There is another place more dear to me, but which I doubt whether any
other but a native of that place can know. After passing through the
plough lands of an empty plateau, a traveller breaks through a little
fringe of chestnut hedge and perceives at once before him the wealthiest
and the most historical of European things, the chief of the great
capitals of Christendom and the arena in which is now debated (and has
been for how long!) the Faith, the chief problem of this world.
Apart from landscape other things belong to this contemplation: Notes
of music, and, stronger even than repeated and simple notes of music, a
subtle scent and its association, a familiar printed page. Perhaps the
test of these sacramental things is their power to revive the past.
There is a story translated into the noblest of English writing by Dasent.
It is to be found in his "Tales from the Norse." It is called the Story of
the Master Maid.
A man had found in his youth a woman on the Norwegian hills: this woman
was faery, and there was a spell upon her. But he won her out of it in
various ways, and they crossed the sea together, and he would bring her
to his father's house, but his father was a King. As they went over-sea
together alone, he said and swore to her that he would never forget how
they had met and loved each other without warning, but by an act of God,
upon the Dovrefjeld.
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