I have sometimes climbed to the top of a hill and looked into some unknown and placid valley, with field and wood and rivulet and the homes of men. I have seen the figures of men and oxen move sedately about those quiet fields. Often, too, gliding at evening in a train through a pastoral country when the setting sun bathes all things in genial light and contented shade, I have felt the same thought. “How peaceful, how simple life would be, nay, must be, here.” Only very gradually, as life goes on, does it dawn upon the soul that the trouble lies deeper, and that though surrounded by the most unimagined peace, the same fret, the same beating of restless wings, the same delays attend. That dreamt-of peace can hardly be attained. The most we can do is to enjoy it to the utmost when it is with us; and when it takes its flight, and leaves us dumb, discontented, peevish, to quench the sordid thought in resolute _silence_, to curb the grating mood, to battle mutely with the cowering fear; and so to escape investing the house and the garden that we love with the poisonous and bitter associations that strike the beauty out of the fairest scene. 27 _September 20, 1894._ I had to-day a strange little instance of the patient, immutable habit of nature. Some years ago there was a particular walk of which I was fond; it led through pastures, by shady wood-ends, and came out eventually on a bridge that spanned the line. Here I often went to see a certain express pass; there was something thrilling in the silent cutting, the beckoning, ghostly arm of the high signal, the faint far-off murmur, and then the roar of the great train forging past. It was a breath from the world. [Sidenote: THE RED SPIDER] On the parapet of the bridge, grey with close-grained lichen, there lived a numerous colony of little crimson spiders. What they did I never could discern; they wandered aimlessly about hither and thither, in a sort of feeble, blind haste; if they ever encountered each other on their rambles, they stopped, twiddled horns, and fled in a sudden horror; they never seemed to eat or sleep, and even continued their endless peregrinations in the middle of heavy showers, which flicked them quivering to death. I used to amuse myself with thinking how one had but to alter the scale, so to speak, and what appalling, intolerable monsters these would become. Think of it! huge crimson shapeless masses, with strong wiry legs, and waving mandibles, tramping silently over the grey veldt, and perhaps preying on minute luckless insects, which would flee before them in vain. One day I walked on ahead, leaving a companion to follow. He did follow, and joined me on the bridge—bringing heavy tidings which had just arrived after I left home.