the dry lizard hid, or basked, of kin, too, to old time. Or the rush of
the sea wave brought them to me, wet and gleaming, up from the depths of
what unknown Past? where they nestled in the root crevices of trees
forgotten before Egypt. The living mind opposite the dead pebble--did you
ever consider the strange and wonderful problem there? Only the thickness
of the skin of the hand between them. The chief use of matter is to
demonstrate to us the existence of the soul. The pebble-stone tells me I
am a soul because I am not that that touches the nerves of my hand. We
are distinctly two, utterly separate, and shall never come together. The
little pebble and the great sun overhead--millions of miles away: yet is
the great sun no more distinct and apart than this which I can touch.
Dull-surfaced matter, like a polished mirror, reflects back thought to
thought's self within.

I listened to the sweet-briar wind this morning; but for weeks and weeks
the stark black oaks stood straight out of the snow as masts of ships
with furled sails frozen and ice-bound in the haven of the deep valley.
Each was visible to the foot, set in the white slope, made individual in
the wood by the brilliance of the background. Never was such a long
winter. For fully two months they stood in the snow in black armour of
iron bark unshaken, the front rank of the forest army that would not
yield to the northern invader. Snow in broad flakes, snow in semi-flakes,
snow raining down in frozen specks, whirling and twisting in fury, ice
raining in small shot of frost, howling, sleeting, groaning; the ground
like iron, the sky black and faintly yellow--brutal colours of
despotism--heaven striking with clenched fist. When at last the general
surface cleared, still there remained the trenches and traverses of the
enemy, his ramparts drifted high, and his roads marked with snow. The
black firs on the ridge stood out against the frozen clouds, still and
hard; the slopes of leafless larches seemed withered and brown; the