The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-26 00:00:00

SAY IT!

THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN LONG-" IN POPULOUS CITY

PENT!"

To men who may be bricked up for nine or ten
months of the year in the streets and closes of a
great city—say, with Goldsmith in Garden Court or
with Johnson in Staple Inn—the story of life
which has been spent in the green woods, on the
open moors, and by the sea-shore in search of rare
or beautiful birds, has on the nerves the freshening
effect of a drive into the country or a plunge into
the sea. We enjoy such a tale like a rouse of wine.
Indeed, this life in the woods or by the sea-shore
seems the point at which reality shakes hands with
romance. Is not Alexander 'Wilson as strange a
figure as Robinson Crusoe ? Are not Audubon's
wanderings on the prairies and savannahs as
delicious as any adventure of the Pathfinder ?
Are not the writings of Yarrell, Maegillivray,
White, and Waterton among the choicest bits of
our mental entertainment, as entrancing to the
young as the best romance of Scott, the keenest
humour of Dickens? In the very name of ae orni-
thologist there is a charm. He is a lonely man,
who loves Nature and has an animal delight in a'r
and colour. With a gun slung on his back, with a
wallet on his thigh, and an inkhorn in his belt,
he sallies forth into the copse, he jumps into his
boat, and for weeks and weeks he may be lost
to the sight of man. 'When he comes back into
the world, it is with rare spoil of knowledge,
won from Nature in her most secret haunts.
No rcof domes in his workroom, which is wide
as the land and open as the sky. His feet are
among the young ferns—his nostrils filled with
the scent of trees and flowers—his eyes are soothed
by the green earth and the blue vault—his ears
lulled with the sighing of leaves or roused by the
whirr of wings. Beauty lies about him at every
step. I❑ almost everything that man does there is
some near limit of scenery. The judge is confined
to his court. The secretary must attend to his
cffice. The journalist is chained to his desk, The
physician sees little beyond his patient and his
brougham. The preacher has but his pulpit and
his Sunday audience. Even in the more stirring
occupations of war and trade, there is an order, a
discipline, a sequence, which in the course of time
palls upon the sense. A 'sailor tires of the sea.
A soldier longs to lay down his sword. A mer-
chant prays for the hour when his ships shall
have come home and ho may take his rest in
peace. But we have heard it said, that a man who
has once become a freeholder of the woods—like
Macgillivray or Gould—who has watched all day
for a grebe by the lonely English tarn, or bagged
his bird of paradise on the coast of New Guinea,
will never tire of his sport so long as he can hold a
gun. The canoe, the fowling-piece, the forest
glade, the hill-top, are to such a man health and
life. He pines in cities. In society he is dreaming
of the loch and the heather ; at his club-room he is
musing of the log-hut in the backwoods or the
camp-fire by the Yarra-Yarra. He is the lion who
has lapped up blood, the Howaojee who has tasted
of the Nile, the poet who has eaten of the insane
root. His life is not es that of other men ; ha is set
apart ; his career is not a profession, but an adven•
thenceum. .