Page:Letters from England.djvu/168

 high world; I tell you, there is still room enough for expeditions and for big ships. Yes, it is needful to keep on sailing forth; the ocean is in all places where courage is.

But, steersman, I beg of you, do not turn back; we are not yet sailing home. Let us linger here in this roadstead of Liverpool and look at everything before we return; it is vast, dirty and noisy. Where is the real England, I wonder? There in those quiet and clean cottages amid the fearfully ancient trees and traditions, in the homes of people who are in the pitch of perfection, peaceable and refined, or here on these turbid waves, in the clattering docks, in Manchester, Poplar, Glasgow’s Broomielaw? Well, I must confess that I do not understand this; there in that England almost too much perfection and beauty; and here, here almost too much

Well, I do not understand it; it is not like the same country and the same people. So be it, let us sail forth; let the ocean splash me, let the wind buffet me; I think that I have seen too much.