ON THE OTHER SIDE.— A PLEA FOR SAVAGERY. 199 



•' Such a whim — ver)- ditiicult for one to realise 

 who is so deeply incrusted with civilisation, where 

 the least original it}* is taxed as folly — is continually 

 indulged in by Nature, who laughs at the judgment 

 of fools." 



Or Thoreau — hero of the Walden shant)', with 

 his open-air gospel — all Nature for the asking — to 

 whom a orarden is but Nature debauched, and all Art 

 a sin : " There is in my nature, methinks, a singular 

 yearning towards wildness. . . . We are apt enough 

 to be pleased with such books as Evel}'n's ' SyK'a,' 

 * Acetarium,' and ' Kalendarium Hortense,' but they 

 imply a relaxed ner^e in the reader. Gardening is 

 civil and social, but it wants the vigour and freedom 

 of the forest and the oudaw. , . . It is true there 

 are the innocent pleasures of countrj^-life, ar.i i: is 

 sometimes pleasant to make the earth peld her in- 

 crease, and gather the fruits in their season, but the 

 heroic spirit will not fail to dream of remoter retire- 

 ments and more rugged paths. It will have its gar- 

 den-plots and its parterres elsewhere than on the 

 earth, and gather nuts and berries by the way for its 

 subsistence, or orchard fruits with such heedlessness 

 as berries. We should not be always soothing and 

 trainincr Nature. . . . The Indian's intercourse 

 with Nature is at least such as admits of the great- 

 est independence of each. If he is somewhat of a 

 stranger in her midst, the gardener is too much 

 of a familiar. There is something vulgar and foul 

 in the latter's closeness to his mistress, something 

 noble and cleanlv in the former's distance. . . . 



