If it were merely aroused by tranquil, comfortable amenities of scene, it might be referable to the general sense of well-being, and of contented life under pleasant conditions.  But it is aroused just as strongly by prospects that are inimical to life and comfort, lashing storms, 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 not say the last word for us, but that there is something larger and stronger outside, in which we may claim a share.  As I write these words I look out upon a strange transfiguration of a familiar scene.  The sky is full of black and inky clouds, but from the low setting sun there pours an intense pale radiance, which lights up house-roofs, trees, and fields, with a white light; a flight of pigeons, wheeling high in the air, become brilliant specks of moving light upon a background of dark rolling vapour.  What is the meaning of the intense and rapturous thrill that this sends through me?  It is no selfish delight, no personal profit that it gives me.  It promises me nothing, it sends me nothing but a deep and mysterious satisfaction, which seems to make light of my sullen and petty moods.

I was reading the other day, in a strange book, of the influence of magic upon the spirit, the vague dreams of the deeper mind that could be awakened by the contemplation of symbols.  It seemed to me to be unreal and fantastic, a manufacturing of secrets, a playing of whimsical tricks with the mind; and yet I ought not to say that, because it was evidently written in good faith.  But I have since reflected that it is true in a sense 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 bring something that is great and incommunicable near us.  This must be called magic, for it is not a thing which can be explained by ordinary laws, or defined in precise terms; but the spell is there, real, insistent, undeniable; it seems to make a bridge for the spirit to pass into a far-off, dimly apprehended region; it gives us a sense of great issues and remote visions; it leaves us with a longing which has no mortal fulfilment.