the top of a down;
in front of me lie the long slopes of the wold, with that purity and
tranquillity of outline which only down-land possesses. Here on a spur
stands a grass-grown camp, with ancient thorn-trees growing in it.
Turning round, the great plain runs for miles, with here and there a
glint of water, where the slow-moving Avon wanders. Hamlets, roads,
towers lie out like a map at my feet--all wearing that secluded,
peaceful air which tempts me to think that life would be easy and happy
if it could only be lived among those quiet fields, with the golden
light and lengthening shadows.

I find myself wondering in these quiet hours--I walk alone as a
rule--what this haunting, incommunicable sense of beauty is. Is it a
mere matter of temperament, of inner happiness, of physical well-being;
or has it an absolute existence? It comes and goes like the wind. Some
days one is acutely, almost painfully, alive to it--painfully, because
it makes such constant and insistent demands upon one's attention. Some
days, again, it is almost unheeded, and one passes through it blind and
indifferent. It is an expression, I cannot help feeling, of the very
mind of God; and yet the ancient earthwork in which I stand, bears
witness to the fact that in far-off days men lived in danger and
anxiety, fighting and striving for bare existence. We have established
by law and custom a certain personal security nowadays; is our sense of
beauty born of that security? I cannot help wondering whether the old
warriors who built this place cared at all for the beauty of the earth;
and yet over it all hangs the gentle sadness of all sweet things that
have an end. All those warriors are dust; the boys and girls who
wandered a century ago where I wander to-day, they are at rest too in
the little churchyard that lies at my feet; and my heart goes out to
all who have loved and suffered, and to those who shall hereafter love
and suffer here. An idle sympathy, perhaps, but none the less strong
and real.

But now for a little human experience that befell me here. I found the
other day, not far from the church, an old artist sketching. A refined,
sad-looking old fellow, sunburned and active, with white hair and
pointed beard, and a certain pathetic attempt, of a faded kind, to
dress for his part--low collar, a red tie, rough shooting-jacket, and
so forth. He seemed in a sociable mood, and I sate down beside him. How
it came about I hardly know, but he was s