And with this growing sense of the pettiness of human struggles will
grow on you a respect for simple labours, a thankfulness for simple
pleasures, a sympathy with simple people, and possibly, my trusty
friend, with me and my little tours about that moorland which I call
my winter-garden, and which is to me as full of glory and of
instruction as the Himalaya or the Punjab are to you, and in which I
contrive to find as much health and amusement as I have time for--and
who ought to have more?
I call the said garden mine, not because I own it in any legal sense
(for only in a few acres have I a life interest), but in that higher
sense in which ten thousand people can own the same thing, and yet no
man's right interfere with another's. To whom does the Apollo
Belvedere belong, but to all who have eyes to see its beauty? So
does my winter-garden; and therefore to me among the rest.
Besides (which is a gain to a poor man) my pleasure in it is a very
cheap one. So are all those of a minute philosopher, except his
microscope. But my winter-garden, which is far larger, at all
events, than that famous one at Chatsworth, costs me not one penny in
keeping up.
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