at blocked the restless
plunging sea; they must have looked for centuries over rollers and
salt marsh and lagoon, felt the tread of strange herds and beasts
about them till they have become the quiet slopes of a sunny park
or the simple appendages of a remote hill farm."

But his greatest delight was in music. He knew a smattering of it
scientifically, enough to follow up subjects and to a certain extent
to recognize chords. There occurs in one of his letters to me the
following passage, which I venture to quote. He is speaking of the
delight of pure sound as apart from melody:

"I remember once," he writes, "being with a great organist in a
cathedral organ-loft, sitting upon the bench at his side. He was
playing a Mass of Schubert's, and close to the end, at the last chord
but two--he was dying to a very soft close, sliding in handles all
over the banks of stops--he nodded with his head to the rows of pedal
stops with their red labels, as though to indicate where danger
lay. 'Put your hand on the thirty-two foot,' he said. There it
was '_Double open wood 32 ft._' And just as his fingers slid on to
the last chord, 'Now,' he said.

"Ah! that was it; the great wooden pipe close to my ear began to blow
and quiver; and hark! not sound, but sensation--the great rapturous
stir of the air; a drowsy thunder in the roof of nave and choir; the
grim saints stirred and rattled ill their leaded casements, while
the melodious roar died away as softly as it had begun, sinking to
silence with many a murmurous pulsation, many a throb of sighing
sound."

Organ-playing, organ music, was the one subject on which I have heard
him wax enthusiastic. His talk and his letters always become
rhetorical when he deals with music; his musical metaphors are always
carefully worked out; he compares a man of settled purpose, in whose
life the "motive was very apparent," to "the great lazy horns, that
you can always hear in the orchestra pouring out their notes hollow
and sweet, however loud the violins shiver or the trumpets cry." He
often went up to London to hear music. The St. James's Hall Concerts
were his especial delight. I find later a description of the effect
produced on him by Wagner.

"I have just come back from the Albert Hall, from hearing the
'Meistersanger,' Wagner himself conducting. I may safely say I
think that I never experienced such absolute artistic rapture before
as at certain parts of this; for instance, in the overture,