BACK TO THE WEST COUNTRY 183 



ing round and round, mounting higher and higher until 

 they were above the cross ; and then from that vast 

 height they would hurl themselves suddenly downwards 

 towards the great building and the earth. All at once, 

 as we watched a bird coming down, he threw his arms 

 up and cried excitedly, " Oh, to fly like that ! " 



And you, said I to myself, born in a hideous grimy 

 manufacturing town, breathing iron dust, a worker in 

 an ugly material engaged in making ugly things, have 

 yet more poetry and romance, more joy in all that is 

 beautiful, than one could find in any native of this soft 

 lovely green south country ! 



Does not this fact strike every observer of his 

 fellows who knows both north and south intimately ? 

 How strange then to think that well-nigh all that is 

 best in our poetic literature has been produced by 

 southerners — by Englishmen in the southern half of the 

 country ! Undoubtedly the poetic feeling is stronger 

 and more general in the north, and we can only conclude 

 that from this seemingly most favourable soil the 

 divine flower of genius springeth not. 



To return to my commercial traveller. I told him 

 where to go in search of the nightingale, and meeting 

 him later that evening asked him if he had succeeded. 

 Yes, he replied, he had found and listened for some 

 time to its song. It was a fine song, unlike that of 

 any other bird known to him, but it did not come up 

 to his expectations, and he had formed the idea that 

 this bird was probably not a very good specimen of its 

 kind. It consoled him to be told that he was absolutely 



