cat-call, young gentleman; heads down in the pit there! Now the
flourish is over, the scene draws up: look before.

A bright, clear, transparent atmosphere,--bright as that of the East,
but vigorous and bracing as the air of the North; a broad and fair
river, rolling through wide grassy plains; yonder, far in the distance,
stretch away vast forests of evergreen, and gentle slopes break the line
of the cloudless horizon. See the pastures, Arcadian with sheep in
hundreds and thousands,--Thyrsis and Menalcas would have had hard labor
to count them, and small time, I fear, for singing songs about Daphne.
But, alas! Daphnes are rare; no nymphs with garlands and crooks trip
over those pastures.

Turn your eyes to the right, nearer the river; just parted by a low
fence from the thirty acres or so that are farmed for amusement or
convenience, not for profit,--that comes from the sheep,--you catch a
glimpse of a garden. Look not so scornfully at the primitive
horticulture: such gardens are rare in the Bush. I doubt if the stately
King of the Peak ever more rejoiced in the famous conservatory, through
which you may drive in your carriage, than do the sons of the Bush in
the herbs and blossoms which taste and breathe of the old fatherland.
Go on, and behold the palace of the patriarchs,--it is of wood, I grant
you; but the house we build with our own hands is always a palace. Did
you ever build one when you were a boy? And the lords of that palace
are lords of the land almost as far as you can see, and of those
numberless flocks; and, better still, of a health which an antediluvian
might have envied, and of nerves so seasoned with horse-breaking,
cattle-driving, fighting with wild blacks,--chases from them and after
them, for life and for death,--that if any passion vex the breast of
those kings of the Bushland, fear at least is erased from the list.