Is there no egotism, ministering to his dignity, that man, having the law
of the organism of the world written in his members, can take with him,
out of the room that has been built to accord with him, into the
landscape that stands only a little further away? He has deliberately
made the smoking chair and the table; there is nothing to surprise him in
their ministrations. But what profounder homage is rendered by the
multitudinous Nature going about the interests and the business of which
he knows so little, and yet throughout confessing him! His eyes have
seen her and his ears have heard, but it would never have entered into
his heart to conceive her. His is not the fancy that could have achieved
these woods, this little flush of summer from the innumerable flowering
of grasses, the cyclic recreation of seasons. And yet he knows that he
is imposed upon all he sees. His stature gives laws. His labour only is
needful--not a greater strength. And the sun and the showers are made
sufficient for him. His furniture must surely be adjudged to pay him but
a coarse flattery in comparison with the subjection, yet the aloofness,
of all this wild world. This is no flattery. The grass is lumpy, as Mr.
Oscar Wilde remarks with truth: Nature is not man's lacquey, and has no
preoccupation about his more commonplace comforts. These he gives
himself indoors; and who prizes, with any self-respect, the things
carefully provided by self-love? But when that _farouche_ Nature, who
has never spoken to him, and to whom he has never had the opportunity of
hinting his wishes or his tastes--when she reveals the suggestions of his
form and the desire of his eyes, and amongst her numberless purposes lets
him surprise in her the purpose to accord with him, and lets him suspect
further harmonies which he has not yet learnt to understand--then man
becomes conscious of having received a token from her lowliness, and a
favour from her loveliness, compared with which the care wherewith his
tailor himself has fitted him might leave his gratitude cool.