158 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



the sublime, the grand, and the awful were not apparent 

 also, all over and around ay, and consciously within me; 

 but, like a stubborn child, my mind would resist force. I 

 gave it up, envying those who would have been so naturally 

 elevated by all these incitements and aids to devotion. 



I could not understand a sentence of the service, but sat, 

 and rose, and kneeled, thus only being able to join in the 

 prayer, and praise, and communion of the congregation. 



Soon my thoughts, now wandering freely, fell to moving 

 in those directions of reverie that I have found they are apt 

 to take when I am hearing what those who listen with critical 

 ear shall call fine music : doubtless it is the best and truest 

 that can effect this; though when I listen attentively and try 

 to appreciate it, my opinion would only be laughed at by 

 them. I had been wantlering in a deep, sad day-dream, far 

 away, beyond the ocean beyond the earth . . . dark lost 

 to remembrance when I was of a sudden brought back and 

 awakened again in the dim old cathedral with such emotion, 

 as if from eternity and infinity, I was remanded to mysterious 

 identity and sense of time, that I choked and throbbed ; and 

 then, as the richest, deepest melody I must ever have heard 

 passed away, softly swelling through the vaulted ceiling, caught 

 up tenderly by mild echoes in the nave, and again and again 

 faintly returning from its deepest distances, I kneeled and 

 bowed my head with the worshippers around me, acknowl 

 edging in all my heart the beauty and sublimity of the place 

 and the services.* 



The sermon was from an elderly man, with a voice slightly 



* I try in vain to express a sensation, which I have many times in my 

 life experienced, and which, I presume, is common to other men, that forces 

 on me a belief, strong at the time as knowledge, of immortality and eter 

 nity, both backward and forward, vastly stronger than all arguments can 

 effect. 



