The congregated life of man, many-coloured, intricate, composed of
numerous interwoven interests, was never painted with a higher skill.
The word that is most expressive in this description is
'neighbourhood.' It strikes the note of cities. Uttering it, one is
aware of the pleasant music of bustling streets, greetings in the
market-place, whispered converse in the doorways, gay meetings and
laughter, lighted squares and crowds, the touch of kind hands, evening
meals and festivals, and all the reverberation of man's social voice.
A man may grow sick for such scenes as a sailor grows sick with longing
for the sea. There were times when this sickness came on me, this
nostalgia of streets. It was only by degrees I came to see that
neighbourhood has a significance apart from cities.

The first sensation of the man suddenly exiled from cities is a kind of
bewildering homelessness in Nature. He is confronted with a
spaciousness that knows no limit. He treads among voids. He
experiences an almost unendurable sense of infinity. He can put a
bound to nothing that he sees; it is a relief to the eye to come upon a
wall or a hedge, or any kind of object that implies dimension. There
is something awful in the glee or song of birds; it seems irrational
that with wings so slight they should dare heights so profound. All
sense of proportion seems lost. After being accustomed for many years
to think of himself as in some sense a figure of importance in the
universe, a man finds himself unimportant, insignificant, a little
creature scarce perceptible a mile away. I came once upon some human
bones lying exposed on the side of an old earthwork on the summit of a
hill; heavy rains had loosened the soil, and there lay these painful
relics in the cold eye of day. Two thousand years ago, or more, spears
had clashed upon this hillside, living men had gone to final rest amid
their blood; and it came upon me with a sense of insult how little man