, to read, to talk, to laugh when it is by. But it
sends flowing through the mind a gentle current of sad and weary images
and thoughts, which still have a beauty of their own; it tinges one's
life with a sober greyness of hue; it heightens perception, though it
prevents enjoyment. In such a mood one can sit silent a long time,
with one's eyes cast upon the grass; one sees the delicate forms of the
tender things that spring softly out of the dark ground; one hears with
a poignant delight the clear notes of birds; something of the spring
languors move within the soul. There is a sense, too, of reaching out
to light and joy, a stirring of the vague desires of the heart, a
tender hope, an upward-climbing faith; the heart sighs for a peace that
it cannot attain.

To-day I walked slowly and pensively by little woods and pastures,
taking delight in all the quiet life I saw, the bush pricked with
points of green, the boughs thickened with small reddening buds, the
slow stream moving through the pasture; all the tints faint, airy, and
delicate; the life of the world seemed to hang suspended, waiting for
the forward leap. In a little village I stood awhile to watch the
gables of an ancient house, the wing of a ruined grange, peer solemnly
over the mellow brick wall that guarded a close of orchard trees. A
little way behind, the blunt pinnacles of the old church-tower stood
up, blue and dim, over the branching elms; beyond all ran the long,
pure line of the rising wold. Everything seemed so still, so serene,
as a long, pale ray of the falling sun, which laboured among flying
clouds, touched the westward gables with gold--and mine the only
troubled, unquiet spirit. Hard by there was an old man tottering about
in a little garden, fumbling with some plants, like Laertes on the
upland farm. His worn face, his ragged beard, his pitifully-patched
and creased garments made him a very type of an ineffectual sadness.
Perhaps his thoughts ran as sadly as my own, but I do not think it was
so, because the minds of many country-people, and of almost all the
old, of whatever degree, seem to me free from what is the curse of
delicately-trained and highly-strung temperaments--namely, the
temptation to be always reverting to the past, or forecasting the
future. Simple people and aged people put that aside, and live quite
serenely in the moment; and that is what I believe we ought all to
attempt, for most moments are bearable, if one only