86 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



into the fascinating dreamlands of the Odyssey and the Arabian 

 Nights, such minds look with scorn upon the humble efforts 

 of geographers who would settle exactly where the Lotophagi 

 lived, or in what sea lay the Isles of the Children of Khaledan. 

 We must plead guilty to something of this feeling ourselves. On 

 one occasion, when sitting at dinner next a hard-headed, mat- 

 ter-of-fact wrangler, to whom "a primrose by a river's brim " 

 was certainly but " a yellow primrose," it received a rude shock. 

 We had eagerly asked him about a celebrated curiosity in the 

 next parish (of which he was incumbent), known as Arthur's 

 Table, and were informed " It is but a rude heap of stones 

 spread over a bare hillside ; if I had a mason or two and a few 

 cartloads of boulders, I could put you together a much finer 

 Round Table in an afternoon." 



One autumn, when we had been more than usually haunted 

 with memories of the past, and when many an echo of poetry 

 floated round the fancy, " there came a day as still as heaven," 

 a day like that on which they found the babe Arthur, 



' ' Upon the sands 

 Of wild Dundagil, by the Cornish sea." 



To take our lute and wallet and wander forth like a troubadour 

 of old in quest of beauty, was clearly a necessity at such a time. 

 An unresisting impulse bade us roam 



" Under groves that looked a paradise 

 Of blossom, over sheets of hyacinth 

 That seemed the heavens upbreaking through the earth, 

 And on from hill to hill and every day." 



Therefore, we translated the language of romance into the 

 matter-of-fact realities of the nineteenth century by shouldering 

 a knapsack, and preparing, stoutly shod and with a trusty staff, 

 to walk into fairy-land. It lies all around us, we discover, when 

 our eyes have once been purged by fancy's Euphrasy. Should 

 we go south to those deep forest glades, 



