Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/355

 1857-1862 295 with their windows all precisely alike ; by the rounded shapes of the trees in a valley, varied somewhat in form, in tint, and, though beautiful in themselves, limiting the range. The prisoner in his cell would go mad or die of despair unless he could see a space of sky through his barred window, and watch a cloud drift by, or contemplate a star looking in. And an artist painting a portrait or an interior, to escape a sense of suffocation, to give breath, must afford a glimpse of space through an open door or window. The vision of limitless space inspires the notion of Infinity, and the thought of Infinity conduces to aspiration after God, whose attribute it is. What glorious sights did the Irish anchorites have of boundless stretch, looking from their rocks over the Atlantic ! How can the imagination play when the prospect before the eyes consists of a street front, in which the sole changes are the pulling up or pulling down of the blind in the lodgings vis-d-vis, and the sight of a servant maid cleaning the window panes is a phenomenon. How limited is its range, when the shiftings of form and colour of the trees is slow and progressive from leafless December to full-foliaged June. But when the prospect is over sea reaching to the horizon and far, far beyond, what play is afforded to the fancy ! I can well understand how it was that the early inhabitants of Europe conceived of an existence in the Isles of the Blessed, where the sun dipped, and that they should crave to lay their bones in boat-like dolmens on the rugged coasts of Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland and North Britain, in hopes of their spirits travelling into the Unknown West! How we can feel with Madoc of Wales, shipping to discover the far-away Atlantis, and Brendan in his coracle launching forth from the coast of Donegal on the same quest! Aspiration after space, I take it, like the sense of beauty, is innate in man ; and, when man was made in the image of God, the Creator implanted in him something of what is in Himself, Beauty and Infinity ; and as he craves after Beauty, so does he also crave after the Unlimited. What is it that impels a man to ascend a hill, to climb a mountain, other than the desire to extend his view, widen the space over which his eye can range ? What but this passion of the soul carried the old Irish saints to cluster like a swarm of bees about the rocks of Aran, the hermits