Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/58

 party in the Highlands. They go to a sporting function at the Laird's, and Philip Hewson, the radical and revolutionist of the party, in whom Clough, no doubt, sketched his own opinions at this time, meets there a Highland girl, the daughter of a small farmer near Braemar. The farmer invited Hewson to visit him if he should come that way. He falls in love with the girl, begs her to marry him, and sends for the tutor to guarantee his character. The girl refuses at first; their stations in life are different. She will be, she thinks, in his way. The farmer doubts on the same grounds. Will his daughter be happy? But Philip does not desire to live in this burdened, denaturalised England; his opinions (and they may represent a dream of Clough's) lead him to a freer life, close to Mother Earth, in a new land. Will she come with him, taking a plough, a tool-box, a few books, pictures, and £500 to New Zealand? The tutor thinks he could not do better; the girl is charming, intelligent, a true-hearted woman; both are in love, love based on mutual reverence; and Philip is a hard worker, who will put all his theories to the test in an eager life in a fresh country. So they marry; and Clough, whom the social subject of marriage engaged all his life, airs his views in tender converse between Philip and Elsie, mixed, as is always the case in his work, with a certain high reasonableness which their love idealises.

There is a true love of nature, especially of Highland