A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. !$! 



looked out on the town on such an evening as this, 

 and with the heroic presentiment of youth, said 

 good-bye for ever to Oxford. Often since that 

 returning, can I say that the Ego which, leaning from 

 the Blue Boar Lane window and watching Bagley 

 under the moon, on that June night began (and left 

 half-way) a ballade of farewells, did not in truth take 

 an eternal leave ? Yes ; it was not I who so rarely 

 mixed dreams and life under these darkening walls, 

 but a soul which some spell of hour and place seems 

 to infuse into my being. I feel motions of barbaric 

 sentiment, of amazing hope ; deadest postulates 

 begin to stir with life ; and an absolution of blissful 

 ignorance floats downwards over all. Couplets of a 

 ghostly Newdigate echo from morning meadows 

 where they were born ; thin voices halloo across 

 shadowy quads. I hear as in a dream Tom begin to 

 clang over the roofs ; but a harsher note, the roll and 

 clatter of the tram below me in the High, serves to 

 break the spell, and bring back my wonted self and the 

 sufficing common world beyond the moonlit spires. 



From Oxford I journeyed into the flats of the 

 Windrush and the Coin a land of rushy streams, in- 

 numerable willow-rows and landmark poplar-clumps 

 whose differences of character, in colour and atmo- 

 sphere, from that of my accustomed Sussex horizons, 



