I have always maintained, quite seriously,
that the Lord is not in the wind or thunder of the waste,
but if anywhere in the still small voice of Fleet Street.
I sincerely maintain that Nature-worship is more morally dangerous
than the most vulgar man-worship of the cities; since it can
easily be perverted into the worship of an impersonal mystery,
carelessness, or cruelty. Thoreau would have been a jollier fellow
if he had devoted himself to a greengrocer instead of to greens.
Swinburne would have been a better moralist if he had worshipped
a fishmonger instead of worshipping the sea. I prefer the
philosophy of bricks and mortar to the philosophy of turnips.
To call a man a turnip may be playful, but is seldom respectful.
But when we wish to pay emphatic honour to a man, to praise
the firmness of his nature, the squareness of his conduct,
the strong humility with which he is interlocked with his equals
in silent mutual support, then we invoke the nobler Cockney metaphor,
and call him a brick.
But, despite all these theories, I have surrendered; I have struck
my colours at sight; at a mere glimpse through the opening of a hedge.
I shall come down to living in the country, like any common Socialist
or Simple Lifer. I shall end my days in a village, in the character
of the Village Idiot, and be a spectacle and a judgment to mankind.
I have already learnt the rustic manner of leaning upon a gate;
and I was thus gymnastically occupied at the moment when my eye caught
the house that was made for me.
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