IN WILTSHIRE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 847, 20 June 1910, Page 5

IN WILTSHIRE.

• » BOOKS ANT) FANCIES. I AN ESCAPE FROM THE SOTJTHERIX' ! I (By. "J.Q.X.") I The coming of a Wiltshire man to be ! Governor and'Commander-in-Chief in and i over the Dominion of New Zealand sng- : gests a sort of return visit. We can be ! back again Wellington more than soon: j enough to. seo has Excellency welcomed, ■ i for our trip to* Wiltshire shall bo taken in vehicles swifter than Latham or Pant ban have ever steered. And wo shall .: escapo from the howling wind and savage rain that just now possess the risible portion of tho outdoor world and drive. ; one to seek more genial seasons in that ; fireside realm of memories and books, where the forecasts of Mr. Bates have no! : application. j "We walk through life as through '' a narrow path, with it thin curtain .; drawn, around it; behind are ranged ; rich portraits, airy harps are strung. : . . . We have only at any tmio to ' 'peep through the blanket of the pasf • to possess ourselves at once of all that •has regaled our senses that is stored i up in our memory, that has struck 1 our fancy, that has pierced our i hearts." ; With those words wo are already ini i Wiltshire, for it was there that they: wore written by that warm-hearted, hot- '• headed, brilliant, and eccentric man of genius, William Hazlitt. In all Bng* land his favourite place was Wraterslo'.v, a village between Salisbury and Andover, where, by long-established habit, ho spent ; several months of each year. He returned almost as faithfully as the swallows far ] his araraal sojourn at tho "ancient inn on. the Great Western Bead called Winterslow Hut." There, while ho quaffed ; his morning "libations of tea," he I watched the clouds sailing from the west, J and fancied that "the spring comes slowly j up this way." Unlike most Londoners, he ; was not merely a fair-weather, lover of ; the country. Ho would saunter for hours when fields were dank and ways were mire, to tread the high, level greensward •'! of the downs; or to stoop over tho "lomgsprent grass and clay-cold clod," recalliig "the tufts of pi-imToses and purple ! hyacinths" of summers past. . j The Hazlitts often entertained friends ] from London. "Among these," writes < William Hazlitt tho younger, "dearly • loved and honoured there, as everywhere I else, Charles and Mary Lamb paid us ; frequent visits, rambling about all the ! time, thorough Londoners in a thoroughly • country place, delighted and wondering ; and wondered at." Among the "few real ; pleasures and advantages," which Haz- \ litt. admitted that he had had, he must; i have ranked among the highest the walk 3 ' j at Winterslow ". . . . with Mr. and \ Miss Lamb of an evening, to look at the 1 Claudo Lorraine skies over our heads melting from azure into purple and gold, i and to gather mushrooms, that sprang up ! at our feet, to throw into our hashed, j mutton at suppor." j Sunsets and hashed mutton with . . "Elia" and "Cousin Bridget" would compensate for many oversights of neglectful | Fortune. I Lamb, who was, of course, born within j the precincts of. the Inner Temple, and i lived, by the way, at Islington for a'. j few years, chose on one occasion to fancy himself a native of Wiltshire. In his "Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years . Ago," ho purports to recall his schoolboy. . ' yearnings for "my native town (far in the west)." "How I lvuld wake and in tho anguish of my heart exclaim; ( upon sweet Calne in Wiltshire!" After-, wards he felt, or supposed himself, called* upon to explain to a courteous corre-, spondent that he was only born at Calnei in "an allegorical or tropical sense." "Byi the word 'native,' I may be supposed to mean a town where I might have beeni born, or where it might be desirable that! I should have been born, as being situates., in wholesome air, upon a dry, chalky soiU. in which I delight; or a town with the? inhabitants of which I passed somo weeis.s h summer or two ago, so agreeably; that; they and it became in a manner native to:', me." , , Wiltshire, I think, is honoured by;i Charles Lamb's thought that it would/* • have been desirable to be born within its?| boundaries. ' ■ But,, alas! while we dally thus wrthU falso surmise, our trip to Wiltshire nearer, its inevitable close. Our thoughts,. "Jumping o'er times, Turning the accomplishment of many£ years Into an. hour-glass," must yet accommodate themselves to the' little length of a column of The Dominion. Coincidence and association have-i but begun "to open all the cells where*; memory slept," when we find that each..cell extends into a vista. We would' visit "holy Georgo Herbert," malrins verses as sublime as quaint among the.; tree-shadows of Bemerton, and walk; with him to hear the anthem in the most graceful of English cathedrals. Leaving Salisbury, wo would loiter through tho'halls and cloisters of Wilton and haply come upon Sir Philip Sidney, writing bis "Arcadia." Over a cloudy horizon, Stoncy henge, about lost in itsjDare undulating; plain, should rise.before us, and grow with our approach into all its rude, but? awful, \ majesty and mystery. For com-, pany amid thoso colossal pillars and lin-. ; tels of grey stono we might have Words* worth with his gentle moralisings, of , Borrow with his breezy pedantry, or Carlyie smoking his pipe while he discourses. j ■to Emerson on "the flight of ages and the succession of religions"; but we should: | have to admit that when Hardy* (whoso kingdom of Wcssex includes an . ' overlordship of Wiltshire) wrote of Tess, lying down to sleep on a Stonehenge al-', I t"ar,. he set tho modern and prehistoric -1 together in that lofty spirit of tragedy" which could surely find no fittei abode . than among those inscrutable stones. But the bare, rolling downs, with.their> grey-green turf and their exposed patchesof white chalk, would lure us northward* toward Malmesbury, birthplace of Thomas liobbos, whoso "Leviathan, or tho Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth" was once prescribed to me as » cure for "nebulosity of •■ mental atmosphere." We- would go round by Swindon, and amid tho smoke and noise its railways, wo would remember that thwo and thereabout, Eichard Jeffries fir.)t watched "pageant of summer." Wo, might' then explore tho Forest of Sarer-» nako, dream of the battles of Arthur, and trace the more authentic campaigns of Ini and' Alfred. And I do not know when we should ba., ready to como back to the southerly, storm that still beats upon the roofs jjfr windy Wellington- . - ,