A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In your picturesque and fascinating article on "A Lodge in the Wilderness" in the Spectator of January 16th you imagine the delights of a residence on some mountain- side in the midst of a tropical forest. It appears that the same vision which lured the imagination of the writer of that article to perch his nest in some vast eyrie of untravelled wilds, or to domesticate himself on the summits of the Moun- tains of the Moon, appealed also to the cosmical mind of Tennyson. In the second volume of the Life a conversation is reported between the Laureate and Carlyle. Tennyson says :—" I should like to get away from all this tumult and turmoil of civilisation, and live on the top of a tropical moun- tain. I should at least like to see the splendours of the Brazilian forests before I die. If I were a young man I would head a colony out somewhere." Carlyle's answer is as characteristic, and betrays the clannish instinct of the Scots- man as contrasted with the openness and universality of Tennyson's world-nature : " 0 ay, so would I, to India or somewhere; but the scraggiest bit of heath in Scotland is worth more to me than all the forests of Brazil." However, if there is to be any migration of British millionaires, or preferably of essayists like the one whose brilliant musings have awakened my far-away pen, or if you have any more poets like Tennyson who want " to head a colony out some- where " in search of remote and romantic building sites, I would like to remind them that we still have a few "for sale or rent" out here in America. And speaking for the mass of my countrymen, I would be willing to offer free a whole mountain range in the Rockies or half the Philippines to any able-bodied poet who in these songless days would come and settle down among us, and sing the Idylls of the Republic as yours (and ours too) sang the " Idylls of the King."—I am,
Sir, &c., J. KINSEY SMITH. The Manse, Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A.
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