crossing the road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no smell.  If you point to a distant object, perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out his glass to look at it.  There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the colour of a cloud, which hits your fancy, but the effect of which you are unable to account for.  There is then no sympathy, but an uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you on the way, and in the end probably produces ill-humour.  Now I never quarrel with myself, and take all my own conclusions for granted till I find it necessary to defend them against objections.  It is not merely that you may not be of accord on the objects and circumstances that present themselves before you—­these may recall a number of objects, and lead to associations too delicate and refined to be possibly communicated to others.  Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do so.  To give way to our feelings before company seems extravagance or affectation; and, on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered), is a task to which few are competent.  We must “give it an understanding, but no tongue.”  My old friend Coleridge, however, could do both.  He could go on in the most delightful explanatory way over hill and dale a summer’s day, and convert a landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaric ode.  “He talked far above singing.”  If I could so clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing words, I might perhaps wish to have some one with me to admire the swelling theme; or I could be more content, were it possible for me still to hear his echoing voice in the woods of All-Foxden.  They had “that fine madness in them which our first poets had”; and, if they could have been caught by some rare instrument, would have breathed such strains as the following: 

               Here be woods as green
  As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet
  As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
  Face of the curled streams, with flowers as many
  As the young spring gives, and as choice as any;
  Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,
  Arbours o’ergrown with woodbines, caves and dells;
  Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing,
  Or gather rushes to make many a ring
  For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,
  How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,
  First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eye
  She took eternal fire that never dies;
  How she convey’d him softly in a sleep,
  His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
  Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,
  Gilding the mountains with her brother’s light,
  To kiss her sweetest.

Had I words and images at command like these, I would attempt to wake the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden ridges in the evening clouds:  but at the sight of nature my fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes up its leaves, like flowers at sunset.  I can make nothing out on the spot:  I must have time to collect myself.