Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers by John Ruskin
page 65 of 120 (54%)
page 65 of 120 (54%)
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horticulture,--and it is only now that I am old, and since pleasant
travelling has become impossible to me, that I am thankful to have the white narcissus in my borders, instead of waiting to walk through the fragrance of the meadows of Clarens; and pleased to see the milkwort blue on my scythe-mown banks, since I cannot gather it any more on the rocks of the Vosges, or in the divine glens of Jura. 2. Among the losses, all the more fatal in being unfelt, brought upon us by the fury and vulgarity of modern life, I count for one of the saddest, the loss of the wish to gather a flower in travelling. The other day,--whether indeed a sign of some dawning of doubt and remorse in the public mind, as to the perfect jubilee of railroad journey, or merely a piece of the common daily flattery on which the power of the British press first depends, I cannot judge;--but, for one or other of such motives, I saw lately in some illustrated paper, a pictorial comparison of old-fashioned and modern travel, representing, as the type of things passed away, the outside passengers of the mail shrinking into huddled and silent distress from the swirl of a winter snowstorm; and for type of the present Elysian dispensation, the inside of a first-class saloon carriage, with a beautiful young lady in the last pattern of Parisian travelling dress, conversing, Daily news in hand, with a young officer--her fortunate vis-à-vis--on the subject of our military successes in Afghanistan and Zululand.[24] 3. I will not, in presenting--it must not be called the other side, but the supplementary, and wilfully omitted, facts, of this ideal,--oppose, as I fairly might, the discomforts of a modern cheap excursion train, to the chariot-and-four, with outriders and courier, of ancient noblesse. I will compare only the actual facts, in the former and in latter years, of my own journey from Paris to Geneva. As matters are now arranged, I find myself, at half past eight in the evening, waiting in a confused crowd with which I |
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