nk and aboriginal
taproot of the race. A thousand interests spring up in the process of
the ages, and a thousand perish; that is now an eccentricity or a lost
art which was once the fashion of an empire; and those only are
perennial matters that rouse us to-day, and that roused men in all
epochs of the past. There is a certain critic, not indeed of execution
but of matter, whom I dare be known to set before the best: a certain
low-browed, hairy gentleman, at first a percher in the fork of trees,
next (as they relate) a dweller in caves, and whom I think I see
squatting in cave-mouths, of a pleasant afternoon, to munch his
berries--his wife, that accomplished lady, squatting by his side: his
name I never heard, but he is often described as Probably Arboreal,
which may serve for recognition. Each has his own tree of ancestors, but
at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal; in all our veins there run
some minims of his old, wild, tree-top blood; our civilised nerves still
tingle with his rude terrors and pleasures; and to that which would have
moved our common ancestor, all must obediently thrill.

We have not so far to climb to come to shepherds; and it may be I had
one for an ascendant who has largely moulded me. But yet I think I owe
my taste for that hillside business rather to the art and interest of
John Todd. He it was that made it live for me as the artist can make all
things live. It was through him the simple strategy of massing sheep
upon a snowy evening, with its attendant scampering of earnest, shaggy
aides-de-camp, was an affair that I never wearied of seeing, and that I
never weary of recalling to mind; the shadow of the night darkening on
the hills, inscrutable black blots of snow-shower moving here and there
like night already come, huddles of yellow sheep and dartings of black
dogs upon the snow, a bitter air that took you by the throat, unearthly
harpings of the wind along the moors; and for centre-piece to all these
features and influences, John winding up the brae, keeping his captain's
eye upon all sides, and breaking, ever and again, into a spasm of
bellowing that seemed to make the evening bleaker. It is thus that I
still see him in my mind's eye, perched on a hump of the declivity not
far from Halkerside, his staff in airy flourish, his great voice taking
hold upon the hills and echoing terror to the lowlands; I, meanwhile,
standing somewhat back, until the fit should be over, and, with a pinch
of s