Had she not atoned for the inevitable rudeness of her rejection
by the grace of her humility, the scene would have lost its beauty.
SHELIDAH,
_20th August 1892._
"If only I could live there!" is often thought when looking at a beautiful
landscape painting. That is the kind of longing which is satisfied here,
where one feels alive in a brilliantly coloured picture, with none of the
hardness of reality. When I was a child, illustrations of woodland and
sea, in _Paul and Virginia_, or _Robinson Crusoe_, would waft me
away from the everyday world; and the sunshine here brings back to my mind
the feeling with which I used to gaze on those pictures.
I cannot account for this exactly, or explain definitely what kind of
longing it is which is roused within me. It seems like the throb of some
current flowing through the artery connecting me with the larger world. I
feel as if dim, distant memories come to me of the time when I was one
with the rest of the earth; when on me grew the green grass, and on me
fell the autumn light; when a warm scent of youth would rise from every
pore of my vast, soft, green body at the touch of the rays of the mellow
sun, and a fresh life, a sweet joy, would be half-consciously secreted and
inarticulately poured forth from all the immensity of my being, as it lay
dumbly stretched, with its varied countries and seas and mountains, under
the bright blue sky.
My feelings seem to be those of our ancient earth in the daily ecstasy of
its sun-kissed life; my own consciousness seems to stream through each
blade of grass, each sucking root, to rise with the sap through the trees,
to break out with joyous thrills in the waving fields of corn, in the
rustling palm leaves.
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