From a College Window

the impression were simple and familiar enough. My room looks out into a little court; there is a plot of grass, and to the right of it an old stone-built wall, close against which stands a r

he grass, the foliage of the lime-trees, their brown wrinkled stems, the pale moss on the walls, the bright points of colour in the emblazonries of t

have a time of gloom and dreariness; work has no interest, pleasure no savour; we go about our business and our delight alike in a leaden mood of dulness; and yet again, when we are surrounded with care and trouble, perhaps in pain or weakness of body, there flashes into the darkened life an exquisite perception of things beautiful and rare; the vision of a spring copse with all its tapestry of flowers, bright points of radiant colour, fills us with a strange yearning, a delightful pain; in such a mood a few chords of music, the haunting melody of some familiar line of verse, the song of a bird at dawn, the light of sunset on lonely fields, thrill us with an inexpressible

elbow; it diverts my attention in the midst of the gravest business; and, on the other hand, no extremity of sorrow or gloom can suspend it. I have stood beside the grave of one I loved, with the shadow of urgent business, of hard detailed arrangements of a practical kind, hanging over me, with the light gone out of life, and the prospect unutterably dreary; and yet the strange spirit has been with me, so that a strain of music should have power to affect me to tears, and

stant, and the sunlight on a flowing water or on an ancient wall, the sound of the wind among trees, the calling of birds, take one captive with the mysterious spell; or on another day when I am working, under apparently the same cond

and dingles of the Sussex hills; the sky was full of flying gleams; the distant ridges, clothed in wood, lay blue and remote in the warm air; but I cared for none of these things. Then, when we stood for a moment in a place where I have stood a hundred times before, where a full stream spills itself over a pair of broken lock-gates into a deserted lock,

y. If one reads the lives of people with strong aesthetic perceptions, such as Rossetti, Pater, J. A. Symonds, one feels that these natures ran a certain risk of being absorbed in delicate perception. One feels that a sensation of beauty was to them so rapturous a thing that they ran the risk of making the pursuit of such sensations the one object and business of their existence; of sweeping the waters of life with busy nets, in the hope of entangling some creature "of bri

rbing, seems to be either favourable to this perception, or the reverse. It is not even like bodily health, which has its variations, but is on the whole likely to result from a certain defined regime of diet, exercise, and habits; and what would still more preserve me from making a deli

ery insincere; though it is equally true on the other hand that a great deal of genuine admiration of natural beauty is not expressed, perhaps hardly consciously felt. To have a true and deep appreciation of nature demands a certain poetical force, which is rare; and a great many people

he influx and efflux of life, which we call the seasons, the rich transfiguring influences of sunrise and sunset, the slow or swift lapse of clear streams, the march and plunge

d others again, who are condemned by circumstances to spend their days in toilsome towns, and yet have the instinct, derived perhaps from

house, with a wide prospect of house-backs and chimney-pots; and how the sage reviled and vituperated the horrors of

interest that is expressed in them. A person who said frankly that he thought that any of these subjects were uninteresting, tiresome or absurd, would be thought stupid or affected, even brutal. Probably most of the people who express a deep concern for these things believe that they are giving utterance to a sincere feeling; but not to expatiate on the emotions which they mistake for the real emotion in the other departments, there are probably a good many people w

an derive a certain pleasure from wide prospects of startling beauty, rugged mountains, steep gorges, great falls of water-all the things that are supposed to be picturesque. But though this is all very well as far as it goes, it is a very elementary kind of thing. The perception of which I speak is a perception which can be fed in the most familiar scene, in the shortest stroll, even in a momentary glance from a window. The things to look out for are little accidents of light and colour, little effects of chance

a fortress of quiet, close to the very dust and din of the street, hold many treasures of stately loveliness and fair association; this city of palaces, thick-set with spires and towers, as rich and dim as Camelot, is invested with a romance that few cities can equal; and then the waterside pleasaunces with their trim alleys, their air of ancient security and wealthy seclusion, have an incomparable charm; day by day, as one hurries or saunters through the streets, the charm strikes across the mind with an incredible force, a newness of impression

f distracting the mind. But I think there is no greater agony than to be confronted with tranquil passionate beauty, when the heart and spirit are out of tune with it. In the days of one's joy, nature laughs with us; in the days of vague and fantastic melancholy, there is an air of wistfulness, of mystery, that ministers to our luxurious sadness. But when one bears about the heavy burden of a harassing anxiety of sorrow, then the smile on the face of nature has something poisonous, almost maddening about it. It breeds an emotion that is like the rage of Othello when he loo

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e lesson is a hard one, that "Nature tolerates, she does not need." Let us only be sure that it is a true one, for nothing but the truth can give us ultimate repose. To the youthful spirit it is different, for all that the young and ardent need is that, if the old fails them, some new delight should be substituted. They but desire that the truth should be hidden from their gaze;

hat manifests itself in field and wood. They should wander alone in solitary places, where the hazel-hidden stream makes music, and the bird sings out of the heart of the forest; in meadows where the flowers grow brightly, or through the copse, purple with bluebells or starred with anemones; or they may climb the crisp turf of the down, and see the wonderful world lie spread out beneath their feet, with some clustering town "smouldering and glittering" in the distance; or lie upon the cliff-top, with the fields of waving wheat behind, and the sea spread out like a wrinkled marble floor in front; or walk on the sand beside the falling waves. Perhaps a soi-disant sensible man may see these words and think that I am a sad sentimentalist. I cannot help it; it is what I believe; nay, I will go further, and say that a man who d

rms, inaccessible peaks, desolate moors, wild sunsets, foaming seas. It is a sense of wonder, of mystery; it arouses a strange and yearning desire for we know not what; very often a rich melancholy attends it, which is yet not painful or sorrowful, but heightens and intensifies the significance, the value of life. I do not know how to interpret it, but it seems to me to be a call from without, a beckoning of some large and loving power to the soul. The primal instincts of which I have spoken all tend to concentrate the mind upon itself, to strengthen it for a selfish part; but the beauty of nature seems to be a call to the spirit to come forth, like the voice which summoned Lazarus from the rock-hewn sepulchre. It bids us to believe that our small identities, our limited desires, do n

of all those who are sensitive to the influences of the spirit. Nature has a magic for many of us-that is to say, a secret power that strikes across our lives at intervals, with a message from an unknown region. And this message is aroused too by symbols; a tree, a flash of light on lonely clouds, a flower, a stream-simple things that we have seen a thousand times-have sometimes the power to cast a spell over our spirit, and to b

eir perception of what is beautiful by the opinions of other people, and to superimpose on their own taste the taste of others. I myself hold strongly that nothing is worth admiring which is not admired sincerely. Of course, one must not form one's opinions too early, or hold them arrogantly or self-sufficiently. If one finds a large number of people admiring or professing to admire a certain class of objects, a certain species of scene,

ng ancient writers, and to have originated as late as the eighteenth century. Dr. Johnson spoke of mountains with disgust, and Gray seems to have been probably the first man who deliberately cultivated a delight in the sight of those "monstrous creatures of God," as he calls mountains. Till his time, the emotions that "nodding rocks" and "cascades" gave our forefathers seem mostly t

instance, is not that things should be perfectly seen and accurately presented; a picture of hard fidelity is often entirely displeasing; but one craves for a certain

ce of perfect beauty, in whatever form it may come, that the deep craving it arouses is meant to receive a satisfaction more deep and real than the act of mere contemplation can give. I have felt in such moments as if I were on the verge of grasping some momentous secret, as if only the thinnest of veils hung between me and some knowledge that would set my whole life and being on a different plane. But the moment passes, and the secret delays. Yet we are right to regard such emotions as direct messages from God; because they bring with them no desire of possession, which is the sig