told to look about them. The sublime miracle play is yearly performed in their sight, and they only hear it said that it is hot or cold, that the day is fair or dark! And now there come sudden insights into still larger and more awful truths; a sense of wonder and awe makes the night solemn with mystery. Who does not recall some starlit night which suddenly, alone on a country road, perhaps, seemed to flash its splendour into his very soul and lift all life for a moment to a sublime height? The trees stood silent down the long road, no other footstep echoed far or near, one was alone with Nature and at one with her; suspecting no strange nearness of her presence, no sudden revelation of her inner self, and yet in the very mood in which these were both possible and natural. The boy of Wordsworth's imagination would stand beneath the trees "when the earliest stars began to move along the edges of the hills," and, with fingers interwoven, blow mimic hootings to the owls: And they would shout Across the watery vale, and shout again, Responsive to his call--with quivering peals, And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud, Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild Of mirth and jocund din. And when it chanced That pauses of deep silence mock'd his skill, Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carried far into his heart the voice Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received Into the bosom of the steady lake. It is in such moods as this, when all things are forgotten, and heart and mind are open to every sight and sound, that Nature comes to the soul with some deep, sweet message of her inner being, and with invisible hand lifts the curtain of mystery for one hushed and fleeting moment.