e their music so soft and sweet, if they had not a hard
heart to turn to the sorrows of the world.

Yet still I am no nearer the secret. God sends me, here the frozen
peak, there the blue sea; here the tiger, there the cuckoo; here
Virgil, there Jeremiah; here St Francis of Assisi, there Napoleon. And
all the while, as he pushes his fair or hurtful toys upon the stage,
not a whisper, not a smile, not a glance escapes him; he thrusts them
on, he lays them by; but the interpretation he leaves with us, and
there is never a word out of the silence to show us whether we have
guessed aright.

VIII

Spring-time

Yesterday was a day of brisk airs. The wind was at work brushing great
inky clouds out of the sky. They came sailing up, those great rounded
masses of dark vapour, like huge galleons driving to the West, spilling
their freight as they came. The air would be suddenly full of tall
twisted rain-streaks, and then would come a bright burst of the sun.

But a secret change came in the night; some silent power filled the air
with warmth and balm. And to-day, when I walked out of the town with
an old and familiar friend, the spring had come. A maple had broken
into bloom and leaf; a chestnut was unfolding his gummy buds; the
cottage gardens were full of squills and hepatica; and the mezereons
were all thick with damask buds. In green and sheltered underwoods
there were bursts of daffodils; hedges were pricked with green points;
and a delicate green tapestry was beginning to weave itself over the
roadside ditches.

The air seemed full of a deep content. Birds fluted softly, and the
high elms which stirred in the wandering breezes were all thick with
their red buds. There was so much to look at and to point out that we
talked but fitfully; and there was, too, a gentle languor abroad which
made us content to be silent.

In one village which we passed, a music-loving squire had made a
concert for his friends and neighbours, and doubtless, too, for our
vagrant delight; we stood uninvited to listen to a tuneful stir of
violins, which with a violoncello booming beneath, broke out very
pleasantly from the windows of a village school-room.

When body and mind are fresh and vigorous, these outside impressions
often lose, I think, their sharp savours. One is preoccupied with
one's own happy schemes and merry visions; the bird sings shrill within
its cage, and claps its golden wings. But on such soft and languo