PREFACE 



How often one may hear people who enjoy command 

 of their own time complain of the dulness of life in 

 the country. Poets, children, lovers, and a few other 

 abnormal individuals, derive constant solace from the 

 seasons ; but modern life in England has been arranged 

 with studied indifference to them. Man slowest 

 among vertebrate animals to attain maturity, yet 

 whose years are but a span compared with those of the 

 oak or lowly lichen man, leaden-footed among beasts, 

 wingless among fowls a poor climber a bad swimmer 

 has shown his discontent with Nature by devising 

 a scheme of civilisation to make him independent of 

 her infinite changefulness. Artificial illuminants have 

 rendered him indifferent to the radiance of rising and 

 setting suns; neither storm nor shine are allowed to 

 interrupt the monotony of counting-house, factory, or 

 mine ; while, strangest of all, fashion has decreed that 

 the fairest half of the year can only be spent in an 

 overgrown, smoky town, built chiefly on swampy 

 ground, lying along a muddy estuary. 



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