In the afternoon we all went off on a long ramble together,
and we were quite surprised to see that everything seemed to be in
its place as usual. Summer is over, the fields have been reaped;
there is a comfortable row of stacks in the rickyard; the pleasant
humming of an engine came up the valley, as it sang its homely
monotone, now low, now loud. After tea--the evenings have begun to
close in--I went off to my study, took out my notebook and looked
over my subjects, but I could make nothing of any of them. I could
see that there were some good ideas among them; but none of them
took shape. Often I have found that to glance over my subjects
thus, after a holiday, is like blowing soap-bubbles. The idea comes
out swelling and eddying from the bowl; a globe swimming with
lucent hues, reflecting dim moving shapes of rooms and figures. Not
so to-day. My mind winked and flapped and rustled like a burnt-out
fire; not in a depressed or melancholy way, but phlegmatically and
dully. Well, the spirit bloweth as it listeth; but it is strange to
find my mind so unresponsive, with none of that pleasant stir, that
excitement that has a sort of fantastic terror about it, such as
happens when a book stretches itself dimly and mysteriously before
the mind--when one has a glimpse of a quiet room with people
talking, a man riding fiercely on lonely roads, two strolling
together in a moonlit garden with the shadows of the cypresses on
the turf, and the fragrance of the sleeping flowers blown abroad.
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