est gold, so high that it seemed to belong to the sky
and to have no part in an earthly landscape. Gradually it expanded, grew
more vivid, and assumed form, other forms and tints emerged beside it,
until at last it was revealed as a ripe corn-field on the high slopes
across the valley, and before many moments had passed, a long line of
downs stood out in the pure air with a sculptural clearness, as if
during the storm all had been uprooted and moved a whole league towards
the spot where I stood. While the rainbow spanned the plain, and the
thunder still rolled in the distance, all the opposite heaven cleared
almost to the furthest horizon; but there a remoter range yet lay
half-covered by a billowy mass of clouds, like the hull of a dismasted
ship in the folds of her fallen sails. At last even this trace of the
battle was gone; the sun shone unopposed; the wet lands and clear sky
were lit with an intenser brightness for their transient eclipse.

Then the humanity of all these things was borne in upon my mind, and I
was affected by these vicissitudes shadowing forth the destiny of man,
and reminding him in their beautiful and majestic procession that nature
endures no perpetual gloom. The sudden ruin of a bright day in deluge
and darkness and sonorous thunder, the timid reappearance of faint
light, the natural forms strangely emerging from the perplexed wrack
infesting the heaven, and at last seen as never before through leagues
of pellucid air; the thunder's silence, the final and supreme triumph of
light;--these swift yet utter revolutions of the visible world, by very
grace of mutability, were rich with instant consolations for the soul's
misgiving. They served to remind me that the fears, the spiritual
conflicts, the darkness that seems eternal, are mere incidents of a
summer noon and leave behind them a purer and serener day. Through all
this close intercourse with nature my mind was being prepared for a
healthier relation to my fellow-man, and my heart saved from the
petrification of melancholy self-regard. The ever-growing delight in
these inanimate things, the constant discovery of new charms as
knowledge widened with experience, united to prevent stagnation and
despair; they kept heart and mind alert for the perception of new
glories; and it is from a clear sense of their salutary power that I
dwell upon them in this record of a self-tormented life. How should he
find life colourless whose eyes are often fixed up