BRITISH FERTILITY. 201 



mestic home-seeking and home-building instinct, than 

 any other city I have yet seen. I felt, and yet feel, 

 its attraction. It is such an aggregate of actual hu- 

 man dwellings that this feeling pervades the very air. 

 All its vast and multiplex industries, and its traffic, 

 seem domestic, like the chores about the household. 

 I used to get glimpses of it from the northwest bor- 

 ders, from Hampstead Heath, and from about High- 

 gate, lying there in the broad, gentle valley of the 

 Thames, like an enormous country village a vil- 

 lage with nearly four million souls, where people find 

 life sweet and wholesome, and keep a rustic freshness 

 of look and sobriety of manner. See their vast 

 parks and pleasure grounds ; see the upper Thames, 

 of a bright Sunday, alive with rowing parties ; see 

 them picnicking in all the country adjacent. Indeed, 

 in summer a social and even festive air broods over 

 the whole vast encampment. There is squalor and 

 misery enough, of course, and too much, but this 

 takes itself away to holes and corners. 



n. 



A FERTILE race, a fertile nature, swarms in these 

 islands. The climate is a kind of prolonged May, and 

 a vernal lustiness and raciness are characteristic of 

 all the prevailing forms. Life is rank and lull. Re- 

 production is easy. There is plenty of sap, plenty 

 of blood. The salt of the sea prickles in the veins ; 



