Happily the downland slopes overlooking these green valleys have so far been neglected by the class of persons who live in mansions; for the time being they are ours, and by "ours" I mean all those who love and reverence this earth. But which of the two {245} is best I cannot say. One prefers the Test and another the Itchen, doubtless because in a matter of this kind the earth-lover will invariably prefer the spot he knows most intimately; and for this reason, much as I love the Test, long as I would linger by it, I love the Itchen more, having had a closer intimacy with it. I dare say that some of my friends, old Wykehamists, who as boys caught their first trout close by the ancient sacred city and have kept up their acquaintance with its crystal currents, will laugh at me for writing as I do. But there are places, as there are faces, which draw the soul, and with which, in a little while, one becomes strangely intimate. The first English cathedral I ever saw was that of Winchester: that was a long time ago; it was then and on a few subsequent occasions that I had glimpses of the river that runs by it. They were like momentary sights of a beautiful face, caught in passing, of some person unknown. Then it happened that in June 1900, cycling Londonwards from Beaulieu and the coast by Lymington, I came to the valley, and to a village about half-way between Winchester and Alresford, on a visit to friends in their summer fishing retreat. [Sidenote: A riverside cottage] They had told me about their cottage, which serves them all the best purposes of a lodge in the vast wilderness. Fortunately in this case the "boundless contiguity of shade" of the woods is some little distance away, on the other side of the ever green Itchen valley, which, narrowing at this spot, is not much more than a couple of hundred yards wide. {246} A long field's length away from the cottage is the little ancient, rustic, tree-hidden village. The cottage, too, is pretty well hidden by trees, and has the reed- and sedge- and grass-green valley and swift river before it, and behind and on each side green fields and old untrimmed hedges with a few old oak trees growing both in the hedgerows and the fields. There is also an ancient avenue of limes which leads nowhere and whose origin is forgotten. The ground under the trees is overgrown with long grass and nettles and burdock; nobody comes or goes by it, it is only used by the cattle, the white and roan and strawberry shorthorns that graze in the fields and stand in the shade of the limes on very hot days. Nor is there any way or path to the cottage; but one must go and come over the green fields, wet or dry. The avenue ends just at the point where the gently sloping chalk down touches the level valley, and the half-hidden, low-roofed cottage stands just there, with the shadow of the last two lime trees falling on it at one side. It was an ideal spot for a nature-lover and an angler to pitch his tent upon.