frost have silvered their tracery
against the sober sky, it becomes a marvel which never tires.

Day by day I look at the coral buds on the lime-tree. Something of
regret will mingle with my joy when they begin to break.

In the middle years of my life--those years that were the worst of all--I
used to dread the sound of a winter storm which woke me in the night.
Wind and rain lashing the house filled me with miserable memories and
apprehensions; I lay thinking of the savage struggle of man with man, and
often saw before me no better fate than to be trampled down into the mud
of life. The wind's wail seemed to me the voice of a world in anguish;
rain was the weeping of the feeble and the oppressed. But nowadays I can
lie and listen to a night-storm with no intolerable thoughts; at worst, I
fall into a compassionate sadness as I remember those I loved and whom I
shall see no more. For myself, there is even comfort in the roaring
dark; for I feel the strength of the good walls about me, and my safety
from squalid peril such as pursued me through all my labouring life.
"Blow, blow, thou winter wind!" Thou canst not blow away the modest
wealth which makes my security. Nor can any "rain upon the roof" put my
soul to question; for life has given me all I ever asked--infinitely more
than I ever hoped--and in no corner of my mind does there lurk a coward
fear of death.

XIII.

If some stranger from abroad asked me to point out to him the most
noteworthy things in England, I should first of all consider his
intellect. Were he a man of everyday level, I might indicate for his
wonder and admiration Greater London, the Black Country, South
Lancashire, and other features of our civilization which, despite eager
rivalry, still maintain our modern pre-eminence in the creation of
ugliness. If, on the other hand, he seemed a man of brains, it would be
my pleasure to take him to one of those old villages, in the midlands or
the west, which lie at some distance from a railway station, and in
aspect are still untouched by the baser tendencies of the time. Here, I
would tell my traveller, he saw something which England alone can show.
The simple beauty of the architecture, its perfect adaptation to the
natural surroundings, the neatness of everything though without
formality, the general cleanness and good repair, the grace of cottage
gardens, that tranquillity and security which make a music in the mind of
him who gazes