180 
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
like Japanese flowers made of coloured bits of 
tissue paper to the living fragrant flowers that 
bloom to-day and perish to-morrow : they are 
a simulacrum, a mockery, and present to us a pale 
phantasmagoric world, peopled with bloodless men 
and women that chatter meanino^less thingrs and 
laugh without joy. The feeling of unreality effects 
us all at times, but in very difierent degrees. And 
perhaps I was too long a doer, herding too much 
with narrow foreheads, drinking too deeply of the 
sweet and bitter cup, to experience that pure 
unfailing delight in literature which some have. 
Its charm, I fancy, is greatest to those in whom 
the natural man, deprived in early life of its proper 
aliment, grows sickl}^ and pale, and perishes at 
last of inanition. There is ample room then for 
the latter higher growth — the unnatural cultivated 
man. Lovers of literature are accustomed to say 
that they find certain works " helpful " to them ; 
and doubtless, being all intellect, they are right. 
But we, the less highly developed, are compounded 
of two natures, and while this spiritual pabulum 
sustains one, the other and larger nature is 
starved ; for the larger nature is earthly, and 
draws its sustenance from the earth. I must look 
at a leaf, or smell the sod, or touch a rough pebble^ 
or hear some natural sound, if onl}^ the chirp of 
a cricket, or feel the sun or wind or rain on my 
