COW-PASTUEES AND COW-PATHS 55 



frank abandonment, with forestry. Perhaps a 

 generation yet unborn may cut a crop of lumber 

 from them two or three centuries hence. 



There are some very familiar and commonplace 

 objects and scenes in whose very nature there 

 inheres an indefinable charm which we cannot ex- 

 plain or analyze and which yet has a very real and 

 distinct value in life. To this quality we sometimes 

 give the name of romance or sentiment. Doubtless 

 the ability to thrill to this unexplained force varies 

 in different individuals and is aroused by different 

 objects, yet every one must acknowledge to some 

 extent the sway of these intangible forces. Our 

 literature is filled with the efforts of men who have 

 tried to express the emotions they have felt when 

 in the presence of that which appealed to them. 

 Men cross the seas that they may stand in the 

 presence of the mementoes of departed civilization, 

 "Old, forgotten, far off things and battles long 

 ago." Yet I doubt whether anything has in it more 

 of this mystic appeal than the life of old farms as 

 expressed in pastures with bright brooks and 

 spreading trees, and cow-paths worn hard and 

 sunken in the turf. 



Gray's Elegy in a Country Church Yard is by 

 common consent the one almost faultlessly perfect 

 pastoral poem of our English tongue, and when the 

 poet wished to convey the thought of peace de- 

 scending with the sunset like a mantle over a lovely 

 summer land, he hit on that line whose cadence 



