THE PROSPERITY OF A WALK 167 



day, in some mood of dryness, you would get 

 from the sight of nightingales and birds of 

 paradise. Worldlings and matter-of-fact men 

 do not know it, but what quiet nature lovers 

 (not scenery hunting tourists) go to nature 

 in search of is not the excitement of novelty, 

 but a refreshment of the sensibilities. You 

 may call it comfort, consolation, tranquillity, 

 peace of mind, a vision of truth, an uplifting 

 of the heart, a stillness of the soul, a quick- 

 ening of the imagination, what you will. It 

 is of different shades, and so may be named 

 in different words. It is theirs who have the 

 secret, and the rest would not divine your 

 meaning though your speech were transpar- 

 ency itself. 



To my thinking, no one, not even Tho- 

 reau, or Jefferies, or Wordsworth, ever said 

 a truer word about it than Keats dropped 

 in one of his letters. Nothing in his poems 

 is more deeply poetical. " The setting sun 

 will always set me to rights," he says, "or 

 if a sparrow come before my window, I take 

 part in his existence and pick about the 

 gravel." There you have the soul of the 



