which was (in his fancy of that 
 morning) like the line of the Faith, still living and 
 returning in a perpetual circle to revivify the 
 world. Moreover, there was in the advent of the 
 procession a kind of climax. As it came nearer, 
 the great crowd moved more thickly towards it; 
 children were lifted up, and by one of Sully's wide 
 pillars a group of three young soldiers climbed on 
 a rail to see the great sight better. The Cardinal- 
 Archbishop, very old, and supported by his 
 priests, half walked and half tottered down the 
 length of the people ; his head, grown weary with 
 age, barely supported the mitre, from which great 
 jewels, false or true, were flashing. In his hand 
 he had a crozier that was studded in the same way 
 with gems, and that seemed to be made of gold ; 
 the same hands had twisted the metal of it as 
 had hammered the hinges of the cathedral doors. 
 Certainly there here appeared one of the resurrec- 
 tions of Europe. The matter of life seemed to 
 take on a fuller stuff and to lift into a dimension 
 above that in which it ordinarily moves. The thin, 
 narrow, and unfruitful experience of to-day and 
 yesterday was amplified by all the lives that have 
 
278 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 made our life, and the blood of which we are only 
 a last expression, the race that is older even than 
 Rome seemed in this revelation of continuity to be 
 gathered up into one intense and passionate 
 moment. The pagan altar of Tiberius, the legend 
 of Dionysius, the whole circle of the wars came 
 into this one pageant, and the old man in his 
 ofBce and his blessing was understood by all the 
 crowd before him to transmit the centuries. A 
 rich woman thrust a young child forward, and he 
 stopped and stooped with difficulty to touch its 
 hair. As he approached the traveller it was as 
 though there had come great and sudden news to 
 him, or the sound of unexpected and absorbing 
 music. 
 
 The procession went on and closed ; the High 
 Mass followed ; it lasted a very long time, and the 
 traveller went out before the crowd had moved and 
 found himself again in the glare of the sun on the 
 Parvis. He went over the bridge to find his eat- 
 ing-shop near the archives, and eat the first food 
 of that day, thinking as he went that certainly 
 there are an infinity of lives side by side in our 
 cities, and each ignores the rest ; and yet, that to 
 pass from what we know of these to what we do 
 not — though it is the most wonderful journey in 
 the world — is one that no one undertakes unless 
 accident or a good fortune pushes him on. He 
 desired to make another such journey. 
 
THE ARENA 279 
 
 He came back to find me in London, and spoke 
 to me of Paris as of a city newly discovered : as I 
 listened I thought I saw an arena. 
 
 In a plain of the north, undistinguished by great 
 hills, open to the torment of the sky, the gods had 
 traced an arena wherein were to be fought out the 
 principal battles of a later age. 
 
 Spirits lower than the divine, spirits intermediate, 
 have been imagined by men wiser than ourselves 
 to have some power over the world — a power which 
 we might vanquish in a special manner, but still 
 a power. To such conceptions the best races of 
 Europe cling ; upon such a soil are grown the 
 legends that tell us most about our dark, and yet 
 enormous, human fate. These intermediate spirits 
 have been called in all the older creeds ^*the 
 gods." It is in the nature of the Church to frown 
 upon these dreams ; but I, as I listened to him, saw 
 clearly that plain wherein the gods had marked 
 out an arena for mankind. 
 
 It was oval, as should be a theatre for any show, 
 with heights around it insignificant, but offering 
 a vantage ground whence could be watched the 
 struggle in the midst. There was a sacred centre 
 — an island and a mount — and, within the lines, so 
 great a concourse of gladiatorial souls as befits the 
 greatest of spectacles. I say, I do not know how 
 
280 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 far such visions are permitted, nor how far the 
 right reason of the Church condemns them ; but 
 the dream returned to me very powerfully, recall- 
 ing my boyhood, when the traveller told me his 
 story. I also therefore went and caught the fresh 
 gale of the stream of the Seine in flood, and saw 
 the many roofs of Paris quite clear after rain, and 
 read the writings of the men I mixed with and 
 heard the noise of the city. 
 
 It is not upon the paltry level of negations or of 
 decent philosophies, it is in the action and hot 
 mood of creative certitudes that the French battle 
 is engaged. The little sophists are dumb and 
 terrified, their books are quite forgotten. I myself 
 forgot (in those few days by that water and in that 
 city) the thin and ineffectual bodies of ignorant 
 men who live quite beyond any knowledge of such 
 fires. The printed things which tired and poor 
 writers put down for pay no longer even disturbed 
 me ; the reflections, the mere phantasms of reality, 
 with which in a secluded leisure we please our 
 intellect, faded. I was like a man who is in the 
 centre of two lines that meet in war ; to such a 
 man this fellow's prose on fighting and that one's 
 verse, this theory of strategy, or that essay upon 
 arms, are not for one moment remembered. Here 
 (in the narrow street which I knew and was now 
 
THE ARENA 281 
 
 following) St. Bernard had upheld the sacrament 
 in the shock of the first awakening — in that twelfth 
 century, when Julian stirred in his sleep. Beyond 
 the bridge, in Roman walls that still stand care- 
 fully preserved, the Church of Gaul had sustained 
 Athanasius, and determined the course of the 
 Christian centuries. I had passed upon my way 
 the vast and empty room where had been estab- 
 lished the Terror ; where had been forced by an 
 angry and compelling force the full return of equal 
 laws upon Europe. Who could remember in such 
 an air the follies and the pottering of men who 
 analyse and put in categories and explain the 
 follies of wealth and of old age ? 
 
 Good Lord, how little the academies became ! I 
 remembered the phrases upon one side and upon 
 the other which still live in the stones of the city, 
 carved and deep, but more lasting than are even 
 the letters of their inscription. I remembered the 
 defiant sentence of Mad Dolet on his statue there 
 in the Quarter, the deliberate perversion of Plato, 
 **And when you are dead you shall no more be any- 
 thing at all." I remembered the **Ave Crux spes 
 Unica" ; and St. Just's **The words that we have 
 spoken will never be lost on earth"; and Danton's 
 ** Continual Daring," and the scribbled Greek on 
 the walls of the cathedral towers. For not only are 
 the air and the voice, but the very material of this 
 town is filled with words that remain. Certainly 
 
282 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 the philosophies and the negations dwindled to be 
 so small as at last to disappear, and to leave only 
 the two antagonists. Passion brooded over the 
 silence of the morning ; there was great energy in 
 the cool of the spring air, and up above, the forms 
 the clouds were taking were forms of gigantic 
 powers. 
 
 I came, as the traveller had come, into the 
 cathedral. It was not yet within half an hour of 
 the feast. There was still room to be found, 
 though with every moment the nave and the 
 aisles grew fuller, until one doubted how at the 
 end so great a throng could be dismissed. They 
 were of all kinds. Some few were strangers 
 holding in their hands books about the building. 
 Some few were devout men on travel, and praying 
 at this great office on the way : men from the 
 islands, men from the places that Spain has re- 
 deemed for the future in the new world. I saw an 
 Irishman near me, and two West Indians also, 
 half negro, like the third of the kings that came 
 to worship at the manger where Our Lord was 
 born. For two hours and nearly three I saw and 
 wondered at that immense concourse. The tri- 
 bunes were full, the whole choir was black, mov- 
 ing with the celebrants, and all the church floor 
 beyond and around me was covered and dark with 
 expectant men. 
 
 The Bourdon that had summoned the traveller 
 
THE ARENA 283 
 
 and driven mad so many despairs, sounded above 
 me upon this day with amplitude and yet with 
 menace. The silence was a solace when it ceased 
 to boom. The Creed, the oldest of our chaunts, 
 filled and completed those walls ; it was as though 
 at last a battle had been joined, and in that issue 
 a great relief ran through the crowd. 
 
 From such a temple I came out at last. They 
 had thrown the western doors wide open, the doors 
 whose hinges man scarcely could have hammered 
 and to whose miracle legend has lent its aid ; the 
 midday, now captured by the sun, came right into 
 the hollow simplicity of the nave, and caught the 
 river of people as they flowed outwards ; but even 
 that and the cry of the Benediction from the altar 
 gave no greater peace than an appeal to combat. 
 In the air outside that other power stood waiting 
 to conquer or to fail. 
 
 I came out, as from a camp, into the civilian 
 debate, the atmosphere of the spectators. The 
 permanent and toppling influence against which 
 this bulwark of ours, the Faith, was reared (as we 
 say) by God Himself, shouted in half the prints, in 
 half the houses. I sat down to read and compare 
 (as it should be one's custom when one is among 
 real and determining things) the writings of the 
 extreme, that is of the leading men. I chose the 
 
284 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 two pamphleteers who are of equal weight in this 
 war, but of whom one only is known as yet to us 
 in England, and that the least. 
 
 I read their battle-cries. Their style was excel- 
 lent ; their good faith shone even in their style. 
 
 Since I had been upon phrases all these hours 
 I separated and remembered the principal words 
 of each. One said : ** They will break their teeth 
 against it. The Catholic Church is not to perish, 
 for she has allies from outside Time." The other 
 said : ** How long will the death of this crucified 
 god linger ? How long will his agony crush men 
 with its despair ? " 
 
 But I read these two writers for my entertain- 
 ment only, and in order to be acquainted with 
 men around me ; for on the quarrel between them 
 I had long ago made up my mind. 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE LION 
 
 IT was late, and the day was already falling 
 when I came, sitting my horse Monster, to 
 a rise of land. We were at a walk, for we had 
 gone very far since early morning, and were now 
 off the turf upon the hard road ; moreover, the 
 hill, though gentle, had been prolonged. From 
 its summit I saw before me, as I had seen it a 
 hundred times, the whole of the weald. 
 
 But now that landscape was transfigured, be^ 
 cause many influences had met to make it, for the 
 moment, an enchanted land. The autumn, coming 
 late, had crowded it with colours ; a slight mist 
 drew out the distances, and along the horizon 
 stood out, quite even and grey like mountains, 
 the solemn presence of the Downs. Over all this 
 the sky was full of storm. 
 
 In some manner which language cannot ex- 
 press, and hardly music, the vision was unearthly. 
 All the lesser heights of the plain ministered to 
 one effect, a picture which was to other pictures 
 what the marvellous is to the experience of com- 
 mon things. The distant mills, the edges of 
 heath and the pine trees, were as though they 
 
 285 
 
286 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 had not before been caught by the eyes of 
 travellers, and would not, after the brief space 
 of their apparition, be seen again. Here was a 
 countryside whose every outline was familiar ; 
 and yet it was pervaded by a general quality of 
 the uplifted and the strange. And for that one 
 hour under the sunset the county did not seem to 
 me a thing well known, but rather adored. 
 
 The glow of evening, which had seemed to 
 put this horizon into another place and time than 
 ours, warned me of darkness ; and I made off the 
 road to the right for an inn I knew of, that stands 
 close to the upper Arun and is very good. Here an 
 old man and his wife live easily, and have so lived 
 for at least thirty years, proving how accessible 
 is content. Their children are in service beyond 
 the boundaries of the county, and are thus pro- 
 vided with sufficiency ; and they themselves, the 
 old people, enjoy a small possession which at 
 least does not diminish, for, thank God, their 
 land is free. It is a square of pasture bordered by 
 great elms upon three sides of it, but on the 
 fourth, towards the water, a line of pollard wil- 
 lows ; and off a little way before the house runs 
 Arun, sliding as smooth as Mincius, and still so 
 young that he can remember the lake in the forest 
 where he rose. 
 
 On such ancestral land these two people await 
 without anxiety what they believe will be a kindly 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE LION 287 
 
 death. Nor is their piety of that violent and 
 tortured kind which is associated with fear and with 
 distress of earlier life ; but they remain peasants, 
 drawing from the earth they have always known 
 as much sustenance for the soul as even their 
 religion can afford them, and mixing that religion 
 so intimately with their experience of the soil 
 that, were they not isolated in an evil time, they 
 would have set up some shrine about the place to 
 sanctify it. 
 
 The passion and the strain which must accom- 
 pany (even in the happiest and most secluded) the 
 working years of life, have so far disappeared from 
 them, that now they can no longer recall any 
 circumstances other than those which they enjoy ; 
 so that their presence in a room about one, as they 
 set food before one or meet one at the door, is in 
 itself an influence of peace. 
 
 In such a place, and with such hosts to serve 
 him, the wears of the world retire for a little time, 
 from an evening to a morning ; and a man can 
 enjoy a great refreshment. In such a place he 
 will eat strongly and drink largely, and sleep 
 well and deeply, and, when he saddles again for 
 his journey, he will take the whole world new ; 
 nor are those intervals without their future value, 
 for the memory of a complete repose is a sort of 
 sacrament, and a viaticum for the weary lengths 
 of the way. 
 
288 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 The stable of this place is made of oak entirely, 
 and, after more than a hundred years, the wood- 
 work is still sound, save that the roof now falls in 
 waves where the great beams have sagged a little 
 under the pressure of the tiles. And these tiles 
 are of that old hand-made kind which, whenever 
 you find them, you will do well to buy ; for they 
 have a slight downward curve to them, and so 
 they fit closer and shed the rain better than if they 
 were flat. Also they do not slip, and thus they 
 put less strain upon the timber. This excellent 
 stable has no flooring but a packed layer of chalk 
 laid on the ground ; and the wooden manger is all 
 polished and shining, where it has been rubbed 
 by the noses of ten thousand horses since the 
 great war. That polishing was helped, perhaps, 
 by the nose of Percy's horse, and perhaps by the 
 nose of some wheeler who in his time had dragged 
 the guns back aboard, retreating through the 
 night after Corunna. It is in every way a stable 
 that a small peasant should put up for himself, 
 without seeking money from other men. It is, 
 therefore, a stable which your gaping scientists 
 would condemn ; and though as yet they have 
 not got their ugly hands upon the dwellings of 
 beasts as they have upon those of men, yet I often 
 fear for this stable, and am always glad when I 
 come back and find it there. For the men who 
 make our laws are the same as those that sell us 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE LION 289 
 
 our bricks and our land and our metals ; and 
 they make the laws so that rebuilding shall go on : 
 and vile rebuilding too. 
 
 Anyhow, this stable yet stands ; and in none 
 does the horse, Monster, take a greater delight, for 
 he also is open to the influence of holiness. So I 
 led him in, and tied him by the ancient headstall, 
 and I rubbed him down, and I washed his feet and 
 covered him with the rough rug that lay there. 
 And when I had done all that, I got him oats from 
 the neighbouring bin ; for the place knew me well, 
 and I could always tend to my own beast when 
 I came there. And as he ate his oats, I said to 
 him : ** Monster, my horse, is there any place on 
 earth where a man, even for a little time, can be 
 as happy as the brutes ? If there is, it is here at 
 the Sign of The Lion." And Monster answered : 
 ** There is a tradition among us that, of all 
 creatures that creep upon the earth, man is the 
 fullest of sorrow." 
 
 I left him then, and went towards the house. 
 It was quite dark, and the windows, with their 
 square, large panes and true proportions, shone 
 out and made it home. The room within received 
 me like a friend. The open chimney at its end, 
 round which the house is built, was filled with 
 beech logs burning ; and the candles, which were 
 set in brass, mixed their yellow light with that of 
 the fire. The long ceiling was low, as are the 
 u 
 
290 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 ceilings of Heaven. And oak was here every- 
 where also : in the beams and the shelves and the 
 mighty table. For oak was, and will be again, 
 the chief wood of the weald. 
 
 When they put food and ale before me, it was 
 of the kind which has been English ever since 
 England began, and which perhaps good fortune 
 will preserve over the breakdown of our genera- 
 tion, until we have England back again. One 
 could see the hops in the tankard, and one could 
 taste the barley, until, more and more sunk into 
 the plenitude of this good house, one could dare 
 to contemplate, as though from a distant stand- 
 point, the corruption and the imminent danger of 
 the time through which we must lead our lives. 
 And, as I so considered the ruin of the great 
 cities and their slime, I felt as though I were in 
 a sort of fortress of virtue and of health, which 
 could hold out through the pressure of the war. 
 And I thought to myself: ^'Perhaps even before 
 our children are men, these parts which survive 
 from a better order will be accepted as models, 
 and England will be built again." 
 
 This fantasy had not time, tenuous as it was, 
 to disappear, before there came into that room a 
 man whose gesture and bearing promised him to 
 be an excellent companion, but in whose eyes 
 I also perceived some light not ordinary. He 
 was of middle age, fifty or more ; his hair was 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE LION 291 
 
 crisp and grey, his face brown, as though he had 
 been much upon the sea. He was tall in stature, 
 and of some strength. He saluted me, and, when 
 he had eaten, asked me if I also were familiar 
 with this inn. 
 
 *'Very familiar," I said; *'and since I can enter 
 it at any hour freely, it is now more familiar to me 
 even than the houses that were once my homes. 
 For nowadays we, we who work in the State and 
 are not idle, must be driven from one place to 
 another ; and only the very rich have certitude 
 and continuity. But to them it is of no service ; 
 for they are too idle to take root in the soil." 
 
 **Yet I was of their blood," he said; **and 
 there is in this county a home which should be 
 mine. But nothing to-day is capable of endur- 
 ance. I have not seen my home (though it is but 
 ten miles from here) since I left it in my thirtieth 
 year ; and I too would rather come to this inn, 
 which I know as you know it, than to any house 
 in England ; because I am certain of entry, and 
 because I know what I shall find, and because 
 what I find is what any man of this county should 
 find, if the soul of it is not to disappear." 
 
 ** You, then," I answered (we were now seated 
 side by side before the fire with but one flickering 
 candle behind us, and on the floor between us 
 a port just younger than the host), **you, then, 
 come here for much the same reason as do I ? " 
 
292 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 ^*And what is that?" said he. 
 
 **Why/' said I, **to enjoy the illusion that 
 Change can somewhere be arrested, and that, in 
 some shape, a part at least of the things we love 
 remains. For, since I was a boy and almost since 
 I can remember, everything in this house has been 
 the same; and here I escape from the threats of 
 the society we know." 
 
 When I had said this, he was grave and silent 
 for a little while ; and then he answered : 
 
 **It is impossible, I think, after many years to 
 recover any such illusion. Just as a young man 
 can no longer think himself (as children do) the 
 actor in any drama of his own choosing, so a man 
 growing old (as am I) can no longer expect of any 
 society — and least of all of his own — the gladness 
 that comes from an illusion of permanence." 
 
 ^*For my part," I answered in turn, ^^ I know 
 very well, though I can conjure up this feeling of 
 security, that it is very flimsy stuff; and I take it 
 rather as men take symbols. For though these 
 good people will at last perish, and some brewer — 
 a Colonel of Volunteers as like as not — will buy 
 this little field, and though for the port we are 
 drinking there will be imperial port, and for the 
 beer we have just drunk something as noisome as 
 that port, and though thistles will grow up in the 
 good pasture ground, and though, in a word, this 
 inn will become a hotel and will perish, neverthe- 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE LION 293 
 
 less I cannot but believe that England remains, 
 and I do not think it the taking of a drug or a 
 deliberate cheating of oneself to come and steep 
 one's soul in what has already endured so long 
 because it was proper to our country." 
 
 *^A11 that you say,'' he answered, **is but part 
 of the attempt to escape Necessity. Your very 
 frame is of that substance for which permanence 
 means death ; and every one of all the emotions 
 that you know is of its nature momentary, and 
 must be so if it is to be alive. 
 
 **Yet there is a divine thirst," I said, ** for some- 
 thing that will not so perish. If there were no 
 such thirst, why should you and I debate such 
 things, or come here to The Lion either of us, to 
 taste antiquity ? And if that thirst is there, it is a 
 proof that there is for us some End and some such 
 satisfaction. For my part, as I know of nothing 
 else, I cannot but seek it in this visible good 
 world. I seek it in Sussex, in the nature of my 
 home, and in the tradition of my blood." 
 
 But he answered: **No; it is not thus to be 
 attained, the end of which you speak. And that 
 thirst, which surely is divine, is to be quenched in 
 no stream that we can find by journeying, not 
 even in the little rivers that run here under the 
 combes of home." 
 
 Myself: **Well, then, what is the End?" 
 
 He: '*I have sometimes seen it clearly, that 
 
294 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 when the disappointed quest was over, all this 
 journeying would turn out to be but the beginning 
 of a much greater adventure, and that I should set 
 out towards another place where every sense should 
 be fulfilled, and where the fear of mutation should 
 be set at rest.'* 
 
 Myself: ** No one denies that such a picture in 
 the mind haunts men their whole lives through, 
 though, after they have once experienced loss and 
 incompletion, and especially when they have 
 caught sight a long way off of the Barrier which 
 ends all our experience, they recognize that picture 
 for a cheat ; and surely nothing can save it? That 
 which reasons in us may be absolute and undying; 
 for it is outside Time. It escapes the gropings of 
 the learned, and it has nothing to do with material 
 things. But as for all those functions which we 
 but half fulfil in life, surely elsewhere they cannot 
 be fulfilled at all ? Colour is for the eyes and music 
 is for the ears ; and all that we love so much comes 
 in by channels that do not remain." 
 
 He: *'Yet the Desire can only be for things 
 that we have known ; and the Desire, as you have 
 said, is a proof of the thing desired, and, but for 
 these things which we know, the words *joy ' and 
 * contentment ' and * fulfilment ' would have no 
 meaning." 
 
 Myself: '*Why yes; but, though desires are 
 the strongest evidence of truth, yet there is also 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE LION 295 
 
 desire for illusions, as there is a waking demand 
 for things attainable, and a demand in dreams for 
 things fantastic and unreal. Every analogy in- 
 creasingly persuades us, and so does the whole 
 scheme of things as we learn it, that, with our 
 passing, there shall also pass speech and comfort- 
 able fires and fields and the voices of our children, 
 and that, when they pass, we lose them for ever." 
 He: **Yet these things would not be, but for 
 the mind which receives them ; and how can we 
 make sure what channels are necessary for the 
 mind? and may not the mind stretch on? And 
 you, since you reject my guess at what may be 
 reserved for us, tell me, what is the End which we 
 shall attain?" 
 
 Myself : ^^ Salva fide^ I cannot tell." 
 Then he continued and said : ** I have too long 
 considered these matters for any opposition 
 between one experience and another to affect my 
 spirit, and I know that a long and careful inquiry 
 into any matter must lead the same man to 
 opposing conclusions ; but, for my part, I shall 
 confidently expect throughout that old age, which 
 is not far from me, that, when it ceases, I shall find 
 beyond it things similar to those which I have 
 known. For all I here enjoy is of one nature ; 
 and if the life of a man be bereft of them at last, 
 then it is falsehood or metaphor to use the word 
 * eternal.'" 
 
296 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 ** You think, then," said I, "that some immortal 
 part in us is concerned not only with our know- 
 ledge, but with our every feeling, and that our 
 final satisfaction will include a sensual pleasure : 
 fragrance, and landscape, and a visible home that 
 shall be dearer even than are these dear hills ? " 
 
 ** Something of the sort," he said, and slightly 
 shrugged his shoulders. They were broad, as he 
 sat beside me staring at the fire. They conveyed 
 in their attitude that effect of mingled strength 
 and weariness which is common to all who have 
 travelled far and with great purpose, perpetually 
 seeking some worthy thing which they could never 
 find. 
 
 The fire had fallen. Flames no longer leapt 
 from the beech logs ; but on their under side, 
 where a glow still lingered, embers fell. 
 
THE AUTUMN 
 AND THE FALL OF LEAVES 
 
 IT is not true that the close of a life which ends 
 in a natural fashion—life which is permitted to 
 put on the pomp of death and to go out in glory — 
 inclines the mind to repose. It is not true of a day 
 ending nor the passing of the year, nor of the fall 
 of leaves. Whatever permanent, uneasy question 
 is native to men, comes forward most insistent and 
 most loud at such times* 
 
 There is a house in my own county which is 
 built of stone, whose gardens are fitted to the 
 autumn. It has level alleys standing high and 
 banked with stone. Their ornaments were carved 
 under the influence of that restraint which marked 
 the Stuarts. They stand above old ponds, and 
 are strewn at this moment with the leaves of elms. 
 These walks are like the Mailles of the Flemish 
 cities, the walls of the French towns or the terraces 
 of the Loire. They are enjoyed to-day by who- 
 ever has seen all our time go racing by ; they are 
 the proper resting-places of the aged, and their 
 spirit is felt especially in the fall of leaves, 
 
 297 
 
298 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 At this season a sky which is of so delicate and 
 faint a blue as to contain something of gentle 
 mockery, and certainly more of tenderness, pre- 
 sides at the fall of leaves. There is no air, no 
 breath at all. The leaves are so light that they 
 sidle on their going downward, hesitating in that 
 which is not void to them, and touching at last so 
 imperceptibly the earth with which they are to 
 mingle, that the gesture is much gentler than a 
 salutation, and even more discreet than a discreet 
 caress. 
 
 They make a little sound, less than the 
 least of sounds. No bird at night in the marshes 
 rustles so slightly ; no men, though men are the 
 subtlest of living beings, put so evanescent a stress 
 upon their sacred whispers or their prayers. The 
 leaves are hardly heard, but they are heard just so 
 much that men also, who are destined at the end to 
 grow glorious and to die, look up and hear them 
 falling. 
 
 • ■ • • • • 
 
 With what a pageantry of every sort is not that 
 troubling symbol surrounded ! The scent of life 
 is never fuller in the woods than now, for the 
 ground is yielding up its memories. The spring 
 when it comes will not restore this fullness, nor 
 these deep and ample recollections of the earth. 
 For the earth seems now to remember the drive 
 of the ploughshare and its harrying ; the seed. 
 
THE FALL OF LEAVES 299 
 
 and the full bursting of it, the swelling and the 
 completion of the harvest. Up to the edge of the 
 woods throughout the weald the earth has borne 
 fruit ; the barns are full, and the wheat is standing 
 stacked in the fields, and there are orchards all 
 around. It is upon such a mood of parentage and 
 of fruition that the dead leaves fall. ^ ^ 
 
 Their colour is not a mere splendour: it is 
 intricate. The same unbounded power, never at 
 fault and never in calculation, which comprehends 
 all the landscape, and which has made the woods, 
 has worked in each one separate leaf as well ; they 
 are inconceivably varied. Take up one leaf and 
 see. How many kinds of boundary are there here 
 between the stain which ends in a sharp edge 
 against the gold, and the sweep in which the 
 purple and red mingle more evenly than they do in 
 shot-silk or in flames? Nor are the boundaries to 
 be measured only by degrees of definition. They 
 have also their characters of line. Here in this leaf 
 are boundaries intermittent, boundaries rugged, 
 boundaries curved, and boundaries broken. Nor 
 do shape and definition even begin to exhaust the 
 list. For there are softness and hardness too: 
 the agreement and disagreement with the scheme 
 of veins ; the grotesque and the simple in line ; the 
 sharp and the broad, the smooth, and raised in 
 boundaries. So in this one matter of boundaries 
 might you discover for ever new things ; there is 
 
300 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 no end to them. Their qualities are infinite. 
 And beside boundaries you have hues and tints, 
 shades also, varying thicknesses of stuff, and end- 
 less choice of surface; that list also is infinite, and 
 the divisions of each item in it are infinite; nor is it 
 of any use to analyse the thing, for everywhere the 
 depth and the meaning of so much creation are be- 
 yond our powers. And all this is true of but one 
 dead leaf ; and yet every dead leaf will differ from its 
 fellow. 
 
 That which has delighted to excel in boundless- 
 ness within the bounds of this one leaf, has also 
 transformed the whole forest. There is no number 
 to the particular colours of the one leaf. This 
 forest is like a thing so changeful of its nature 
 that change clings to it as a quality, apparent even 
 during the glance of a moment. This forest makes 
 a picture which is designed, but not seizable. It 
 is a scheme, but a scheme you cannot set down. 
 It is of those things which can best be retained by 
 mere copying with a pencil or a brush. It is of 
 those things which a man cannot fully receive, 
 and which he cannot fully re-express to other 
 men. 
 
 It is no wonder, then, that at this peculiar time, 
 this week (or moment) of the year, the desires 
 which if they do not prove at least demand — per- 
 haps remember — our destiny, come strongest. 
 They are proper to the time of autumn, and all 
 
THE FALL OF LEAVES 801 
 
 men feel them. The air is at once new and old ; 
 the morning (if one rises early enough to welcome 
 its leisurely advance) contains something in it of 
 profound reminiscence. The evenings hardly yet 
 suggest (as they soon will) friends and security, 
 and the fires of home. The thoughts awakened in 
 us by their bands of light fading along the downs 
 are thoughts which go with loneliness and prepare 
 me for the isolation of the soul. 
 
 It is on this account that tradition has set, at the 
 entering of autumn, for a watch at the gate of the 
 season, the Archangel ; and at its close the day 
 and the night of All-Hallows on which the dead 
 return. 
 
THE GOOD WOMAN 
 
 UPON a hill that overlooks a western plain 
 and is conspicuous at the approach of even- 
 ing, there still stands a house of faded brick faced 
 with cornerings of stone. It is quite empty, but 
 yet not deserted. In each room some little furni- 
 ture remains ; all the pictures are upon the walls ; 
 the deep red damask of the panels is not faded, or 
 if faded, shows no contrast of brighter patches, for 
 nothing has been removed from the walls. Here 
 it is possible to linger for many hours alone, and 
 to watch the slope of the hill under the level light 
 as the sun descends. Here passed a woman of 
 such nobility that, though she is dead, the land- 
 scape and the vines are hers. 
 
 It was in September, during a silence of the air, 
 that I first saw her as she moved among her pos- 
 sessions ; she was smiling to herself as though at 
 a memory, but her smile was so slight and so dig- 
 nified, so genial, and yet so restrained, that you 
 would have thought it part of everything around 
 and married (as she was) to the land which was 
 now her own. She wandered down the garden 
 
 302 
 
THE GOOD WOMAN 303 
 
 paths ruling the flowers upon either side, and 
 receiving as she went autumn and the fruition of 
 her fields ; plenitude and completion surrounded 
 her ; the benediction of Almighty God must have 
 been upon her, for she was the fulfilment of her 
 world. 
 
 Three fountains played in that garden — two, 
 next to the northern and the southern walls, were 
 small and low ; they rather flowed than rose. 
 Two cones of marble received their fall, and over 
 these they spread in an even sheet with little noise, 
 making (as it were) a sheath of water which 
 covered all the stone ; but the third sprang into 
 the air with delicate triumph, fine and high, satis- 
 fied, tenous and exultant. This one tossed its 
 summit into the light, and, alone of the things in 
 the garden, the plash of its waters recalled and 
 suggested activity — though that in so discreet a 
 way that it was to be heard rather than regarded. 
 The birds flew far off in circles over the roofs of 
 the town below us. Very soon they went to their 
 rest. 
 
 The slow transfiguration of the light by which 
 the air became full of colours and every outline 
 merged into the evening, made of all I saw, as I 
 came up towards her, a soft and united vision 
 wherein her advancing figure stood up central and 
 gave a meaning to the whole. I will not swear 
 that she did not as she came bestow as w^ell as 
 
304 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 receive an influence of the sunset. It was said by 
 the ancients that virtue is active, an agent, and has 
 power to control created things ; for, they said, it 
 is in a direct relation with whatever orders and has 
 ordained the general scheme. Such power, per- 
 haps, resided in her hands. It would have awed 
 me but hardly astonished if, as the twilight 
 deepened, the inclination of the stems had obeyed 
 her gesture and she had put the place to sleep. 
 
 As I came near I saw her plainly. Her face was 
 young although she was so wise, but its youth had 
 the aspect of a divine survival. Time adorned it. 
 
 Music survives. Whatever is eternal in the 
 grace of simple airs or in the Christian innocence 
 of Mozart was apparent, nay, had increased, in 
 her features as the days in passing had added to 
 them not only experience but also revelation and 
 security. She was serene. The posture of her 
 head was high, and her body, which was visibly 
 informed by an immortal spirit, had in its carriage 
 a large, a regal, an uplifted bearing which even 
 now as I write of it, after so many years, turns 
 common every other sight that has encountered 
 me» This was the way in which I first saw her 
 upon her own hillside at evening. 
 
 With every season I returned. And with every 
 season she greeted my coming with a more 
 generous and a more vivacious air. I think the 
 years slipped off and did not add themselves upon 
 
THE GOOD WOMAN 305 
 
 her mind : the common doom of mortality escaped 
 her until, perhaps, its sign was imposed upon her 
 hair — for this at last was touched all through with 
 that appearance or gleam which might be morning 
 or which might be snow. 
 
 She was able to conjure all evil. Those despe- 
 rate enemies of mankind which lie in siege of us 
 all around grew feeble and were silent when she 
 came. Nor has any other force than hers dared to 
 enter the rooms where she had lived : it is her 
 influence alone which inhabits them to-day. 
 There is a vessel of copper, enamelled in green 
 and gilded, which she gave with her own hands 
 to a friend overseas. I have twice touched it in 
 an evil hour. 
 
 Strength, sustenance, and a sacramental justice 
 are permanent in such lives, and such lives also 
 attain before their close to so general a survey of 
 the world that their appreciations are at once 
 accurate and universal. 
 
 On this account she did not fail in any human 
 conversation, nor was she ever for a moment less 
 than herself; but always and throughout her 
 moods her laughter was unexpected and full, her 
 fear natural, her indignation glorious. 
 
 Above all, her charity extended like a breeze : it 
 enveloped everything she knew. The sense of 
 destiny faded from me as the warmth of that 
 charity fell upon my soul ; the foreknowledge of 
 
306 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 death retreated, as did every other unworthy 
 panic. 
 
 She drew the objects of her friendship into 
 something new; they breathed an air from another 
 country, so that those whom she deigned to regard 
 were, compared with other men, like the living 
 compared with the dead ; or, better still, they were 
 like men awake while the rest were tortured by 
 dreams and haunted of the unreal. Indeed, she 
 had a word given to her which saved all the souls 
 of her acquaintance. 
 
 It is not true that influence of this sort decays 
 or passes into vaguer and vaguer depths of mem- 
 mory. It does not dissipate. It is not dissolved. 
 It does not only spread and broaden : it also in- 
 creases with the passage of time. The musicians 
 bequeath their spirit, notably those who have loved 
 delightful themes and easy melodies. The poets 
 are read for ever ; but those who resemble her do 
 more, for they grow out upon the centuries — they 
 themselves and not their arts continue. There is 
 stuff in their legend. They are a tangible inherit- 
 ance for the hurrying generations of men. 
 
 She was of this kind. She was certainly of this 
 kind. She died upon this day* in the year 1892. 
 In these lines I perpetuate her memory. 
 
 * 22 December. 
 
THE HARBOUR IN THE NORTH 
 
 UPON that shore of Europe which looks out 
 towards no further shore, I came once by 
 accident upon a certain man. 
 
 The day had been warm and almost calm, but a 
 little breeze from the south-east had all day long 
 given life to the sea. The seas had run very small 
 and brilliant, yet without violence, before the wind, 
 and had broken upon the granite cliffs to leeward, 
 not in spouts of foam, but in a white, even line 
 that was thin, and from which one heard no 
 sound of surge. Moreover, as I was running 
 dead north along the coast, the noise about the 
 bows was very slight and pleasant. The regular 
 and gentle wind came upon the quarter without 
 change, and the heel of the boat was steady. 
 No calm came with the late sunset ; the breeze 
 still held, and so till nearly midnight I could hold 
 a course and hardly feel the pulling of the helm. 
 Meanwhile the arch of the sunset endured, for I 
 was far to the northward, and all those colours 
 which belong to June above the Arctic Sea shone 
 and changed in the slow progress of that arch as 
 
 307 
 
308 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 it advanced before me and mingled at last with 
 the dawn. Throughout the hours of that journey 
 I could see clearly the seams of the deck forward, 
 the texture of the canvas and the natural hues of 
 the woodwork and the rigging, the glint of the 
 brasswork, and even the letters painted round the 
 little capstan-head, so continually did the light 
 endure. The silence which properly belongs to 
 darkness, and which accompanies the sleep of 
 birds upon the sea, appeared to be the more 
 intense because of such a continuance of the 
 light, and what with a long vigil and new water, 
 it was as though I had passed the edge of all 
 known maps and had crossed the boundary of new 
 land. 
 
 In such a mood I saw before me the dark band 
 of a stone jetty running some miles off from the 
 shore into the sea, and at the end of it a fixed 
 beacon whose gleam showed against the trans- 
 lucent sky (and its broken reflection in the pale 
 sea) as a candle shows when one pulls the curtains 
 of one's room and lets in the beginnings of the 
 day. 
 
 For this point I ran, and as I turned it I dis- 
 covered a little harbour quite silent under the 
 growing light ; there was not a man upon its 
 wharves, and there was no smoke rising from its 
 slate roofs. It was absolutely still. The boat 
 swung easily round in the calm water, the pier- 
 
HARBOUR IN THE NORTH 309 
 
 head slipped by, the screen of the pier-head beacon 
 suddenly cut off its glare, and she went slowly 
 with no air in her canvas towards the patch of dark- 
 ness under the quay. There, as I did not know 
 the place, I would not pick up moorings which 
 another man might own and need, but, as my boat 
 still crept along with what was left of her way I 
 let go the little anchor, for it was within an hour 
 of low tide, and I was sure of water. 
 
 When I had done this she soon tugged at the 
 chain and I slackened all the halyards. I put the 
 cover on the mainsail, and as I did so, looking aft, 
 I noted the high mountain-side behind the town 
 standing clear in the dawn. I turned eastward to 
 receive it. The light still lifted, and though I had 
 not slept I could not but stay up and watch the 
 glory growing over heaven. It was just then, when 
 I had stowed everything away, that I heard to the 
 right of me the crooning of a man. 
 
 A few moments before I should not have seen 
 him under the darkness of the sea-wall, but the 
 light was so largely advanced (it was nearly two 
 o'clock) that I now clearly made out both his craft 
 and him. 
 
 She was sturdy and high, and I should think of 
 slight draught. She was of great beam. She 
 carried but one sail, and that was brown. He had 
 it loose, with the peak dipped ready for hoisting, 
 and he himself was busy at some work upon her 
 
310 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 floor, stowing and fitting his bundles, and as he 
 worked he crooned gently to himself. It was then 
 that I hailed him, but in a low voice, so much did 
 the silence of that place impress itself upon all 
 living beings who were strange to it. He looked 
 up and told me that he had not seen me come in 
 nor heard the rattling of the chain. I asked him 
 what he would do so early, whether he was off 
 fishing at that hour or whether he was taking 
 parcels down the coast for hire or goods to sell at 
 some other port. He answered me that he was 
 doing none of those things. 
 
 ** What cruise, then, are you about to take?" I 
 said. ^* 
 
 **I am off," he answered in a low and happy 
 voice, ^*to find what is beyond the sea." 
 
 ** And to what shore," said I, **do you mean to 
 sail?" 
 
 He answered : ^* I am out upon this sea north- 
 ward to where they say there is no further shore." 
 
 As he spoke he looked towards that horizon 
 which now stood quite clean and clear between the 
 pier-heads : his eyes were full of the broad day- 
 light, and he breathed the rising wind as though 
 it were a promise of new life and of unexpected 
 things. I asked him then what his security was 
 and had he formed a plan, and why he was setting 
 out from this small place, unless, perhaps, it was 
 his home, of which he might be tired. 
 
HARBOUR IN THE NORTH 311 
 
 **No," he answered, and smiled; ^Hhis is not 
 my home ; and I have come to it as you may have 
 come to it, for the first time; and, like you, I came 
 in after the whole place slept ; but as I neared I 
 noticed certain shuremarks and signs which had 
 been given me, and then I knew that I had come 
 to the starting-place of a long voyage." 
 
 *^ Of what voyage? " I asked. 
 
 He answered : 
 
 **This is that harbour in the North of which a 
 Breton priest once told me that I should reach it, 
 and when I had moored in it and laid my stores 
 on board in order, I should set sail before morn- 
 ing and reach at last a complete repose." Then 
 he went on with eagerness, though still talking 
 low : ** The voyage which I was born to make in 
 the end, and to which my desire has driven me, is 
 towards a place in which everything we have 
 known is forgotten, except those things which, as 
 we knew them, reminded us of an original joy. 
 In that place I shall discover again such full 
 moments of content as I have known, and I shall 
 preserve them without failing. It is in some 
 country beyond this sea, and it has a harbour like 
 this harbour, only set towards the South, as this 
 is towards the North; but like this harbour it 
 looks out over an unknown sea, and like this 
 harbour it enjoys a perpetual light. Of what the 
 happy people in this country are, or of how they 
 
312 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 speak, no one has told me, but they will receive 
 me well, for I am of one kind with themselves. 
 But as to how I shall know this harbour, I can tell 
 you : there is a range of hills, broken by a valley 
 through which one sees a further and a higher 
 range, and steering for this hollow in the hills one 
 sees a tower out to sea upon a rock, and high up 
 inland a white quarry on a hill-top ; and these two 
 in line are the leading marks by which one gets 
 clear into the mouth of the river, and so to the 
 wharves of the town. And there," he ended, **I 
 shall come off the sea for ever, and every one will 
 call me by my name," 
 
 The sun was now near the horizon, but not yet 
 risen, and for a little time he said nothing to me 
 nor I to him, for he was at work sweating up the 
 halyard and setting the peak. He let go the 
 mooring knot also, but he held the end of the rope 
 in his hand and paid it out, standing and looking 
 upward, as the sail slowly filled and his craft 
 drifted towards me. He pressed the tiller with 
 his knee to keep her full. 
 
 I now knew by his eyes and voice that he was 
 from the West, and I could not see him leave me 
 without asking him from what place he came that 
 he should set out for such another place. So I 
 asked him; *'Are you from Ireland, or from 
 Brittany, or from the Islands ? " He answered me : 
 ** I am from none of these, but from Cornwall." 
 
HARBOUR IN THE NORTH 318 
 
 And as he answered me thus shortly he still 
 watched the sail and still pressed the tiller with his 
 knee, and still paid out the mooring rope without 
 turning round. 
 
 *^ You cannot make the harbour," I said to him. 
 ** It is not of this world." 
 
 Just at that moment the breeze caught the peak 
 of his jolly brown sail ; he dropped the tail of the 
 rope : it slipped and splashed into the harbour 
 slime. His large boat heeled, shot up, just missed 
 my cable ; and then he let her go free, and she 
 ran clear away. As she ran he looked over his 
 shoulder and laughed most cheerily ; he greeted 
 me with his eyes, and he waved his hand to me in 
 the morning light. 
 
 He held her well. A clean wake ran behind her. 
 He put her straight for the harbour-mouth and 
 passed the pier-heads and took the sea outside. 
 
 Whether in honest truth he was a fisherman out 
 for fishes who chose to fence with me, or whether 
 in that cruise of his he landed up in a Norwegian 
 bay, or thought better of it in Orkney, or went 
 through the sea and through death to the place he 
 desired, I have never known. 
 
 I watched him holding on, and certainly he kept 
 a course. The sun rose, the town awoke, but I 
 would not cease from watching him. His sail 
 still showed a smaller and a smaller point upon 
 the sea ; he did not waver. For an hour I caught 
 
314 HILLS AND THE SEA 
 
 it and lost it, and caught it again, as it dwindled ; 
 for half another hour I could not swear to it in the 
 blaze. Before I had wearied it was gone. 
 
 Oh ! my companions, both you to whom I dedi- 
 cate this book and you who have accompanied me 
 over other hills and across other waters or before the 
 guns in Burgundy, or you others who were with 
 me when I seemed alone — that ulterior shore was 
 the place we were seeking in every cruise and 
 march and the place we thought at last to see. 
 We, too, had in mind that Town of which this 
 man spoke to me in the Scottish harbour before 
 he sailed out northward to find what he could 
 find. But I did not follow him, for even if I had 
 followed him I should not have found the Town. 
 
 t ^58je