Mandeville never comes in that I do not feel a north-wind vigor
and healthfulness in his cordial, sincere, hearty manner, and in his
wholesome way of looking at things. The Parson, you would say, was
the east wind, and only his intimates know that his peevishness is
only a querulous humor. In the fair west wind I know the Mistress
herself, full of hope, and always the first one to discover a bit of
blue in a cloudy sky. It would not be just to apply what I have said
of the south wind to any of our visitors, but it did blow a little
while Herbert was here.
II
In point of pure enjoyment, with an intellectual sparkle in it, I
suppose that no luxurious lounging on tropical isles set in tropical
seas compares with the positive happiness one may have before a great
woodfire (not two sticks laid crossways in a grate), with a veritable
New England winter raging outside. In order to get the highest
enjoyment, the faculties must be alert, and not be lulled into a mere
recipient dullness. There are those who prefer a warm bath to a
brisk walk in the inspiring air, where ten thousand keen influences
minister to the sense of beauty and run along the excited nerves.
There are, for instance, a sharpness of horizon outline and a
delicacy of color on distant hills which are wanting in summer, and
which convey to one rightly organized the keenest delight, and a
refinement of enjoyment that is scarcely sensuous, not at all
sentimental, and almost passing the intellectual line into the
spiritual.
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