How much, too, the English countryside owes for its beauty to the many old manor-houses, gabled and moated, with their quaint, mossy-walled gardens and great forestlike parks.  Whatever we may think of the English territorial system as economics, its service to English scenery has been incalculable.  Without English traditionalism we should hardly have had the English countryside.

The conservation of great estates, entailing a certain conservatism in the treatment of farm lands from generation to generation, and the upholding, too, of game-preserves, however obnoxious to the land reformer, have been all to the good of the nature-lover.  We owe no little of the beauty of the English woodland to the English pheasant; and with the coming of land nationalization we may expect to see considerable changes in the English countryside.  Meanwhile, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the feudalistic character of English landlordism, the Englishman enjoys a right of walking over his native land of which no capitalist can rob him.  Hence results another charming feature of the English countryside—­the footpaths you see everywhere winding over hill and dale, through field and coppice.  The ancient rights of these are safeguarded to the people forever by statute no wealth can defy; and, let any nouveau riche of a landlord try to close one of them, and he has to reckon with one of the pluckiest and most persistent organizations of English John Hampdens, the society that makes the protection of these traditional pathways its particular care.  So the rich man cannot lock up his trees and his woodland glades all for himself, but is compelled to share them to the extent of allowing the poorest pedestrian to walk through them—­which is about all the rich man can do with them himself.

These footpaths, in conjunction with English lanes, have made the charm of walking tours in England proverbial.  Certain counties particularly pride themselves on their lands.  Surrey and Devonshire are the great rivals in this respect.  We say “Surrey lanes” or “Devonshire lanes,” as we speak of “Italian skies” or “Southern hospitality.”  Other counties—­Warwickshire, for example—­doubtless have lanes no less lovely, but Surrey and Devonshire have, so to say, got the decision; and, if an American traveller wants to see a typical English lane, he goes to Surrey or Devonshire, just as, if he wants a typical English pork-pie, he sends to Melton Mowbray.

And the English lane has come honestly by its reputation.  You may be disappointed in Venice, but you will be hard to please if you are not caught by the spell of an English lane.  Of course, you must not expect to feel that spell if you tear through it in a motor-car.  It was made for the loiterer, as its whimsical twists and turns plainly show.  If you are in a hurry, you had better keep to the king’s highway, stretching swift and white on the king’s business.  The English lane was made for the leisurely meandering of cows to and from pasture, for the dreamy snail-pace of time-forgetting lovers, for children gathering primroses or wild strawberries, or for the knap-sacked wayfarer to whom time and space are no objects, whose destination is anywhere and nowhere, whose only clocks are the rising sun and the evening star, and to whom the way means more than the goal.