The Perfume of an Evening Primrose. 243 
loss of a vanished happiness—which ended in tears, 
succeeded to some such vivid representation of the 
past as I have described, and to the purely delight- 
ful recovery of a vanished sensation. Not only 
flowery and aromatic odours can produce this 
powerful effect; it is caused by any smell, not 
positively disagreeable, which may be in any way 
associated with a happy period in early or past 
life: the smell, for instance, of peat smoke, of a 
brewery, a tan yard, of cattle and sheep, and 
sheep-folds, of burning weeds, brushwood, and 
charcoal ; the dank smell of marshes, and the smell, 
“ancient and fish-like,” that clings about many 
seaside towns and villages; also the smell of the 
sea itself, and of decaying seaweed, and the dusty 
smell of rain in summer, and the smell of new 
mown hay, and of stables and of freshly-ploughed 
ground, with so many others that every reader can 
add to the list from his own experience. Being so 
common a thing, it may be thought that I have 
dwelt too long on it. My excuse must be that 
some things are common without being familiar ; 
also that some common things have not yet been 
explained. 
Locke somewhere says that unless we refresh 
our mental pictures of what we have seen by look- 
ing again at their originals, they fade, and in the 
end are lost. Bain appears to have the same 
opinion, at all events he says: ‘‘The simplest im- 
pression that can be made, of taste, smell, touch, 
hearing, sight, needs repetition in order to endure 
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