admire so much, drives me to
distraction with his ecstacies. What would I not give to spend one
summer on the lakes; visit with Wordsworth all the places to which he
has given names; greet all the trees which he has saved from the axe;
and only once watch a far-off sunset with him, which he describes as
only Turner could have painted."

It was a peculiarity of hers that her voice never dropped at the close
of her talk, as with most people; on the contrary, it rose and always
ended, as it were, in the broken seventh chord. She always talked up,
never down, to people. The melody of her sentences resembled that of
the child when it says: "Can't I, father?" There was something
beseeching in her tones, and it was well-nigh impossible to gainsay her.

"Wordsworth," said I, "is a dear poet, and a still dearer man to me,
and as one often has a more beautiful, wide-spread, and stirring
outlook from a little hill which he ascends without effort, than when
he has clambered up Mont Blanc with difficulty and weariness, so it
seems to me with Wordsworth's poetry. At first, he often appeared
commonplace to me, and I have frequently laid down his poems unable to
understand how the best minds of England to-day can cherish such an
admiration for him. The conviction has grown upon me that no poet whom
his nation, or the intellectual aristocracy of his people, recognize as
a poet, should remain unenjoyed by us, whatever his language.
Admiration is an art which we must learn. Many Germans say Racine does
not please them. The Englishman says, 'I do not understand Goethe.'
The Frenchman says Shakespeare is a boor. What does all this amount
to? Nothing more than the child who says it likes a waltz better than
a symphony of Beethoven's. The art consists in discovering and
understanding what each nation admires in its great men. He who seeks
beauty will eventually find it, and discover that the Persians are not
entirely deceived in their Hafiz, nor the Hindoos in their Kalidasa.
We cannot understand a great man all at once. It takes strength,
effort, and perseverance, and it is singular that what pleases us at
first sight seldom captivates us any length of time.

"And yet," she continued, "there is something common to all great
poets, to all true artists, to all the world's heroes, be they Persian
or Hindoo, heathen or Christian, Roman or German; it is--I hardly know
what to call it--it is the Infinite which seems to lie behind th