or wet. This easterly key of to-day is shriller, more cheerful,
warmer in sound, though the day itself be colder: but grander still,
as well as softer, is the sad soughing key in which the south-west
wind roars on, rain-laden, over the forest, and calls me forth--being
a minute philosopher--to catch trout in the nearest chalk-stream.

The breeze is gone a while; and I am in perfect silence--a silence
which may be heard. Not a sound; and not a moving object; absolutely
none. The absence of animal life is solemn, startling. That
ringdove, who was cooing half a mile away, has hushed his moan; that
flock of long-tailed titmice, which were twinging and pecking about
the fir-cones a few minutes since, are gone: and now there is not
even a gnat to quiver in the slant sun-rays. Did a spider run over
these dead leaves, I almost fancy I could hear his footfall. The
creaking of the saddle, the soft step of the mare upon the fir-
needles, jar my ears. I seem alone in a dead world. A dead world:
and yet so full of life, if I had eyes to see! Above my head every
fir-needle is breathing--breathing for ever; currents unnumbered
circulate in every bough, quickened by some undiscovered miracle;
around me every fir-stem is distilling strange juices, which no
laboratory of man can make; and where my dull eye sees only death,
the eye of God sees boundless life and motion, health and use.

Slowly I wander on beneath the warm roof of the winter-garden, and
meditate upon that one word--Life; and specially on all that Mr.
Lewes has written so well thereon--for instance -


'We may consider Life itself as an ever-increasing identification
with Nature. The simple cell, from which the plant or animal arises,