I know but one writer whose pen would have been able worthily to set forth the delights of the first few days at Bodyfauld--Jean Paul. Nor would he have disdained to make the gladness of a country school-boy the theme of that pen. Indeed, often has he done so. If the writer has any higher purpose than the amusement of other boys, he will find the life of a country boy richer for his ends than that of a town boy. For example, he has a deeper sense of the marvel of Nature, a tenderer feeling of her feminality. I do not mean that the other cannot develop this sense, but it is generally feeble, and there is consequently less chance of its surviving. As far as my experience goes, town girls and country boys love Nature most. I have known town girls love her as passionately as country boys. Town boys have too many books and pictures. They see Nature in mirrors--invaluable privilege after they know herself, not before. They have greater opportunity of observing human nature; but here also the books are too many and various. They are cleverer than country boys, but they are less profound; their observation may be quicker; their perception is shallower. They know better what to do on an emergency; they know worse how to order their ways. Of course, in this, as in a thousand other matters, Nature will burst out laughing in the face of the would-be philosopher, and bringing forward her town boy, will say, 'Look here!' For the town boys are Nature's boys after all, at least so long as doctrines of self-preservation and ambition have not turned them from children of the kingdom into dirt-worms. But I must stop, for I am getting up to the neck in a bog of discrimination. As if I did not know the nobility of some townspeople, compared with the worldliness of some country folk. I give it up. We are all good and all bad. God mend all. Nothing will do for Jew or Gentile, Frenchman or Englishman, Negro or Circassian, town boy or country boy, but the kingdom of heaven which is within him, and must come thence to the outside of him. To a boy like Robert the changes of every day, from country to town with the gay morning, from town to country with the sober evening--for country as Rothieden might be to Edinburgh, much more was Bodyfauld country to Rothieden--were a source of boundless delight. Instead of houses, he saw the horizon; instead of streets or walled gardens, he roamed over fields bathed in sunlight and wind. Here it was good to get up before the sun, for then he could see the sun get up. And of all things those evening shadows lengthening out over the grassy wildernesses--for fields of a very moderate size appeared such to an imagination ever ready at the smallest hint to ascend its solemn throne--were a deepening marvel. Town to country is what a ceiling is to a cælum. CHAPTER XVII. ADVENTURES.