The City public, cheated of their countryside walks on the outskirts of the town, impatiently turn to the less enclosed parts of England for that free passage of foot denied them at home.  The Surrey Downs, Exmoor, the Welsh Hills, Dartmoor, Malvern, the Peak country, the English Lake District are sought after.  But unless, as in the case of the Malvern Hills, some strict Bill has been obtained to protect the people in their wanderings; and to prevent enclosure and a general shut-out of the public, it is certain that each year what the tourist is in quest of he will less and less find.  The occupiers of land in these parts are on the alert—not without reason; for the town-bred man, even if he is educated, cannot apparently understand that gates were meant to be shut to as well as opened.  Foolish and wanton mischief—more of thoughtlessness than malice—is done to the farmer’s land and the woodman’s plantation; the rare wild flowers are taken up by the roots wholesale; ferns disappear from whole tracts of country side.  And all because these strangers, as they use the old rights of way, forget the old rights of courtesy and care for other men’s property as they pass over it.  So the landowners in these be-touristed parts are on the alert, and the inhabitants of a country side are made to suffer for the suns of the strangers. (p. 377)…. 

Of course, much of the illegal closing of footpaths proceeds from the entire ignorance both on the side of the landlord and the public as to the law upon the matter.  Let us glance at such law as at present exists in the matter of footpaths.  But first let us bear in mind that a footpath, as much as a carriage-road, cart-road, bridle-path, footway, driftway, causeway, or churchway, is by the eye of the law looked upon as a highway.  Let us remember also that the public, though they can claim no atom of the soil, nor even have contributed to the maintenance of a path—nay, though the path may be dangerous or impassable in bad weather—can still claim, after sufficient user, such as shall amount to public dedication, a right of highway that is inalienable, except by legal process. (pp. 378-379)….

But a better time, it is believed, is coming.  Public feeling is being roused.  Within the past four years a National Footpath Preservation Society, with an office in Essex Street, Strand, has been set afloat, and footpath societies at Birmingham, Henley-on-Thames, Kendal, Lancaster, Llandudno, Reading, Stockton, Keswick and Carlisle have been inaugurated.  So far as can be learned these societies have been framed in no hostile spirit to the owners of private property.  They appear to have realized how just are the complaints of the proprietors or tenants of the soil against trespassers of the pathways, and they seem determined, whilst they uphold the rights of the public, to remember that private rights must be regarded, and to be anti-trespass societies as well as path-preservation societies. (p. 382)….

Doubtless, also, it is felt that the laws of trespass need amending.  Rights of passage across private property lay heavy responsibilities upon those who enjoy them.  These responsibilities are not enough realized.  Private leave to pass over land at the will of a landowner is too often confounded with public right of passage.  At this time of day it would seem specially needful to safe-guard the legitimate rights of the landowner.  But the public have definite rights also.  And it would appear that the public must be empowered by some speedier, less personal, less intricate, and less expensive method to vindicate on national grounds their national rights against the path-stopper and the road-side waste encroachment alike, or one of the chiefest charms of pleasant England will cease to be. (p. 386)

(Contemporary Review, 50 (September 1886), 373-86)

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Nameless the tomb, his forest-deeds unsung,
        But this rude scrawl upon his monument,
Drawn as a child would draw is eloquent;
For there he stands, his huntsman’s bow well-strung,
And overhead, the quarrel-punch up-hung
Which round his girth was worn when forth he went
To hunt for venison in the woods of Deut,
Or rob the Sanwith she-wolf of her young.
Ah, since that day of hound and hawk and hood,
Which this stout archer of the Priory knew,
A blight has fallen upon Saint Bega’s land;
The rooks can scarcely find a nesting wood,
The steam-mills hoot where once the horn he blew,
And men are slaves in coaly Cumberland.

(Sonnets Round the Coast, p. 102)

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As one writes, one sees the gentle horse, new-harnessed, turn his head, wistfully wondering at the unaccustomed silence, and gaze upon the burden he has to bear; sees the sad faces of the servants he called friends, pale in the paling light, and one asks oneself while the solemn procession moves up the laurelled grove toward the Aldworth gates, if it has ever been given to a bard, thus fittingly and in all solemn simplicity and grace, to leave his home at ending of an all-golden day, and go toward his rest, by dewfall, beneath the gathering stars. (p. 167)

The Aldworth groves were left behind, and we gained the moor; very dark and black, the Down sloped up towards the lingering sunset light.  Villagers here, and villagers there, in groups, were waiting with bared heads to watch the dumb procession pass in the purple twilight.  Then, while the bats flew overhead, and the pheasants called, and an owl crowed from a far wood, and a beetle hummed across our path, we entered the long oak-canopied hollow way that led us by its mile and a half, or two miles, of autumn-scented leafy darkness down toward the village in the vale. (pp. 167-168)

The fragrance of flowers on the coffin and in the little chaise, that bore these trophies of affection behind it, became under this canopy of boughs and in the heavy dewfall almost overpowering; but, as the darkness fell, the effects of moving light and flickering shade from the lamps on either side the funeral-car were weird and beautiful.  Some one at my side said, “with such a glory gone before we need not fear to follow on.”  They were but the words of an old hymn, but they seemed to have a new meaning for those who followed down that darkened lane. (p. 168)

At the last, from the breathless scented way we emerged, as it seemed almost in sight of the little town, and felt the cool air on our foreheads; saw lights twinkling in the mist, and heard a distant train go thundering by, but our eyes and our hearts were in Heaven, for all the stars had come to say farewell.  There, above the Pleiades, to the east shone the Charioteer, and Cassiopeia sat over, high-lifted in her jewelled chair.  The starry Swan flew at the zenith across or rather up the flood of worlds that mingled in a milky haze.  And over Hindhead, level, and, as it would seem, at rest, the great “Plow” stood; Jupiter hung in mid air magnificent and of solen whiteness, and Mars burned ruddy gold. (pp. 168-169)

We neared the village.  A church bell tolled.  Sadly, I thought of him who was so fond of listening to the bells of Yule from towers “folded in the mist.”  He was going home triumphant; if bells rang, one almost thought they should have pealed their cheeriest for him.  The townsfolk of Haslemere looked from their windows; the saddler put down his awl, the baker left his loaves, and out of their rosy cottage doors the people poured to see the Poet’s home-going. (p. 169)

So, by the village street, with here and there an added few to bear us company and swell with their tramping the sound of our going, we passed along from the lights and lamps to the almost lampless dark.  High on our left, upon the causeway, pattered the children, close by us walked the elders, man and wife, none speaking, all hushed and reverent of mien, till the engine whistle was heard, and the signal lights flashed into red and green.  The station had been reached.  The solemn journey was ended, and the swift train, iron of will, and heedless of heart, bore us far away. (pp. 169-170)

So the Poet was carried from the land of his life and love and labour.  A feeling of fitness mingled with the sorrow.  It was better to leave the Surrey hills when they were muffled in the darkness; easier to say farewell at night than at the morn. (p. 170)

And the engine throbbed and the wheels beat out their rhythmic tune, and so, to a kind of melancholy music, the Singer went through the darkened land of sleep, towards the far-off lurid-lighted town. (p. 170)

It may have been that one was in the mood for such thoughts, but one did not seem to have realized the restlessness of that city, where no sleep is, till, as the train neared Waterloo that night, to bring the Sleeper home, one saw “in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn,” and felt that there can never fall the night, nor ever quite work cease. (p. 170)

But the train drew up in the station.  Few people knew of its coming.  Not with parade or civic pomp or even with ordinary sign of funereal trapping came “the honoured guest” to be a citizen for ever; but simply and almost unobserved, the coffin with its wreaths of snow was borne quietly to a hooded wain.  Such an one as might ply with living flowers and palms and ferns for some festal occasion; such as I have seen often used to take those wild flowers, the city children, from the slum to country air. (pp. 170-171)

And so, without a plume of sable woe or sign of mourning, stout-hearted horses took England’s flower of song out of the sounding station into the roaring streets, towards the Abbey. (p. 171)

(Memories of the Tennysons, pp. 150-184)

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Engelberg

 The dust-whorls rise and smoke along the road
        That maps with milk-white lines the distant
            vale;
        Foreworn we are, we scarce know what we ail,
For lo! the withering Föhn-wind flies abroad;
The mountain packman who so lightly trod
        Puts down his pack, uneasy slips his bale,
        The mighty eagle’s spirit seems to fail,
From weary heights the avalanche casts his load.

With a chill sense of prisonment and fear
The heavy clouds drop down the hills, and near,
    Now bitter cold, now fiery is the blast;
        Leaves curl, flowers close, the roof-stones crash
            and fall,
        Discomfortable loss is over all;
Comes sunshine and sweet rain! the Föhn is past. 

(Sonnets in Switzerland and Italy, p. 40)

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