hould be a
view. The whole system of the country lay spread before Rickie, and he
gained an idea of it that he never got in his elaborate ride. He saw how
all the water converges at Salisbury; how Salisbury lies in a shallow
basin, just at the change of the soil. He saw to the north the Plain,
and the stream of the Cad flowing down from it, with a tributary that
broke out suddenly, as the chalk streams do: one village had clustered
round the source and clothed itself with trees. He saw Old Sarum, and
hints of the Avon valley, and the land above Stone Henge. And behind him
he saw the great wood beginning unobtrusively, as if the down too needed
shaving; and into it the road to London slipped, covering the bushes
with white dust. Chalk made the dust white, chalk made the water clear,
chalk made the clean rolling outlines of the land, and favoured the
grass and the distant coronals of trees. Here is the heart of our
island: the Chilterns, the North Downs, the South Downs radiate hence.
The fibres of England unite in Wiltshire, and did we condescend to
worship her, here we should erect our national shrine.

People at that time were trying to think imperially, Rickie wondered how
they did it, for he could not imagine a place larger than England.
And other people talked of Italy, the spiritual fatherland of us all.
Perhaps Italy would prove marvellous. But at present he conceived it as
something exotic, to be admired and reverenced, but not to be loved like
these unostentatious fields. He drew out a book, it was natural for him
to read when he was happy, and to read out loud,--and for a little time
his voice disturbed the silence of that glorious afternoon. The book was
Shelley, and it opened at a passage that he had cherished greatly two
years before, and marked as "very good."

"I never was attached to that great sect Whose doctrine is that each one
should select Out of the world a mistress or a friend, And all the rest,
though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion,--though it is the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary
footsteps tread Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad
highway of the world,--and so With one sad friend, perhaps a jealous
foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go."

It was "very good"--fine poetry, and, in a sense, true. Yet he was
surprised that he had ever selected it so vehemently. This afternoon it
seemed a little inhuman. Half a mile off