nchantment,
like phantoms, barely conscious of ourselves. We had now recovered
proprietorship in our own lives. Work, that had been a curse, was a
blessing. Life, that had gone on maimed feet, was now virile in every
part. This mere fulness of health was in itself ample compensation for
the loss of a hundred artificial pleasures which we had once thought
necessary to existence. We knew that we had found a delight in mere
living which must remain wholly incredible to the tortured hosts that
toil in cities; and we knew also that when at last we came to lie down
with kings and conquerors in the house of sleep, we should carry with
us fairer dreams than they ever knew amid all the tumult of their
triumph.

CHAPTER X

NEIGHBOURSHIP

There is a wonderful passage in _Timon of Athens_ which appears to
express in a few strokes, at once broad and subtle, the picture and the
ideal of a perfect city:

Piety and fear,
Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
Degrees, observances, customs, and laws.

The congregated life of man, many-coloured, intricate, composed of
numerous interwoven interests, was never painted with a higher skill.
The word that is most expressive in this description is
'neighbourhood.' It strikes the note of cities. Uttering it, one is
aware of the pleasant music of bustling streets, greetings in the
market-place, whispered converse in the doorways, gay meetings and
laughter, lighted squares and crowds, the touch of kind hands, evening
meals and festivals, and all the reverberation of man's social voice.
A man may grow sick for such scenes as a sailor grows sick with longing
for the sea. There were times when this sickness came on me, this
nostalgia of streets. It was only by degrees I came to see that
neighbourhood has a significance apart from cities.

The first sensation of the man suddenly exiled from cities is a kind of
bewildering homelessness in Nature. He is confronted with a
spaciousness that knows no limit. He treads among voids. He
experiences an almost unendurable sense of infinity. He can put a
bound to nothing that he sees; it is a relief to the eye to come upon a
wall or a hedge, or any kind of object that implies dimension. There
is something awful in the glee or song of birds; it seems irrational
that with wings so slight they should dare heights so profoun