til the
plastic power of fancy moulds out of this poor recluse a man like other
men. Amid these visionary sympathies time goes quickly by, and returning
to his voiceless dwelling he has stored up such wealth of dreams that he
can even endure the supreme test when the lonely man finds himself
sitting in the wan light with no one near him to whom he is dear. Of the
strength and peacefulness which bring him safely through that hour of
desolation he owes much to the players, who have shot the drab texture
of life with an infinity of bright and tender hues, so that he can bear
to turn it in his hands and look upon it with a wistful pleasure. I say,
then, let the shy man frequent the playhouse, and there facet and
burnish his dulled mind until it reflects, if it may not touch, the
many-sided world.

For the discipline of sympathy, for the quickened sense of comradeship
in work, for the very presence of that unloveliness which compels
sympathy, I dwell more months in the town than in the country-side. But
remembering what Nature did to save me, and owing her an endless debt of
filial duty, I return to her in the summer days, and to make up for the
long months of separation cling nearer to her than most of her truant
sons. For communion with Nature, the ideal joy of country life, is not
attained by the sportsman or the mere player of games, who think of
their bodies chiefly, and use as a means to rude physical vigour the end
ordained for the fine contentience of body, mind, and spirit. Again I
will pass by the obvious and familiar resources of outdoor life, and
speak only of such as men are unaccountably prone to neglect.

There is a way of learning nature which in this wet land is mostly
followed by tramps and vagrants; the way of sleeping beneath the stars.
So far is this joy from the thoughts of most men, that even George
Borrow felt a strange uneasiness when for the first time the darkness
descended upon him in the open country. I think we carry with us all our
lives that fear of night with which nursery tales inspired our
childhood; it reinforces the later more reasoned fear of boisterous
weather, or of the men who walk in darkness because their works are
evil. We shrink from night as a chill privation of daylight, as a gloom
which we must traverse, but not inhabit; the distrust becomes with years
instinctive and universal, and the nearest approach to friendly relation
with night attained by most of us is a timid liking f