s wrote a prose
poem on the mystery of the woods which Thoreau himself could not have
excelled.

'If we were charged so much a head for sunsets, or if God sent round a
drum before the hawthorns came into flower, what a work we should make
about their beauty. But these things, like good companions, stupid
people early cease to observe;' a state of affairs fortunately
incomprehensible to Mr Stevenson, who had not only a keen perception of
the beauty of the world but 'that inward eye which is the bliss of
solitude' that enabled him to recall and reproduce from memory these
pleasures of the past.

The volume which ends with the statement that 'The most beautiful
adventures are not those we go to seek,' is from its first page to its
last brightly readable and full of pleasant and graceful thoughts and
fancies. Its style is more mannered and less excellent than that of his
later work, but it already appealed to that cultured public who welcomed
the appearance of a new writer likely to make his mark as a 'maker' of
English style.

In 1895 _An Inland Voyage_ had run into its seventh edition; it was
followed by the even more popular _Travels in the Cevennes with a
Donkey_, which the same publishers sent out in 1879, and which in 1895
had reached a ninth edition.

On this occasion Mr Stevenson travelled alone. He had been living for a
time in the little town of Le Monastier, fifteen miles from Le Puy, and
here, in the late autumn, he bought an ass which he called 'Modestine,'
and with it, to the great interest of his simple neighbours, started on
a tour in the Cevennes. The pair set forth speeded on their way by many
good wishes and, in spite of a slow pace and not a few misfortunes with
the baggage and the pack-saddle, the tour was most successful. As to
Modestine's pace her master describes it as being 'as much slower than a
walk as a walk is slower than a run'!

The experiences of the traveller in the crisp, bright autumn weather and
the perfect scenery of the Cevennes were thoroughly enjoyable. The
simple peasantry and the homely innkeepers proved more friendly and
agreeable than those along the route of the canoeists had done. In the
monastery of 'Our Lady of the Snows' he had a kindly welcome from the
Trappist monks, who seemed to have found it possible to break their
stern rule of silence in their eagerness to convert him to Roman
Catholicism. Among themselves this rule of silence and the poorest diet
is rigidly enf