The nights are pleasant in May, short and pleasant for travel. We will leave the city asleep, and do our flight in the night to save time. Trust yourselves, then, to the story-teller’s aËrial machine. It is but a rough affair, I own, rough and humble, unfitted for high or great flights, with no gilded panels, or dainty cushions, or C-springs—not that we shall care about springs, by the way, until we alight on terra-firma again—still, there is much to be learned in a third-class carriage if we will only not look while in it for cushions, and fine panels, and forty miles an hour travelling, and will not be shocked at our fellow-passengers for being weak in their h’s and smelling of fustian. Mount in it, then, you who will, after this warning; the fares are holiday fares, the tickets return tickets. Take with you nothing but the poet’s luggage,

and may you have a pleasant journey, for it is time that the stoker should be looking to his going gear!

So now we rise slowly in the moonlight from St. Ambrose’s quadrangle, and, when we are clear of the clock-tower, steer away southwards, over Oxford city and all its sleeping wisdom and folly, over street and past spire, over Christ Church and the canons’ houses, and the fountain in Tom quad; over St. Aldate’s and the river, along which the moonbeams lie in a pathway of twinkling silver, over the railway sheds—no, there was then no railway, but only the quiet fields and foot-paths of Hincksey hamlet. Well, no matter; at any rate, the hills beyond, and Bagley Wood, were there then as now: and over hills and wood we rise, catching the purr of the night-jar, the trill of the nightingale, and the first crow of the earliest cock-pheasant, as he stretches his jewelled wings, conscious of his strength and his beauty, heedless of the fellows of St. John’s, who slumber within sight of his perch, on whose hospitable board he shall one day lie, prone on his back, with fair larded breast turned upwards for the carving knife, having crowed his last crow. He knows it not; what matters it to him? If he knew it, could a Bagley Wood cock-pheasant desire a better ending?

We pass over the vale beyond; hall and hamlet, church, and meadow, and copse, folded in mist and shadow below us, each hamlet holding in its bosom the materials of three-volumed novels by the dozen, if we could only pull off the roofs of the houses and look steadily into the interiors; but our destination is farther yet. The faint white streak behind the distant Chilterns reminds us that we have no time for gossip by the way; May nights are short, and the sun will be up by four. No matter; our journey will now be soon over, for the broad vale is crossed, and the chalk hills and downs beyond. Larks quiver up by us, “higher, ever higher,” hastening up to get a first glimpse of the coming monarch, careless of food, flooding the fresh air with song. Steady plodding rooks labor along below us, and lively starlings rush by on the look-out for the early worm; lark and swallow, rook and starling, each on his appointed round. The sun arises, and they get them to it; he is up now, and these breezy uplands over which we hang are swimming in the light of horizontal rays, though the shadows and mists still lie on the wooded dells which slope away southwards.

This is no chalk, this high knoll which rises above—one may almost say hangs over—the village, crowned with Scotch firs, its sides tufted with gorse and heather. It is the Hawk’s Lynch, the favorite resort of Englebourn folk, who come up for the view, for the air, because their fathers and mothers came up before them, because they came up themselves as children—from an instinct which moves them all in leisure hours and Sunday evenings, when the sun shines and the birds sing, whether they care for view or air or not. Something guides all their feet hitherward; the children, to play hide-and-seek and look for nests in the gorse-bushes; young men and maidens, to saunter and look and talk, as they will till the world’s end—or as long, at any rate, as the Hawk’s Lynch and Englebourn last—and to cut their initials, inclosed in a true lover’s knot, on the short rabbit’s turf; steady married couples, to plod along together consulting on hard times and growing families; even old tottering men, who love to sit at the feet of the firs, with chins leaning on their sticks, prattling of days long past, to any one who will listen, or looking silently with dim eyes into the summer air, feeling perhaps in their spirits after a wider and more peaceful view which will soon open for them. A common knoll, open to all, up in the silent air, well away from every-day Englebourn life, with the Hampshire range and the distant Beacon Hill lying soft on the horizon, and nothing higher between you and the southern sea, what a blessing the Hawk’s Lynch is to the village folk, one and all! May Heaven and a thankless soil long preserve it and them from an inclosure under the Act!