independence. How much money do we need to secure independence? That
must depend on the nature of our wants. Becky Sharp thought that
virtue might be possible on 5000 pounds a year; and, apart from the
question of whether money has anything to do with virtue at all, it is
obvious that she put her figure absurdly high. Most of us put the
figure at which independence may be purchased too high. If our idea of
independence is the possession of an income that allows extravagance,
if life would be intolerable to us without the gratification of many
artificial wants, if our notion of a lodge in the wilderness is the

Cottage, with a double coach-house,
The pride that apes humility,

at which Coleridge sneered, then only a very few of us can ever hope
for our emancipation. The first step toward independence is the
limitation of our wants. We must be fed, clothed, and lodged in such a
way that a self-respecting life is possible to us; when we have
ascertained the figure at which this ideal can be realised, we have
ascertained the price of independence.

My experiment I regard as successful, but there are two features in it
which diminish its general application. One is that I took with me
into my solitude certain tastes and aptitudes, which I may claim
without the least egoism to be not altogether common. I had an intense
love of Nature, a delight in physical exertion, and a vital interest in
literature. I was thus provided with resources in myself. It would be
the height of folly for a person wholly destitute of these aptitudes to
venture upon such a life as mine. He would find the country
unutterably wearisome, its pursuits a detestable form of drudgery, and
the unoccupied hours of his life tedious beyond expression.

In reconsidering what I have written I perceive that unconsciously I
have chronicled only the pleasant episodes of my existence. There is
another picture that might be painted of mountains clothed in cloud,
roads deep in mire, work done under drenching rains, early darkness,
lack of neighbourship, isolation and monotony, a life separated by
continents of silence from all the eager movement of the world. There
are two pictures of the country, equally true; the country of Corot,
idyllic, lovely, full of soft light and graceful form; the country of
Millet, austere, harsh, bleak, impressive only by a certain gravity and
grand severity. We all imagine that we could live in, and we all