the ragworts and the tender
passing glances of the wild veronica, you can take in all their
loveliness with the eye, while the brain goes on adding to your pleasure
by recalling the music of the poets. Perhaps you fall into step with the
quiver and beat of our British Homer's rushing rhymes, and Marmion
thunders over the brown hills of the Border, or Clara lingers where
mingles war's rattle with groans of the dying. Perhaps the wilful brain
persists in crooning over the "Belle Dame Sans Merci;" your mood
flutters and changes with every minute, and you derive equal
satisfaction from the organ-roll of Milton or the silvery flageolet
tones of Thomas Moore. If culture consists in learning the grammar an
etymologies of a poet's song, then no cultured man will ever get any
pleasure from poetry while he is on a walking tour; but, if you absorb
your poets into your being, you have spells of rare and unexpected
delight.

The halt is always pleasant. On our sand-hills the brackens grow to an
immense height, and, if you lie down among them, you are surrounded by a
pale green gleam, as if you had dived beneath some lucent sun-smitten
water. The ground-lark sways on a frond above you; the stonechat lights
for an instant, utters his cracking cry, and is off with a whisk; you
have fair, quiet, and sweet rest, and you start up ready to jog along
again. You come to a slow clear stream that winds seaward, lilting to
itself in low whispered cadences. Over some broad shallow pool paven
with brown stones the little trout fly hither and thither, making a weft
and woof of dark streaks as they travel; the minnows poise themselves,
and shiver and dart convulsively; the leisurely eel undulates along, and
perhaps gives you a glint of his wicked eye; you begin to understand the
angler's fascination, for the most restive of men might be lulled by the
light moan of that wimpling current. Cruel? Alas, yes!

That quaint old cruel coxcomb in his gullet
Should have a hook, with a small trout to pull it.

That was the little punishment which Byron devised for Izaak Walton. But
of course, if you once begin to be supersensitive about cruelty, you
find your way blocked at every cross-road of life, and existence ceases
to be worth having.

On, as the sun slopes, and his beams fall slant over solemn mounds of
cool gray hue and woody fields all pranked in gold. Look to the north,
and you see the far-away hills in their sunset livery of white and