e, but because it is the faithful reflection of the
life of a race who faced the world on all sides with masterly
intelligence and power. It is a liberal education to have travelled
from Aeschylus, with his almost Asiatic splendour of imagination, to
Theocritus, under whose exquisite touch the soft outlines of Sicilian
life took on idyllic loveliness!

And then there were those unbroken winter evenings, when one began
really to know the great modern masters of literature. What would one
not give to have them back again, with their undisturbed hours ending
only when the fire or the lamp gave out! Those were nights of royal
fellowships, of introduction into the noblest society the world has
ever known, and it is the recollection of this companionship which
gives those days under college roofs a unique and perennial charm.
Then first the spirit of our own race was revealed to us in Chaucer,
Shakespeare, and Milton; then first we thrilled to that music which has
never faltered since Caedmon found his voice in answer to the heavenly
vision. There are days which will always have a place by themselves in
our memory, nights whose stars have never set, because they brought us
face to face with some great soul, and struck into life in an instant
some new and mighty meaning. The ferment of soul which Hazlitt
describes on the night when he walked home from his first talk with
Coleridge is no exceptional experience; it comes to most young men who
are susceptible to the influence of great thoughts coming for the first
time into consciousness. A lonely country road comes into view as I
write these words, and over it the heavens bend with a new and
marvellous splendour, because the boy who walked along its winding
course had just finished for the first time, and in a perfect tumult of
soul, Schiller's "Robbers;" it was the power of a great master, felt
through his crudest work, that filled the night with such magical
influences.

The hours in which we come in contact with great souls are always
memorable in our history, often the crises in our intellectual life; it
is the recollection of such hours that gives those bending elms an
imperishable charm, and lends to this landscape a deathless interest.

Chapter XVI

A Summer Morning

I do not understand how any one who has watched the breaking of a
summer day can question the noblest faiths of man. William Blake, with
that integrity of insight which is often the possess