t any place is good enough to live a life in, while it is
only in a few, and those highly favoured, that we can pass a few hours
agreeably. For, if we only stay long enough, we become at home in
the neighbourhood. Reminiscences spring up, like flowers, about
uninteresting corners. We forget to some degree the superior loveliness
of other places, and fall into a tolerant and sympathetic spirit which
is its own reward and justification.

*****

For when we are put down in some unsightly neighbourhood, and especially
if we have come to be more or less dependent on what we see, we must set
ourselves to hunt out beautiful things with all the ardour and patience
of a botanist after a rare plant. Day by day we perfect ourselves in
the art of seeing nature more favourably. We learn to live with her, as
people learn to live with fretful or violent spouses: we dwell lovingly
on what is good, and shut our eyes against all that is bleak or
inharmonious. We learn, also, to come to each place in the right spirit.
The traveller, as Brantome quaintly tells us, 'fait des discours en soi
pour se soutenir en chemin.'

*****

There is no end, indeed, to making books or experiments, or to travel,
or to gathering wealth. Problem gives rise to problem. We may study
for ever, and we are never as learned as we would. We have never made a
statue worthy of our dreams. And when we have discovered a continent,
or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or
another plain upon the farther side. In the infinite universe there is
room for our swiftest diligence and to spare. It is not like the works
of Carlyle, which can be read to an end. Even in a corner of it, in a
private park, or in the neighbourhood of a single hamlet, the weather
and the seasons keep so deftly changing that although we walk there for
a lifetime there will be always something to startle and delight us.

*****

It is in virtue of his own desires and curiosities that any man
continues to exist with even patience, that he is charmed by the look
of things and people, and that he wakens every morning with a renewed
appetite for work and pleasure. Desire and curiosity are the two eyes
through which he sees the world in the most enchanted colours: it is
they that make women beautiful or fossils interesting: and the man
may squander his estate and come to beggary, but if he keeps these two
amulets he is still rich in the possibilities of pleasure.

*****