ving memories.

What I find to regret in these latter days is--I say it with
shame--that there is no house of any living writer which I should visit
with this sense of awe and desire and sacredness. There are writers
whom I honour and admire greatly, whose work I reverence and read, but
there is no author alive a summons to whose presence I should obey with
eager solemnity and devout expectation. That is perhaps my own fault,
or the fault perhaps of my advancing years; but, to put it differently,
there is no author now writing whose book I should order the moment I
saw it announced, and await its arrival with keen anticipation. There
are books announced that I determine I will see and read, but no books
that I feel are sure to hold some vital message of truth and beauty. I
cannot help feeling that this is a great loss. I remember the almost
terrible excitement with which I saw Tennyson stalking out of Dean's
Yard at Westminster, with his dark complexion, his long hair, his
strange, ill-fitting clothes, his great glasses, his dim yet piercing
look. I recollect the timid expectation with which I went to meet
Robert Browning--and the disappointment which I endured in his presence
at his commonplace bonhomie, his facile, uninteresting talk. I
remember, as an undergraduate, begging and obtaining an introduction to
Matthew Arnold, who stood robed in his scarlet gown at an academical
garden-party; and I shall never forget the stately and amiable
condescension with which he greeted me. But what seer of high visions,
what sayer of ineffable things, transforming the commonplace world into
a place of spirits and heavenly echoes, now moves and breathes among
us? The result of our present conditions of life seems to be to develop
a large number of effective and accomplished people, but not to evolve
great, lonely, majestic figures of indubitable greatness.

Perhaps there are personalities whom the young and ardent as
whole-heartedly desire to see and hear as I did the gods of my youth.
But at present the sea and the depth alike concur in saying, "It is not
in me."

But I do not cease to hope. I care not whether my hero be old or young;
I should like him better to be young; and if I could hear of the rise
of some great and gracious personality, full of fire and genius, I
would make my way to his presence, even though it involved a number of
cross-country journeys and solitary evenings in country inns, to lay my
wreath at his feet