10 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



Returning to the hamlets among the hills or in the 

 little valleys Test and Itchen, Anton and Anna 

 after an absence of a few months perhaps, we feel this 

 freshness go into us. In March or early April, even 

 in backward seasons, I have often found it so. 



These places have the gift at once to quiet and to 

 exhilarate. 



Freshness everywhere the earth is steeped in it ; 

 in the elmy lanes leading out of river hamlets, on the 

 commons, though gorse be not yet gold, along the 

 thin, old hedges of thorn and maple on windy hill- 

 sides, and almost more than anywhere in the hazel 

 coppices where the hurdler has piled his white split 

 wands against the oak. The thing goes into one's 

 heart and head. English countryside has no quality 

 so easily communicated to us or quite so curing. 



