kers and bad poets. The man
who draws in noble joy from the poetic feeling is a true poet, though he
has never written a verse all his life.

My thoughts had flown in this direction, without my perceiving that
my confidence in the capacity of man for education was strengthened by
external influences. I was walking along the edge of a field, which some
peasants were preparing to sow. The space was vast as that in Holbein's
picture; the landscape, too, was vast and framed in a great sweep of
green, slightly reddened by the approach of autumn. Here and there in
the great russet field, slender rivulets of water left in the furrows by
the late rains sparkled in the sunlight like silver threads. The day was
clear and mild, and the soil, freshly cleft by the plowshare, sent up
a light steam. At the other extremity of the field, an old man, whose
broad shoulders and stern face recalled Holbein's plowman, but whose
clothes carried no suggestion of poverty, was gravely driving his plow
of antique shape, drawn by two placid oxen, true patriarchs of the
meadow, tall and rather thin, with pale yellow coats and long, drooping
horns. They were those old workers who, through long habit, have grown
to be _brothers_, as they are called in our country, and who, when one
loses the other, refuse to work with a new comrade, and pine away with
grief. People who are unfamiliar with the country call the love of the
ox for his yoke-fellow a fable. Let them come and see in the corner of
the stable one of these poor beasts, thin and wasted, restlessly lashing
his lean flanks with his tail, violently breathing with mingled terror
and disdain on the food offered him, his eyes always turned toward the
door, scratching with his hoof the empty place at his side, sniffing the
yokes and chains which his fellow used to wear, and incessantly calling
him with melancholy lowings. The ox-herd will say: "There is a pair
of oxen gone;' this one will work no more, for his brother is dead. We
ought to fatten him for the market, but he will not eat, and will soon
starve himself to death." The old laborer worked slowly, silently, and
without waste of effort His docile team were in no greater haste than
he; but, thanks to the undistracted steadiness of his toil and the
judicious expenditure of his strength, his furrow was as soon plowed as
that of his son, who was driving, at some distance from him, four less
vigorous oxen through a more stubborn and stony piece of g