draws it from Heaven above,
And it sings a song of undying love.

That is a power which we all have, in some degree, to draw into our
souls, or to set running through them, the streams of Heaven--for
like water they will run in the dullest and darkest place if only they
be led thither; and the lower the place, the stronger the stream! I am
careful not to prescribe the source too narrowly, for it must be to
our own liking, and to our own need. And so I will not say "love this
and that picture, read this and that poet!" because it is just thus,
by following direction too slavishly, that we lose our own particular
inspiration. Indeed I care very little about fineness of taste,
fastidious critical rejections, scoffs and sneers at particular
fashions and details. One knows the epicure of life, the man who
withdraws himself more and more from the throng, cannot bear to find
himself in dull company, reads fewer and fewer books, can hardly eat
and drink unless all is exactly what he approves; till it becomes
almost wearisome to be with him, because it is such anxious and
scheming work to lay out everything to please him, and because he will
never take his chance of anything, nor bestir himself to make anything
out of a situation which has the least commonness or dulness in it. Of
course only with the command of wealth is such life possible; but the
more delicate such a man grows, the larger and finer his maxims
become, and the more he casts away from his philosophy the need of
practising anything. One must think, such men say, clearly and finely,
one must disapprove freely, one must live only with those whom one can
admire and love; till they become at last like one of those sad
ascetics, who spent their time on the top of pillars, and for ever
drew up stones from below to make the pillar higher yet.

One is at liberty to mistrust whatever makes one isolated and
superior; not of course that one's life need be spent in a sort of
diffuse sociability; but one must practise an ease that is never
embarrassed, a frankness that is never fastidious, a simplicity that
is never abashed; and behind it all must spring the living waters,
with the clearness of the sky and the cleanness of the hill about
them, running still swiftly and purely in our narrow garden-ground,
and meeting the kindred streams that flow softly in many other glad
and desirous hearts.

In the beautiful old English poem, _The Pearl_, where the dreamer
seems to b