200 



AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



Wordsworthian feeling for Nature, because French lit- 

 erature does not show this sense or this kind of per- 

 ception. I am inclined to think the forest is congenial 

 to their love of form and their sharp perceptions, but 

 more especially to that kind of fear and wildness which 

 they at times exhibit ; for civilization has not quenched 

 the primitive ardor and fierceness of the Frenchman 

 yet, and it is to be hoped it never may. He is still 

 more than half a wild man, and, if turned loose in the 

 woods, I think would develop, in tooth and nail, and 

 in all the savage, brute instincts, more rapidly than the 

 men of any other race, except possibly the Slavic. 

 Have not his descendants in this country — the Cana- 

 dian French — turned and lived with the Indians, and 

 taken to wild, savage customs with more relish and 

 genius than have any other people ? How hairy and 

 vehement and pantomimic he is ! How his eyes'glance 

 from under his heavy brows ! His type among the 

 animals is the wolf, and one readily recalls how largely 

 the wolf figures in the traditions and legends and folk- 

 lore of Continental Europe, and how closely his re- 

 mains are associated with those of man in the bone- 

 caves of the geologists. He has not stalked through 

 their forests and fascinated their imaginations so long 

 for nothing. The she-wolf suckled other founders 

 beside those of Rome. Especially when I read of the 

 adventures of Russian and Polish exiles in Siberia — 

 men of aristocratic lineage, wandering amid snow and 

 arctic cold, sleeping in rocks or in hollow trees, and 



