more pleasure in Nature as represented by art than in Nature herself.  Even during that strange time when hardships and passions held me captive far from any glimpse of the flowering earth, I could be moved, and moved deeply, by a picture of the simplest rustic scene.  At rare moments, when a happy chance led me into the National Gallery, I used to stand long before such pictures as “The Valley Farm,” “The Cornfield,” “Mousehold Heath.”  In the murk confusion of my heart these visions of the world of peace and beauty from which I was excluded—­to which, indeed, I hardly ever gave a thought—­touched me to deep emotion.  But it did not need—­nor does it now—­the magic of a master to awake that mood in me.  Let me but come upon the poorest little woodcut, the cheapest “process” illustration, representing a thatched cottage, a lane, a field, and I hear that music begin to murmur.  It is a passion—­Heaven be thanked—­that grows with my advancing years.  The last thought of my brain as I lie dying will be that of sunshine upon an English meadow.

III.

Sitting in my garden amid the evening scent of roses, I have read through Walton’s Life of Hooker; could any place and time have been more appropriate?  Almost within sight is the tower of Heavitree church—­Heavitree, which was Hooker’s birthplace.  In other parts of England he must often have thought of these meadows falling to the green valley of the Exe, and of the sun setting behind the pines of Haldon.  Hooker loved the country.  Delightful to me, and infinitely touching, is that request of his to be transferred from London to a rural living—­“where I can see God’s blessing spring out of the earth.”  And that glimpse of him where he was found tending sheep, with a Horace in his hand.  It was in rural solitudes that he conceived the rhythm of mighty prose.  What music of the spheres sang to that poor, vixen-haunted, pimply-faced man!

The last few pages I read by the light of the full moon, that of afterglow having till then sufficed me.  Oh, why has it not been granted me in all my long years of pen-labour to write something small and perfect, even as one of these lives of honest Izaak!  Here is literature, look you—­not “literary work.”  Let me be thankful that I have the mind to enjoy it; not only to understand, but to savour, its great goodness.

IV.

It is Sunday morning, and above earth’s beauty shines the purest, softest sky this summer has yet gladdened us withal.  My window is thrown open; I see the sunny gleam upon garden leaves and flowers; I hear the birds whose wont it is to sing to me; ever and anon the martins that have their home beneath my eaves sweep past in silence.  Church bells have begun to chime; I know the music of their voices, near and far.