Owing to this close intimacy and family character of the village which continues from generation to generation, there must be under all differences on the surface a close mental likeness hardly to be realised by those who live in populous centres; a union between mind and mind corresponding to that reticulation as it appeared to me, of plot with plot and with all they contained. It is perhaps equally hard to realise that this one mind of a particular village is individual, wholly its own, unlike that of any other village, near or far. For one village differs from another; and the village is in a sense a body, and this body and the mind that inhabits it, act and react on one another, and there is between them a correspondence and harmony, although it may be but a rude harmony.
It is probable that we that are country born and bred are affected in more ways and more profoundly than we know by our surroundings. The nature of the soil we live on, the absence or presence of running water, of hills, rocks, woods, open spaces; every feature in the landscape, the vegetative and animal life—everything in fact that we see, hear, smell and feel, enters not into the body only, but the soul, and helps to shape and colour it. Equally important in its action on us are the conditions created by man himself:—situation, size, form and the arrangements of the houses in the village; its traditions, customs and social life.
On that airy mirador which I occupied under (not in) the clouds, after surveying the village beneath me I turned my sight abroad and saw, near and far, many many other villages; and there was no other exactly like Burbage nor any two really alike.
Each had its individual character. To mention only two that were nearest—East Grafton and Easton, or Easton Royal. The first, small ancient rustic-looking place: a large green, park-like shaded by well-grown oak, elm, beech, and ash trees; a small slow stream of water winding through it: round this pleasant shaded and watered space the low-roofed thatched cottages, each cottage in its own garden, its porch and walls overgrown with ivy and creepers. Thus, instead of a straight line like Burbage it formed a circle, and every cottage opened on to the tree-shaded village green; and this green was like a great common room where the villagers meet, where the children play, where lovers whisper their secrets, where the aged and weary take their rest, and all subjects of interest are daily discussed. If a blackcap or chaffinch sung in one of the trees the strain could be heard in every cottage in the circle. All hear and see the same things, and think and feel the same.
The neighbouring village was neither line, nor circle, but a cluster of cottages. Or rather a group of clusters, so placed that a dozen or more housewives could stand at their respective doors, very nearly facing one another, and confabulate without greatly raising their voices. Outside, all round, the wide open country—grass and tilled land and hedges and hedgerow elms—is spread out before them. And in sight of all the cottages, rising a little above them, stands the hoary ancient church with giant old elm-trees growing near it, their branches laden with rooks' nests, the air full of the continuous noise of the wrangling birds, as they fly round and round, and go and come bringing sticks all day, one to add to the high airy city, the other to drop as an offering to the earth-god beneath, in whose deep-buried breast the old trees have their roots.
But the other villages that cannot be named were in scores and hundreds, scattered all over Wiltshire, for the entire county was visible from that altitude, and not Wiltshire only but Somerset, and Berkshire and Hampshire, and all the adjoining counties, and finally, the prospect still widening, all England from rocky Land's End to the Cheviots and the wide windy moors sprinkled over with grey stone villages. Thousands and thousands of villages; but I could only see a few distinctly—not more than about two hundred, the others from their great distance—not in space but time—appearing but vaguely as spots of colour on the earth. Then, fixing my attention on those that were most clearly seen, I found myself in thought loitering in them, revisiting cottages and conversing with old people and children I knew; and recalling old and remembered scenes and talks, I smiled and by-and-by burst out laughing.
It was then, when I laughed, that visions, dreams, memories, were put to flight, for my wise sister was studying my face, and now, putting her hand on mine, she said, "Listen!" And I listened, sadly, since I could guess what was coming.
"I know," she said, "just what is at the back of your mind, and all these innumerable villages you are amusing yourself by revisiting, is but a beginning, a preliminary canter. For not only is it the idea of the village and the mental colour in which it dyes its children's mind which fades never, however far they may go, though it may be to die at last in remote lands and seas—"
Here I interrupted, "O yes! Do you remember a poet's lines to the little bourne in his childhood's home? A poet in that land where poetry is a rare plant—I mean Scotland. I mean the lines:
How men that niver have kenned aboot it
Can lieve their after lives withoot it
I canna tell, for day and nicht
It comes unca'd for to my sicht."