250 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



those days and nights of camping out, are just the things 

 I am gladdest of, the most real and the most cherished " 

 (A.G. pp. 82-3). It was the same in New Zealand, where 

 the very occupations of the station were wrought into 

 materials for happiness. Lady Barker tells of an ex- 

 pedition after wild cattle in the Kowai bush that con- 

 sumed three days — " three long, happy days," she calls 

 them. And years afterwards she speaks of " those 

 delicious wild days," when she was the wife of a Can- 

 terbury runholder (S.L. ; S.A. p. 79). We are reminded 

 of Hawthorne's " wild, free days on the Assabeth" in 

 the company of Ellery Channing. 



Just so did the Patriarchal Age lay " an invincible 

 spell " on the imagination of the Hebrews, so that a large 

 section of the people yearned ever to revert to it ; and 

 Renan explains their religious evolution as a reversion, 

 under the influence of the prophets, from the worship 

 of a stern and terrible Jahveh to a genial adoration of 

 the more kindly Elohim. Just so did the New Eng- 

 landers of North America look back on the early days 

 of colonisation, though their trials must then have been 

 hardest ; and just so do the Canadians of the present 

 look back on the contented and happy life led by a past 

 generation in the eastern provinces. 



The mood is not entirely an illusion. Those days 

 were happy days, when care pressed lightly on the brow, 

 and life was bright and free, and simple pleasures 

 abounded. It was an idyllic existence, such as was led 

 " in the days of ignorance," in Arabia, or — 



" Where shepherds still their songs repeat. 

 And breaks the blue Sicilian sea." 



It was well to taste once of such bliss as made the 

 Garden of Eden credible. Even now the dreamer, re- 

 turning to a station whereon his youth has been spent, 

 may recall days when " the blood ran riot in the veins," 

 and " the dullest felt vague strivings which he could not 

 resolve into words, dim visions of holier things." Then 

 the autumn mornings were for riding through the timber 



