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Milestones

THE ways of the world are many, leading nowhither, coming nowhence, ending ultimately in their beginning; and yet here and there by the side we find finger-posts, set up, as it were, to measure the infinite. The town is so many miles distant, the cheerful stone will tell you; and when you have reached your stage's end and made use of the scrap of knowledge, once more the stones take up their tale and dot the paths running forth into the unknown. What wayfarer has not found it in his heart by turns to bless and curse those wayside scrolls, and who, when all his journeys are over, does not look back on them with the regret begotten of old fellowship?

The man who sees no distinction of nature in milestones is on the highroad to blindness. Each track has its own choice kind, which take all the attributes of the adventurous way, and solidify them into stone. By the low roads you have the great, stolid blocks, moss-grown and bedded in lush grass, which tell you their tale in mumbled words, like the speech of a palsied man. Up on the mountain ways the granite slabs set alert in the heather bear the impress of the hills: their surface scarred and seamed by wind and chill rain; lichen- clad, austere, deserted. Then to our sorrow there are the iron monstrosities which an intelligent public sets up for the guidance of that portion of it which foots the track. And last, what shall we say, there is that milestone which is none, but a bald lettering on the face of a boulder, crag, or common wall, gruff announcement of the path, stripped of all kindly manners.

It is a pleasant fancy to beguile an hour to think of those who in old-world days set up and first gazed upon these stones. In the England of highwaymen and coaches they were there to mark the stages in a driver's memory, to guide the belated wanderer; stared on by honest faces, serving fair purposes and foul, silent witnesses of the dead and the forgotten. Now we are fallen on the times of the holiday shopman, well-furnished with map and guide-book, who needs not their humble aid. Once respected, they are now all but neglected, save by the vagrant who looks for them with hungry eyes, or the gentleman-tramp who makes them a matter for romancing; they exist for little save to form landmarks in the geographical vagaries of the rustic, who will mark out a place for you by its proximity to a milestone.

Nowadays, too, the city stretches gaunt fingers toward the fields, and what not fifty years agone was a rustic path is now a street of the suburbs. All trace of greenery has been obliterated, save perhaps a scrap of hedge, grown dingy with smoke and summer's heat. But here, too, is one ancient friend, wedged in masonry or standing erect in its dignity, the sporting-place of the irresponsible urchin—a milestone, prisci conscium aevi, a battered relic of the old, happier days. Once the road ran placidly by it and quiet fields slept behind. Titmouse and chaffinch once hopped over it, where now there is only a mournful sparrow. 'Tis a mad world, we ponder as we pass by, scarce casting a glance at the antiquated legend on its face.

Yet even in these days the generation of the stones is not fully served; there is still a place and a duty for them. I have known a man who was painfully affected by the very sight of one. He was used to spend strenuous days in the pursuit of a weary profession, and in his brief country walks he would fall in with these inscriptions. So many miles to such and such a place he would read; so many miles to Arcady it sounded; and to dwell on the long road stretching away from his feet past little hamlets and moorland farms, woods, and hills, and bickering streams, would give him a regretful pleasure. And when the time of his release came and the fates suffered him once more to "buckle on his pack," then he would linger lovingly over each stone as it told him of the steps of his journey towards El Dorado—surely the most futile of messages. Others beside my friend hail a milestone afar off; they rest by it, they eat their bread and cheese seated on the top, they bless it in the mornings and ban it heartily in the late afternoons.

The character of these altars of Mercury, the god of travellers, has much to do with their share in our affection. If their foolish makers have set them up in the side of a village street or deep below a thick hedge, then I fear our love is not excessive. Surely this is a matter where foolish accuracy is little needed. Probably the spot is the mile's end; but were it not better to let slip a few yards and set it up yonder at the root of the beeches where the grass is fresh? But of all places give me the end of a bridge or the lee of a wood. At the first you can have your ears eased with the prattle of the water, and refresh your sun-blinded eyes with the cool, deep shadows. At the latter there is the mossy turf to lounge on, the never-ending whispering of leaves, the rustle of boughs, and the eternal song of birds to make musical the silence.

But sentiment, I fear, comes too late in the day, and, as the proverb hath it, it is idle to lock the stable when the steed is off. We have it on the authority of a great wanderer that

There's nothing under Heav'n so blue

That's fairly worth the travelling to.

And if this be so, if the chief end of wayfaring is to be on the road and not to reach a destination, why then, the milestone will be as useless as a chance boulder on a hillside. In that golden age which is to come, when man will of his own accord destroy all clocks and watches, and see the folly of regulating time, we must suppose that they, as representing the parochial division of space, will not escape destruction. Meanwhile, till that day one may find much romance of the forgotten kind to dwell in the grey, weather-stained face of these mementoes of finitude.