oor is beautiful. The path I took runs through thick shade with
many windings, and presently comes out at the edge of the wood down by
the sea in a very hot, sheltered corner, where the sun beats all day
long on the shingle and coarse grass. A solitary oak tree, old and
storm-beaten, stands by itself near the water; across the water is the
wooded side of Vilm; and if you continue along the shingle a few yards
you are away from the trees and out on a grassy plain, where lilac
scabious bend their delicate stalks in the wind. An old black
fishing-smack lay on its side on the shingle, its boards blistered by
the sun. Its blackness and the dark lines of the solitary oak sharply
cleft the flood of brilliant light. What a hot, happy corner to lie in
all day with a book! No tourists go to it, for the path leads to
nowhere, ending abruptly just there in coarse grass and shingle--a
mixture grievous to the feet of the easily tired. The usual walk for
those who have enough energy--it is not a very long one, and does not
need much--is through the Goor to the north side, where the path takes
you to the edge of a clover field across which you see the little
village of Vilmnitz nestling among its trees and rye, and then brings
you back gently and comfortably and shadily to the hotel; but this
turning to the right only goes down to the shingle, the old boat, and
the lonely oak. The first thing to do in that hot corner is to pull off
your coat, which I did; and if you like heat and dislike blue finger
tips and chilled marrows, lie down on the shingle, draw your hat over
your eyes, and bake luxuriously, which I did also. In the pocket of my
coat was _The Prelude_, the only book I had brought. I brought it
because I know of no other book that is at the same time so slender and
so satisfying. It slips even into a woman's pocket, and has an
extraordinarily filling effect on the mind. Its green limp covers are
quite worn with the journeys it has been with me. I take it wherever I
go; and I have read it and read it for many summers without yet having
entirely assimilated its adorable stodginess. Oh shade of Wordsworth, to
think that so unutterable a grub and groveller as I am should dare call
anything of thine Stodgy! But it is this very stodginess that makes it,
if you love Wordsworth, the perfect book where there can be only one.
You must, to enjoy it, be first a lover of Wordsworth. You must love the
uninspired poems for the sake of the divin