THE WOOD HOME 9 



lonely ride with him towards home across a bit of 

 country with a few remote farmhouses and a few 

 scattered thatched cottages. 



It can hardly be altogether fancy or partiality that 

 in this land of chalk downs and chalk streams and of 

 oak and hazel woods one finds above all a great fresh- 

 ness. This seems a quality of all the country round 

 about. Could any one not recognise it as a quality of 

 the hills and valleys round Winchester, where we 

 celebrated this summer the thousandth year ? I have 

 felt it through and through me, not only in the vale 

 of the river where the stream divides and divides 

 again to make the freshness fresher but on the turf 

 of the downs far from sight of water and the rich 

 green which the water makes. It seems to have been 

 noticed by a poet nearly a hundred years ago. 

 William Arnold reminds us that Keats stayed at 

 Winchester, and he thinks that out of the visit came 

 " The Eve of St. Mark," a rare and curious fragment ; 

 and that Keats was struck by the freshness of the 

 district. Keats could write down the little landscapes, 

 hillock, rill, and spinney, so entirely typical of southern 

 England, as perhaps no other English poet. About 

 his minutiae in pictures of English idyll there was a 

 touch faery-fine exquisite inventories of field and 

 wood. And it is easy to understand how this bit of 

 country full of idyll would appeal to him. But in 

 calling it " fresh " I do think we have a name that 

 above any other possible description fits exactly. 



