They spoke, proclaiming themselves human; but their clothes, their twisted bodies, and their gnarled, grey, bare feet, seemed to be the original material from which some power had adventured to carve their desperate faces, and then desisted in alarm, lest it should make a gnome. They might seem to have newly risen out of the soil, with all its lugubrious dishonours about them, and in an elder world might have commanded the reverence of simple men, as Chthonian apparitions. I have seen dead pollard-willows like them, and rocks out of which the sea has wrought figures more humane. “Pedestalled haply in a palace court,” they would have amazed the curious and confounded the wise; drinking beer at “The Pilgrim’s Chair,” they happened to agree with Philip’s “idea of a wild man,” which he had treasured on a dusty Platonic shelf of his mind for fifty years. The _urpflanze_ found at last could not bring a finer joy to a botanist than they to him. His mind wandered about his discovery. “These great men”--he said--“are the victims of a community that permits nobody to break its own law, and is indignant that a poacher or a thief should claim the foregone privilege. On these men falls the duty of keeping up the capacity of our race for breaking law--a natural capacity. I should like to see--fill the pot, landlord--something like the American arbor-day established in this fine country. On that day men should plant, not a tree, but a wild emotion. Not all of us, alas! could find one to plant. But such a wild man’s day would be a noble opportunity for the divine instincts that are now relieved or ill-fed by politics, fiction, religious reform, and so on. I am for a more than Stuart, indulgent, anti-parliament government on one day, when the policeman should clink tankards with the tramp, as if he too were a man. See here!”--he mildly concluded, exposing the unwilling palm of the nearest tramp,--“this good fellow is so appreciative that he has taken my coppers and left the silver in my purse.” Ordering the landlord to fill tankards all round--“for this gentleman,” he said, pointing to the pickpocket--he soon made the whole party harmonious, eloquent, and gay. He spoke few words. His Virgil lay open still. Now and then his random speech or a laugh at a bad jest floated joyously--like lemons in a punch-bowl--over the company. Every one astonished every one with shrewd or witty things. Not a man but thought himself almost as fine a fellow as Philip Amberley. Not a man but on leaving him was a little abashed as he took a last glance at my friend, and saw what manner of man he was.