“Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
  By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
  Or in the beached margent of the sea—­“[293]

or this, the last I will quote:—­

“The moon shines bright.  In such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise, in such a night
Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls—­

                   ... in such a night
  Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew—­
                    ... in such a night
  Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand,
  Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love
  To come again to Carthage."[294]

And those last lines of all are so drenched and intoxicated with the fairy-dew of that natural magic which is our theme, that I cannot do better than end with them.

And now, with the pieces of evidence in our hand, let us go to those who say it is vain to look for Celtic elements in any Englishman, and let us ask them, first, if they seize what we mean by the power of natural magic in Celtic poetry:  secondly, if English poetry does not eminently exhibit this power; and, thirdly, where they suppose English poetry got it from?

GEORGE SAND[295]

The months go round, and anniversaries return; on the ninth of June George Sand will have been dead just one year.  She was born in 1804; she was almost seventy-two years old when she died.  She came to Paris after the revolution of 1830, with her Indiana[296] written, and began her life of independence, her life of authorship, her life as George Sand.  She continued at work till she died.  For forty-five years she was writing and publishing, and filled Europe with her name.

It seems to me but the other day that I saw her, yet it was in the August of 1846, more than thirty years ago.  I saw her in her own Berry, at Nohant,[297] where her childhood and youth were passed, where she returned to live after she became famous, where she died and has now her grave.  There must be many who, after reading her books, have felt the same desire which in those days of my youth, in 1846, took me to Nohant, —­the desire to see the country and the places of which the books that so charmed us were full.  Those old provinces of the centre of France, primitive and slumbering,—­Berry, La Marche, Bourbonnais; those sites and streams in them, of name once so indifferent to us, but to which George Sand gave such a music for our ear,—­La Chatre, Ste. Severe, the Vallee Noire, the Indre, the Creuse; how many a reader of George Sand must have desired, as I did, after frequenting them so much in thought, fairly to set eyes upon them!

I had been reading Jeanne.[298] I made up my mind to go and see Toulx Ste. Croix, Boussac, and the Druidical stones on Mont Barlot, the Pierres Jaunatres.[299]