will be easy to prove me absurd, but nothing can shake me. Thou in me and l in thee. Death! what is death? There is no death: in thee it is impossible, absurd.

BELIEF

HE has vanished, the God of the Church and the Schools:

He has gone for us all except children and fools;

Where He dwelt is the uttermost limit of cold,

And a fathomless depth is the Heaven of old.

I turn from my books, and behold! I’m aware

There’s a girl in the room, just a girl over there.

She stole in while I mused ; and she watches the verge

Of a low-lying cloud whence a star doth emerge.

A touch on her shoulder; I whisper a. word,

One more, and I know that the heavenly Lord

Still loves and rejoices His creatures to meet:

My faith still survives, for I kneel at her feet.

EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY ON THE QUANTOCKS

Spring 18—.

WALKED from Holford to my lodgings on the hill. Never remember to have lived in such quietude. The cottage stands half a mile away from any house. Woke very early the next morning and went down to Alfoxden House, where Wordsworth and Dorothy lived a century ago. Here also came Coleridge. It was almost too much to remember that they had trodden those paths. I could hardly believe they were not there, and yet they were dead—such a strange overcoming sense of presence and yet of vanishedness.

A certain degree of ignorance is necessary for a summary essay on creatures of this order. The expression of Dorothy’s soul is spread over large surfaces. Some people require much space and time, and the strik

ing events of a life are often not those which are most significant. It is in small, spontaneous actions and their reiteration that character plainly appears. After prolonged acquaintance with Dorothy we see that she was great and we love her reverentially and passionately. She could look at a beautiful thing for an hour without reflection, but absorbed in its pure beauty—a most rare gift. For how long can we watch a birch tree against the sky? Here are two extracts from her journal in the very place where I now am. They are dated 26th January and 24th February 1798, in the winter it will be noticed. ‘Sat in the sunshine. The distant sheep-bells; the sound of the stream ; the woodman winding along the half-marked road with his laden pony; locks of wool still spangled with the dewdrops; the blue-grey sea, shaded with immense masses of cloud, not streaked; the sheep glittering in the sunshine.’ . . . ‘Went to the hill-top. Sat a considerable time overlooking the country towards the sea. The air blew pleasantly around us.

. Scattered farmhouses, half-concealed by green, mossy orchards ; fresh straw lying at the doors; haystacks in the fields. Brown fallows; the springing wheat, like a shade of green over the brown earth; and the