owly work; but had he only cared to look up, had he
only had a moment's leisure, he would have seen that the celestial
crown hung close above his head, and within reach of his forgetful hand.

There is a well-known passage in a brilliant modern satire, where a
trenchant satirist declares that he has tracked all human emotions to
their lair, and has discovered that they all consist of some dilution
of primal and degrading instincts. But the pure and passionless love of
natural beauty can have nothing that is acquisitive or reproductive
about it. There is no physical instinct to which it can be referred; it
arouses no sense of proprietorship; it cannot be connected with any
impulse for self-preservation. If it were merely aroused by tranquil,
comfortable amenities of scene, it might be referable to the general
sense of well-being, and of contented life under pleasant conditions.
But it is aroused just as strongly by prospects that are inimical to
life and comfort, lashing storms, inaccessible peaks, desolate moors,
wild sunsets, foaming seas. It is a sense of wonder, of mystery; it
arouses a strange and yearning desire for we know not what; very often
a rich melancholy attends it, which is yet not painful or sorrowful,
but heightens and intensifies the significance, the value of life. I do
not know how to interpret it, but it seems to me to be a call from
without, a beckoning of some large and loving power to the soul. The
primal instincts of which I have spoken all tend to concentrate the
mind upon itself, to strengthen it for a selfish part; but the beauty
of nature seems to be a call to the spirit to come forth, like the
voice which summoned Lazarus from the rock-hewn sepulchre. It bids us
to believe that our small identities, our limited desires, do not say
the last word for us, but that there is something larger and stronger
outside, in which we may claim a share. As I write these words I look
out upon a strange transfiguration of a familiar scene. The sky is full
of black and inky clouds, but from the low setting sun there pours an
intense pale radiance, which lights up house-roofs, trees, and fields,
with a white light; a flight of pigeons, wheeling high in the air,
become brilliant specks of moving light upon a background of dark
rolling vapour. What is the meaning of the intense and rapturous thrill
that this sends through me? It is no selfish delight, no personal
profit that it gives me. It promises me nothing, i