When I came here first thirty years ago, exploring with a friend long dead the country-side, it was, I am sure, the same thought that made the place beautiful.  I could not then put it into words; I have learned to do that since, and word-painting is a very pleasant pastime.  It was a hot, bright summer day—­I recall the scent of the clover in the air—­and there came on me that curious uplifting of the heart, that wonder as to what all the warmth and scent, the green-piled tree, the grazing cows, the children trotting to and fro, could possibly mean, or why it was all so utterly delightful.  It was not a religious feeling, but there was a sense of a great, good-natured, beauty-loving mind behind it all—­a mind very like our own, and yet even then with a shadow striking across it—­the shadow of pain and grief and hollow farewells.

I was not a very contented boy in those days, in some bewilderment of both mind and heart, having had my first experience that life could be hard and intricate.  The world was sweeter to me, though not so interesting as it now is; but I had just the same deep desire as I have now, though it has not been satisfied, to find something strong and secure and permanent, some heart to trust utterly and entirely, something that could understand and comfort and explain and reassure, a power which one could clasp hands with, as a child lays its delicate finger in a strong, enfolding palm, and never be in any doubt again.  It is one’s weakness which is so tiring, so disappointing; and yet I do not want a careless, indifferent, brutal, healthy strength at all.  It is the strength of love and peace that I want, not to be afraid, not to be troubled.  It is all somewhere, I do not doubt: 

     Yet, oh, the place could I but find!

I have been through my village this very day.  The sun was just beginning to slope to the west; the sun poured out his rays of gold from underneath the shadow of a great, dark, up-piled cloud—­the long rays which my nurse used to tell me were sucking up water, but which I believed to be the eye of God.  The trees were bare, but the elm-buds were red, and the willow-rods were crimson with spring; the little stream bubbled clearly off the hill; and the cottage gardens were full of up-thrusting blades; while the mezereons were all aflame with bloom.  Life moving, pausing, rushing past!  I wonder.  When I pass the gate, if I see the dawn of that other morning, I cannot help feeling that I shall want to see my little village again, to loiter down the lane among the white-gabled houses.  Shall I be much wiser then than I am now?  Shall I have seen or heard something which will set my anxious mind at rest?  Who can tell me?  And yet the old, gnarled apple-boughs, with the blue sky behind them, and the new-springing grass all seem to hold the secret, which I want as much to interpret and make my own as when I wandered through the hamlet under the wold more than thirty years ago.