him the far-off spires of some city, or a range of mountain-tops, or
a rim of sea, perhaps, along a low horizon. In short, he may gratify

his every whim and fancy, without a pang of reproving conscience, or
the least jostle to his self-respect. It is true, however, that most

men do not possess the faculty of free action, the priceless gift of
being able to live for the moment only; and as they begin to go

forward on their journey, they will find that they have made for
themselves new fetters. Slight projects they may have entertained

for a moment, half in jest, become iron laws to them, they know not
why. They will be led by the nose by these vague reports of which I

spoke above; and the mere fact that their informant mentioned one
village and not another will compel their footsteps with inexplicable

power. And yet a little while, yet a few days of this fictitious
liberty, and they will begin to hear imperious voices calling on them

to return; and some passion, some duty, some worthy or unworthy
expectation, will set its hand upon their shoulder and lead them back

into the old paths. Once and again we have all made the experiment.
We know the end of it right well. And yet if we make it for the

hundredth time to-morrow: it will have the same charm as ever; our
heart will beat and our eyes will be bright, as we leave the town

behind us, and we shall feel once again (as we have felt so often
before) that we are cutting ourselves loose for ever from our whole

past life, with all its sins and follies and circumscriptions, and go
forward as a new creature into a new world.

It was well, perhaps, that I had this first enthusiasm to encourage
me up the long hill above High Wycombe; for the day was a bad day for

walking at best, and now began to draw towards afternoon, dull,
heavy, and lifeless. A pall of grey cloud covered the sky, and its

colour reacted on the colour of the landscape. Near at hand, indeed,
the hedgerow trees were still fairly green, shot through with bright

autumnal yellows, bright as sunshine. But a little way off, the
solid bricks of woodland that lay squarely on slope and hill-top were

not green, but russet and grey, and ever less russet and more grey as
they drew off into the distance. As they drew off into the distance,

also, the woods seemed to mass themselves together, and lie thin and
straight, like clouds, upon the limit of one's view. Not that this

massing was complete, or gave the idea of any extent of forest, for
every here and there the trees would break up and go down into a

valley in open order, or stand in long Indian file along the horizon,
tree after tree relieved, foolishly enough, against the sky. I say

foolishly enough, although I have seen the effect employed cleverly
in art, and such long line of single trees thrown out against the

customary sunset of a Japanese picture with a certain fantastic
effect that was not to be despised; but this was over water and level

land, where it did not jar, as here, with the soft contour of hills
and valleys. The whole scene had an indefinable look of being

painted, the colour was so abstract and correct, and there was
something so sketchy and merely impressional about these distant

single trees on the horizon that one was forced to think of it all as
of a clever French landscape. For it is rather in nature that we see

resemblance to art, than in art to nature; and we say a hundred
times, 'How like a picture!' for once that we say, 'How like the

truth!' The forms in which we learn to think of landscape are forms
that we have got from painted canvas. Any man can see and understand

a picture; it is reserved for the few to separate anything out of the
confusion of nature, and see that distinctly and with intelligence.

The sun came out before I had been long on my way; and as I had got
by that time to the top of the ascent, and was now treading a

labyrinth of confined by-roads, my whole view brightened considerably
in colour, for it was the distance only that was grey and cold, and

the distance I could see no longer. Overhead there was a wonderful
carolling of larks which seemed to follow me as I went. Indeed,

during all the time I was in that country the larks did not desert
me. The air was alive with them from High Wycombe to Tring; and as,

day after day, their 'shrill delight' fell upon me out of the vacant
sky, they began to take such a prominence over other conditions, and

form so integral a part of my conception of the country, that I could
have baptized it 'The Country of Larks.' This, of course, might just

as well have been in early spring; but everything else was deeply
imbued with the sentiment of the later year. There was no stir of

insects in the grass. The sunshine was more golden, and gave less
heat than summer sunshine; and the shadows under the hedge were

somewhat blue and misty. It was only in autumn that you could have
seen the mingled green and yellow of the elm foliage, and the fallen

leaves that lay about the road, and covered the surface of wayside
pools so thickly that the sun was reflected only here and there from

little joints and pinholes in that brown coat of proof; or that your
ear would have been troubled, as you went forward, by the occasional

report of fowling-pieces from all directions and all degrees of
distance.

For a long time this dropping fire was the one sign of human activity
that came to disturb me as I walked. The lanes were profoundly

still. They would have been sad but for the sunshine and the singing
of the larks. And as it was, there came over me at times a feeling

of isolation that was not disagreeable, and yet was enough to make me
quicken my steps eagerly when I saw some one before me on the road.

This fellow-voyager proved to be no less a person than the parish
constable. It had occurred to me that in a district which was so

little populous and so well wooded, a criminal of any intelligence
might play hide-and-seek with the authorities for months; and this

idea was strengthened by the aspect of the portly constable as he
walked by my side with deliberatedignity and turned-out toes. But a

few minutes' converse set my heart at rest. These rural criminals
are very tame birds, it appeared. If my informant did not

immediately lay his hand on an offender, he was content to wait; some
evening after nightfall there would come a tap at his door, and the

outlaw, weary of outlawry, would give himself quietly up to undergo
sentence, and resume his position in the life of the country-side.

Married men caused him no disquietude whatever; he had them fast by
the foot. Sooner or later they would come back to see their wives, a

peeping neighbour would pass the word, and my portly constable would
walk quietly over and take the bird sitting. And if there were a few

who had no particular ties in the neighbourhood, and preferred to
shift into another county when they fell into trouble, their

departure moved the placidconstable in no degree. He was of
Dogberry's opinion; and if a man would not stand in the Prince's

name, he took no note of him, but let him go, and thanked God he was
rid of a knave. And surely the crime and the law were in admirable

keeping; rusticconstable was well met with rusticoffender. The
officer sitting at home over a bit of fire until the criminal came to

visit him, and the criminal coming - it was a fair match. One felt
as if this must have been the order in that delightful seaboard

Bohemia where Florizel and Perdita courted in such sweet accents, and
the Puritan sang Psalms to hornpipes, and the four-and-twenty

shearers danced with nosegays in their bosoms, and chanted their
three songs apiece at the old shepherd's festival; and one could not

help picturing to oneself what havoc among good peoples purses, and
tribulation for benignant constables, might be worked here by the

arrival, over stile and footpath, of a new Autolycus.
Bidding good-morning to my fellow-traveller, I left the road and

struck across country. It was rather a revelation to pass from
between the hedgerows and find quite a bustle on the other side, a

great coming and going of school-children upon by-paths, and, in
every second field, lusty horses and stout country-folk a-ploughing.

The way I followed took me through many fields thus occupied, and
through many strips of plantation, and then over a little space of

smooth turf, very pleasant to the feet, set with tall fir-trees and
clamorous with rooks making ready for the winter, and so back again

into the quiet road. I was now not far from the end of my day's
journey. A few hundred yards farther, and, passing through a gap in

the hedge, I began to go down hill through a pretty extensive tract
of young beeches. I was soon in shadow myself, but the afternoon sun