Personal Pleasures by Rose Macaulay Page B

a driver: but what was Nero doing? At the most, about fifteen. Bishop Wilkins much praised for their swiftness certain chariots with wheels and sailsthat were, said he, driven over land by the wind at a rate far exceeding the swiftness of ships on the sea. Such chariots sailed, he said, over the great smooth plains of China; and there was one at Sceveling in Holland, which that eminent inquisitive man Peireskius travelled to see, and would ever after talk of it, saying that its passengers did not feel the motion of the wind that drove them, since they travelled with equal speed themselves; men running before it seemed to go backwards, and things which seemed at a great distance were presently overtaken and left behind. Grotius was very copious and elegant in the celebration of this invention, and Bishop Wilkins inquires, what could be more delightful than to make use of the wind, which costs nothing and eats nothing, instead of horses. In two hours’ space, says he, the Sceveling chariot would travel two and forty miles. So, after all this fuss and travelling to see it and excitement on the part of English bishops and the eminent inquisitive Peireskius and the copious elegant Grotius, the thing could only do twenty-one.
    The fact that our grandchildren, nay, our children, will soon be talking with similar contempt of us, rather adds to than detracts from our pleasure. The cars that we send hurtling over the earth by the touch of a foot on a knob are but at the beginning of their race with time and space; we drive slow and clumsy embryos. But they are swift enough to delight us, as with open throttle and hands lightly on the wheel we scud the roads, watching the needle mount, slipping past thoseother cars which unfortunately also scud the roads and impede our view.
    All is bliss; we hum songs of triumph, as all charioteers have, even when they have been ignobly dragged by the brute creation, instead of by a drop of volatile spirit and a rotating engine, which is so obviously far better. Our song is chorused by the little chirping squeak of the door handles, the faint rattling of the windows, the less faint humming of the engine, the running of the wind. The scenery is doubled in charm by being seen at this rate; it flashes by with the vividness of a string of jewels, glimpsed, admired, and gone. How tired we should get of it were we afoot, trudging along with pack on back! One should not give scenery the chance to fatigue one. Seen thus, it will glow in the memory like a fairy land scarce trodden, awaiting one’s return.
    The serpent in this Eden, the canker in this lovely bloom of speed, is (need one say it?) the other vehicles in our road. And particularly in the middle of our road, which is where cars, horse-carts, and cyclists love to travel. But, did all travellers keep, as they should, to their near side, driving would be too like heaven for sinful man below. As it is, when our time comes to go, when we fall in turn to the juggernaut, we may hope to be translated to some paradise traversed by great fair roads, to each soul a road to herself, along which her car shall dash at some supramundane speed, hugging (for souls shall be made perfect) the near border of thymey Elysian grass.

Easter in the Woods
    A Delicate shimmer of greenery flickers, a light veil, over purple and brown, and starry blackthorn and wild cherry-blossom riot, in flights gay and white like angels, over wood and hill. How the copses, all enverdured with larch and birch and thorn and springing beech, climb the steep brown hillsides, running down to cowslipped dells and banks, while at their feet the marshy bottoms, gold-starred with kingcups, lie! Standing here, my feet deep in brown beech leaves, on Wheatham Hill’s steep shoulder, I can see the high hangers, copses, valleys, commons and farms, for miles around. There is the long, circling hanger called, in its different curves, Oakshott, Juniper, and Happersnapper, lying coiled, like a