oduces in us a shock of pleasure, does it become a permanent
possession of the mind; in other words, it registers an image which,
when called up before the inner eye, is capable of reproducing a measure
of the original delight.

In recalling those scenes which have given me the greatest happiness,
the images of which are most vivid and lasting, I find that most of them
are of scenes or objects which were discovered, as it were, by chance,
which I had not heard of, or else had heard of and forgotten, or which
I had not expected to see. They came as a surprise, and in the following
instance one may see that it makes a vast difference whether we do or do
not experience such a sensation.

In the course of a ramble on foot in a remote district I came to a small
ancient town, set in a cuplike depression amidst high wood-grown hills.
The woods were of oak in spring foliage, and against that vivid green
I saw the many-gabled tiled roofs and tall chimneys of the old timbered
houses, glowing red and warm brown in the brilliant sunshine--a scene of
rare beauty, and yet it produced no shock of pleasure; never, in fact,
had I looked on a lovely scene for the first time so unemotionally.
It seemed to be no new scene, but an old familiar one; and that it had
certain degrading associations which took away all delight.

The reason of this was that a great railway company had long been
"booming" this romantic spot, and large photographs, plain and coloured,
of the town and its quaint buildings had for years been staring at me
in every station and every railway carriage which I had entered on that
line. Photography degrades most things, especially open-air things;
and in this case, not only had its poor presentments made the scene too
familiar, but something of the degradation in the advertising pictures
seemed to attach itself to the very scene. Yet even here, after some
pleasureless days spent in vain endeavours to shake off these vulgar
associations, I was to experience one of the sweetest surprises and
delights of my life.

The church of this village-like town is one of its chief attractions; it
is a very old and stately building, and its perpendicular tower,
nearly a hundred feet high, is one of the noblest in England. It has a
magnificent peal of bells, and on a Sunday afternoon they were ringing,
filling and flooding that hollow in the hills, seeming to make the
houses and trees and the very earth to tremble with the glorious st