Page:Pagan papers.djvu/24

12 easily of the most disagreeable facts;' so that he looks upon 'the factory village and the railway' and 'sees them fall within the great Order not less than the bee-hive or the spider's geometrical web.' The poet, however, seems hard to convince hereof. Emerson will have it that 'Nature loves the gliding train of cars;' 'instead of which' the poet still goes about the country singing purling brooks. Painters have been more flexible and liberal. Turner saw and did his best to seize the spirit of the thing, its kinship with the elements, and to blend furnace-glare and rush of iron with the storm-shower, the wind and the thwart-flashing sun-rays, and to make the whole a single expression of irresoluble force. And even in a certain work by another and a very different painter—though I willingly acquit Mr. Frith of any deliberate romantic intention—you shall find the element of romance in the vestiges of the old order still lingering in the first transition period: the coach-shaped railway carriages with luggage piled and corded on top, the red-coated guard, the little engine tethered well ahead as if between traces. To those bred within sight of the sea, steamers will always partake