As I think of it now I can never be quite sufficiently grateful to Barfleur for a certain affectionate, thoughtful, sympathetic regard for my every possible mood on this occasion. This was my first trip to this England of which, of course, he was intensely proud. He was so humanly anxious that I should not miss any of its charms or, if need be, defects. He wanted me to be able to judge it fairly and humanly and to see the eventual result sieved through my temperament. The soul of attention; the soul of courtesy; patient, long-suffering, humane, gentle. How I have tried the patience of that man at times! An iron mood he has on occasion; a stoic one, always. Gentle, even, smiling, living a rule and a standard. Every thought of him produces a grateful smile. Yet he has his defects--plenty of them. Here he was at my elbow, all the way to London, momentarily suggesting that I should not miss the point, whatever the point might be, at the moment. He was helpful, really interested, and above all and at all times, warmly human. We had been just two hours getting from the boat to the train. It was three-thirty when the train began to move, and from the lovely misty sunshine of the morning the sky had become overcast with low, gray--almost black--rain clouds. I looked at the hills and valleys. They told me we were in Wales. And, curiously, as we sped along first came Wordsworth into my mind, and then Thomas Hardy. I thought of Wordsworth first because these smooth, kempt hills, wet with the rain and static with deep gray shadows, suggested him. England owes so much to William Wordsworth, I think. So far as I can see, he epitomized in his verses this sweet, simple hominess that tugs at the heart-strings like some old call that one has heard before. My father was a German, my mother of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction, and yet there is a pull here in this Shakespearian-Wordsworthian-Hardyesque world which is precisely like the call of a tender mother to a child. I can’t resist it. I love it; and I am not English but radically American. I understand that Hardy is not so well thought of in England as he might be--that, somehow, some large conservative class thinks that his books are immoral or destructive. I should say the English would better make much of Thomas Hardy while he is alive. He is one of their great traditions. His works are beautiful. The spirit of all the things he has done or attempted is lovely. He is a master mind, simple, noble, dignified, serene. He is as fine as any of the English cathedrals. St. Paul’s or Canterbury has no more significance to me than Thomas Hardy. I saw St. Paul’s. I wish I could see the spirit of Thomas Hardy indicated in some such definite way. And yet I do not. Monuments do not indicate great men. But the fields and valleys of a country suggest them.