have on them the dew of man's morning; they lie near, not so much
to us, the semi-artificial flowerets, as to the trunk and
aboriginal taproot of the race. A thousand interests spring up in
the process of the ages, and a thousand perish; that is now an
eccentricity or a lost art which was once the fashion of an empire;
and those only are perennial matters that rouse us to-day, and that
roused men in all epochs of the past. There is a certain critic,
not indeed of execution but of matter, whom I dare be known to set
before the best: a certain low-browed, hairy gentleman, at first a
percher in the fork of trees, next (as they relate) a dweller in
caves, and whom I think I see squatting in cave-mouths, of a
pleasant afternoon, to munch his berries - his wife, that
accomplished lady, squatting by his side: his name I never heard,
but he is often described as Probably Arboreal, which may serve for
recognition. Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of
all sits Probably Arboreal; in all our veins there run some minims
of his old, wild, tree-top blood; our civilised nerves still tingle
with his rude terrors and pleasures; and to that which would have
moved our common ancestor, all must obediently thrill.

We have not so far to climb to come to shepherds; and it may be I
had one for an ascendant who has largely moulded me. But yet I
think I owe my taste for that hillside business rather to the art
and interest of John Todd. He it was that made it live for me, as
the artist can make all things live. It was through him the simple
strategy of massing sheep upon a snowy evening, with its attendant
scampering of earnest, shaggy aides-de-champ, was an affair that I
never wearied of seeing, and that I never weary of recalling to
mind: the shadow of the night darkening on the hills, inscrutable
black blots of snow shower moving here and there like night already