we are made acquainted with the grey sadness of twilight, the solemn majesty of the night-time, the faint chill of the dawn, that we set so high a value on the more meridional hours.  If there were no autumn, no winter, then spring and summer would lose, not all indeed, yet an appreciable part of their sweet savour for us.  Thus, as his mind matured, Percy came to be very glad of the gradual changes of the year.  He found in them a rhythm, as he once described it in his diary; and this he liked very much indeed.  He was aware that in his own character, with its tendency to waywardness, to caprice, to disorder, there was an almost grievous lack of this rhythmic quality.  In the sure and seemly progression of the months, was there not for him a desirable exemplar, a needed corrective?  He was so liable to moods in which he rebelled against the performance of some quite simple duty, some appointed task—­moods in which he said to himself “H-ng it!  I will not do this,” or “Oh, b-th-r!  I shall not do that!” But it was clear that Nature herself never spoke thus.  Even as a passenger in a frail barque on the troublous ocean will keep his eyes directed towards some upstanding rock on the far horizon, finding thus inwardly for himself, or hoping to find, a more stable equilibrium, a deeper tranquillity, than is his, so did Percy daily devote a certain portion of his time to quiet communion with the almanac.

There were times when he was sorely tempted to regret a little that some of the feasts of the Church were “moveable.”  True, they moved only within strictly prescribed limits, and in accordance with certain unalterable, wholly justifiable rules.  Yet, in the very fact that they did move, there seemed—­to use an expressive slang phrase of the day—­“something not quite nice.”  It was therefore the fixed feasts that pleased Percy best, and on Christmas Day, especially, he experienced a temperate glow which would have perhaps surprised those who knew him only slightly.

By reason of the athletic exercises of his earlier years, Percy had retained in middle life a certain lightness and firmness of tread; and this on Christmas morning, between his rooms and the Cathedral, was always so peculiarly elastic that he might almost have seemed to be rather running than walking.  The ancient fane, with its soarings of grey columns to the dimness of its embowed roof, the delicate traceries of the organ screen, the swelling notes of the organ, the mellow shafts of light filtered through the stained-glass windows whose hues were as those of emeralds and rubies and amethysts, the stainless purity of the surplices of clergy and choir, the sober richness of Sunday bonnets in the transept, the faint yet heavy fragrance exhaled from the hot-water pipes—­all these familiar things, appealing, as he sometimes felt, almost too strongly to that sensuous side of his nature which made him so susceptible to the paintings of Mr. Leader, of Sir Luke Fildes, were on Christmas morning more than usually affecting by reason of that note of quiet joyousness, of peace and good will, that pervaded the lessons of the day, the collect, the hymns, the sermon.