CHAPTER IV.
MODE OF LIFE OF 8QUATTERS—BUSH FIRES—BU8H TRAVELLERS.
"Cor.—And how like yon this shepherd's lift, Master Touchstone?
"Touchs.—Truly shepherd in respect of itself it is good life, but in respect that it is a shepherd's life it is naught. In respect that it is private I like it very well, but in respect that it is solitary it is a very vile life. Now in respect that it is in the fields it pleaseth me well, but in respect that it is not at the court it is tedious.
When Shakspeare penned the foregoing lines he little thought that he was writing what would with sufficient point characterize the advantages and inconveniences of a mode of life to he pursued, after a lapse of centuries, by thousands of his fellow countrymen at the antipodes, in regions undreamt of by the wildest speculator of his times. Yet such has been the revolution of events; such too are the unchanging qualities of man, that there never will be wanting those who are unreasonable enough to complain of the absence of advantages, from their very nature incompatible with the mode of life they have adopted; and this I take to be the moral of Touchstone's satire". Thus he who paints in the school of nature produces portraits, the originals of which never die, and uses colours that will for ages continue fresh as when they flowed wet from the pallet of the artist. Thus, too, the descriptions in the earlier books of the Pentateuch almost startle one by the accuracy and fidelity with which they represent a state of life
