My next walks were in England. For their size, the British Isles probably afford the most varied tramping ground of any country in the world. Within a few hundred miles of radius you get infinite variety: the rolling downs; the quiet weald; hilly Derbyshire; mountainous Wales; Devonshire's lanes; the Westmorland or the Cumberland lakes—these for the seeker of quiet. For the more emprising there is the wild and broken scenery of the northern isles; and the lover of the homeless sea can choose any shore to his liking.
§ 7
There is an impression abroad that in England you must confine your steps to the high-road. That has not been my experience. True, you must not expect everywhere to be allowed to stalk anywhere across country—unless you are following the beagles; but, so numerous are the byways and bridle-paths; so easy has access been made, through centuries of hereditary ownership, from one field or stile or farm to another; so generous, too, are so many landlords, that one can travel for many and many a mile without doing more than cross and recross the road. But true it is also that, in order to do this, you must know something of the locality.
One much-hidden entrance to a most sequestered spot I hope I do no wrong in revealing here.—London stretches out north-west almost to Uxbridge, nearly twenty miles out—that is, habitations line almost every inch of the way. After Uxbridge, the road is hard, dry, and comparatively uninteresting. But, near a cross-road, where is a house on either side, if you look carefully to the right you will dimly discern, beneath the shade of low-bending boughs, and almost hidden by these, a simple, unpretending stile. I recommend you to climb over it, for it is the entrance to a great, quiet, secluded spot, several acres in extent, thickly wooded with superb beeches and firs, so thickly wooded that the sky is invisible and the earth wholly in shade. But for the extreme kemptness of the underbrush (and the fact that you have just stepped out of the London road), you might be in a primæval forest of the West. Nor is this the sum of its beauty. High though it is above the surrounding country, embosomed in this forest is a lovely lake, exquisite in its colouring, reflecting, as it does, the cloud-flecked sky, and, all round its rim, the bending boughs of the beech. Typical of England are this lake and park. They are private property, of course; but the owner gives every wayfarer leave of access. Typical of England: tenacious of rights, yet just, nay, generous, to all.
VII
A Spring Morning in England
§ 8
He who knows not England I will here permit to peep into a page of a diary giving a glimpse of a morning dawdle on the Sussex Downs:
"Royal Oak Inn,
"Village of Poynings,
"27th March 18—, 11.30 A.M.
"The little maid is laying the other half of this table to supply me with eggs and bacon....