d there all his
life from a child upwards, and had his impression of to-day modified by
that of to-morrow, and belied by that of the day after, till at length
the stable characteristics of the country are all blotted out from him
behind the confusion of variable effect.

I began my little pilgrimage in the most enviable of all humours: that
in which a person, with a sufficiency of money and a knapsack, turns his
back on a town and walks forward into a country of which he knows only
by the vague report of others. Such an one has not surrendered his will
and contracted for the next hundred miles, like a man on a railway. He
may change his mind at every finger-post, and, where ways meet, follow
vague preferences freely and go the low road or the high, choose the
shadow or the sunshine, suffer himself to be tempted by the lane that
turns immediately into the woods, or the broad road that lies open
before him into the distance, and shows him the far-off spires of some
city, or a range of mountain-tops, or a rim of sea, perhaps, along a low
horizon. In short, he may gratify his every whim and fancy, without a
pang of reproving conscience, or the least jostle to his self-respect.
It is true, however, that most men do not possess the faculty of free
action, the priceless gift of being able to live for the moment only;
and as they begin to go forward on their journey, they will find that
they have made for themselves new fetters. Slight projects they may have
entertained for a moment, half in jest, become iron laws to them, they
know not why. They will be led by the nose by these vague reports of
which I spoke above; and the mere fact that their informant mentioned
one village and not another will compel their footsteps with
inexplicable power. And yet a little while, yet a few days of this
fictitious liberty, and they will begin to hear imperious voices calling
on them to return; and some passion, some duty, some worthy or unworthy
expectation, will set its hand upon their shoulder and lead them back
into the old paths. Once and again we have all made the experiment. We
know the end of it right well. And yet if we make it for the hundredth
time to-morrow, it will have the same charm as ever; our heart will beat
and our eyes will be bright, as we leave the town behind us, and we
shall feel once again (as we have felt so often before) that we are
cutting ourselves loose for ever from our whole past life, with all its
sins and fol