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 unnaturalclothing, delightedly 
rub against and renew their acquaintance with one 
another. Hveryone 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 buta 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 
