Chapter XVIII: A Woeful Walk 105 (3)

The best all-round stimulant is tea. I say it advisedly, knowing full well that to Dr Alexander Haig and the anti-uric-acid dietists tea is Anathema Maranatha. But every mining prospector, every railroad constructor, every lumberman, every out-in-the-wilds worker throughout Australia and America drinks tea--proof, surely, that it is efficacious, even if it be in a sense deleterious. In huge quantities, and constantly taken, I dare say it is deleterious. But personally I know of no pick-me-up preferable to tea, when, cold, hungry, and tired at the end of a long day's tramp, you find yourself "all in" and unable to eat.

I recall an instance of the extraordinary efficacy of tea--quite weak, but hot. It was at the end of a forty-mile walk through a monotonous country in cold, wind, and rain. We arrived tired out; and although we knew we were hungry (for we had had precious little to eat all day), the thought of food was repulsive, though the restaurant we had reached displayed a variety of viands. I ordered hot tea in the biggest teapot procurable. It was brought. We sipped I forget how many cups each. Then we supped indeed; and after supper one of the party proposed to walk the forty miles back!

* * * * *

Perhaps Dr Haig will say that plain hot water would have done just as well. Humph! Give me weak, but good, tea.

Hot milk, of course, is an incomparable pick-me-up. But who, on a trudge, can always, by demanding it, obtain hot milk? If you can get it, milk, in any shape or form, is unrivalled. More than once it has raised me from the depths of low spirits, produced by hunger and thirst and fatigue, to the most contented of moods.--I was walking once on a hot summer's day along a barren and dusty road where was no habitation nor signs of men. My knapsack was empty, so was my water-bottle. Not a brook or a stream could I find. It was late in the day. I was heart-sick and weary. But the miracle happened. Did I believe my eyes, or was that a man there milking cows over yonder in that field? I made straight for him, and, after passing the time of day and being generally polite (the while my tongue clave to my palate), I presently asked if I might have some of his priceless liquid--I called it simply "milk." Genially he pointed to a pail--_a pail_, and bade me help myself. I put that vessel to my lips, and I rather think that the vertical arc described by any given point on the periphery of the bottom of that utensil during the process of deglutition was not a small one! When I put that pail down (and a twenty-five-cent piece beside it) I was a new man, and laughed at miles and melancholy.

* * * * *

Very often, when walking, especially in hot weather, one finds oneself tired when only a few miles have been covered. It is not real fatigue; it is want of fluid. The skin exudes moisture; the blood thickens; the serums and synovial fluids run short; waste matter is not excreted; the muscles and tendons require lubrication. A copious draught of water will put all to rights. Not everyone knows this. I myself owe the hint to a friend.[25]

§ 48

Each walker must, however, discover for himself what is the food best suited to his needs--remembering always that it is quite possible to spoil a whole day by even trivial dietetic mistakes. If you walk to see and to enjoy, unless you possess that youth which can digest anything, and that vitality which can attack anything, take heed as to what you eat and what you attempt.--Most unfortunate is the remembrance of an otherwise lovely walk I took one day over one of the most lovely of the passes of the Jura. The day was superb; the road by the soft green pastures was superb; and superb was the climb through the tangled brushwood of the slopes. Filmy clouds formed themselves to leeward of the peaks and hid the tops of the pines; above, I gazed into a deep blue sky; beneath, I gazed into a deep green vale; and a tumbling brook sent its music up the heights. But--I had started foodless, and had stuffed into my pockets only a stodgy roll and a box of sardines. By noon I was hungry. I finished the roll _and_ the sardines. With deplorable result. The pancreas rebelled, the senses were dulled, and all the beauties of the Jura were lost upon _heu me miserum_!--Fellow-tramp, take thought for your provender--and "provender" good old Dr Johnson defines as "dry food for brutes."--_That_ is the diet to walk on.

§ 49

But, after all, one's impedimenta must be chosen according to one's tastes. Mr Hilaire Belloc equipped himself for his seven-hundred-mile walk from Toul to Rome with "a large piece of bread, half-a-pound of smoked ham, a sketch-book, two Nationalist papers, and a quart of the wine of Brulé"[26] (but one halfpennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!); though farther on he tells us he also carried "a needle, some thread, and a flute."[27] But then Mr Belloc's path lay through thickly-peopled districts; he rarely slept in the open; travelled in summer-time; and not once, I think, lighted a fire: and certes he reached Rome in sorry plight.

XXII

Practical Details

§ 50

And now for some hints on the practical details of walking tours of more arduous character and more extended length.[28]--Suit the weight of your knapsack or pack to your strength, leaving a large margin for comfort. If you travel in regions uninhabited by man, and the climate is rigorous, a shelter at night is all-important. Therefore carry a light blanket: a warm head and face induce sleep; so does a change to dry underclothing at the end of the day. For really hard trips, when you walk all day and walk far, you will need, to replace used-up muscular tissue, each day:

3/4 lb. of flour;
3/4 lb. of bacon;
1/2 lb. of beans;

--and to these you should add dried fruit or rice. The best dried fruit is a mixture in equal parts of apricots and prunes. Take an abundance of tea: nothing takes the place of tea; and supply yourself with pepper, salt, sugar, candles, and soap. Your cooking pots should fit the one into the other. These things, with a small frying-pan, an axe (to cut poles for your evening shelter and wood for your fire), a file to sharpen this, and some stout wire hooks by which to hang your pots over the fire, complete, I think, the sum-total of your absolutely necessary impedimenta.

§ 51

The sedulous, however sage, have little idea how large a part of active life depends on food. To stay-at-homes, who go down to the dining-room when the gong sounds, a meal seems a mere incident of life, an intermission from work, an opportunity for a family chat. The traveller on foot soon learns that a meal is of the most vital importance. Every reader of Nansen's thrilling narrative must have noticed this. Even in Mr Belloc's literary "Path to Rome" one is struck with the intrusion of this unliterary topic, and the more literary "Inland Voyage" of Robert Louis Stevenson is not free from it. While even in that delightful, and delightfully feminine, "An Oberland Chalet," which I have already cited, although the foods were generally cheese or cakes or _petits pains_, and the drinks chocolate or milk or _café au lait_, the mention of edibles and potables is frequent.

The importance of a supply of food has so often been borne in upon me that I am inclined to believe that the political community is coæval with the pantry. Even amongst animals, only those form commonwealths which form common stores of food--as the ant and the bee.

The pedestrian gains a practical insight into this wide-reaching influence of a storage of food. Not for half-a-dozen hours can he subsist before its importance is impressed upon him by most painful pangs. If, therefore, sedulous sage, you set out on a long hard walk without due provision for the allaying of hunger, you will come to grief. I make no apologies, accordingly, for minute instructions on that topic here.

§ 52

The bread of the Western prospector, my fraternal informant tells me, is the bannock. Dost know how to make a bannock? You must have with you a bag containing flour (of the highest grade, made from hard wheat), baking powder, and salt, thoroughly mixed beforehand. (Use twice as much baking powder as the instructions on the tin direct. Half a cupful of salt will suffice for ten pounds of flour.) Open this bag, and make a depression in the contents with your fist. Into this pour a cupful of water. Stir the sides of the depression into the water till you get a stiff dough. Spread this dough in a clean greased frying-pan. Hold the pan over the fire till the under side of the dough is slightly browned, then take the pan off the fire and set it up on edge to allow the top of the bannock to toast, and your bannock is made--and very delicious you will find it if you are hungry, and hungry you certainly will be.

Beans are a more troublesome affair, for, unfortunately, they take from two to four hours to boil. But beans are the mainstay of life on a tour. There are two good varieties: the small white, and the larger brown. Take both, and before starting clean them thoroughly from dust and grit and stones--thoroughly. As soon as your fire is lighted, put on your beans in cold water with no salt, and keep them boiling. As soon as they show signs of softening, add a piece of bacon or a ham bone and some pepper and salt. When ready--eat. If they are not ready for you when you are ready for them (and this coincidence is, alas, rare with beans), the pot should be filled up with water, the remains of the fire raked into a circle, in the centre of which the pot should be kept for the night: they will then make a dish for breakfast, when they may be eaten as they are, or can be fried. If drained fairly dry, they may be carried as they are and used for luncheon.--But the best thing is to make a bannock of them. Take a clean frying-pan with plenty of bacon fat in it, and mash the already boiled beans in this with a fork. Heat, with stirring, till the mass is dry enough to set; then fry on both sides. This will keep for days, "and is," says my authority, "the finest food I know of for emergency trips."

XXIII

The Beauty of Landscape

§ 53

May I here request the reader to accompany me in a short digression?--Few things are pleasanter than a walk in which one turns down any lane that invites.

One of the first delights of walking is the pleasure derived from the passing scene.--What is the secret of the pleasure derived from a beautiful landscape--or, as a matter of fact, from almost any landscape? For apparently a landscape need not be actually beautiful in order to give pleasure. "I wouldn't give a mile of the dear old Sierras," says Bret Harte, "with their honesty, sincerity, and magnificent uncouthness, for 100,000 kilomètres of the picturesque Vaud."[29] And even Mary MacLane, rail as she did at the barren sands of Butte, Montana, in her "Story,"[30] when she left them wrote, "I love those things the best of all."[31]--Bret Harte and Mary MacLane may give us a clue to the secret. It is not merely the contour or the colours of a landscape that delight; it is the associations that cling to it.--But what of a scene which is quite new to the eyes? Still, I think, association. "Scenery soon palls," says George Borrow, "unless it is associated with remarkable events, and the names of remarkable men."[32] And Ruskin, you will remember, when gazing at the broken masses of pine forest which skirt the course of the Ain above the village of Champignole, in the Jura, found that the impressiveness of the scene owed its source to the fact that "those ever-springing flowers and ever-flowing streams had been dyed by the deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue."[33]

Packed away in the brain and mind of man must be subtle and secret memories dating back through unknown ages of time.--A gaseous theory, perhaps, but one which Senancour has liquefied into the pellucid sentence:--"La nature sentie n'est que dans les rapports humains, et l'éloquence des choses n'est rien que l'éloquence de l'homme."[34] The great fight for life, the stern joys of life--the ferocious combat, the thrilling love match, the myriad sensations and emotions evoked by man's physical environment, and his struggle for existence therein--surely these live somehow somewhere packed away in his brain to-day--just as some migratory and nidificatory memories must be packed away in the brain of a bird. It is these dormant cosmic memories that a landscape revives. On how many a plain to-day does there not flow veritable human blood remuted into sap!--Terrene Nature was man's ancestral home and no man can gaze upon it unmoved.

§ 54

The freedom of a great expanse seems to arouse primitive instincts. Idylls are not enacted in drawing-rooms. It is the odorous glades are Hymen's haunts. In the meads of Enna Proserpine was wooed. Zephir won Aurora a-maying. On Latmos top Endymion was nightly kissed. In the boscage Daphnis proposed--and was there and then accepted.[35] If only Fashion would decree that honeymoons should be spent under Jove! Lovers ken the banks where amaranths blow, and poets build their altars in the fields. How actually physically exhilarating sometimes is

"The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
. . . . . .
Such life there, through such lengths of hours,
Such miracles performed in play,
Such primal naked forms of flowers,
Such letting Nature have her way."[36]

There must survive in the cosmic consciousness of the race, deep-seated and ineradicable memories of primæval nuptials. What a pity it is that that supreme, that sacred drama called "Love" should be enacted by youths and damsels, not in secluded groves amidst perfumed and amorous blooms, but in ball-rooms and boudoirs.[37]

§ 55

It is a complex, it is a profound enigma, this of the appeal of the beauty of nature to the senses and emotions of man. For Beauty, we must remember, is not an attribute of the external thing. Beauty is in the soul that feels, the mind that thinks, the memory that remembers. _That_ is beautiful which brings to mind and memory and soul, ecstatic thrill, exalted feeling. _That_ is beautiful which makes for the preservation and propagation and (which should make for the) elevation of the race.--And this is why Beauty is of various kinds. There is a Beauty of the senses, and there is a beauty of the soul--as there is a terrestrial Aphrodite, and an Aphrodite uranian.[38] Though why the earthly and the heavenly Aphrodites should not join hands, I do not know. Perhaps it is only when they do join hands--when there is at one and the same time a spiritual obsession and a physical oblation--that Beauty becomes transfigured before us, reveals her divine nature radiant through fleshly vestments. Ah! this occurs only when we are on the Mount.

§ 56

After all, did John Ruskin really get to the bottom of this matter of the appeal of Nature to the heart of man? Is the beauty of any particular scene due to the generic fact that "those ever-springing flowers and ever-flowing streams had been dyed by the deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue"? If my theory is right that beauty is subjective, not objective; that the connecting link between the natural object and the emotion which it evokes is that of memory or association, surely we must seek for a more particular, a more personal explanation than this of Ruskin his "human endurance, valour, and virtue." Well, I too have lounged a whole morning on a mountain top not far from the spot of which Ruskin wrote. Before me was the valley of the Arve; behind me, the valley of the Rhône: both, from that height of vision, and on that perfect day, breathing prosperity and peace. Square mile after square mile of fertile land lay under my eyes: farms and vineyards, fields and meadows, all watered by winding streams. Dotted about, here in groups, there discrete, were the tiled roofs of cottages; and all through the verdure, in long white curves with an occasional tangent, here hidden by boscage, there emerging in the sunlight, ran the good white roads of France. The sweet grass on which I lay was thickly strewn with flowers, and the air brought scents sweet as softest music heard afar. To right and left in the middle distance rose Alpine peaks--light green at their bases, dark green in the zone of the pines, lifting grey or green or purple masses towards the clouds; and straight in front, some seven leagues away, stretched the rugged jagged snow-capped chain of Mont Blanc.

It was early morning, and it was one of those perfect summer days when, as one lay supine, one could actually perceive the filmy clouds vanish into invisibility; while, as an addition to the blessings of the scene, there came to my ear the tinkling bells of the cattle.

And the region was thick with the memories of human endurance, valour, and virtue. Cæsar's legions strode that soil. Long before Cæsar came, marauding bands had met and fought. And, since Cæsar's time, owing to the fortunes of war, war in which man fought hand-to-hand with man--opposed shield to javelin, discharged the feathered arrow, or pointed arquebus and carronade--the very ground on which I walked had changed owners innumerable.

It would be difficult to choose a more appealing scene.--And yet, if I probe my own heart to the core, if I tell my inmost thought, to me a sunny--or even, for that matter, a misty--scene in pastoral England--Surrey or Bucks or Berks, Kent or Devon, Sussex or Herts, where you will--rouses more poignant emotions than all the plain of Haute Savoie backed by the Chaine du Mont Blanc.

* * * * *

Mr Kipling, in his simple language, has come nearer to the truth than has Ruskin with all his felicity of phrase. It is not the associations connected with human endeavour _in the mass_ that make any particular scene to appeal, it is the associations connected with our own little selves; it is because "our hearts are small" that God has

"Ordained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all."[39]

But, indeed, I think that the great Darwin long ago, quite incidentally--and quite unwittingly--put his finger upon the crux of the problem. Speaking of the beauties of the landscape of the East Indian Archipelago he says: "These scenes of the tropics are in themselves so delicious, that they almost equal those dearer ones at home, to which we are bound by each best feeling of the mind."[40] The sublime and beautiful in Nature call forth our admiration, reverence, awe; it is the simple scenes, to which associations cling, that call forth our love.

Nature--the sun, the sky, the earth, the sea--is always beautiful, because Nature, as Man's primæval habitat, has embedded in the memory of Man primæval associations; but for any one particular scene to arouse emotions deeper than those evoked by mere form and colour, that scene must arouse associations embedded in one's own memory or in those of one's forbears. It may be that this is a generalisation shallow and jejune. Yet I make it, remembering torrid India; wide Canadian snows; the Alps and the Jura; the Rhône; the Rhine; the Irawadi; lovely, lovable England; and those perfumed slopes of le Grand Salève, inhabited on that early morning only by myself and those grazing cows.

§ 57

Those mild-eyed cattle interested me. They were very gentle, very sleek, very quiet and patient; large of bone, lactiferous; and, beneath all their passivity, I should imagine they possessed potentialities of heroism and endurance unknown to their bovine fellows of the plains. And if I may judge from the features, figures, and expressions of the women of this same region, too, I should be inclined to conjecture that they were not dissimilar in character to their kine. They too are quiet-eyed, deep-bosomed, large-framed, heavy-buttocked; and in the expression of their faces there is something patient and heroic. And the youthful tender of those cattle--he too was interesting. He lay prone on the grass, his back to Mont Blanc. If he exercised his own limbs but little, he faithfully performed all the duties appertaining to that state of life into which it had pleased God to call him by springing every twenty minutes to his feet and shouting orders to his dog--the faithful sub or deputy herdsman, who kept the cattle from straying too far. I envied that youthful herdsman his pleasant occupation. Life in that mountain air must be sweet to the senses, as companionship with those gentle kine must be quieting to the mind.

§ 58

It was a wonderful morning, that. How quiet it was, how peaceful! Those mighty mountains were so still, so soundless. When I was out of sight of the cattle, the only noise that reached my ear was the hum of the bee at my elbow, the song of the lark overhead. Nature seemed at peace. Nature seemed to fraternise with Man. A great comradeship was abroad. With my own eyes I saw three cows come to their keeper's side, close up to him, and he, kind soul, stroked their soft and wrinkled cheeks. With my own eyes I saw a young and curious heifer walk up to the recumbent dog--her deputy-herdsman--and sniff his hide; and he, good creature, never twitched an ear!--though presently he did move off, moving somewhat stiffly, as if his dignity had been ruffled.

* * * * *

And the flowers at my feet, on every side! It was not grass I lay on; it was blossoms--lovely scented blossoms; and as I looked along the slopes it was flowers I saw, not blades of grass: it was on a purfled plain I lay, a plain of blue and green and yellow and purple.--At first I could hardly bring myself to crush these buds. I kept to cart tracks, to cattle-paths. But in time these ceased, and I could not choose but crush. And then ... came a curious thought; one I hardly like to put on paper. Yet of itself it came, and some perhaps will interpret it as reverently as did I.--Nature was in repentant mood, and, like the Magdalen, was once again bedewing Man's feet with her tears, and bescenting them with her spikenard. She made amends, as it were, for her treatment of Man.--Fickle, feminine Nature, from whose loins we come, from whose breast we suck our livelihood; from whom we wrest our pleasure--with much cost--much cost and strife....

§ 59

Strife! The very word was like a bell to toll me back. Those very flowers were fighting for their lives. Their very scents and colours were but enticements for the bee--for the bee which, in turn, with toil, garnered honey against chimenal famine. And those still, stupendous mountains--silent, superb--immobile, massive; their very crags bespoke tremendous struggle, immense upheaval, and the grinding of ice and glacier. Indeed the solid earth and all about me was unrestful, rushing.--I lay on my back on the grass and thrust my finger towards the sky. It seemed steady enough in all conscience. Yet I knew that as a matter of fact that fingertip of mine was performing most astounding feats. It was rushing through space. And in its rush it was pursuing a path would take an expert astronomer to determine. With the rotation of the earth, it was flying eastwards at more than a dozen miles a minute. With the revolution of the earth, it was rushing round the sun some two or three miles in that minute. And with the whole solar system, it was leaping towards the constellation of Hercules with leaps of more than seven hundred miles in each minute![41]--Seven hundred miles a minute![42] It is inconceivable. That enormous mass, the sun, into a spot on which, hundreds of our earths could be dropped like a handful of pebbles into a puddle, it and the farthermost of its planets, three thousand million miles away--all rushing through space ... twenty miles while I sneeze; thirty thousand miles while I sit at dinner; half-a-million miles between going to bed and getting up.... What a stupendous journey! What a mighty company! Where to? What for? Why this terrific expenditure of energy?--Think of the _ergs_ necessary to propel that mass! What is being _done_? Who does it? And for whom?

Nothing is immobile in Nature. Nothing is stationary in Life. To exist, to be, to live, is to become, to change, to strive, to achieve. The seeming peace about me was outcome of infinite struggle. Only by struggle does life evolve, does man aspire.

* * * * *

Return we to my theme.

XXIV

Warnings to the Over-Zealous

§ 60

Now, I know precisely what will happen. Some epimethean enthusiast, carried away by the anticipated delights of a walk, will suddenly make up his mind to take one; will hastily stuff some things into a bag, and will start off at four o'clock in the morning with some vague and distant goal in view. He will think to roll John Burroughs and Richard Jefferies into one in his minute observation of Nature, and to outdo Wordsworth and Amiel combined in his philosophico-poetical disquisitions on the same; he will rid his mind of the world and the worldly, and float in themes transcendental and abstruse. But I think I know what will happen. By the afternoon of that selfsame day he will be hungry, thirsty, footsore, and tired. His boots will be tight; his bag as heavy as his spirits; his head as empty as his craw. Instead of observing Nature he will find Nature--in the shape of the rustics (and the rustics' dogs)--very narrowly observing him, not always with sympathetic or benignant gaze. Instead of deep and transcendental meditations rising spontaneously to his mind, he will find curt and practical questions assailing his ear as to who he is and what he is doing there.--My dear but epimethean enthusiast, you must know that Nature is a jealous mistress. If so be you are sedulously engaged for fifty weeks in the year in the pursuit of pelf, think not to woo her by a half day's worship at her shrine. Even if your courtship be sincere, it must be slow. Not in forty-eight hours will you brush away the cobwebs of the workaday world and prepare for the reception of sweet Nature's influence a mind free from all uncharitableness: their skies, not their characters, they change who sail over-seas. From all blindness of heart, from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy, you must seek to be delivered, else you will walk in vain. For most men walk in a vain show, and the perpetual perambulation of the streets of Vanity Fair is a poor preparation for the Delectable Mountains.--But take heart. If you will keep but a corner of your mind free from the carking cares of barter and commerce--if only by half-holiday jaunts and Sabbath-day journeys, great will be your reward. By the end of the third or fourth day's tramp, what with the exhilarating exercise, the fresh air, the peace and loneliness, the long hours of mental quietude, the freedom from the petty distractions of social and official life, if you are humble and childlike, the world forgetting by the world forgot--the scales will fall from your eyes; then indeed you will see--and feel--and think. The trivial little objects at your feet, equally with the immense expanses of earth and sky, will lift you high above themselves; the wet and drooping high-road weed, the tender green of a curled frond, the soft ooziness of a summer marsh--the sense of beauty--of the fitness of things--of their immense incomprehensibility--the wonder of it all ... words seem useless to say how such things sink into the soul, plough up its foundations, sow there seeds which, like the Indian juggler's plant, spring up at once and blossom into worship, reverence, awe.--Believe me, I am not extravagant or hyperbolic, nor do I beguile with empty words. If you will not hear me, hear the simple-minded Richard Jefferies:

"I linger in the midst of the long grass, the luxury of the leaves,
and the song in the very air. I seem as if I could feel all the
glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind calls to being.
The endless grass, the endless leaves, the immense strength of the
oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird; from all
of them I receive a little.... In the blackbird's melody one note
is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me,
though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have
collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with them, I receive
some, at least, of their fulness of life. Never could I have enough;
never stay long enough.... The hours when the mind is absorbed by
beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer
we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched
from inevitable Time.... These are the only hours that are not
wasted--these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty.
This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. To
be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of
Nature. If I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it."[43]

Which passage has received the _imprimatur_ of quotation by no less an authority than Lord Avebury (better known, perhaps, as Sir John Lubbock), himself not only a man of science, but a statesman and a man of affairs as well. Listen:

"The exquisite beauty and delight of a fine summer day in the country has never perhaps been more truly, and therefore more beautifully, described."[44]

* * * * *

But surely, with all deference to the learned quoter, there is something deeper in Richard Jefferies, these his dithyrambs, than a description of a fine summer day. Surely Jefferies finds himself here, in Amiel's fine phrase, _tête-à-tête_ with the Infinite, and tries, poor soul, in vain to find vent for his thoughts. It is not a picture, it is a poem. Nor needed it the Pageant of Summer to transport this poet thither. Jefferies was here viewing Nature through a seventh sense--a sense more delicate than that of sight or sound, the sense that Maurice de Guérin has defined as,--

"Un sens que nous avons tous, mais voilé, vague, et privé presque de
toute activité, le sens qui recueille les beautés physiques et les
livre à l'âme, qui les spiritualise, les harmonie, les combine
avec les beautés idéales, et agrandit ainsi sa sphère d'amour et
d'adoration"[45]

It is not Richard Jefferies his catalogue of the things he saw which moves us to admiration and delight, it is his sense sublime which enabled him to rise from the things which are seen to the things which are unseen, to rise above the _hic et nunc_ of the parochial and to peer into the _illuc et tunc_ of the eternal. He saw "into the life of things," and in him the finite stirred emotions which savoured of the infinite.

XXV

How that all points to the Infinite

§ 61

Of a sober truth, could we only realise it, all things point to the infinite. Not a cobweb, not a wisp of morning mist, not a toadstool, not a gnat, but has a life-history dating back to the dark womb of Time, or ere even meteoritic dust or incandescent nebulæ were born; dating forward too, could we trace it, to the dark doom of Time, if for Time there be a doom. Who can understand it? Who shall explain it?--any part of it? Take Burns his simple line,--

"Green grow the rashes, O."

To explain "green" is not within the power of profoundest oculist and physicist combined: on the question of the colour-sense alone the scientific world is divided and has for years been divided; and of the precise action of chlorophyll--the green colouring-matter of plants--it is almost equally ignorant; while of the train of connected phænomena, from the chemic and catalytic action in the leaf, through the stimulation of the retina, the transmission along the optic nerve, the sensation in the corpora quadrigemina of the brain, to the concept in the mind, we know absolutely nothing. To define and classify the rushes, also; to know exactly their place in the vegetable kingdom and how they came there--their evolution from lower forms, the modifications wrought in their structure by environment and internecine strife--that is beyond the wit of botanist and palæophytologist in one. And as to that simple verb, "to grow," dealing, as it does, with life itself in its inmost penetralia, that has baffled, and probably will for ever baffle, the whole host of physical and metaphysical experimenters and speculators world without end. When we can explain Life, we shall be within measurable distance of explaining the Life-Giver.--Tennyson saw this:

"Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of your crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower, but _if_ I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."

§ 62

But my song has grown too advent'rous. Let us descend th'Aonian mount.--This, however, let me say: If to somewhat abstruse ontological speculations such as these you like to add scientific or other knowledge of the region of your walk--something of the geology, palæontology, mineralogy, zoology, botany, archæology, history, well and good. No sort of knowledge but is profitable for doctrine. The interest and pleasure of walking are greatly enhanced by noting and being able to account for the thousand and one natural phænomena which greet the eye even in the shortest stroll; and few things sooner oust petty worries from the mind than such occupation. Happy is the man who can do this. I, alas, cannot help you here. I have but a bowing acquaintance with Science, though it is always with a deep reverence that I doff my hat to her. Nevertheless, with this I console myself; it seems to matter but little with what sort of eyes you look on Nature, provided you really look. Give her but the seeing eye and the understanding heart, and she is lavish of her gifts.--And (let me roun this in thine ear) perhaps she prefers (woman-like) the understanding heart to the seeing eye; though (woman-like again) she likes to be admired as well as understood--though never (and here most woman-like) does she like to be too curiously regarded.--Sometimes, I confess, I have envied him gifted with the scientific eye: him in whom a granite boulder in a grassy mead rouses long geological trains of thought; to whom the dwarfed horse-tails by lacustrine shores paint pictures of dense equisetaceous forests; for whom a fossil trilobite calls up visions of Silurian seas; him too have I envied who can classify common plants or recognise and name the stones at his feet: can tell us why the lowly daisy is superior to the lordly oak; can expatiate on crystallographic angles; and learnedly descant on amphibole or pyroxene. For myself, I am not versed in the mechanism of Nature. I have never asked to see the wheels go round. I like to see her smile, and am not careful as to what oral or buccal muscles are brought into play for that smile. That she has an anatomy I suppose. But I bethink me of Actæon's fate, he who saw Dian's naked loveliness too near. So thou, beware lest thine eye see so much that thy heart understand too little. Keep thy mind "in a just equipoise of love." Accomplish that, and no knowledge is too high for thee.

§ 63

Here, however, it is but right to enter a _caveat_. It must be admitted that it is not given to everyone to hold high converse with Nature. Nature speaks a cryptic tongue, and unless one has paid some heed to her language her accents are apt to fall upon deaf ears. Nor can anyone translate Nature's language to those unversed in her speech. If you think to hear her voice while the din and clatter of business or mercature are ringing in your ears, you will hear nothing. Nor, for that matter, will you see anything. Trees and fields and clouds you may see, or may think you see; but they will say nothing to you, will mean nothing to you. To their mere beauty you will be blind; for beauty is a thing to be felt, not seen.

Goethe declared that Beauty was a primæval phænomenon which had never yet made its appearance.[46] To Euripides--~kluôn men audên, omma douch horôn to son~.[47]

And Shelley declares--

"Fair are others; none beholds thee,
. . . . . .
And all feel, yet see thee never."[48]

Beauty is _felt_. That is the clue to the secret. The appeal of natural beauty is to the heart, to the emotions, not to the intellect. The eyes of the wisest savant may miss what Nature will reveal to the veriest babe. This is what Mr Edward Carpenter means when he says, albeit in somewhat extravagant language--

"As to you, O Moon--

I know very well that when the astronomers look at you through their
telescopes they see only an aged and wrinkled body;

But though they measure your wrinkles never so carefully they do not
see you personal and close--

As you disclosed yourself among the chimney-tops last night to the
eyes of a child--

When you thought no one else was looking.

* * * * *

Anyhow I see plainly that like all created things you do not yield
yourself up as to what you are at the first or the thousandth onset,

And that the scientific people for all their telescopes know as
little about you as any one--

Perhaps less than most.

How curious the mystery of creation."[49]

The poet, bereft of words whereby to give vent to his emotion, falls back on "the mystery of creation."--Not dissimilarly says Carlyle, "The rudest mind has still some intimation of the greatness there is in Mystery."[50] And again, "The _mystical_ enjoyment of an object goes infinitely farther than the _intellectual_."[51]--It is not alone the indescribable colour of the delicate corolla, nor is it the minute knowledge of its astonishing structure, that causes to blaze up in the beholder a sense of something profound; it is not alone the majestic heap of the cloud, nor the piercing radiance of the quiet stars, known to be incomputably distant, that lifts one to the contemplation of the lofty; it is the immanent, the permanent Mystery that pervades and unifies all that ever was or is or shall be.

* * * * *

XXVI

The Pleasures of Walking

§ 64

"But what possible pleasure, what possible profit," I can hear the practical and common-sensible man asking, "is to be gained from walking--_walking_? Surely walking is the paltriest of sports. Why not write of riding, driving, rowing, bicycling, motoring, aeroplaning--any mode of locomotion rather than that of mere trudging?"--Well, in a technical and paronomasiacal phrase, the question really _solvitur ambulando_. For one thing, horses have to be baited, boats caulked, bicycles pumped up, balloons inflated, and motor cars eternally tinkered at--aeroplanes fly far beyond my welkin. For another thing, not the least of the practical blessings incident to a walk is that you are beyond the reach of letters and telegrams and telephones. You are not likely to be served with a writ when walking; you can laugh at _capiases_ and injunctions; drafts at sight and judgment summonses cannot easily overtake you on a trudge. "I have generally found," says De Quincey, "that, if you are in quest of some certain escape from Philistines of whatsoever class--sheriff-officers, bores, no matter what--the surest refuge is to be found amongst hedgerows and fields."[52] (Had De Quincey lived in the twentieth century, truly he might have added that it is amongst the fields and hedgerows also that one gets away from that pest of civilisation, the pene-ubiquitous advertisement.--And not always even amongst fields and hedgerows, as the landscape-spoiling hoardings along the routes of our railways prove. Like Nero, I sometimes wish that the erectors of sky-signs and the daubers of barns and fences had but one neck that I might ... that I might--lay upon it a heavy yoke of taxation.--I throw out that hint to any Finance Minister or Chancellor of the Exchequer that may care to act upon it.)

But far rather would I reply to my quærist in other words than mine.--"I went to the woods," says Thoreau, "because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.... Our life is frittered away by detail.... In the midst of this chopping sea of civilised life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand and one items to be allowed for that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds."[53]

Hear, too, Henri-Frédéric Amiel:

"_1st February 1854._--A walk. The atmosphere incredibly pure--a
warm, caressing gentleness in the sunshine--joy in one's whole
being.... I became young again, wondering, and simple, as candour
and ignorance are simple. I abandoned myself to life and to nature,
and they cradled me with an infinite gentleness. To open one's heart
in purity to this ever-pure nature, to allow this immortal life of
things to penetrate into one's soul, is at the same time to listen
to the voice of God. Sensation may be a prayer, and self-abandonment
an act of devotion."[54]

Or hear a greater man than these--hear the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he who divided with Voltaire the intellectual realm of the eighteenth century:

"What I regret most in the details of my life which I have forgotten
is that I did not keep a diary of my travels. Never have I thought
so much, never have I realised my own existence so much, been
so much alive, been so much myself if I may so say, as in those
journeys which I have made alone and afoot. Walking has something in
it which animates and heightens my ideas: I can scarcely think when
I stay in one place; my body must be set a-going if my mind is to
work. The sight of the country, the succession of beautiful scenes,
the great breeze, the good appetite, the health which I gain by
walking, the getting away from inns, the escape from everything
which reminds me of my lack of independence, from everything which
reminds me of my unlucky fate--all this releases my soul, gives me
greater courage of thought, throws me as it were into the midst of
the immensity of the objects of Nature, which I may combine, from
which I may choose at will, which I may make my own carelessly and
without fear. I make use of all Nature as her master; my heart,
surveying one object after another, unites itself, identifies itself
with those in sympathy with it, surrounds itself with delightful
images, intoxicates itself with emotions the most exquisite. If, in
order to seize these, I amuse myself by describing them to myself,
what a vigorous pencil, what bright colours, what energy of
expression they need! Some have, so they say, discerned something
of these influences in my writings, though composed in my declining
years. Ah! if only those of my early youth had been seen! those
which I have composed but never written down!"[55]

Thus wrote the great Jean-Jacques in the calm of his declining years. Those walking inspirations must have been potent indeed to have left so lasting an impression.[56]

§ 65

But Thoreau and Amiel and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are perhaps counsellors of perfection; exemplars too remote for our purpose. Permit me then to resort to an _argumentum ad hominem_.--I knew a man who one summer tried to do two and a half men's work in one. For five days in the week it took him from early in the morning of one day till early in the morning of the next. On Saturday afternoon he was free, and on Saturday he took the boat to a village twenty-one miles distant. Sunday afternoon was devoted (alas, necessarily) again to work,--but in the open air. At two-thirty on Monday morning he started on his return journey--afoot; breakfasted halfway in; and was at his desk in as good time as spirits.--Profit? That early morning walk picked him up for the week. Pleasure? My dear practical sir, would you had been with him! Would you had felt the quiet, the serenity, the calming influence of unsullied Nature; the supreme repose in those early morning hours, the solitude, the vastness, the expansion of soul and spirit beneath the silent stars, the quiet morn. He saw the full moon pale and set; he saw great Nature slowly wake; the sleepy cows knee-deep in clover; the fields begemmed with dew; the little pools--pools which at noon would be muddy puddles--glistening like emeralds and garnets in the dawn. By degrees, growing things were individualised. Each shrub, each creeping thing, had a life of its own. The veriest weed was exalted into a vegetable personality which had dealings with the Infinite and the Divine: and "all flowers in field or forest which unclose their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day" spake to him.--He was alone--alone with unhurrying, uncareful Nature. The peace of untold æons entered his soul and couraged him to battle with the petty and the trivial for five more wearing days without a qualm.--Profit? Pleasure?--What nag, what buggy, what skiff, what bike, what motor, what dirigible balloon, or hydro-aeroplane would have got him that? In simple truth, of all that he learned and did during those arduous weeks, only those lovely lonely walks live in that man's memory to-day.--Would that oftener we bathed our thirsty souls in the dews of the dawn! Would that oftener men gat them away from offices and counters and desks--nay, from balls and bats and cleeks--away into the quiet country, where nor strife nor struggle, noble or ignoble, has place or worth! The world is too much with us. Call-loans--narrow margins, with a slump in the market--killing races with a dark horse--quickly changing quotations--prolonged ill luck--unstable tariffs--strikes and rumours of strikes--such things perturb the human mind. Well, I know few more efficacious antidotes to mental perturbation than an early morning walk. It is a psychic as well as a sanitary investment.

§ 66

It is also a mental tonic--even in homœopathic doses.--I took last Sunday a little four-mile stroll before breakfast, and its calming and beneficent influence is with me still. No one was about; I had the whole country to myself, and I bathed a tired head in the spacious quietude of earth and sky. From a height I looked over a great and restful country, across the sleeping town, and far away over the peaceful lake. Above it all stretched the benevolent heavens, brooding over this pendent world.--I thought I saw fixity in the midst of motion; substance beneath evanescence; unity in multiplicity; a sort of goal where everything was cyclical; an end where all things seemed only means; infinity lurking in finitude; a divine inhering in the human. After the treadmill of the week it was uplifting, exalting. I inhaled great draughts of air from ultra-planetary spaces; I fed on manna fallen from the highest heavens. This tiny planet, with its trivial cares and duties, vanished from my eyes, and I cooled my brow in the clouds of the holy of holies.--But none the less did I recognise the all-importance, to it and to me, of earth's small cares and duties. Were they not part of that infinite multiplicity in which lurked that infinite unity? Did they not go to make up the "spiritual economy"[57] of the cosmos? But I saw them in a newer light--a larger light than merely solar, and they took on a new aspect, and declared themselves integral portions of that divine All without which that divine All would cease to be.

There is something strangely pure and purifying about early morning air. It is Nature's great steriliser. It is aseptic; and none breathes it but is more or less cleansed of the taint of noontide life. The noxious germs of care and anxiety cannot live in it. It is a magnificent bactericide. Nature is herself then. Even the denizens of Nature seem to know this, for never is bird or beast more blithesome than at dawn.

§ 67

For lonely souls, for luckless souls, there is, perhaps, after all is said and done, but one source of solace. "Nothing human," said Eugénie de Guérin, "nothing human comforts the soul, nothing human supports it:--

'À l'enfant il faut sa mère,
À mon âme il faut mon Dieu.'"[58]

Well, those who think their God has revealed himself in the Canonical Books will go to their Bible; those who think he has chosen the channel of a Church will derive ghostly strength from their spiritual counsellors; but those who think the Nameless has nowhere so plainly shown himself as in his works, will seek in the face and lineaments of Nature that consoling smile which every lonely soul so miserably craves; and fortunate it is that not over his works, but only over his words, theologians so wrathfully wrangle.--Art thou cast down, and is thy soul disquieted within thee? Dost distrust thyself? Has love grown cold? And hast thou caught on thy leman's lips a sigh not meant for thee? Is there none to whom thou canst go, on whose bosom to rain out the heavy mist of tears?--Go thou to Pan; betake thee to the fields; betake thee to the woods; pour out thy contrite heart at the altar of the universe, and thou shalt be comforted. What matters it the petty perturbations of the mind? What signify the paltry upheavings of the heart? Lay thy tired head on Nature's breast. Friendship may fade, ideals vanish, passion wane, the darling desire upon which thou hast staked thine all may prove to have been snatched from thee before thy very eyes.--Take heart. Always there is at hand the Infinite and the Eternal: about thee, above thee, in presence of which the petty and the paltry flee away.

I know no more comfortable medicament than the quiet companionship of Nature. The trees breathe a salutary air. The fields invite to repose. A calming influence pervades unwalled, unceilinged earth, and there the crumpled soul has room in which to smooth itself out: the noxious bacilli which infest its folds are swept away; ill-natured thoughts take flight. How paltry seems a passing quarrel beneath the boughs of a hoary oak that has witnessed a hundred fights! How puny a callous rage beneath the capacious sky!

For, believe me, Great Pan is _not_ dead. Nor, believe me, are any that go to him in any wise cast out. He cares not of what Church thou art a child, nor does he fence his tables. Worship at whatsoever shrine thou choosest, always he will welcome thee to his, for Pan is beloved of all the gods.

Ach! There comes a time when nothing seems worth while; when gaiety palls, and even sorrow dulls instead of stirs; when nothing seems of any use, and one feels inclined to give up, to give up.--To such I would say, pull on thick boots, clutch a stout stick, and go for a country walk--rain or shine.--It sounds a preposterous remedy, but try it. Nature never gives up. Not a pygmy weed, trodden under foot of man, and covered up and overwhelmed with rival growths, but battles for its life with vim. Nor does it ask for what it battles. Neither does it question why more favoured plants are so carefully nurtured, and it, poor thing, is dragged up by the roots.--Take a country walk, and look at the weeds if at nothing else.

And remember, this is a legitimate remedy, preposterous though it may sound. So many prescriptions for the heartache are illegitimate--stimulants, or narcotics, or stimulant-narcotics: sport, work, play, hazardous adventure, the gaming-table or the betting-ring, to say nothing of the cup that inebriates but does not cheer. A country walk is but "letting Nature have her way," is but giving an opportunity for the _vis medicatrix naturæ_. Try it; do not, like Naaman, prate of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, but go wash in Jordan seven times.

XXVII

Is Walking Selfish?

§ 68