a stump of thorn in the central valley of Egdon, between
afternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the
world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the
whole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything around
and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the
stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and
harassed by the irrepressible New. The great inviolate place had
an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a
particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the
moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea
changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people
changed, yet Egdon remained. Those surfaces were neither so steep as
to be destructible by weather, nor so flat as to be the victims of
floods and deposits. With the exception of an aged highway, and a
still more aged barrow presently to be referred to--themselves almost
crystallized to natural products by long continuance--even the
trifling irregularities were not caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade,
but remained as the very finger-touches of the last geological change.
The above-mentioned highway traversed the lower levels of the heath,
from one horizon to another. In many portions of its course it
overlaid an old vicinal way, which branched from the great Western
road of the Romans, the Via Iceniana, or Ikenild Street, hard by.
On the evening under consideration it would have been noticed that,
though the gloom had increased sufficiently to confuse the minor
features of the heath, the white surface of the road remained almost
as clear as ever.
II
Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in Hand with Trouble
Along the road walked an old man. He was white-headed as a mountain,
bowed in the shoulders, and faded in general aspect. He wore a
glazed hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass buttons
bearing an anchor upon their face. In his hand was a silver-headed
walking-stick, which he used as a veritable third leg, perseveringly
dotting the ground with its point at every few inches' interval. One
would have said that he had been, in his day, a naval officer of some
sort or other.
Before him stretched the long, laborious road, dry, empty, and white.
It was quite open to the heath on each side, and bisected that
vast dark surface like the parting-line on a head of black hair,
dim
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