The planet is familiar as the trodden pathway running between towns.  We no longer gaze wistfully to the west, dreaming of the Fortunate Isles.  We seek our wonders now on the ebbed sea-shore; we discover our new worlds with the microscope.  Yet, for all that time has brought and taken away, I am glad to know that the vagabond sleeps in our blood, and awakes now and then.  Overlay human nature as you please, here and there some bit of rock, or mound of aboriginal soil, will crop out with the wild-flowers growing upon it, sweetening the air.  When the boy throws his Delectus or his Euclid aside, and takes passionately to the reading of “Robinson Crusoe” or Bruce’s “African Travels,” do not shake your head despondingly over him and prophesy evil issues.  Let the wild hawk try its wings.  It will be hooded, and will sit quietly enough on the falconer’s perch ere long.  Let the wild horse career over its boundless pampas; the jerk of the lasso will bring it down soon enough.  Soon enough will the snaffle in the mouth and the spur of the tamer subdue the high spirit to the bridle, or the carriage-trace.  Perhaps not; and, if so, the better for all parties.  Once more there will be a new man and new deeds in the world.  For Genius is a vagabond, Art is a vagabond, Enterprise is a vagabond.  Vagabonds have moulded the world into its present shape; they have made the houses in which we dwell, the roads on which we ride and drive, the very laws that govern us.  Respectable people swarm in the track of the vagabond as rooks in the track of the ploughshare.  Respectable people do little in the world except storing wine-cellars and amassing fortunes for the benefit of spendthrift heirs.  Respectable well-to-do Grecians shook their heads over Leonidas and his three hundred when they went down to Thermopylae.  Respectable Spanish churchmen with shaven crowns scouted the dream of Columbus.  Respectable German folks attempted to dissuade Luther from appearing before Charles and the princes and electors of the Empire, and were scandalised when he declared that “Were there as many devils in Worms as there were tiles on the house-tops, still would he on.”  Nature makes us vagabonds, the world makes us respectable.

In the fine sense in which I take the word, the English are the greatest vagabonds on the earth, and it is the healthiest trait in their national character.  The first fine day in spring awakes the gipsy in the blood of the English workman, and incontinently he “babbles of green fields.”  On the English gentleman lapped, in the most luxurious civilisation, and with the thousand powers and resources of wealth at his command, descends oftentimes a fierce unrest, a Bedouin-like horror of cities and the cry of the money-changer, and in a month the fiery dust rises in the track of his desert steed, or in the six months’ polar midnight he hears the big wave clashing on the icy shore.  The close presence of the sea feeds the Englishman’s restlessness.