pleased me most; the glance rose up the flame-shaped fir-tree, tapering to
its green tip, and above was the azure sky. By aid of the tree I felt the
sky more. By aid of everything beautiful I felt myself, and in that intense
sense of consciousness prayed for greater perfection of soul and body.

Afterwards, I walked almost daily more than two miles along the
road to a spot where the hills began, where from the first rise
the road could be seen winding southwards over the hills, open
and uninclosed. I paused a minute or two by a clump of firs, in
whose branches the wind always sighed--there is always a movement of the air
on a hill. Southwwards the sky was illumined by the sun, southwards the
clouds moved across the opening or pass in the amphitheatre, and southwards,
though far distant, was the sea. There I could think a moment. These
pilgrimages gave me a few sacred minutes daily; the moment seemed holy when
the thought or desire came in its full force.

A time came when, having to live in a town, these pilgrimages
had to be suspended. The wearisome work on which I was engaged
would not permit of them. But I used to look now and then, from
a window, in the evening at a birch-tree at some distance; its
graceful boughs drooped across the glow of the sunset. The
thought was not suspended; it lived in me always. A bitterer
time still came when it was necessary to be separated from those
I loved. There is little indeed in the more immediate suburbs
of London to gratify the sense of the beautiful. Yet there was a cedar by
which I used to walk up and down, and think the
same thoughts as under the great oak in the solitude of the sunlit meadows.
In the course of slow time happier circumstances brought us together again,
and, though near London, at a spot where there was easy access to meadows
and woods. Hills that purify those who walk on them there were