PRAETERIT AETAS.
(To THZ EDITOR or TEL " SPECTATOIL.n] SIR,—Is "S. W." right in ascribing the depressing effect of hills on his friend to her growing old P I well remember my first experience of that effect : I had gone from my Hampshire home to stay with friends in Hertfordshire, where rounded hills encircled us. I was only thirteen years old, and remarkably " undepressable," but after bearing it for a week, I finally exploded with " I do wish you'd push down one of these hills and let me see out " I It was a long-standing joke among my friends, but the nostalgia for the open horizon. was " no joke " to me (does a bear in a bear-pit feel it, poor beast P). Hills, of course, are glorious. No one could feel unhappy where the Malvern Hills stand above the blue distances of the plain; or where Dorset hills rise north, east, and west, but open for a southward sweep to the sea. It is the crowding round on every side that depresses " S. W.'s " correspondent and me. Mountains have not the same effect (beyond the strong desire to climb and see over) : I suppose their height and grandeur lead the thoughts up rather than out. But some of us pine for our open, windy spaces : to stand on a hillside on a summer evening, and watch, to the north- west, the sun setting across leagues of heather, and to the south, the moon rising over the distant Channel, is the ideal of at least
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