ladies in Watteau's "conversations," who look so exquisitely pure, lay
down on the cushion when the children run up to have their laces righted.
Yet the pity of it! What floods of weeping! There is a tone about which
strikes me as going well with the grace of these leafless birch-trees
against the sky, the pale silver of their bark, and a certain delicate
odour of decay which rises from the soil. It is all one half-light; and
the heroine, nay! The hero himself also, that dainty Chevalier des
Grieux, with all his fervour, have, I think, but a half-life in them
truly, from the first. And I could fancy myself almost of their
condition sitting here alone this evening, in which a premature touch
of winter makes the world look but an inhospitable place of
entertainment for one's spirit. With so little genial warmth to hold it
there, one feels that the merest accident might detach that flighty guest
altogether. So chilled at heart things seem to me, as I gaze on that
glacial point in the motionless sky, like some mortal spot whence death
begins to creep over the body!

*Possibly written at this date, but almost certainly not printed till
many years later.--Note in Second Edition.

And yet, in the midst of this, by mere force of contrast, comes back to
me, very vividly, the true colour, ruddy with blossom and fruit, of the
past summer, among the streets and gardens of some of our old towns we
visited; when the thought of cold was a luxury, and the earth dry enough
to sleep on. The summer was indeed a fine one; and the whole country
seemed bewitched. A kind of infectious sentiment passed upon us, like an
efflux from its flowers and flowerlike architecture--flower-like to me at
least, but of which I never felt the beauty before.

And as I think of that, certainly I have to confess that there is a