LLANDDWYN 21 



There hangs, for me, an air of mystery over all 

 unpossessed spaces, particularly open spaces, which, 

 being disclosed in their whole extent, declare 

 themselves at once unoccupied. 



Blackstone has truly observed that there is in 

 mankind a natural disposition to regard as right 

 that everything should have an owner. It may 

 therefore be considered a triumph of righteousness 

 that it is in these days hardly possible to look upon 

 land without having obtruded upon one's notice the 

 personality of some land-owner. Hence a habit in 

 the social mind to seek in scenes of solitude signs of 

 human occupation, and finding none, to return into 

 itself uneasily, as if with a feeling that the general 

 fitness of things had been disturbed. 



Emerging from that curtain of confused sandhills 

 suddenly upon a clearly marked scene of absolute 

 detachment, wherein was no sign or suggestion of 

 human presence or possession, I, too, experienced 

 some such feeling, though one that was analogous 

 rather than similar. For I think that there persists 

 in the minds of some a feeling of remoter origin, of 

 which Blackstone's comment touches but the material 

 aspect a feeling that such scenes, in spite of their 

 seeming loneliness and aloofness, do not exist solely 

 in and for themselves. There is a natural disposition 

 in the mind to conceive of them as being reflected in 

 the consciousness of some being ; and to transfer the 

 peculiar unity, suggestive of the unity of personality, 

 that often pervades them, to some spirit of the spot, 

 imagined as intimately mingled with and animating 

 the material elements that suggest its presence. 



Some such feeling held us silent as we looked 



