as a description of a street-fight would be if written by a perfumed
odalisque who had never crossed the threshold of a harem. The ancient
elemental life of man, spent in storm and sunshine, under wide skies,
they had not so much as looked at, and their voluminous chatter about
man and his doings had as little relation to life as the philosophy
that is enunciated in a monkey-house. Opera-bouffe performed upon
Helvellyn would be a sorry spectacle; what was all this bedizened rout
of people playing before the footlights of cities, but a vain burlesque
at which Nature laughed? And as my sense of the importance of this
kind of spectacle gradually sank, my appreciation of the serious drama
conducted by Nature, upon a stage as old as time, whose footlights are
the changeless planets, gradually rose. I had become the neighbour of
Eternity, through neighbourship with things that are themselves
eternal. I tasted the pleasure of enlarged existence, which had become
possible through enlarged affinities. I had eaten of the Tree of Life,
which grows wherever there is a Garden brought to beauty by the sweat
of man's brow, and I had the knowledge of good and evil.

One form of neighbourship which brought me perpetual delight was--if I
may so describe it--neighbourship with the stars. I had hitherto
scarce given a thought to astronomy, save of the vaguest kind, and all
I knew of it was derived from the recollection of one or two popular
lectures. This was pardonable in a citizen, who is never able to see
any considerable space of firmament. But when a man comes to live in
the country he can scarce remain indifferent to a pageant so sublime as
the midnight heavens. It is always with him; it obtrudes itself upon
him; it becomes in time the scenery of his life. It pleased me on
clear evenings before I slept to go out and take what I called a
star-bath, a term justified by the real sense I had of waves of soft
light and silence flowing over me, submerging and cleansing me, and