In the day of their bloom it was the thing itself, the
craze, the study, for its own sake; now it is the discipline, or any
broad human culture, in which they may have been influential. The boy
chases the butterfly, and thinks not of the wood and the blue heaven;
but those only does the man remember, for the mark of their beauty upon
him, so unconsciously impressed, for the health of their power and
sweetness still living in his blood--for these does that chase seem
alone of worth, when the dusty entomological relic thereof is in limbo.
And so that long and costly shelf, groaning beneath the weight of Grose
and Dugdale, and many a mighty slab of topographical prose; those
pilgrimages to remote parish churches, with all their attendant ardours
of careful 'rubbings'; those notebooks, filled with patient data; those
long letters to brother antiquaries--of sixteen; even that famous
Exshire Tour itself, which was to have rivalled Pennant's own--what
remains to show where this old passion stood, with all the clustering
foliage of a dream; what but that quaint cadence I spoke of, and an
anecdote or two which seemed but of little import then, with such
breathless business afoot as an old font or a Roman road?
One particular Roman road, I know, is but remembered now, because, in
the rich twilight of an old June evening, it led up the gorsy stretches
of Lancashire 'Heights' to a solemn plateau, wide and solitary as
Salisbury Plain, from the dark border of which, a warm human note
against the lonely infinite of heath and sky, beamed the little
whitewashed 'Traveller's Rest,' its yellow light, growing stronger as
the dusk deepened, meeting the eye with a sense of companionship
becoming a vague need just then.
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