As for Wena, she (the beauty) had cocked her tail with great arrogance at smelling English ground again. To her straight came several dogs, who had never travelled far (except when they were tail–piped), and one and all cried, “Hail, my dear! Have you seen any dogs to compare with us? Set of mongrel parley–woos, canʼt bark or bite like a Christian. Just look round the corner, pretty, while we kill that poodle.” To whom Wena—_leniter atterens caudam_—”Cordially I thank you. So much now I have seen of the world that my faith is gone in tail–wags. If you wish to benefit by my society, bring me a bit from the hock of bacon, or a very young marrowbone. Then will I tell you something.” They could not comply with her requisitions, because they had eaten all that themselves. And so she trotted along the beach, like the dog of Polyphemus, or the terrier of Hercules, who tinged his nose with murex. ‘Tis a very easy thing to talk of walking fifty miles, but quite another pair of shoes to do it; especially with pack on back, and feet that have lost habitual sense of Macadamʼs tender mercies. Moreover, the day had been very warm for the beginning of October—the dying glance of Summer, in the year 1860, at her hitherto foregone and forgotten England. The highest temperature of the year had been 72° (in the month of May); in June and July, 66° and 68° were the maxima, and in August things were no better. Persistent rain, perpetual chill, and ever–present sense of icebergs, and longing for logs of dry wood. But towards the end of September some glorious weather set in; and people left off fires at the time when they generally begin them. Therefore, Cradock Nowell was hot, footsore, and slightly jaded, as he came to the foot of Sydenham Hill, on the second day of his journey. The Crystal Palace, which long had been his landmark through country crossroads, shone with blue and airy light, as the sun was sinking. Cradock admired more and more, as the shadows sloped along it, the fleeting gleams, the pellucid depth, the brightness of reflection framed by the softness of refraction.