e day in the country; to moon
onwards entirely oblivious of time; to stop on a hill-top and survey a
scene, to turn into a village church and sit long in the cool gloom; to
seek out the heart of a copse, all carpeted with spring flowers, and to
lie on a green bank, with the whisper of the leaves in one's ear; or to
sit beside a stream, near a crystal pool, half-hidden in sedges, and to
see hour by hour what goes on in the dim waterworld. I do not mean to
say that it would not be pleasanter to share one's rambles with a
congenial companion; but it is not easy to find one; either there are
differences of opinion, or the subtle barriers of age to overleap, or
one is conscious that there are regions of one's mind in which a friend
will inevitably and fretfully miss his way--there are not many friends,
for anyone, to whom his mind can lie perfectly and unaffectedly open;
and thus, though I do not hesitate to say that I would prefer the
society of the perfect friend to my loneliness, yet I prefer my
loneliness to the incursions of the imperfect friend.

Then at the close of day there is a prospect of a long, quiet evening;
one can go to bed when one wishes, with the thought of another
unclouded and untroubled day before one. Liberty is, after all, the
richest gift that life can give.

And now, having made this panegyric on solitude, I will be just and
fair-minded, and I will say exactly what I have found the disadvantages
to be.

In the first place, though I do not grow morbid, I find a loss of
proportion creeping over me. I attach an undue importance to small
things. A troublesome letter, which in a busy life one would answer and
forget, rattles in the mind like a pea in a bladder. A little
incident--say, for instance, that one has to find fault with a
servant--assumes altogether unreal importance. In a busy life one would
make up one's mind as well as one could, and act. But here it is not
easy to make up one's mind. One weighs all contingencies too minutely;
one is too considerate, if that is possible; and if one makes up one's
mind, perhaps, to find fault, the presence in the house of a
dissatisfied person is an undue weight on the mind. Or one reads an
unfavourable review, and is too much occupied with its possible results
on one's literary prospects. It is not depression that these things
induce, but one expends too much energy and thought upon them.

But this on the whole matters little. There is time to be slow in