the warren, and the
dairy-farm inland, and the slope of the ground where the sea used to
come, and fields where the people grew potatoes gratis, and all the
eastern village, where the tenants paid their rents whenever they found
it rational.

A hot young man, in a place like this, would have done a great deal of
mischief. Either he would have accepted large views, and applauded this
fine communism (if he could afford it, and had no wife), or else he
would have rushed at every body headlong, and batted them back to their
abutments. Neither course would have created half the excitement which
the Major's did. At least, there might have been more talk at first, but
not a quarter so much in sum total. Of those things, however, there is
time enough to speak, if I dare to say any thing about them.

The things more to my mind (and therefore more likely to be made plain
to another mind) are not the petty flickering phantoms of the shadow we
call human, and which alone we realize, and dwell inside it and upon
it, as if it were all creation; but the infinitely nobler things of
ever-changing but perpetual beauty, and no selfishness. These, without
deigning to us even sense to be aware of them, shape our little minds
and bodies and our large self-importance, and fail to know when the lord
or king who owns is buried under them. To have perception of such mighty
truths is good for all of us: and I never had keener perception of them
than when I sat down on the Major's camp-stool, and saw all his land
around me, and even the sea--where all the fish were his, as soon as he
could catch them--and largely reflected that not a square foot of the
whole world would ever belong to me.

"Bruntlands," as the house was called, perhaps from standing well above
the sea, was sheltered by the curve of the eastern cliff, which looked
down over Bruntsea. The cliff was of chalk, very steep toward the sea,
and showing a prominent headland toward the south, but prettily rising
in grassy curves from the inland and from the westward. And then, where
it suddenly chined away from land-slope into sea-front, a long bar of
shingle began at right angles to it, and, as level as a railroad, went
to the river's mouth, a league or so now to the westward. And beyond
that another line of white cliffs rose, and looked well till they came
to their headland. Inside this bank of shingle, from end to end, might
be traced the old course of the river, and to landward of th