- menced to climb the Wolds, and as we rose the
country around widened out. At the crest of the first hill we rested a while to enjoy the prospect; looking back, our eyes ranged over miles and miles of changeful greenery with the wide over-arching sky above, a sky of a blue that would have done credit to Italy. On the far-off horizon we could just discern the faint outlines of Lincoln's lordly minster, regnant on the hill above the city, a vision that doubtless would have caused the pious medieval pilgrim to go down on his knees,—I write "pious" though I am by no means sure that all medieval pilgrims deserved that epithet. It was in those days a cheap, comparatively safe, if uncomfortable way of travelling, the poor man then had only to assume the garb and manners of a pilgrim to travel and see novel sights and even foreign countries free of expense for board or food, and he might be as lazy as he liked, provided he did not mind a little leisurely walking and going through certain religious observances. The modern tramp was born too late!
As we drove on we had before us a sea of hills, round and green close at hand, fading away by subtle degrees to gray, and from gray to tenderest blue, where in the dim distance the land seemed almost to melt into the sky. Then our road dipped down gradually into a well-wooded country, a glorious country of leafy woods—most charming at Holbeck with its little lakes, an ideal spot on a hot summer's day; and from the woods rose great grassy slopes down which the sunshine glinted in long lines of yellow light, the golden warmth of the sunlit earth being
