central
features of the race; when once youth has flown, each new impression
only deepens the sense of nationality and the desire of native places.
So may some cadet of Royal Ecossais or the Albany Regiment, as he
mounted guard about French citadels, so may some officer marching his
company of the Scots-Dutch among the polders, have felt the soft rains
of the Hebrides upon his brow, or started in the ranks at the remembered
aroma of peat-smoke. And the rivers of home are dear in particular
to all men. This is as old as Naaman, who was jealous for Abana and
Pharpar; it is confined to no race nor country, for I know one of
Scottish blood but a child of Suffolk, whose fancy still lingers about
the hued lowland waters of that shire.

*****

THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS

We travelled in the print of olden wars;
Yet all the land was green;
And love we found, and peace,
Where fire and war had been.
They pass and smile, the children of the sword--
No more the sword they wield;
And O, how deep the corn
Along the battlefield!

*****

To reckon dangers too curiously, to hearken too intently for the threat
that runs through all the winning music of the world, to hold back the
hand from the rose because of the thorn, and from life because of death:
this it is to be afraid of Pan. Highly respectable citizens who flee
life's pleasures and responsibilities and keep, with upright hat,
upon the midway of custom, avoiding the right hand and the left, the
ecstasies and the agonies, how surprised they would be if they could
hear their attitude mythologically expressed, and knew themselves as
tooth-chattering ones, who flee from Nature because they fear the hand
of Nature's God!

*****

The spice of life is battle; the friendliest relations are still a kind
of contest; and if we would not forego all that is valuable in our lot,
we must continually face some other person, eye to eye, and wrestle a
fall whether in love or enmity. It is still by force of body, or power
of character or intellect, that we attain to worthy pleasures.

*****

Extreme BUSYNESS, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a
symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a
catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a
sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious
of living except in the exercise of some conventi