glad to think that I have
walked on the heights where it was gathered and drawn, and that I have
heard it talk hoarsely to itself, cold and uncomforted, among the bleak
and dripping stones.

XLII

I have just returned from a few days in town, feeling that it is good
to have been there, if only for the sake of the return to the cool
silence of these solitary fields. I am not ungrateful for all the
kindness which I have received, but I cannot help thinking of the
atmosphere which I have left with a kind of horror.

The friend with whom I have been staying is a man of considerable
wealth. He has no occupation but the pursuit of culture. He is married
to a charming wife, also wealthy; but they are childless, and the
result is that they have nothing to expend their energies upon except
books and art and society. At long intervals my friend produces a tiny
volume, beautifully printed and bound, which he presents to his
friends. Last year it was an account of some curious religious
ceremonies which he came across in a tour in Brittany. I dare say I am
wrong, but it seems to me that the only charm of these grotesque and
absurd rites is that country people should practise them quietly and
secretly, as a matter of old and customary tradition. The moment that
the cultivated stranger comes among them with his philological and
sociological explanations, their pretty significance seems to me to be
gone. I do not care a brass farthing what they are all about; they are
old, they are legendary; as performed by people who have grown up among
them, and seen them practised from childhood as a matter of course,
they have a certain grace of congruity about them, as the schoolmen
say. But printed gravely in a book they seem to me to be nothing but
barbarous and foolish games of childish import.

Another year he found some Finnish legends when he was on a yachting
cruise, which he translated into an ungainly English. The tales are
utterly worthless, not a spark of romance from beginning to end, only
typical of an age which I humbly thank God we have left behind.

This year he is full of Balearic music; he played me a number of dreary
and monotonous tunes, which he said were so characteristic. But if they
were characteristic, and I have no reason to doubt his word, they only
seem to me to prove that those islanders are destitute of musical taste
and instinct to a quite singular degree.

While I was up in town, my friends certain