fter in
shade,--wholly tempered to what is genial. The imagination is a better
medium than the eye. This is surely the reason why Byron could not
write poetry on Lake Leman, but found he must wait till he got within
four walls. This is the reason why we are all more moved by the
slightest glimpses of good descriptions in books than by the amplitude
of the same objects before our eyes. I used to wonder how that was,
when, as a child, I read the openings of scenes and books in `Paradise
Lost.' I saw plenty of summer sunrises; but none of them gave me a
feeling like the two lines:--

"`Now morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl.'

"If all this be so, our lot is more equalised than is commonly thought.
Once having received pictures into our minds, and possessing a clear eye
in the mind to see them with, the going about to obtain more is not of
very great consequence. This comforts one for prisoners suffering
_carcere duro_, and for townspeople who cannot often get out of the
streets; and for lame people like me, who see others tripping over
commons and through fields where we cannot go. I wish there was as much
comfort the other way,--about such as suffer from unhappy moods of mind,
and know little of the joy of the highest. It would be a small gain to
them to fly like birds,--to see like the eagle itself.--Oh, there are
the children! So that is their cowslip meadow! How like children they
all look together, down on the grass!--gathering cowslips, I suppose.
The two in black are more eager about it than Sophia. She sits on the
stile while they are busy. The children are holding forth to their
cousins,--teaching them something, evidently. How I love to overlook
people,--to watch them acting unconsciously, and speculate for them! It
is the most tempting thing in the world to contrast the little affairs
one sees them busy about, with the very serious ones which await them,--
which await every one. There are those two strangers busy gathering
cowslips, and perhaps thinking of nothing beyond the fresh pleasure of
the air and the grass, and the scent of their flowers,--their minds
quite filled with the spirit of the spring, when who knows what may be
awaiting them! Love may be just at hand. The tempest of passion may be
brewing under this soft sunshine. They think themselves now as full of
happiness as possible; and a little while hence, upon a few words
spok