cornices, cresting the roof-tiles, crusted sharply on the cupola,
whitening the tall chimney-stacks. The comfortable smoke went up
into the still air, and the firelight darted in the rooms. What a
sense of beautiful permanence, sweet hopefulness, fireside warmth
it all gave; and it is real as well. No life that I could have
devised is so rich in love and tranquillity as mine; everything to
give me content, except the contented mind. Why cannot I enter,
seat myself in the warm firelight, open a book, and let the old
beautiful thoughts flow into my mind, till the voices of wife and
children return to gladden me, and I listen to all that they have
seen and done? Why should I rather sit, like a disconsolate child
among its bricks, feebly and sadly planning new combinations and
fantastic designs? I have done as much and more than most of my
contemporaries; what is this insensate hunger of the spirit that
urges me to work that I cannot do, for rewards that I do not want?
Why cannot I be content to dream and drowse a little?


"Rest, then, and rest
And think of the best,
'Twixt summer and spring,
When no birds sing."


That is what I desire to do, and cannot. It is as though some
creeper that had enfolded and enringed a house with its tendrils,
creeping under window-ledges and across mellow brickwork, had been
suddenly cut off at the root, and hung faded and lustreless, not
even daring to be torn away. Yet I am alive and well, my mind is
alert and vigorous, I have no cares or anxieties, except that my