ld not. The water had to be
drawn from the barrel, the barrel was on wheels; time was short, life
was tough; and so--you see! We did justice to the shepherd.

It is shocking that a man should live so, held of less account than
the sheep which he rears; but it is admirable that this man should
live as he does. The house, to call it so, was as clean as a dairy;
the children were neat, washed and brushed; the girl was one for
Herrick to have sung of. I wish that I could have seen the shepherd,
though it may well be that his wife, if she is alive, would reveal
more. Something told me that he was a widower, and that this fair
young woman mothered his brood for him. What she had of the nest-lore
can only have come from a shrewd mistress of it. I did not see a book
in the place, nor a newspaper.

Life out there, on such terms, is more solitary than in
Northumberland, where the farms are isolated and self-sufficient,
but all the hinds' dwellings are clustered, and society may be had.
I don't believe you can set up for a successful hermit without a
long education; and although a shepherd himself may be one by a stern
schooling in solitude, you should not expect it of his daughter. Here
was a girl made for social amenity, who would want to be danced
with, flirted with, courted with flowers, sweets and other delicate
observance. She deserved admiration both to receive and impart. It is
useless to talk about nature; the love of that is both sophisticated
and acquired. Nothing to her the great blue spaces of the Plain, the
brooded mystery of Stonehenge, the companionship of her long-dead
ancestry, dust in their barrows. No solace for her, after the burden
of the day, in the large solemnity of evening out there, which to
some of us would call a message almost vocal. To me, for instance, a
summer's dusk, a moonrise on the Plain, are poems without words. Heard
melodies are sweet, but those unheard--!

For whom, then, had she adorned herself in white raiment, for whom
dressed her dark hair? Not for us, that's certain. She had had no
notice of our coming. That she should do such things for their own
sake, _elegantia quadam prope divinum_, was original virtue in her.
Solomon in all his glory had been no goodlier sight; and if she toiled
or spun to achieve it, her state, I should say, is by so much the
more gracious. And what the devil does she do with herself in the long
winter nights, when you light the lamp at four and see nothing of