es that they give to their homes are one long catalogue of romantic
lies. The houses have no gardens, and the only prospect that they
command is the view of over the way. But read their names--The Dingle,
The Elms, Pine Grove, Windermere, The Nook, The Nest. Even social
pretence, which is said to be one of our weaknesses, and which may be
read in such names as Belvoir or Apsley House, is less in evidence than
the Englishman's passion for the country. He cannot bear to think that
he lives in a town. He does not much respect the institutions of a town.
A policeman, before he has been long in the force, has to face the fact
that he is generally regarded as a comic character. The police are
Englishmen and good fellows, and they accept a situation which would
rouse any continental gendarme to heroic indignation. Mayors, Aldermen,
and Justices of the Peace are comic, and take it not quite so well.
Beadles were so wholly dedicated to the purposes of comedy that I
suppose they found their position unendurable and went to earth; at any
rate it is very difficult to catch one in his official costume.

All this is reflected in Shakespeare. He knew the country, and he knew
the town; and he has not left it in doubt which was the cherished home
of his imagination. He preferred the fields to the streets, but the
Arcadia of his choice is not agricultural or even pastoral; it is rather
a desert island, or the uninhabited stretches of wild and woodland
country. Indeed, he has both described it and named it. 'Where will the
old Duke live?' says Oliver in _As You Like It_. 'They say he is already
in the forest of Arden,' says Charles the wrestler, 'and a many merry
men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England.
They say many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the time
carelessly, as they did in the golden world.' That is Shakespeare's
Arcadia; and who that has read _As You Like It_ will deny that it
breathes the air of Paradise?

It is quite plain that the freedom that Shakespeare valued was in fact
freedom, not any of those ingenious mechanisms to which that name has
been applied by political theorists. He thought long and profoundly on
the problems of society; and anarchy has no place among his political
ideals. It is by all means to be avoided--at a cost. But what harm would
anarchy do if it meant no more than freedom for all the impulses of the
enlightened imagination and the tender heart? The ideal