THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 OF WALKS AND 
 WALKING TOURS
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 GOLDWIN SMITH 
 
 His Life and Opinions 
 
 Illustrated with many Important Portraits 
 Demy 8vo, cloth gilt. i8s. net 
 
 "A thoroughly readable book." Lon- 
 don Times. 
 
 "Of its human and literary interest we 
 could hardly speak too highly." Birming- 
 ham Post. 
 
 UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE 
 
 THE CORRESPONDENCE OF 
 GOLDWIN SMITH 
 
 Illustrated with many Important Portraits 
 Demy 8vo, cloth gilt. i8s. net. 
 
 All Rights Reserved
 
 OF WALKS AND 9 $ 
 WALKING TOURS 
 
 An Attempt to find a Philosophy 
 and a Creed 
 
 BY 
 
 ARNOLD HAULTAIN 
 
 Author of " Hints for Lovers " 
 
 " The Mystery of Golf" 
 " Goldwin Smith : His Life and Opinions " 
 Etc. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 T. WERNER LAURIE LTD. 
 
 8 ESSEX STREET, STRAND 
 1914
 
 " De natura Rationis est res sub quadam 
 aeternitatis specie percipere." 
 
 SPINOZA, Ethics, Part II., 
 
 Proposition xliv., Corollary ii.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE writing of this little book has given 
 me a great deal of pleasure. That is why 
 I hope that, here and there, it may give 
 pleasure to others. 
 
 And yet it was not an easy task. 
 Nature's lessons are hard to learn. Harder 
 still is it to translate Nature's lessons to 
 others. Besides, the appeal of Nature is 
 to the Emotions ; and words are weak 
 things (save in the hands of a great Poet) 
 by which to convey or to evoke emotion. 
 Words seem to be the vehicles rather of 
 ratiocination than of emotion. Is not 
 even the Poet driven to link words to 
 music ? And always le mot juste, the 
 exact word, is so difficult to find ! Yet 
 found it must be if the appeal is to avail. 
 
 If, in these pages, there are scattered 
 speculations semi-mystical, semi-intellig- 
 ible, perhaps even transcending the boun- 
 daries of rigid logic, I must simply aver 
 that I put in writing that only which was 
 
 V 
 
 87O902
 
 PREFACE 
 
 given me to say. How or whence it came, 
 I do not know. And this, notwithstand- 
 ing (or, perhaps, in a way, corroborative of) 
 my own belief that no thought is auto- 
 genous, but has parents and a pedigree. 
 
 I have tried, quite humbly, to follow, as 
 motto, the sentence chosen from Spinoza. 
 Yet, with that sentence always should be 
 read this other, taken from Pascal: "La 
 derniere demarche de la rat'son, cest de 
 reconnaitre quit y a une infinite de ckoses 
 qui la surpassent" Always emotion, 
 imagination, feeling, faith, try to soar 
 above reason ; and always they feel the 
 inadequacy of words. 
 
 I have incorporated in this book some 
 parts of my " Two Country Walks in 
 Canada" now long out of print (itself 
 comprising an article from The Nineteenth 
 Century and another from Blackwoods] ; 
 also (with the permission of the editor) an 
 article in The Atlantic Monthly Magazine ; 
 and Sections 22 and 23 first appeared in 
 The Canadian Magazine. 
 
 GENEVA, 1914.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. GOLF AND WALKING . . i 
 
 II. THE ESSENCE OF A WALK . . 5 
 
 III. NOTABLE WALKERS ... 9 
 
 IV. MY EARLIEST WALKS . . 15 
 V. INDIA . . . *7 
 
 VI. ENGLISH BYWAYS . . .21 
 
 VII. A SPRING MORNING IN ENGLAND . 25 
 
 VIII. AUTUMN REVERIES . 29 
 
 IX. SPIRITUALITY OF NATURE . . 34 
 
 X. PRACTICAL TRANSCENDENTALISM . 40 
 
 XI. SPRING IN CANADA . . .45 
 
 XII. AUTUMN IN CANADA . . 53 
 
 XIII. WINTER IN CANADA. . . 59 
 
 XIV. THE MOOD FOR WALKING . . 72 
 XV. EVENING MEDITATIONS . . 78 
 
 XVI. THE UNITY OF NATURE . . 91 
 
 XVII. THE INSTINCT FOR WALKING . 103 
 vii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEB 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XVIII. A WOEFUL WALK . . 105 
 
 XIX. AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN . 107 
 
 XX. THE WALKING TOUR . . 133 
 
 XXI. THE TRAMP'S DIETARY . . , 140 
 
 XXII. PRACTICAL DETAILS . . 152 
 
 XXIII. THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE . 159 
 
 XXIV. WARNINGS TO THE OVER-ZEALOUS 180 
 
 XXV. HOW THAT ALL POINTS TO THE 
 
 INFINITE . . *88 
 
 XXVI. THE PLEASURES OF WALKING . 198 
 
 XXVII. Is WALKING SELFISH? . . 216 
 
 XXVIII. THE P.EAN OF BEING . . 223 
 
 INDEX . . . .227
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING 
 TOURS 
 
 I 
 GOLF AND WALKING 
 
 MANY are the indictments which are 
 brought against Golf : that it is a deplor- 
 able waster of time ; that it depletes the 
 purse ; that it divorces husband and 
 wife ; that it delays the dinner - hour, 
 freckles fair feminine faces, upsets 
 domestic arrangements, and unhinges 
 generally the mental balance of its 
 devotees. Yet perhaps to each of such 
 charges Golf can enter a plea. It repays 
 expenditure of time and money with
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 interest in the form of health and good 
 spirits. If it acts the part of co-respondent 
 it is always open to the petitioner to 
 espouse the game. If it keeps men and 
 women away from work and home, at 
 least it keeps them out on the breezy 
 links and dispels for a time the cares of 
 the office or the kitchen. If it tans 
 well, it tans, and a tanned face needs 
 no paint, and is, moreover, beautiful to 
 look upon. Nevertheless, one indictment 
 there is against which it is not in the 
 power of Golf to enter a plea. It has 
 killed the country walk. " A country 
 walk ! " exclaimed a fellow-golfer to me 
 the other day. " I have not taken a 
 country walk since I began to play." 
 
 There are, I know, who affect to believe 
 that Golf consists of country walks, 
 diversified and embellished by pauses 
 made for the purpose of impelling little
 
 GOLF AND WALKING 
 
 round balls into little round holes ; that 
 mind and eye are occupied chiefly with 
 the beauties of Nature, and that the 
 impulsion of the insignificant sphere into 
 the insignificant void is, as it were, but a 
 sop to Cerberus, or a cock sacrificed to the 
 ^sculapius of this sporting age. " How 
 greatly," said to me once a fair and inno- 
 cent stranger to my links " how greatly 
 this beautiful landscape must enhance 
 the pleasure of your game 1 " sancta 
 simplicitas ! Far be it from me to explain 
 that as a rule the horrid golfer only drank 
 in the beauties of that landscape when the 
 game was over, and he was, perchance, 
 occupied in performing a similar opera- 
 tion upon the contents of a tumbler at his 
 elbow as he reclined in an arm-chair on the 
 verandah. And yet, and yet, our links 
 are beautiful, and one and all of us then- 
 frequenters know and appreciate to the 
 3
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 full their beauty ; but not, I think, at the 
 moment of " addressing the ball." No ; 
 Golf is Golf ; a country walk is quite 
 another thing ; and the one, I maintain, 
 has killed the other.
 
 II 
 
 THE ESSENCE OF A WALK 
 
 2 
 
 FOR, mark you, the essence of a country 
 walk is that you shall have no object or 
 aim whatsoever. The frame of mind in 
 which one ought to set out upon a rural 
 peregrination should be one of absolute 
 mental vacuity. Almost one ought to 
 rid oneself, if so be that were possible, 
 even of the categories of time and place : 
 for to start with a determination to cover 
 a certain distance within a specified time 
 is to take, not a walk, but a " constitu- 
 tional " ; and of all abortions or mon- 
 strosities of country walks, commend me 
 to the constitutional. The proper frame 
 5
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 of mind is that of absolute and secure 
 passivity ; an openness to impressions ; 
 a giving-up of ourselves to the great and 
 guiding influences of benignant Nature ; 
 a humble receptivity of soul ; a wonder- 
 ing and childlike eagerness not a restless 
 and too inquisitive eagerness to learn all 
 that great Nature may like to teach, and 
 to learn it in the way that great Nature 
 would have us learn. 
 
 Yet, true, though we take with us a 
 vacuous mind, it must be a plenable mind 
 (if I may coin the word), a serenely 
 responsive mind ; otherwise we shall not 
 reap the harvest of a quiet eye. 
 
 " How bountiful is Nature ! he shall find 
 Who seeks not ; and to him who hath not asked 
 Large measure shall be dealt," 
 
 sings Wordsworth ; and of Nature and 
 of Nature's ways no one had a greater 
 right to sing. Wordsworth must have
 
 THE ESSENCE OF A WALK 
 
 been an ideal country walker. " The Ex- 
 cursion " is the harvest of innumerable 
 walks, and when Wordsworth depicts the 
 Wanderer he depicts himself : 
 
 " In the woods 
 
 A lone Enthusiast, and among the fields, 
 Itinerant in this labour, he had passed 
 The better portion of his time ; and there 
 Spontaneously had his affections thriven 
 Amid the bounties of the year, the peace 
 And liberty of Nature ; there he kept, 
 In solitude and solitary thought, 
 His mind in a just equipoise of love." 
 
 Only, " the w ... w ... worst of 
 W ... W ... Wordsworth is," as a 
 stammering friend of mine once remarked, 
 " is, he is so d ... d ... d ... des- 
 perate p . . . pensive." (I was expecting 
 a past participle, not an ungrammatical 
 adverb for the " d.") He is ; and like, 
 yet unlike, Falstaff, he is not only pensive 
 in himself, but he is the cause of pensive- 
 7
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 ness in other things to wit, his " stars," 
 his " citadels," and what not ; and cer- 
 tainly his diary of " A Tour in Scotland " 
 makes the driest reading I know. Never- 
 theless, Wordsworth must have been an 
 ideal country walker. He was 
 
 " A lover of the meadows and the woods, 
 And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
 From this green earth " ; 
 
 and if we would understand him, we 
 ourselves must 
 
 " Let the moon 
 
 Shine on us in our solitary walk ; 
 And let the misty mountain winds be free 
 To blow against us."
 
 Ill 
 
 NOTABLE WALKERS 
 
 3 
 
 ALL great souls, I venture to think, were 
 at some period of their lives walkers in the 
 country. Jesus of Nazareth spent forty 
 days in the wilderness, and the three years 
 of his mission were, we know, spent in 
 unceasing wandering. And whose heart 
 does not burn within him as he reads the 
 moving narrative of that seven-mile 
 country walk which he took with two of 
 his disciples to the village called Emmaus ? 
 It was after a forty days' solitary sojourn 
 on Mount Sinai, too, so we are told, that 
 Moses came down armed with the Deca- 
 logue ; and was it not after a similar 
 Ramadan retreat that Mohammed re- 
 9
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 turned with the novel doctrine that there 
 was no God but God ? Enoch, we know, 
 walked with God ; and it is a childish 
 fancy of mine which I am loath to relin- 
 quish that God took him, and that he was 
 not, for because he was so delectable 
 a companion. Of a surety the Sweet 
 Singer of Israel must have wandered much 
 in the green pastures and by the still 
 waters ; he who kept his father's sheep ; 
 who slew both the lion and the bear ; who 
 sang the high hills, a refuge for the wild 
 goats, and the rocks for the conies. 
 Indeed, if one comes to think of it, how 
 much literature owes to the country walk ! 
 It was to that long walk outside the wall 
 of Athens, and to the long talk that 
 Socrates held with Phaedrus under the 
 plane-tree by the banks of the Ilissus, 
 that we owe one of the most beautiful of 
 the Dialogues of Plato. There had been 
 
 10
 
 NOTABLE WALKERS 
 
 no Georgics had not Virgil loved the 
 country. Horace must as often have 
 circumambulated his Sabine farm as he 
 perambulated the Via Sacra. Chaucer 
 must sometimes have pilgrimed afoot, 
 and Spenser, trod as well as pricked 
 o'er the plain. Shakespeare's poaching 
 episode gives us a glimpse into his youth- 
 ful pursuits. Milton " oft the woods 
 among wooed Philomel to hear her even- 
 song " ; and even after his blindness 
 " not the more ceased he to wander where 
 the Muses haunt clear spring, or shady 
 grove, or sunny hill." " The Traveller " 
 of Goldsmith was the outcome of a walking 
 tour ; so was Robert Louis Stevenson's 
 " Travels in the Cevennes with a Donkey." 
 To how many minds walks about the green 
 flat meads of Oxford have been a quiet 
 stimulant we may get a hint from more 
 
 than one of Matthew Arnold's poems, 
 ii
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 Was it to Newman that Jowett, meeting 
 him alone and afoot, put the query: 
 " Nunquam minus solus quam quum 
 solus ?" Of Jowett's walks many a tale 
 is told. Of De Quincey, who spent his 
 youth in wanderings ; of William Cowper, 
 the gentle singer of the " Winter Walk " ; 
 of Thoreau * ; of Mr John Burroughs 2 ; 
 of Richard Jefferies 3 ; of Mr Hamilton 
 Wright Mabie, 4 the discoverer of the 
 
 ^ee Henry D. Thoreau's "Walden"; "A 
 Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers " ; 
 " Winter"; etc. 
 
 2 See John Burroughs, his "Birds and Poets " ; 
 "Locusts and Wild Honey"; "JPejj>acton_ ' ; 
 ""Signs and Seasons " ; " Wake Robin " ; " Winter 
 Sunshine^' ; etc. f^^. \<^C^> 
 
 8 See Richard Jefferies, his " Amateur Poaching ' ' ; -/ / 
 ^ FjelcUad JLedgejrow -. "4_L'_\WidLif e in a Southern ' 
 County " ; " Najture_near JLGffl^fla^J.JlJ^aBi--- 
 about a Great Estate " ; " Wood Magic " ; " The 
 "Story of my Heart." 
 
 * See Hamilton Wright Mabie's "In the Forest 
 of Arden " ; " Under the Trees and Elsewhere " ; 
 etc. 
 
 12
 
 NOTABLE WALKERS 
 
 Forest of Arden ; of Mr Henry Van Dyke 1 
 who would be, I warrant me, an incom- 
 parable companion for a walk, and whose 
 books make the pent-up sigh for the 
 open; of "A Son of the Marshes" 2 ; of 
 Dr Charles C. Abbott, 3 that indefatigable 
 Wasteland Wanderer ; of Mr Charles 
 Goodrich Whiting, 4 the Saunterer ; of 
 
 1 See Henry Van Dyke's " 
 some other Uncertain 
 
 A Book of Essays in Profitable Idleness " ; " Days 
 Off, and other Digressions " ; etc. 
 
 2 See "Ir^the Green Leaf and the^ere," by 
 " A Son of "the Marshes." Edited byjTA. Owen. 
 Illustrated by G. C. Haite and D. C. Nicholl. Also 
 "Drift from Longshore," by the same author and 
 editor. 
 
 3 See Charles C. Abbott's "Upland and 
 Meadow " ; " Wasteland Wanderings " ; " The 
 Birds About Us " ; "A Naturalist's Rambles about 
 Home " ; " Outings at Odd Times " ; " Recent 
 Rambles, or, In Touch with Nature " ; "Travels 
 in a Tree Top " ; " Birdland Echoes " ; " Notes 
 of the Night, and other Outdoor Sketches " ; etc. 
 
 4 See Charles Goodrich Whiting's " Walks in New 
 England " ; etc. 
 
 13
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 that prince of walkers, of whom The 
 Spectator said it was " half a pity that 
 such a man could not go walking about 
 for ever, for the benefit of people who are 
 not gifted with legs so stout and eyes so 
 discerning," I mean that erudite nomad, 
 George Borrow * ; of Senancour, who in 
 his journeys afoot experienced illusions 
 imposantes 2 ; of Sir Leslie Stephen 3 
 of these and many another lover of 
 outdoor Nature it is needless to speak. 
 
 1 See George Sorrow's " Wild Wales : Its People, 
 Language, and Scenery."" 
 
 * " Obermann," lettre ii. 
 
 8 See his " In Praise of Walking," in The Monthly 
 Review (London : Murray) of August, 1901.
 
 IV 
 MY EARLIEST WALKS 
 
 4 
 
 THE earliest walks which my own memory 
 recalls were rather curious ones. We were 
 in Burma, a country in which, in the dry 
 season, exercise must be taken about 
 daybreak or sundown, or not at all. 
 We walked and before breakfast ; and 
 always we were accompanied by a pet cat, 
 a sharp-nosed " toddy-cat " (so they 
 called him), indigenous to the country, 
 and not unlike the American raccoon, very 
 affectionate and very cleanly. But the 
 cat was not our only companion, for just 
 overhead, screaming threateningly, were 
 always also, and all the way, a flock of 
 15
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 kites the mortal enemies, so I must 
 suppose, of Hokey-Pokey (thus was named 
 our 'coon-cat pet). Now I come to think 
 of it, it must have been a funny sight : 
 a family afoot ; in the rear an impudent 
 cat with tail erect ; overhead irate and 
 clamorous kites. 
 
 16
 
 INDIA 
 
 5 
 
 MY next walks were on the Nilgiris, the 
 Blue Mountains of India. Ah, they were 
 beautiful ! The seven or eight thousand 
 feet of altitude tempered the tropical sun, 
 the mornings were fresh and invigorating 
 your cold bath was really cold, and 
 spring seemed perennial. Hedges of 
 cluster-roses bloomed the whole year 
 round ; on the orange-trees were leaf, bud, 
 bloom and ripening fruit, also the whole 
 year round. Heliotrope grew in gigantic 
 bushes that were pruned with garden 
 clippers. Through the grounds about 
 
 the house flowed a babbling brook, widen- 
 B 17
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 ing here and there into quiet ponds, from 
 the sedgy edges of which green-stemmed 
 arums raised their graceful cups. In the 
 deep valleys grew the tree-fern ; here 
 and there a playful waterfall gushed from 
 the hill ; and everything was green. No ; 
 two things were not green : the one, the 
 hot and hazy plains, shimmering in yellow 
 dust as seen from the shoulder of a hill ; 
 the other, the gigantic Droog, a mighty 
 mountain mass rearing its head, sombre 
 and silent, on the other side of a deep 
 ravine. The Droog was purple : not 
 with the pellucid purple of a petal, but 
 with the misty blue-black purple of the 
 bloom of a plum. Ah, it was all very 
 good. Never shall I forget the convolvu- 
 lus that decorated the northern verandah 
 before the heat of day shrivelled the 
 delicate corollas. There were rich bass 
 
 purples that stirred one like the tones of 
 18
 
 INDIA 
 
 an organ. There were soprano pinks so 
 exquisite that a pianissimo trill on a violin 
 seemed crude in comparison. Their 
 beauty was all but audible : it penetrated 
 the senses and reached in to some inner 
 subtile psychic centre, there to move 
 emotions which must remain unsaid. 
 This was in India. There is something 
 perfervid in the fascination of the East. 
 The West may clutch the thrilled heart 
 with a steely clasp ; the East holds the 
 soul in a passionate embrace. Ah, India, 
 beloved India, my first nurse and I trust 
 my last ; "not were that submarine, gem- 
 lighted city mine " would I relinquish 
 hope of seeing thee again, adored India : 
 old majestic land ; land of ancient castes 
 and alien creeds ; land of custom, myth, 
 and magic ; land of pungent odours, 
 stinging tastes, and colours dazzling as the 
 sun ; land of mystery, of pageant, and of 
 19
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 pain ! Ah, subtile, thralling, luring India! 
 India is like Samson's lion : it has been 
 conquered by the young and lusty Occi- 
 dent, and in its old carcass its conqueror 
 finds both meat and sweetness ; and it 
 serves for a riddle to others. To complete 
 the analogy, there are those who are 
 trying to plough with Samson's heifer. 
 
 20
 
 VI 
 
 ENGLISH BYWAYS 
 6 
 
 MY next walks were in England. For 
 their size, the British Isles probably 
 afford the most varied tramping ground 
 of any country in the world. Within a 
 few hundred miles of radius you get 
 infinite variety : the rolling downs ; the 
 quiet weald ; hilly Derbyshire ; mount- 
 ainous Wales ; Devonshire's lanes ; the 
 Westmorland or the Cumberland lakes 
 these for the seeker of quiet. For the 
 more emprising there is the wild and 
 broken scenery of the northern isles ; 
 and the lover of the homeless sea can 
 choose any shore to his liking. 
 
 21
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 7 
 
 There is an impression abroad that in 
 England you must confine your steps to 
 the high-road. That has not been my 
 experience. True, you must not expect 
 everywhere to be allowed to stalk any- 
 where across country unless you are 
 following the beagles ; but, so numerous 
 are the byways and bridle-paths ; so 
 easy has access been made, through 
 centuries of hereditary ownership, from 
 one field or stile or farm to another ; so 
 generous, too, are so many landlords, that 
 one can travel for many and many a mile 
 without doing more than cross and recross 
 the road. But true it is also that, in order 
 to do this, you must know something of 
 the locality. 
 
 One much-hidden entrance to a most 
 sequestered spot I hope I do no wrong in 
 
 22
 
 ENGLISH BYWAYS 
 
 revealing here. London stretches out 
 north-west almost to Uxbridge, nearly 
 twenty miles out that is, habitations 
 line almost every inch of the way. After 
 Uxbridge, the road is hard, dry, and 
 comparatively uninteresting. But, near 
 a cross-road, where is a house on either 
 side, if you look carefully to the right 
 you will dimly discern, beneath the shade 
 of low-bending boughs, and almost hidden 
 by these, a simple, unpretending stile. 
 I recommend you to climb over it, for it is 
 the entrance to a great, quiet, secluded 
 spot, several acres in extent, thickly 
 wooded with superb beeches and firs, so 
 thickly wooded that the sky is invisible 
 and the earth wholly in shade. But for 
 the extreme kemptness of the underbrush 
 (and the fact that you have just stepped 
 out of the London road), you might be in 
 a primaeval forest of the West. Nor is 
 23
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 this the sum of its beauty. High though 
 it is above the surrounding country, 
 embosomed in this forest is a lovely lake, 
 exquisite in its colouring, reflecting, as 
 it does, the cloud-flecked sky, and, all 
 round its rim, the bending boughs of the 
 beech. Typical of England are this lake 
 and park. They are private property, 
 of course ; but the owner gives every 
 wayfarer leave of access. Typical of 
 England : tenacious of rights, yet just, 
 nay, generous, to all. 
 
 24
 
 VII 
 
 A SPRING MORNING IN ENGLAND 
 
 8 
 
 HE who knows not England I will here 
 permit to peep into a page of a diary 
 giving a glimpse of a morning dawdle on 
 the Sussex Downs : 
 
 " ROYAL OAK INN, 
 
 " VILLAGE OF POYNINGS, 
 
 " 27/7? March 18 , 11.30 A.M. 
 
 " The little maid is laying the other half 
 of this table to supply me with eggs and 
 bacon. . . . 
 
 " I got me out of Brighton early, 
 
 walked through Hassocks and Hurstpier- 
 
 point, and strolled on in any direction that 
 
 invited (for I had the whole lovely day 
 
 25
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 to myself), choosing chiefly byways and 
 sequestered paths approached by stiles. 
 
 " The day was superb. The sky, after 
 a rainy night, was a rich deep blue, and 
 across it sailed great white-grey clouds, 
 the shadows of which chased each other 
 albeit solemnly and with dignity over 
 field and meadow. The fields, sown with 
 corn already tall, were burnished green 
 they shone in the sunlight . The meadows 
 were deeper in colour. The slopes of the 
 downs changed their hues every moment ; 
 every acre changed, according as it caught 
 the light direct, or through a thin cloud, 
 or was immersed in shade by a big and 
 thick one. The ditches and the little 
 banks by the road, out of which the trim 
 hedgerows sprang, were green with a 
 hundred little plants and weeds the 
 dock, the nettle, groundsel, stick-a-bobs, 
 
 ivy of every hue and shape, mullein, the 
 26
 
 A SPRING MORNING IN ENGLAND 
 
 alder well in leaf, and the hawthorn here 
 and there in flower. 
 
 " Breakfast over. The most delicious 
 bacon, the freshest of eggs, milk that 
 might have masqueraded as cream ; and 
 all served with the extremity of respect- 
 ful civility. A fire smouldering in the 
 hearth ; a terrier longing to make friends ; 
 otherwise they shut the door and leave me 
 to quiet privacy. 
 
 " The greenness of the hedges was 
 exquisite. And here and there the prim- 
 roses in profusion and the violets and 
 birds. England teems with life. I 
 heard the thrush ' It is Spring ! It is 
 Spring ! O the joy ! I tell you it is is 
 is ! ' And the blackbirds screaming out 
 of a bush, pretending to be frightened, 
 but only looking for an excuse to shout. 
 The ring-doves, really disturbed and 
 
 rising with noisy wings. The rooks, lost 
 27
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 in real wonderment that anyone should 
 stop and look at them for five minutes, 
 and ' cawing ' and ' cahing ' in vociferous 
 interrogation. Querulous tits, chirping 
 hedge-sparrows, cheeping linnets and 
 finches by the hundreds and hundreds." 
 
 A mere peep (but a peep photographed 
 on the spot), and giving but a poor glimpse 
 of a scene the exact like of which you will 
 not get elsewhere the wide world over. 
 And, by the way, shouldst ever find thy- 
 self at this self -same village of Poynings, 
 omit not to examine the Early Perpen- 
 dicular church ; the alms-box is an 
 ancient thurible.
 
 VIII 
 
 AUTUMN REVERIES 
 
 9 
 
 THIS was in the spring. Autumn in 
 England is equally lovely. In the new 
 world at least in the northern regions 
 there is a chill in the fall of the year. 
 The cold north-western winds, cradled 
 amidst palaeocrystic ice, and blowing over 
 tundra and prairie, are untempered by 
 Gulf Stream or ocean. Untempered, too, 
 by cloud and moisture, they cut keen, and 
 reveal the leafless landscape in all its bare- 
 ness. And it may be that they bring with 
 them the thought that for many months 
 to come that landscape will be bare indeed 
 unless covered with a shroud of snow. 
 
 Far different is autumn in England 
 29
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 I write (this time) situate in the basin of 
 the Thames, and for many weeks I have 
 been watching summer slowly give up its 
 glowing glories in order that other glories, 
 not less wonderful in colour, may take their 
 place. For England is never colourless ; 
 nay, in England, all through the year, the 
 colours are warm and sweet and com- 
 forting. The very trunks and twigs of 
 the trees are warm with browns and greens 
 and purples, the result of the mosses and 
 lichens, minute epiphytic and parasitic 
 vegetation which the humid climate so 
 greatly fosters. Even brick walls, the 
 stepping-stones in brooks, wooden palings 
 everything constructed by man, Nature 
 soon mellows with a gentle hand ; so that, 
 in place of stark and staring edifices where 
 the bare boards or the dull paint form 
 blotches on the scene, you have every- 
 where a great harmony of colour violets 
 30
 
 AUTUMN REVERIES 
 
 shading into green ; greens gliding into 
 softest yellows ; and these again deepen- 
 ing into warm and beautiful orange and 
 gold and red. 
 
 A long, long tramp through beechy 
 Buckinghamshire one day revealed at 
 every step beauties that filled the eye 
 and filled the heart. No pen could do 
 them justice ; and, among painters, only 
 the brush of a Corot could attempt their 
 depicture without depriving them of their 
 exquisite, their almost evanescent, soft- 
 ness. A great mist lay over the land ; a 
 gentle, noiseless mist that hid from you 
 the horizon and the outer world ; that 
 shut you in from the outer world ; lured 
 you into that mood of quiet reverence 
 in the presence of quiet, wonder-working 
 Nature ; and revealed to you ... I 
 cannot tell all that was revealed. I can 
 
 only point to this and that beautiful little 
 31
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 thing or vision, themselves but emblems 
 of a Beauty and a Mystery invisible. 
 
 Again I saw the little ivies in the ditches. 
 Again I saw unnumbered little leaves and 
 stalks and tendrils in the hedges ; all, of 
 shape and texture and colour actually 
 and positively divine. The hedges, a 
 tangle of twigs thick with a hundred 
 growths, were mighty marvels that no 
 human clipping and pruning and trim- 
 ming could diminish. And at every few 
 paces rose out of these hedges, on either 
 hand, old majestic elms, great in girth, 
 tall of stature, interlacing their branches 
 high overhead and making for pygmy 
 me, who walked that winding lane, a 
 wondrous fane in which to worship. It 
 was not exactly what one saw with one's 
 bodily eye that roused worship in that 
 fane. What was it ? ... 
 
 As morning grew towards noon, and 
 32
 
 AUTUMN REVERIES 
 
 the sun gained power, that gentle mist 
 so noiseless, like an angel's hand laid 
 soothingly on me and on all that hemmed 
 me in the mist mysteriously withdrew 
 itself. But only to show fresh loveliness. 
 On either hand were meadows, still lush 
 with grass ; or brown and furrowed fields, 
 shot through with the myriad tips of grow- 
 ing corn ; and here and there in scattered 
 heaps lay the rich leaves of the oak and 
 the elm and the beech, brilliant in their 
 orange and russet, and here and there lit 
 up, like burnished gold, by glints of sun- 
 shine from between the clouds. 
 
 For miles, quiet little scenes like this 
 filled the eye and the heart entrancing, 
 exalting, humbling. 
 
 Wherein lay the secret of their appeal ? 
 Why is it that field and hedgerow, winding 
 lane and interlacing boughs, strike upon 
 the emotions of man ? 
 c 33
 
 IX 
 
 SPIRITUALITY OF NATURE 
 10 
 
 ONE thing at least is certain. Of this 
 human race, of which each of us frail and 
 wailing mortals is a fragment, this kindly 
 or unkindly thing we call " external 
 Nature " is at once the mother, the cradle, 
 and the home : out of it we came ; in it 
 we play ; from it we delve our livelihood ; 
 and to it we go. For it is also our grave. 
 But, unlike the mournful mounds, so piti- 
 lessly ranged in regular rows as if, 'fore 
 God, to accentuate the fact that in Death 
 this impotent thing called sapient man 
 meets at last a uniforming and levelling 
 foe unlike those mournful mounds we 
 
 34
 
 SPIRITUALITY OF NATURE 
 
 see in cemeteries, external Nature is a 
 grave out of which there is a perpetual and 
 unceasing resurrection. Nature is at once 
 the tomb and the womb of life. What was 
 once soil and rain and sunshine becomes 
 grass then hay then beef or mutton 
 or milk and, in time, the very bone and 
 muscle, the very laughter and tears of the 
 child that plays in those fields. And 
 when bone and muscle lay down that 
 subtle thing called Life, give up the spirit 
 and lie inert, they enter once again into 
 the tomb and womb of Nature, and the 
 mighty cycle begins afresh. 
 
 n 
 
 And this " spirit " is not a thing apart, 
 a thing outside Nature ; breathed into 
 man at his birth, and wafted to some 
 mythical heaven or hell at his death. 
 Actually and actively in great Nature, 
 35
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 manifesting itself as soil and herb and 
 sunshine, is immanent that which, when 
 metamorphosed into so-called human Life, 
 manifests itself as feeling, imagination, 
 emotion, faith. There cannot be any- 
 thing in esse in Man that was not 
 aforetime in posse in Nature. 
 
 12 
 
 Never shall I forget the day upon which 
 and the walk during which there 
 flared upon me like a great and sudden 
 light the fact that the whole cosmos was 
 alive was LIFE ; that it was not com- 
 posed of two dissimilar things : (a) a gross 
 and ponderable " matter " ; and (b) an 
 immaterial imponderable " mind." There 
 is no such dichotomy in Nature. All 
 is immaterial, spiritual, living. Every 
 particle in me is alive ; but every particle 
 
 in me came from Nature ; and, as I cannot 
 36
 
 SPIRITUALITY OF NATURE 
 
 create life, life must have existed poten- 
 tially in those particles. My bodily 
 mechanism is merely a transmutation of 
 one form of life into another. 
 
 What we call " life " is a process ; a 
 process kept agoing by (a) the ingestion 
 of surrounding material ; and (b) the re- 
 production of the individual which so 
 ingests. 
 
 Look at that field of oats growing there 
 to the right. You will admit, will you 
 not, that those little green blades just 
 springing from the soil are actually and 
 veritably the matter of the field in which 
 they grow ? The silicon and phosphorus 
 and oxygen and nitrogen and carbon and 
 what-not, which were in the air or soil, 
 will by next July be gluten and protein. 
 If you and I should haggle over the origin 
 of the first oat -seed, at least if it did not 
 spring from this particular field, it had 
 37
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 not, I take it, any ultra-terrestrial origin. 
 Or granted it had, as, I think, Arrhenius 
 argues, that origin was not extra-cosmic : 
 it came, certainly, from somewhere within 
 this our visible universe. Good ! Let us 
 go back. The oats then that is, the 
 gluten and the protein are but the 
 matter of soil and air and sunshine in 
 another form. So, then, is the porridge in 
 your plate. So, then, areyou, surely. You 
 and I are this external Nature in another 
 shape ; and if we had n senses and a 
 mind endowed with powers of discern- 
 ment and of comprehension nihly more 
 powerful than at present, we might be 
 able, not only to see the process of trans- 
 formation in its every stage, but to 
 understand that matter is immaterial, 
 is spiritual (whatever that word may 
 connote) ; and that ourselves, the 
 
 porridge, the oats, the soil, the earth 
 38
 
 SPIRITUALITY OF NATURE 
 
 the Cosmos, are, is ... one and a 
 Mystery. In Nature, as in Man, resides 
 that Spirit of Eternal Things which we 
 call Life : a thing incomprehensible and 
 divine ; transcending thought ; one and 
 a unit ; one with the thing that is, and 
 one with that which asks itself what it 
 is and whence it came ; revealing itself 
 under the aspects of time and space, yet 
 unbounded by time or space ; manifest- 
 ing itself under an infinitude of forms, yet 
 remaining one and the same ; at once the 
 revealer and the revealed ; the thing 
 thought of and the thing that thinks. 
 
 39
 
 X 
 
 PRACTICAL TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 13 
 
 BUT of what avail are transcendental 
 themes like these for the conduct and 
 comfort of life ? What light are they to 
 our path ? To what goal do they point ? 
 
 It is not a question that needs to be 
 asked. Were no investigation to be 
 undertaken, no theories formed, save for 
 some definite and preconceived purpose, 
 it may be that no new path would be 
 found, no more distant goal discerned. 
 
 And yet these meditations, such as 
 they were, crude in matter, inchaote in 
 form, mere adumbrations of a truth all 
 
 too dimly perceived, brought comfort. 
 40
 
 PRACTICAL TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 Once more they took me away from the 
 trivial and the ephemeral. Above all, 
 they took me away from the geocentric. 
 So many creeds, so many religions, pin 
 me down to this little planet. How many 
 earths are there in the visible heavens ? 
 Are there terrestrial sinners on each and 
 all ? If so, for how many deaths did the 
 vicarious mercy of the Almighty call ? 
 And even if we travel outside the realm 
 of Christendom, still we find our little 
 earth regarded as the centre of thought, 
 the only scene upon which the great drama 
 of Being is enacted : for so many philo- 
 sophies and religions accentuate the 
 isolated existence of individual human 
 beings, and limit their application to the 
 periphery of this speck in space. 
 
 I like the larger aspect. When we look 
 up to the stars and remember that they 
 are suns about which probably revolve 
 41
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 an infinitude of habitable earths earths 
 of every conceivable and inconceivable 
 kind, and peopled probably with an 
 infinitude of beings also of every con- 
 ceivable and inconceivable kind some 
 perhaps as gross as we, others breathing 
 airs of heaven, requiring neither senses 
 nor anatomical organs, enjoying " the 
 communion of saints " by powers and 
 processes outside the ken of touch or 
 speech or vision . . . we link ourselves 
 with the immensity of Being ; we are not 
 separate little entities trudging a few miles 
 of earth, but particles of Omnipresent 
 Life, partakers in the history and destiny 
 of All that Is. 
 
 14 
 
 There is a practical side, too, to these 
 transcendental themes. For what is Con- 
 science, that inward monitor which, what- 
 42
 
 PRACTICAL TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 ever your creed, bids you walk thus and 
 not otherwise, that applauds you when 
 you do right, and shames you when you 
 go wrong ? From one point of view, 
 Conscience is the evolved consensus of 
 mankind, that inherited instinct which 
 declares that only such actions as subserve 
 the welfare of the race are right, and that 
 all others are wrong ; and that distributes 
 its sanctions accordingly. From another, 
 and perhaps a rather fanciful, point of 
 view (and yet one that may appeal to 
 those who look forward to a life after 
 death and cling to a possibility of com- 
 munication between dead and living) 
 from another point of view, Conscience 
 may be the inaudible voice of myriads of 
 fellow-creatures like unto ourselves, who, 
 having passed through the trials and 
 temptations of this life, and viewing this 
 life from the plane of a life supernal, 
 43
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 shout spiritually, warningly, in our psychic 
 ears when they see us doing the things that 
 brought them ill. But from another and 
 cosmic point of view, it is that absolute 
 and categorical imperative which dictates 
 that each attenuated portion of the All 
 shall act in Unison with the All, in the 
 history and destiny of which each attenu- 
 ated portion partakes. 
 But I digress. 
 
 44
 
 XI 
 
 SPRING IN CANADA 
 
 15 
 
 MY next walks were in quite another hemi- 
 sphere to wit, in the great and grow- 
 ing colony of Canada. From many points 
 of view Canada is one of the most inter- 
 esting of countries. From the rank of a 
 somewhat humble dependency, made up 
 of a heterogeneous collection of provinces, 
 she has sprung within the last few decades 
 into the rank of a proud and self-conscious 
 nation. The contrast is notable. Indeed 
 the country is one of contrasts. Her 
 climate, her scenery, her sentiments, her 
 people, her politics, all exhibit extremes 
 the most extraordinary. A winter of 
 45
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 Arctic severity is followed by a tropical 
 summer. Within sight of luxuriant pas- 
 tures glide stupendous glaciers. Flattest 
 prairies spread to the feet of mountain 
 ranges the rivals of the Alps ; prim fields, 
 orchards, and vineyards encroach upon 
 primaeval forests. Along with the hardy 
 apple and the far-famed No. i Manitoba 
 wheat, this land produces strawberries, 
 peaches, grapes, and melons. Constitu- 
 tionally content with British connexion, 
 her people are intimately influenced by 
 ideas and manners American. Indeed, 
 her people are as heterogeneous as herself. 
 The Maritime Provinces of the extreme 
 east hardly call themselves Canadian ; 
 Quebec is French ; Ontario is Canadian to 
 the core ; so is Manitoba ; in the North- 
 West Territories are settlers from almost 
 every nationality in Europe ; British 
 
 Columbia, in the extreme west, again, 
 46
 
 SPRING IN CANADA 
 
 fights shy of the cognomen Canadian. 
 Newfoundland holds aloof altogether. A 
 rude and toilsome social life goes hand 
 in hand with patches of refinement and 
 culture unmistakable. Canadian cheese 
 took the prize at Chicago ; Canadian 
 poetry has been crowned by the Academy. 
 Lauding democratic institutions to the 
 skies, Radical to the last degree, Canada 
 nevertheless contains within herself castes 
 and cliques in their horror of such prin- 
 ciples almost rabid. With a political 
 system the counterpart of the British, 
 her politics are rife with personalities, 
 election protests, corruption trials. 
 
 However, I am not here concerned 
 with political or social tendencies or 
 delinquencies. 
 
 16 
 
 Soon after I arrived I betook me, one 
 spring, in my canoe, down the banks of the 
 
 47
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 River Otonabee. Pitching a tent, I made 
 this a focus from which I radiated in any 
 direction I chose dawdling and saunter- 
 ing and lounging and seeing what there 
 was to be seen. 
 
 And what is there to be seen ? Well, 
 let me give you here another little 
 photograph. 
 
 I write, sitting ensconced, sheltered 
 from sun and wind, between two huge 
 roots of the stump of a burned pine on a 
 bare hill overlooking the river. Not a 
 place in which to see much, you would say. 
 Pardon me, you are wrong. You, shut 
 in between four superficies of wall-paper, 
 a whitewashed ceiling, and a carpet, 
 know absolutely nothing of the clouded 
 sky as I know it, gazing at it unconfined 
 from horizon to zenith. Far overhead, 
 the delicatest vapoury cirri fleck the purest 
 
 blue ; in the distance, bold, rpunded, 
 
 4 8
 
 SPRING IN CANADA 
 
 white cumuli rise above a misty haze of 
 grey, against which as a background rise 
 in points and curves and lines dark green 
 firs and round-topped birches and emerald 
 hill-sides ; and below these, and nearer, 
 comes the water in no two spots the 
 same ruffled and unruffled, wavy and 
 still, dark blue and lead-grey, in eddies 
 and in currents ; here dimpled, there 
 like a mirror ; now dazzling you with a 
 thousand flashing, floating stars ; there 
 sullenly bearing up the reflections and 
 shadows of the great, dark trees above 
 it at one moment thus, and while 
 you say it, otherwise. For a symbol of 
 God serene, shapeless, profound, in 
 eternal repose, unchanging, all-embracing, 
 majestic give me the blue sky ; for a 
 symbol of Man tossed, shapen, ever 
 at strife, changeful, unresting, evanescent, 
 
 with dark depths and foul weeds, sombre 
 D 49
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 and woeful when deprived of the light of 
 heaven, and beautiful only when beauti- 
 fied by skyey tints give me the water. 
 And after the water, and closer, comes 
 my foreground tufted grass and brown 
 soil, with dandelions and clover and 
 mullein, and here and there a piece of 
 glistering granite or a quaint-shaped, 
 rotting tree trunk. Amongst these hops 
 fearless, while I sit still and silent with 
 half-closed eyes, the thrush or the grey- 
 bird, chasing insects a few feet from my 
 foot ; while above me, on the very stump 
 against which I lean, perches the various- 
 coloured high-holder. Truly, it seems as 
 if Nature had taken me to be one with her, 
 recognised me as part of her manifold 
 immensity, looked upon me as a consort, 
 a co-mate. 
 
 And am I not a part of her ? It needs 
 not to comprehend the harmonious work- 
 so
 
 SPRING IN CANADA 
 
 ings of mighty natural laws to perceive the 
 unity of all things. Each minutest spot 
 on this earth verifies the truth. I need 
 not move a step to find evidences of it. 
 I look at my blackened stump, and not one 
 square inch can I find which is not instinct 
 with evidences of life within life ; life 
 interfused with, dependent on, correlated 
 with other life, with signs of the ceaseless 
 being born, growing, dying with pro- 
 cesses interlinked with processes. It is a 
 universe of processes, this in which we 
 live ; not a universe in which this, that, 
 and the other separate thing exists for a 
 time, but a universe of subsistences, made 
 up wholly of interdependent existences. 
 Wherever I look on my trunk I see mosses 
 and lichens and creeping ants and beetles, 
 and the holes of boring worms, and the 
 marks of woodpeckers' beaks, chrysalises, 
 seeds, twigs. To each of these the stump
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 is its universe : they regard it as we do 
 the solar system, as a place, a locality, 
 made for them to inhabit. They do not 
 understand that the tree is itself but part 
 of a greater whole of life, of thought ; 
 a link in an endless chain of existence. 
 And so we often forget that this infinitely 
 various and changing universe which we 
 call ours, which we look upon as our habi- 
 tation, our dwelling-house, in which we 
 move about as lords and masters, is after 
 all but an infinitesimal fragment of the 
 real demesne of the true Lord of the 
 Manor. And what if after all we were not 
 even bailiffs of this manor ? What if 
 we were but the furniture in some small 
 attic mirrors, it may be and that what 
 we call our universe prove to be nothing 
 more than the small part of this attic 
 which is reflected in us !
 
 XII 
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA 
 
 17 
 
 THIS was in the spring. But I remember 
 an autumn walk in Canada that was very 
 different from this, both in the locality 
 chosen and in the scenes viewed. 
 
 Late in October once, a friend and 
 myself had three whole days' holiday ! 
 rare and joyous boon ! We took a train 
 to the little Ontarian town of Stayner. 
 From Stayner to the shores of the 
 Georgian Bay was a little trudge of about 
 three miles. But a trudge it was ; for 
 the train had been late ; our knapsacks 
 were heavy ; the sun had set ; and both 
 darkness and hunger came on apace. 
 53
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 But at last the shore was reached. And 
 what a shore it was ! For, beating on it 
 from far away to the north was a wealth 
 of waters oceanic in magnitude, sombre 
 as the sea and, as the sea, mysterious. 
 
 As we walked, the night closed in, the 
 northern night, so beautiful, so clear, so 
 immense. But it was chill and dark, and 
 either we must advance, or we must seek 
 shelter where we were. Shall it be a 
 leafy " lean-to " under a pine, constructed 
 of heaped-up boughs, or shall it be a 
 trudge to a civilised hostelry ? Such 
 were the problems discussed over sand- 
 wiches and hard-boiled eggs (washed 
 down with sandy water from the bay), as 
 we sat on a wave-washed log, the wind 
 blowing strong in our faces. The ground 
 was damp as damp ; the pines seemed 
 lugubriously incompetent to shelter from 
 the growing gale. Blankets we had none ; 
 54
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA 
 
 night was upon us. We decided to 
 walk. 
 
 On the left was this rolling Georgian 
 ocean, seemingly illimitable. In its 
 northern stretches it reached up to 
 Hudson's Bay, to the Arctic ; and by its 
 southern streams it drave down to Lake 
 Ontario, to the St Lawrence, to the 
 Atlantic. It was one with this Atlantic ; 
 it was one with the Pacific ; it was first 
 cousin to the Indian Ocean, and but once 
 or twice removed from all the waters of 
 the world, since they and it had a common 
 origin. 
 
 The walking was superb. The sand 
 was firm as asphalt : on the right was 
 dimly visible a friendly fringe of trees 
 pine and scrub and brushwood ; on the 
 left there was ever that never-ceasing roll 
 of waves waves once more linking me 
 with Ostend and Hove, Rotterdam and 
 55
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 Rangoon, St John in New Brunswick, 
 Ascension Isle, the Cape of Good Hope, 
 and the palm-fringed coast of Malabar. 
 
 We walked. And we walked fast. 
 But not too fast to notice. There was no 
 moon. The stars came out, and in that 
 pellucid northern air, where was no dust 
 of road nor smoke of chimney, those stars 
 shone as assuredly never can they shine 
 elsewhere. It is a literal fact that, in 
 order to determine whether or not the 
 great luminous patches which I gazed at 
 overhead were the veritable Milky Way 
 or only drifting clouds lit up by star- 
 light, I had to look again and again, and 
 to take note as to whether there was 
 perceptible any change of shape. There 
 was not. It was the Galaxy itself ; but 
 so revealed, so clearly seen, so unremote, 
 as it were, that once again the great 
 
 portals of the Infinite seemed to open, 
 56
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA 
 
 and to permit a glimpse into the mysteri- 
 ous abode of Being inadequate term by 
 which we feebly connote the supreme 
 unity of all that is. To permit a glimpse, 
 too, into that puzzle of puzzles, the not 
 impossible identification or unification or 
 intussusception of that All with the 
 smallest of its integral contents. For was 
 not that assemblage of suns those masses 
 of solar systems, so numerous as to seem 
 but a mist was it not actually depicted 
 on the tiny retina of the eye ? It was ; 
 and, through this depicture, it was, as 
 it were, intellectually embraced in the 
 thinking mind behind ; a fact symbolical 
 of the truth, as yet but dimly com- 
 prehended, that in very deed the 
 infinitesimal unit and the mighty All 
 are one and identical. 
 
 However, ontological speculations 
 under an autumnal sky have their limit ; 
 57
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 and glad indeed were we, after long search 
 among the pines and the hemlocks, to 
 find, albeit it was late, a hostel in 
 which were warmth and shelter for the 
 night.
 
 XIII 
 
 WINTER IN CANADA 
 18 
 
 I REMEMBER me, too, of a notable 
 winter's walk in Canada. 
 
 For some reason, one night in mid- 
 January, Sleep forsook me. After wooing 
 her in vain, I rose at three and lighted an 
 ungainly but highly satisfactory stove. 
 It had a draught like a Bessemer furnace, 
 drawing through an ugly stove-pipe which 
 ran bolt upright, turned sharp before it 
 reached the ceiling, and disappeared in a 
 hole in the wall an apparatus quite the 
 most conspicuous article of furniture in 
 the room (it was in a hotel). On this I 
 warmed a cup of tea, then donned all the 
 59
 
 OF, WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 warm clothing I could find ; and in some 
 forty minutes was afoot. 
 
 My point of departure was a little 
 Ontarian country town of some ten 
 thousand inhabitants we will call it 
 Dummer. Dummer stood in a slightly 
 higher latitude than the parallels which 
 run through the belt of country skirting 
 the northern shore of the Great Lakes, 
 along which are dotted most of the centres 
 of population ; and accordingly it was ex- 
 posed to a slightly severer wintry climate. 
 At the time of my visit it was enveloped 
 in snow. , Snow lay deep over the whole 
 land, thick on every roof, over the edges 
 of which it protruded itself in irregular 
 curves solid cataracts suspended in air, 
 and vainly endeavouring to complete their 
 descent by long six-foot icicles. Snow- 
 white was every road, save for the two 
 
 dirty grooves beaten down by the hoofs 
 60
 
 WINTER IN CANADA 
 
 of horses. Snow covered the country, far 
 as the eye could reach ; glistening like 
 glaciers on the hill-sides, deep purple and 
 blue in the patches shaded by the pines ; 
 only the woods showing black against the 
 dazzling white, the perpendicular walls of 
 the wooden farm buildings, the solitary 
 trees and shrubs, and the straggling snake- 
 fences long, unshaped logs of split 
 timber, their ends placed zigzag the one 
 over the other, to keep the structure erect 
 relieved the white monotony. And yet 
 this belt of country is almost in the same 
 latitude with the south of France, with 
 the Riviera, whence but a few days before 
 I had received in a letter a violet ! 
 
 When I started, there was no moon, 
 there were no stars ; my sole light was 
 the skyey reflection of the electric lamps 
 of the city ; and only this for many miles 
 
 enabled me to distinguish the grooves in 
 61
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 which I had to walk from the high ridge 
 of snow between them which I had to 
 avoid. When I skirted the lee side of a 
 high hill, or passed the distal edge of a 
 thick wood, I floundered from one to other 
 in the dark. The landscape, such of it 
 as could be seen under a leaden-grey sky, 
 was a vast monochrome, an expanse of 
 dull white picked out with blotches and 
 points and lines of black. Not a living 
 thing was to be seen. Not a sound was 
 to be heard. And, what particularly 
 struck a lover of country walks, not the 
 faintest suspicion of any kind of a scent 
 was to be detected. Everything seemed 
 to be dumb and dead ; and the tiny 
 flakes which fell in myriads, fell so silently, 
 so pitilessly, had seemingly for their object 
 the making of all things, if possible, still 
 more dumb and dead. There is always 
 
 something poetic about snow in England. 
 62
 
 WINTER IN CANADA 
 
 There is something playful and jocular 
 in the way in which lusty standard rose- 
 trees, stout shrubs, and sturdy hedges don 
 aged Winter's garb, as a laughing maid 
 will half demurely wear her grand-dam's 
 cap. In the Western Hemisphere, away 
 from the genial influences of the Gulf 
 Stream, even in the same latitudes, winter 
 is a more serious matter. The snow 
 comes " to stay." There is little jocosity 
 about it. It lies several feet thick. If 
 it disappears during a temporary thaw, it 
 comes again very soon. Here the trees 
 do not sport with it. They put up with 
 it. They stand knee-deep in it, leafless, 
 motionless, scentless, soundless. If there 
 is a wind, it sweeps through them with a 
 long thin swish, like the wail of a host of 
 lost spirits seeking shelter. Not a branch 
 falls the autumn blasts brought down all 
 that was frangible. Only frozen tears 
 63
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 fall, fall from the ice-encrusted twigs. 
 For miles on either side of me stood these 
 patient trees; thick, black, heavy-boughed 
 cedars, their stout trunks buried in snow, 
 squatting, like Mr Kipling's Djinn of All 
 Deserts, on their haunches and vainly 
 " thinking a Magic " to make idling Winter 
 " hump himself " ; beech-trees, naked 
 but for a few scattered sere and yellow 
 leaves fluttering about their waists ; the 
 drooping-branched elm, not half so grace- 
 ful as when full-leafed ; elegant maples 
 with a tracery of twigs far too fine to be 
 compared to lace. These trees formed 
 often the outermost fringe of thick woods. 
 Into these I penetrated. A profound 
 silence pervaded them, a silence so intense, 
 so all-embracing, it seemed to overflow 
 the forest, to go out into space, to enwrap 
 the world in its grasp. Not a thing stirs. 
 
 To be alive in that shrine of death-like 
 64
 
 WINTER IN CANADA 
 
 soundlessness seems desecration. It is 
 supreme, infinite, absolute ; you, the 
 living, moving onlooker, are finite and 
 relative, a thing of time and space. To 
 think is to disturb the serenity of its 
 repose, for to think is to attempt to limit 
 it, to reduce it to the level of yourself, and 
 no thought is large enough to compass it. 
 Only some shaggy elk, hoofed and horned, 
 diabolically crashing through crust upon 
 crust of superimposed layers of frozen 
 snow ; and only demoniacal little troops 
 of wolves, pattering fiendishly, are fit to 
 defy or to disturb this deity of Quiet. 
 It is large, expansive, in its influence. 
 Summer sights and sounds bind you to a 
 spot, limit your attention to a locality, 
 accentuate the petty, the individual, the 
 trivial. The wintry woods, the white 
 unfurrowed fields, stimulate no sense. 
 The soul of man seems bared to the soul 
 
 E 65
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 of Nature, and human thought and the 
 universal mind seem contiguous and 
 conterminous. Silence affects the mind 
 as darkness affects the senses : both in 
 their impressiveness quicken the faculties 
 to the utmost ; and yet, as no sense can 
 perceive the impalpability of darkness, so 
 no thought can pierce the impenetrability 
 of silence. One must visit a wintry clime 
 to experience emotions such as these. 
 
 As I walked, the wind rose, and its noise 
 in the convolutions of the ear, so still 
 was everything else, became almost 
 annoying in its resounding roar. I had 
 followed devious and untravelled ways in 
 the semi-darkness, and this wind it was 
 that told me when again I reached a high- 
 road namely, by the whistling of the 
 telegraph wires. I never heard such 
 obstreperous wires. They made an 
 
 harp truly hyperborean in timbre 
 66
 
 WINTER IN CANADA 
 
 and volume. Every note in the scale of 
 audible human sound seemed struck ; and 
 were there such a thing as an acoustical 
 spectroscope, it would have shown, not 
 only every tone and semitone in the 
 gamut, but ultra-treble and infra-bass 
 notes also. And it was played fortissimo. 
 Those wires shrieked, bellowed. Whether 
 at that early hour they were carrying 
 messages, I do not know ; but all the 
 intensity of human anguish, human 
 happiness, and human woe seemed to be 
 flowing through their scrannel lengths ; 
 and the thin hapless things plained of 
 their freight to the unheeding winds. 
 It was a weird sound far out there in the 
 desolate wild, with not a soul to hear or 
 sympathise for I, what was I in all that 
 huge expanse ? They wotted not of me. 
 Then the great sky by degrees broke up 
 
 into masses of cloud, and here and there 
 67
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 between them shone out the steady stars 
 imperturbable, piercing, shaken not 
 by the slightest twinkle. One rich and 
 brilliant planet in the west glowed argent 
 in the blue a blue into which the eye 
 penetrated far, far into infinity. The 
 Canadian sky is ever lofty, pellucid, pro- 
 found ; very different from the close 
 canopy so common in cloudy England. 
 But it was high time to turn home- 
 wards. A faint light overspread the 
 east ; things began to take shape ; 
 houses, instead of appearing as dark 
 blotches against the white, now looked 
 like habitable dwellings ; the separate 
 boughs were distinguishable on the trees. 
 As one neared the town signs of life were 
 seen and smelled ; the pungent odour of 
 the " coal-oil " with which the impatient 
 and unthrifty housewife coaxed her wood 
 
 fire more rapidly to catch, smote almost 
 68
 
 WINTER IN CANADA 
 
 smartingly upon the nostril. Sleepy-eyed 
 mechanics, buttoned to the throat, heavily 
 " overshoed," and with hands be- 
 pocketed, strode sullenly workwards. 
 Later on " cutters " so are called the 
 comfortable little one-horsed sleighs just 
 seating a couple sped hither and thither. 
 Then a milk-cart or two glided past, the 
 cans wrapped in furs, the hairs on the 
 horses' muzzles showing white with 
 cleaving ice. Later still, and when within 
 the precincts of the town proper, children 
 were met espying sleighs on which to get 
 " rides " to school. It was a different 
 world now. A dazzling sun transformed 
 the dull dead landscape of the night into 
 a blinding spangled sheet of purest white. 
 Involuntarily the eyes half closed against 
 that glare. No wonder the sub- Arctic 
 eye lacks the large frank openness of those 
 
 of softer realms ; against even the summer 
 69
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 sunshine the protection of approximated 
 eyelids is needed, as the crow's-feet of the 
 farmers' features prove. If Canada has 
 earned the title of Our Lady of the Snows, 
 she certainly equally deserves the title 
 of Our Lady of the Sunshine ; nowhere 
 is sunshine so bright or so abundant ; so 
 bright and abundant that it is not un- 
 reasonable to suppose that it has not a 
 little to do with the elimination of that 
 "phlegm" from the descendants of the 
 immigrant of that land to the folk of which 
 the French attribute that characteristic. 
 "There are few, if any, places in England," 
 says the Director of the Meteorological 
 Service of Canada, " that have a larger 
 normal annual percentage [of bright sun- 
 shine] than thirty-six, and there are 
 many as low as twenty-five ; whereas in 
 Canada most stations exceed forty, and 
 
 some few have as high a percentage as 
 70
 
 WINTER IN CANADA 
 
 forty-six." 1 "Weather permitting" is 
 a phrase but rarely heard in Canada. 
 
 But my early morning walk was over. 
 It was one I would not have exchanged 
 for many another taken under more 
 genial skies. 
 
 1 Mr Robert F. Stupart, in the " Handbook of 
 Canada," published by the Publication Committee 
 of the Local Executive [of the British Association 
 for the Advancement of Science], Toronto : 1897, 
 p. 78. 
 
 7 1
 
 XIV 
 
 THE MOOD FOR WALKING 
 
 19 
 
 A MORNING walk is worth the effort of 
 getting up. Much would I give to have 
 been of that party which, in sixteen 
 hundred and something, " stretched their 
 legs up Tottenham Hill towards the 
 Thatched House in Hoddesdon on that 
 fine fresh May morning " I mean Messrs 
 Piscator, Venator, and Auceps. I should 
 have been Peregrinator ; and whereas 
 Piscator praised the water, and Venator 
 the land, and Auceps the air, as the 
 element in which each respectively 
 traded, I should have praised all three, 
 
 for the pedestrian's pleasures derive from 
 
 72
 
 THE MOOD FOR WALKING 
 
 no single one. And to walking I should 
 have applied dear old Izaak Walton's 
 own phrase, that it, like angling, was 
 " most honest, ingenious, quiet, and 
 harmless." x Upon quiet, Walton sets 
 extraordinary stress. Quoting with 
 approbation the learned Peter du Moulin, 
 he tells us that " when God intended to 
 reveal any future events or high notions 
 to his prophets, he then carried them 
 either to the deserts or the sea-shore, that 
 having so separated them from amidst 
 the press of people and business, and the 
 cares of the world, he might settle their 
 mind in a quiet repose, and there make 
 them fit for revelation." 2 
 
 It is strange that Izaak Walton, him- 
 self apparently a most quiet and con- 
 tented old man (he lived to be ninety-one), 
 
 1 See " The Compleat Angler," chapter i. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 73
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 should, writing at sixty years of age, and 
 two hundred and fifty years ago when 
 I suppose there was no faster or noisier 
 thing than a galloping horse should so 
 insistently preach and teach quiet. Yet, 
 perhaps we must remember that he lived 
 through the Great Rebellion. The last 
 words of his book and he puts them into 
 his own, Piscator's, mouth are : 
 
 " And [let the blessing of St Peter's 
 Master be] upon all that are lovers of 
 virtue, and dare trust in his providence, 
 and be quiet, and go a-angling. STUDY 
 TO BE QUIET. i Thess. iv. n." 
 
 Why, I do not exactly know, but there 
 is to me something straightforward, 
 honest, and simple-minded in the idea of 
 ending a book with the words " and go 
 a-angling." This and the quotation 
 74
 
 THE MOOD FOR WALKING 
 
 from i Thess. iv. n sum up for me the 
 character of the man and the book. 
 
 20 
 
 Walking rivals angling in demanding 
 and engendering quiet. " To make a 
 walk successful," says another dear old 
 gentleman, writing at the same time of 
 life but in modern times, " mind and 
 body should be free of burthen." 1 The 
 true and abiding joy of walking is in calm. 
 " The mood," says John Burroughs, " in 
 which you set out on a spring or autumn 
 
 1 See a delightful letter to The Publishers' Circular 
 of September the 27th, 1902 ; vol. Ixxvii., p. 325, 
 on " A Plea for a Long Walk," by T. Thatcher, of 
 44 College Green, Bristol, England. Also another 
 letter by the same writer on "42 Miles on 2d. at 
 the Age of 64," in the same periodical in its issue 
 of April the 25th, 1903 ; vol. Ixxviii., p. 457. The 
 " 2d." means that his food consisted of dry brown- 
 bread crusts only, the cost of which he computes 
 at twopence. 
 
 75
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 ramble or a sturdy winter walk ... is 
 the mood in which your best thoughts and 
 impulses come to you. . . . Life is sweet 
 in such moods, the Universe is complete, 
 and there is no failure or imperfection 
 anywhere." x Only Nature can induce 
 such moods 
 
 " Dear Nature is the kindest mother still," 
 
 says the soul -tossed, self-torturing Byron. 
 Books, music, art, the drama, philosophy, 
 science at bottom there seems to be 
 something disquieting in these. They 
 come in such questionable shape. They 
 are the works of man ; and we never 
 altogether trust the works of man. We 
 never feel, even with the first of those who 
 know, that our fellow-man, who is, after 
 all, like unto ourselves, has answered 
 every question, allayed every doubt, 
 
 1 " Pepacton," Foot Paths, p. 205. 
 76
 
 THE MOOD FOR WALKING 
 
 stilled every fear. Was something of 
 this in Matthew Arnold's mind when 
 he cried : 
 
 " One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee," 
 
 and prayed her to calm, to compose 
 him to the end? But enough in praise 
 of calm. Calm is compatible with the 
 highest and most exuberant spirits. In- 
 deed, high and exuberant spirits are the 
 first and natural outcome of a mind at 
 peace with itself. Good old Walton is 
 continually breaking out into pious or 
 pastoral song and making milkmaids 
 and milkmaids' mothers break out into 
 song, too. 
 
 77
 
 XV 
 
 EVENING MEDITATIONS 
 
 21 
 
 IF, as Messieurs Piscator, Venator, and 
 Auceps, and their tuneful milkmaids, show, 
 early morning walks tend to blithesome- 
 ness of heart, evening walks tend perhaps 
 to meditation of mind. As day wears on 
 I do not know, I may be wrong, but to 
 me it seems that as day wears on it takes 
 a more sombre aspect. It was at dusk 
 that Gray's Elegy was written. In the 
 very sound of Milton's simple words, 
 
 "Then came still evening on," 
 
 there is to me an echo of quietness, 
 perhaps of melancholy. Many a lesson 
 
 I have learned by quiet meditation in 
 
 78
 
 EVENING MEDITATIONS 
 
 quiet scenes, prolonged far into the night. 
 Indeed, he is a wise walker who chooses 
 for himself one or more secluded spots, 
 sequestered deep, whither he may go, 
 there to commune with himself ; or to 
 hold high converse with the mighty dead ; 
 or to lend an expectant ear for the dryads 
 of the woods ; or, if nothing more, to rid 
 him of the petty perturbations incident 
 to a life lived between four walls, a floor, 
 and a ceiling, and broken into fragments 
 by clocks which strike the hours and 
 watches which point to the minute. 
 
 22 
 
 One such spot I have, and from it many 
 a lesson I have learned. It is a great 
 amphitheatre, Nature-made, vast and 
 open. It slopes to the north and west, 
 and all about it and about are green trees 
 green trees and shrubs and lowly plants. 
 79
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 In the whole space I am the one spec- 
 tator save for little grasses that stand on 
 tiptoe to look and listen ; save for little 
 weeds that nod their heads ; and a beetle 
 crawling heedless over dry and shining 
 grains of sand. In the orchestral centre, 
 where, in ancient Greece, should stand the 
 lighted altar, there chances to be a little 
 crimson maple; and behind and beyond 
 rise verdant hills. Before me, as where 
 should be the stage, stand, in green habili- 
 ments, beech and elm and fir ; oak and 
 cedar ; lithe and virginal saplings ; broad- 
 shouldered pines, staid and stalwart 
 a goodly company, goodly and green, 
 wondrous green ; and for me they act and 
 pose and sing. . . . The drama opens. 
 
 There is no fanfaronade. On the left, 
 against a dove-grey cloud, the topmost 
 
 twigs of a silver poplar rustle, the signal 
 80
 
 EVENING MEDITATIONS 
 
 to commence. Gently, and with grace 
 supreme, the boughs begin a cosmic song, 
 and sway the while they chant. They 
 dip and fall, and lightly rise ; take hands 
 and touch, and smile, and sing again. 
 Troop after troop takes up the measure 
 as the wind sweeps through the trees, and 
 there is revealed to the eye and to the ear 
 sound and motion obedient to an unseen 
 power. . . . The movement deepens. 
 Great masses join the dance, swell the 
 vespertinal hymn. Huge and cumbrous 
 boughs sweep back and forth, melodious, 
 eloquent ; and from tremulous leaf to 
 swaying limb rises a choric song, beautiful, 
 wonderful. ... Of what is it that they 
 speak ? 
 
 Presently, beneath the dove-grey cloud, 
 the red sun momentarily shows. Gleams 
 strike the amphitheatre, the stage. My 
 
 F 8l
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 neighbour grasses glint in the sheen, the 
 beetle's wing-sheaths glow; the sand 
 grains glisten, and, overhead, the veined 
 leaves of the larch, which before were 
 black against the sky, become trans- 
 lucent to the light. The massed greens 
 grow radiant ; solitary boughs shake 
 sunshine from their locks ; the shrubs 
 stand out overt ; a divine gleesomeness 
 fills all the wood. . . . Whence comes the 
 mystic impulse ? 
 
 Then slowly evening falls. The wind 
 dies down. A fitful breeze, now warm 
 with Summer's breath, now chill, strays 
 aimless ; and the major song sinks to a 
 key in flats. The sun sinks. The green 
 shadows grow black ; and where before 
 was great leafage, is now a great gloom, 
 in which even the white-stemmed birches 
 
 lose their tapering limbs. Gone are the 
 
 82
 
 EVENING MEDITATIONS 
 
 leaves of the larch ; the shrubs hide ; 
 the beetle creeps out of sight. A far-off 
 rill mingles a bass maestoso sob with its 
 treble trill ; and slowly, very slowly, a 
 thin thin mist creates itself in every 
 cranny of the dell. Only I am left, dull 
 of hearing, miscomprehending, obtuse. 
 
 Only a little scene in an unending play ; 
 for all through the night, and for endless 
 days and nights, before man was, and 
 long after man will be, these leafy persons 
 uplift that solemn chant, enact that 
 choric dance : now frolicsome and free ; 
 now plaintive : now expectant, patient, 
 still. . . . What is it that they hymn ? 
 
 23 
 
 It is but little that I, I and the heedless 
 
 beetle, comprehend of this mighty but 
 
 mystical drama. Some supernal power 
 
 impels them, so it seems, and they hymn 
 
 83
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 and praise this power ; some hidden force, 
 emanating in regions far beyond the sun, 
 yet immanent in the grass blade, in the 
 leaflet, in the sand grains at my feet. 
 Often a darksome power, ruthless, blind ; 
 slaying horde on horde ; spilling blood 
 like water ; scattering real pain and 
 poignant agony like hail ; yet often thrill- 
 ing, joyous, tremulous with bliss in- 
 scrutable, recondite, dark. It is formed 
 and transformed into myriad shapes, out- 
 running time, out-living life ; muted and 
 re-muted, here into gross and ponderable 
 matter, there into filmiest air ; anon 
 revealing itself as exuberant life ; again 
 vanishing in so-called death ; a breath ; 
 a spirit ; the soul of eternal things. . . . 
 Some hidden power they hymn. 
 
 The darkness deepens. The mist 
 
 grows thick apace, heavy and sombre. 
 
 8 4
 
 EVENING MEDITATIONS 
 
 The keen jagged edge that cut the 
 horizon is blunted. The mystic play is 
 withdrawn ; the persons of the drama 
 vanish ; and spectators and stage, pro- 
 scenium and scene, the ampitheatre, the 
 open earth, and the illimitable sky, are 
 blent into one dark and invisible whole. 
 
 Then in the silence of night I heard the 
 soundless voice of that Spirit of Eternal 
 Things : that Mystery, impenetrable as 
 the dark, impalpable : revealing itself as 
 one with the shapes it took and one with 
 the impulse they obeyed ; in the grass 
 blade and the leaf, and in the wind to 
 which they swayed ; in the ponderous 
 earth that, darkling, rolls through space, 
 and in the subtle mind that holds this 
 earth in fee. The vast and the far-off 
 were embraced in the vision, for from the 
 remotest star came rays that united me 
 85
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 with it. The minute and the trivial 
 were summoned from their hiding to 
 prove themselves near and akin. Magni- 
 tude and proportion were swallowed up 
 in unity; number and computation dis- 
 appeared in a stupendous integer. Not 
 a leaf shook, not a bud burst, but was 
 moved to motion and to life by forces 
 infinite and remote, ante-dating sun or 
 star, one with sun and star, older than the 
 Milky Way, vaster than the limits of vision. 
 For in each leaflet of the boscage ran a 
 sap ancient as ocean ; and but yesterday, 
 in the history of Time, that whole assem- 
 blage was something far other than it is. 
 Bud and leaf were but manifestations of 
 a something supreme a Force, a Spirit, 
 a God ; a mysterious Thing that took hold 
 of dew and sunshine and soil and trans- 
 formed them into shape and perfume. 
 
 And sunshine and dew and soil were in 
 
 86
 
 EVENING MEDITATIONS 
 
 turn themselves but mutations of things, 
 chemical elements or movements of mole- 
 cules ; and these again but mutations 
 of things more subtle still atoms or 
 electrons, infinitesimal and innominate 
 particles ; till ultimately, surely, we 
 arrive at something immense, immut- 
 able. Something there must be behind all 
 change ; behind all appearances Some- 
 thing that Appears . And the last appear- 
 ance, and the sum-total of appearances, 
 must be potential in the first, as in the 
 acorn is contained a potential forest. 
 Given one acorn, and enough of space and 
 time, and there is actually possible a 
 cosmos of oaks ; and every oak different, 
 and no two twigs alike. So, could we 
 explain the electron, we should compre- 
 hend the inane ; in the moment lies 
 concealed the aeon. Indeed, it is only to 
 
 time-fettered space-bound man that these 
 
 87
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 are not one and identical. And, if in leaf 
 and bud, then in perceiving mind. For 
 somehow mind, this wondering mind of 
 man, arose upon this planet ; uprose, 
 appeared, became. No trailing comet, 
 surely, in wanton sport, showered mind 
 upon this world. Whencesoever it arose, 
 being here, and fed and nurtured by all 
 things here, emergent from matter, a 
 fragment of earth and sea and sky, surely 
 in this mind of man must also be that 
 self-same hidden power. . . . 
 
 I, too, then, was one of a mystic band, 
 was in the hands of the self-same power, 
 was indeed but a mutation amid its 
 mutations, and had a part to play on my 
 little stage, a part without which the 
 mighty drama would be incomplete, how- 
 ever lowly it were. For, as by inexorable 
 
 law the youngest leaflet in that dell was 
 
 88
 
 EVENING MEDITATIONS 
 
 potentially existent from before all time, 
 could not help but be and sway and flutter 
 in the breeze, so I in my little world. 
 But what the mighty drama portended or 
 portrayed I knew as little as did the heed- 
 less beetle that had crept out of sight ; 
 and surely, he, poor little soul, had as 
 much right to know as I not many 
 mutations, on this paltry planet, separated 
 me from him. Only I saw, behind all, 
 some ineffable power enacting an ineffable 
 drama : playwright and protagonist in 
 one ; conceiving and enacting an endless 
 plot ; manifesting itself to itself, yet ever 
 remaining the thing unmanifest ; sunder- 
 ing itself into innumerable myriads, yet 
 remaining one and a whole incompre- 
 hensible divine. 1 
 
 1 Confer. "The primal One, from which all 
 things are, is everywhere and nowhere. As being 
 the cause of all things, it is everywhere. As being
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 By degrees the great sky broke up into 
 clouds. A half moon, cut into fantastic 
 shapes by the twigs, peered through the 
 trees ; and as I thridded the boles 
 I miscomprehending, obtuse, merely a 
 larger atom in a small inane, rinding my 
 devious way by a doubly reflected light 
 the scene was shifted, fresh actors 
 called, and the great drama went on, 
 unfolding for ever a tale without end. 
 
 other than all things, it is nowhere. ... No pre- 
 dicate of Being can be properly applied to it. . . . 
 It is greatest of all, not by magnitude, but by 
 potency. ... It is to be regarded as infinite, not 
 because of the impossibility of measuring or count- 
 ing it, but because of the impossibility of compre- 
 hending its power. It is perfectly all-sufficing." 
 "The Neo-Platonists : A Study in the History of 
 Hellenism." By Thomas Whittaker. Cambridge, 
 1901. Chapter v., pp. 58, 59. 
 
 90
 
 XVI 
 THE UNITY OF NATURE 
 
 24 
 
 THE lesson I learned was this : Nature 
 is vast. Nature knows nothing of Time. 
 Nor does Nature know anything of Space. 
 It is we who import spatial and temporal 
 limitations into Nature. Because we 
 look up with two eyes, and feel forth with 
 two arms, and walk about with two legs, 
 we think, not only that our, but that 
 the, universe is an infinite sphere ! an 
 actual objective sphere of which each 
 stupidly assumes that he is the centre ! 
 Which means that there are, supposedly, 
 millions of centres, and each centre chang- 
 ing its place by millions of miles a day ! 
 91
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 positive proof of the preposterousness 
 of the assumption. To an animalcule 
 born and bred inside an old garden hose, 
 the universe, I suppose, is an endless 
 tunnel. To a baby cockroach hatched 
 between floor and carpet, the universe is 
 a limitless plane. Well, we are animal- 
 cules on a little rolling clod; and this 
 clod may bear the same relation to some 
 supernal, w-dimensional mansion and 
 garden and gardeners and Owner, as 
 does my supposititious caoutchouc hose 
 or patterned carpet to some terrestrial 
 demesne. 
 
 And so with Time. Time is a matter 
 of individual memory, of remembering 
 past events and of anticipating (which is 
 memory reversed, as it were ; memory 
 projected) events to come. And memory, 
 
 as we know it, is purely a matter of this 
 92
 
 THE UNITY OF NATURE 
 
 or that sort of nerve-substance in the 
 brain. Had we no memory, we should 
 know nothing whatsoever of time ; an 
 event would be a point, and no past 
 point could be recalled, nor any future 
 one conjectured. So, could an infinite 
 number of memories coalesce, there would 
 be no time either, for in that case all 
 events would occur here and now. 
 
 Nature the Cosmos the All the 
 Deity . . . He is not limited by cubical 
 contents nor by clocks striking the hours. 
 
 25 
 
 How convey a notion of this mysterious 
 Unity ? Shall we essay a gross and 
 inadequate analogy ? 
 
 There are in the blood of man little 
 
 things called white corpuscles. They are 
 93
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 alive ; they are, in fact, little living per- 
 sonages. Indeed, it would be hard to 
 deny that they possess a certain sort of 
 " intelligence " ; for, according to the 
 phagocytic theory, they attack their 
 foes and help their friends. Now, if 
 these white corpuscles ever reason about 
 the world which they inhabit, they must 
 think that it consists of an immense red 
 ocean in a perpetual flux, limitless and 
 restless, and peopled with myriads of 
 beings like unto themselves. Yet they 
 are an integral part of the human frame ; 
 indeed without them the human frame 
 could not be what it is. Well, man's 
 place in his universe may be very similar 
 to that of the white corpuscle in its ; and 
 the intelligence and nature of the Being 
 of which man forms an integral part 
 may be as inconceivable to man to be- 
 wildered man, buried 'neath an ocean of 
 94
 
 THE UNITY OF NATURE 
 
 air, and blown about space without even 
 a " by your leave " as are man's to the 
 leucocytes of the blood. 
 
 If there is no such thing as Space 
 objectively existing outside our groping 
 human selves ; and if there is no such 
 thing as Time, also objectively existing in- 
 dependent of our remembering and antici- 
 pating human selves ; if also Death is 
 but Life undergoing Change (for Life is 
 not a thing extraneous to the cosmos, 
 and there is nothing in the cosmos that 
 can ever go out of it) ; if even Change 
 itself is but a process so named because 
 of the necessities of our temporal and 
 spatial conditions ; and what we call 
 " multiplicity " or " manifoldness " merely 
 a word coined by our incompetence 
 to perceive the interdependence of all 
 that is ... why, then, surely, one with 
 and interpenetrating our own little space- 
 95
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 bound, time-fettered lives, there must be 
 an Absolute Life, indiscerptible because 
 coherent ; immutable, because unspatial ; 
 inexorable, because timeless ; not to be 
 gainsaid, because all-embracing ; whose 
 behests the human spirit, because identical 
 with and contained in it, must and 
 cannot but obey. 
 
 26 
 
 However, that there is a flaw in my 
 Philosophy and a flaw in my Creed, I do 
 not conceal from myself. If, underlying 
 and upholding all phenomenal multi- 
 plicity, there is a noumenal unity, how 
 it comes about that there is evil and 
 suffering and injustice and pain I do 
 not know. Nor do I know how, if that 
 Unity (including man) is governed by 
 infrangible law, it comes about that we 
 
 obtain notions of Responsibility and 
 96
 
 THE UNITY OF NATURE 
 
 Will ; how we feel that we ought to act 
 thus and not otherwise, and have the 
 power to choose the good from the evil. 
 Yet I comfort myself thus : Human 
 reason, after all, is inadequate for the ex- 
 planation of anything superhuman. But 
 there may be in man a faculty of imagina- 
 tion or feeling or emotion or faith call it 
 what you like that insists upon our 
 trying to act thus and not otherwise ; 
 upon our helping on the good and 
 eradicating the bad ; and that leaves the 
 problem of the Origin of Evil and the 
 problem of the Freedom of the Will to 
 another sphere and another stage in the 
 upward emergence of mind. 
 
 27 
 
 Of the Origin of Evil I have no solution 
 whatsoever. Why it is that not a single 
 
 human being can go through his short 
 G 97
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 threescore years and ten without pain, 
 anguish, disappointment, the heartache, 
 and the thousand natural shocks that 
 flesh is heir to; why 
 
 " But to think is to be full of sorrow 
 And leaden-eyed despairs " ; 
 
 why this solid earth is drenched with 
 blood, and on every square inch of its 
 surface are creatures slaughtering and 
 stuffing creatures into their maws ; why 
 torture and agony mental and physical 
 should be rampant ; why innocent 
 little babies should suffer lingering deaths 
 racked with pain weak gasping . . . 
 upon this heart-rending enigma I dare 
 not dwell. But I cannot accept the 
 incredible solution that an Almighty 
 Being created this cosmos out of nothing 
 thus, and, having created it thus, looks on 
 
 at this his appalling creation unmoved. 
 
 98
 
 THE UNITY OF NATURE 
 
 28 
 
 On the Freedom of the Will may I 
 quote myself ? Matthew Arnold has 
 given me precedent. 1 
 
 " There are just two misleading terms 
 in that little phrase, the Freedom of the 
 Will, and these are just the words ' free- 
 dom ' and ' will.' There is no such thing 
 in the bodily frame as a separate entity 
 or faculty called a ' will ' walking about 
 like a pilot on deck and directing the 
 course ; and, if there were, such pilot 
 would not be ' free ' from the influences 
 of wind and tide. The bodily frame is 
 like a ship, with its captain and crew. 
 The captain has to go by the chart (that 
 is, by his knowledge and experience of 
 life), and the crew have to trim the sails 
 (that is, adapt actions to circumstances). 
 The captain (that is, the higher co- 
 
 1 See his General Introduction to Ward's " English 
 Poets," vol. i., p. xvii. London and New York : 
 Macmillan, 1880. 
 
 99
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 ordinating centres) is not ' free,' for he 
 is dependent on his crew (to which we 
 may compare the nerves and the ganglia) 
 which, in turn, are dependent upon 
 weather (that is, our surroundings) . The 
 captain may ' will ' as much as he likes, 
 but if his crew are mutinous, or the winds 
 contrary, he will not make port. ' Will 
 power ' at bottom merely means an in- 
 telligent captain and an obedient crew ; 
 and ' putting-forth ' or ' exercising ' will 
 power merely means that captain and 
 crew must work in harmony. So that, if 
 attention, if virtue, if conduct and char- 
 acter depend upon will power (as of course 
 they do), Aristotle seems to be perfectly 
 right in saying that the secret of these is 
 ey, or habit or practice : only a trained 
 crew can work the ship." l 
 
 29 
 One thing only is certain and whether 
 
 1 " The Mystery of Golf." By Arnold Haultain. 
 Second Edition. Pp. 153, 154. London and New 
 York : Macmillan, 1910. 
 
 100
 
 THE UNITY OF NATURE 
 
 the certainty derives from a rational or 
 an emotional, a social or a cosmic, an 
 evolutionary or an intuitive, a political 
 or an ecclesiastical source, I do not stay 
 to ask one thing only is certain : The 
 evil that there is, it is our bounden duty to 
 alleviate ; " le monde subsist e pour exer- 
 cer misericorde et jugement " x ; and I 
 care not a fig that I have no meta- 
 physical, philosophical, ethical, or re- 
 ligious basis of argument to adduce for 
 this untransferable onus of Duty. 
 
 And I take comfort, also, in the thought 
 that, after all, Reason has had very little 
 to do with the moral progress of mankind. 
 " C'est le cceur qui sent Dieu, et non 
 raison." 2 Answer me this one question : 
 Which have exercised the greater influence 
 for good : reasoned-out systems of philo- 
 
 1 Pascal, " Pensees," XVI. iv. 
 a Ibid. iii. 
 
 101
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 sophy ; or religious evangels whose tenets 
 no one could prove ? How many pious 
 followers has Spinoza or Leibnitz or 
 Nietzsche ? And how many Buddha 
 or Confucius or Mohammed or with all 
 reverence be added his name Jesus of 
 Nazareth ? 
 
 But the critic will say : If the religious 
 tenet is incapable of proof, by what 
 criterion can we judge of the authenticity 
 of any evangel ? Well, if it teaches to 
 alleviate suffering and to do the Right, 
 that is criterion enough for me. 
 
 Return we to the humble topic of 
 walking. 
 
 102
 
 XVII 
 
 THE INSTINCT FOR WALKING 
 30 
 
 FOR many reasons, walking seems to be 
 an ingrained instinct of mankind. I 
 cling to the perhaps fanciful theory that 
 no primitive instinct of man is altogether 
 lost. It is modified, amplified, refined ; 
 that is all. With all our culture, we 
 are barbarians still. Man is a clothed 
 savage. And now and again he delights 
 in doffing the clothing and returning 
 heartily to savagery. How delightful 
 the feel of the briny breeze and the boister- 
 ous wave on the bare pelt ! Mr Edward 
 Carpenter rails at the (I think) eleven 
 
 layers of clothing that intervene between 
 103
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 our skins and the airs of heaven. Walt 
 Whitman revelled nude in his sun bath. 
 What a treat too, sometimes, to get away 
 from the multi-coursed dinner and to bite 
 downright audibly into simple food in the 
 fresh air, and to lap water noisily from 
 the brook ! Well, walking, perhaps, is the 
 primal instinct, ancient as Eden, where 
 the Lord God walked in the garden in 
 the cool of the day. And, if my theory 
 is correct, walking will persist till in 
 recovered Paradise man walks with his 
 Maker again. No mechanical contri- 
 vance for locomotion will extirpate the 
 tribe of tramps, of those who walk from 
 love of walking. 
 
 104
 
 XVIII 
 A WOEFUL WALK 
 
 3i 
 
 BUT not all walks are occasions of 
 unmitigated pleasure. By no means. A 
 certain trudge, which particularly lives 
 in my memory, was one of almost un- 
 mitigated pain. No ; I will not say that, 
 
 for wert not thou, L , cheeriest of 
 
 companions, with me ? What a walk 
 that was ! It rained the long day 
 through, and as we strode westward, 
 a cold, wet wind from the east blew 
 hard. The roads were impassable for 
 mud ; the trees were leafless ; the fields 
 bare. Inns there were none, and at 
 
 the thirteenth mile I broke a nice big 
 
 105
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 flask of port wine or e'er a blessed sip of 
 the liquid (I mean a sip of the blessed 
 liquid) had passed our lips. A woeful 
 walk was that, and woeful pedestrians 
 were we. Yet, somehow, it is with the 
 extremest pleasure that now I recall that 
 trudge. To beguile the time, and to try 
 to forget the rain, we improvised a play, 
 and shouted dialogues as we strode. We 
 covered forty miles at a stretch ; and 
 whether it was the play, or the fresh air, 
 
 or the exercise, or L 's indomitable 
 
 Mark Tapleyism, we limped (no, we 
 lamely ran the last few yards) into our 
 destination, in spirits, at least, buoyant, 
 jubilant, and secure. How mad and bad 
 and sad it was ! And oh, how we were 
 stiff! 
 
 106
 
 XIX 
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 32 
 
 YET another country walk taken in 
 England's North American dominions 
 lives most pleasantly in my memory. 
 
 Two of the clock one autumn afternoon 
 found me free. I had hoped to have lost 
 no time in beginning to put enormous 
 stretches of space between me and my 
 desk. Not that this desk had not its 
 pleasures, and many of them ; but one 
 craves a change of mental atmosphere, 
 however salubrious that usually respired. 
 The temptation, however, of calmly and 
 in self-righteously indolent manner en- 
 joying the sweets of freedom was too 
 107
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 strong, so I lounged a whole afternoon, 
 and not till daybreak on the following 
 morning was I booted, knapsacked, and 
 afoot. 
 
 The task of putting space between me 
 and my desk was not one as easy as I had 
 anticipated. It was hours before the dust 
 of the city was shaken off, and the mud 
 of the country allowed to take its place ; 
 the tedium of the streets at that unfre- 
 quented hour of the day made them seem 
 interminable. For was I not craving 
 and in search of country sights and 
 sounds ? And yet for miles not one met 
 the eye or ear. Yes, I am forgetting : 
 there was one which made up for much 
 monotony. On a humble cottage wall 
 facing the south, far out in the suburbs, 
 was a wealth of flowering convolvulus 
 such as I had rarely or only in India seen 
 
 before. The sight was entrancing. The 
 
 108
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 various-hued blossoms seemed blatantly 
 to trumpet forth their beauty to the sun, 
 to borrow the terms of sound and to apply 
 them to colour. And what colour was 
 there ! That deep, soft, velvet purple, 
 powdered with snowy pollen what a 
 profound, what an acute sense it produced 
 of something altogether beyond the limi- 
 tations of time and space, of something 
 mysterious, beneficent, divine. Never 
 before did I see so deep a meaning in 
 those words : " Consider the lilies of the 
 field, how they grow ; they toil not, 
 neither do they spin : and yet I say unto 
 you, That even Solomon in all his glory 
 was not arrayed like one of these." How 
 paltry, how tainted, seemed all human 
 greatness beside those simple petals ; 
 how marred, how deformed ! And why ? 
 Why should Nature alone be able to 
 
 smile openly before her Maker's eyes, and 
 109
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 man be ever hiding himself from the 
 presence of the Lord God ? Ah ! there 
 is more than one interpretation of the 
 text, " All have sinned, and come short 
 of the glory of God." . . . Those brilliant 
 blossoms aroused many a thought. How 
 earnestly have all poets of Nature striven 
 to find expression for the emotions that 
 natural beauty evokes ! And yet none 
 has completely succeeded, and none will 
 succeed till the hidden links are discovered 
 between the beautiful thing, the mind 
 that perceives it, and the Hand that 
 fashions it. How is it that a sunset, a 
 landscape, a green field even, or a growing 
 fern, will sometimes in a moment of time 
 cause to blaze up in a man a thrill, a joy, 
 so intense that under its influence one 
 feels dazed and dumb ? A great power 
 is, as it were, suddenly let loose ; beauty 
 
 incarnated momentarily reveals its divine 
 no
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 presence, and one feels an all but over- 
 whelming impulse to yield oneself to 
 it and be rapt away whithersoever it 
 leads. But whither it leads we cannot 
 go- 
 
 Of all poets who have given utterance 
 to this deep and mystical emotion, Words- 
 worth perhaps has best succeeded. What 
 can rival the following lines ? which 
 will bear constant quotation : 
 
 " For I have learned 
 To look on Nature, not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." 
 in
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 If only Wordsworth had written oftener 
 in that strain of higher mood ! To me 
 this passage, even with just such narrow 
 meaning as one not worthy to call himself 
 a Words wort hian can read into it, has 
 been invaluable. In the mass of that 
 hidden, cloudy, inner signification with 
 which (I think it is Mr Ruskin who insists 
 that) all poetry should be instinct, these 
 lines are marvellous. They more nearly 
 reach the goal of that " struggle to con- 
 ceive the inconceivable, to utter the 
 unutterable, that longing after the In- 
 finite, that love of God," which Professor 
 Max Miiller describes as the basis of all 
 religions, than all the creeds such religions 
 have constructed. 
 
 Wordsworth saw, as perhaps no one 
 before him ever quite so clearly saw, the 
 Spiritual Unity underlying those two 
 things : the one called External Nature ; 
 
 112
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 the other, this spark of life called the 
 Human Soul the product of, and burning 
 in, that External Nature, as a flame 
 feeds upon the air which it illumines. 
 But to return to my walk. 
 
 33 
 
 Curiously enough, I had hardly reached 
 the confines of the town which I was 
 leaving before I fell in with a youth 
 apparently possessed of the same motive 
 as myself namely, to enjoy to the full 
 the delights of the country after a year's 
 inclusion in a thronged city ; and, in order 
 the better to do so, to use as means of 
 locomotion his own two legs, and a stout 
 stick. I say " apparently/' for very 
 short converse with him revealed the fact 
 that he was utterly blind to the charms 
 of Nature. He was nice-mannered and 
 
 polite to a degree ; but as a companion 
 H 113
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 to aid in discovering rural beauty he was 
 simply worse than none at all. His two 
 negative or denominatorial eyes and ears 
 completely cancelled, made useless, and 
 altogether put out of existence my two 
 positive or numeratorial senses. I was 
 prepared to take infinite delight in the 
 most trivial and insignificant of Nature's 
 works, to extol her most commonplace 
 manifestations, to find the longest sermons 
 in the tiniest pebbles ; but to do this by 
 the side of the most antipathetic of, to 
 all intents and purposes, blind and deaf 
 of fellow-pedestrians it was out of the 
 question. I nothing extenuate nor set 
 down aught in malice when I say that 
 that utterance of his most pregnant with 
 observation of the passing scene was con- 
 tained in the words, " That's a potato- 
 patch ! " The early morning sun fought 
 
 its way between dense grey clouds, and 
 114
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 fell in cheering light on the tops of the 
 trees, and in silver showers on the gleam- 
 ing lake below ; the rich green meadows 
 caught the rays, the very air seemed 
 laden with treasures of sunlight ; young 
 and graceful maples, in crimson autumn 
 tints, like Msenads at vintage-time, flung 
 flaming torches towards the sky, unmind- 
 ful of the morn ; the sumach and the 
 gorgeous virginia-creeper were ablaze with 
 beauty ; yet of all this he saw nothing ; 
 a brown potato-patch by the highway 
 rim a brown potato-patch was to him, and 
 it was nothing more. Yes, by the by, it 
 was something more : it was an appreci- 
 able piece of property, a prospective 
 town lot at so much per foot frontage, 
 one-third cash down and the balance in 
 half-yearly instalments to suit the pur- 
 chaser, all local improvements paid by ... 
 At least some such jargon caught my
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 inattentive ear. Real estate is, I gladly 
 grant, a topic of (often too) absorbing 
 interest ; but one does not exactly wish 
 to be confronted with intricate monetary 
 calculations, connected with barter and 
 commerce, when engaged in the not very 
 kindred and decidedly delicate task of 
 wooing Nature. Barter and commerce 
 when Wordsworth is ringing in one's ears, 
 incorporated companies and syndicates 
 when bird and bush ask your attention 
 these things, in the language of the 
 pharmacopoeia, are incompatibles. 
 
 34 
 
 I had thus two causes of complaint 
 against my companion. So I left him : 
 I took a bypath ; he kept to the high- 
 way. Nor was I sorry. It is pleasant 
 now and again for short periods to get 
 
 away from one's fellow-men. Familiar- 
 116
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 ity breeds contempt, it is said ; perhaps 
 it is as true of aggregations of men as of 
 individuals. At all events, one comes 
 back from a temporary seclusion with 
 a sweeter temper, a more kindly and 
 tolerant regard for those about one. Nor 
 was I sorry. The main road contained 
 too many curious starers. To walk for 
 pleasure was a thing wholly outside the 
 limits of their comprehension. " Tisn't 
 'cause 'tis cheaper ? " asked one irre- 
 pressible inquirer (always this matter of 
 money ! ) ; and he was still mpre puzzled 
 at the explanation that hotel bills largely 
 exceeded railway fare. . . . 
 
 35 
 
 Yet one seeks entertainment when 
 travelling long alone. The mind becomes 
 overfull, it gathers from every sight and 
 
 sound and scent, and craves another mind 
 117
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 as depositary for the surplus, as sharer 
 of the spoils. In time also it wearies of 
 constant observation, and would give 
 much for a companion. In lieu of a con- 
 crete one, I found myself quite uncon- 
 sciously imitating Macaulay, and sub- 
 stituting an abstract one by quoting 
 Milton ; and never did his ponderous yet 
 marvellously poised lines sound to me so 
 grand as when rolled ore rotundo to the 
 accompaniment of Ontario's rolling wave. 
 M. Henri Cochin, Matthew Arnold tells 
 us, speaks of " the majestic English 
 iambic." It is to Milton surely that 
 the English iambic owes the praise of 
 majesty. To me, I confess, the exceed- 
 ing beauty of much of Milton's verse is 
 a snare as is also much of Mr Ruskin's 
 prose : the ear is so captivated by the 
 sound that the mind strays from the 
 
 sense. 
 
 118
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 36 
 
 Toronto was my starting point, and my 
 course lay eastwards on the northern 
 shore of great Lake Ontario by what is 
 always known as the Kingston Road, one 
 of the oldest in the country, the precursor 
 of the Grand Trunk Railway, the track of 
 which, indeed, it closely follows. The 
 country through which it runs varies but 
 little in scenery, being a great undulating 
 stretch of fertile land thickly settled 
 with farms and orchards, and as thickly 
 wooded with pine, maple, larch, elm, fir, 
 beech, hickory, and other trees common 
 in Canada. Here and there a small river 
 runs to the lake, and here and there the 
 shore rises into cliffs of eighty or a 
 hundred feet. Cows and sheep, and pigs 
 and poultry, meet one all along the road, 
 
 showing us the occupations of the in- 
 119
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 habitants ; as do also the fields of barley 
 and wheat, and the great orchards gay 
 with the unrivalled Canadian apple, which 
 gleams at us from the boughs with every 
 hue and size. The Kingston Road is a 
 king's highway with a vengeance ; hard, 
 well-travelled, and dotted, I should say, 
 along its whole length, with comfortable, 
 often elaborate, habitations standing in 
 the midst of fields and trees. At every 
 ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty miles these 
 habitations cluster into villages or towns ; 
 sometimes where road and railway inter- 
 sect, when there spring up factories and 
 warehouses ; sometimes down by the shore, 
 when there rise elevators and wharves. 
 I cannot pretend to say that these are 
 interesting. They consist for the most 
 part each of one straggling main street, 
 itself a part of the Kingston Road, and 
 differentiated from it only by the unkempt 
 
 120
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 habitations that line its length, and by the 
 inevitable wooden pavements, broad in 
 the central portions, but narrowing to a 
 single plank in the outskirts where, no 
 doubt, it was in reality, if not in name, 
 the "Lovers' Walk." They were not 
 quaint, no ancient and few historical 
 traditions clung to them, neither did they 
 appear to me to possess any distinguishing 
 characteristics. 
 
 37 
 
 I have spoken of a quiet country town. 
 A country town of a Sunday afternoon in 
 Canada is the quietest of existing things. 
 Everything in it seems lifeless. Not a 
 sound is heard from any side. One's own 
 cough startles one in the very streets. 
 Two cows slowly wend their way home- 
 wards ; an over-ripe apple falls heavily 
 in an unkempt front garden even these
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 signs of semi-life are a relief. Rows of 
 youths, all dressed in sombre black, and 
 all smoking cigars fearfully if not wonder- 
 fully made, lean against the walls of the 
 inn at the corner, or stand in silent knots 
 about the horse-gnawed " hitching-post." 
 The jaded afternoon sunlight falls slant- 
 ingly and weariedly on untidy plots in 
 which weeds strive for mastery success- 
 fully with flowers, on empty verandahs 
 with blistered paint, on the dusty grass 
 encroaching ever on the street. I enter 
 the inn. It is chilly, and in the common 
 room which serves many purposes a 
 battered stove lacking two-thirds of its 
 mica radiates a dry and suffocating heat. 
 On deal chairs, mostly tipped up, sit the 
 youths but just now lounging without. 
 They say nothing ; only they sit and 
 smoke, and spit how they spit ! They 
 themselves probably are all unconscious .: 
 
 122
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 of the incessant salivary sharp-shooting ; 
 but I I sit in terror, like a nervous 
 woman dreading the pistol shots on the 
 stage. Soon church bells begin to clang. 
 None heeds them, nor are they over- 
 inviting ; one is cracked, they are not in 
 harmony, and they seem to be ringing a 
 race in which the hindmost is to win. 
 In the space of about an hour, however, 
 the youths begin to move, as if with the 
 feeling that at last will come a small 
 relief from the awful ennui which they 
 cannot express. Church is coming out. 
 They go out and draw up before the doors. 
 A heavy yellow light streams across the 
 street, and with it issues an odour, 
 perhaps, of sanctity, but much disguised 
 by kerosene. Greetings follow between 
 the out -coming damsels and the waiting 
 youths, and curious raucous laughs in- 
 tended to be tender are heard disappear- 
 123
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 ing into darkened ways. Soon all is 
 again hushed, and but for here and there 
 the slow and lugubrious sounds of hymn 
 tunes played on old and middle-aged 
 organs, the little town might be a buried 
 city of the East. 
 
 38 
 
 Yet no doubt it had its tragedies, this 
 seemingly peaceful and sequestered spot : 
 indeed signs of most pathetic tragedies 
 came under my own eyes, few as were the 
 hours which I spent in it. Hanging about 
 the unpretentious hostelry about which 
 those uncouth youths gathered, were two 
 specimens of what was once humanity 
 that made the heart ache to look on. One 
 was a case, I think, hopeless : a gaunt and 
 dirty figure, his last drink still dripping 
 
 from his beard, clothed in the vilest of 
 124
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 shirts, and in things that were once 
 trousers, which last hung loose over large 
 and faded carpet slippers, he moved dis- 
 gust as well as pity. The other was of a 
 different class. Drink had been his bane 
 also, but there was not in his face that 
 absence of all shame, that despair merging 
 into careless defiance, which stamped his 
 fellow-sufferer's case as beyond the cure of 
 man. They called him " Doc," and there 
 were still evidences of birth and education 
 upon his bloated features. What had 
 driven him thus far ? I could not help 
 but conjecture. Was there a woman at 
 the bottom of it ? If so, where and what 
 was she now ? Somebody else's. . . . 
 But this was idle guesswork. There was 
 yet another case, a woman herself this 
 time, still more tragic. Her motto, 
 stamped upon every feature, expressed in 
 
 every gesture, was " The heart knoweth 
 125
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 its own bitterness." A tall, dark, and 
 once handsome spinster, a femme de 
 trente ans, she waited upon us at table ; 
 but with such an air of utter indifference, 
 with such complete abstraction from 
 things material and ephemeral, that she 
 awed the very persons to whose wants she 
 ministered. Her face wore a settled and 
 unaltering expression of something missed 
 yet never to that day for one moment 
 forgotten. A machine could not have 
 carried plates and moved dishes with more 
 unfailing stolidity. Her thoughts were 
 remotely away in the past, and it seemed 
 as if nothing, nothing upon all this earth, 
 could fetch them back. Cato's statue 
 would have smiled as soon as she. It was 
 pathetic in the extreme. One longed to 
 give her if but one moment's peace of 
 mind. Did she never forget ? What was 
 
 it she brooded on ? How long would the 
 126
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 feminine heart and brain stand that 
 strain ? Tragedies ! Yes, there were 
 tragedies there, as everywhere else. 
 
 39 
 
 Such is Sunday in a country town. 
 But in truth, after the rush and hurry of 
 city life, in the country it seems always 
 Sunday. There is a leisure, a calm, a 
 restfulness, and, away by the fields, a 
 quiet sanctity which pervades its every 
 part and unconsciously influences its 
 every inhabitant. By degrees, too, on 
 the traveller through the country this 
 calming influence comes. The still green 
 meadows, the gently swaying boughs, the 
 sunshine sleeping pillowed on the clouds 
 all tend to meditative and restful peace, 
 and one reaps the harvest of a quiet eye. 
 
 And if one yields to this beneficent mood 
 127
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 there is much, very much, to be gained. 
 Alone with Nature, all around the spacious 
 earth, above the immeasurable heavens, 
 alone in a vast expanse, one finds one- 
 self, in AmieTs fine phrase, tUe-a-tUe with 
 the Infinite. At such times the great 
 problem of Life flares upon us like a flash 
 of lightning, so sudden, so intense, so 
 vivid is its irruption on the mental vision. 
 Time and space, like the darkness of night, 
 are annihilated, earthly bounds are burst, 
 and there is revealed a realm of Being 
 beyond the confines of the relative, the 
 limited, the finite. We recognise the 
 infinity of unity, the brotherhood of all 
 things. Terms of proportion and com- 
 parison lose their significance : there is 
 no great or little, important or trivial, for 
 the minutest object is an essential part of 
 the All, without which this All would 
 
 cease to be. 
 
 128
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 40 
 
 Curious thoughts, or " half -embody ings 
 of thoughts " as Coleridge called them, 
 that lonely walk aroused. What was this 
 All ? And what portion of this All was 
 I I, this tiny biped crawling ant-like 
 between earth and sky ? I looked over 
 the flat earth, and remembered that it was 
 not flat but round, and but one of myriads 
 like itself, and among them, perhaps, as 
 paltry as, upon it, I. I looked up at the 
 sky, filled with the radiance of the sun, 
 and again remembered that, sown through 
 space like seed, were countless other suns, 
 and ours perhaps the least in all that host. 
 And when night came, and the stars shone, 
 I remembered that even then I saw only 
 what came in at the pin-prick of the eye, 
 and that to the mighty All that myriad- 
 studded sky was perhaps as trivial as to 
 i 129
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 it was earth or sun. Yet, trivial as we 
 were, we were not naught not quite 
 nothing. That was the wonder of it. 
 So far from naught, indeed, that to me, 
 this tiny biped crawling, himself was very 
 important ; his little pains, his aches, even 
 these his questionings were very real. If 
 incommensurable suns swung high over- 
 head, he at least was the centre of his own 
 little world, and not the most astounding 
 facts of science could alter or remove that 
 egocentric view. And, if not nothing, if 
 something in all that vast inane, then 
 what ? How came it that, prompted by 
 what entered at that pin-prick eye, some- 
 thing within him could fling itself, fling 
 itself faster than light, far beyond the 
 outermost boundary of vision, and put to 
 the immensity of Being questions which, 
 could Being hear, would surely put it to 
 
 the blush ? Those pains, those aches, 
 130
 
 AUTUMN IN CANADA AGAIN 
 
 were they nothing to the All ? To the 
 tiny mighty atom they were much. But 
 the world spun round, and the sun set, and 
 darkness was upon the face of the deep. 
 
 4i 
 
 It is well now and again, I think, to 
 withdraw into the holy of holies of one's 
 own self, " where dwells the Nameless," x 
 in its shapeless and vague impenetrability, 
 " as a cloud." The world is too much 
 with us. The myriad trivial details of 
 everyday life hide from us that of which 
 they ought in reality perpetually to re- 
 mind us. For, after all, what is all action, 
 even as manifested in these trivial details, 
 but a struggle to overcome space and time, 
 the limitations of the finite ; and what, 
 again, is all thought but a struggle to 
 conceive the infinite ? 
 
 Tennyson, "The Ancient Sage."
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 42 
 
 Yet another thought this spacious 
 prospect gave me. The endless green 
 fields and the endless blue lake seemed a 
 symbol of the unrealisability of the ideal. 
 With both I was enamoured, and with 
 the beauty of both I craved in some dim 
 and unknown way to take my fill of 
 delight : both were at my feet, but both 
 stretched away and away until they met 
 the eternal and unapproachable heavens 
 at the horizon. Yes, the fields were green, 
 but not the spot on which I stood ; the 
 water was blue, but not in the cup with 
 which I tried to assuage my thirst. But 
 there is a limit to ontological and psycho- 
 logical speculations of sombre hue. 
 
 132
 
 XX 
 
 THE WALKING TOUR 
 
 43 
 
 UP to the present we have considered 
 the country walk only. The walking trip 
 or tour is a more serious affair. If it 
 requires as vacuous a frame of mind, it 
 necessitates a more deliberate preparation. 
 Much depends upon the country and the 
 locality chosen. If inviting hostelries 
 abound, one needs to weight oneself with 
 little ; if they are infrequent, or non- 
 existent, food and clothing become matters 
 of moment. This may sound a truism ; 
 but it is a truism that many a tripper 
 wishes he had laid more earnestly to heart 
 when, miles from house and home, he
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 finds himself wet, hungry, and fatigued. 
 It is better to carry a few extra pounds 
 far than to run short soon ; for a worn- 
 out body means a useless mind, and hunger 
 and cold, with their attendant depression 
 of spirits, not only rob the tour of its 
 pleasure, but rob the tourist of his zest. 
 Start, therefore, comfortable, and com- 
 fortably provided. This is not Sybarit- 
 ism ; it is common-sense. 
 
 For an extended trip, send on some 
 luggage ahead, if you can ; and some 
 money (I speak of civilised regions). It 
 is impossible, if you are alone unless, 
 like Stevenson, you hire a donkey to 
 transport on your own back food and 
 clothing to keep you going for more than 
 a few days at a stretch unless you shoot, 
 or fish, or trap which is sport or pro- 
 specting, not walking. 
 
 Your first care should be for your feet
 
 THE WALKING TOUR 
 
 another truism not seldom neglected. 
 See that your boots fit -fit, remember- 
 ing that the feet swell (I speak to tender- 
 foots). 
 
 If you are unaccustomed to walking, 
 a good plan is to start with an extra 
 pair of leather soles inside your boots. 
 These can be taken out when the feet 
 swell. 
 
 If you prefer shoes to boots, wear gaiters 
 or putties to keep out the wet in winter, 
 to keep out the dust in summer. The 
 only occasion upon which I suffered from 
 blisters was on a sixty-mile walk in tennis 
 shoes on a dusty road in August. Take 
 two or three changes of socks. If you 
 walk in a populous region, carry a pair of 
 light shoes. These will come in handy if 
 you run across a friend who asks you to 
 dinner. Carry also a collar or two ; not 
 only hosts and hostesses, but landlords and
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 landladies look askance at too trampish 
 an appearance. I once felt rather un- 
 comfortable sitting at the head of a table 
 d'hote at the excellent Hotel Kalten- 
 bach on the American side at Niagara 
 (the landlord knew me well), for I was in 
 rough flannels and tweeds, and my fellow- 
 guests were dressed like (and some of them 
 probably were ) millionaires and million- 
 airesses. Verbum sapientibus satis. Do 
 not refuse an invitation to dinner. Follow 
 Napoleon's advice and let the country 
 you pass through support you, falling 
 back upon your own food-supply when 
 necessary. Help yourself to as much 
 fruit as you can, or as the owners 
 thereof and their dogs permit. A too 
 concentrated diet is unwholesome. Ex- 
 patiate upon this to the owners of 
 orchards, and back your theories with 
 
 a dole. 
 
 136
 
 THE WALKING TOUR 
 
 44 
 
 But nothing equals the evening meal 
 cooked over your own fire if you are 
 not too tired to cook it. Of the cookery 
 I shall speak later ; but the fire is as in- 
 vigorating as the food. Would you taste 
 the consummation of human masculine 
 contentment, stretch your tired legs before 
 your own fire after a long, long walk 
 followed by a full meal : your chamber, 
 the forest primaeval, green, indistinct in 
 the twilight ; your couch, the scented 
 earth ; your canopy, the heavens, curtained 
 with clouds ; in your nostrils the incense 
 of burning wood ; in your heart the peace 
 which the world giveth not. The elabor- 
 ately ornamented modern hearth, with 
 its carved oak or its sculptured marble, is 
 the direct lineal descendant of the nomad 
 fire the earliest institution of man, the
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 first promoter of civilisation, the binder- 
 together of troglodytic families into 
 tribes. " Hearth and Home " is an 
 ancient, a very ancient, sentiment. It 
 dates back, I take it, to the Glacial Epoch 
 far enough, in all conscience. In my 
 mind's eye I see the shivering Cave-man, 
 appalled at the encroaching ice, the 
 deepening cold. He gathers wood, 
 huddles him in caves, the drops from his 
 furry, ill-smelling clothing (there was no 
 tanning then) sputtering in the flames. 
 For self -protection, and from lack of fuel, 
 family makes alliance with family, and 
 the first -formed human community squats 
 silent about the first-formed human 
 hearth. What friendships must have 
 there been cemented, what tales told ; 
 what a strange first unburthening of 
 human heart to human heart ! What 
 
 ecstatic love-making, too, must have 
 138
 
 THE WALKING TOUR 
 
 been enacted in the darksome corners of 
 the sooty cave, the while the grey gorged 
 hunters snored, and toothless beldames 
 gesticulated dumb-crambo scandal by the 
 smouldering brands ! No wonder prae- 
 historic associations cluster even now 
 about what is too often represented by a 
 flamboyant mantelpiece with immaculate 
 tiles and polished brasses. Pro Aris 
 et Focis ! The smoking altar is the 
 consecrated symbol of the lowly hearth. 
 
 139
 
 XXI 
 
 THE TRAMP'S DIETARY 
 
 45 
 
 As to food bacon, flour, and beans are 
 the stand-by. The curious in the matter 
 of concentrated and portable foods will 
 do well to consult Nansen's elaborate and 
 carefully calculated lists of these. 1 Carry 
 some chocolate : it staves off hunger and 
 is nourishing. Milk, if you can get it, has 
 wonderful staying powers, and by most 
 people especially under stress of pro- 
 longed exertion is easily digested. 
 Wear wool next the skin, and wear it 
 loose. Let everything be loose. And 
 
 *See his "Farthest North," ii. 73 et seq. ; 76 et 
 seq. ; et passim. 
 
 140
 
 THE TRAMP'S DIETARY 
 
 see that your tailor puts pockets deep 
 and wide ones in every conceivable and 
 inconceivable part of your costume. As 
 to books, sketching or writing materials, 
 or a camera every tramp has his hobby : 
 indulge yours to the full ; what are you 
 walking for if not to enjoy life ? Lastly, 
 do not forget that, if you are not far 
 from the haunts of men, you will over 
 and over again be indebted to your fellow- 
 men for little kindnesses and civilities. 
 A pocketful of small change will make 
 many a rough place smooth. I might 
 mention also sotto voce that so will a flask 
 of good whisky. To these you may add 
 a couple of bandages, some chlorodyne, 
 a few ounces of cognac, a small styptic, 
 a needle and some thread, a small razor, 
 and a cake of soap. Also, if you wear 
 an eye-glass or glasses, by no means 
 
 forget to carry some extra ones. As for 
 141
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 the rest, a pipe, a very big pouch of 
 tobacco (many will dip into it), a stout 
 stick, and abundance of matches ought 
 to make you independent of everything 
 and everybody for days together. 
 
 46 
 
 A word, too, on beverages, which are 
 as important as is food. Eschew alcohol 
 in every shape or form, unless you are 
 dog-tired at the end of a long day and 
 must make a few miles ere nightfall. 
 Alcoholic stimulation spells ruination 
 to muscular exertion the moment the 
 stimulus has passed off. It was said 
 that on the march to the relief of Lady- 
 smith in the South African War the 
 drinkers could be told as plainly as if 
 they had been labelled. 
 
 The best example I know of the wise 
 
 and efficacious use of alcohol is in Edith 
 142
 
 THE TRAMP'S DIETARY 
 
 Elmer Wood's "An Oberland Chalet." 
 The author, her sister-in-law, and her 
 brother, with a guide, were climbing the 
 Strahlegg Pass. 
 
 " All the way up that eight hundred 
 feet of rock wall, there was never a ledge 
 large enough to rest on with the entire 
 two feet at once ! . . . The numbness of 
 my hands was so great that my control 
 over them was most uncertain. My life 
 and that of my companions depended on 
 the grip I should keep with those cramped, 
 aching fingers, but though I concentrated 
 my will power on them I felt no certainty 
 that the next minute they would not 
 become rigid and refuse to obey me. . . . 
 After the first few minutes, I never looked 
 downward. I was not inclined to dizzi- 
 ness, but the drop was too appalling. . . . 
 Once we got all four on a little ledge not 
 as wide as the length of our feet, but solid 
 enough to stand on without balancing. 
 We paused there to take breath, and 
 somebody said ' Cognac.' Now our ex- 
 143
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 perience in the Alpine hut the night 
 before had nearly made teetotalers of us. 
 But at this moment we decided that 
 stimulants might have a legitimate use. 
 Prater produced his silver pocket flask 
 and handed it round. We took a swallow 
 in turn, and it was like liquid life running 
 down our throats. I never experienced 
 anything so magical. ... I was at the 
 very last point of endurance. I had lost 
 faith in ever reaching the summit of the 
 cliff. I had no more physical force with 
 which to lift my sagging weight upward. 
 I had lost the will power that lashes on 
 an exhausted body. My numb hands 
 were stiffening. My lungs were choked 
 and labouring. I could neither go on 
 nor go back. Then those two teaspoon- 
 fuls, or thereabouts, of fiery cognac that 
 burned down my throat sufficed to give 
 me back my grip on myself, physical and 
 mental. I moved my cramped fingers 
 and they answered. I took a deep 
 long breath and felt strengthened. A 
 hope, almost a confidence, crept into 
 144
 
 THE TRAMP'S DIETARY 
 
 my heart that we might reach the top 
 alive." 1 
 
 47 
 
 The best all-round stimulant is tea. 
 I say it advisedly, knowing full well that 
 to Dr Alexander Haig and the anti-uric- 
 acid dietists tea is Anathema Maranatha. 
 But every mining prospector, every rail- 
 road constructor, every lumberman, every 
 out - in - the - wilds worker throughout 
 Australia and America drinks tea proof, 
 surely, that it is efficacious, even if it be 
 in a sense deleterious. In huge quan- 
 tities, and constantly taken, I dare say 
 it is deleterious. But personally I know 
 of no pick-me-up preferable to tea, when, 
 cold, hungry, and tired at the end of a 
 
 x "An Oberland Chalet." By Edith Elmer 
 Wood. London : T. Werner Laurie. No date, 
 but probably circa 1912. Pp. 256-260. 
 
 K 145
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 long day's tramp, you find yourself "all 
 in " and unable to eat. 
 
 I recall an instance of the extraordinary 
 efficacy of tea quite weak, but hot. It 
 was at the end of a forty-mile walk through 
 a monotonous country in cold, wind, and 
 rain. We arrived tired out ; and al- 
 though we knew we were hungry (for we 
 had had precious little to eat all day), 
 the thought of food was repulsive, though 
 the restaurant we had reached displayed 
 a variety of viands. I ordered hot tea 
 in the biggest teapot procurable. It 
 was brought. We sipped I forget how 
 many cups each. Then we supped in- 
 deed ; and after supper one of the party 
 proposed to walk the forty miles back ! 
 
 Perhaps Dr Haig will say that plain 
 hot water would have done just as well. 
 
 Humph ! Give me weak, but good, tea. 
 146
 
 THE TRAMP'S DIETARY 
 
 Hot milk, of course, is an incomparable 
 pick-me-up. But who, on a trudge, can 
 always, by demanding it, obtain hot 
 milk ? If you can get it, milk, in any 
 shape or form, is unrivalled. More than 
 once it has raised me* from the depths 
 of low spirits, produced by hunger and 
 thirst and fatigue, to the most contented 
 of moods. I was walking once on a hot 
 summer's day along a barren and dusty 
 road where was no habitation nor signs 
 of men. My knapsack was empty, so 
 was my water-bottle. Not a brook or a 
 stream could I find. It was late in the 
 day. I was heart -sick and weary. But 
 the miracle happened. Did I believe my 
 eyes, or was that a man there milking cows 
 over yonder in that field ? I made 
 straight for him, and, after passing the 
 time of day and being generally polite 
 
 (the while my tongue clave to my palate), 
 147
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 I presently asked if I might have some of 
 his priceless liquid I called it simply 
 " milk." Genially he pointed to a pail 
 a pail, and bade me help myself. I 
 put that vessel to my lips, and I rather 
 think that the vertical arc described by 
 any given point on the periphery of the 
 bottom of that utensil during the process 
 of deglutition was not a small one ! 
 When I put that pail down (and a twenty- 
 five-cent piece beside it) I was a new 
 man, and laughed at miles and melan- 
 choly. 
 
 Very often, when walking, especially 
 in hot weather, one finds oneself tired 
 when only a few miles have been covered. 
 It is not real fatigue ; it is want of fluid. 
 The skin exudes moisture ; the blood 
 thickens ; the serums and synovial fluids 
 
 run short ; waste matter is not ex- 
 148
 
 THE TRAMP'S DIETARY 
 
 creted ; the muscles and tendons require 
 lubrication. A copious draught of water 
 will put all to rights. Not everyone knows 
 this. I myself owe the hint to a friend. 1 
 
 48 
 
 Each walker must, however, discover 
 for himself what is the food best suited 
 to his needs remembering always that 
 it is quite possible to spoil a whole day 
 by even trivial dietetic mistakes. If you 
 walk to see and to enjoy, unless you 
 possess that youth which can digest any- 
 thing, and that vitality which can attack 
 anything, take heed as to what you eat 
 and what you attempt. Most unfortun- 
 ate is the remembrance of an otherwise 
 lovely walk I took one day over one of 
 the most lovely of the passes of the Jura. 
 
 1 And I thank you, C.B.L. 
 149
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 The day was superb ; the road by the 
 soft green pastures was superb ; and 
 superb was the climb through the tangled 
 brushwood of the slopes. Filmy clouds 
 formed themselves to leeward of the peaks 
 and hid the tops of the pines ; above, I 
 gazed into a deep blue sky ; beneath, 
 I gazed into a deep green vale ; and a 
 tumbling brook sent its music up the 
 heights. But I had started foodless, 
 and had stuffed into my pockets only a 
 stodgy roll and a box of sardines. By 
 noon I was hungry. I finished the roll 
 and the sardines . With deplorable result . 
 The pancreas rebelled, the senses were 
 dulled, and all the beauties of the Jura 
 were lost upon heu me miserum I Fellow- 
 tramp, take thought for your provender 
 and " provender " good old Dr Johnson 
 defines as " dry food for brutes." That 
 
 is the diet to walk on. 
 150
 
 THE TRAMP'S DIETARY 
 
 49 
 
 But, after all, one's impedimenta must 
 be chosen according to one's tastes. Mr 
 Hilaire Belloc equipped himself for his 
 seven-hundred-mile walk from Toul to 
 Rome with " a large piece of bread, half- 
 a-pound of smoked ham, a sketch-book, 
 two Nationalist papers, and a quart of 
 the wine of Brule " x (but one half- 
 pennyworth of bread to this intolerable 
 deal of sack !) ; though farther on he 
 tells us he also carried " a needle, some 
 thread, and a flute." 2 But then Mr 
 Belloc's path lay through thickly-peopled 
 districts ; he rarely slept in the open ; 
 travelled in summer-time ; and not once, 
 I think, lighted a fire : and certes he 
 reached Rome in sorry plight. 
 
 1 " The Path to Rome/' p. 16. 
 2 1 bid., p. 341.
 
 XXII 
 
 PRACTICAL DETAILS 
 5o 
 
 AND now for some hints on the practical 
 details of walking tours of more arduous 
 character and more extended length. 1 
 Suit the w^'ght of your knapsack or pack 
 to your strength, leaving a large margin 
 for comfort. If you travel in regions 
 uninhabited by man, and the climate 
 is rigorous, a shelter at night is all- 
 important. Therefore carry a light 
 blanket : a warm head and face induce 
 sleep ; so does a change to dry under- 
 clothing at the end of the day. For really 
 
 1 For these I am entirely indebted to my 
 younger brother, Professor Herbert E. T. 
 Haultain, A.M.Inst.C.E., etc. 
 152
 
 PRACTICAL DETAILS 
 
 hard trips, when you walk all day and 
 walk far, you will need, to replace used-up 
 muscular tissue, each day : 
 
 lb. of flour ; 
 f lb. of bacon ; 
 2 lb. of beans ; 
 
 and to these you should add dried fruit 
 or rice. The best dried fruit is a mixture 
 in equal parts of apricots and prunes. 
 Take an abundance of tea : nothing takes 
 the place of tea ; and supply yourself 
 with pepper, salt, sugar, candles, and 
 soap. Your cooking pots should fit the 
 one into the other. These things, with 
 a small frying-pan, an axe (to cut poles 
 for your evening shelter and wood for 
 your fire), a file to sharpen this, and some 
 stout wire hooks by which to hang your 
 pots over the fire, complete, I think, the 
 sum-total of your absolutely necessary 
 impedimenta.
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 5i 
 
 The sedulous, however sage, have little 
 idea how large a part of active life depends 
 on food. To stay-at-homes, who go down 
 to the dining-room when the gong sounds, 
 a meal seems a mere incident of life, an 
 intermission from work, an opportunity 
 for a family chat. The traveller on foot 
 soon learns that a meal is of the most 
 vital importance. Every reader of 
 Nansen's thrilling narrative must have 
 noticed this. Even in Mr Belloc's liter- 
 ary " Path to Rome " one is struck with 
 the intrusion of this unliterary topic, and 
 the more literary " Inland Voyage " of 
 Robert Louis Stevenson is not free from 
 it. While even in that delightful, and de- 
 lightfully feminine, " An Oberland Chalet," 
 which I have already cited, although the 
 foods were generally cheese or cakes or 
 i54
 
 PRACTICAL DETAILS 
 
 petits pains, and the drinks chocolate or 
 milk or cafe an lait, the mention of edibles 
 and potables is frequent. 
 
 The importance of a supply of food has 
 so often been borne in upon me that I 
 am inclined to believe that the political 
 community is coseval with the pantry. 
 Even amongst animals, only those form 
 commonwealths which form common 
 stores of food as the ant and the bee. 
 
 The pedestrian gains a practical insight 
 into this wide-reaching influence of a 
 storage of food. Not for half-a-dozen 
 hours can he subsist before its importance 
 is impressed upon him by most painful 
 pangs. If, therefore, sedulous sage, you 
 set out on a long hard walk without due 
 provision for the allaying of hunger, you 
 will come to grief. I make no apologies, 
 accordingly, for minute instructions on 
 
 that topic here. 
 
 i55
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 52 
 
 The bread of the Western prospector, 
 my fraternal informant tells me, is 
 the bannock. Dost know how to make 
 a bannock ? You must have with you 
 a bag containing flour (of the highest 
 grade, made from hard wheat), baking 
 powder, and salt, thoroughly mixed be- 
 forehand. (Use twice as much baking 
 powder as the instructions on the tin 
 direct. Half a cupful of salt will suffice 
 for ten pounds of flour.) Open this bag, 
 and make a depression in the contents 
 with your fist. Into this pour a cupful 
 of water. Stir the sides of the depres- 
 sion into the water till you get a stiff 
 dough. Spread this dough in a clean 
 greased frying-pan. Hold the pan over 
 the fire till the under side of the dough 
 
 is slightly browned, then take the pan 
 156
 
 PRACTICAL DETAILS 
 
 off the fire and set it up on edge to allow 
 the top of the bannock to toast, and 
 your bannock is made and very de- 
 licious you will find it if you are hungry, 
 and hungry you certainly will be. 
 
 Beans are a more troublesome affair, 
 for, unfortunately, they take from two 
 to four hours to boil. But beans are 
 the mainstay of life on a tour. There are 
 two good varieties : the small white, and 
 the larger brown. Take both, and before 
 starting clean them thoroughly from 
 dust and grit and stones thoroughly. 
 As soon as your fire is lighted, put on your 
 beans in cold water with no salt, and keep 
 them boiling. As soon as they show signs 
 of softening, add a piece of bacon or a ham 
 bone and some pepper and salt. When 
 ready eat. If they are not ready for 
 you when you are ready for them (and 
 this coincidence is, alas, rare with beans), 
 i57
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 the pot should be filled up with water, 
 the remains of the fire raked into a circle, 
 in the centre of which the pot should be 
 kept for the night : they will then make 
 a dish for breakfast, when they may be 
 eaten as they are, or can be fried. If 
 drained fairly dry, they may be carried 
 as they are and used for luncheon. But 
 the best thing is to make a bannock of 
 them. Take a clean frying-pan with 
 plenty of bacon fat in it, and mash the 
 already boiled beans in this with a fork. 
 Heat, with stirring, till the mass is dry 
 enough to set ; then fry on both sides. 
 This will keep for days, " and is," says 
 my authority, " the finest food I know 
 of for emergency trips." 
 
 158
 
 XXIII 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 53 
 
 MAY I here request the reader to accom- 
 pany me in a short digression ? Few 
 things are pleasanter than a walk in 
 which one turns down any lane that 
 invites. 
 
 One of the first delights of walking is the 
 pleasure derived from the passing scene. 
 What is the secret of the pleasure derived 
 from a beautiful landscape or, as a 
 matter of fact, from almost any land- 
 scape ? For apparently a landscape need 
 not be actually beautiful in order to give 
 pleasure. " I wouldn't give a mile of the 
 dear old Sierras," says Bret Harte, " with 
 159
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 their honesty, sincerity, and magnificent 
 uncouthness, for 100,000 kilometres of the 
 picturesque Vaud." 1 And even Mary 
 MacLane, rail as she did at the barren 
 sands of Butte, Montana, in her " Story," 2 
 when she left them wrote, " I love those 
 things the best of all." 3 Bret Harte and 
 Mary MacLane may give us a clue to the 
 secret . It is not merely the contour or the 
 colours of a landscape that delight ; it is 
 the associations that cling to it. But 
 what of a scene which is quite new to 
 the eyes ? Still, I think, association. 
 " Scenery soon palls," says George 
 Borrow, " unless it is associated with 
 remarkable events, and the names of 
 
 1 Quoted in The Academy and Literature (London) 
 of October the 4th, 1902, p. 340. 
 
 8 " The Story of Mary MacLane," by Herself. 
 Chicago : Herbert S. Stone & Company, 1902. 
 
 3 In The New York World of September the I4th, 
 1902, p. 7. 
 
 160
 
 THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 remarkable men." * And Ruskin, you 
 will remember, when gazing at the broken 
 masses of pine forest which skirt the 
 course of the Ain above the village of 
 Champignole, in the Jura, found that the 
 impressiveness of the scene owed its 
 source to the fact that "those ever- 
 springing flowers and ever-flowing streams 
 had been dyed by the deep colours of 
 human endurance, valour, and virtue." 2 
 Packed away in the brain and mind of 
 man must be subtle and secret memories 
 dating back through unknown ages of 
 time. A gaseous theory, perhaps, but 
 one which Senancour has liquefied into 
 the pellucid sentence : " La nature sentie 
 n'est que dans les rapports humains, et 
 1'eloquence des choses n'est rien que 
 
 1 " Wild Wales," Introduction. 
 2 " The Seven Lamps of Architecture," chapter 
 vi., The Lamp of Memory, i. 
 L 161
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 1'eloquence de 1'homme." x The great 
 fight for life, the stern joys of life 
 the ferocious combat, the thrilling love 
 match, the myriad sensations and emo- 
 tions evoked by man's physical environ- 
 ment, and his struggle for existence 
 therein surely these live somehow some- 
 where packed away in his brain to-day 
 just as some migratory and nidificatory 
 memories must be packed away in the 
 brain of a bird. It is these dormant 
 cosmic memories that a landscape revives. 
 On how many a plain to-day does there 
 not flow veritable human blood remuted 
 into sap ! Terrene Nature was man's 
 ancestral home and no man can gaze 
 upon it unmoved. 
 
 54 
 The freedom of a great expanse seems 
 
 1 Obermann, Lettre XXXVI. 
 162
 
 THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 to arouse primitive instincts. Idylls are 
 not enacted in drawing-rooms. It is the 
 odorous glades are Hymen's haunts. 
 In the meads of Enna Proserpine was 
 wooed. Zephir won Aurora a-maying. 
 On Latmos top Endymion was nightly 
 kissed. In the boscage Daphnis proposed 
 and was there and then accepted. 1 If 
 only Fashion would decree that honey- 
 moons should be spent under Jove ! 
 Lovers ken the banks where amaranths 
 blow, and poets build their altars in 
 the fields. How actually physically 
 exhilarating sometimes is 
 
 " The champaign with its endless fleece 
 
 Of feathery grasses everywhere ! 
 Silence and passion, joy and peace, 
 
 1 And his bride complained of the damp ! 
 
 eis dfidpav /AC, Kai ci/tara KaAa jutcuveis. 
 
 Theocritus, Idyll XXVII. 52). 
 163
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 Such life there, through such lengths of hours, 
 Such miracles performed in play, 
 
 Such primal naked forms of flowers, 
 Such letting Nature have her way." l 
 
 There must survive in the cosmic 
 consciousness of the race, deep-seated 
 and ineradicable memories of primaeval 
 nuptials. What a pity it is that that 
 supreme, that sacred drama called "Love" 
 should be enacted by youths and damsels, 
 not in secluded groves amidst perfumed 
 and amorous blooms, but in ball-rooms 
 and boudoirs. 2 
 
 55 
 
 It is a complex, it is a profound enigma, 
 this of the appeal of the beauty of nature 
 
 1 Browning, "Two in the Campagna." 
 
 2 Confer Edward Carpenter: "The Drama of 
 Love and Death : A Study of Human Evolution 
 and Transfiguration," page 51. London: George 
 Allen, 1912. Also Mr Havelock Ellis, his "Studies 
 in the Psychology of Sex," vol. vi., p. 558. 
 
 164
 
 THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 to the senses and emotions of man. For 
 Beauty, we must remember, is not an 
 attribute of the external thing. Beauty 
 is in the soul that feels, the mind that 
 thinks, the memory that remembers. 
 That is beautiful which brings to mind 
 and memory and soul, ecstatic thrill, 
 exalted feeling. That is beautiful which 
 makes for the preservation and propaga- 
 tion and (which should make for the) 
 elevation of the race. And this is why 
 Beauty is of various kinds. There is a 
 Beauty of the senses, and there is a beauty 
 of the soul as there is a terrestrial 
 Aphrodite, and an Aphrodite uranian. 1 
 Though why the earthly and the heavenly 
 Aphrodites should not join hands, I do 
 not know. Perhaps it is only when they 
 do join hands when there is at one and 
 
 1 See Plato, Symposium, l8o: "Travres yap wr/uev, 
 OTL OVK ICTTIV avev "E/owros 'A</oo8tTT?, K. T. A." 
 165
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 the same time a spiritual obsession and 
 a physical oblation that Beauty becomes 
 transfigured before us, reveals her divine 
 nature radiant through fleshly vestments. 
 Ah ! this occurs only when we are on the 
 Mount. 
 
 56 
 
 After all, did John Ruskin really get to 
 the bottom of this matter of the appeal 
 of Nature to the heart of man ? Is the 
 beauty of any particular scene due to the 
 generic fact that " those ever-springing 
 flowers and ever-flowing streams had been 
 dyed by the deep colours of human 
 endurance, valour, and virtue " ? If 
 my theory is right that beauty is sub- 
 jective, not objective ; that the connect- 
 ing link between the natural object and 
 the emotion which it evokes is that of 
 
 memory or association, surely we must 
 166
 
 THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 seek for a more particular, a more personal 
 explanation than this of Ruskin his 
 " human endurance, valour, and virtue." 
 Well, I too have lounged a whole morning 
 on a mountain top not far from the spot 
 of which Ruskin wrote. Before me was 
 the valley of the Arve ; behind me, the 
 valley of the Rhone : both, from that 
 height of vision, and on that perfect day, 
 breathing prosperity and peace. Square 
 mile after square mile of fertile land lay 
 under my eyes : farms and vineyards, 
 fields and meadows, all watered by wind- 
 ing streams. Dotted about, here in 
 groups, there discrete, were the tiled roofs 
 of cottages ; and all through the verdure, 
 in long white curves with an occasional 
 tangent, here hidden by boscage, there 
 emerging in the sunlight, ran the good 
 white roads of France. The sweet grass 
 
 on which I lay was thickly strewn with 
 167
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 flowers, and the air brought scents sweet 
 as softest music heard afar. To right and 
 left in the middle distance rose Alpine 
 peaks light green at their bases, dark 
 green in the zone of the pines, lifting grey 
 or green or purple masses towards the 
 clouds ; and straight in front, some seven 
 leagues away, stretched the rugged jagged 
 snow-capped chain of Mont Blanc. 
 
 It was early morning, and it was one of 
 those perfect summer days when, as one 
 lay supine, one could actually perceive 
 the filmy clouds vanish into invisibility ; 
 while, as an addition to the blessings of the 
 scene, there came to my ear the tinkling 
 bells of the cattle. 
 
 And the region was thick with the 
 memories of human endurance, valour, 
 and virtue. Caesar's legions strode that 
 
 soil. Long before Caesar came, maraud- 
 168
 
 THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 ing bands had met and fought. And, 
 since Caesar's time, owing to the fortunes 
 of war, war in which man fought hand-to- 
 hand with man opposed shield to javelin, 
 discharged the feathered arrow, or 
 pointed arquebus and carronade the 
 very ground on which I walked had 
 changed owners innumerable. 
 
 It would be difficult to choose a more 
 appealing scene. And yet, if I probe 
 my own heart to the core, if I tell my 
 inmost thought, to me a sunny or even, 
 for that matter, a misty scene in pastoral 
 England Surrey or Bucks or Berks, 
 Kent or Devon, Sussex or Herts, where 
 you will rouses more poignant emotions 
 than all the plain of Haute Savoie backed 
 by the Chaine du Mont Blanc. 
 
 Mr Kipling, in his simple language, has 
 
 come nearer to the truth than has Ruskin 
 169
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 with all his felicity of phrase. It is not 
 the associations connected with human 
 endeavour in the mass that make any 
 particular scene to appeal, it is the associa- 
 tions connected with our own little selves ; 
 it is because " our hearts are small " that 
 God has 
 
 " Ordained for each one spot should prove 
 Beloved over all." 1 
 
 But, indeed, I think that the great 
 Darwin long ago, quite incidentally and 
 quite unwittingly put his finger upon 
 the crux of the problem. Speaking of 
 the beauties of the landscape of the East 
 Indian Archipelago he says: "These 
 scenes of the tropics are in themselves 
 so delicious, that they almost equal those 
 dearer ones at home, to which we are 
 
 1 " Sussex," first stanza. "The Five Nations," 
 p. 69. New York : Doubleday, Page & Co., 1903. 
 170
 
 THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 bound by each best feeling of the mind." * 
 The sublime and beautiful in Nature call 
 forth our admiration, reverence, awe ; 
 it is the simple scenes, to which associa- 
 tions cling, that call forth our love. 
 
 Nature the sun, the sky, the earth, 
 the sea is always beautiful, because 
 Nature, as Man's primaeval habitat, has 
 embedded in the memory of Man primaeval 
 associations ; but for any one particular 
 scene to arouse emotions deeper than those 
 evoked by mere form and colour, that 
 scene must arouse associations embedded 
 in one's own memory or in those of one's 
 forbears. It may be that this is a 
 generalisation shallow and jejune. Yet 
 I make it, remembering torrid India ; 
 wide Canadian snows ; the Alps and 
 the Jura ; the Rhone ; the Rhine ; the 
 Irawadi ; lovely, lovable England ; and 
 
 1 " The Voyage of the Beagle," chapter xx. 
 171
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 those perfumed slopes of le Grand Saleve, 
 inhabited on that early morning only 
 by myself and those grazing cows. 
 
 57 
 
 Those mild-eyed cattle interested me. 
 They were very gentle, very sleek, very 
 quiet and patient ; large of bone, lacti- 
 ferous ; and, beneath all their passivity, 
 I should imagine they possessed potenti- 
 alities of heroism and endurance unknown 
 to their bovine fellows of the plains. 
 And if I may judge from the features, 
 figures, and expressions of the women of 
 this same region, too, I should be inclined 
 to conjecture that they were not dissimilar 
 in character to their kine. They too are 
 quiet-eyed, deep-bosomed, large-framed, 
 heavy-buttocked ; and in the expression 
 of their faces there is something patient 
 
 and heroic. And the youthful tender of 
 172
 
 THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 those cattle he too was interesting. 
 He lay prone on the grass, his back to 
 Mont Blanc. If he exercised his own 
 limbs but little, he faithfully performed 
 all the duties appertaining to that state of 
 life into which it had pleased God to call 
 him by springing every twenty minutes 
 to his feet and shouting orders to his dog 
 the faithful sub or deputy herdsman, 
 who kept the cattle from straying too 
 far. I envied that youthful herdsman 
 his pleasant occupation. Life in that 
 mountain air must be sweet to the senses, 
 as companionship with those gentle kine 
 must be quieting to the mind. 
 
 58 
 
 It was a wonderful morning, that. 
 How quiet it was, how peaceful ! Those 
 mighty mountains were so still, so sound- 
 less. When I was out of sight of the
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 cattle, the only noise that reached my 
 ear was the hum of the bee at my elbow, 
 the song of the lark overhead. Nature 
 seemed at peace. Nature seemed to 
 fraternise with Man. A great comrade- 
 ship was abroad. With my own eyes I 
 saw three cows come to their keeper's side, 
 close up to him, and he, kind soul, stroked 
 their soft and wrinkled cheeks. With 
 my own eyes I saw a young and curious 
 heifer walk up to the recumbent dog 
 her deputy-herdsman and sniff his hide ; 
 and he, good creature, never twitched 
 an ear! though presently he did move 
 off, moving somewhat stiffly, as if his 
 dignity had been ruffled. 
 
 And the flowers at my feet, on every 
 side 1 It was not grass I lay on ; it was 
 blossoms lovely scented blossoms ; and 
 
 as I looked along the slopes it was flowers 
 174
 
 THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 I saw, not blades of grass : it was on a 
 purfled plain I lay, a plain of blue and 
 green and yellow and purple. At first 
 I could hardly bring myself to crush these 
 buds. I kept to cart tracks, to cattle- 
 paths. But in time these ceased, and 
 I could not choose but crush. And 
 then . . . came a curious thought ; one 
 I hardly like to put on paper. Yet of 
 itself it came, and some perhaps will 
 interpret it as reverently as did I. 
 Nature was in repentant mood, and, like 
 the Magdalen, was once again bedewing 
 Man's feet with her tears, and bescenting 
 them with her spikenard. She made 
 amends, as it were, for her treatment of 
 Man. Fickle, feminine Nature, from 
 whose loins we come, from whose breast 
 we suck our livelihood ; from whom we 
 wrest our pleasure with much cost 
 much cost and strife. . . .
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 59 
 
 Strife ! The very word was like a bell 
 to toll me back. Those very flowers were 
 fighting for their lives. Their very scents 
 and colours were but enticements for the 
 bee for the bee which, in turn, with toil, 
 garnered honey against chimenal famine. 
 And those still, stupendous mountains 
 silent, superb immobile, massive ; their 
 very crags bespoke tremendous struggle, 
 immense upheaval, and the grinding of 
 ice and glacier. Indeed the solid earth 
 and all about me was unrestful, rushing. 
 I lay on my back on the grass and thrust 
 my finger towards the sky. It seemed 
 steady enough in all conscience. Yet I 
 knew that as a matter of fact that finger- 
 tip of mine was performing most astound- 
 ing feats. It was rushing through space. 
 
 And in its rush it was pursuing a path 
 176
 
 THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 would take an expert astronomer to 
 determine. With the rotation of the 
 earth, it was flying eastwards at more 
 than a dozen miles a minute. With the 
 revolution of the earth, it was rushing 
 round the sun some two or three miles 
 in that minute. And with the whole 
 solar system, it was leaping towards the 
 constellation of Hercules with leaps of 
 more than seven hundred miles in each 
 minute ! * Seven hundred miles a 
 
 1 Professor W. W. Campbell, of the Lick Observa- 
 tory, California, computes the velocity of the Solar 
 System through space at approximately nineteen 
 kilometres per second (see Lick Observatory 
 Bulletin, No. 195, vol. vi. (1910-1911), p. 123. 
 See also Bulletin No. 196, vol. vi., pp. 125 
 et seq.}. What, in interstellar space, the precise 
 curve described by my ringer nail was, especi- 
 ally if to rotation, revolution, and the approach 
 to Hercules, we add nutation, tidal drag, and 
 the precession of the equinoxes, to say nothing 
 of earth tremours, I should much like to 
 know. 
 
 M 177
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 minute I 1 It is inconceivable. That 
 enormous mass, the sun, into a spot on 
 which, hundreds of our earths could be 
 dropped like a handful of pebbles into 
 a puddle, it and the farthermost of its 
 planets, three thousand million miles 
 away all rushing through space . . . 
 twenty miles while I sneeze ; thirty 
 thousand miles while I sit at dinner ; half- 
 a-million miles between going to bed and 
 getting up. ... What a stupendous 
 journey ! What a mighty company ! 
 Where to? What for? Why this 
 terrific expenditure of energy ? Think 
 of the ergs necessary to propel that mass ! 
 What is being done ? Who does it ? 
 And for whom ? 
 Nothing is immobile in Nature. 
 
 1 All my figures are, of course, rough in the 
 extreme ; and I give Professor Campbell the benefit 
 of about fifty miles a minute because he says 
 " approximately." 
 
 178
 
 THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE 
 
 Nothing is stationary in Life. To exist, 
 to be, to live, is to become, to change, 
 to strive, to achieve. The seeming peace 
 about me was outcome of infinite struggle. 
 Only by struggle does life evolve, does 
 man aspire. 
 
 Return we to my theme. 
 
 179
 
 XXIV 
 
 WARNINGS TO THE OVER-ZEALOUS 
 60 
 
 Now, I know precisely what will happen. 
 Some epimethean enthusiast, carried 
 away by the anticipated delights of a walk, 
 will suddenly make up his mind to take 
 one ; will hastily stuff some things into 
 a bag, and will start off at four o'clock in 
 the morning with some vague and distant 
 goal in view. He will think to roll John 
 Burroughs and Richard Jefferies into one 
 in his minute observation of Nature, and 
 to outdo Wordsworth and Amiel com- 
 bined in his philosophico-poetical dis- 
 quisitions on the same ; he will rid 
 
 his mind of the world and the worldly, 
 180
 
 WARNING TO THE OVER-ZEALOUS 
 
 and float in themes transcendental and 
 abstruse. But I think I know what will 
 happen. By the afternoon of that self- 
 same day he will be hungry, thirsty, foot- 
 sore, and tired. His boots will be tight ; 
 his bag as heavy as his spirits ; his head 
 as empty as his craw. Instead of observ- 
 ing Nature he will find Nature in the 
 shape of the rustics (and the rustics' dogs) 
 very narrowly observing him, not 
 always with sympathetic or benignant 
 gaze. Instead of deep and transcen- 
 dental meditations rising spontaneously 
 to his mind, he will find curt and practical 
 questions assailing his ear as to who he is 
 and what he is doing there. My dear but 
 epimethean enthusiast, you must know 
 that Nature is a jealous mistress. If so 
 be you are sedulously engaged for fifty 
 weeks in the year in the pursuit of pelf, 
 
 think not to woo her by a half day's 
 181
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 worship at her shrine. Even if your court- 
 ship be sincere, it must be slow. Not in 
 forty-eight hours will you brush away 
 the cobwebs of the workaday world and 
 prepare for the reception of sweet Nature's 
 influence a mind free from all uncharit- 
 ableness : their skies, not their characters, 
 they change who sail over-seas. From 
 all blindness of heart, from pride, vain- 
 glory, and hypocrisy, you must seek to 
 be delivered, else you will walk in vain. 
 For most men walk in a vain show, and 
 the perpetual perambulation of the streets 
 of Vanity Fair is a poor preparation for 
 the Delectable Mountains. But take 
 heart. If you will keep but a corner of 
 your mind free from the carking cares of 
 barter and commerce if only by half- 
 holiday jaunts and Sabbath-day journeys, 
 great will be your reward. By the end 
 
 of the third or fourth day's tramp, what 
 182
 
 WARNING TO THE OVER-ZEALOUS 
 
 with the exhilarating exercise, the fresh 
 air, the peace and loneliness, the long 
 hours of mental quietude, the freedom 
 from the petty distractions of social and 
 official life, if you are humble and child- 
 like, the world forgetting by the world 
 forgot the scales will fall from your 
 eyes ; then indeed you will see and feel 
 and think. The trivial little objects 
 at your feet, equally with the immense 
 expanses of earth and sky, will lift you 
 high above themselves ; the wet and 
 drooping high-road weed, the tender 
 green of a curled frond, the soft ooziness 
 of a summer marsh the sense of beauty 
 of the fitness of things of their im- 
 mense incomprehensibility the wonder 
 of it all ... words seem useless to say 
 how such things sink into the soul, plough 
 up its foundations, sow there seeds which, 
 
 like the Indian juggler's plant, spring 
 183
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 up at once and blossom into worship, 
 reverence, awe. Believe me, I am not 
 extravagant or hyperbolic, nor do I beguile 
 with empty words. If you will not hear 
 me, hear the simple-minded Richard 
 Jefferies : 
 
 " I linger in the midst of the long grass, 
 the luxury of the leaves, and the song in 
 the very air. I seem as if I could feel all 
 the glowing life the sunshine gives and the 
 south wind calls to being. The endless 
 grass, the endless leaves, the immense 
 strength of the oak expanding, the un- 
 alloyed joy of finch and blackbird ; from 
 all of them I receive a little. ... In the 
 blackbird's melody one note is mine ; in 
 the dance of the leaf shadows the formed 
 maze is for me, though the motion is 
 theirs ; the flowers with a thousand faces 
 have collected the kisses of the morning. 
 Feeling with them, I receive some, at 
 least, of their fulness of life. Never 
 could I have enough ; never stay long 
 184
 
 WARNING TO THE OVER-ZEALOUS 
 
 enough. . . . The hours when the mind 
 is absorbed by beauty are the only hours 
 when we really live, so that the longer we 
 can stay among these things so much the 
 more is snatched from inevitable Time. . . . 
 These are the only hours that are not 
 wasted these hours that absorb the soul 
 and fill it with beauty. This is real life, 
 and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. 
 To be beautiful and to be calm, without 
 mental fear, is the ideal of Nature. If I 
 cannot achieve it, at least I can think 
 it." 1 
 
 Which passage has received the impri- 
 matur of quotation by no less an authority 
 than Lord Avebury (better known, per- 
 haps, as Sir John Lubbock), himself not 
 only a man of science, but a statesman 
 and a man of affairs as well. Listen : 
 
 " The exquisite beauty and delight of a 
 fine summer day in the country has never 
 
 x "The Pageant of Summer." 
 185
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 perhaps been more truly, and therefore 
 more beautifully, described." 1 
 
 But surely, with all deference to the 
 learned quoter, there is something deeper 
 in Richard Jefferies, these his dithyrambs, 
 than a description of a fine summer day. 
 Surely Jefferies finds himself here, in 
 Amiel's fine phrase, tete-a-t&te with the 
 Infinite, and tries, poor soul, in vain to 
 find vent for his thoughts. It is not a 
 picture, it is a poem. Nor needed it 
 the Pageant of Summer to transport this 
 poet thither. Jefferies was here viewing 
 Nature through a seventh sense a sense 
 more delicate than that of sight or sound, 
 the sense that Maurice de Guerin has 
 defined as, 
 
 " Un sens que nous avons tous, mais 
 voile, vague, et prive presque de toute 
 
 1 " The Pleasures of Life," Part II., chapter viii. 
 186
 
 WARNING TO THE OVER-ZEALOUS 
 
 activit6, le sens qui recueille les beautes 
 physiques et les livre a Tame, qui les 
 spiritualise, les harmonic, les combine 
 avec les beautes ideales, et agrandit ainsi 
 sa sphere d'amour et d'adoration." * 
 
 It is not Richard Jefferies his catalogue 
 of the things he saw which moves us to 
 admiration and delight, it is his sense 
 sublime which enabled him to rise from 
 the things which are seen to the things 
 which are unseen, to rise above the hie et 
 nunc of the parochial and to peer into the 
 illuc et tune of the eternal. He saw 
 "into the life of things/' and in him the 
 finite stirred emotions which savoured of 
 the infinite. 
 
 1 " Journal, Lettres, et Poemes," p. 17. Paris, 
 1880. 
 
 187
 
 XXV 
 
 HOW THAT ALL POINTS TO THE INFINITE 
 6l 
 
 OF a sober truth, could we only realise 
 it, all things point to the infinite. Not a 
 cobweb, not a wisp of morning mist, not 
 a toadstool, not a gnat, but has a life- 
 history dating back to the dark womb 
 of Time, or ere even meteoritic dust or 
 incandescent nebulae were born ; dating 
 forward too, could we trace it, to the dark 
 doom of Time, if for Time there be a doom. 
 Who can understand it ? Who shall 
 explain it ? any part of it ? Take 
 Burns his simple line, 
 
 " Green grow the rashes, O." 
 To explain "green" is not within the 
 
 power of prof oundest oculist and physicist 
 
 188
 
 ALL POINTS TO THE INFINITE 
 
 combined : on the question of the colour- 
 sense alone the scientific world is divided 
 and has for years been divided ; and of 
 the precise action of chlorophyll the 
 green colouring-matter of plants it is 
 almost equally ignorant ; while of the 
 train of connected phaenomena, from the 
 chemic and catalytic action in the leaf, 
 through the stimulation of the retina, the 
 transmission along the optic nerve, the 
 sensation in the corpora quadrigemina of 
 the brain, to the concept in the mind, we 
 know absolutely nothing. To define and 
 classify the rushes, also ; to know exactly 
 their place in the vegetable kingdom and 
 how they came there their evolution 
 from lower forms, the modifications 
 wrought in their structure by environ- 
 ment and internecine strife that is 
 beyond the wit of botanist and palaeophy- 
 
 tologist in one. And as to that simple 
 189
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 verb, " to grow," dealing, as it does, with 
 life itself in its inmost penetralia, that has 
 baffled, and probably will for ever baffle, 
 the whole host of physical and metaphysi- 
 cal experimenters and speculators world 
 without end. When we can explain Life, 
 we shall be within measurable distance 
 of explaining the Life-Giver. Tennyson 
 saw this : 
 
 " Flower in the crannied wall, 
 I pluck you out of your crannies, 
 I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
 Little flower, but if I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man is." 
 
 62 
 
 But my song has grown too advent 'rous. 
 Let us descend th'Aonian mount. This, 
 however, let me say : If to somewhat 
 abstruse ontological speculations such as 
 these you like to add scientific or other 
 
 knowledge of the region of your walk 
 190
 
 ALL POINTS TO THE INFINITE 
 
 something of the geology, palaeontology, 
 mineralogy, zoology, botany, archaeology, 
 history, well and good. No sort of know- 
 ledge but is profitable for doctrine. The 
 interest and pleasure of walking are 
 greatly enhanced by noting and being 
 able to account for the thousand and one 
 natural phenomena which greet the eye 
 even in the shortest stroll ; and few 
 things sooner oust petty worries from the 
 mind than such occupation. Happy is 
 the man who can do this. I, alas, cannot 
 help you here. I have but a bowing 
 acquaintance with Science, though it is 
 always with a deep reverence that I doff 
 my hat to her. Nevertheless, with this 
 I console myself ; it seems to matter but 
 little with what sort of eyes you look on 
 Nature, provided you really look. Give 
 her but the seeing eye and the under- 
 standing heart, and she is lavish of her 
 191
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 gifts. And (let me roun this in thine ear) 
 perhaps she prefers (woman-like) the 
 understanding heart to the seeing eye ; 
 though (woman-like again) she likes to be 
 admired as well as understood though 
 never (and here most woman-like) does 
 she like to be too curiously regarded. 
 Sometimes, I confess, I have envied him 
 gifted with the scientific eye : him in 
 whom a granite boulder in a grassy mead 
 rouses long geological trains of thought ; 
 to whom the dwarfed horse-tails by lacus- 
 trine shores paint pictures of dense 
 equisetaceous forests ; for whom a fossil 
 trilobite calls up visions of Silurian seas ; 
 him too have I envied who can classify 
 common plants or recognise and name the 
 stones at his feet : can tell us why the 
 lowly daisy is superior to the lordly oak ; 
 can expatiate on crystallographic angles ; 
 
 and learnedly descant on amphibole or 
 192
 
 ALL POINTS TO THE INFINITE 
 
 pyroxene. For myself, I am not versed 
 in the mechanism of Nature. I have 
 never asked to see the wheels go round. 
 I like to see her smile, and am not careful 
 as to what oral or buccal muscles are 
 brought into play for that smile. That 
 she has an anatomy I suppose. But I 
 bethink me of Act aeon's fate, he who saw 
 Dian's naked loveliness too near. So 
 thou, beware lest thine eye see so much 
 that thy heart understand too little. 
 Keep thy mind "in a just equipoise of 
 love." Accomplish that, and no know- 
 ledge is too high for thee. 
 
 63 
 
 Here, however, it is but right to enter 
 a caveat. It must be admitted that it is 
 not given to everyone to hold high 
 converse with Nature. Nature speaks a 
 
 cryptic tongue, and unless one has paid 
 N 193
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 some heed to her language her accents are 
 apt to fall upon deaf ears. Nor can any- 
 one translate Nature's language to those 
 unversed in her speech. If you think 
 to hear her voice while the din and clatter 
 of business or mercature are ringing in 
 your ears, you will hear nothing. Nor, 
 for that matter, will you see anything. 
 Trees and fields and clouds you may see, 
 or may think you see ; but they will say 
 nothing to you, will mean nothing to you. 
 To their mere beauty you will be blind ; 
 for beauty is a thing to be felt, not 
 seen. 
 
 Goethe declared that Beauty was a 
 primaeval phenomenon which had never 
 yet made its appearance. 1 To Euripides 
 
 K\v<0v fjt-ev avSt]v, o/x/ua $'ov% opwv TO (rov. z 
 
 1 " Das Schone 1st ein Urphanomen, das zwar 
 nie selber zur Erscheinung kommt." "Dichtung 
 und Wahrheit." 
 
 '"Hippolytus." 
 
 194
 
 ALL POINTS TO THE INFINITE 
 
 And Shelley declares 
 
 " Fair are others ; none beholds thee, 
 
 And all feel, yet see thee never." 1 
 
 Beauty is felt. That is the clue to the 
 secret. The appeal of natural beauty is 
 to the heart, to the emotions, not to the 
 intellect. The eyes of the wisest savant 
 may miss what Nature will reveal to the 
 veriest babe. This is what Mr Edward 
 Carpenter means when he says, albeit in 
 somewhat extravagant language 
 
 " As to you, O Moon 
 
 I know very well that when the 
 astronomers look at you through their 
 telescopes they see only an aged and 
 wrinkled body ; 
 
 But though they measure your wrinkles 
 never so carefully they do not see you 
 personal and close 
 
 As you disclosed yourself among the 
 
 1 " Prometheus Unbound." 
 195
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 chimney-tops last night to the eyes of a 
 child 
 
 When you thought no one else was 
 looking. 
 
 Anyhow I see plainly that like all 
 created things you do not yield yourself 
 up as to what you are at the first or the 
 thousandth onset, 
 
 And that the scientific people for all 
 their telescopes know as little about you 
 as any one 
 
 Perhaps less than most. 
 
 How curious the mystery of creation." 1 
 
 The poet, bereft of words whereby to 
 give vent to his emotion, falls back on 
 " the mystery of creation." Not dis- 
 similarly says Cailyle, " The rudest mind 
 has still some intimation of the greatness 
 there is in Mystery." 2 And again, 
 
 l " Towards Democracy." Third Edition, pp. 
 149, 151. London : Fisher Unwin, 1892. 
 
 'Essay on Characteristics. Works (Shilling 
 Edition), ix. 15. 
 
 196
 
 ALL POINTS TO THE INFINITE 
 
 " The mystical enjoyment of an object 
 goes infinitely farther than the intel- 
 lectual." 1 It is not alone the indescrib- 
 able colour of the delicate corolla, nor is it 
 the minute knowledge of its astonishing 
 structure, that causes to blaze up in the 
 beholder a sense of something profound ; 
 it is not alone the majestic heap of the 
 cloud, nor the piercing radiance of the 
 quiet stars, known to be incomputably 
 distant, that lifts one to the contempla- 
 tion of the lofty ; it is the immanent, the 
 permanent Mystery that pervades and 
 unifies all that ever was or is or shall be. 
 
 1 Essay on Diderot. Works, x. 26. The italics 
 are Carlyle's. 
 
 197
 
 XXVI 
 
 THE PLEASURES OF WALKING 
 
 64 
 
 " BUT what possible pleasure, what 
 possible profit," I can hear the practical 
 and common-sensible man asking, " is 
 to be gained from walking walking ? 
 Surely walking is the paltriest of sports. 
 Why not write of riding, driving, rowing, 
 bicycling, motoring, aeroplaning any 
 mode of locomotion rather than that of 
 mere trudging ? " Well, in a technical 
 and paronomasiacal phrase, the question 
 really solvitur ambulando. For one thing, 
 horses have to be baited, boats caulked, 
 bicycles pumped up, balloons inflated, 
 
 and motor cars eternally tinkered at 
 198
 
 THE PLEASURES OF WALKING 
 
 aeroplanes fly far beyond my welkin. 
 For another thing, not the least of the 
 practical blessings incident to a walk is 
 that you are beyond the reach of letters 
 and telegrams and telephones. You are 
 not likely to be served with a writ when 
 walking ; you can laugh at capiases and 
 injunctions ; drafts at sight and judgment 
 summonses cannot easily overtake you on 
 a trudge. " I have generally found," 
 says De Quincey, " that, if you are in 
 quest of some certain escape from Philis- 
 tines of whatsoever class sheriff -officers, 
 bores, no matter what the surest refuge 
 is to be found amongst hedgerows and 
 fields." x (Had De Quincey lived in the 
 twentieth century, truly he might have 
 added that it is amongst the fields and 
 
 1 Additions to the "Confessions of an Opium- 
 Eater," p. 381. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & 
 Co., 1876. 
 
 199
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 hedgerows also that one gets away from 
 that pest of civilisation, the pene-ubiquit- 
 ous advertisement. And not always even 
 amongst fields and hedgerows, as the 
 landscape-spoiling hoardings along the 
 routes of our railways prove. Like Nero, 
 I sometimes wish that the erectors of sky- 
 signs and the daubers of barns and fences 
 had but one neck that I might . . . that 
 I might lay upon it a heavy yoke of 
 taxation. I throw out that hint to 
 any Finance Minister or Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer that may care to act upon it.) 
 But far rather would I reply to my 
 quserist in other words than mine. " I 
 went to the woods," says Thoreau, " be- 
 cause I wished to live deliberately, to 
 front only the essential facts of life. . . . 
 I wanted to live deep and suck out all 
 the marrow of life. . . . Our life is frittered 
 away by detail. ... In the midst of this
 
 THE PLEASURES OF WALKING 
 
 chopping sea of civilised life, such are 
 the clouds and storms and quicksands and 
 thousand and one items to be allowed for 
 that a man has to live, if he would not 
 founder and go to the bottom and not 
 make his port at all, by dead reckoning, 
 he must be a great calculator indeed who 
 succeeds." l 
 
 Hear, too, Henri-Frederic Amiel : 
 
 " ist February 1854. A walk. The 
 atmosphere incredibly pure a warm, 
 caressing gentleness in the sunshine joy 
 in one's whole being. ... I became 
 young again, wondering, and simple, as 
 candour and ignorance are simple. I 
 abandoned myself to life and to nature, 
 and they cradled me with an infinite 
 gentleness. To open one's heart in purity 
 to this ever-pure nature, to allow this 
 immortal life of things to penetrate into 
 
 1 " Walden," pp. 98, 99, in David Douglas's 
 Edinburgh Edition, 1884. 
 201
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 one's soul, is at the same time to listen 
 to the voice of God. Sensation may be a 
 prayer, and self-abandonment an act of 
 devotion." x 
 
 Or hear a greater man than these 
 hear the great Jean- Jacques Rousseau, 
 he who divided with Voltaire the intel- 
 lectual realm of the eighteenth century : 
 
 " What I regret most in the details of 
 my life which I have forgotten is that 
 I did not keep a diary of my travels. 
 Never have I thought so much, never have 
 I realised my own existence so much, been 
 so much alive, been so much myself if I 
 may so say, as in those journeys which 
 I have made alone and afoot. Walking 
 has something in it which animates and 
 heightens my ideas : I can scarcely think 
 when I stay in one place ; my body must 
 be set a-going if my mind is to work. 
 
 1 " Journal Intime," p. 45. London : The Mac- 
 millan Co., 1890. I avail myself of Mrs Humphry 
 Ward's admirable translation. 
 202
 
 THE PLEASURES OF WALKING 
 
 The sight of the country, the succession 
 of beautiful scenes, the great breeze, the 
 good appetite, the health which I gain by 
 walking, the getting away from inns, the 
 escape from everything which reminds me 
 of my lack of independence, from every- 
 thing which reminds me of my unlucky 
 fate all this releases my soul, gives me 
 greater courage of thought, throws me as 
 it were into the midst of the immensity of 
 the objects of Nature, which I may com- 
 bine, from which I may choose at will, 
 which I may make my own carelessly and 
 without fear. I make use of all Nature 
 as her master ; my heart, surveying one 
 object after another, unites itself, identifies 
 itself with those in sympathy with it, 
 surrounds itself with delightful images, 
 intoxicates itself with emotions the most 
 exquisite. If, in order to seize these, I 
 amuse myself by describing them to 
 myself, what a vigorous pencil, what bright 
 colours, what energy of expression they 
 need ! Some have, so they say, discerned 
 something of these influences in my writ- 
 203
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 ings, though composed in my declining 
 years. Ah ! if only those of my early 
 youth had been seen ! those which I have 
 composed but never written down ! " l 
 
 Thus wrote the great Jean- Jacques in 
 the calm of his declining years. Those 
 walking inspirations must have been 
 potent indeed to have left so lasting an 
 impression. 2 
 
 But Thoreau and Amiel and Jean- 
 Jacques Rousseau are perhaps counsellors 
 of perfection ; exemplars too remote for 
 our purpose. Permit me then to resort 
 to an argumentum ad hominem. I knew a 
 man who one summer tried to do two and 
 
 1 " Confessions," Partie I. Livre IV. Paris : 
 Lefevre's Edition ; 1819, vol. i., pp. 259, 260. 
 
 2 Thirty-four years separated the tour of which 
 he speaks from the date when he penned these 
 words. 
 
 204
 
 THE PLEASURES OF WALKING 
 
 a half men's work in one. For five days 
 in the week it took him from early in 
 the morning of one day till early in 
 the morning of the next. On Saturday 
 afternoon he was free, and on Saturday 
 he took the boat to a village twenty-one 
 miles distant. Sunday afternoon was 
 devoted (alas, necessarily) again to work, 
 but in the open air. At two-thirty on 
 Monday morning he started on his return 
 journey afoot ; breakfasted halfway in ; 
 and was at his desk in as good time as 
 spirits. Profit ? That early morning 
 walk picked him up for the week. 
 Pleasure ? My dear practical sir, would 
 you had been with him ! Would you had 
 felt the quiet, the serenity, the calming 
 influence of unsullied Nature ; the 
 supreme repose in those early morning 
 hours, the solitude, the vastness, the 
 
 expansion of soul and spirit beneath the 
 205
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 silent stars, the quiet morn. He saw the 
 full moon pale and set ; he saw great 
 Nature slowly wake ; the sleepy cows 
 knee-deep in clover ; the fields begemmed 
 with dew ; the little pools pools which at 
 noon would be muddy puddles glistening 
 like emeralds and garnets in the dawn . By 
 degrees, growing things were individual- 
 ised. Each shrub, each creeping thing, 
 had a life of its own. The veriest weed 
 was exalted into a vegetable personality 
 which had dealings with the Infinite and 
 the Divine : and " all flowers in field or 
 forest which unclose their trembling eye- 
 lids to the kiss of day " spake to him. 
 He was alone alone with unhurrying, 
 uncareful Nature. The peace of untold 
 aeons entered his soul and couraged him 
 to battle with the petty and the trivial 
 for five more wearing days without a 
 
 qualm. Profit ? Pleasure ? What nag, 
 206
 
 THE PLEASURES OF WALKING 
 
 what buggy, what skiff, what bike, what 
 motor, what dirigible balloon, or hydro- 
 aeroplane would have got him that ? In 
 simple truth, of all that he learned and 
 did during those arduous weeks, only 
 those lovely lonely walks live in that 
 man's memory to-day. Would that 
 oftener we bathed our thirsty souls in the 
 dews of the dawn ! Would that oftener 
 men gat them away from offices and 
 counters and desks nay, from balls and 
 bats and cleeks away into the quiet 
 country, where nor strife nor struggle, 
 noble or ignoble, has place or worth ! 
 The world is too much with us. Call- 
 loans narrow margins, with a slump in 
 the market killing races with a dark 
 horse quickly changing quotations 
 prolonged ill luck unstable tariffs - 
 strikes and rumours of strikes such 
 
 things perturb the human mind. Well, 
 207
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 I know few more efficacious antidotes 
 to mental perturbation than an early 
 morning walk. It is a psychic as well 
 as a sanitary investment. 
 
 66 
 
 It is also a mental tonic even in 
 homoeopathic doses. I took last Sunday 
 a little four-mile stroll before breakfast, 
 and its calming and beneficent influence 
 is with me still. No one was about ; I 
 had the whole country to myself, and 
 I bathed a tired head in the spacious 
 quietude of earth and sky. From a 
 height I looked over a great and restful 
 country, across the sleeping town, and far 
 away over the peaceful lake. Above it 
 all stretched the benevolent heavens, 
 brooding over this pendent world. I 
 thought I saw fixity in the midst of 
 
 motion ; substance beneath evanescence ; 
 208
 
 THE PLEASURES OF WALKING 
 
 unity in multiplicity ; a sort of goal where 
 everything was cyclical ; an end where 
 all things seemed only means ; infinity 
 lurking in finitude ; a divine inhering 
 in the human. After the treadmill of 
 the week it was uplifting, exalting. I 
 inhaled great draughts of air from ultra- 
 planetary spaces ; I fed on manna fallen 
 from the highest heavens. This tiny 
 planet, with its trivial cares and duties, 
 vanished from my eyes, and I cooled my 
 brow in the clouds of the holy of holies. 
 But none the less did I recognise the all- 
 importance, to it and to me, of earth's 
 small cares and duties. Were they not 
 part of that infinite multiplicity in which 
 lurked that infinite unity ? Did they not 
 go to make up the " spiritual economy " x 
 
 1 The fine phrase of Mrs Humphry Ward. See 
 her preface to her translation of Amiel's " Journal/' 
 last paragraph. 
 
 o 209
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 of the cosmos ? But I saw them in a 
 newer light a larger light than merely 
 solar, and they took on a new aspect, and 
 declared themselves integral portions of 
 that divine All without which that divine 
 All would cease to be. 
 
 There is something strangely pure and 
 purifying about early morning air. It is 
 Nature's great steriliser. It is aseptic ; 
 and none breathes it but is more or less 
 cleansed of the taint of noontide life. 
 The noxious germs of care and anxiety 
 cannot live in it. It is a magnificent 
 bactericide. Nature is herself then. 
 Even the denizens of Nature seem to 
 know this, for never is bird or beast 
 more blithesome than at dawn. 
 
 67 
 
 For lonely souls, for luckless souls, 
 there is, perhaps, after all is said and done, 
 
 210
 
 THE PLEASURES OF WALKING 
 
 but one source of solace. " Nothing 
 human," said Eugenie de Guerin, " no- 
 thing human comforts the soul, nothing 
 human supports it : 
 
 ' A 1 'enfant il faut sa mere, 
 A mon ame il faut mon Dieu.' " l 
 
 Well, those who think their God has 
 revealed himself in the Canonical Books 
 will go to their Bible ; those who think 
 he has chosen the channel of a Church 
 will derive ghostly strength from their 
 spiritual counsellors ; but those who 
 think the Nameless has nowhere so plainly 
 shown himself as in his works, will seek 
 in the face and lineaments of Nature that 
 consoling smile which every lonely soul 
 so miserably craves ; and fortunate it is 
 that not over his works, but only over his 
 
 1 Eugenie de Guerin, "Journal et Fragments," 
 p. 181. Twenty-fourth Edition. Paris : Didier 
 et Cie, 1879. 
 
 211
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 words, theologians so wrathfully wrangle. 
 Art thou cast down, and is thy soul 
 disquieted within thee ? Dost distrust 
 thyself ? Has love grown cold ? And 
 hast thou caught on thy leman's lips a 
 sigh not meant for thee ? Is there none 
 to whom thou canst go, on whose bosom 
 to rain out the heavy mist of tears ? 
 Go thou to Pan ; betake thee to the fields ; 
 betake thee to the woods ; pour out thy 
 contrite heart at the altar of the universe, 
 and thou shalt be comforted. What 
 matters it the petty perturbations of 
 the mind ? What signify the paltry 
 upheavings of the heart ? Lay thy tired 
 head on Nature's breast. Friendship 
 may fade, ideals vanish, passion wane, 
 the darling desire upon which thou hast 
 staked thine all may prove to have been 
 snatched from thee before thy very eyes. 
 Take heart. Always there is at hand 
 
 212
 
 THE PLEASURES OF WALKING 
 
 the Infinite and the Eternal : about thee, 
 above thee, in presence of which the petty 
 and the paltry flee away. 
 
 I know no more comfortable medica- 
 ment than the quiet companionship of 
 Nature. The trees breathe a salutary air. 
 The fields invite to repose. A calming 
 influence pervades unwalled, unceilinged 
 earth, and there the crumpled soul has 
 room in which to smooth itself out : the 
 noxious bacilli which infest its folds are 
 swept away ; ill-natured thoughts take 
 flight. How paltry seems a passing 
 quarrel beneath the boughs of a hoary 
 oak that has witnessed a hundred fights ! 
 How puny a callous rage beneath the 
 capacious sky ! 
 
 For, believe me, Great Pan is not dead. 
 Nor, believe me, are any that go to him 
 in any wise cast out . He cares not of what 
 
 Church thou art a child, nor does he fence 
 
 213
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 his tables. Worship at whatsoever shrine 
 thou choosest, always he will welcome 
 thee to his, for Pan is beloved of all the 
 gods. 
 
 Ach ! There comes a time when 
 nothing seems worth while ; when gaiety 
 palls, and even sorrow dulls instead of 
 stirs ; when nothing seems of any use, and 
 one feels inclined to give up, to give up. 
 To such I would say, pull on thick boots, 
 clutch a stout stick, and go for a country 
 walk rain or shine. It sounds a pre- 
 posterous remedy, but try it. Nature 
 never gives up. Not a pygmy weed, 
 trodden under foot of man, and covered 
 up and overwhelmed with rival growths, 
 but battles for its life with vim. Nor 
 does it ask for what it battles. Neither 
 does it question why more favoured plants 
 are so carefully nurtured, and it, poor 
 
 thing, is dragged up by the roots. Take 
 214
 
 THE PLEASURES OF WALKING 
 
 a country walk, and look at the weeds if 
 at nothing else. 
 
 And remember, this is a legitimate re- 
 medy, preposterous though it may sound. 
 So many prescriptions for the heartache 
 are illegitimate stimulants, or narcotics, 
 or stimulant - narcotics : sport, work, 
 play, hazardous adventure, the gaming- 
 table or the betting-ring, to say nothing 
 of the cup that inebriates but does not 
 cheer. A country walk is but "letting 
 Nature have her way," is but giving 
 an opportunity for the vis medicatrix 
 nature. Try it ; do not, like Naaman, 
 prate of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of 
 Damascus, but go wash in Jordan seven 
 times. 
 
 215
 
 XXVII 
 
 Is WALKING SELFISH ? 
 68 
 
 BUT is it not a selfish pleasure, this that 
 is to be gained by rural peregrination, 
 I shall be asked. Bluntly I answer, No. 
 A country walk makes one blithesome ; 
 and than blithesomeness there is no 
 greater foe to selfishness. Had Bacon 
 not declared that gardening was the 
 purest of human pleasures, I should be 
 inclined to give the palm to walking. 
 
 We are too gregarious. We live too 
 much in herds, and we consider too much 
 what the herd will think of our petty 
 individual ways. Civilisation is not an 
 
 unmixed boon, and artificial combinations 
 216
 
 IS WALKING SELFISH 
 
 of men taint the natural simplicity of the 
 race. In combining together for mutual 
 protection against a common foe we 
 forget that sometimes a man's foes are 
 those of his own household. Each feels 
 that the eyes of the world are upon him, 
 and always he is subconsciously occupied 
 in conforming himself to the world. A 
 political community not only curtails 
 the individual's freedom of action for 
 the good of the whole, it curtails also 
 his freedom of thought and manner. 
 What is the result ? The result is that 
 " self - consciousness " has taken on a 
 new and sinister meaning. Instead of 
 denoting the especial and distinguishing 
 characteristic of emancipated reason, self- 
 consciousness has come to denote a painful 
 cognisance of the fetters that our fellow- 
 reasoners have put upon reason. We are 
 
 the slaves of ourselves. Only the child 
 217
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 and the savage are free to " live deliber- 
 ately," to " live deep and suck out all the 
 marrow of life." Long before the child 
 has developed into the grown, and the 
 savage into the civilised, man, that silent 
 and unseen but tireless architect, Con- 
 vention, builds about him an invisible but 
 infrangible wall of reserve : his spontane- 
 ous emotions, his natural affections, his 
 aspirations and ambitions, must filter 
 through crevices and peepholes instead 
 of exhaling from him as a rich and original 
 aura. 
 
 Already the taint is perceptible in our 
 literature. The centripetal tendency is 
 not a purely economic one. Commerce 
 and industry draw the crowds to the 
 cities, and immediately there arises a set 
 of writers who write only of the city. 
 How large a proportion of our fiction 
 
 portrays only the wretched drawing- 
 218
 
 IS WALKING SELFISH 
 
 room intrigue, the wretched rivalries of 
 wretched citizens. The Epic was buried 
 three hundred years ago. The Ode is 
 dead. The Lyric is dying. Now we have 
 the Novel and the Problem Play, the 
 sensational Newspaper and the Picture 
 Magazine. In time, I suppose, we shall 
 come to the Snapshot and the Paperette. 
 Already we are almost there. Was it for 
 this that the mighty Areopagitical pleader 
 for the Liberty of Unlicenced Printing 
 strove ? 
 
 I wish that whole populations of crowded 
 cities could be turned out hebdomadally 
 to take long week-end walks in the 
 country, there to mew its mighty youth 
 and kindle its undazzled eyes at the full 
 midday beam ; there to slough off the 
 skin of daily toil, cleanse itself from the 
 dross of money-getting, and learn that 
 
 there is something in life more worth 
 219
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 living for than the weekly wage, and other 
 joys than those of panem et cir censes. 
 But this is a wild dream. As well try to 
 rehabilitate the Bacchic dance and Chian 
 wine in place of Football and beer or 
 Baseball and peanuts. Yet methinks 
 I have heard of wilder. What did Jean- 
 Jacques and his school really mean by 
 " back to nature " ? 
 
 To me, I confess, this polipetal or city- 
 seeking tendency in modern life (if I may 
 so call it) wears a most serious, a most 
 sinister aspect . So, I am inclined to think, 
 it did to Ruskin. ' ' I had once purposed, ' ' 
 wrote John Ruskin half-a-century ago, 
 " to show what kind of evidence existed 
 respecting the possible influence of country 
 life on men ; it seeming to me, then, likely 
 that here and there a reader would perceive 
 this to be a grave question, more than 
 most which we contend about, political 
 
 220
 
 IS WALKING SELFISH 
 
 or social, and might care to follow it out 
 with me earnestly. The day will assuredly 
 come when men will see that it is a grave 
 question." 1 
 
 If we read history aright, always the 
 bloated city succumbs to the pagan horde. 
 It is in the crowded city that all that is 
 in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the 
 lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, 2 have 
 most free play. And it is in the city, 
 where division of labour is daily carried 
 to greater extremes, that men's activities 
 as a whole have least free play. The 
 result is twofold : the nobler emotions 
 are stunted ; the baser passions are 
 stimulated. Socialism (whatever the 
 precise prescription so labelled may be) 
 
 1 " Modern Painters," Part VI., chapter i., 
 paragraph 7. Vol. v., pp. 5 and 6 of Messrs George 
 Allen & Sons' edition. 
 
 2 1 John ii. 16. 
 
 221
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 is no remedy for this. Perhaps Rousseau 
 reasoned better than he knew. 
 
 In a sense, however thanks to what- 
 ever gods may be ! as a matter of fact 
 there is quietly going on a constant 
 recurrence to Nature. The United States 
 of America, Canada, Australia, South 
 Africa what but wholesale emigration 
 from over-populous or over-pragmatical 
 centres is the source and origin of these ? 
 Colonisation is the protest against the 
 social, political, economical, or religious 
 constrictions of the crowd. It is pre- 
 cisely these constrictions, my practical 
 quaerist, that I am tempting thee now 
 and again to flee. De te fabula narratur. 
 
 222
 
 XXVIII 
 THE P^AN OF BEING 
 
 69 
 
 HAVE I too much belauded the country 
 walk ? I do not thereby decry the out- 
 door sport. The thorough sportsman is 
 the noblest work of God (apologies to the 
 shade of Alexander Pope!). Athletics, 
 said that acute philosophical historian, 
 Goldwin Smith, " wash the brain/' Well, 
 sometimes I think a really good country 
 walk cleans the soul. You get away from 
 rivalries and trivialities ; from scandal, 
 gossip, and paltriness ; you get away 
 from your compeers and your neighbours 
 perhaps you learn for the first time who 
 
 your neighbour is namely, your f ellow- 
 223
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 farer in distress, as the Good Samaritan 
 long ago taught ; you get away from 
 barter and commerce, from manners and 
 customs, from forms and ceremonies ; 
 from the thousand and one complications 
 that arise when a multitude of hearts that 
 do not beat as one try to live in a too 
 close contiguity. It was only when the 
 inevitable third party appeared upon the 
 scene (as I think someone must have 
 said) that Adam and Eve ceased to be 
 good, put on clothes, and hid themselves 
 from the voice of the Lord God walking 
 in the garden. It is easy to be generous 
 amongst trees and grass and running 
 water ; one feels good 'neath the blue 
 firmament on the open earth ; ghosts 
 vanish that scent the morning air, and 
 glow-worms pale their uneffectual fire. 
 For to everyone I care not whether 
 
 theist, deist, or atheist to everyone 
 224
 
 THE P^EAN OF BEING 
 
 Nature instinctively, spontaneously, 
 proclaims herself an infinitely adorable 
 Mystery. If there is anything above and 
 beyond the ephemeral and the fleeting ; 
 if there is somewhere some immensity of 
 Being, some source of All, would it not be 
 well sometimes to make haste and bow the 
 head towards the earth and worship ? 1 
 
 Some immensity of Being. It is to this 
 that in reality all Nature points. The 
 clouds, the skies, the greenery of earth, the 
 myriad forms of vegetation at our feet, 
 stir as these may the soul to its depths, 
 they are but single chords in the orchestra 
 of Life. It is the great paean of Being 
 that Nature chants. By them it is that 
 we perceive " the immense circulation of 
 life which throbs in the ample bosom of 
 Nature, a life which surges from an 
 invisible source and swells the veins of 
 
 1 Exodus xxxiv. 8, 
 p 225
 
 OF WALKS AND WALKING TOURS 
 
 this universe." 1 Through them it is 
 that we detect the enormous but in- 
 comprehensible unity which underlies 
 this incommensurable multiplicity. The 
 wavelet's plash ; the purl of the rill ; the 
 sough of the wind in the pines these are 
 but notes hi the divine diapason of Life, 
 of Life singing its cosmic song, unmindful 
 who may hear. Alas, that so few hear 
 aught but a thin and scrannel sound ! 
 
 1 " Cette immense circulation de vie qui s'opere 
 dans 1 'ample sein de la nature ; . . . cette vie 
 qui sourd d'une fontaine invisible et gonfle les 
 veines de cet univers." Maurice de GueVin, 
 " Journal," p. 22. Paris, 1880. 
 
 226
 
 INDEX 
 
 ABBOTT, Charles C , 13 
 
 Action, a struggle to over- 
 come space and time, 131 
 
 Advertisements, hint as to 
 taxing, 200 
 
 Alcohol, proper use of, 142 
 et seq. 
 
 All, the, 129 et seq. 
 
 Amiel, Henri-Frederic, 128 ; 
 quoted, 201, 202 
 
 Aphrodites, the two, 165 
 
 Appearance, something be- 
 hind, 87 
 
 Arve, the river, 167 
 
 Autumn in Canada, 107 et 
 seq 
 
 Autumn reveries, 29 
 
 Avebury, Lord, quoted, 185, 
 1 86 
 
 B 
 
 BANNOCK, the, 156 
 
 Beans, how to cook, 157, 158 
 
 Beauty, no ; the appeal of, 
 164 et seq. ; subjective 
 character of, 165 ; various 
 kinds of, ibid. ; Goethe on, 
 194 ; Shelley on, 195 
 
 Being, the paean of, 223 et 
 seq. ; immensity of, 225 
 
 Belloc, Hilaire, quoted, 151 
 
 Beverages, 142 et seq. 
 
 Blood corpuscles, an analogy 
 from, 93 et seq. 
 
 Boots, 135 
 
 Borrow, George, 14 ; quoted, 
 160, 161 
 
 Browning, Robert, quoted, 
 
 163, 164 
 Buckinghamshire, a walk in, 
 
 31 et seq. 
 Burma, 15 
 Burroughs, John, 12 ; quoted, 
 
 75. 7 6 
 Byways, English, 21 et seq. 
 
 CALM, Matthew Arnold on, 
 
 Campbell, Professor W. W., 
 
 quoted, 177 
 Canada, spring in, 45 et seq. ; 
 
 autumn in, 107 et seq. ; 
 
 53 et seq. ; winter in, 59 
 
 et seq. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 196, 
 
 197 
 Carpenter, Edward, 103 ; 
 
 quoted, 195, 196 
 Cattle, mountain, 172 
 Cave man, the, 138, 139 
 Cities, crowded populations 
 
 of, 218 et seq. 
 Civilisation a mixed boon, 
 
 216 et seq. 
 Companion, an uncongenial, 
 
 113. H4 
 
 Conscience, 42 et seq. 
 
 Cosmos, the, 93 
 
 Country, the, calming in- 
 fluence of, 127 
 
 DARWIN, Charles, quoted, 
 
 170, 171 
 Death, a change, 95 
 
 227
 
 INDEX 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas, quoted, 
 
 P* 199 
 
 Details, practical, 152 et seq. 
 
 Dietary, the tramp's, 140 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 Downs, the Sussex, 25 et seq. 
 Drama, a natural, 79 et seq. 
 
 H 
 
 HAIG, Dr Alexander, 145 
 Harte, Bret, quoted, 159, 
 
 160 
 
 Hassocks, 25 
 Hearth, the, 137, 139 
 Hurstpierpoint, 25 
 
 EAST, the fascination of the, 
 
 19 
 
 Emigration, 222 
 England, byways in, 22 et 
 
 seq. ; a spring morning in, 
 
 25 et seq. 
 Enthusiasts, cautions for, 
 
 181 et seq. 
 
 Euripides, quoted, 194 
 Evening walks, 78 et seq. 
 Evil, origin of, 97 et seq. 
 
 IDEAL unrealisability of, 132 
 
 Impedimenta, 151 
 
 India, 17 et seq. 
 
 Infinite, the, 128 ; how that 
 
 all things point to the, 188 
 
 et seq. 
 Instincts, primitive, 162 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 JEFFERIES, Richard, 
 quoted, 184, 185 
 
 FATIGUE, a fictitious, 148 
 Fire, the nomad, 137 et seq. 
 Food, 140 ; importance of, 
 
 149 et seq. ; 154 et seq. ; 
 
 details concerning, 153 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 GEORGIAN BAY, the, 53 
 
 Glacial epoch, the, 138, 139 
 
 Goethe, quoted, 194 
 
 Golf and walking, i et seq. ; 
 indictments against, ibid. ; 
 vindication of, 2 ; mis- 
 apprehension concerning, 
 
 2 3 
 
 Guerin, Eugenie de, quoted, 
 
 211 
 Guerin, Maurice de, quoted, 
 
 186, 187 ; 225, 226 
 
 K 
 
 KIPLING, Rudyard, quoted, 
 
 170 
 
 Kingston Road, the, 119, 120 
 Knapsack, contents of, 152 
 
 et seq. 
 
 L 
 
 LANDSCAPE, the beauty of, 
 
 159 et seq. 
 Life, a process, 37 et seq. ; 
 
 omnipresent, 42 ; 95 ; an 
 
 absolute, 96 
 Literature, modern, 218, 219 
 
 MABIE, Hamilton Wright, 12, 
 
 J 3 
 MacLane, Mary, quoted, 160 
 
 228
 
 INDEX 
 
 Meditations, evening, 78 et 
 seq. 
 
 Memories, cosmic, 162 
 
 Memory, idea of time de- 
 pendent on, 92, 93 
 
 Milk, value of, 147 
 
 Milky Way, the, 56 
 
 Morning air, a steriliser, 210 
 
 Morning walk, an early, 205 ; 
 208 
 
 Morning walks, 72 et seq. 
 
 Mountains, peacefulness of, 
 
 i?3. i?4 
 
 Miiller, Max, 112 
 
 Multiplicity, subjective char- 
 acter of, 95 
 
 Mystery, the, of nature, 39 ; 
 85 ; Carlyle on, 196, 197 
 
 N 
 
 NATURE, spirituality of, 34 
 et seq.; a universe of sub- 
 sistences, 51 ; unity of, 
 91 ; 93 ; beauty of, 164 
 et seq. ; man's primaeval 
 habitat, 171 ; the language 
 of, 193, 194 ; companion- 
 ship of, 213 
 
 Neo-Platonists, 90 
 
 Nilgiris, the, 17 
 
 " OBERLAND CHALET, AN," 
 
 quoted, 143 
 Ontario, lake, 118, 119 
 Otonabee, river, 48 
 
 REASON, inadequacy of, 97 ; 
 
 and moral progress, 101, 
 
 102 
 Religious tenets, criterion of, 
 
 102 
 
 Responsibility, 96, 97 
 Rh6ne, the, 167 
 Rousseau, Jean- Jacques, 
 
 quoted, 202-204, 
 Ruskin, John, quoted, 161 ; 
 
 220, 221 
 
 SALEVE, the Grand, 167 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 Savoie, Haute, 172 
 Science, 191 
 
 Seclusion, benefits of, 117 
 Self-consciousness, 217, 218 
 Senancour, quoted, 161 
 Sense, a seventh, 186 
 Solar system, motion of, 176, 
 
 177 
 
 " Son of the Marshes, A," 13 
 Soul, the, 113 
 Space, subjective character 
 
 of, 91 ; 95 
 Spirit of eternal things, the, 
 
 39, 85 
 Stayner, 53 
 
 Stephen, Sir Leslie, 14 
 Strife, universality of, 176 
 Sunday in a country town, 
 
 121 et seq. 
 Sunshine, Canadian, 70, 71 
 
 PANTRY, the antiquity of 
 
 the, 155 
 
 Pascal, quoted, 101 
 Plato, quoted, 165 
 Plotinus, 89, 90 
 Poynings, village, 25 
 
 TEA, as a stimulant, 145 tt 
 
 seq. 
 
 Tennyson, quoted, 190 
 Thatcher, T., quoted, 73 
 Thoreau, Henry D., 12 ; 
 
 quoted, 200, 201^ 
 
 229
 
 INDEX 
 
 Thought, a struggle to con- 
 ceive the infinite, 131 
 
 Time, subjective character 
 of, 91, 92, 95 
 
 Toronto, 119 
 
 Tragedies, 124 et seq. 
 
 Transcendentalism, practical, 
 40 et seq. 
 
 Troglodytic families, 138 
 
 U 
 
 UNITY, a spiritual, 112, 113 
 Universe, the, imagined as a 
 
 sphere, 91 
 Uxbridge, 23 
 
 VAN DYKE, Henry, 13 
 
 W 
 
 WALK, the essence of a, 5 et 
 
 seq. ; a woeful, 105 et seq. 
 Walkers, notable, 9 et seq. 
 Walking tour, preparations 
 
 for a, 133 et seq. 
 Walking tours, 133 et seq. 
 Walks and walking, effects 
 
 of golf upon, 2 et seq. ; 
 
 essence of, 5 et seq. ; proper 
 
 frame of mind for, ibid. ; 
 
 the mood for, 72 et seq. ; 
 
 the rivals of angling, 75; 
 
 instinct for, 103, 104 ; the 
 pleasures of, 198 et seq. 
 
 Walks, my earliest, 15 et seq. ; 
 in Burma, ibid. ; in India, 
 17 et seq. ; in England, 21 
 et seq. ; on the Sussex 
 Downs, 25 et seq.; in 
 Buckinghamshire, 31 et 
 seq. ; in Canada, 45 et seq. ; 
 on the banks of the Otona- 
 bee, 47 et seq. ; by the 
 Georgian Bay, 53 et seq. ; 
 on the outskirts of an 
 Ontarian country town, 
 59 et seq. ; a woeful walk, 
 105, 106 ; from Toronto, 
 along the Kingston Road, 
 107 et seq. ; over one of 
 the Passes of the Jura, 149, 
 150 ; on the Grand Saleve, 
 167 et seq. ; early on Mon- 
 day mornings, 205, 206 ; 
 of a Sunday before break- 
 fast, 208 et seq. 
 
 Walton, Izaak, quoted, 72, 
 
 73. 74 
 
 Warnings, 180 
 Whiting, Charles Goodrich, 
 
 *3 
 
 Will, 96, 97 ; freedom of the, 
 
 99 et seq. 
 
 Winter in Canada, 62 et seq. 
 Wood, Edith Elmer, quoted, 
 
 143 et seq. 
 
 Woods, Canadian, 63 et seq. 
 Wordsworth, William, quoted, 
 
 7, III, 112 
 
 230
 
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