careful choice of language betokens, far more often than not, a

corresponding delicacy of mind. Landor saw it as a ridiculous trait
that English people were so mealy-mouthed in speaking of their

bodies; De Quincey, taking him to task for this remark, declared it
a proof of blunted sensibility due to long residence in Italy; and,

whether the particular explanation held good or not, as regards the
question at issue, De Quincey was perfectly right. It is very good

to be mealy-mouthed with respect to everything that reminds us of
the animal in man. Verbal delicacy in itself will not prove an

advanced civilization, but civilization, as it advances, assuredly
tends that way.

XXIII
All through the morning, the air was held in an ominous stillness.

Sitting over my books, I seemed to feel the silence; when I turned
my look to the window, I saw nothing but the broad, grey sky, a

featureless expanse, cold, melancholy. Later, just as I was
bestirring myself to go out for an afternoon walk, something white

fell softly across my vision. A few minutes more, and all was
hidden with a descending veil of silent snow.

It is a disappointment. Yesterday I half believed that the winter
drew to its end; the breath of the hills was soft; spaces of limpid

azure shone amid slow-drifting clouds, and seemed the promise of
spring. Idle by the fireside, in the gathering dusk, I began to

long for the days of light and warmth. My fancy wandered, leading
me far and wide in a dream of summer England. . . .

This is the valley of the Blythe. The stream ripples and glances
over its brown bed warmed with sunbeams; by its bank the green flags

wave and rustle, and, all about, the meadows shine in pure gold of
buttercups. The hawthorn hedges are a mass of gleaming blossom,

which scents the breeze. There above rises the heath, yellow-
mantled with gorse, and beyond, if I walk for an hour or two, I

shall come out upon the sandy cliffs of Suffolk, and look over the
northern sea. . . .

I am in Wensleydale, climbing from the rocky river that leaps amid
broad pastures up to the rolling moor. Up and up, till my feet

brush through heather, and the grouse whirrs away before me. Under
a glowing sky of summer, this air of the uplands has still a life

which spurs to movement, which makes the heart bound. The dale is
hidden; I see only the brown and purplewilderness, cutting against

the blue with great round shoulders, and, far away to the west, an
horizon of sombre heights. . . .

I ramble through a village in Gloucestershire, a village which seems
forsaken in this drowsywarmth of the afternoon. The houses of grey

stone are old and beautiful, telling of a time when Englishmen knew
how to build whether for rich or poor; the gardens glow with

flowers, and the air is delicately sweet. At the village end, I
come into a lane, which winds upwards between grassy slopes, to turf

and bracken and woods of noble beech. Here I am upon a spur of the
Cotswolds, and before me spreads the wide vale of Evesham, with its

ripening crops, its fruiting orchards, watered by sacred Avon.
Beyond, softly blue, the hills of Malvern. On the branch hard by

warbles a little bird, glad in his leafy solitude. A rabbit jumps
through the fern. There sounds the laugh of a woodpecker from the

copse in yonder hollow. . . .
In the falling of a summer night, I walk by Ullswater. The sky is

still warm with the afterglow of sunset, a dusky crimson smouldering
above the dark mountain line. Below me spreads a long reach of the

lake, steel-grey between its dim colourless shores. In the profound
stillness, the trotting of a horse beyond the water sounds strangely

near; it serves only to make more sensible the repose of Nature in
this her sanctuary. I feel a solitude unutterable, yet nothing akin

to desolation; the heart of the land I love seems to beat in the
silent night gathering around me; amid things eternal, I touch the

familiar and the kindly earth. Moving, I step softly, as though my
footfall were an irreverence. A turn in the road, and there is

wafted to me a faint perfume, that of meadow-sweet. Then I see a
light glimmering in the farmhouse window--a little ray against the

blackness of the great hillside, below which the water sleeps. . . .
A pathway leads me by the winding of the river Ouse. Far on every

side stretches a homelylandscape, tilth and pasture, hedgerow and
clustered trees, to where the sky rests upon the gentle hills.

Slow, silent, the river lapses between its daisied banks, its grey-
green osier beds. Yonder is the little town of St. Neots. In all

England no simpler bit of rural scenery; in all the world nothing of
its kind more beautiful. Cattle are lowing amid the rich meadows.

Here one may loiter and dream in utter restfulness, whilst the great
white clouds mirror themselves in the water as they pass above. . .

.
I am walking upon the South Downs. In the valleys, the sun lies

hot, but here sings a breeze which freshens the forehead and fills
the heart with gladness. My foot upon the short, soft turf has an

unwearied lightness; I feel capable of walking on and on, even to
that farthesthorizon where the white cloud casts its floating

shadow. Below me, but far off, is the summer sea, still, silent,
its ever-changing blue and green dimmed at the long limit with

luminous noontide mist. Inland spreads the undulant vastness of the
sheep-spotted downs, beyond them the tillage and the woods of Sussex

weald, coloured like to the pure sky above them, but in deeper tint.
Near by, all but hidden among trees in yon lovely hollow, lies an

old, old hamlet, its brown roofs decked with golden lichen; I see
the low church-tower, and the little graveyard about it. Meanwhile,

high in the heaven, a lark is singing. It descends; it drops to its
nest, and I could dream that half the happiness of its exultant song

was love of England. . . .
It is all but dark. For a quarter of an hour I must have been

writing by a glow of firelight reflected on to my desk; it seemed to
me the sun of summer. Snow is still falling. I see its ghostly

glimmer against the vanishing sky. To-morrow it will be thick upon
my garden, and perchance for several days. But when it melts, when

it melts, it will leave the snowdrop. The crocus, too, is waiting,
down there under the white mantle which warms the earth.

XXIV
Time is money--says the vulgarest saw known to any age or people.

Turn it round about, and you get a precious truth--money is time. I
think of it on these dark, mist-blinded mornings, as I come down to

find a glorious fire crackling and leaping in my study. Suppose I
were so poor that I could not afford that heartsome blaze, how

different the whole day would be! Have I not lost many and many a
day of my life for lack of the material comfort which was necessary

to put my mind in tune? Money is time. With money I buy for
cheerful use the hours which otherwise would not in any sense be

mine; nay, which would make me their miserable bondsman. Money is
time, and, heaven be thanked, there needs so little of it for this

sort of purchase. He who has overmuch is wont to be as badly off in
regard to the true use of money, as he who has not enough. What are

we doing all our lives but purchasing, or trying to purchase, time?
And most of us, having grasped it with one hand, throw it away with

the other.
XXV

The dark days are drawing to an end. Soon it will be spring once
more; I shall go out into the fields, and shake away these thoughts

of discouragement and fear which have lately too much haunted my
fireside. For me, it is a virtue to be self-centred; I am much

better employed, from every point of view, when I live solely for my
own satisfaction, than when I begin to worry about the world. The

world frightens me, and a frightened man is no good for anything. I
know only one way in which I could have played a meritorious part as

an active citizen--by becoming a schoolmaster in some little country
town, and teaching half a dozen teachable boys to love study for its

own sake. That I could have done, I daresay. Yet, no; for I must
have had as a young man the same mind that I have in age, devoid of

idle ambitions, undisturbed by unattainable ideals. Living as I do
now, I deserve better of my country than at any time in my working

life; better, I suspect, than most of those who are praised for busy
patriotism.

Not that I regard my life as an example for any one else; all I say
is, that it is good for me, and in so far an advantage to the world.

To live in quiet content is surely a piece of good citizenship. If
you can do more, do it, and God-speed! I know myself for an

exception. And I ever find it a good antidote to gloomy thoughts to
bring before my imagination the lives of men, utterly unlike me in

their minds and circumstances, who give themselves with glad and
hopefulenergy to the plain duties that lie before them. However