CHAPTER XXIX 



Arcadia " A Shattered Day- Dream." 



THESE autobiographical reminiscences have 

 necessarily dealt with agriculture and its 

 followers mainly from a practical, in con- 

 tradistinction to a sentimental, standpoint, but 

 I am minded, before I finally part with my subject, 

 to say something about it in its mythical aspect. 



Entirely owing to the imaginative powers of 

 poet and painter, it may be safely averred that 

 no occupation of this life has been so idealized, 

 so steeped in the spirit of romanticism, as the 

 pursuit of agriculture. But those who have in- 

 vested it with so much charm have invariably 

 sought and found their inspiration in a mythical 

 past such as Kingsley visualized though he had 

 the future in his mind when he sang 



" When all the world is young, lad, 



And all the trees are green ; 

 And every goose a swan, lad, 

 And every lass a queen." 



The jocund nymphs and swains, who, untram- 

 melled by any mundane cares or vicissitudes, 

 tilled the soil and tended the flocks and herds 

 in the perpetual sunshine of Arcadia, lived, moved, 

 and had their being in days to which the memory 

 of man reacheth not. It was certainly long 



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