ON THE OTHER SIDE. A PLEA FOR SAVAGERY. 195 



What wonder that a land where Nature has thus 

 succumbed wholesale to culture, should exasperate 

 the man who has earned a right to be morbid, or 

 that he should cry aloud in his despair, " I am tired 

 of civilised Europe, and I want to see a wild country 

 if I can." Too many are our spots renowned for 

 beauty, our smiling champaigns of flower and fruit. 

 For " Fair prospects wed happily with fair times ; 

 but, alas, if times be not fair ! " Hence the comfort 

 of oppressive surroundings over-sadly tinged, to men 

 who suffer from the mockery of a place that is too 

 smiling ! Hence the glory of a waste like Egdon to 

 Mr Hardy! ("The Return of the Native," pp. 4, 5). 

 For Egdon Heath, " Haggard Egdon appealed to a 

 subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt 

 emotion than that which responds to the sort of 

 beauty called charming and fair. Indeed, it is a 

 question if the exclusive reign of this orthodox beauty 

 is not approaching its last quarter. The new Vale 

 of Tempe may be a gaunt waste in Thule ; human 

 souls may find themselves in closer and closer 

 harmony with external things wearing a sombre- 

 ness distasteful to our race when it was young. 

 The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, 

 when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, or 

 a mountain will be all of Nature that is absolutely 

 in keeping with the moods of the more thinking 

 of mankind. And ultimately, to the commonest 

 tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the 

 vineyards and myrtle-gardens of South Europe are 

 to him now; and Heidelberg and Baden be passed 



N 2 



