50 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



no such feeling, and would not have been re- 

 membered. 



We live in thoughts and feelings, not in days and 



years 



In feelings, not in figures on a dial, 



as some poet has said, and, recalling an afternoon and an 

 evening spent on this heath, it does not seem to my 

 mind like an evening passed alone in a vacant place, 

 in the usual way, watching and listening and think- 

 ing of nothing, but an eventful period, which deeply 

 moved me, and left an enduring memory. 



The sun went down, and though the distressed birds 

 had cried till they were weary of crying, I did not 

 go away. Something on this occasion kept me, in 

 spite of the gathering gloom and a cold wind bit- 

 terly cold for June which blew over the wide heath. 

 Here and there the rays from the setting sun fell 

 upon and lit up the few mounds that rise like little 

 islands out of the desolate brown waste. These are 

 the Pixie mounds, the barrows raised by probably pre- 

 historic men, a people inconceivably remote in time and 

 spirit from us, whose memory is pale in our civilised 

 days. 



There are times and moods in which it is revealed 

 to us, or to a few among us, that we are a survival 

 of the past, a dying remnant of a vanished people, 

 and are like strangers and captives among those who 

 do not understand us, and have no wish to do so; 



