through the county town five miles off, but--among the midland villages
and markets, along by the tree-studded hedgerows, and where the heavy
barges seem in the distance to float mysteriously among the rushes and
the feathered grass. Our vision, both real and ideal, has since then
been filled with far other scenes: among eternal snows and stupendous
sun-scorched monuments of departed empires; within the scent of the long
orange-groves; and where the temple of Neptune looks out over the
siren-haunted sea. But my eyes at least have kept their early
affectionate joy in our native landscape, which is one deep root of our
national life and language.

And I often smile at my consciousness that certain conservative
prepossessions have mingled themselves for me with the influences of our
midland scenery, from the tops of the elms down to the buttercups and
the little wayside vetches. Naturally enough. That part of my father's
prime to which he oftenest referred had fallen on the days when the
great wave of political enthusiasm and belief in a speedy regeneration
of all things had ebbed, and the supposed millennial initiative of
France was turning into a Napoleonic empire, the sway of an Attila with
a mouth speaking proud things in a jargon half revolutionary, half
Roman. Men were beginning to shrink timidly from the memory of their
own words and from the recognition of the fellowships they had formed
ten years before; and even reforming Englishmen for the most part were
willing to wait for the perfection of society, if only they could keep
their throats perfect and help to drive away the chief enemy of mankind
from our coasts. To my father's mind the noisy teachers of revolutionary
doctrine were, to speak mildly, a variable mixture of the fool and the
scoundrel; the welfare of the nation lay in a strong Government which
could maintain order; and I was accustomed to hear him utter the word
"Government" in a tone that charged it with awe, and made it part of my