ii8 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



than I am, and I lack the confidence to think I could 

 make any use of his income. I would as soon envy a 

 tramp because he has no possessions, or a navvy because 

 he w^alks like a hero as he pushes a heavy trolley before 

 him, his loose jacket fitting him as a mane fits a lion. 

 To envy a man is to misunderstand him or yourself. 



Nor yet is it pure admiration. That is what I feel 

 for something external that can be described as right, as 

 having absolute individuality and inevitableness of form. 

 For example, I admire certain groups that are the result 

 of what we call chance — an arrangement of fishing boats 

 going out to sea, first one, then at a long interval two 

 close together, a fourth a little behind, and then by ones 

 and pairs and clusters at different intervals; or the four or 

 five oaks left in a meadow that was once a copse; or the 

 fruit fallen on autumn rime; or sunset clouds that pause 

 darkly along the north-west in a way that will never be 

 seen again; or of tragic figures at such a moment as when 

 Polyxena, among the Grecian youths, gave her throat to 

 the dagger of Neoptolemus, and fell beautiful in death. 



No. Those houses are castles in Spain. They are 

 fantastic architecture. We have made them out of our 

 spirit stuff and have set our souls to roam their corridors 

 and look out of their casements upon the sea or the moun- 

 tains or the clouds. It is because they are accessible only 

 to the everywhere wandering irresistible and immortal part 

 of us that they are beautiful. There is no need for them 

 to be large or costly or antique. The poorest house can 

 do us a like service. In a town, for example, and in a 

 suburb, I have had the same yearning when, on a fine 

 still morning of May or June, in streets away from the 

 traffic, I have seen through the open windows a cool 



