I rode away with a quiet hopefulness in my heart.  I seemed like a dusty and weary wayfarer, who has flung off his heated garments and plunged into the clear waters of comfort; to have drawn near to the heart of the world; to have had a sight, in the midst of things mutable and disquieting, of things august and everlasting.  At another time I might have flung myself into busy fancies, imagined a community living an orderly and peaceful life, full of serene activities, in that still place; but for once I was content to have seen a dwelling-place, devised by some busy human brain, that had failed of its purpose, lost its ancient lords, sunk into a calm decay; to have seen it all caressed and comforted and embraced by nature, its scars hidden, its grace replenished, its harshness smoothed away.

Such gentle hours are few; and fewer still the moments of anxiety and vexation when so direct a message is flashed straight from the Mind of God into the unquiet human heart; I never doubted that I was led there by a subtle, delicate, and fatherly tenderness, and shown a thing which should at once touch my sense of beauty, and then rising, as it were, and putting the superficial aspect aside, speak with no uncertain voice of the deep hopes, the everlasting peace on which for a few years the little restless world of ours is rocked and carried to and fro. . . .—­Ever yours,

T. B.

Upton,
Nov. 29, 1904.

Dear Herbert,—­To-day the world is shrouded in a thick, white, dripping mist.  Glancing up in the warm room where I sit, I see nothing but grey window spaces.  “How melancholy, how depressing,” says my generally cheerful friend, Randall, staring sadly out into the blank air.  But I myself do not agree.  I am conscious of a vague, pleasurable excitement; a sense, too, of repose.  This half light is grateful and cooling alike to eye and brain.  Then, too, it is a change from ordinary conditions, and a change has always something invigorating about it.  I steal about with an obscure sense that something mysterious is happening.  And yet imagine some bright spirit of air and sunshine, like Ariel, flitting hither and thither above the mist, dipping his feet in the vapour, as a sea-bird flies low across the sea.  Think of the pity he would feel for the poor human creatures, buried in darkness below, creeping hither and thither in the gloom.

It is pleasurable enough within the house, but still more pleasurable to walk abroad; the little circle of dim vision passes with you, just revealing the road, the field, the pasture in which you walk.