the din of the factory and the workshop. Sometimes, too, a door
would open into a bare and melancholy place, a hillside strewn with
stones, an interminable plain of sand; worst of all, a place would
sometimes be revealed which was full of suffering, anguish, and
hopeless woe, shadowed with fears and sins. From such prospects I
turned with groans unutterable; but the air of the accursed place
would hang about me for days. These surprises, these strange
surmises, crowded in fast upon me. How different the world was from
what the careless forecast of boyhood had pictured it! How strange,
how beautiful, and yet how terrible! As life went on the beauty
increased, and a calmer, quieter beauty made itself revealed; in
youth I looked for strange, impressive, haunted beauties, things
that might deeply stir and move; but year by year a simpler,
sweeter, healthier kind of beauty made itself felt; such beauty as
lies on the bare, lightly washed, faintly tinted hillside of
winter, all delicate greens and browns, so far removed from the
rich summer luxuriance, and yet so austere, so pure. I grew to love
different books too. In youth one demanded a generous glow, a fire
of passion, a strongly tinged current of emotion; but by degrees
came the love of sober, subdued reflection, a cooler world in
which, if one could not rest, one might at least travel equably and
gladly, with a far wider range of experience, a larger, if a
fainter, hope. I grew to demand less of the world, less of Nature,
less of people; and, behold, a whole range of subtler and gentler
emotions came into sight, like the blue hills of the distance, pure
and low. The whole movement of the world, past and present, became
intelligible and clear. I saw the humanity that lies behind
political and constitutional questions, the strong, simple forces
that move like a steady stream behind the froth and foam of
personality. If in youth I believed that personality and influence