150 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



stately in groups, his mighty wych elms, his apple trees 

 and all their mistletoe, his walnut trees, and the long 

 bay of sky that was framed by his tall woods east and 

 north and west. 



There are many places which nobody can look upon 

 without being consciously influenced by a sense of their 

 history. It is a battlefield, and the earth shows the scars 

 of its old wounds; or a castle or cathedral of distinct 

 renown rises among the oaks; or a manor house or 

 cottage, or tomb or woodland walk that speaks of a dead 

 poet or soldier. Then, according to the extent or care 

 of our reading and the clearness of our imagination, we 

 can pour into the groves or on the turf tumultuous or 

 silent armies, or solitary man or woman. It is a deeply- 

 worn coast; the spring tide gnaws the yellow cliff, and 

 the wind files it with unceasing hiss, and the relics of 

 every age, skull and weapon and shroudpin and coin and 

 carven stone, are spread out upon the clean, untrodden 

 sand, and the learned, the imaginative, the fanciful, the 

 utterly unhistoric and merely human man exercises his 

 spirit upon them, and responds, if only for a moment. In 

 some places history has wrought like an earthquake, in 

 others like an ant or mole; everywhere, permanently; 

 so that if we but knew or cared, every swelling of the 

 grass, every wavering line of hedge or path or road were 

 an inscription, brief as an epitaph, in many languages and 

 characters. But most of us know only a few of these 

 unspoken languages of the past, and only a few words in 

 each. Wars and parliaments are but dim, soundless, and 

 formless happenings in the brain; toil and passion of 

 generations produce only an enriching of the light within 

 the glades, and a solemnizing of the shadows. 



