pastures, through which a straight public path conducted them into one of
those charming lanes never seen out of this bowery England,--a lane deep
sunk amidst high banks with overhanging oaks, and quivering ash, gnarled
wych-elm, vivid holly and shaggy brambles, with wild convolvulus and
creeping woodbine forcing sweet life through all. Sometimes the banks
opened abruptly, leaving patches of green sward, and peeps through still
sequestered gates, or over moss-grown pales, into the park or paddock of
some rural thane. New villas or old manor-houses on lawny uplands,
knitting, as it were, together England's feudal memories with England's
freeborn hopes,--the old land with its young people; for England is so
old, and the English are so young! And the gray cripple and the bright-
haired child often paused, and gazed upon the demesnes and homes of
owners whose lots were cast in such pleasant places. But there was no
grudging envy in their gaze; perhaps because their life was too remote
from those grand belongings. And therefore they could enjoy and possess
every banquet of the eye. For at least the beauty of what we see is ours
for the moment, on the simple condition that we do not covet the thing
which gives to our eyes that beauty. As the measureless sky and the
unnumbered stars are equally granted to king and to beggar; and in our
wildest ambition we do not sigh for a monopoly of the empyrean, or the
fee-simple of the planets: so the earth too, with all its fenced gardens
and embattled walls, all its landmarks of stern property and churlish
ownership, is ours too by right of eye. Ours to gaze on the fair
possessions with such delight as the gaze can give; grudging to the
unseen owner his other, and, it may be, more troubled rights, as little
as we grudge an astral proprietor his acres of light in Capricorn.
Benignant is the law that saith, "Thou shalt not covet."

When the sun was at the highest our wayfarers found a shadowy nook for
their rest and repast. Before them ran a shallow limpid trout-stream;