And What A Power They Have Over The Colour Of The
World!
How they ruffle the solid woodlands in their passage, and
make them shudder and whiten like a single willow!
There is
nothing more vertiginous than a wind like this among the woods,
with all its sights and noises; and the effect gets between some
painters and their sober eyesight, so that, even when the rest of
their picture is calm, the foliage is coloured like foliage in a
gale. There was nothing, however, of this sort to be noticed in a
country where there were no trees and hardly any shadows, save the
passive shadows of clouds or those of rigid houses and walls. But
the wind was nevertheless an occasion of pleasure; for nowhere
could you taste more fully the pleasure of a sudden lull, or a
place of opportune shelter. The reader knows what I mean; he must
remember how, when he has sat himself down behind a dyke on a
hillside, he delighted to hear the wind hiss vainly through the
crannies at his back; how his body tingled all over with warmth,
and it began to dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that
the country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the far-away
hills all marbled with sun and shadow. Wordsworth, in a beautiful
passage of the 'Prelude,' has used this as a figure for the feeling
struck in us by the quiet by-streets of London after the uproar of
the great thoroughfares; and the comparison may be turned the other
way with as good effect:-
'Meanwhile the roar continues, till at length,
Escaped as from an enemy, we turn
Abruptly into some sequester'd nook,
Still as a shelter'd place when winds blow loud!'
I remember meeting a man once, in a train, who told me of what must
have been quite the most perfect instance of this pleasure of
escape.
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