But, after all, the resolute cheerfulness that can be to a certain
extent captured and secured by an effort of the will, though it is
perhaps a more useful quality than natural joy, and no doubt ranks
together in the moral scale, is not to be compared with a certain
unreasoning, incommunicable rapture which sometimes, without
conscious effort or desire, descends upon the spirit, like sunshine
after rain. Let me quote a recent experience of my own which may
illustrate it.
A few days ago, I had a busy tiresome morning hammering into shape
a stupid prosaic passage, of no suggestiveness; a mere statement,
the only beauty of which could be that it should be absolutely
lucid; and this beauty it resolutely refused to assume. Then the
agent called to see me, and we talked business of a dull kind. Then
I walked a little way among fields; and when I was in a pleasant
flat piece of ground, full of thickets, where the stream makes a
bold loop among willows and alders, the sun set behind a great
bastion of clouds that looked like a huge fortification.
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