PREFACE.
Curious Reader,
Come with me, I pray, to the wooded hills and dreamy valleys of mine own Siluria. Leave the "chargeable noise of the great town," and stand with me on the mountain that I love, while the wind sweeps over the heather and bracken, bringing with it the salt of the far-away sea. Below us the country is extended; wave after wave of wood and meadow floating in the mist of the morning, and here and there a window-pane shoots back the rays of the mounting sun. In a valley to the east the smoke of a walled city, Caerleon, the metropolitan, arises; and on the yellow water beyond ships are passing in and out of harbour. Just beneath us, on the verge between heather and cornfield, stands an ancient house with mullioned windows that have withstood the storm of many a hundred year, and from its chimneys also a faint blue smoke rises straight till it meets the mountain wind. Here then let us stand awhile and mingle the golden clouds of Virginia with those of Siluria. For, mark me, we have got into a little hollow sheltered from the full strength of the breeze, and a beechtree that bends over us will give sufficient shade, though, like most of our mountain trees, it is somewhat stunted. Here we can smoke, and meditate, and dream, for a time at least, like to the gods of Epicurus, taking no heed for the turmoil of the world beneath us, but each man, rapt in his own fancies, weaves them into what he sees, and the whole is very sweet for him to remember hereafter in the midst of the streets, and noisome smoke, and clamour without end. More I say not; let my reader make his dreams for himself of what he may, and if they be even dreams of love I will reprove him not in this place; though in my lecture-room at Brentford it would be otherwise. So if in my book I speak somewhat harshly of Venus and her train, you, O reader, must remember that it is the Professor of Pipe Philosophy in his chair, and not the Silurian on his hills, who does so; and this because he will not tolerate any imperium which seems to threaten and diminish the honour of the Pipe and Jar.
Come with me, then, through our shady woods in summer, wander with me by our rivers and wandering brooks, let us drink deep of the life-giving breath of the mountains; and, so it be done moderately, of the cwrw that is without guile. And what the printer has set after this shall be to you my discourse by the way.