Nothing is more beautiful than the Burman in his ways with his children, and his beasts, with all who are lesser than himself. Even to us, who think so very differently from him on many points, there is a great and abiding charm in all this, to which we can find only one exception; for to our ideas there is one exception, and it is this: No Burman will take any life if he can help it, and therefore, if any animal injure itself, he will not kill it--not even to put it out of its pain, as we say. I have seen bullocks split on slippery roads, I have seen ponies with broken legs, I have seen goats with terrible wounds caused by accidental falls, and no one would kill them. If, when you are out shooting, your beaters pick up a wounded hare or partridge, do not suppose that they wring its neck; you must yourself do that, or it will linger on till you get home. Under no circumstances will they take the life even of a wounded beast. And if you ask them, they will say: 'If a man be sick, do you shoot him? If he injure his spine so that he will be a cripple for life, do you put him out of his pain?' If you reply that men and beasts are different, they will answer that in this point they do not recognise the difference. 'Poor beast! let him live out his little life.' And they will give him grass and water till he dies. This is the exception that I meant, but now, after I have written it, I am not so sure. Is it an exception? CHAPTER XXI ALL LIFE IS ONE 'I heard a voice that cried, "Balder the Beautiful Is dead, is dead," And through the misty air Passed like the mournful cry Of sunward-sailing cranes.' TEGNER'S _Drapa_. All romance has died out of our woods and hills in England, all our fairies are dead long ago. Knowledge so far has brought us only death. Later on it will bring us a new life. It is even now showing us how this may be, and is bringing us face to face again with Nature, and teaching us to know and understand the life that there is about us. Science is telling us again what we knew long ago and forgot, that our life is not apart from the life about us, but of it. Everything is akin to us, and when we are more accustomed to this knowledge, when we have ceased to regard it as a new, strange teaching, and know that we are but seeing again with clearer eyes what a half-knowledge blinded us to, then the world will be bright and beautiful to us as it was long ago.