unty I forget. In the pages of this genial volume
Lockley Park and its appurtenances made a very handsome figure. We
took up our abode at a certain little wayside inn, at which in the
days of leisure the coach must have stopt for lunch, and burnished
pewters of rustic ale been tenderly exalted to "outsides" athirst with
breezy progression. Here we stopt, for sheer admiration of its steep
thatched roof, its latticed windows, and its homely porch. We allowed
a couple of days to elapse in vague undirected strolls and sweet
sentimental observance of the land, before we prepared to execute the
especial purpose of our journey. This admirable region is a compendium
of the general physiognomy of England. The noble friendliness of the
scenery, its subtle old friendliness, the magical familiarity of
multitudinous details, appealed to us at every step and at every
glance. Deep in our souls a natural affection answered. The whole
land, in the full, warm rains of the last of April, had burst into
sudden perfect spring. The dark walls of the hedge-rows had turned
into blooming screens; the sodden verdure of lawn and meadow was
streaked with a ranker freshness. We went forth without loss of time
for a long walk on the hills. Reaching their summits, you find half
England unrolled at your feet. A dozen broad counties, within the vast
range of your vision, commingle their green exhalations. Closely
beneath us lay the dark, rich flats of hedgy Worcestershire and the
copse-checkered slopes of rolling Hereford, white with the blossom of
apples. At widely opposite points of the large expanse two great
cathedral towers rise sharply, taking the light, from the settled
shadow of the circling towns--the light, the ineffable English light!
"Out of England," cried Searle, "it's but a garish world!"

[Footnote 66: From "A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales." Copyright,
1875. Houghton, Mifflin Company.]

The whole vast sweep of our surrounding prospect lay answering in a
myriad fleeting shades the cloudy process of the tremendous sky. The
English heaven is a fit antithesis to the complex English earth. We
possess in America the infinite beauty of the blue; England possesses
the splendor of combined and animated clouds. Over against us, from
our station on the hills, we saw them piled and dissolved, compacted
and shifted, blotting the azure with sullen rain-spots, stretching,
breeze-fretted, into dappled fields of gray, bursting into a storm of
lig