out
in pain and drifting on to death, the beauty of the world, the familiar
scene, is full of a hateful and atrocious insolence of grace and
sweetness; and then I feel that we are all perhaps in the grip of some
relentless and inscrutable law that has no care for our happiness
or peace at all, and works blindly and furiously in the darkness,
bespattering some with woe and others with joy. Those are the blackest
and most horrible moments of life; and yet even so we live on.

As I write at my ease I see the velvety grass green on the rich pasture;
the tall spires of the chestnut perch, and poise, and sway in the sun; a
thrush sings hidden in the orchard; it is all caressingly, enchantingly
beautiful, and I am well content to be alive. Looking backwards, I
discern that I have had my share, and more than my share, of good
things. But they are over; they are mine no longer. And even as I think
the thought, the old church clock across the fields tells out another
hour that is fallen softly into the glimmering past. If I could discern
any strength or patience won from hours of pain and sorrow it would be
easier; but the memory of pain makes me dread pain the more, the thought
of past sorrow makes future sorrow still more black. I would rather have
strength than tranquillity, when all is done; but life has rather taught
me my weakness, and struck the garland out of my reluctant hand.

To-day I have been riding quietly among fields deep with buttercups and
fringed by clear, slow streams. The trees are in full spring leaf, only
the oaks and walnuts a little belated, unfurling their rusty-red fronds.
A waft of rich scent comes from a hawthorn hedge where a hidden cuckoo
flutes, or just where the lane turns by the old water-mill, which throbs
and grumbles with the moving gear, a great lilac-bush leans out of a
garden and fills the air with perfume. Yet, as I go, I am filled with
a heavy anxiety, which plays with my sick heart as a cat plays with a
mouse, letting it run a little in the sun, and then pouncing upon it in
terror and dismay. The beautiful sounds and sights round me--the sight
of the quiet, leisurely people I meet--ought, one would think, to soothe
and calm the unquiet heart. But they do not; they rather seem to mock
and flout me with a savage insolence of careless welfare. My thoughts go
back, I do not know why, to an old house where I spent many happy days,
now in the hands of strangers. I remember sitting, one of a si