Nor is the wealth of these bells in their number only, but also in their use; for they are not reserved in any way, but ring tunes and add harmonies at every half and quarter and at all the hours both by night and by day.  Nor must you imagine that there is any obsession of noise through this; they are far too high and melodious, and, what is more, too thoroughly a part of all the spirit of Delft to be more than a perpetual and half-forgotten impression of continual music; they render its air sacred and fill it with something so akin to an uplifted silence as to leave one—­when one has passed from their influence—­asking what balm that was which soothed all the harshness of sound about one.

Round that tower and that voice the town hangs industrious and subdued—­a family.  Its waters, its intimate canals, its boats for travel, and its slight plashing of bows in the place of wheels, entered the spirit of the traveller and gave him for one long day the Right of Burgess.  In autumn, in the early afternoon—­the very season for those walls—­it was easy for him to be filled with a restrained but united chorus, the under-voices of the city, droning and murmuring perpetually of Peace and of Labour and of the wild rose—­Content....

Peace, labour, and content—­three very good words, and summing up, perhaps, the goal of all mankind.  Of course, there is a problem everywhere, and it would be heresy to say that the people of Delft have solved it.  It is Matter of Breviary that the progress of our lives is but asymptotic to true joy; we can approach it nearer and nearer, but we can never reach it.

Nevertheless, I say that in this excellent city, though it is outside Eden, you may, when the wind is in the right quarter, receive in distant and rare appeals the scent and air of Paradise; the soul is filled.

To this emotion there corresponds and shall here be quoted a very noble verse, which runs—­or rather glides—­as follows:—­

     Satiety, that momentary flower
     Stretched to an hour—­
     These are her gifts which all mankind may use,
     And all refuse.

Or words to that effect.  And to think that you can get to a place like that for less than a pound!

THE WING OF DALUA

Time was, and that not so long ago, when the Two Men had revealed to them by their Genius a corner of Europe wherein they were promised more surprises and delights than in any other.

It was secretly made known to them that in this place there were no pictures, and no one had praised its people, and further that no Saint had ever troubled it; and the rich and all their evils (so the Two Men were assured) had never known the place at all.