surface. Nascent and ever renascent, it has electrical attraction;
it leaps to the embrace of the atom it selects, but only under the
influence of powerful affinities; and what it clasps once, it
clasps for ever. That is the pure air which we drink in on the
heather-clad heights--not the venomous air of the crowded casino,
nor even the close air of the middle-class parlour. It thrills and
nerves us. How we smile, we who live here, when some dweller in the
mists and smoke of the valley confounds our delicate atmosphere,
redolent of honey and echoing the manifold murmur of bees, with
that stifling miasma of the gambling hell and the dancing saloon!
Trust me, dear friend, the moorland air is far other than you
fancy. You can wander up here along the purple ridges, hand locked
in hand with those you love, without fear of harm to yourself or
your comrade. No Bloom of Ninon here, but fresh cheeks like the
peach-blossom where the sun has kissed it: no casual fruition of
loveless, joyless harlots, but life-long saturation of your own
heart's desire in your own heart's innocence. Ozone is better than
all the champagne in the Strand or Piccadilly. If only you will
believe it, it is purity and life and sympathy and vigour. Its
perfect freshness and perpetual fount of youth keep your age from
withering. It crimsons the sunset and lives in the afterglow. If
these delights thy mind may move, leave, oh, leave the meretricious
town, and come to the airy peaks. Such joy is ours, unknown to the
squalid village which spreads its swamps where the poet's silver
Thames runs dull and leaden.

Have we never our doubts, though, up here on the hill-tops? Ay,
marry, have we! Are we so sure that these gospels we preach with
all our hearts are the true and final ones? Who shall answer that
question? For myself, as I lift up my eyes from my paper once more,