day, with the sun lying warm on the brickwork, it seemed to have a perfection of charm about it like the design of a mind intent upon devising as beautiful a thing as could be made.  The old house seemed to have grown old and mellow like a rock or crag; to have sprung up out of the ground; and nature, working patiently with rain and sun and wind, drooping the stonecrop from the parapet, fringing the parapets with snapdragons and wallflowers, touching the old roofs with orange and grey lichens, had done the rest.  No one shall learn from me where the House of Bellasyze lies; but I will revisit it spring by spring, like a hidden treasure of beauty.

The result of these perfect days, full of life and freshness, with all the loveliness and without the languors of spring, is to produce in me a perfectly inconsequent mood of happiness, which is better than any amount of philosophical consolation.  The air, the breeze, the flying hour are all full of delight.  Everything is touched with a fine savour and quality, whether it be the wide view over the dappled plain, the blue waters of the lonely dyke, the old farm-house blinking pleasantly among its barns and outbuildings, the tall church-tower that you see for miles over the flat, the busy cawing of rooks in the village grove; the very people that one meets wear a smiling and friendly air, from the old labourer trudging slowly home, to the jolly, smooth-faced ploughboy riding a big horse, clanking and plodding down the highway.  One sees the world as it was meant to be made; a life in the open air, labour among the wide fields, seems the joyful lot of man.  The very food that one eats by the quick-set thorn on the edge of a dyke, where the fish poise and hang in dark pools, has a finer savour, and is like a sacrament of peace; hour after hour, from morning to sunset, one can range without weariness and without care, one’s thoughts reduced to a mere flow of gentle perceptions, murmuring along like a clear stream.  Pleasant, too, is the return home when one swings in at the familiar gate; and then comes the quiet solitary evening when one recounts the hoarded store of delicate impressions.  Then follow hours of dreamless sleep, till one wakes again upon a bright world, with the thrushes fluting in the shrubbery and the morning sun flooding the room.

LVI

It was by what we clumsily call chance but really by what I am learning to perceive to be the subtlest and prettiest surprises of the Power that walks beside us, that I found myself in Ely yesterday morning—­the first real day of summer.  The air was full of sunshine, like golden dust, and all the plants had taken a leap forward in the night, and were unfurling their crumpled flags as speedily as they might.  I came vaguely down to the river, guided by the same good spirit, and there at the boat-wharf I found a little motor-launch lying, which could be hired for the day.  I took it, like the Lady of Shalott; but I did not write my name on the prow, because it had already some silly, darting kind of name.  A mild, taciturn man took charge of my craft; and without delay we clicked and gurgled out into the stream.