The best example I know of an approach to this excellent sort of vitality in roads is the Ridgeway of the North Berkshire Downs.  Join it at Streatley, the point where it crosses the Thames; at once it strikes you out and away from the habitable world in a splendid, purposeful manner, running along the highest ridge of the Downs a broad green ribbon of turf, with but a shade of difference from the neighbouring grass, yet distinct for all that.  No villages nor homesteads tempt it aside or modify its course for a yard; should you lose the track where it is blent with the bordering turf or merged in and obliterated by criss-cross paths, you have only to walk straight on, taking heed of no alternative to right or left; and in a minute ’tis with you again —­ arisen out of the earth as it were.  Or, if still not quite assured, lift your eyes, and there it runs over the brow of the fronting hill.  Where a railway crosses it, it disappears indeed —­ hiding Alpheus-like, from the ignominy of rubble and brick-work; but a little way on it takes up the running again with the same quiet persistence.  Out on that almost trackless expanse of billowy Downs such a track is in some sort humanly companionable:  it really seems to lead you by the hand.

The ``Rudge’’ is of course an exceptional instance; but indeed this pleasant personality in roads is not entirely fanciful.  It exists as a characteristic of the old country road, evolved out of the primitive prehistoric track, developing according to the needs of the land it passes through and serves:  with a language, accordingly, and a meaning of its own.  Its special services are often told clearly enough; but much else too of the quiet story of the country-side:  something of the old tale whereof you learn so little from the printed page.  Each is instinct, perhaps, with a separate suggestion.  Some are martial and historic, and by your side the hurrying feet of the dead raise a ghostly dust.  The name of yon town —­ with its Roman or Saxon suffix to British root —­ hints at much.  Many a strong man, wanting his vates sacer, passed silently to Hades for that suffix to obtain.  The little rise up yonder on the Downs that breaks their straight green line against the sky showed another sight when the sea of battle surged and beat on its trampled sides; and the Roman, sore beset, may have gazed down this very road for relief, praying for night or the succouring legion.  This child that swings on a gate and peeps at you from under her sun-bonnet —­ so may some girl-ancestress of hers have watched with beating heart the Wessex levies hurry along to clash with the heathen and break them on the down where the ash trees grew.  And yonder, where the road swings round under gloomy overgrowth of drooping boughs —­ is that gleam of water or glitter of lurking spears?

Some sing you pastorals, fluting low in the hot sun between dusty hedges overlooked by contented cows; past farmsteads where man and beast, living in frank fellowship, learn pleasant and serviceable lessons each of the other; over the full-fed river, lipping the meadow-sweet, and thence on either side through leagues of hay.  Or through bending corn they chant the mystical wonderful song of the reaper when the harvest is white to the sickle.  But most of them, avoiding classification, keep each his several tender significance; as with one I know, not so far from town, which woos you from the valley by gentle ascent between nut-laden hedges, and ever by some touch of keen fragrance in the air, by some mystery of added softness under foot —­ ever a promise of something to come, unguessed, delighting.  Till suddenly you are among the pines, their keen scent strikes you through and through, their needles carpet the ground, and in their swaying tops moans the unappeasable wind —­ sad, ceaseless, as the cry of a warped humanity.  Some paces more, and the promise is fulfilled, the hints and whisperings become fruition:  the ground breaks steeply away, and you look over a great inland sea of fields, homesteads, rolling woodland, and —­ bounding all, blent with the horizon, a greyness, a gleam —­ the English Channel.  A road of promises, of hinted surprises, following each other with the inevitable sequence in a melody.

But we are now in another and stricter sense an island of chemins qui cheminent:  dominated, indeed, by them.  By these the traveller, veritably se guindans, may reach his destination ``sans se poiner ou se fatiguer’’ (with large qualifications); but sans very much else whereof he were none the worse.  The gain seems so obvious that you forget to miss all that lay between the springing stride of the early start and the pleasant weariness of the end approached, when the limbs lag a little as the lights of your destination begin to glimmer through the dusk.  All that lay between! ``A Day’s Ride a Life’s Romance’’ was the excellent title of an unsuccessful book; and indeed the journey should march with the day, beginning and ending with its sun, to be the complete thing, the golden round, required of it.  This makes that mind and body fare together, hand in hand, sharing the hope, the action, the fruition; finding equal sweetness in the languor of aching limbs at eve and in the first god-like intoxication of motion with braced muscle in the sun.  For walk or ride take the mind over greater distances than a throbbing whirl with stiffening joints and cramped limbs through a dozen counties.  Surely you seem to cover vaster spaces with Lavengro, footing it with gipsies or driving his tinker’s cart across lonely commons, than with many a globe-trotter or steam-yachtsman with diary or log?  And even that dividing line —­ strictly marked and rarely overstepped —­ between the man who bicycles and the man who walks, is less due to a prudent regard for personal safety of the one part than to an essential difference in minds.

There is a certain supernal, a deific, state of mind which may indeed be experienced in a minor degree, by any one, in the siesta part of a Turkish bath.  But this particular golden glow of the faculties is only felt at its fulness after severe and prolonged exertion in the open air. ``A man ought to be seen by the gods,’’ says Marcus Aurelius, ``neither dissatisfied with anything, nor complaining.’’ Though this does not sound at first hearing an excessive demand to make of humanity, yet the gods, I fancy, look long and often for such a sight in these unblest days of hurry.  If ever seen at all, ’tis when after many a mile in sun and wind —­ maybe rain —­ you reach at last, with the folding star, your destined rustic inn.  There, in its homely, comfortable strangeness, after unnumbered chops with country ale, the hard facts of life begin to swim in a golden mist.  You are isled from accustomed cares and worries —­ you are set in a peculiar nook of rest.  Then old failures seem partial successes, then old loves come back in their fairest form, but this time with never a shadow of regret, then old jokes renew their youth and flavour.  You ask nothing of the gods above, nothing of men below —­ not even their company.  To-morrow you shall begin life again:  shall write your book, make your fortune, do anything; meanwhile you sit, and the jolly world swings round, and you seem to hear it circle to the music of the spheres.  What pipe was ever thus beatifying in effect?  You are aching all over, and enjoying it; and the scent of the limes drifts in through the window.  This is undoubtedly the best and greatest country in the world; and none but good fellows abide in it.

      Laud we the Gods,
  And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
  From our blest altars

It will never be clear to the lay mind why the book-buyer buys books.  That it is not to read them is certain:  the closest inspection always fails to find him thus engaged.  He will talk about them —­ all night if you let him —­ wave his hand to them, shake his fist at them, shed tears over them (in the small hours of the morning); but he will not read them.  Yet it would be rash to infer that he buys his books without a remote intention of ever reading them.  Most book lovers start with the honest resolution that some day they will ``shut down on’’ this fatal practice.  Then they purpose to themselves to enter into their charmed circle, and close the gates of Paradise behind them.  Then will they read out of nothing but first editions; every day shall be a debauch in large paper and tall copies; and crushed morocco shall be familiar to their touch as buckram.  Meanwhile, though, books continue to flaunt their venal charms; it would be cowardice to shun the fray.  In fine, one buys and continues to buy; and the promised Sabbath never comes.

The process of the purchase is always much the same, therein resembling the familiar but inferior passion of love.  There is the first sight of the Object, accompanied of a catching of the breath, a trembling in the limbs, loss of appetite, ungovernable desire, and a habit of melancholy in secret places.  But once possessed, once toyed with amorously for an hour or two, the Object (as in the inferior passion aforesaid) takes its destined place on the shelf —­ where it stays.  And this saith the scoffer, is all; but even he does not fail to remark with a certain awe that the owner goeth thereafter as one possessing a happy secret and radiating an inner glow.  Moreover, he is insufferably conceited, and his conceit waxeth as his coat, now condemned to a fresh term of servitude, groweth shabbier.  And shabby though his coat may be, yet will he never stoop to renew its pristine youth and gloss by the price of any book.  No man —­ no human, masculine, natural man —­ ever sells a book.  Men have been known in moments of thoughtlessness, or compelled by temporary necessity, to rob, to equivocate, to do murder, to commit what they should not, to ``wince and relent and refrain’’ from what they should:  these things, howbeit regrettable, are common to humanity, and may happen to any of us.  But amateur bookselling is foul and unnatural; and it is noteworthy that our language, so capable of particularity, contains no distinctive name for the crime.  Fortunately it is hardly known to exist:  the face of the public being set against it as a flint —­ and the trade giving such wretched prices. In book-buying you not infrequently condone an extravagance by the reflection that this particular purchase will be a good investment, sordidly considered:  that you are not squandering income but sinking capital.  But you know all the time that you are lying.  Once possessed, books develop a personality:  they take on a touch of warm human life that links them in a manner with our kith and kin.  Non angli sed Angeli was the comment of a missionary (old style) on the small human duodecimos exposed for sale in the Roman market-place; and many a buyer, when some fair-haired little chattel passed into his possession, must have felt that here was something vendible no more.  So of these you may well affirm Non libri sed liberi; children now, adopted into the circle, they shall be trafficked in never again.

There is one exception which has sadly to be made —­ one class of men, of whom I would fain, if possible, have avoided mention, who are strangers to any such scruples.  These be Executors —­ a word to be strongly accented on the penultimate; for, indeed, they are the common headsmen of collections, and most of all do whet their bloody edge for harmless books.  Hoary, famous old collections, budding young collections, fair virgin collections of a single author —­ all go down before the executor’s remorseless axe.  He careth not and he spareth not. ``The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy,’’ and it is chiefly by the hand of the executor that she doth love to scatter it.  May oblivion be his portion for ever! Of a truth, the foes of the book-lover are not few.  One of the most insidious, because he cometh at first in friendly, helpful guise, is the bookbinder.  Not in that he bindeth books —­ for the fair binding is the final crown and flower of painful achievement —­ but because he bindeth not:  because the weary weeks lapse by and turn to months, and the months to years, and still the binder bindeth not:  and the heart grows sick with hope deferred.  Each morn the maiden binds her hair, each spring the honeysuckle binds the cottage-porch, each autumn the harvester binds his sheaves, each winter the iron frost binds lake and stream, and still the bookbinder he bindeth not.  Then a secret voice whispereth:  ``Arise, be a man, and slay him!  Take him grossly, full of bread, with all his crimes broad-blown, as flush as May; At gaming, swearing, or about some act That hath no relish of salvation in it!’’ But when the deed is done, and the floor strewn with fragments of binder —­ still the books remain unbound.  You have made all that horrid mess for nothing, and the weary path has to be trodden over again.  As a general rule, the man in the habit of murdering bookbinders, though he performs a distinct service to society, only wastes his own time and takes no personal advantage. And even supposing that after many days your books return to you in leathern surcoats bravely tricked with gold, you have scarce yet weathered the Cape and sailed into halcyon seas.  For these books —­ well, you kept them many weeks before binding them, that the oleaginous printer’s-ink might fully dry before the necessary hammering; you forbore to open the pages, that the autocratic binder might refold the sheets if he pleased; and now that all is over —­ consummatum est —­ still you cannot properly enjoy the harvest of a quiet mind.  For these purple emperors are not to be read in bed, nor during meals, nor on the grass with a pipe on Sundays; and these brief periods are all the whirling times allow you for solid serious reading.  Still, after all, you have them; you can at least pulverise your friends with the sight; and what have they to show against them?  Probably some miserable score or so of half-bindings, such as lead you scornfully to quote the hackneyed couplet concerning the poor Indian whose untutored mind clothes him before but leaves him bare behind.  Let us thank the gods that such things are:  that to some of us they give not poverty nor riches but a few good books in whole bindings.  Dowered with these and (if it be vouchsafed) a cup of Burgundy that is sound even if it be not old, we can leave to others the foaming grape of Eastern France that was vintaged in ’74, and with it the whole range of shilling shockers, —­ the Barmecidal feast of the purposeful novelist —­ yea, even the countless series that tell of Eminent Women and Successful Men.

Loafing

Concerning Cigarette Smoking:  It hath been well observed by a certain philosopher that this is a practice commendable enough, and pleasant to indulge in, ``when you’re not smoking’’; wherein the whole criticism of the cigarette is found, in a little room.  Of the same manner of thinking was one that I knew, who kept by him an ample case bulging with cigarettes, to smoke while he was filling his pipe.  Toys they be verily, nugæ, and shadows of the substance.  Serviceable, nevertheless, as shadows sometimes be when the substance is temporarily unattainable; as between the acts of a play, in the park, or while dressing for dinner:  that such moments may not be entirely wasted.  That cigarette, however, which is so prompt to appear after dinner I would reprehend and ban and totally abolish:  as enemy to that diviner thing before which it should pale its ineffectual fires in shame —­ to wit, good drink, ``la dive bouteille’’; except indeed when the liquor be bad, as is sometimes known to happen.  Then it may serve in some sort as a sorry consolation.  But to leave these airy substitutes, and come to smoking. It hath been ofttimes debated whether the morning pipe be the sweeter, or that first pipe of the evening which ``Hesperus, who bringeth all good things,’’ brings to the weary with home and rest.  The first is smoked on a clearer palate, and comes to unjaded senses like the kiss of one’s first love; but lacks that feeling of perfect fruition, of merit recompensed and the goal and the garland won, which clings to the vesper bowl.  Whence it comes that the majority give the palm to the latter.  To which I intend no slight when I find the incense that arises at matins sweeter even than that of evensong.  For, although with most of us who are labourers in the vineyard, toilers and swinkers, the morning pipe is smoked in hurry and fear and a sense of alarums and excursions and fleeting trains, yet with all this there are certain halcyon periods sure to arrive —­ Sundays, holidays, and the like —­ the whole joy and peace of which are summed up in that one beatific pipe after breakfast, smoked in a careless majesty like that of the gods ``when they lie beside their nectar, and the clouds are lightly curled.’’ Then only can we be said really to smoke.  And so this particular pipe of the day always carries with it festal reminiscences:  memories of holidays past, hopes for holidays to come; a suggestion of sunny lawns and flannels and the ungirt loin; a sense withal of something free and stately, as of ``faint march-music in the air,’’ or the old Roman cry of ``Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement." If there be any fly in the pipe-smoker’s ointment, it may be said to lurk in the matter of ``rings.’’ Only the exceptionally gifted smoker can recline in his chair and emit at will the perfect smoke-ring, in consummate eddying succession.  He of the meaner sort must be content if, at rare heaven-sent intervals —­ while thinking, perhaps, of nothing less —­ there escape from his lips the unpremeditated flawless circle.  Then ``deus fio’’ he is moved to cry, at that breathless moment when his creation hangs solid and complete, ere the particles break away and blend with the baser atmosphere.  Nay, some will deny to any of us terrene smokers the gift of fullest achievement:  for what saith the poet of the century? ``On the earth the broken arcs:  in the heaven the perfect round!’’

It was well observed by a certain character in one of Wilkie Collins’s novels (if an imperfect memory serveth me rightly) that women will take pleasure in scents derived from animal emanations, clarified fats, and the like; yet do illogically abhor the ``clean, dry, vegetable smell’’ of tobacco.  Herein the true base of the feminine objection is reached; being, as usual, inherent want of logic rather than any distaste, in the absolute, for the thing in question.  Thinking that they ought to dislike, they do painfully cast about for reasons to justify their dislike, when none really exist.  As a specimen of their so-called arguments, I remember how a certain fair one triumphantly pointed out to me that my dog, though loving me well, could yet never be brought to like the smell of tobacco.  To whom I, who respected my dog (as Ben saith of Master Shakespeare) on this side idolatry as much as anything, was yet fain to point out —­ more in sorrow than in anger —­ that a dog, being an animal who delights to pass his whole day, from early morn to dewy eve, in shoving his nose into every carrion beastliness that he can come across, could hardly be considered arbiter elegantiarum in the matter of smells.  But indeed I did wrong to take such foolish quibbling seriously; nor would I have done so, if she hadn’t dragged my poor innocent dog into the discussion.

Of Smoking in Bed:  There be who consider this a depravity —­ an instance of that excess in the practice of a virtue which passes into vice —­ and couple it with dram-drinking:  who yet fail to justify themselves by argument.  For if bed be by common consent the greatest bliss, the divinest spot, on earth, ``ille terrarum qui præter omnes angulus ridet’’; and if tobacco be the true Herb of Grace, and a joy and healing balm, and respite and nepenthe, —­ if all this be admitted, why are two things, super-excellent separately, noxious in conjunction?  And is not the Bed Smoker rather an epicure in pleasure —­ self indulgent perhaps, but still the triumphant creator of a new ``blend,’’ reminding one of a certain traveller’s account of an intoxicant patronised in the South Sea Islands, which combines the blissful effect of getting drunk and remaining sober to enjoy it?  Yet I shall not insist too much on this point, but would only ask —­ so long as the smoker be unwedded —­ for some tolerance in the matter and a little logic in the discussion thereof.

Concerning Cigars:  That there be large sums given for these is within common knowledge. 1 d., 2 d., nay even 4 d., is not too great a price, if a man will have of the finest leaf, reckless of expense.  In this sort of smoking, however, I find more of vainglory and ostentation than solid satisfaction; and its votaries would seem to display less a calm, healthy affection for tobacco than (as Sir T. Browne hath it) a ``passionate prodigality.’’ And, besides grievous wasting of the pocket, atmospheric changes, varyings in thecrops, and the like, cause uncertainty to cling about each individual weed, so that man is always more or less at the mercy of Nature and the elements —­ an unsatisfactory and undignified position in these latter days of the Triumphant Democracy.  But worst and fatallest of all, to every cigar-smoker it is certain to happen that once in his life, by some happy combination of time, place, temperament, and Nature —­ by some starry influence, maybe, or freak of the gods in mocking sport —­ once, and once only, he will taste the aroma of the perfect leaf at just the perfect point —­ the ideal cigar.  Henceforth his life is saddened; as one kissed by a goddess in a dream, he goes thereafter, as one might say, in a sort of love-sickness.  Seeking he scarce knows what, his existence becomes a dissatisfied yearning; the world is spoiled for him, its joys are tasteless:  so he wanders, vision-haunted, down dreary days to some miserable end.

Yet, if one will walk this path and take the risks, the thing may be done at comparatively small expense.  To such I would commend the Roman motto, slightly altered —­ Alieni appetens, sui avarus.  There be always good fellows, with good cigars for their friends.  Nay, too, the boxes of these lie open; an the good cigar belongs rather to him that can appreciate it aright than to the capitalist who, owing to a false social system, happens to be its temporary guardian and trustee.  Again there is a saying —­ bred first, I think, among the schoolmen at Oxford —­ that it is the duty of a son to live up to his father’s income.  Should any young man have found this task too hard for him, after the most strenuous and single-minded efforts, at least he can resolutely smoke his father’s cigars.  In the path of duty complete success is not always to be looked for; but an approving conscience, the sure reward of honest endeavour, is within reach of all.

He was cruising in the Southern Seas (was the Ulysses who told me this tale), when there bore down upon him a marvellous strange fleet, whose like he had not before seen.  For each little craft was a corpse, stiffly ``marlined,’’ or bound about with tarred rope, as mariners do use to treat plug tobacco:  also ballasted, and with a fair mast and sail stepped through his midriff.  These self-sufficing ships knew no divided authority:  no pilot ever took the helm from the captain’s hands; no mutines lay in bilboes, no passengers complained of the provisions.  In a certain island to windward (the native pilot explained) it was the practice, when a man died, to bury him for the time being in dry, desiccating sand, till a chief should pass from his people, when the waiting bodies were brought out and, caulked and rigged secumdum artem, were launched with the first fair breeze, the admiral at their head, on their voyage to the Blessed Islands.  And if a chief should die, and the sand should hold no store of corpses for his escort, this simple practical folk would solve the little difficulty by knocking some dozen or twenty stout fellows on the head, that the notable might voyage like a gentleman.  Whence this gallant little company, running before the breeze, stark, happy, and extinct, all bound for the Isles of Light!  ’Twas a sight to shame us sitters at home, who believe in those Islands, most of us, even as they, yet are content to trundle City-wards or to Margate, so long as the sorry breath is in us; and, breathless at last, to Bow or Kensal Green; without one effort, dead or alive, to reach the far-shining Hesperides.

``Dans la galère, capitane, nous étions quatre-vingt rameurs!’’ sang the oarsmen in the ballad; and they, though indeed they toiled on the galley-bench, were free and happy pirates, members of an honoured and liberal profession.  But all we —­ pirates, parsons, stockbrokers, whatever our calling —­ are but galley-slaves of the basest sort, fettered to the oar each for his little spell.  A common misery links us all, like the chain that runs the length of the thwarts.  Can nothing make it worth our while not to quarrel with our fellows?  The menace of the storms is for each one and for all:  the master’s whip has a fine impartiality.  Crack! the lash that scored my comrade’s back has flicked my withers too; yet neither of us was shirking —­ it was that grinning ruffian in front.  Well:  to-morrow, God willing, the evasion shall be ours, while he writhes howling.  But why do we never once combine —­ seize on the ship, fling our masters into the sea, and steer for some pleasant isle far down under the Line, beyond the still-vexed Bermoothes?  When ho for feasting!  Hey for tobacco and free-quarters!  But no:  the days pass, and are reckoned up, and done with; and ever more pressing cares engage.  Those fellows on the leeward benches are having an easier time than we poor dogs on the weather side?  Then, let us abuse, pelt, vilify then:  let us steal their grub, and have at them generally for a set of shirking, malingering brutes!  What matter that to-morrow they may be to windward, we to lee?  We never can look ahead.  And they know this well, the gods our masters, pliers of the whip.  And mayhap we like them none the worse for it. Indeed, there is a traitor sort among ourselves, that spins facile phrases in the honour of these whipmasters of ours —­ as ``omnes eodem cogimur,’’ and the rest; which is all very pretty and mighty consoling.  The fact is, the poets are the only people who score by the present arrangement; which it is therefore their interest to maintain.  While we are doing all the work, these incorrigible skulkers lounge about and make ribald remarks; they write Greek tragedies on Fate, on the sublimity of Suffering, on the Petty Span, and so on; and act in a generally offensive way.  And we are even weak enough to buy their books; offer them drinks, peerages, and things; and say what superlative fellows they are!  But when the long-looked-for combination comes, and we poor devils have risen and abolished fate, destiny, the Olympian Council, early baldness, and the like, these poets will really have to go. And when every rhymester has walked the plank, shall we still put up with our relations?  True members of the ``stupid party,’’ who never believe in us, who know (and never forget) the follies of our adolescence; who are always wanting us not to do things; who are lavish of advice, yet angered by the faintest suggestion of a small advance in cash:  shall the idle singers perish and these endure?  No:  as soon as the last poet has splashed over the side, to the sharks with our relations! The old barkey is lightening famously:  who shall be next to go?  The Sportsman of intolerable yarns:  who slays twice over —­ first, his game, and then the miserable being he button-holes for the tedious recital.  Shall we suffer him longer?  Who else?  Who is that cowering under the bulwarks yonder?  The man who thinks he can imitate the Scottish accent!  Splash!  And the next one?  What a crowd is here!  How they block the hatchways, lumber the deck, and get between you and the purser’s room —­ these fadmongers, teetotallers, missionaries of divers isms!  Overboard with them, and hey for the Fortunate Isles!  Then for tobacco in a hammock ’twixt the palms!  Then for wine cooled in a brooklet losing itself in silver sands!  Then for —­ but O these bilboes on our ankles, how mercilessly they grip!  The vertical sun blisters the bare back:  faint echoes of Olympian laughter seem to flicker like Northern Lights across the stark and pitiless sky.  One earnest effort would do it, my brothers!  A little modesty, a short sinking of private differences; and then we should all be free and equal gentlemen of fortune, and I would be your Captain! ``Who? you? you would make a pretty Captain!’’ Better than you, you scurvy, skulking, little galley-slave! ``Galley-slave yourself, and be —–­ Pull together, boys, and lie low!  Here’s the Master coming with his whip!’’