aw of healthy existence
into question with them, and every alleged method of help and hope into
doubt. Indignation, without any calming faith in justice, and
self-contempt, without any curative self-reproach, dull the
intelligence, and degrade the conscience, into sullen incredulity of all
sunshine outside the dunghill, or breeze beyond the wafting of its
impurity; and at last a philosophy develops itself, partly satiric,
partly consolatory, concerned only with the regenerative vigour of
manure, and the necessary obscurities of fimetic Providence; showing how
everybody's fault is somebody else's, how infection has no law,
digestion no will, and profitable dirt no dishonour.

And thus an elaborate and ingenious scholasticism, in what may be called
the Divinity of Decomposition, has established itself in connection with
the more recent forms of romance, giving them at once a complacent tone
of clerical dignity, and an agreeable dash of heretical impudence; while
the inculcated doctrine has the double advantage of needing no laborious
scholarship for its foundation, and no painful self-denial for its
practice.

III. The monotony of life in the central streets of any great modern
city, but especially in those of London, where every emotion intended to
be derived by men from the sight of nature, or the sense of art, is
forbidden for ever, leaves the craving of the heart for a sincere, yet
changeful, interest, to be fed from one source only. Under natural
conditions the degree of mental excitement necessary to bodily health is
provided by the course of the seasons, and the various skill and fortune
of agriculture. In the country every morning of the year brings with it
a new aspect of springing or fading nature; a new duty to be fulfilled
upon earth, and a new promise or warning in heaven. No day is without
its innocent hope, its special prudence, its kindly gift, and its
sublime danger; and in every process of wise husbandry, and every
effort of contending or remedial courage, the wholesome passions, pride,
and bodily power of the labourer are excited and exerted in happiest
unison. The companionship of domestic, the care of serviceable, animals,
soften and enlarge his life with lowly charities, and discipline him in
familiar wisdoms and unboastful fortitudes; while the divine laws of
seed-time which cannot be recalled, harvest which cannot be hastened,
and winter in which no man can work, compel the impatiences and covetin