or when he says,

     Some silent laws our hearts may make
       Which they shall long obey—­

then he seems to uncover the very secrets of the world, and to speak as when in the prophet’s vision the seven thunders uttered their voices.  Only to-day I was working with a pupil; in his essay he had quoted Wordsworth, and we looked up the place.  While I was speaking, my eye fell upon “The Poet’s Epitaph,” and I saw,

     Come hither in thy hour of strength,
     Come, weak as is a breaking wave!

Those two lines of unutterable magic; he could not understand why I stopped and faltered, nor could I have explained it to him.  But it was as Coleridge says,

     Weave a circle round him thrice,
       And close your eyes in holy dread,
       For he on honey-dew hath fed,
     And drunk the milk of paradise.

It is just a mystery of beauty that has been seen, not to be explained or understood.

Of course there are people, there will be people, who will read what I have just written in an agony of rationality, and say that it is all rubbish.  But I am describing an experience of ecstasy which is not very common perhaps; but just as real an experience as eating or drinking.  I have had the experience before.  I shall have it again; I recognise it at once, and it is quite distinct from other experiences.  One cannot sit down to it as regularly as one sits down to a meal, of course.  It is not a thing to be proud of, because I have had it as far back as I can remember.  Nor am I at all sure what the effect of it is.  It does not transfigure life except for the moment; and if I were in a dull frame of mind, it might not visit me at all, though it is very apt to come if I am in a sad or anxious frame of mind.

Then how do I interpret it?  Very simply indeed; that there is a region which I will call the region of beauty, to which the view of life that I have called art does sometimes undoubtedly admit one; though as I have also said the view of which I speak is concerned with many perceptions which are not beautiful, and even sometimes quite the opposite.

If I were frankly asked whether it is worth while trying to think or imagine or thrust oneself into this particular kind of rapture, I should say, “Certainly not!” It is very doubtful if it could be genuinely attained unless it has been already experienced; and I do not believe in the wholesomeness of self-suggested emotions.

But I do believe most firmly that it is worth while for anyone who is interested in such effects at all to try experiments, by looking at things critically, hearing things, observing, listening to other people, reading books, trying in fact to practise observation and judgment.

I was visiting some printing works the other day.  The great cylinders were revolving, the wheels buzzing, the levers clicking.  A boy perched on a platform by the huge machine lightly disengaged a sheet of paper; it was drawn in, and a moment after a thing like a gridiron flew up, made a sort of bow, and deposited a printed sheet in a box, the sides of which kept moving, so as to pat the papers into one solid pad.