g and unhealthy
about the atmosphere, and one turns with relief to the vagabondage of men
like Whitman, who are "enamoured of growth out of doors."

Of profounder interest is the Russian Vagabond. In Russian Literature
the Vagabond seems to be the rule, not the exception.

Every great Russian writer has more or less of the Vagabond about him.
Tolstoy, it is true, wears the robe of the Moralist, and Tolstoy the
Ascetic cries down Tolstoy the Artist. But I always feel that the most
enduring part of Tolstoy's work is the work of the Vagabond temperament
that lurks beneath the stern preacher. Political and social exigencies
have driven him to take up a position which is certainly not in harmony
with many traits in his nature.

In the case of Gorky, of course, we have the Vagabond naked and
unashamed. His novels are fervent defences of the Vagabond. What could
be franker than this?--"I was born outside society, and for that reason I
cannot take in a strong dose of its culture, without soon feeling forced
to get outside it again, to wipe away the infinite complications, the
sickly refinements, of that kind of existence. I like either to go about
in the meanest streets of towns, because, though everything there is
dirty, it is all simple and sincere; or else to wander about in the high
roads and across the fields, because that is always interesting; it
refreshes one morally, and needs no more than a pair of good legs to
carry one." Racial differences mark off in many ways the Russian
Vagabond from his English brother; a strange fatalism, a fierce
melancholy, and a nature of greater emotional intensity; but in the
passage quoted how much in common they have also.

V

There were literary Vagabonds in England before the nineteenth century.
Many interesting and picturesque figures--Marlowe's, for instance--arrest
the attention of the student, and to some extent the characteristics
noted may be traced in these. But every century, no less than every
country, has its psychological atmosphere, and the modern literary
Vagabond is quite a distinctive individual. Some I know are inclined to
regard Goldsmith as one of the Vagabond band; but, although a charming
Vagabond in many ways, he did not express his Vagabondage in his
writings. The spirit of his time was not conducive to Vagabond
literature. The spirit of the succeeding age especially favoured the
Vagabond strain.

The Gothic Revival, and the newly-awakened