“Not at home, though it is his holidays. He is now fifteen, and he and a school friend of his are travelling on foot into Cornwall. Nothing, I think, fits boys better for life than those hardy excursions in which they must depend on themselves, shift for themselves, think for themselves.” “I daresay you are right,” said Tracey; “the earlier each of us human beings forms himself into an individual God’s creature, distinct from the _servum pecus_, the better chance he has of acquiring originality of mind and dignity of character. And your other children?” “Oh, my two younger boys I teach at home, and one little girl—I play with.” Here addressing me, Gray asked “If I farmed?” “Yes,” said I, “but very much as _les Rois Fainéants_ reigned. My bailiff is my _Maire du Palais_. I hope, therefore, that our friend Sir Percival will not wound my feelings as a lover of Nature by accusing me of wooing her for the sake of her turnips.” “Ah!” said Gray, smiling, “Sir Percival, I know, holds to the doctrine that the only pure love of Nature is the æsthetic; and looks upon the intimate connection which the husbandman forms with her as a cold-blooded _mariage de convenance_.” “I confess,” answered Percival, “that I agree with the great German philosopher, that the love of Nature is pure in proportion as the delight in her companionship is unmixed with any idea of the gain she can give us. But a pure love may be a very sterile affection; and a _mariage de convenance_ may be prolific in very fine offspring. I concede to you, therefore, that the world is bettered by the practical uses to which Nature has been put by those who wooed her for the sake of her dower: and I no more commend to the imitation of others my abstract æsthetic affection for her abstract æsthetic beauty, than I would commend Petrarch’s poetical passion for Laura to the general adoption of lovers. I give you, then, gentlemen farmers, full permission to woo Nature for the sake of her turnips. Our mutton is all the better for it.”