d only to
conquer Nature, find out her secrets, make her our obedient slave, then
the Earth would be Eden, and every man Adam and every woman Eve. We are
still marching bravely on, conquering Nature, but how weary and sad
we are getting! The old joy in life and gaiety of heart have vanished,
though we do sometimes pause for a few moments in our long forced march
to watch the labours of some pale mechanician, seeking after perpetual
motion, and indulge in a little, dry, cackling laugh at his expense."
And again: "For here the religion that languishes in crowded cities or
steals shamefaced to hide itself in dim churches flourishes greatly,
filling the soul with a solemn joy. Face to face with Nature on the vast
hills at eventide, who does not feel himself near to the Unseen?

"Out of his heart God shall not pass
His image stamped is on every grass."

All Hudson's books breathe this spirit of revolt against our new
enslavement by towns and machinery, and are true oases in an age so
dreadfully resigned to the "pale mechanician."

But Hudson is not, as Tolstoi was, a conscious prophet; his spirit is
freer, more willful, whimsical--almost perverse--and far more steeped in
love of beauty. If you called him a prophet he would stamp his foot
at you--as he will at me if he reads these words; but his voice is
prophetic, for all that, crying in a wilderness, out of which, at the
call, will spring up roses here and there, and the sweet-smelling grass.
I would that every man, woman, and child in England were made to read
him; and I would that you in America would take him to heart. He is a
tonic, a deep refreshing drink, with a strange and wonderful flavour; he
is a mine of new interests, and ways of thought instinctively right. As
a simple narrator he is well-nigh unsurpassed; as a stylist he has
few, if any, living equals. And in all his work there is an indefinable
freedom from any thought of after-benefit--even from the desire that we
should read him. He puts down what he sees and feels, out of sheer love
of the thing seen, and the emotion felt; the smell of the lamp has not
touched a single page that he ever wrote. That alone is a marvel to us
who know that to write well, even to write clearly, is a wound business,
long to learn, hard to learn, and no gift of the angels. Style should
not obtrude between a writer and his reader; it should be servant, not
master. To use words so true and simple that they oppose no obstacl