But on the other hand there is, I am sure, in the hearts of many
quiet people a real love for and delight in the beauty of the
kindly earth, the silent and exquisite changes, the influx and
efflux of life, which we call the seasons, the rich transfiguring
influences of sunrise and sunset, the slow or swift lapse of clear
streams, the march and plunge of sea-billows, the bewildering
beauty and aromatic scents of those delicate toys of God which we
call flowers, the large air and the sun, the star-strewn spaces of
the night.

Those who are fortunate enough to spend their lives in the quiet
country-side have much of this tranquil and unuttered love of
nature; and others again, who are condemned by circumstances to
spend their days in toilsome towns, and yet have the instinct,
derived perhaps from long generations of country forefathers, feel
this beauty, in the short weeks when they are enabled to approach
it, more poignantly still.

FitzGerald tells a story of how he went to see Thomas Carlyle in
London, and sate with him in a room at the top of his house, with a
wide prospect of house-backs and chimney-pots; and how the sage
reviled and vituperated the horrors of city life, and yet left on
FitzGerald's mind the impression that perhaps after all he did not
really wish to leave it.

The fact remains, however, that a love of nature is part of the
panoply of cultivation which at the present time people above a
certain social standing feel bound to assume. Very few ordinary
persons would care to avow that they took no interest in national
politics, in games and sport, in literature, in appreciation of