, or swung the Admiral's galley on its tide.

It is good for an Englishman to stand here and listen to the brown
waters lapping on the old walls and caulked timbers; to hear, as an
under murmur, voices of Lechlade and Bablockhythe, for all intervening
leagues of wood and meadow not altogether lost: before this persistence
and continuity of youth to feel high thoughts stir within him and
solemnize the nativity of new resolve. You cannot feel beneath your feet
these old stones trodden by the great generations of your own blood and
kindred, and not be moved to walk uprightly, to be approved by their
shades as one not unworthy of such descent. For whether such worn
stones be in the aisle of some great minster, or here, paving this
narrow way for hurrying feet, the inspiration is as strong and the
thankfulness not other. For this is a place of meridian, the navel of
our land and empire; the wind searching its alleys has no usual voice,
but as it were a deep and oceanic sound, according with old ballads and
stories of the sea.

I lingered leaning upon the rail until the tide had fallen from the
wall, tracing along the narrow pebbled foreshore a clear marginal line
of irregular contour, now sinuous, now straight, but palely luminous
like a silver tone on some enamel of old Italy, a line drawn by a master
draughtsman, in its inevitable and sure perfection wholly satisfying the
eye. With the dark bank it vanished towards the great city, now marked
in the upper sky by a hovering brightness of light escaped beyond the
smoky rampart to tell the effort of innumerable lamps beneath, all
pouring their blurred and vain effulgence to the disdainful stars.

Moreover, the city will give the shy man all the consolations of art,
philosophy and literature of which his education or experience may have
made him worthy. He can see great pictures or read great books at little
cost, and find in them the truest of friends in need. It is so obvious
that a solitary of any culture will find relief with such companions,
that here I take for granted his resort to their aid, and will only
mention two resources from which the real recluse often draws less
advantage than he might, I mean orchestral music and the drama. Any man
of feeling who hears a great symphony ceases to be self-centred with the
first movement; he goes out of himself, and rides upon waves of sound,
exalted by this majesty of collective effort. No other music thrills his
whole being l