beat on its trampled sides; and the Roman, sore beset, may have gazed
down this very road for relief, praying for night or the succouring
legion. This child that swings on a gate and peeps at you from under
her sun-bonnet -- so may some girl-ancestress of hers have watched
with beating heart the Wessex levies hurry along to clash with the
heathen and break them on the down where the ash trees grew. And
yonder, where the road swings round under gloomy overgrowth of
drooping boughs -- is that gleam of water or glitter of lurking
spears?

Some sing you pastorals, fluting low in the hot sun between dusty
hedges overlooked by contented cows; past farmsteads where man and
beast, living in frank fellowship, learn pleasant and serviceable
lessons each of the other; over the full-fed river, lipping the
meadow-sweet, and thence on either side through leagues of hay. Or
through bending corn they chant the mystical wonderful song of the
reaper when the harvest is white to the sickle. But most of them,
avoiding classification, keep each his several tender significance; as
with one I know, not so far from town, which woos you from the valley
by gentle ascent between nut-laden hedges, and ever by some touch of
keen fragrance in the air, by some mystery of added softness under
foot -- ever a promise of something to come, unguessed, delighting.
Till suddenly you are among the pines, their keen scent strikes you
through and through, their needles carpet the ground, and in their
swaying tops moans the unappeasable wind -- sad, ceaseless, as the cry
of a warped humanity. Some paces more, and the promise is fulfilled,
the hints and whisperings become fruition: the ground breaks steeply
away, and you look over a great inland sea of fields, homesteads,
rolling woodland, and -- bounding all, blent with the horizon, a
greyness, a gleam -- the English Channel. A road of promises, of