lime communion which Aubrey De Vere describes as "one long mystic colloquy between the twin-born powers, whispering together of immortality; " of quiet brooding over one's thought; of the rapture of the imagination detaching itself from the world of habit and work, and breathing the ampler ether of the great Idealisms. Nothing redeems a life from the barrenness of continued activity so completely as a stream of deep, silent meditation running under all one's work, and rising into light when the day of solitude comes round. It has been said of Shakespeare that his face. bears the marks of habitual meditation; there is visible in it the calmness and fulness of a mind forever brooding over the deep things of life; steadied by contemplation of the unfathomable gulfs beneath, uplifted by vision of the shining heights above, calmed and held in poise by familiarity with the unmeasured forces which play about us.

There is no shirking of common duties, no self-indulgence, in this separation from our fellows. The Irishman who defined solitude as "being alone with one's sweet

heart" was not so far out of the way as he seems at the first blush. For the solitude that is a necessity to thoughtful natures is not isolation; it is separation from the stress and turmoil of the world. Wordsworth's life at Grasmere was a life of solitude, but not a solitary life; on the contrary, it was enriched and ministered to by the most intimate and devoted companionship. That companionship did not introduce new and contradictory influences into the poet's life; it brought no pressure of other and diverse aims and ideals to bear on his work. It confirmed and inspired him by constant and pervading sympathy. His days were spent in solitude, without solitariness or isolation; the atmosphere of his fireside was not different. from that which reigned among the hills in those long hours when the poet paced to and fro along his garden paths, chanting his own lines in low monotone.

There is nothing more delightful about the study fire than the sense of congenial solitude which it conveys the solitude of quiet, reposeful hours, "far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife." The world.

must be with us, but not too much with us, if we would gain that calm, complete mastery of ourselves which marks full intellectual stature. No large-minded man reviles the world; he knows its uses and value too well for that; it is the cramped, narrow, or morbid natures who seek complete isolation, and in the little circle of their own individualism find that satisfaction which comes to men of larger mould only from free and inspiring contact with the whole order of things of which they are part. It is not rejection of society, but wise and right use of it, which characterises the man who lives most richly in the things of the mind. One finds in solitude only that which he takes into it; it gives nothing save the conditions most favourable to growth. The quiet hours before one's fire, with one's books at hand; the long ramble along the woodland road - these make one free to brood over the thoughts that come unbidden, to follow. them step by step to their unseen goals, and to drink in the subtle and invisible influences of the hour when one gives one's self up to it. There is nothing in

all the rich and deep experience of life so full of quiet joy, so freighted with the revelations of the things we seek with completest sincerity, as these pauses of solitude in the ceaseless stir and movement of the world.

CHAPTER XXX

THE MYSTERY OF ATMOSPHERE

OT many months ago an artist described a striking change in a landscape. It was a dull afternoon in September, and the stretch of sand dune, with its stunted trees herbage, was gray as The narrow channel

and scattered bits of the sky and the sea. of a little estuary that ran back among the low hills was empty and bare. Two hours passed, and the busy sketcher looked up suddenly from her work to find the silent world alive once more. The tide was coming in, and the sea was sending a current out of its own fathomless life into the heart of the land. Up the narrow channel ran the eager, restless rivulet, widening, rippling, full of vitality, movement, and