Such are hints of the scenes opening out to explorers on what may at first sight seem a monotonous stretch of heath and pine-woods, with this good quality for feeble folks, that, once at the top, they can ramble some way without any trying ups and downs. "Eyes or no eyes," its visitors cannot but be sensible of that "ampler ether," those restoring breezes that blow over Hindhead, untainted by smoky towns or misty flats. Too soon passes its season of purple glory; but it has other charms that win on one by familiarity. Its very winter is apt to show a more cheerful face than on the sodden, muggy lowlands; then always it lies open to the painting of the sky, from crisp clear mornings, when "not yet are Christmas garlands sere," till that evening of the year, when--
Red o'er the forest peers the setting sun, The line of yellow light dies fast away That crowned the eastern copse; and chill and dun Falls on the moor the brief November day.
Keble, like other writers of our day, means by _moor_ the heathy uplands that are the chief ornament of Hindhead. But Spenser's "moorish Colne" hints to us how, in the south of England at least, this name has implied rather such marshy and rushy flats as, about Thursley, are still vernacularly called the "moor" _par excellence_. These lowerlying skirts have beauties of their own, and seldom fail to be at least patched with the richer material spread out to dry on the heights.
It will soon be found how Hindhead runs into a neighbourhood of swelling heaths, such as Frensham Common, Headley Common, Ludshott Common, and Bramshott Common, over which one can expatiate for hours to the west. A couple of miles south of the Huts, the Portsmouth road crosses a here very jagged boundary of Surrey, reaching the "Seven Thorns" in Hampshire, and thence falling to Liphook on the edge of Woolmer Forest, which straggles on by the new Longmoor Camp to White's Selborne. In the valley to the left, that is the course of the railway, runs the Sussex border, across which may be sought out scenes still more beautiful as more varied. Then on the north side lie another series of broken moorlands, by which the high ground slopes into the Wey valley--Milford Heath, Royal Common, Thursley Common, Kettlebury Hill, and Hankley Common, not to add minor names. Even Cobbett had kind thoughts of Thursley; and the author of _Robert Elsmere_, with an eye on this vicinity, if I err not, speaks the mind of our generation about the waste skirts of her hero's parish:--