ed to see the green semicircles of
lawn repeat themselves like a pattern of green moons; for he was not
one to whom repetition was merely monotony. Only in looking over a
particular gate at a particular lawn, he became pleasantly conscious,
or half conscious, of a new note of colour in the greenness; a much
bluer green, which seemed to change to vivid blue, as the object at
which he was gazing moved sharply, turning a small head on a long
neck. It was a peacock. But he had thought of a thousand things
before he thought of the obvious thing. The burning blue of the
plumage on the neck had reminded him of blue fire, and blue fire had
reminded him of some dark fantasy about blue devils, before he had
fully realised even that it was a peacock he was staring at. And the
tail, that trailing tapestry of eyes, had led his wandering wits away
to those dark but divine monsters of the Apocalypse whose eyes were
multiplied like their wings, before he had remembered that a peacock,
even in a more practical sense, was an odd thing to see in so
ordinary a setting.

Yet always to Chesterton the beauty of nature was enhanced by the
work of men, and if in London men had swarmed too closely, it was not
to get away from them but to appreciate them more individually that
he chose the country. Yes, his literary friends would say: in the
real country that is true; the farmer, the labourer, even the village
barber and the village tradesmen are worth knowing, but not suburban
neighbours. Against such discrimination the whole democracy of
Chesterton stood in revolt. All men were valuable, all men were
interesting, the doctor as much as the barber, the clergyman as much
as the farmer. All men were children of God and citizens of the
world. If he had a choice in the matter it was discrimination against
the literary world itself with all the fads that tended to smother
its essential humanity. Nothing would have induced him to
discriminate against the suburban. In the last year of his life he
wrote in the _Autobiography:_ "I have lived in Beaconsfield from the
time when it was almost a village, to the time when, as the enemy
profanely says, it is a suburb."

For the author of _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ this would hardly be
a conclusive argument against any place. We should, he once said,
"regard the important suburbs as ancient cities embedded in a sort of
boiling lava spouted up by that volcano,