.The Plains of Patagonia. 225 



when occasion permits. Leigh Hunt wrote an amus- 

 ing paper on the pleasures of going to bed, when the 

 legs, long separated by unnatural cloth ing, delightedly 

 rub against and renew their acquaintance with one 

 another. Everyone knows the feeling. If it were 

 convenient, and custom not so tyrannical, many of us 

 would be glad to follow Benjamin Franklin's example, 

 and rise not to dress, but to settle comfortably down 

 to our morning's work, with nothing on. When, for 

 the first time, in some region where nothing but a fig- 

 leaf has " entered the soul," we see men and women 

 going about naked and unashamed, we experience a 

 slight shock ; but it has more pleasure than pain in 

 it, although we are reluctant to admit the pleasure, 

 probably because we mistake the nature of the feel- 

 ing. If, after seeing them for a few days in their 

 native simplicity, our new friends appear before us 

 clothed, we are shocked again, and this time dis- 

 agreeably so ; it is like seeing those who were free 

 .and joyous yesterday now appear with fettered feet 

 and sullen downcast faces. 



To leave this question; what has truly entered 

 our soul and become psychical is our environment 

 that wild nature in which and to which we were 

 born at an inconceivably remote period, and which 

 made us what we are. It is true that we are emi- 

 nently adaptive, that we have created, and exist in 

 some sort of harmony with new conditions, widely 

 different from those to which we were originally 

 adapted ; but the old harmony was infinitely more 

 perfect than the new, and if there be such a thing 



Q 



