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hold had prepared our breakfast. After breakfast we walked along the clear waters of the Dove, and in the valley of Ilam, till noon. Then we separated, each to enjoy his solitary musings and explore in what direction he pleased, agreeing to rendezvous at Ilam village at a certain hour in the evening, and, later, to ascend Thorpe Cloud together, for the sunset. I returned along the stream, and sauntered away far up the Dale; and, as I walked, the same unaccountable anticipation of severance which had oppressed me on our way to Miller's Dale, began to visit me again, with an intense sadness, and I could not shake it off. As I approached Ilam in the evening, this feeling was suddenly wrought to the highest pitch by a curious phenomenon; for, moving on slowly towards the village, and expecting to find Edmund somewhere by the roadside, I happened to look up towards the grassy peak above, and there on its edge appeared to my sight the dark shape of a man of superhuman proportions, in reclining attitude, extended hugely against the heavens. The outlines were those of Armstrong's figure, but the proportions were so enormous that a momentary feeling of absolute horror and alarm passed over me. Nor did either the illusion or the painful sensation abate until I had advanced several paces, and then they were dispelled simultaneously by the shout of the wellknown voice from above, and the veritable Ed

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mund, in his natural altitude, hastening towards me down the slope. Of this phenomenon the only explanations I can offer are, first, that a peculiar state of atmosphere tended to magnify an object placed, relatively to my eye and to the sunlight, in the position in which Armstrong lay; and, secondly, that the hill, which was peaked, and in form like lofty mountains with which I was familiar, was in reality much more diminutive than I had imagined, and my eyes had not had any opportunity of comparing its height with that of the ordinary human figure, when the two thus flashed before me unexpectedly and in juxtaposition at a moment when I was probably aweary, and my vitality low. We discussed the incident together, and later in the evening found reason to attribute much of it to atmospheric causes; for as we sat on the top of Thorpe Cloud, to enjoy the sundown, the god of day seemed to remain poised in precisely the same spot for such an extraordinary length of time that we began to imagine that he had suddenly changed his mind, and was determined to remain up for the night!"

These wanderings about Dovedale and the "Happy Valley" of Ilam, were to Armstrong, for months afterwards, a soothing and tranquillizing reminiscence, and he often paused to brood over that quiet, peaceful landscape, in wooing mental repose, when calmness of thought and feeling had become a vital necessity.

CHAPTER XIX. 1864, ÆT. 23–.

Quietude in T. C. D.-Extraordinary Productiveness.— Letter CVI. "The Bee;" Longings for Leisure."By Gaslight."-"Studies of Certain Defined Characters."-"September Equinox."-Essay on Coleridge.— Gold Medal of the Historical Society.-Address to the Philosophical Society; "The Visitors."-Warm Eulogiums. New Friends.-Reviews.

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T was not many weeks before he was back again in his rooms in Trinity College. In that calm season of the Long Vacation, when no bells boom or tinkle within the walls, and grass begins to peep up in the quadrangles, here and there, green and fresh as in Ferrara's streets, he found his undisturbed solitude in the heart of the city very favourable to the work he had in hand; and he wrote there much, as well in prose as in verse; and, as his note-books manifest, read prodigiously. His Essay on Coleridge, his Address on Essayists and Essay- Writing,' together with a large number of his lyrical pieces, were among the produce of August, September, and October. He has frequently written four or even five lyrics a-day during this fertile period, and his note-books are a mingled mass of excerpts from 1 See "Essays and Sketches."—ED.

multifarious authors; jottings on one topic or another; lyrics written down in his clear, sure, rapid hand, with scarcely an erasure, as the thought, in the midst of other occupations, might strike him; and passages and pages of essays in which he had engaged himself. Never in the whole course of his previous life had he seemed wrought to such a state of acute sensibility, energy, elation, intellectual vigour and fecundity. I can compare him to nothing more like than a fountain tossing up inexhaustible bright waters and sunlit spray as if with sheer joy at its own perennial vitality.

The following letter (which refers to a little act of kindness on the part of his correspondent) exhibits something of the mood and lightness of finger with which he dashed off his paragraphs and lines:

LETTER CVI. (To G. A. C.)—" 29, T. C. D., Saturday, August 27, 1864. -The Tremendous Gloom to the Roaring Sea, Greeting.-Happily will I come to thy house on any night . . . Happily, likewise, would I have gone to see thee today had not the weather frustrated my good intention. . . . To thee be many thanks for remembering me, in token whereof accept the following dainty lyric!

"THE BEE.

"There is a bee within my brain;

It is not storing honey;

Buzz-buzz-it buzzeth dismally,

'Make money, man, make money!'

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(To which the afflicted poet maketh answer :—

"There's money enough in good greenwood,

In sunshine and gay weather;

There's money enough in two warm hearts
That glow and throb together.

"There's money enough in a kindly smile,

In gentle loving laughter;

There's money enough in a mind that broods
On the mystery of Hereafter.

(And proceedeth to testify that it won't do, in

this dolorous stanza :-)

"But the bee keeps buzzing within my brain,

And will not store its honey;

Alack! it buzzeth continually,

'Make money, fool, make money!'

"(Here the poet relapseth into that 'sweet and commendable' silence which is golden, and demandeth, with becoming modesty, the boisterous admiration of his friend.)

"Ay me! will the day ever come when, unvext by the turmoils and tumults of this little world, I may consecrate to my art a calm and trustful mind, a loyal purpose, and a will subdued in the perfect law of liberty to the one great Will that governs the universe?"

Walking on the western slope of the Flagstaff Hill at Killiney, one Sunday morning in the early days of autumn, he said to me suddenly: "I know there is a comfortable summer-house in the plant

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