desire, the country of Corot. But could we live in the country of
Millet? I confess that I could not have done so without resources in
myself. It required a genuine pleasure in hard physical exercise to
get through the duties of the day, and a genuine interest in literature
to supply the place of those artificial forms of pleasure which relieve
the tedium of towns. I do not know what I should have done without
books in the long winter evenings. Nowhere is a 'city of the mind,'
into which one can retire, so necessary as in the country. There is
also needed an enduring and genuine delight in Nature and outdoor
occupations, which creates its own sunshine under dreary skies. The
mere sentiment of rusticity, created in the townsman's mind by pictures
and novels, soon dissolves before the realities of a genuine country
life. It is Millet, not Corot, who is the most frequent comrade of the
man who looks for months together on the same expanse of fields, and
moves upon the same unchanging round of labour. Therefore it is
necessary to insist that no error could be greater than for a man with
no real aptitude for a solitary life, and no resources of intellectual
pleasure in himself, to attempt such an experiment as mine. He would
weary of it in a month, and would flee, like a child afraid of the
darkness, back to gaslit streets again, with reviling on his lips and
bitter anger in his heart.

It must also be remembered that I did not go into the country with the
intention of deriving my livelihood from the soil. My sources of
income were separate from my mode of life; and although my income was
at the best very small, yet it was sufficient to secure me ease of
mind. I did indeed discover that the expenses of a simple life were
slight, and that these expenses might be kept low by a moderate degree
of industry in rural pursuits, but I never imagined that I could live
altogether by the soil. I may frankly confess that while I believe it
to be perfectly possible for a strong and handy man, accustomed to
agricultural pursuits, to earn a living from the soil, my example has
little to teach in this direction. The cry of 'Back to the Land' will
be meaningless until general ownership in the land is made possible.
It is the burden of rent, often a cruel and unjust rent, that has
driven men from the land. Not far from me at Thornthwaite there
resided a man and his wife who were among the most frugal and
industrious persons I