predilections have their source in a purer fountain--the love of Nature
herself. I follow the deer in his tracks, because they lead me into the
wildest solitudes of the forest--I follow the trout in its stream,
because I am guided into still retreats, by the margin of shady pools,
where human foot rarely treads. Once in the haunts of the fish and the
game, my sporting energy dies within me. My rod-spear pierces the turf,
my gun lies neglected by my side, and I yield up my soul to a diviner
dalliance with the beauties of Nature. Oh, I am a rare lover of the
sylvan scene!

And yet, for all this, I freely admit that the first hours spent in a
great city have for me a peculiar fascination. A world of new pleasures
is suddenly placed within reach--a world of luxury opened up. The soul
is charmed with rare joys. Beauty and song, wine and the dance, vary
their allurements. Love, or it may be passion, beguiles you into many
an incident of romantic adventure; for romance may be found within the
walled city. The human heart is its home, and they are but Quixotic
dreamers who fancy that steam and civilisation are antagonistic to the
purest aspirations of poetry. A sophism, indeed, is the chivalry of the
savage. His rags, so picturesque, often cover a shivering form and a
hungry stomach. Soldier though I may claim to be, I prefer the cheering
roll of the busy mill to the thunder of the cannon--I regard the tall
chimney, with its banner of black smoke, a far nobler sight than the
fortress turret with its flouting and fickle flag. I hear sweet music
in the plashing of the paddle-wheel; and in my ears a nobler sound is
the scream of the iron horse than the neigh of the pampered war-steed.
A nation of monkeys may manage the business of gunpowder: they must be
men to control the more powerful element of steam.

These ideas will not suit the puling sentimentalism of the boudoir and
the boarding-school. The Quixotism of the modern time will be angry
with the rough writer who thus rudely lays his hand upon the helm of the
mailed knight, and would deflower it of its glory and glossy plumes. It
is hard to yield up prejudices and preconceptions, however false; and
the writer himself in doing so confesses to the cost of a struggle of no
ordinary violence. It was hard to give up the Homeric illusion, and
believe that Greeks were men, not demigods--hard to recognise in the
organ-man and the opera-singer the descendants of those h