He proposed now to resume his former life of sojourn in tents and desultory practice of the arts, a life which, as it was at once highly practical and entirely dependent upon enjoyment, we may call one of contemplative activity. For twenty years he had not lived in a house, slept in a bed, or owned anything beyond the barest necessities. (The only thing he had, indeed, found himself owning, had at last removed itself.) He had been by turns poet, painter-in-water-colours, tinker, botaniser, antinomian, and anarchist; and attributed his success in all these busy walks to the fact that he was as strongly averse to the possession of property as he was incapable of getting any. Here, then, was his capital, with which to commence the world again. With this at his back, you would have said, he had but to pack his knapsack, stow his tent, and take to the road. But that was not so. He had, with the purest intentions, broken all the laws of Society. Entitled to a competence, he had had neither house nor gear, earned just so much as would keep him in food. He knew what it was to go without a dinner, and what to sleep under the stars. Yet he had been extraordinarily happy. He had held up his head, and kept it, alike with the learned--for he had learning--and with the simple, whose simplicity he shared. He had had the knack, in fact, of getting himself accepted on his own terms, exorbitant as they were; and of both rich and poor alike he had demanded entire equality. “Barefoot I stand,” had been his proposition, “of level inches with your lordship, or with you, my hedgerow acquaintance. Take me for a man, decently furnished within, or take me not at all. Take me never, at least, for a clothes-horse.” In all these things, which he had proclaimed far and wide, in divers tongues, all of them eloquent, he had violated the unwritten laws of our country as great and small know them to be. Chiefest he broke them in being happy. That was outrageous. But he was now, it seemed, confronted with a Law of Nature when he found that, having broken with a way of life, you cannot resume it, not because it isn't there (for there it is), but rather because you are not there yourself. You are elsewhere, and the road is hard to find. At forty-two you are not the mountaineer of thirty-five. Worse than that, worst sign of all, you don't want to be. Here was a shock for the poet in him, which it was the philosopher's task to allay. In heated debate the two contended for his reasonable soul. _Poet_. I am young. _Philosopher_. You put it so. You are forty-two, and as old as you feel. _Poet_. Away with you. I am young, I tell you. There are worlds to see. _Philosopher_. Europe, Asia, Africa-- _Poet_. Alas! I have never been to Tibet.