it was wise or foolish, to-morrow's travel will carry you, body and mind, into some different parish of the infinite.

Many essays have been written in praise of walking, and the reader will find it profitable to compare this essay with Hazlitt's essay on p. 65, or with one or more of the following: L. Stephen, In Praise of Walking; G. M. Trevelyan, essay on 'Walking " in Clio a Muse; Burroughs, The Exhilaration of the Road; Thoreau, Walking and the Wild.

R. L. STEVENSON

FROM Bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, I set out to scale a portion of the Lozère. An ill-marked stony drove-road guided me forward; and I met nearly half-a-dozen bullock-carts descending from the woods, each laden with a whole pine-tree for the winter's firing. At the top of the woods, which do not climb very high upon this cold ridge, I struck leftward by a path among the pines, until I hit on a dell of green turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some stones to serve me for a water-tap. "In a more sacred or sequestered bower . . nor nymph nor faunus haunted." The trees were not old, but they grew thickly round the glade: there was no

A Night Among the Pines. From Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, a series of essays describing an eleven days' journey in the Cevennes, which Stevenson undertook in September, 1878. It was a walking tour with a donkey, named by him Modestine, to carry his luggage. Modestine, he tells us, was a diminutive she-ass, not much bigger than a dog, the colour of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined under-jaw."

In a more sacred, etc.

"In shadier bower

More sacred and sequestered, though but feigned,

Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph,

Nor Faunus haunted.'

Paradise Lost, iv. 705-708.

outlook, except north-eastward upon distant hill-tops, or straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure and private like a room. By the time I had made my arrangements and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to decline. I buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty meal; and as soon as the sun went down, I pulled my cap over my eyes and fell asleep.

Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest, she turns and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet. It is then that the cock first crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course of night. Cattle awake on the meadows; sheep break their fast on dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair among the ferns; and house, less men, who have lain down with the fowls, open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night.

At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature, are all these sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life? Do the stars rain down an influence, or do we share some thrill of mother earth below

our resting bodies? Even shepherds and old countryfolk, who are the deepest read in these arcana, have not a guess as to the means or purpose of this nightly resurrection. Towards two in the morning they declare the thing takes place; and neither know nor inquire further. And at least it is a pleasant incident. We are disturbed in our slumber only, like the luxurious Montaigne, "that we may the better and more sensibly relish it." We have a moment to look upon the stars. And there is a special pleasure for some minds in the reflection that we share the impulse with all outdoor creatures in our neighbourhood, that we have escaped out of the Bastille of civilisation, and are become, for the time being, a mere kindly animal and a sheep of Nature's flock.

When the hour came to me among the pines, I wakened thirsty. My tin was standing by me half full of water. I emptied it at a draught; and feeling broad awake after this internal cold aspersion, sat upright to make a cigarette. The stars were clear, coloured, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapour stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness of the pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at the length of

Montaigne (1533-92). A French writer of aristocratic birth and sympathies, whose essays were the first of their kind in modern literature. His tendency to present an Epicurean view of life will account for the epithet luxurious.

Bastille. Fortress prison of Paris, which was the outward symbol of the tyranny which resulted in the French Revolution, as its fall was the sign of the downfall of that tyrannical system.