tremendous cataracts, 'deep glooms and sudden glories,' in every
foot-broad rill which wanders through the turf. All is there for you
to see, if you will but rid yourself of 'that idol of space;' and
Nature, as everyone will tell you who has seen dissected an insect
under the microscope, is as grand and graceful in her smallest as in
her hugest forms.

The March breeze is chilly: but I can be always warm if I like in my
winter-garden. I turn my horse's head to the red wall of fir-stems,
and leap over the furze-grown bank into my cathedral, wherein if
there be no saints, there are likewise no priestcraft and no idols;
but endless vistas of smooth red green-veined shafts holding up the
warm dark roof, lessening away into endless gloom, paved with rich
brown fir-needle--a carpet at which Nature has been at work for forty
years. Red shafts, green roof, and here and there a pane of blue
sky--neither Owen Jones nor Willement can improve upon that
ecclesiastical ornamentation,--while for incense I have the fresh
healthy turpentine fragrance, far sweeter to my nostrils than the
stifling narcotic odour which fills a Roman Catholic cathedral.
There is not a breath of air within: but the breeze sighs over the
roof above in a soft whisper. I shut my eyes and listen. Surely
that is the murmur of the summer sea upon the summer sands in Devon
far away. I hear the innumerable wavelets spend themselves gently
upon the shore, and die away to rise again. And with the innumerable
wave-sighs come innumerable memories, and faces which I shall never
see again upon this earth. I will not tell even you of that, old
friend.

It has two notes, two keys rather, that Eolian-harp of fir-needles
above my head; according as the wind is east or west, the needles dry