was humorous, coming of age humorous, drinking and fighting humorous,
they were far too young and solemn to know. But at least they were
taught that death was humorous.

There is a peculiar idea abroad that the value and fascination of what
we call Nature lie in her beauty. But the fact that Nature is beautiful
in the sense that a dado or a Liberty curtain is beautiful, is only one
of her charms, and almost an accidental one. The highest and most
valuable quality in Nature is not her beauty, but her generous and
defiant ugliness. A hundred instances might be taken. The croaking noise
of the rooks is, in itself, as hideous as the whole hell of sounds in a
London railway tunnel. Yet it uplifts us like a trumpet with its coarse
kindliness and honesty, and the lover in 'Maud' could actually persuade
himself that this abominable noise resembled his lady-love's name. Has
the poet, for whom Nature means only roses and lilies, ever heard a pig
grunting? It is a noise that does a man good--a strong, snorting,
imprisoned noise, breaking its way out of unfathomable dungeons through
every possible outlet and organ. It might be the voice of the earth
itself, snoring in its mighty sleep. This is the deepest, the oldest,
the most wholesome and religious sense of the value of Nature--the value
which comes from her immense babyishness. She is as top-heavy, as
grotesque, as solemn and as happy as a child. The mood does come when we
see all her shapes like shapes that a baby scrawls upon a slate--simple,
rudimentary, a million years older and stronger than the whole disease
that is called Art. The objects of earth and heaven seem to combine into
a nursery tale, and our relation to things seems for a moment so simple
that a dancing lunatic would be needed to do justice to its lucidity and
levity. The tree above my head is flapping like some gigantic bird
standing on one leg; the moon is like the eye of a Cyclops. And, however
much my face clouds with sombre vanity, or vulgar vengeance, or