SUNLIGHT IN A LONDON SQUARE. 241 



dress, a pink parasol — summer hues — go by in the 

 stream of dark-clothed people ; a flower fallen on the 

 black water of a river. Either the light subdues 

 the sound, or perhaps rather it renders the senses 

 slumberous and less sensitive, but the great sunlit 

 square is silent — silent, that is, for the largest city 

 on earth, A slumberous silence of abundant light, 

 of the full summer day, of the high flood of summer 

 hours whose tide can rise no higher. A time to linger 

 and dream under the beautiful breast of heaven, 

 heaven brooding and descending in pure light upon 

 man's handiwork. If the light shall thus come in, 

 and of its mere loveliness overcome every aspect of 

 dreariness, why shall not the light of thought, and 

 hope — the light of the soul — overcome and sweep 

 away the dust of our lives ? 



I stood under the portico of the National Gallery in 

 the shade looking southwards, across the fountains and 

 the lions, towards the green trees under the distant 

 tower. Once a swallow sang in passing on the wing, 

 garrulous still as in the time of old Rome and Augustan 

 Virgil. From the high pediments dropped the occa- 

 sional chatter of sparrows and the chirp of their young 

 in the roofs. The second brood, they were late ; they 

 would not be in time for the harvest and the fields of 

 stubble. A flight of blue pigeons rose from the central 

 pavement to the level line of the parapet of the western 

 houses. A starling shot across the square, swift, 

 straight, resolute. I looked for the swifts, but they 

 had gone, earliest of all to leave our sky for distant 

 countries. Away in the harvest field the reaper, 

 pausing in his work, had glanced up at the one stray 



