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 hearts 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 follies and circumscriptions, and go forward as a new creature
into a new world.

*****

Herein, I think, lies the chief attraction of railway travel. The speed
is so easy, and the train disturbs so little the scenes through which it
takes us, that our heart becomes full of the placidity and stillness of
the country; and while the body is borne forward in the flying chain
of carriages, the thoughts alight, as the humour moves them, at
unfrequented stations; they make haste up the poplar alley that leads
towards town; they are left behind with the signalman as, shading his
eyes with his hand, he watches the long train sweep away into the golden
distance.

*****

Now, there is no time when business habits are more mitigated than on a
walking tour. And so during these halts, as I say, you will feel almost
free. ... If the evening be fine and warm, there is nothing better in
life than to lounge before the inn door in the sunset, or lean over the
parapet of the bridge, to watch the weeds and the quick fishes. It is
then, if ever, that you taste joviality to the full significance of that
audacious word. Your muscles are so agreeably slack, you feel so clean
and so strong and so idle, that whether you move or sit still, whatever
you do is done with pride and a kingly sort of pleasure. You fall in
talk with any one, wise or foolish, drunk or sober. And it seems as if
a hot walk purged you, more than of anything else, of all narrowness and
pride, and left curiosity to play its part freely, as in a child or a
man of science. You lay aside all your own hobbies to watch provincial
humours dev