ell
as social circumstance, was unfavourable to all the graces of life. And
now one can only watch the encroachment of his rule upon that old, that
true England whose strength and virtue were so differently manifested.
This fair broad land of the lovely villages signifies little save to the
antiquary, the poet, the painter. Vainly, indeed, should I show its
beauty and its peace to the observant foreigner; he would but smile, and,
with a glance at the traction-engine just coming along the road, indicate
the direction of his thoughts.

XV.

Nothing in all Homer pleases me more than the bedstead of Odysseus. I
have tried to turn the passage describing it into English verse, thus:--

Here in my garth a goodly olive grew;
Thick was the noble leafage of its prime,
And like a carven column rose the trunk.
This tree about I built my chamber walls,
Laying great stone on stone, and roofed them well,
And in the portal set a comely door,
Stout-hinged and tightly closing. Then with axe
I lopped the leafy olive's branching head,
And hewed the bole to four-square shapeliness,
And smoothed it, craftsmanlike, and grooved and pierced,
Making the rooted timber, where it grew,
A corner of my couch. Labouring on,
I fashioned all the bed-frame; which complete,
The wood I overlaid with shining gear
Of gold, of silver, and of ivory.
And last, between the endlong beams I stretched
Stout thongs of ox-hide, dipped in purple dye.

_Odyssey_, xxiii. 190-201.

Did anyone ever imitate the admirable precedent? Were I a young man, and
an owner of land, assuredly I would do so. Choose some goodly tree,
straight-soaring; cut away head and branches; leave just the clean trunk
and build your house about it in such manner that the top of the rooted
timber rises a couple of feet above your bedroom floor. The trunk need
not be manifest in the lower part of the house, but I should prefer to
have it so; I am a tree-worshipper; it should be as the visible presence
of a household god. And how could one more nobly symbolize the
sacredness of Home? There can be no home without the sense of
permanence, and without home there is no civilization--as England will
discover when the greater part of her population have become
flat-inhabiting nomads. In some ideal commonwealth, one can imagine the
Odyssean bed a normal institution, every head of a household, cottager or
lord (for the commonwe