ALONG THE ROAD I. 13 



limits. In the earlier days it was the king s high 

 way, and along its up-hill and down-dale course the 

 battalions of royal troops marched and counter 

 marched to the call of bugles that have gone silent 

 these hundred years and more. It is a road of 

 varied fortunes, like many of those who have passed 

 over it ; it is sometimes rich in all manner of price 

 less possessions, and again it is barren, poverty- 

 stricken and desolate. It climbs long hills, some 

 times in a roundabout, hesitating, half-hearted way, 

 and sometimes with an abrupt and breathless 

 ascent ; at the summit it seems to pause a moment 

 as if to invite the traveler to survey the splendid 

 domain which it commands. On one side, in such 

 a restful moment, one sees the wide circle of waters, 

 stretching far off to a horizon which rests on clus 

 ters of islands and marks the limits of the world ; 

 in the foreground, and sweeping around the other 

 points of the compass, a landscape rich in foliage, 

 full of gentle undulations, and dotted here and 

 there with fallow fields, spreads itself like another 

 sea that has been hushed into sudden immutability, 

 and then sown, every wave and swell of it, with the 

 seeds of exhaustless fertility. 



From such points of eminence as these the road 

 sometimes runs with hurried descent, as if longing 

 for solitude, into the heart of the woodlands, and 

 there winds slowly and solemnly under the over 

 shadowing branches ; there are no fences here, and 

 the sharp lines of separation between road-bed and 



