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WAYFARING BOOKS

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THE WAYFARER. CLAUDE E. BENSON

THE VOICE OF THE MOUNTAINS.
E. A. BAKER AND F. E. Ross

THE VOICE OF THE SEA.

INGRAM SWALE

THE WINDS OF HEAVEN. A. H. HYATT PRAISE OF A SIMPLE LIFE. E. A. BAKER VOICES OF NATURE. E. A. BAKER

PRAYERS FROM THE POETS. C. HEADLAM AND LAURIE MAGNUS

THE GARDEN ANTHOLOGY. ROSE Gardner THE POCKET CARLYLE. ROSE GARDNER THE POCKET EMERSON.

W. T. S. SONNENSCHEIN, B.A.

THE POCKET PLATO. S. C. WoODHOUSE

THE POCKET RUSKIN. ROSE GARDNER

A SEQUEL TO

PRAISE OF A SIMPLE LIFE

EDITED BY

ERNEST Albert

BAKER

Come and make thy calm retreat
Among green leaves and blossoms sweet.

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GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD.

NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea, that bares her bosom to the moon ;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn ;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

WORDSWORTH.

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AS

PREFACE

S explained in the preface to Praise of a Simple Life, the contents of this little book were to have formed, not a sequel, but the latter portion of an anthology of passages from the earliest to the latest times, extolling that eternal dream of mankind, a life according to the simple laws of Nature. But the great divergency that obtruded itself between the earlier and the later ways of regarding Nature and Man detracted so much from the unity of the collection, that it seemed more satisfactory to put the ancients and the moderns in separate volumes.

There were Nature-worshippers before Wordsworth, as the former volume shows well enough. Men have always felt the call, though they have felt it differently. And they have expressed their emotions very differently. Only at times in the other volume is there a direct lyrical utterance, a spontaneous cry from the heart, without reflection and without analysis. Most often the tone is consciously didactic, or at any rate philosophical: many of the pieces are simply moral lessons in

rhyme. The general difference between the old gospel and the new is the difference between theology and faith, between dogma and worship. Before the Return to Nature, men were not content to submit their souls to this inscrutable impulsion without trying to rationalise their instincts. Wishing to conduct themselves like philosophers, they must formulate rules and combine rules into systems. Inarticulate whisperings had no meaning for them. But more meaningless still are the dogmas given in exchange for faith, the abstract formulas proffered in lieu of a religion of the heart. Rasselas turns away in disgust from the sage who pompously informs him that 'to live according to nature, is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things'.

Wordsworth, Barnes, and Borrow are not concerned to teach improving lessons, to reduce their faith within the compass of thirty-nine articles. But they have revealed a temper, a passion, an attitude of soul, that affect us infinitely more profoundly than the generalities devoid of ponderable meaning which Johnson resented. And it follows that the task of the anthologist is a difficult oneto find rounded, concise, detachable utterances of

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