round you, those
perpetual courtships of half a score of young men; it all diverts you.
You are never tired of it; you cannot understand any life outside its
pale. All your days, whether they pass in Paris or Petersburgh, at
Trouville, at Biarritz, or at Vienna or Scheveningen, are modelled on
the same lines; you must have excitement as you have your cup of
chocolate when you wake. What I envy you is that the excitement excites
you. When I was amidst it I was not excited; I was seldom ever diverted.
See the misfortune that it is to be born with a grave nature! I am as
serious as Marcus Antoninus. You will say that it comes of having
learned Latin and Greek. I do not think so; I fear I was born
unamusable. I only truly care about horses and trees, and they are both
grave things, though a horse can be playful enough sometimes when he is
allowed to forget his servitude. Your friends, the famous tailors, send
me admirably-chosen costumes which please that sense in me which Titians
and Vandycks do (I do not mean to be profane); but I only put them on as
the monks do their frocks. Perhaps I am very unworthy of them; at least,
I cannot talk toilette as you can with ardour a whole morning and every
whole morning of your life. You will think I am laughing at you; indeed
I am not. I envy your faculty of sitting, as I am sure you are sitting
now, in a straw chair on the shore, with a group of _boulevardiers_
around you, and a crowd making a double hedge to look at you when it is
your pleasure to pace the planks. My language is involved. I do not envy
you the faculty of doing it, of course; I could do it myself to-morrow.
I envy you the faculty of finding amusement in doing it, and finding
flattery in the double hedge."

* * *

"No doubt a love of nature is a triple armour against self-love. How can
I say how right I think your system with these children? You seem not to
believe me. There is only one thing in which I differ with you; you
think the 'eyes that see' bring content. Surely not! surely not!"

"It depends on what they see. When they are wide open in the woods and
fields, when they have been taught to see how the tree-bee forms her
cell and the mole her fortress, how the warbler builds his nest for his
love and the water-spider makes his little raft, how the leaf comes
forth from the hard stem and the fungi from the rank mould, then I think
that sight is content--content in the simple life of the wood