Confessions of a Book-Lover by E. Walter Walters

‘SO we saunter towards the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn. ' These were the last words I heard from my friend's lips. He had a serious relapse, shortly after our visit to the country, and died within a few days. And now I am divided between a deep sense of personal loss and my duty to his memory. He would, I know, have had me look upon his journey to the ‘Other Side' in the light of a pilgrimage, gone upon bravely, cheerfully, in perfect confidence.

By my side is a letter in which he speaks of this attitude in the course of a reference to our day in the country. ‘I have been reading,' he says, ‘a volume of Mr. A. C. Benson's essays, procured from a circulating library, and am filled with gratitude for their soothing influence. The following passage from his essay on "Beauty" will recall the conversation we had at our last meeting -- our day in the country: "Nature has a magic for many of us -- that is to say, a secret power that strikes across our lives at intervals, with a message from an unknown region. And this message is aroused by symbols; a tree, a flash of light on lonely clouds, a flower, a stream -- simple things that we have seen a thousand times -- have sometimes the power to cast a spell over our spirit, and to bring something that is great and incommunicable near us. This must be called magic, for it is not a thing which can be explained by ordinary laws, or defined in precise terms; but the spell is there, real, insistent, undeniable; it seems to make a bridge for the spirit to pass into a far-off, dimly apprehended region; it gives us a sense of great issues and remote visions; it leaves us with a longing which has no mortal fulfilment."