purple and rose. On the clear summits the snow sometimes lies; and, as
the royal orb sinks, you will see the snow blush for a minute with
throbbing carnation tints that shift and faint off slowly into cold
pallid green. The heart is too full of ecstasy to allow even of thought.
You live--that is all! You may continue your wanderings among all the
mystic sounds and sights of the night, but it is better to rest long and
well when you can. Let the village innkeeper put down for you the
coarsest fare that can be conceived, and you will be content; for, as a
matter of fact, any food and drink appeal gratefully to the palate of a
man who has been inhaling the raciest air at every pore for eight or ten
hours. If the fare does not happen to be coarse--if, for example, the
landlord has a dish of trout--so much the better; you do not envy any
crowned personage in Christendom or elsewhere. And how much does your
day of Paradise cost you? At the utmost, half-a-crown. Had you been away
on the Rhine or in Switzerland or in some German home of brigands, you
would have been bleeding at the purse all day, while in our own
matchless land you have had merriment, wild nature, air that is like the
essence of life--and all for thirty pence. When night falls heavily, you
pass your last hour in listening to the under-song of the sea and the
whisper of the roaming winds among the grass. Then, if you are wise and
grateful, you thank the Giver of all, and go to sleep.

In the jolly greenwoods of the Midlands you may have enjoyment of
another kind. Some men prefer the sleepy settled villages, the sweeping
fens with their bickering windmills, the hush and placidity of old
market-towns that brood under the looming majesty of the castle. The
truth is that you cannot go anywhere in England outside of the blighted
hideous manufacturing districts without finding beauty and peace. In the
first instance you seek health and physical well-being--that goes
without saying; but the walking epicure must also have dainty thoughts,
full banquets of the mind, quiet hours wherein resolutions may be framed
in solitude and left in the soul to ripen. When the epicure returns to
the din of towns, he has a safeguard in his own breast which tends to
keep him alike from folly and melancholy. Furthermore, as he passes the
reeking dens where human beings crowd who never see flower or tree, he
feels all churlishness depart from him, and he is ready to pity and help
his less