It would not be easy to express more pathos than is conveyed in these few words.  Xenophon himself, one may be sure, did not feel it quite as we do, but he preserved the incident for its own sake, and there, in a line or two, shines something of human love and sacrifice, significant for all time.

X.

I sometimes think I will go and spend the sunny half of a twelvemonth in wandering about the British Isles.  There is so much of beauty and interest that I have not seen, and I grudge to close my eyes on this beloved home of ours, leaving any corner of it unvisited.  Often I wander in fancy over all the parts I know, and grow restless with desire at familiar names which bring no picture to memory.  My array of county guide-books (they have always been irresistible to me on the stalls) sets me roaming; the only dull pages in them are those that treat of manufacturing towns.  Yet I shall never start on that pilgrimage.  I am too old, too fixed in habits.  I dislike the railway; I dislike hotels.  I should grow homesick for my library, my garden, the view from my windows.  And then—­I have such a fear of dying anywhere but under my own roof.

As a rule, it is better to revisit only in imagination the places which have greatly charmed us, or which, in the retrospect, seem to have done so.  Seem to have charmed us, I say; for the memory we form, after a certain lapse of time, of places where we lingered, often bears but a faint resemblance to the impression received at the time; what in truth may have been very moderate enjoyment, or enjoyment greatly disturbed by inner or outer circumstances, shows in the distance as a keen delight, or as deep, still happiness.  On the other hand, if memory creates no illusion, and the name of a certain place is associated with one of the golden moments of life, it were rash to hope that another visit would repeat the experience of a bygone day.  For it was not merely the sights that one beheld which were the cause of joy and peace; however lovely the spot, however gracious the sky, these things external would not have availed, but for contributory movements of mind and heart and blood, the essentials of the man as then he was.

Whilst I was reading this afternoon my thoughts strayed, and I found myself recalling a hillside in Suffolk, where, after a long walk I rested drowsily one midsummer day twenty years ago.  A great longing seized me; I was tempted to set off at once, and find again that spot under the high elm trees, where, as I smoked a delicious pipe, I heard about me the crack, crack, crack of broom-pods bursting in the glorious heat of the noontide sun.  Had I acted upon the impulse, what chance was there of my enjoying such another hour as that which my memory cherished?  No, no; it is not the place that I remember; it is the time of life, the circumstances, the mood, which at that moment fell so happily together.  Can