Then there was another man who travelled with me from Birmingham,
pressed certain tracts upon me, and wanted to charge me sixpence each at
Paddington. But if I were to speak of even these few I should exceed.




On the Sources of Rivers


There are certain customs in man the permanence of which gives infinite
pleasure. When the mood of the schools is against them these customs lie
in wait beneath the floors of society, but they never die, and when a
decay in pedantry or in despotism or in any other evil and inhuman
influence permits them to reappear they reappear.

One of these customs is the religious attachment of man to isolated high
places, peaks, and single striking hills. On these he must build
shrines, and though he is a little furtive about it nowadays, yet the
instinct is there, strong as ever. I have not often come to the top of a
high hill with another man but I have seen him put a few stones together
when he got there, or, if he had not the moral courage so to satisfy his
soul, he would never fail on such an occasion to say something ritual and
quasi-religious, even if it were only about the view; and another instinct
of the same sort is the worship of the sources of rivers.

The Iconoclast and the people whose pride it is that their senses are
dead will see in a river nothing more than so much moisture gathered in
a narrow place and falling as the mystery of gravitation inclines it.
Their mood is the mood of that gentleman who despaired and wrote: