wn old in gaslight.

I had not thought of the simple and unaffected joy of the heart of natural
things; the colour of the open air, the many forms of the country, the
birds flying,--that one making for the sea; the abandoned boat, the dwarf
roses and the wild lavender; nor had I thought of the beauty of mildness in
life, and how by a certain avoidance of the wilfully passionate, and the
surely ugly, we may secure an aspect of temporal life which is abiding and
soul-sufficing. A new dawn was in my brain, fresh and fair, full of wide
temples and studious hours, and the lurking fragrance of incense; that such
a vision of life was possible I had no suspicion, and it came upon me
almost with the same strength, almost as intensely, as that divine song of
the flesh,--Mademoiselle de Maupin.

Certainly, in my mind, these books will be always intimately associated;
and when a few adventitious points of difference be forgotten, it is
interesting to note how firm is the alliance, and how cognate and co-equal
the sympathies on which it is based; the same glad worship of the visible
world, and the same incurable belief that the beauty of material things is
sufficient for all the needs of life. Mr. Pater can join hands with Gautier
in saying--_je trouve la terre aussi belle que le ciel, et je pense que
la correction de la forme est la vertu_. And I too join issue; I too
love the great pagan world, its bloodshed, its slaves, its injustice, its
loathing of all that is feeble.

But "Marius the Epicurean" was more to me than a mere emotional influence,
precious and rare though that may be, for this book was the first in
English prose I had come across that procured for me any genuine pleasure
in the language itself, in the combination of words for silver or gold
chime, and unconventional cadence, and for all those lurking half-meanings,
and that evanescent suggestion, like the odour of dead roses, that words
retain to the last of other times and elder usage. Until I read "Marius"
the English language (English prose) was to me what French must be to the
majority of English readers. I read for the sense and that was all; the
language itself seemed to me coarse and plain, and awoke in me neither
aesthetic emotion nor even interest. "Marius" was the stepping-stone that
carried me across the channel into the genius of my own tongue. The
translation was not too abrupt; I found a constant and careful invocation
of meaning that was a little asi