in a beautiful passage[15] of the
"Prelude," has used this as a figure for the feeling struck in us by
the quiet by-streets of London after the uproar of the great
thoroughfares; and the comparison may be turned the other way with as
good effect:

"Meanwhile the roar continues, till at length,
Escaped as from an enemy we turn,
Abruptly into some sequestered nook,
Still as a shelter'd place when winds blow loud!"

I remember meeting a man once, in a train, who told me of what must
have been quite the most perfect instance of this pleasure of escape.
He had gone up, one sunny, windy morning, to the top of a great
cathedral somewhere abroad; I think it was Cologne Cathedral, the
great unfinished marvel by the Rhine;[16] and after a long while in
dark stairways, he issued at last into the sunshine, on a platform
high above the town. At that elevation it was quite still and warm;
the gale was only in the lower strata of the air, and he had forgotten
it in the quiet interior of the church and during his long ascent; and
so you may judge of his surprise when, resting his arms on the sunlit
balustrade and looking over into the _Place_ far below him, he saw the
good people holding on their hats and leaning hard against the wind as
they walked. There is something, to my fancy, quite perfect in this
little experience of my fellow-traveller's. The ways of men seem
always very trivial to us when we find ourselves alone on a
church-top, with the blue sky and a few tall pinnacles, and see far
below us the steep roofs and foreshortened buttresses, and the silent
activity of the city streets; but how much more must they not have
seemed so to him as he stood, not only above other men's business, but
above other men's climate, in a golden zone like Apollo's![17]

This was the sort of pleasure I found in the country of which I write.
The pleasure was to be out of the wind, and to keep it in memory all
the time, and hug oneself upon the shelter. And it was only by the sea
that any such sheltered places were to be found. Between the black
worm-eaten headlands there are little bights and havens, well screened
from the wind and the commotion of the external sea, where the sand
and weeds look up into the gazer's face from a depth of tranquil
water, and the sea-birds, screaming and flickering from the ruined
crags, alone disturb the silence and the sunshine. One such place has
impressed itself on my memory beyond all others. On a ro