It Is From Nineteen To Two Or Three And Twenty
Perhaps That This War Of The Man Against Men Is Like To Be Waged
Most Sullenly.
You are yet in this smiling England, but you find
yourself wending away to the dark sides of her
Mountains, climbing
the dizzy crags, exulting in the fellowship of mists and clouds,
and watching the storms how they gather, or proving the mettle of
your mare upon the broad and dreary downs, because that you feel
congenially with the yet unparcelled earth. A little while you are
free and unlabelled, like the ground that you compass; but
civilisation is coming and coming; you and your much-loved waste
lands will be surely enclosed, and sooner or later brought down to
a state of mere usefulness; the ground will be curiously sliced
into acres and roods and perches, and you, for all you sit so
smartly in your saddle, you will be caught, you will be taken up
from travel as a colt from grass, to be trained and tried, and
matched and run. All this in time, but first came Continental
tours and the moody longing for Eastern travel. The downs and the
moors of England can hold you no longer; with large strides you
burst away from these slips and patches of free land; you thread
your path through the crowds of Europe, and at last, on the banks
of Jordan, you joyfully know that you are upon the very frontier of
all accustomed respectabilities.
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