This thought may seem, to men of practical activity, to
weaken the force of effective energy in both poet and scientist. But
they will be content to be misunderstood on this point, because they
will be aware that such activity as they manifest is the direct effect
of something larger and greater than human volition, and that the
busiest lives are as much the inevitable outcome of this insuperable
force as their own more secluded, more contemplative lives.
The Mareway is an old track or drift-road, dating from primitive times,
which diverges from the Old North Road and runs for some miles along
the top of the low chalk downs which bound my southern horizon. Its
name is a corruption of the word Mary--Mary's way--for there was an
ancient shrine of pilgrimage dedicated to the Virgin Mary that stood on
the broad low bluff still known as Chapel Hill, where the downs sink
into the well-watered plain. No trace of the shrine exists, and it is
not known where it stood. Perhaps its walls have been built into the
little irregular pile of farm-buildings which stands close to where the
way ends. In a field hard by that spot, the leaden seal of a Pope, the
_bulla_ that gives its name to a Pope's bull, was once ploughed up; but
the chapel itself, which was probably a very humble place, was unroofed
and wrecked in an outburst of Puritanical zeal, with a practical piety
which could not bear that a place should gather about itself so many
hopes and prayers and holy associations.
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