162 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



any more than upon the red deer that roam in the 

 forest behind his camp. The negroes have their fetich, 

 every nation its idols ; the gipsy alone has none — not 

 even a superstitious observance ; they have no idolatry 

 of the Past, neither have they the exalted thought of the 

 Present. It is very strange that it should be so at this 

 the height of our civilisation, and you might go many 

 thousand miles and search from Africa to Australia 

 before you would find another people without a Deity. 

 That can only be seen under an English sky, under 

 English oaks and beeches. 



Are they the oldest race on earth ? and have they 

 worn out all the gods ? Have they worn out all the 

 hopes and fears of the human heart in tens of thousands 

 of years, and do they merely live, acquiescent to fate ? 

 For some have thought to trace in the older races an 

 apathy as with the Chinese, a religion of moral maxims 

 and some few joss-house superstitions, which they them- 

 selves full well know to be nought, worshipping their 

 ancestors, but with no vital living force, like that which 

 drove Mohammed's bands to zealous fury, like that 

 which sent our own Puritans over the sea in ths 

 Mayflower. No living faith. So old, so very, very old, 

 older than the Chinese, older than the Copts of Egypt, 

 older than the Aztecs ; back to those dim Sanskrit times 

 that seem like the clouds on the far horizon of human 

 experience, where space and chaos begin to take shape, 

 though but of vapour. So old, they went through 

 civilisation ten thousand years since ; they have worn it 

 all out, even hope in the future ; they merely live 

 acquiescent to fate, like the red deer. The crescent 

 moon, the evening star, the clatter of the fern-owl, the 

 red embers of the wood fire, the pungent smoke blown 

 round about by the occasional puffs of wind, the 

 shadowy trees, the sound of the horses cropping the 



