l come to him. I have heard
of men in prison who would note the day when its influence passed
through the narrow window that was their only communion with their kind.
It comes even to men in cities; men of the stupid political sort, who
think in maps and whose interest is in the addition of numbers. Indeed,
I have heard such men in London itself expressing pleasure when a
south-west gale came up in April from over the pines of Hampshire and of
Surrey and mixed the Atlantic with the air of the fields. To me this
year the spring came suddenly, like a voice speaking, though a low
one--the voice of a person subtle, remembered, little known, and always
desired. For a wind blew off the land.

The surface of the sea northward between me and the coast of Sussex had
been for so many hours elastic, smooth, and dull, that I had come to
forget the indications of a change. But here and there, a long way off,
little lines began to show, which were indeed broad spaces of ruffled
water, seen edgeways from the low free-board of my boat. These joined
and made a surface all the way out towards me, but a surface not yet
revealed for what it was, nor showing the movement and life and grace of
waves. For no light shone upon it, and it was not yet near enough to be
distinguished. It grew rapidly, but the haze and silence had put me into
so dreamy a state that I had forgotten the ordinary anxiety and
irritation of a calm, nor had I at the moment that eager expectancy of
movement which should accompany the sight of that dark line upon the
sea.

Other things possessed me, the memory of home and of the Downs. There
went before this breeze, as it were, attendant servants, outriders who
brought with them the scent of those first flowers in the North Wood or
beyond Gumber Corner, and the fragrance of our grass, the savour which
the sheep know at least, however much the visitors to my dear home
ignore it. A deeper sympathy even than that of the senses came with
those messengers and brought me the beeches and the yew trees also,
although I was so far out at sea, for the loneliness of this great water
recalled the loneliness of the woods, and both those solitudes--the real
and the imaginary--mixed in my mind together as they might in the mind
of a sleeping man.

Before this wind as it approached, the sky also cleared: not of clouds,
for there were none, but of that impalpable and warm mist which seems to
us, who know the south country and the Channe