stant quarters, and lending, in
lack of that, some power of solace to the thought of sleep in the home
churchyard, at least--dead cheek by dead cheek, and with the rain
soaking in upon one from above.

So powerful is this instinct, and yet accidents like those I have been
speaking of so mechanically determine it; its essence being indeed the
early familiar, as constituting our ideal, or typical conception, of
rest and security. Out of so many possible conditions, just this for
you and that for me, brings ever the unmistakeable realisation of the
delightful chez soi; this for the Englishman, for me and you, with the
closely-drawn white curtain and the shaded lamp; that, quite other, for
the wandering Arab, who folds his tent every morning, and makes his
sleeping-place among haunted ruins, or in old tombs.

With Florian then the sense of home became singularly intense, his good
fortune being that the special character of his home was in itself so
essentially home-like. As after many wanderings I have come to fancy
that some parts of Surrey and Kent are, for Englishmen, the true
landscape, true home-counties, by right, partly, of a certain earthy
warmth in the yellow of the sand below their gorse-bushes, and of a
certain grey-blue mist after rain, in the hollows of the hills there,
welcome to fatigued eyes, and never seen farther south; so I think that
the sort of [180] house I have described, with precisely those
proportions of red-brick and green, and with a just perceptible
monotony in the subdued order of it, for its distinguishing note, is
for Englishmen at least typically home-life. And so for Florian that
general human instinct was reinforced by this special home-likeness in
the place his wandering soul had happened to light on, as, in the
second degree, its body and earthly tabernacle; the sense of harmony
between his soul and its physical environment became, for a time at
least, like perfectly played music, and the life led there singularly
tranquil and filled with a curious sense of self-possession. The love
of security, of an habitually undisputed standing-ground or
sleeping-place, came to count for much in the generation and correcting
of his thoughts, and afterwards as a salutary principle of restraint in
all his wanderings of spirit. The wistful yearning towards home, in
absence from it, as the shadows of evening deepened, and he followed in
thought what was doing there from hour to hour, interpreted to