s
nothing more vertiginous than a wind like this among the woods, with all
its sights and noises; and the effect gets between some painters and
their sober eyesight, so that, even when the rest of their picture is
calm, the foliage is coloured like foliage in a gale. There was nothing,
however, of this sort to be noticed in a country where there were no
trees and hardly any shadows, save the passive shadows of clouds or
those of rigid houses and walls. But the wind was nevertheless an
occasion of pleasure; for nowhere could you taste more fully the
pleasure of a sudden lull, or a place of opportune shelter. The reader
knows what I mean; he must remember how, when he has sat himself down
behind a dyke on a hill-side, he delighted to hear the wind hiss vainly
through the crannies at his back; how his body tingled all over with
warmth, and it began to dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise,
that the country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the far-away
hills all marbled with sun and shadow. Wordsworth, in a beautiful
passage of the "Prelude," has used this as a figure for the feeling
struck in us by the quiet by-streets of London after the uproar of the
great thoroughfares; and the comparison may be turned the other way with
as good effect:

"Meanwhile the roar continues, till at length,
Escaped as from an enemy, we turn
Abruptly into some sequester'd nook,
Still as a shelter'd place when winds blow loud!"

I remember meeting a man once, in a train, who told me of what must have
been quite the most perfect instance of this pleasure of escape. He had
gone up, one sunny, windy morning, to the top of a great cathedral
somewhere abroad; I think it was Cologne Cathedral, the great unfinished
marvel by the Rhine; and after a long while in dark stairways, he issued
at last into the sunshine, on a platform high above the town. At that
elevation it was quite still and warm; the gale was only in the lower
strata of the air, and he had forgotten it in the quiet interior of the
church and during his long ascent; and so you may judge of his surprise
when, resting his arms on the sunlit balustrade and looking over into
the "Place" far below him, he saw the good people holding on their hats
and leaning hard against the wind as they walked. There is something, to
my fancy, quite perfect in this little experience of my
fellow-traveller's. The ways of men seem always very trivial to us when
we find ourselves alone o