intricacy, their penetrating fragrance. In such a moment one could
find it in one's heart to believe that some ethereal soulless
creature, like Ariel of the "Tempest," was floating at one's side,
directing one's attention, like a petulant child, to the things
that touched its light-hearted fancy, and constraining one into an
unsought enjoyment.

Neither does it seem to be an intellectual process; because it
comes in the same self-willed way, alike when one's mind is deeply
engrossed in congenial work, as well as when one is busy and
distracted; one raises one's head for an instant, and the sunlight
on a flowing water or on an ancient wall, the sound of the wind
among trees, the calling of birds, take one captive with the
mysterious spell; or on another day when I am working, under
apparently the same conditions, the sun may fall golden on the old
garden, the dove may murmur in the high elm, the daffodils may hang
their sweet heads among the meadow-grass, and yet the scene, may be
dark to me and silent, with no charm and no significance.

It all seems to enact itself in a separate region of the spirit,
neither in the physical nor in the mental region. It may come for a
few moments in a day, and then it may depart in an instant. I was
taking a week ago what, for the sake of the associations, I call my
holiday. I walked with a cheerful companion among spring woods,
lying nestled in the folds and dingles of the Sussex hills; the sky
was full of flying gleams; the distant ridges, clothed in wood, lay
blue and remote in the warm air; but I cared for none of these
things. Then, when we stood for a moment in a place where I have
stood a hundred times before, where a full stream spills itself
over a pair of broken lock-gates into a deserted lock, where the