Through ages in which the most arrogant and elaborate ideals of power
and civilization held otherwise undisputed sway, the ideal of the
perfect and healthy peasant did undoubtedly represent in some shape or
form the conception that there was a dignity in simplicity and a dignity
in labour. It was good for the ancient aristocrat, even if he could not
attain to innocence and the wisdom of the earth, to believe that these
things were the secrets of the priesthood of the poor. It was good for
him to believe that even if heaven was not above him, heaven was below
him. It was well that he should have amid all his flamboyant triumphs
the never-extinguished sentiment that there was something better than
his triumphs, the conception that 'there remaineth a rest.'

The conception of the Ideal Shepherd seems absurd to our modern ideas.
But, after all, it was perhaps the only trade of the democracy which was
equalized with the trades of the aristocracy even by the aristocracy
itself. The shepherd of pastoral poetry was, without doubt, very
different from the shepherd of actual fact. Where one innocently piped
to his lambs, the other innocently swore at them; and their divergence
in intellect and personal cleanliness was immense. But the difference
between the ideal shepherd who danced with Amaryllis and the real
shepherd who thrashed her is not a scrap greater than the difference
between the ideal soldier who dies to capture the colours and the real
soldier who lives to clean his accoutrements, between the ideal priest
who is everlastingly by someone's bed and the real priest who is as glad
as anyone else to get to his own. There are ideal conceptions and real
men in every calling; yet there are few who object to the ideal
conceptions, and not many, after all, who object to the real men.

The fact, then, is this: So far from resenting the existence in art and
literature of an ideal shepherd, I genuinely regret that the shepherd is