of a
great church gives one a larger sense of immensity than the sky with
its sailing clouds. Indeed it is often the very minuteness of a
conception rather than its vastness that makes it great. It must not be
outside our range. As to the form, it depends upon some curious
felicity of hand, and touch, and thought. Suppose that a great painter
gave a rough pencil-sketch of a picture to a hundred students, and told
them all to work it out in colour. Some few of the results would be
beautiful, the majority would be still uninteresting and tame.

Thus I am somewhat of a fatalist about art, because it seems to depend
upon a lucky union of conception and technical instinct. The saddest
proof of which is that many good and even great artists have not
improved in greatness as their skill improved. The youthful works of
genius are generally the best, their very crudities and stiffnesses
adorable.

The history of art and literature alike seems to point to the fact that
each artistic soul has a flowering period, which generally comes early,
rarely comes late; and therefore the supreme artist ought also to know
when the bloom is over, when his good work is done. And then, I think,
he ought to be ready to abjure his art, to drown his book, like
Prospero, and set himself to live rather than to produce. But what a
sacrifice to demand of a man, and how few attain it! Most men cannot do
without their work, and go on to the end producing more feeble, more
tired, more mannerised work, till they cloud the beauty of their prime
by masses of inferior and uninspired production.

November 24, 1888.

Soft wintry skies, touched with faintest gleams of colour, like a
dove's wing, blue plains and heights, over the nearer woodland;
everywhere fallen rotting leaf and oozy water-channel; everything, tint
and form, restrained, austere, delicate; nature asleep and breathing
gently in the cool airs; a tranquil and sober hopefulness abroad.

I walked alone in deep woodland lanes, content for once to rest and
dream. The country seemed absolutely deserted; such labour as was going
forward was being done in barn and byre; beasts being fed, hurdles made.

I passed in a solitary road a draggled ugly woman, a tramp, wheeling an
old perambulator full of dingy clothes and sordid odds and ends; she
looked at me sullenly and suspiciously. Where she was going God knows:
to camp, I suppose, in some dingle, with ugly company; to beg, to lie,
to purloin, pe