can see only a limited portion of the earth at once. When one is in the
middle of Lake Erie we are as much out of sight of land, as impressed by
the illusion of boundless water, as if we were in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean. So, on Salisbury Plain, with nothing but rolling billows
of close-cropped turf, springy and noiseless to the tread, as far as the
eye can see, one feels as alone with the universe as in the middle of
some Asian desert. In addition to the actual loneliness of the scene,
and a silence broken only by the occasional tinkle of sheep-bells, as a
flock moves like a fleecy cloud across the grass, is an imaginative
loneliness induced by the overwhelming sense of boundless unrecorded
time, the "dim-grey-grown ages," of which the mysterious boulders of
Stonehenge are the voiceless witnesses. To experience this feeling to
the full one should come upon an old Roman road in the twilight,
grass-grown, choked with underbrush, but still running straight and
clearly defined as when it shook to the tread of Roman legions. It is
eery to follow one of these haunted roads, filled with the far-off
thoughts and fancies it naturally evokes, and then suddenly to come out
again into the world of today, as it joins the highway once more, and
the lights of a wayside inn welcome us back to humanity, with perhaps a
touring car standing at the door.

One need hardly say that the English wayside inn is as much a feature of
the English countryside as the English hawthorn. Its praises have been
the theme of essayists and poets for generations, and at its best there
is a cosiness and cheer about it which warm the heart, as its quaintness
and savour of past days keep alive the sense of romantic travel. There
the spirit of ancient hospitality still survives, and, though the
motor-car has replaced the stage-coach, that is, after all, but a
detail, and the old, low-ceilinged rooms, the bay windows with their
leaded panes, the tap-room with its shining vessels, the great kitchen,