86 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



hence suffer unutterable loneliness. I know what bitter- 

 ness it is to be lacking in those strong tastes and impulses 

 which, blinding men to what does not concern them, 

 enables them to live with a high heart. For example, I 

 have a sensitive palate and am glad of my food, yet when- 

 ever I taste Iamb — which I do when I can — my pleasure 

 is spoilt by the sight of the butcher carrying a lamb under 

 his arm. There it is. I am sensitive on all sides. Your 

 true man would either forget the sight or he would be 

 moved to a crusade. I can do neither. 



" I am weary of seeing things, the outsides of things, 

 for I see nothing else. It makes me wretched to think 

 what swallows are to many children and poets and other 

 men, while to me they are nothing but inimitable, com- 

 pact dark weights tumbling I do not know how through 

 the translucent air — nothing more, and yet I know they 

 are something more. I apprehend their weight, buoyancy 

 and velocity as they really are, but I have no vision. 

 Then it is that I remember those words of Sir Thomas 

 Browne's — 



*" I am sure there is a common spirit that plays within 

 us, yet makes no part in us; and that it is the Spirit of 

 God, the fire and scintillation of that noble and mighty 

 essence, which is the life and radical heat of spirits. . . . 

 This is that gentle heat that brooded on the waters and in 

 six days hatched the world; this is that irradiation that 

 dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of horror, fear, sorrow, 

 despair; and preserves the region of the mind in serenity. 

 Whosoever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventila- 

 tion of this spirit (though I feel his pulse) I dare not say 

 he lives; for truly without this, to me there is no heat 

 under the tropic; nor any light, though I dwell in the 

 body of the sun.* 



