16 THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE CHAP. 
idyll “ My Winter Garden” tries to persuade 
himself that he was glad he had never 
travelled, “having never yet actually got to 
Paris.” Monotony, he says, “is pleasant in 
itself; morally pleasant, and morally useful. 
Marriage is monotonous; but there is much, 
I trust, to be said in favour of holy wedlock. — 
Living in the same house is monotonous; 
but three removes, say the wise, are as bad 
as a fire. Locomotion is regarded as an evil 
by our Litany. The Litany, as usual, is 
right. ‘Those who travel by land or sea’ are 
to be objects of our pity and our prayers ; 
and I do pity them. I delight in that same 
monotony. It saves curiosity, anxiety, ex- 
citement, disappointment, and a host of bad 
passions.” 
But even as he writes one can see that 
he does not convince himself. Possibly, he 
admits, “ after all, the grapes are sour”; and 
when some years after he did travel, how 
happy he was! At last, he says, trium- 
phantly, “At last we too are crossing the 
Atlantic. At last the dream of forty years, 
please God, would be fulfilled, and I should 
