rselves in others, and our
delight in the recognition; and in men, as in books, we only know that,
the parallel of which we have in ourselves. We know only that portion
of the world which we have travelled over; and we are never a whit
wiser than our own experiences. Imagination, the falcon, sits on the
wrist of Experience, the falconer; she can never soar beyond the reach
of his whistle, and when tired she must return to her perch. Our
knowledge is limited by ourselves, and so also are our imaginations.
And so it comes about, that a man measures everything by his own
foot-rule; that if he is ignoble, all the ignobleness that is in the
world looks out upon him, and claims kindred with him; if noble, all
the nobleness in the world does the like. Shakspeare is always the
same height with his reader; and when a thousand Christians subscribe
to one Confession of Faith, hardly to two of them does it mean the same
thing. The world is a great warehouse of raiment, to which every one
has access and is allowed free use; and the remarkable thing is, what
coarse stuffs are often chosen, and how scantily some people are
attired.

We never get quit of ourselves. While I am writing, the spring is
outside, and this season of the year touches my spirit always with a
sense of newness, of strangeness, of resurrection. It shoots boyhood
again into the blood of middle age. That tender greening of the black
bough and the red field,--that coming again of the new-old
flowers,--that re-birth of love in all the family of birds, with
cooings, and caressings, and building of nests in wood and brake,--that
strange glory of sunshine in the air,--that stirring of life in the
green mould, making even churchyards beautiful,--seems like the
creation of a new world. And yet--and yet, even with the lamb in the
sunny field, the lark mile-high in the blue, Spring has her melancholy
side, and bears a sadder burden to the heart than Autumn, preaching of
decay with all his painted woods. For the flowers that make sweet the
moist places in the forest are not the same that bloomed the year
before. Another lark sings above the furrowed field. Nature rolls on
in her eternal course, repeating her tale of spring, summer, autumn,
winter; but life in man and beast is transitory, and other living
creatures take their places. It is quite certain that one or other of
the next twenty springs will come unseen by me, will awake no throb of
transport in my vei