It was truly wonderful how rapidly Maurice had adapted himself to the
mountaineering life of Melnos; and he breasted the steep path with a
vigor which had been quite foreign to him, when listless, enervated, and
melancholic, in England. The artificial life of six years in London,
amid a deleterious atmosphere, surrounded by ugly houses and stony
streets, had saddened and depressed his spirits; but now that he had
returned to Nature for cure, her calm and soothing medicines had stilled
his fretful spirit, had smoothed the wrinkles from his brow, removed the
haggard anguish of his heart; and now, reinvigorated and vitalized, he
felt that it was good to live. Doctors can do much, but Nature can do
more; for, while physical ills are to a certain extent under the control
of the former, only the latter can minister to the mind; and the
intangible influence of landscape, mountain air, rustic quiet, and
woodland music, on the diseased mental faculties, cannot be
over-estimated in their curative powers. Wise, indeed, were the Greeks
to fable how the giant Antæus drew fresh vigor for his frame from his
mother Tellus; and if we in modern days did but apply this parable of
nature-cure to our crowded city populations, how infinitely less would
be the physical and mental ills to be endured by our worn-out, exhausted
toilers of this over-anxious age!
What wonder if the Hellenes were a joyous race, dwelling as they did in
a radiant climate, amid scenes of undying beauty, in healthful communion
with the Earth-spirit! They exercised the body in the palæstra, the mind
in the portico, and, ever drinking in health, beauty, and the music of
leaves, winds, and waves, were therefore easily able to attain and
preserve that serene calm of existence, which we see stamped in vivid
beauty on the faces of their marble masterpieces. The countenances of
Egyptian sphinx and granite king express the awful solemnity of
communion with the unseen; the rapt faces of mediæval saints a spiritual
unrest to escape from the world they despised; but in the frieze of the
Parthenon, in the statues of god, goddess, hero, and nymph, we but see
the calm of contentment, of serene satisfaction, arising from the
healthful minds and bodies of the race, whose joyous tranquillity was
the gift of Nature to her believing children. Yet we, while envying
their beatitude, and desirous of emulating their intense calm, make no
effort to do so; for we leave the country, and rush to the already
overcrowded cities, wrangling, toiling, worrying, striving to attain an
unsatisfying end. Wiseacres talk of the complexity of modern
civilization, of the over-population of the world, of the survival of
the fittest; but this is, so to speak, merely laying the blame of our
own mistakes on the stars, for we ourselves have produced this age of
unrest, which we profess to loathe. When the humors of the body run to
one spot, a tumor ensues, which throws the whole system out of order;