I thought of these things yesterday as I passed the ruins of Copenhagen’s school. How far, since then, have travelled the feet that trod there; how far, how weary, how humbled, how elate, how prosperous, how shamefully down at heel? Dear lads, dear girls, wherever you be, my old companions, were we not here in this poor place, among the hazel and the fern, most fortunate and happy? Has the wide world we travel through for fame or fortune—or, better still, content—added aught to us of joy we did not have (at least in memory) in those irrecoverable, enduring, summer days? Now it is mist for ever on the hill, and the rain-rot in the wood, and clouds and cares chasing each other across our heavens, and flowers that flame from bud to blossom and smoulder into dust almost before we have caught their perfume; then, old friends, we pricked our days out leisurely upon a golden calendar: the scent of the morning hay-fields seemed eternal. THE SILVER DRUM. FIFTY yards to the rear of the dwelling-house the studio half hid itself amongst young elms and laurel bushes, at its outside rather like a granary, internally like a chapel, the timbers of the roof exposed and umber-stained, with a sort of clerestory for the top light, a few casts of life-size statues in the corners, and two or three large bas-reliefs of Madonnas and the like by Donatello helping out the ecclesiastical illusion. It was the last place to associate with the sound of drums, and yet I sat for twenty minutes sometimes stunned, sometimes fascinated, by the uproar of asses’ skin. The sculptor who played might, by one less unconventional, be looked upon as seriously sacrificing his dignity in a performance so incongruous with his age and situation. But I have always loved the whimsical; I am myself considered somewhat eccentric, and there is a _rapport_ between artistic souls that permits—indeed, induces—some display of fantasy or folly when they get into each other’s society apart from the intolerant folks who would think it lunacy for a man of over middle age to indulge in the contre-dance of “Petronella” at a harvest-home, or display any accomplishment with the jew’s-harp.