KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



29 



FIELD PATHS AND COUNTRY STILES. 



Now let me tread the meadow paths, 

 While glittering dew the ground illumes; 

 As sprinkled o'er the withering swaths, 

 Their moisture shrinks in sweet perfumes. — 



Clare. 



Field Paths are at this season particu- 

 larly attractive. I love our real old English 

 footpaths. I love those rustic and pictu- 

 resque stiles, opening their pleasant escapes 

 from frequented places and dusty highways 

 into the solitudes of nature. It is delightful 

 to catch a glimpse of one on the old village- 

 green ; under the old elder-tree by some 

 ancient cottage, or half hidden by the over- 

 hanging boughs of a wood. I love to see the 

 smooth, dry track, winding away in easy 

 curves, along some green slope to the 

 church-yard, to the forest-grange, or to the 

 embowered cottage. It is to me an object 

 of certain inspiration. It seems to invite one 

 from noise and publicity into the heart of 

 solitude and of rural delight. It beckons the 

 imagination on through green and whisper- 

 ing corn-fields, through the short but verdant 

 pasture, the flowering mowing-grass, the 

 odorous and sunny hay-field, the festivity of 

 harvest ; from lonely farm to farm, from 

 village to village ; by clear and mossy wells : 

 by tinkling brooks, and deep, wood-skirted 

 streams, to crofts where the daffodil is 

 rejoicing in spring, or meadows where the 

 large blue geranium embellishes the summer 

 wayside ; to heaths with their warm elastic 

 sward and crimson bells, the chithering of 

 grasshoppers, the foxglove, and the old 

 gnarled oak; in short, to all the solitary 

 haunts after which the city-pent lover of 

 nature pants " as the hart panteth after the 

 water-brooks." 



What is there so truly English ? What is 

 so truly linked with our rural tastes, our 

 sweetest memories, and our sweetest poetry, 

 as stiles and footpaths ? Goldsmith, Thom- 

 son, and Milton, have adorned them with 

 some of their richest wreaths. They have 

 consecrated them to poetry and love. It is 

 along the footpath in secluded fields, upon 

 the stile in the embowered lane, where the 

 wild rose and the honeysuckle are lavishing 

 their beauty and their fragrance, that we 

 delight to picture to ourselves rural lovers, 

 breathing, in the dewy sweetness of summer 

 evening, vows still sweeter. There it is that 

 the poet, seated, sends back his soul into the 

 freshness of his youth, amongst attachments 

 since withered by neglect, rendered painful 

 by absence, or broken by death ; amongst 

 dreams and aspirations which, even now that 

 they pronounce their own fallacy, are lovely. 

 It is there that he gazes upon the gorgeous 

 sunset — the evening star following with its 

 silvery lamp the fading day, or the moon 

 showering her pale lustre through the balmy 



night air — with a fancy that kindles and 

 soars into the heavens before him ; there 

 that we have all felt the charm of woods and 

 green fields, and solitary boughs waving in 

 the golden sunshine, or darkening in the 

 melancholy beauty of evening shadows. Who 

 has not thought how beautiful was the sight 

 of a village congregation, pouring out from 

 their old grey church on a summer day, and 

 streaming off through the quiet meadows, in 

 all directions to their homes ? Or who that 

 has visited Alpine scenery, has not beheld 

 with a poetic feeling, the mountaineers come 

 winding down out of their romantic 

 seclusions on a Sabbath morning, pacing the 

 solitary heath-tracks, bounding with elastic 

 step down the fern-clad dells, or along the 

 course of a riotous stream, as cheerful, as 

 picturesque, and yet as solemn as the scenes 

 around them ? 



Again I say, I love field-paths, and stiles 

 of all species ; ay, even the most inaccessible 

 piece of rustic erection ever set up in 

 defiance of age, laziness, and obesity. How 

 many scenes of frolic and merry confusion 

 have I seen at a clumsy stile ! What ex- 

 clamations, and blushes, and fine eventual 

 vaulting on the part of the ladies ! and what 

 an opportunity does it afford to beaux of 

 exhibiting a variety of gallant and delicate 

 attentions ! I consider a rude stile as any- 

 thing but an impediment in the course of a 

 rural courtship. 



Those good old turnstiles too — can I ever 

 forget them ? the hours I have spun round 

 upon them when a boy ! or those in which I 

 have almost laughed myself to death at the 

 remembrance of my village pedagogue's 

 disaster ! Methinks I see him now ! — the 

 time', a sultry day, — the dominie, a goodly 

 person of some eighteen or twenty stone, — 

 the scene, a footpath sentinelled with turn- 

 stiles, one of which held him fast as in amaze- 

 ment at his bulk. Never shall I forget his 

 efforts and agonies to extricate himself ; nor 

 his lion-like roars which brought some 

 laborers to his assistance, who, when they 

 had recovered from their convulsions of 

 laughter, knocked off the top of the turn- 

 stile and let him go. It is long since I saw 

 a stile i of this construction, and I suspect 

 the Falstaffs have cried them down. — 

 William Howitt. 



MY FIRST DAY IN TOWN. 



BY THE AUTHOR OF "A JOURNEY TO 

 LONDON." 



(Continued from page 15.) 



After dreaming over my journey, I 

 awoke at an early hour, on the morning next 

 to my arrival, and opened my bed-room 

 window to survey the boundless spread of 



