d on the top of the rich meadow-grass.
Then I passed into a wood, and for a long time I walked in the green
glooms of copses, in a forest stillness, only the tall trees rustling
softly overhead, with doves cooing deep in the wood. Only once I passed
a house, a little cottage of grey stone, in a clearing, with an air of
settled peace about it, that reminded me of an old sweet book that I
used to read as a child, Phantastes, full of the mysterious romance of
deep forests and haunted glades. I was overshadowed that afternoon with
a sense of the ineffectiveness, the loneliness of my life, walking in a
vain shadow; but it melted out of my mind in the delicate beauty of the
woodland, with its wild fragrances and cool airs, as when one chafes
one's frozen hands before a leaping flame. They told me, those
whispering groves, of the patient and tender love of the Father, and I
drew very near His inmost heart in that gentle hour. The secret was to
bear, to endure, not stoically nor stolidly, but with a quiet
inclination of the will to sorrow and pain, that were not so bitter
after all, when one abode faithfully in them. I became aware, as I
walked, that my heart was with the future after all. The beautiful dead
past, I could be grateful for it, and not desire that it were mine
again. I felt as a man might feel who is making his way across a wide
moor. "Surely," he says to himself, "the way lies here; this ridge,
that dingle mark the track; it lies there by the rushy pool, and shows
greener among the heather." So he says, persuading himself in vain that
he has found the way; but at last the track, plain and unmistakable,
lies before him, and he loses no more time in imaginings, but goes
straight forward. It was my sorrow, after all, that had shown me that I
was in the true path. I had tried, in the old days, to fancy that I was
homeward bound; sometimes it was in the love of my dear ones, sometimes
in the joy of art, sometimes in my chosen work; and yet I knew in my
heart all the time that I was but a leisurely wanderer; but now at last
the destined road was clear; I was no longer astray; I was no longer
inventing duties and acts for myself, but I had in very truth a note of
the way. It was not the path I should have chosen in my blindness and
easiness. But there could no longer be any doubt about it. How the
false ambitions, the comfortable schemes, the trivial hopes melted away
for me in that serene certainty! What I had pursued be