That sense I shall never know again.  For me Nature has comforts, raptures, but no more invigoration.  The sun keeps me alive, but cannot, as in the old days, renew my being.  I would fain learn to enjoy without reflecting.

My walk in the golden hours leads me to a great horse-chestnut, whose root offers a convenient seat in the shadow of its foliage.  At that resting-place I have no wide view before me, but what I see is enough—­a corner of waste land, over-flowered with poppies and charlock, on the edge of a field of corn.  The brilliant red and yellow harmonize with the glory of the day.  Near by, too, is a hedge covered with great white blooms of the bindweed.  My eyes do not soon grow weary.

A little plant of which I am very fond is the rest-harrow.  When the sun is hot upon it, the flower gives forth a strangely aromatic scent, very delightful to me.  I know the cause of this peculiar pleasure.  The rest-harrow sometimes grows in sandy ground above the seashore.  In my childhood I have many a time lain in such a spot under the glowing sky, and, though I scarce thought of it, perceived the odour of the little rose-pink flower when it touched my face.  Now I have but to smell it, and those hours come back again.  I see the shore of Cumberland, running north to St. Bee’s Head; on the sea horizon a faint shape which is the Isle of Man; inland, the mountains, which for me at that time guarded a region of unknown wonder.  Ah, how long ago!

IX.

I read much less than I used to do; I think much more.  Yet what is the use of thought which can no longer serve to direct life?  Better, perhaps, to read and read incessantly, losing one’s futile self in the activity of other minds.

This summer I have taken up no new book, but have renewed my acquaintance with several old ones which I had not opened for many a year.  One or two have been books such as mature men rarely read at all—­books which it is one’s habit to “take as read”; to presume sufficiently known to speak of, but never to open.  Thus, one day my hand fell upon the Anabasis, the little Oxford edition which I used at school, with its boyish sign-manual on the fly-leaf, its blots and underlinings and marginal scrawls.  To my shame I possess no other edition; yet this is a book one would like to have in beautiful form.  I opened it, I began to read—­a ghost of boyhood stirring in my heart—­and from chapter to chapter was led on, until after a few days I had read the whole.

I am glad this happened in the summer-time, I like to link childhood with these latter days, and no better way could I have found than this return to a school-book, which, even as a school-book, was my great delight.