126 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



In the same way, few men can now look back to their 

 childhood like Traherne and say that 



" All appeared new and strange at first, inexpressibly 

 rare and delightful and beautiful. I was a little stranger 

 which at my entrance into the world was saluted and 

 surrounded with innumerable joys. My knowledge was 

 Divine. I knew by intuition those things which since 

 my Apostasy I collected again by the highest reason. My 

 very ignorance was advantageous. I seemed as one 

 brought into the Estate of Innocence. All things were 

 spotless and pure and glorious; yea, and infinitely mine, 

 and joyful and precious. I knew not that there were any 

 sins or complaints or laws. I dreamed not of poverties, 

 contentions or vices. All tears and quarrels were hidden 

 from mine eyes. Everything was at rest, free and im- 

 mortal. I knew nothing of sickness or death or rents or 

 exaction, either for tribute or bread. . . . All Time was 

 Eternity, and a perpetual Sabbath. Is it not strange, that 

 an infant should be heir of the whole world and see 

 those mysteries which the books of the learned never 

 unfold? "1 



We blink, deliberately or not, unpleasant facts in our 

 own lives, as in the social life of Greece or the Middle 

 Ages. Some have no need to do so; robustly or sensitively 

 made, their childish surroundings have been such as to 

 meet their utmost needs or to draw out their finest powers 

 or to leave them free. Ambition, introspection, remorse 

 had not begun. The vastness and splendour and gloom 

 of a world not understood, but seen in its effects and 

 hardly at all in its processes, made a theatre for their 

 happiness which — especially when seen through a mist of 

 years — glorify it exceedingly, and it becomes like a ridge 

 of the far-off downs transfigured in golden light, so that 



1 Centuries of Meditation, by Thomas Traherne (Dobell). 



