to
do so, I sought the most silent and sequestered nooks in the grounds about
the house, or in the neighbouring fields. The awful stillness occasionally
of summer noons, when no winds were abroad, the appealing silence of grey
or misty afternoons--these were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into the
woods or the desert air I gazed as if some comfort lay hid in _them_. I
wearied the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks. I tormented the
blue depths with obstinate scrutiny, sweeping them with my eyes and
searching them for ever after one angelic face that might perhaps have
permission to reveal itself for a moment. The faculty of shaping images in
the distance out of slight elements, and grouping them after the yearnings
of the heart, aided by a slight defect in my eyes, grew upon me at this
time. And I recal at the present moment one instance of that sort, which
may show how merely shadows, or a gleam of brightness, or nothing at all,
could furnish a sufficient basis for this creative faculty. On Sunday
mornings I was always taken to church: it was a church on the old and
natural model of England, having aisles, galleries, organ, all things
ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. Here, whilst the
congregation knelt through the long Litany, as often as we came to that
passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, where God is supplicated
on behalf of "all sick persons and young children," and that he would
"show his pity upon all prisoners and captives"--I wept in secret, and
raising my streaming eyes to the windows of the galleries, saw, on days
when the sun was shining, a spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can
have beheld. The sides of the windows were rich with storied glass;
through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the golden light;
emblazonries of heavenly illumination mingling with the earthly
emblazonries of what is grandest in man. There were the apostles that had
trampled upon earth, and the glories of earth, out of celestial love to
man. There were the martyrs that had borne witness to the truth through
flames, through torments, and through armies of fierce insulting faces.
There were the saints who, under intolerable pangs, had glorified God by
meek submission to his will. And all the time, whilst this tumult of
sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from an accompaniment in the
bass, I saw through the wide central field of the window, where the glass
was uncoloured, white fleec