To me there is something inexpressibly sweet and refreshing in the familiar and yet unfailing loveliness of this place. The fields are always peaceful, and the slow motions of the cattle grouped here and there under the shadows of solitary trees, or of the sheep browsing in long, irregular lines across the further meadows, give the landscape that touch of pastoral life which unites us with Nature in the oldest and most homelike relations. Here, on still summer afternoons, one seems to have come upon a sleeping world; a world over whose slumber the clouds are passing like peaceful dreams. In such an hour the limpid water of the spring seems to rise out of the very heart of the earth, and to bring with it an unfailing refreshment of spirit. The white sand through which it finds its way makes its transparent clearness more apparent, and the great stone seems to hold back the woods from an approach that would overshadow it. It rises so silently into the visible world from the unseen depths that one cannot but feel some illusion of sentiment thrown over it, some disclosure of truth escaping with it from the darkness beneath. Whence does it flow, and what has its journey been? Did some remote mountain range gather its waters from the clouds and send them down through long and winding channels deep in its heart? Is there far below an invisible stream flowing, like the river Alphaeus, unseen and unheard beneath the earth? The spring is mute when these questions rise to lips which it is always ready to moisten from its cool depths. It is enough that in this quiet place the bounty of Nature never ceases to overflow, and that here she holds out the cup of refreshment with royal indifference to gratitude or neglect. Here she ministers to every comer as if her whole life were a service. One forgets that behind this cup of cold water, held out to the humblest, there sweep sublime powers, and that the same hand which serves him here moves in their courses the planets, whose faint reflections shine in this silent pool by night.