( 65 ) 



MEADOW THOUGHTS. 



The old house stood by the silent country road, 

 secluded by many a long, long mile, and yet again 

 secluded within the great walls of the garden. Often 

 and often I rambled up to the milestone which stood 

 under an oak, to look at the chipped inscription low 

 down — " To London, 79 Miles." So far away, you see, 

 that the very inscription was cut at the foot of the 

 stone, since no one would be likely to want that infor- 

 mation. It was half hidden by docks and nettles, 

 despised and unnoticed. A broad land this seventy- 

 nine miles — how many meadows and corn-fields, hedges 

 and woods, in that distance ? — wide enough to seclude 

 any house, to hide it, like an acorn in the grass. 

 Those who have lived all their lives in remote places 

 do not feel the remoteness. No one else seemed to be 

 conscious of the breadth that separated the place from 

 the great centre, but it was, perhaps, that consciousness 

 which deepened the solitude to me. It made the 

 silence more still ; the shadows of the oaks yet slower 

 in their movement ; everything more earnest. To 

 convey a full impression of the intense concentration 

 of Nature in the meadows is very difficult — everything 



F 



