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then a new delight breaks suddenly upon them; they hear with 
fresh unaccustomed sense, perhaps better than we do, the gentle 
sound of waters, that ‘‘“make sweet music on the enamelled stones.” 
I remember one of these whose first surprise at the murmur of 
the Brun was a pleasure to see. But we, have we ever heard that 
‘¢ sweet inland murmur,” since we heard it as children, and as 
this child of nature heard it, for the first time? So are we helped 
by novelty, unfamiliarity, contrast. I have not been a great 
traveller, but I have seen the Trossachs, and Loch Katrine, and 
Loch Lomond, and the grand hills above Oban tiat, in their awful 
silence and loneliness, seem waiting for some wizard Merlin to 
break, with Orphic unfathomable song, the spell of their enchant- 
ment. I have seen the mist-crowned summit of Snowdon, and 
weird Plinlimmon, the English Lakes, Skiddaw, and Helvelyn, 
the soft green Downs of Sussex, the white cliffs of the south, the 
rural lanes of Warwickshire, and from the Malvern Hills I 
have seen the broad prospect stretching over thirteen counties in 
woodland ridges, rising like waves upon a shadowy sea, with 
“ hamlets brown and dim-discovered spires!’’ But before all 
these I remember most vividly some evening walks in the Broad 
Ing and Towneley Holme, between sunset and moonrise, when 
a light lingered on the low hills and brown woods that seemed 
hardly to come from sun, or moon, or star, and I knew not if 
they who were with me there saw what I saw, or whether it were 
indeed that other light, which ‘‘ never was on sea or shore, the 
consecration and the poet’s dream.” The horizon is not always 
crowned with this light, this glamour from beyond the sun, or if 
it were we could not bear to see it, and be the things we are. It 
is these rare, and shall I say supernatural glimpses that make 
our happiest moments of communion with that transcendent 
apparition we call nature, but which is something more. But 
the apparition is always present, always waiting, and every day 
of our lives, if we go forth to meet it with pure thoughts, and 
taking with us no taint of the “Sordid cares or the foolish vanities 
of towns, we shall find its fairy glamour on the wayside flower, 
or trace its shining footsteps on the distant hill. Hven in dull 
weather and dark days, when a pall of sombre cloud covers sky 
and earth, at the end of a long ramble I have had a glimpse of 
that loveliness that redeems the darkest day, as it does the 
darkest life on which it is permitted to shine. In the following 
lines I have attempted to give expression to thoughts which took 
their colour from 
A DARK DAY. 
There are no daisies in the grass 
Through which I walk to-day, 
Nor do I hear the little burn 
That sings beside the way : 
