moving splendour, such varied and interwoven charm. Brutus yielding to the noble importunity of Portia for confidence, and Marc Antony melting in purpose and energy at the glance of those languorous eyes and the sound of that full-throated, passionate voice—is there anywhere a contrast so fundamental, because so compounded of the invisible elements which belong, not to the fixed and stationary, but to the free and flowing side of life?

And the spell of this atmospheric quality lies in its spontaneity and unconsciousness. It steals into our thought and conveys a lasting impression while we take no note of its presence. Statements of facts, conclusions, descriptions, we can deal with critically, because they are, in a way, concrete and tangible; but the colours in which these are dyed, the feeling which pervades them, the nameless, elusive quality which conforms them to the idea they embody or the character they express, find us unprotected and defenceless. Unless we resolutely close the eye, the landscape instantly records itself on the mind; and unless we deliberately shut the imagination,

the artist works his spell within us. The fresh and penetrating charm of the early summer is not more pervasive and impossible to escape than is this intangible quality in a work of art.

To the artist himself it is not less mysterious; it is part of his personality, and he cannot lay hand upon it. In the “Ode on a Grecian Urn" and the “ Eve of St. Agnes" Keats was dealing with material as different in substance, colour, and form as the classical and the mediaval ideals and manner of life. Of that difference he was no doubt perfectly conscious, and he makes us realise it in a definite and distinct difference of diction, feeling, and treatment; but there is a difference of atmosphere between the two poems of which the poet cannot have been conscious at the moment of production. There was in him an unconscious adjustment of mind, an unconscious response of the imagination to the appeal of two aspects of life, separated not only by an abyss of time, but by a still deeper abyss of experience. That response is a vital act; it is the activity of that deeper self whose secret is unrevealed;

it is creative, and therefore baffling and inexplicable. The rocks, fields, trees, and hills may be set down accurately on the map; but no man can make record of the atmosphere which to-day touches them with beauty beyond the skill of art, and to-morrow leaves them cold, detached, and lifeless as the matter of which they are compounded. Students and critics have. not failed to point out Shakespeare's methods of dealing with history and character, but no lover of the great dramatist has ever discovered the secret of that power by which he gives to our imagination the rude massiveness of the age of Lear, the fresh, varied, and vital charm of the Forest of Arden, and the colour, the languor, and the voluptuous spell of Egypt upon Antony and Enobarbus.

CHAPTER XXXI

A NEW HEARTH

N most men there is a native conservatism; even those who are progressive and radical in their view of things in general are stanch defenders of old habits and familiar places.

The man who has his doubts about absolute private ownership will hesitate long before cutting down some old-time tree whose beauty decay is fast changing into ugliness, or giving up the inconvenient and narrow home of childhood for more ample and attractive quarters. We cling to old things by instinct, and because they have been a part of our lives. When Rosalind and myself began talking about a new and ampler hearth for the study fire, the prospect, although alluring, was not without its shadows. There was not only the consciousness of the sur

render of delightful associations, but the thought of the newness to be made old and the coldness to be made warm. A fresh hearth has no sentiment until the fire has roared up the wide-throated chimney on windy nights, no associations until its glow has fallen on a circle of familiar faces.

But how soon the strange becomes familiar, and that which was detached from all human fellowship takes on the deeper interest and profounder meaning of human life! Rosalind had barely lighted the fire on the new hearth before the room seemed familiar and homelike. The bit of driftwood which the children laid on at a later stage was really needed to give a suggestion of something strange and foreign to our daily habit. There is a wonderful power in us of imparting ourselves to our surroundings; the fountain of vitality constantly overflows and fertilises everything we touch. We give ourselves to the

rooms in which we live and the tools with which we work. It is not only the pen with which the great man wrote and the toy with which the little child played that