Freeman, when here below, proclaimed it his mission to prove
that "Englishmen were Englishmen, and not somebody else." It
appeared to me that any person, unbiassed by theories on such
a subject, looking at that crowd, would have come to the
conclusion, sadly or gladly, according to his nature, that we
are, in fact, "somebody else."
Chapter Fourteen: The Return of the Native
That "going back" about which I wrote in the second chapter to
a place where an unexpected beauty or charm has revealed
itself, and has made its image a lasting and prized possession
of the mind, is not the same thing as the revisiting a famous
town or city, rich in many beauties and old memories, such as
Bath or Wells, for instance. Such centres have a permanent
attraction, and one who is a rover in the land must return to
them again and again, nor does he fail on each successive
visit to find some fresh charm or interest. The sadness of
such returns, after a long interval, is only, as I have said,
when we start "looking up" those with whom we had formed
pleasant friendly relations. And all because of the illusion
that we shall see them as they were--that Time has stood still
waiting for our return, and by and by, to our surprise and
grief, we discover that it is not so; that the dear friends of
other days, long unvisited but unforgotten, have become
strangers. This human loss is felt even more in the case of a
return to some small centre, a village or hamlet where we knew
every one, and our intimacy with the people has produced the
sense of being one in blood with them.
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