in 1848. During this, journey we visited Kenilworth, the town and
castle of Warwick, Stratford-on-Avon, and all therewith connected. At
the Easter spring-tide, when primroses first flush by running waters, and
there are many long bright sunny days in the land, while birdes' songs do
ripple in the aire, it is good roaming or resting in such a country,
among old castles, towers, and hamlets quaint and grey. To him who can
think and feel, it is like the reading of marvellously pleasant old
books, some in Elizabethan type, some in earlier black letter, and
hearing as we read sweet music and far-distant chimes. And apropos of
this, I would remark that while I was at Princeton an idea fixed itself
so firmly in my mind that to this day I live on it and act on it. It is
this:--There is a certain stage to be reached in reading and reflection,
especially if it be aided by broad aesthetic culture and science, when
every landscape, event, or human being is or may be to us exactly the
same as a _book_. For everything in this world which can be understood
and felt can be described, and whatever can be described may be written
and printed. For ordinary people, no ideas are distinct or concentrated
or "literary" till they are in black and white; but the scholar or artist
in words puts thoughts into as clear a form in his own mind. Having
deeply meditated on this idea for forty years, and been constantly
occupied in realising it, I can say truly that I _often_ compose or think
books or monographs which, though not translated into type, are as
absolutely _literature_ to me as if they were. There is so _much_ more
in this than will at first strike most readers, that I can not help
dwelling on it. It once happened to me in Philadelphia, in 1850, to pass
_all_ the year--in fact, nearly two years--"in dusky city pent," and
during all that time I never got a glimpse of the country. As a director
of the Art Union, I was continually studying pictures, landscapes by
great artists, and the like. The second year, when I went up into
Pennsylvania, I found that I had strangely developed what practically
amounted to a kind of pseudophia. Every fragment of rural scenery, every
rustic "bit," every group of shrubs or weeds, everything, in fact, which
recalled pictures, or which could itself be pictured, appeared to me to
be a picture perfectly executed. This lasted as a vivid or real
perception for about a week, but the memory of it has been