256 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



has lately been sold. What is the value of every one's 

 right to use a footpath if a single anti-social exclusive 

 landowning citizen has the right to make it intolerable 

 except to such as consider it a place only for the soles of 

 the feet? The builder of a house acquires the right to 

 admit the sunlight through his window. Cannot the users 

 of a footpath acquire a right, during the course of half-a- 

 dozen dynasties or less, to the sight of the trees and the 

 sky which that footpath gives them in its own separate 

 way? At least I hope that footpaths will soon cease to 

 be defined as a line — length without breadth — connecting 

 one point with another. In days when they are used as 

 much for the sake of the scenes historic or beautiful 

 through which they pass as of the villages or houses on 

 this hand or that, something more than the mere right 

 to tread upon a certain ribbon of grass or mud will have 

 to be preserved if the preservation is to be of much use, 

 and the right of way must become the right of view and 

 of very ancient lights as well. By enforcing these rights 

 some of the mountains of the land might even yet be 

 saved, as Mr. Henry S. Salt wishes to save them.^ In 

 the meantime it is to be hoped that his criticisms will not 

 be ignored by the tourists who leave the Needle Gully 

 a cascade of luncheon wrappings and the like; for it is 

 not from a body of men capable of such manners that 

 a really effective appeal against the sacrifice of *' our 

 mountains " to commercial and other selfishness is like 

 to spring. 



And those lone wayside greens, no man's gardens, 

 measuring a few feet wide but many miles in length- 

 why should they be used either as receptacles for the 



1 See his valuable On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills (Fifield) 



