rous
days as these days of early spring, when the body is unstrung, and the
bonds and ties that fasten the soul to its prison are loosened and
unbound, the spirit, striving to be glad, draws in through the passages
of sense these swift impressions of beauty, as a thirsty child drains a
cup of spring-water on a sun-scorched day, lingering over the limpid
freshness of the gliding element. The airy voices of the strings being
stilled, with a sort of pity for those penned in the crowded room,
interchanging the worn coinage of civility, we stood a while looking in
at a gate, through which we could see the cool front of a Georgian
manor-house, built of dusky bricks, with coigns and dressings of grey
stone. The dark windows with their thick white casements, the
round-topped dormers, the steps up to the door, and a prim circle of
grass which seemed to lie like a carpet on the pale gravel, gave the
feeling of a picture; the whole being framed in the sombre yews of
shrubberies which bordered the drive. It was hard to feel that the
quiet house was the scene of a real and active life; it seemed so full
of a slumberous peace, and to be tenanted only by soft shadows of the
past. And so we went slowly on by the huge white-boarded mill, its
cracks streaming with congealed dust of wheat, where the water
thundered through the sluices and the gear rattled within.

We crossed the bridge, and walked on by a field-track that skirted the
edge of the wold. How thin and clean were the tints of the dry
ploughlands and the long sweep of pasture! Presently we were at the
foot of a green drift-road, an old Roman highway that ran straight up
into the downs. On such a day as this, one follows a spirit in one's
feet, as Shelley said; and we struck up into the wold, on the green
road, with its thorn-thickets, until the chalk began to show white
among the ruts; and we were soon at the top. A little to the left of
us appeared, in the middle of the pasture, a tiny round-topped tumulus
that I had often seen from a lower road, but never visited. It was
fresher and cooler up here. On arriving at the place we found that it
was not a tumulus at all, but a little outcrop of the pure chalk. It
had steep, scarped sides with traces of caves scooped in them. The
grassy top commanded a wide view of wold and plain.

Our talk wandered over many things, but here, I do not know why, we
were speaking of the taking up of old friendships, and the comfort and