60 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



I wish they could always be as accessible as churches 

 are, and not handed over to land-owners like Sandsbury 

 Lane near Petersfield because straight new roads have 

 taken their places for the purposes of tradesmen and car- 

 riage people, or boarded up like that discarded fragment, 

 deep-sunken and overgrown, below Colman's Hatch in 

 Surrey. For centuries these roads seemed to hundreds so 

 necessary, and men set out upon them at dawn with hope 

 and followed after joy and were fain of their whiteness 

 at evening : few turned this way or that out of them 

 except into others as well worn (those who have turned 

 aside for wantonness have left no trace at all), and most 

 have been well content to see the same things as those 

 who went before and as they themselves have seen a 

 hundred times. And now they, as the sound of their feet 

 and the echoes, are dead, and the roads are but pleasant 

 folds in the grassy chalk. Stay, traveller, says the dark 

 tower on the hill, and tread softly because your way is 

 over men's dreams; but not too long; and now descend to 

 the west as fast as feet can carry you, and follow your 

 own dream, and that also shall in course of time lie under 

 men's feet; for there is no going so sweet as upon the old 

 dreams of men. 



