24 VILLAGE BNGLAND 



this, urban things are felt to be secondary and country 

 things primal. The happy countryman is quite definitely 

 conscious of a communion with the world about him. 

 Wordsworth puts the feeling better than anyone else in 

 literature in Tintern Abbey and the Prelude ; but we 

 all feel what he felt in our minor degrees. The country 

 people, not least the agricultural labourers, have a 

 deeper and better sense of the realities of life and death 

 as of the essentials of behaviour. You may desire periods 

 in the town where wits are quicker, amusements more 

 various, the multitude of people more stirring and in 

 some ways life freer from the bonds of criticism. In the 

 country you must do as countrymen do, or you are as 

 much out of place as a pink tiled bungalow among 

 thatched cottages. In the town you may do exactly as 

 you please and no one that matters is a penny the wiser. 

 Yet you touch a higher liberty when you are alone on a 

 hill where (as a dweller in Idbury once said) there is 

 &quot; plenty of place for the moon &quot; than in the neighbour 

 hood of any artificial light. &quot; It is good for us to be 

 here &quot; that is the heart of the feeling. If all this is too 

 general let me come to more definite ideas. I asked one 

 who shares with me this unquestioned preference for 

 the country, why in one word she chose the country. 

 The answer was &quot; Quiet,&quot; I once put up for the night 

 a resident from the Old Kent Road, but he slept badly : 

 the noise of the brook disturbed him. What I fear for 

 the English people is that like this Londoner they may 

 come to prefer the tumult of mechanical noises before 

 the pleasant voice of bird or water ; and more intrinsi 

 cally will dislike what is individual, natural, distinct and 

 real. 



The Gods approve 



The depth and not the tumult of the soul 



