LOVE OF OPEN SPACES 41 



a man be capable of an exalted mood, of a sense of 

 absolute freedom, so that he is no longer flesh and 

 spirit but both in one, and one with nature, it comes 

 to him like some miraculous gift on a hill or down or 

 wide open heath. " You never enjoy the earth aright," 

 wrote Thomas Traherne in his Divine Raptures, " until 

 the sun itself floweth through your veins, till you 

 are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the 

 stars, and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the 

 whole world." 



It may be observed that we must be out and well 

 away from the woods and have a wide horizon all 

 around in order to feel the sun flowing through us. 

 Many of us have experienced these "divine raptures," 

 this sublimated state of feeling; and such moments 

 are perhaps the best in our earthly lives; but it is 

 mainly the Trahernes, the Silurist Vaughans, the 

 Newmans, the Frederic Myers, the Coventry Patmores, 

 the Wordsworths, that speak of them, since such 

 moods best fit, or can be made to fit in with their 

 philosophy, or mysticism, and are, to them, its best 

 justification. 



This wide heath, east of Beaulieu, stretching miles 

 away towards Southampton Water, looks level to the 

 eye. But it is not so ; it is grooved with long valley- 

 like depressions with marshy or boggy bottoms, all 

 draining into small tributaries of the Dark Water, 

 which flows into the Solent near Lepe. In these 

 bottoms and in all the wet places the heather and 



