eezing the sponge and cramming the trunk: it is good to be at home.

But to people of more cultivated and intellectual tastes there is an
abundance of good reasons for the pursuit of impressions. It is worth
a little fatigue to see the spring sun lie softly upon the unfamiliar
foliage, to see the delicate tints of the purple-flowered Judas-tree,
the bright colours of Southern houses, the old high-shouldered chateau
blinking among its wooded parterres; it is pleasant to see mysterious
rites conducted at tabernacled altars, under dark arches, and to
smell the "thick, strong, stupefying incense-smoke"; to see well-known
pictures in their native setting, to hear the warm waves of the canal
lapping on palace-stairs, with the exquisite moulded cornice overhead.
It gives one a strange thrill to stand in places rich with dim
associations, to stand by the tombs of heroes and saints, to see the
scenes made familiar by art or history, the homes of famous men. Such
travel is full of weariness and disappointment. The place one had
desired half a lifetime to behold turns out to be much like other
places, devoid of inspiration. A tiresome companion casts dreariness
as from an inky cloud upon the mind. Do I not remember visiting the
Palatine with a friend bursting with archaeological information, who led
us from room to room, and identified all by means of a folding plan, to
find at the conclusion that he had begun at the wrong end, and that even
the central room was not identified correctly, because the number of
rooms was even, and not odd?

But, for all that, there come blessed unutterable moments, when the mood
and the scene and the companion are all attuned in a soft harmony. Such
moments come back to me as I write. I see the mouldering brickwork of
a crumbling tomb all overgrown with grasses and snapdragons, far out in
the Campagna; or feel the plunge of the boat through the reed-beds of
the Anapo, as we slid into the silent pool of blue water in the heart of
the marsh, where the sand danced at the bottom, and the springs bubbled
up, while a great bittern flew booming away from a reedy pool hard by.
Such things are worth paying a heavy price for, because they bring a
sort of aerial distance into the mind, they touch the spirit with a
hope that the desire for beauty and perfection is not, after all, wholly
unrealisable, but that there is a sort of treasure to be found even upon
earth, if one diligently goes in search of it.

Of