A RETURN TO NATURE 89 



dust, humiliated, all their rusticity ravished though not 

 forgotten. The very sky, lofty, blue, white-clouded, was 

 parched, the blue and the white being soiled by a hot, 

 yellowish-grey scum that harmonizes with gritty pave- 

 ments and stark towers and spires. The fairest thing to 

 be seen away from the river was the intense young 

 green of the grass-blades trying to grow up through the 

 gratings which surround the trees of the streets. The 

 grass was a prophet muttering wild, ambiguous things, 

 and since his voice was very small and came from under- 

 ground, it was hard to hear him, even without understand- 

 ing. Thousands tread down the grass, so that except for 

 a few hours at night it can never emerge from the grating. 



Some vast machinery plunged and thundered behind 

 the walls, but though they trembled and grew hot, it 

 burst not through. Even so the multitude in the streets, 

 of men and horses and machines and carriages of all kinds, 

 roared and moved swiftly and continuously, encaged within 

 walls that are invisible; and they also never burst through. 

 Both are free to do what they are told. All of the crowd 

 seem a little more securely imprisoned than him who 

 watches, because he is aware of his bars; but they move 

 on, or seem to do, on and on, round and round, as 

 thoughtless as the belt of an engine. 



There was not one face I knew; not one smiled; not 

 one relaxed or contracted with a thought, an emotion, a 

 fancy; but all were clear, hard, and fixed in a vice, so 

 that though they were infinite in their variety no two 

 eyebrows set the same way, no two mouths in the same 

 relation to the eyes the variety seemed the product of a 

 senseless ingenuity and immense leisure, as of a sublime 



