art of the
continents and the solitary places of the mountains with the universal
sea which washes all shores and beats its melancholy refrain at either
pole. Into their currents the hills and uplands pour their streams; to
them the little rivulets come laughing and singing down from their
sources in the forest depths. A drop falling from a passing shower
into the lake of Delolo may be carried eastward, through the Zambesi,
to the Indian Ocean, or westward, along the transcontinental course of
the Congo, to the Atlantic. The mists that rise from great streams,
separated by vast stretches of territory, commingle in the upper air,
and are carried by vagrant winds to the wheat-fields of the far
Northwest or the rice-fields of the South. The ocean ceaselessly makes
the circuit of the globe, and summons its tributaries along all shores
to itself. But it gives even more lavishly than it receives; day and
night there rise over its vast expanse those invisible clouds of
moisture which diffuse themselves through the atmosphere, and descend
at last upon the earth to pour, sooner or later, into the rivers, and
be returned whence they came. This subtle commerce, universal
throughout the whole domain of nature, animate and inanimate, tells us
a common truth with the rose, and corrects the false report of the
senses that all things are fixed and isolated. It discloses a
communion of matter with matter, a fellowship of continent with
continent, an interchange of forces which throws a broad light on
things still deeper and more marvellous. It affirms the unity of all
created things and predicts the dawn of a new thought of the kinship of
races; there is in it the prophecy of new insights into the universal
life of men, of fellowships that shall rise to the recognition of new
duties, and of a well-being which shall bind the weakest to the
strongest, the poorest to the richest, the lowest to the highest, by
the golden bond of a diviner love.

Chapter XIII

At the Spring

The path across the fields is so well worn that one can find his way
along its devious course by night almost as easily as by day. I have
gone over it at all hours, and have never returned without some fresh
and cheering memory for other and less favoured days. The fields
across which it leads one, with the unfailing suggestion of something
better beyond, are undulating and dotted here and there with browsing
cattle. The landscape is full of pastoral