

wonderful. These varied and marvellous 

 appearances are no longer detached and 

 changeless to him; they are alive, and 

 they change moment by moment. Ah, the 

 young feet have come now to the very 

 threshold of the temple, and fortunate are 

 they if there be one to guide them whose 

 heart still speaks the language of childhood 

 while her thought rests in the great truths 

 which come with deep and earnest living. 

 Childhood is defrauded of half its inheri- 

 tance when no one swings wide before it the 

 door into the fairyland of Nature ; a land 

 in which the most beautiful dreams are 

 like visions of the distant Alps, cloudlike, 

 apparently evanescent, yet eternally true; 

 in which the commonest realities are more 

 wonderful than visions. How many chil- 

 dren live all their childhood in the very 

 heart of this realm, and are never so much 

 as told to look about them. The sublime 

 miracle play is yearly performed in their 

 sight, and they only hear it said that it is 

 hot or cold, that the day is fair or dark ! 

 And now there come sudden insights into 



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