in the promise, rich only in fleet foot and keen spear; for he carried into the wilds with him an essentially noble nature—­no brother with his mess of pottage could mulct him of that.  And he had a fine revenge; for when Jacob, on his journey, heard that his brother was near with four hundred men, and made division of his flocks and herds, his man-servants and maid-servants, impetuous as a swollen hill-torrent, the fierce son of the desert, baked red with Syrian light, leaped down upon him, and fell on his neck and wept.  And Esau said, “What meanest thou by all this drove which I met?” and Jacob said, “These are to find grace in the sight of my lord;” then Esau said, “I have enough, my brother, keep that thou hast unto thyself.”  O mighty prince, didst thou remember thy mother’s guile, the skins upon thy hands and neck, and the lie put upon the patriarch, as, blind with years, he sat up in his bed snuffing the savory meat?  An ugly memory, I should fancy!

Commend me to Shakspeare’s vagabonds, the most delightful in the world!  His sweet-blooded and liberal nature blossomed into all fine generosities as naturally as an apple-bough into pink blossoms and odours.  Listen to Gonsalvo talking to the shipwrecked Milan nobles camped for the night in Prospero’s isle, full of sweet voices, with Ariel shooting through the enchanted air like a falling star;—­

  “Had I the plantation of this isle, my lord,
  I’ the commonwealth I would by contraries
  Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
  Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
  Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
  And use of service none; contract, succession,
  Bourne, bound of land, tilth, title, vineyard none;
  No use of metal coin, or wine, or oil;
  No occupation—­all men idle—­all! 
  And women too, but innocent and pure;
  No sovereignty;
  All things in common nature should produce,
  Without sweat or endurance; treason, felony,
  Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine
  Would I not have; but nature would bring forth
  Of its own kind all foison, all abundance,
  To feed my innocent people. 
  I would with such perfection govern, sir,
  To excel the golden age.”

What think you of a world after that pattern?  “As You Like it” is a vagabond play, and, verily, if there waved in any wind that blows a forest peopled like Arden’s, with an exiled king drawing the sweetest, humanest lessons from misfortune; a melancholy Jacques, stretched by the river bank, moralising on the bleeding deer; a fair Rosalind, chanting her saucy cuckoo-song; fools like Touchstone—­not like those of our acquaintance, my friends; and the whole place, from centre to circumference, filled with mighty oak bolls, all carven with lovers’ names,—­if such a forest waved in wind, I say, I would, be my worldly prospects what they might, pack up at once, and cast in my lot with that vagabond company.  For there I should find more gallant