time before a natural landscape. Those years of London had obscured all
my earlier life; I was like a man town-born and bred, who scarce knows
anything but street vistas. The light, the air, had for me something of
the supernatural--affected me, indeed, only less than at a later time did
the atmosphere of Italy. It was glorious spring weather; a few white
clouds floated amid the blue, and the earth had an intoxicating
fragrance. Then first did I know myself for a sun-worshipper. How had I
lived so long without asking whether there was a sun in the heavens or
not? Under that radiant firmament, I could have thrown myself upon my
knees in adoration. As I walked, I found myself avoiding every strip of
shadow; were it but that of a birch trunk, I felt as if it robbed me of
the day's delight. I went bare-headed, that the golden beams might shed
upon me their unstinted blessing. That day I must have walked some
thirty miles, yet I knew not fatigue. Could I but have once more the
strength which then supported me!

I had stepped into a new life. Between the man I had been and that which
I now became there was a very notable difference. In a single day I had
matured astonishingly; which means, no doubt, that I suddenly entered
into conscious enjoyment of powers and sensibilities which had been
developing unknown to me. To instance only one point: till then I had
cared very little about plants and flowers, but now I found myself
eagerly interested in every blossom, in every growth of the wayside. As
I walked I gathered a quantity of plants, promising myself to buy a book
on the morrow and identify them all. Nor was it a passing humour; never
since have I lost my pleasure in the flowers of the field, and my desire
to know them all. My ignorance at the time of which I speak seems to me
now very shameful; but I was merely in the case of ordinary people,
whether living in town or country. How many could give the familiar name
of half a dozen plants plucked at random from beneath the hedge in