dark waters to wade across; these feet will stumble and bleed; these knees will be weary before the end; but to-day there is no doubt about the pilgrimage, no question of the far-off goal.  The world is sad, perhaps, but sweet; sad as the homeless clouds that drift endlessly across the sky from marge to marge; sweet as the note of the hidden bird, that rises from moment to moment from the copse beside me, again and yet again, telling of a little heart that is content to wait, and not ill-pleased to be alone with its own soft thoughts.

April 4, 1889.

Down in the valley which runs below the house is a mill.  I passed it to-day at dusk, and I thought I had never seen so characteristically English a scene.  The wheel was silent, and the big boarded walls, dusted with flour, loomed up solemnly in the evening light.  The full leat dashed merrily through the sluice, making holiday, like a child released from school.  Behind was the stack-yard, for it is a farm as well as a mill; and in the byre I heard the grunting of comfortable pigs, and the soft pulling of the hay from the big racks by the bullocks.  The fowls were going to roost, fluttering up every now and then into the big elder-bushes; while high above, in the apple-trees, I saw great turkeys settled precariously for the night.  The orchard was silent, except for the murmur of the stream that bounds it.  In the mill-house itself lights gleamed in the windows, and I saw a pleasant family-party gathered at their evening meal.  The whole scene with its background of sloping meadows and budding woods so tranquil and contented—­a scene which William Morris would have loved—­for there is a pleasant grace of antiquity about the old house, a sense of homely and solid life, and of all the family associations that have gone to the making of it, generation after generation leaving its mark in the little alterations and additions that have met a need, or even satisfied a pleasant fancy.

The miller is an elderly man now, fond of work, prosperous, good-humoured.  His son lives with him, and the house is full of grandchildren.  I do not say that it puzzles me to divine what is the miller’s view of life, because I think I know it.  It is to make money honestly, to bring up his grandchildren virtuously and comfortably, to enjoy his daily work and his evening leisure.  He is never idle, never preoccupied.  He enjoys getting the mill started, seeing the flour stream into the sacks, he enjoys going to market, he enjoys going prosperously to church on Sundays, he enjoys his paper and his pipe.  He has no exalted ideas, and he could not put a single emotion into words, but he is thoroughly honest, upright, manly, kind, sensible.  A perfect life in many ways; and yet it is inconceivable to me that a man should live thus, without an aim, without a hope, without an object.  He would think my own life even more inconceivable—­that a man could deliberately sit down day after day to construct a