The sensation that we have already seen or lived or heard something is similarly explained. Each active moment is an amalgam of sentiments and wills and multiple elements which split apart as soon as the purpose is achieved. The moments of its duration then scatter through space and time, taking with them remains of their charged sounds, colours, and scents, with atmospheres of joy or sadness not fully perceptible by our limited senses, but certainly to be opined, and almost to be felt. We may pursue this train of thought a little farther, and be prepared to accept that certain places derive a special atmosphere from the events of which they have been the setting, and may preserve it indefinitely. We are often sensible of particular associations which hang about such and such a feature: one place may instil terror, and others peace, disquietude, mystery, or love, without any apparent quality in their disposition to account for the possession of such power. The reason is that the events or thoughts or actions of which they have been the scene have left traces within the four walls of the room, in the branches of the tree, or in the various features of the place. In fact, the seconds of old time are yet living there, loaded with old association, and as they whirl and vibrate they sensitize us with their invisible rays. If we were endowed with new faculties, sensitive to such influences as now escape us, and with them were able to apprehend and analyse these scattered fragments of the past, these waifs of dead adventures, then we might be able to reconstruct the deeds and lives and deaths, all the unplumbed combinations of circumstance in the cities or countries of our passage. This invisible swarm of "seconds which have been" hems us about, wherever and whenever we go, with its traces of suffering and of delight, of unrest, of clashing, of colour: for the emanations of our souls (like those of the souls of things) are heavy with various essences which may grow faint, but never altogether perish. In this dead November air a soft musical murmur seemed to hang round the giant tree, as if it were mourning its old age and sadness. In this autumnal dreaminess the tree was living again some of its passed life, hearing the times and moments thronging by, contrasting (even in its least fibre) the brilliancy of yesterday with the sadness of the failing present. The numberless radiations of the air which for centuries had made florid its stem seemed to-day to renew about it their health-giving vibrations. This dust of time, the elements of old situations great and small, had come from near or far as the case was: perhaps from the beginning of things in the depths of the abyss. To-morrow, when the great tree would be no more, it might affect other forms, and make fertile other existences.