happily among the delights which upon earth are represented by sound and colour and scent and comeliness and comfort. This was a perpetual surprise to me, because I saw in these fine creatures such a faculty of delicate perception, that I could not help believing again and again that their emotions were as deep and varied too; but I found little by little, that they were all bent, not on loving, and therefore on giving themselves away to what they loved, but in gathering in perceptions and sensations, and finding their delight in them; and I realised that what lies at the root of the artistic nature is its deep and vital indifference to anything except what can directly give it delight, and that these souls, for all their amazing subtlety and discrimination, had very little hold on life at all, except on its outer details and superficial harmonies; and that they were all very young in experience, and like shallow waters, easily troubled and easily appeased; and that therefore they were being dealt with like children, and allowed full scope for all their little sensitive fancies, until the time should come for them to go further yet. Of course they were one degree older than the people who in the world had been really immersed in what may be called solid interests and serious pursuits--science, politics, organisation, warfare, commerce--all these spirits were very youthful indeed, and they were, I suppose, in some very childish nursery of God. But what first bewildered me was the finding of the earthly proportions of things so strangely reversed, the serious matters of life so utterly set aside, and so much made of the things which many people take no sort of trouble about, as companionships and affections, which are so often turned into a matter of mere propinquity and circumstance. But of this I shall have to speak later in its place.