I left the inn in rather a turbid humour. Moving homeward by a new way,
I presently found myself on the side of a little valley, in which lay a
farm and an orchard. The apple trees were in full bloom, and, as I stood
gazing, the sun, which had all that day been niggard of its beams, burst
forth gloriously. For what I then saw, I have no words; I can but dream
of the still loveliness of that blossomed valley. Near me, a bee was
humming; not far away, a cuckoo called; from the pasture of the farm
below came a bleating of lambs.



XVI.


I am no friend of the people. As a force, by which the tenor of the time
is conditioned, they inspire me with distrust, with fear; as a visible
multitude, they make me shrink aloof, and often move me to abhorrence.
For the greater part of my life, the people signified to me the London
crowd, and no phrase of temperate meaning would utter my thoughts of them
under that aspect. The people as country-folk are little known to me;
such glimpses as I have had of them do not invite to nearer acquaintance.
Every instinct of my being is anti-democratic, and I dread to think of
what our England may become when Demos rules irresistibly.

Right or wrong, this is my temper. But he who should argue from it that
I am intolerant of all persons belonging to a lower social rank than my
own would go far astray. Nothing is more rooted in my mind than the vast
distinction between the individual and the class. Take a man by himself,
and there is generally some reason to be found in him, some disposition
for good; mass him with his fellows in the social organism, and ten to