language betokens, far more often than not, a corresponding delicacy of mind.  Landor saw it as a ridiculous trait that English people were so mealy-mouthed in speaking of their bodies; De Quincey, taking him to task for this remark, declared it a proof of blunted sensibility due to long residence in Italy; and, whether the particular explanation held good or not, as regards the question at issue, De Quincey was perfectly right.  It is very good to be mealy-mouthed with respect to everything that reminds us of the animal in man.  Verbal delicacy in itself will not prove an advanced civilization, but civilization, as it advances, assuredly tends that way.

XXIII.

All through the morning, the air was held in an ominous stillness.  Sitting over my books, I seemed to feel the silence; when I turned my look to the window, I saw nothing but the broad, grey sky, a featureless expanse, cold, melancholy.  Later, just as I was bestirring myself to go out for an afternoon walk, something white fell softly across my vision.  A few minutes more, and all was hidden with a descending veil of silent snow.

It is a disappointment.  Yesterday I half believed that the winter drew to its end; the breath of the hills was soft; spaces of limpid azure shone amid slow-drifting clouds, and seemed the promise of spring.  Idle by the fireside, in the gathering dusk, I began to long for the days of light and warmth.  My fancy wandered, leading me far and wide in a dream of summer England. . . .

This is the valley of the Blythe.  The stream ripples and glances over its brown bed warmed with sunbeams; by its bank the green flags wave and rustle, and, all about, the meadows shine in pure gold of buttercups.  The hawthorn hedges are a mass of gleaming blossom, which scents the breeze.  There above rises the heath, yellow-mantled with gorse, and beyond, if I walk for an hour or two, I shall come out upon the sandy cliffs of Suffolk, and look over the northern sea. . . .

I am in Wensleydale, climbing from the rocky river that leaps amid broad pastures up to the rolling moor.  Up and up, till my feet brush through heather, and the grouse whirrs away before me.  Under a glowing sky of summer, this air of the uplands has still a life which spurs to movement, which makes the heart bound.  The dale is hidden; I see only the brown and purple wilderness, cutting against the blue with great round shoulders, and, far away to the west, an horizon of sombre heights. . . .

I ramble through a village in Gloucestershire, a village which seems forsaken in this drowsy warmth of the afternoon.  The houses of grey stone are old and beautiful, telling of a time when Englishmen knew how to build whether for rich or poor; the gardens glow with flowers, and the air is delicately sweet.  At the village end, I come into a lane, which winds upwards between grassy slopes, to turf and bracken