and the mystery of meres. Something of what a man feels in East
England belonged to this last of the plain under the guardian hills.
Everywhere I passed ponds and reeds, and saw the level streaks of
sunset reflected in stagnant waters.

The marshy valley kept its character when I had left the lane and
regained the highroad. Its isolation dominated the last effort with
which I made for the line of the Jura in that summer twilight, and as
I blundered on my whole spirit was caught or lifted in the influence
of the waste waters and of the birds of evening.

I wished, as I had often wished in such opportunities of recollection
and of silence, for a complete barrier that might isolate the mind.
With that wish came in a puzzling thought, very proper to a
pilgrimage, which was: 'What do men mean by the desire to be dissolved
and to enjoy the spirit free and without attachments?' That many men
have so desired there can be no doubt, and the best men, whose
holiness one recognizes at once, tell us that the joys of the soul are
incomparably higher than those of the living man. In India, moreover,
there are great numbers of men who do the most fantastic things with
the object of thus unprisoning the soul, and Milton talks of the same
thing with evident conviction, and the Saints all praise it in chorus.
But what is it? For my part I cannot understand so much as the meaning
of the words, for every pleasure I know comes from an intimate union
between my body and my very human mind, which last receives, confirms,
revives, and can summon up again what my body has experienced. Of
pleasures, however, in which my senses have had no part I know
nothing, so I have determined to take them upon trust and see whether
they could make the matter clearer in Rome.