Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

Ordered South 129
order of the hills ; it may be that we have
lain awake at night, and agreeably tantalised
ourselves with the thought of corners we had
never turned, or summits we had all but
climbed : we shall now be able, as we tell
ourselves, to complete all these unfinished
pleasures, and pass beyond the barriers that
confined our recollections.
The promise is so great, and we are all so
easily led away when hope and memory are
both in one story, that I daresay the sick
man is not very inconsolable when he receivea
sentence of banishment, and is inclined to
regard his ill-health as not the least fortunate
accident of his life. Nor is he immediately
undeceived. The stir and speed of the
journey, and the restlessness that goes to
bed with him as he tries to sleep between
two days of noisy progress, fever him, and
stimulate his dull nerves into something of
their old quickness and sensibility. And so
he can enjoy the faint autumnal splendour of
the landscape, as he sees hill and plain, vine-
yard and forest, clad in one wonderful glory