to
be derived by men from the sight of nature, or the sense of art, is
forbidden forever, 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 laborer 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
seedtime which cannot be recalled, harvest which cannot be hastened, and
winter in which no man can work, compel the impatiences and coveting of
his heart into labor too submissive to be anxious, and rest too sweet to
be wanton. What thought can enough comprehend the contrast between such
life, and that in streets where summer and winter are only alternations
of heat and cold; where snow never fell white, nor sunshine clear; where
the ground is only a pavement, and the sky no more than the glass roof
of an arcade; where the utmost power of a storm is to choke the gutters,
and the finest magic of spring, to change mud into dust: where--chief
and most fatal difference in state--there is no interest of occupation
for any of the inhabitants but the routine of counter or desk within
doors, and the effort to pass each other without collision outside; so
that from morning to evening the only possible variation of the monotony
of the hours, and lightening of the penalty of existence, must be some
kind of mischief, limited, unless by more than ordinary godsend of
fatality, to the fall of a horse, or the slitting of a pocket?

8. I said that under these laws of inanition, the craving of the human
heart for some kind of excitement could be supplied from _one_ source
only. It might have been thought by any other than a sternly tentative
philosopher, that the denial of their natural food to human fee