And one may love, too, with a wistful sort of love the works of men, pictures, music, statues; but that, I think, is because one discerns a human figure at the end of a vista—­a figure hurrying away through the ages, but whom one feels one could have loved had time and place only allowed.

But when it comes to loving trees and flowers, streams and hills, buildings and fields, what is it that happens?  I have a perfectly distinct feeling about these little villages hereabouts.  Some are to me like courteous strangers, some like dull and indifferent people, some like pleasant, genial folk whom I am mildly pleased to see; but with some I have a real and devoted friendship.  I like visiting them, and if I cannot visit them, I think of them; when I am far away the thought of them comes across me, and I am glad to think of them waiting there for me, nestling under their hill, the smoke going up above the apple-orchards.

One or two of them are particularly beloved because I visited them first thirty years ago, when I was an undergraduate, and the thought of the old days and the old friendships springs up again like a sweet and far-off fragrance when I enter them.  Yet I do not know any of the people who live in these villages, though by dint of going there often there are a few people by whom I am recognised and saluted.

But let me take one village in particular, and I will not name it, because one ought not to publish the names of those whom one loves.  What does it consist of?  It straggles along a rough and ill-laid lane, under a little wold, once a sheep-walk, now long ploughed up.  The soil of the wold is pale, so that in the new-ploughed fields there rest soft, creamlike shadows when the evening sun falls aslant.  There are two or three substantial farmhouses of red brick, comfortable old places, with sheds and ricks and cattle-byres and barns close about them.  And I think it is strange that the scent of a cattle-byre, with its rich manure and its oozing pools, is not ungrateful to the human sense.  It ought to be, but it is not.  It gives one, by long inheritance, no doubt, a homelike feeling.

Then there are many plastered, white-walled, irregular cottages, very quaint and pretty, perhaps a couple of centuries old, very ill built, no doubt, but enchanting to look at; there is a new schoolhouse, very ugly at present, with its smart red brick and its stone facings—­ugly because it does not seem to have grown up out of the place, but to have been brought there by rail; and there are a few new yellow-brick cottages, probably much pleasanter to live in than the old ones, but with no sort of interest or charm.  The whole is surrounded by little fields, orchards, closes, paddocks, and a good many great elms stand up above the house-roofs.  There is one quaint old farm, with a moat and a dove-cote and a fine, old mellow brick wall surrounded by little pollarded elms, very quiet and characteristic; and then there is a