delicate passage of music, a conspiracy
of sweet sounds and rich tones; or as if I had passed through a sweet
scent, such as blows from a clover-field in summer. There was no
definite thought to disentangle: it was rather as if I had had a glimpse
of the land which lies east of the sun and west of the moon, had seen
the towers of a castle rise over a wood of oaks; met a company of
serious people in comely apparel riding blithely on the turf of a forest
road, who had waved me a greeting, and left me wondering out of what
rich kind of scene they had stepped to bless me. It left me feeling
as though there were some beautiful life, very near me, all around me,
behind the mirror, outside of the door, beyond the garden-hedges, if I
could but learn the spell which would open it to me; left me pleasantly
and happily athirst for a life of gracious influences and of an unknown
and perfect peace; such as creeps over the mind for the moment at the
sight of a deep woodland at sunset, when the forest is veiled in the
softest of blue mist; or at the sound of some creeping sea, beating
softly all night on a level sand; or at the prospect of a winter sun
going down into smoky orange vapours over a wide expanse of pastoral
country; or at the soft close of some solemn music--when peace seems not
only desirable beyond all things but attainable too.

How can one account for this sudden and joyful visitation? I am going to
try and set down what I believe to be the explanation, if I can
reduce to words a thought which is perfectly clear to me, however
transcendental it may seem.

Well, at such a moment as this, one feels just as one may feel when from
the streets of a dark and crowded city, with the cold shadow of a
cloud passing over it, one sees the green head of a mountain over the
housetops, all alone with the wind and the sun, with its crag-bastions,
its terraces and winding turf ways.

The peace that thus blesses one is not, I think, a merely subjective
mood, an imagined thing. It is, I believe, a real and actual thing which
is there. One's consciousness does not create its impressions, one does
not make for oneself the moral and artistic ideas that visit one; one
perceives them. Education is not a process of invention--it is a process
of discovery; a process of learning the names given to things that are
all present in one's own mind. One knows things long before one knows
the names for them, by instinct and by intuition; and one's o