FOOTPATHS. 25 



with parapets only four or five inches high. It is 

 thrown aslant the stream, and not straight across it, 

 and has a long brick approach. It is not unlike — on 

 a small scale — the bridges seen in views of Eastern 

 travel. Another path leads to a hamlet, consisting of 

 a church, a farmhouse, and three or four cottages — 

 a veritable hamlet in every sense of the word. 



In a village a few miles distant, as you walk 

 between cherry and pear orchards, you pass a little 

 shop — the sweets, and twine, and trifles are such as 

 may be seen in similar windows a hundred miles 

 distant. There is the very wooden measure for nuts, 

 which has been used time out of mind, in the distant 

 country. Out again into the road as the sun sinks, 

 and westwards the wind lifts a cloud of dust, which is 

 lit up and made rosy by the rays passing through it. 

 For such is the beauty of the sunlight that it can 

 impart a glory even to dust. 



Once more, never go by a stile (that does not look 

 private) without getting over it and following the path. 

 But they all end in one place. After rambling across 

 furze and heath, or through dark fir woods ; after 

 lingering in the meadows among the buttercups, 

 or by the copses where the pheasants crow; after 

 gathering June roses, or, in later days, staining the 

 lips with blackberries or cracking nuts, by-and-by the 

 path brings you in sight of a railway station. And 

 the railway station, through some process of mind, 

 presently compels you to go up on the platform, and 

 after a little puffing and revolution of wheels you 

 emerge at Charing-cross, or London Bridge, or 

 Waterloo, or Ludgate-hill, and^ with the freshness of 



