will no doubt disdain these
barbarian delights, and wonder that memory should be persistent over
mere physical sensations. But I am not sure that these physical
sensations are not recollected with more acuteness than mental ones,
and there is no just reason why they should be despised. I have
forgotten a good many aesthetic pleasures which at the time gave me
keen delight--some phrase in oratory, some movement in concerted music,
and such like--but I never forget the sensation of wind blowing over my
bare flesh as I coasted down a long mountain road on a broiling day in
August, nor the poignant thrill of that rushing water in my morning
bathes. And mixed with it all is the aromatic scent of the pines
beside the stream, the freshness of the meadows, and the song of
falling water. Sometimes, when the river was in summer flood, there
was just that spice of danger in our bathing which gave it a memorable
piquancy. On such occasions we had to use skill and coolness to avoid
disaster; we were tossed about the boiling water like bubbles;
incredible masses of water flowed over us, warm and strong, in a few
seconds, and we came out of the roaring pool so beaten and thrashed by
the violence of the stream that every nerve quivered. Breakfast was a
great occasion after these adventures. Then came a stroll round our
small estate, and an hour or so over books. Matthew Arnold's _Thyrsis_
was a favourite poem with us all on these mornings. It breathed the
very spirit of the life we lived, but for its sadness--this we did not
feel. But we did appreciate its wonderfully exact and beautiful
interpretation of Nature, and we had but to look around us to see the
very picture Arnold painted when he wrote:

Soon will the high midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweetwilliam with his homely cottage smell,
And stocks in fragrant blow:
Roses that down the alley shine afar,
And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,
And groups under the dreaming garden trees,
And the full moon, and the white evening star.

Such was the life we lived. If we looked back at all to the life we
had left, it was with that sort of sick horror which a prisoner may
feel who has endured and survived a long term of imprisonment. It
seemed to us that we had never really lived before. The past was a
dream, and an evil dream. We had moved in a world of bad e