Grindelwald, Como, Cap Martin--they are good enough company for a mile or two of the road. To have known them has been a real privilege, and to meet them again would be an equal joy. But for the long, all-weathers' tramp, for the comfortable silences of true comradeship, and above all for those last hobbling footsteps of the journey, give me some little hill like this above English cornlands. And, taking everything into consideration, I can really find very little in the way of an emotional demand that the view, for example, from the fourth hole of this particular course doesn't amply satisfy. For eyes necessarily accustomed to close studies and narrower outlooks there is space enough and to spare, and grandeur too, if they are content to accept it from above rather than below, and to feast upon those heavenly Himalayas and ethereal Pacifics that Nature and a south-west wind will always provide for the untravelled. As an echo, or perhaps fountain, of which sentiments let me extract for you three verses from a weekly paper upon my table. They are entitled--it is the Prayer Book heading of the traveller's psalm--"Levavi oculos." Mahomed, when the mountains stood Aloof from his so strong desire, Mahomed, being great and good-- And likewise free--concealed his ire. And since their will might not be bent, Mahomed to the mountains went. I too, a clerk in Bedford Row, Long years the mountains yearned to see, And since to them I could not go, Besought that they might come to me. "If Faith," I said, "can mountains move, How surely should they come for Love." And lo, to-day I watch them crowd, Range upon range, above my head, Cordilleras of golden cloud, And snow-white Andes, captive-led, Yea, Himalayas, crowned with snow, Above my head in Bedford Row. Wiser than Mahomed, like this little clerk, I begin to think that I can see myself enthroned, in my retirement, and letting my mountains be brought to my door. Moreover to old age, a little timid of loneliness, such a view as this would be completely reassuring. Cottages, manor-houses, Oxford with her dreaming spires, they are all contained within its broad and kindly grasp. Life, human life, trivial, cheery, part and parcel of the ages, has not here been sacrificed to any merely scenic splendour; while beneath it, if still flowing through it, lies the fierce and jovial memory of Briton and Saxon and Dane, their frames long since a part of this quiet crucible, and all but the heroic of their memories--a peaceable reflection--distilled into oblivion. Yes, one might do a great deal worse, I think, than retire to Streatley. At any rate that is Uncle Jacob's opinion, and he has been there a year. "View?" he remarked, when I pointed it out to him, "God bless my soul, it's the finest view in England. Let me see, where are they? Aha, just there. No, that's not them. _There_ they are--the Wittenham Clumps. My honour, I think. Fore!"