§ 21
If, as Messieurs Piscator, Venator, and Auceps, and their tuneful milkmaids, show, early morning walks tend to blithesomeness of heart, evening walks tend perhaps to meditation of mind. As day wears on—I do not know, I may be wrong, but to me it seems that as day wears on it takes a more sombre aspect. It was at dusk that Gray's Elegy was written. In the very sound of Milton's simple words,
"Then came still evening on,"
there is to me an echo of quietness, perhaps of melancholy.—Many a lesson I have learned by quiet meditation in quiet scenes, prolonged far into the night.—Indeed, he is a wise walker who chooses for himself one or more secluded spots, sequestered deep, whither he may go, there to commune with himself; or to hold high converse with the mighty dead; or to lend an expectant ear for the dryads of the woods; or, if nothing more, to rid him of the petty perturbations incident to a life lived between four walls, a floor, and a ceiling, and broken into fragments by clocks which strike the hours and watches which point to the minute.