|As I lay on the hill-top this morning at the edge of the beech woods
watching the harvesters in the fields, and the sunlight and shadows
chasing each other across the valley, it seemed that the centuries were
looking down with me. For the hill-top is scored with memories, as an
old school book is scored with the names of generations of scholars.
Near by are the earthworks of the ancient Britons, and on the face of
the hill is a great white horse carved in the chalk centuries ago. Those
white marks, that look like sheep feeding on the green hill-side, are
reminders of the great war. How long ago it seems since the recruits
from the valley used to come up here to learn the art of trench-digging,
leaving these memorials behind them before they marched away to whatever
fate awaited them! All over the hill-top are the ashes of old fires lit
by merry parties on happy holidays. One scorched and blackened area,
more spacious than the rest, marks the spot where the beacon fire was
lit to celebrate the signing of Peace. And on the boles of the beech
trees are initials carved deep in the bark--some linked like those of
lovers, some freshly cut, some old and covered with lichen.
What is this instinct that makes us carve our names on tree trunks, and
school desks with such elaborate care? It is no modern vulgarity. It is
as ancient as human records. In the excavations at Pergamos the school
desks of two thousand years ago have been found scored with the names of
the schoolboys of those far-off days. No doubt the act itself delighted
them. There was never a boy who did not find pleasure in cutting wood
or scrawling on a wall, no matter what was cut or what was scrawled.
And the joy does not wholly pass with youth. Stonewall Jackson found
pleasure in whittling a stick at any time, and I never see a nice
white ceiling above me as I lie in bed, without sharing Mr Chesterton's
hankering for a charcoal with which to cover it with prancing fancies.
But at the back of it all, the explanation of those initials
on the boles of the beeches is a desire for some sort of
immortality--terrestrial if not celestial. Even the least of us would
like to be remembered, and so we carve our names on tree trunks and
tombstones to remind later generations that we too once passed this way.
If it is a weakness, it is a weakness that we share with the great.
One of the chief pleasures of greatness is the assurance that fame will
trumpet its name down the centuries. Cæsar wrote his Commentaries
to take care that posterity did not forget him, and Horace's “Exegi
monumentum ære perennius” is one of many confident assertions that he
knew he would be among the immortals. “I have raised a monument,” he
says, “more enduring than brass and loftier than the pyramids of kings;
a monument which shall not be destroyed by the consuming rain nor by
the rage of the north wind, nor by the countless years and the flight
of ages.” The same magnificent confidence appears in Shakespeare's proud
declaration--