The Pocket | Page 6

a walking tour is quite accessory. He who is indeed of the brotherhood
does not voyage in quest of the picturesque, but of certain jolly
humours--of the hope and spirit with which the march begins at
morning, and the peace and spiritual repletion of the evening's rest. He
cannot tell whether he puts his knapsack on, or takes it off, with more
delight. The excitement of the departure puts him in key for that of the
arrival. Whatever he does is not only a reward in itself, but will be
further rewarded in the sequel; and so pleasure leads on to pleasure in
an endless chain.
*
Nor does the scenery any more affect the thoughts than the thoughts
affect the scenery. We see places through our humours as through
differently-coloured glasses. We are ourselves a term in the equation, a
note of the chord, and make discord or harmony almost at will. There is
no fear for the result, if we can but surrender ourselves sufficiently to
the country that surrounds and follows us, so that we are ever thinking
suitable thoughts or telling ourselves some suitable sort of story as we
go. We become thus, in some sense, a centre of beauty; we are
provocative of beauty, much as a gentle and sincere character is
provocative of sincerity and gentleness in others.
*
There is nobody under thirty so dead but his heart will stir a little at

sight of a gypsies' camp. 'We are not cotton-spinners all;' or, at least,
not all through. There is some life in humanity yet; and youth will now
and again find a brave word to say in dispraise of riches, and throw up
a situation to go strolling with a knapsack.
*
I began my little pilgrimage in the most enviable of all humours: that in
which a person, with a sufficiency of money and a knapsack, turns his
back on a town and walks forward into a country of which he knows
only by the vague report of others. Such an one has not surrendered his
will and contracted for the next hundred miles, like a man on a railway.
He may change his mind at every finger-post, and, where ways meet,
follow vague preferences freely and go the low road or the high, choose
the shadow or the sunshine, suffer himself to be tempted by the lane
that turns immediately into the woods, or the broad road that lies open
before him into the distance, and shows him the far-off spires of some
city, or a range of mountain-tops, or a run of sea, perhaps, along a low
horizon. In short, he may gratify his every whim and fancy, without a
pang of reposing conscience, or the least jostle of his self-respect. It is
true, however, that most men do not possess the faculty of free action,
the priceless gift of being able to live for the moment only; and as they
begin to go forward on their journey, they will find that they have made
for themselves new fetters. Slight projects they may have entertained
for a moment, half in jest, become iron laws to them, they know not
why. They will be led by the nose by these vague reports of which I
spoke above; and the mere fact that their informant mentioned one
village and not another will compel their footsteps with inexplicable
power. And yet a little while, yet a few days of this fictitious liberty,
and they will begin to hear imperious voices calling on them to return;
and some passion, some duty, some worthy or unworthy expectation,
will set its hand upon their shoulder and lead them back into the old
paths. Once and again we have all made the experiment. We know the
end of it right well. And yet if we make it for the hundredth time
to-morrow, it will have the same charm as ever; our hearts will beat and
our eyes will be bright, as we leave the town behind us, and we shall
feel once again (as we have felt so often before) that we are cutting
ourselves loose for ever from our whole past life, with all its sins and
follies and circumscriptions, and go forward as a new creature into a

new world.
*
Herein, I think, lies the chief attraction of railway travel. The speed is
so easy, and the train disturbs so little the scenes through which it takes
us, that our heart becomes full of the placidity and stillness of the
country; and while the body is borne forward in the flying chain of
carriages, the thoughts alight, as the humour moves them, at
unfrequented stations; they make haste up the poplar alley that leads
towards town; they are left behind with the signalman as,