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tries for which we long occupy, at any given moment, a far
larger place in our true life than the country in which we
may happen to be. Doubtless, if, at that time, I had paid
more attention to what was in my mind when I pronounced
the words ‘going to Florence, to Parma, to Pisa, to Venice,’ I
should have realised that what I saw was in no sense a town,
but something as different from anything that I knew,
something as delicious as might be for a human race whose
whole existence had passed in a series of late winter after-
noons, that inconceivable marvel, a morning in spring.
These images, unreal, fixed, always alike, filling all my
nights and days, differentiated this period in my life from
those which had gone before it (and might easily have been
confused with it by an observer who saw things only from
without, that is to say, who saw nothing), as in an opera a
fresh melody introduces a novel atmosphere which one
could never have suspected if one had done no more than
read the libretto, still less if one had remained outside the
theatre, counting only the minutes as they passed. And be-
sides, even from the point of view of mere quantity, in our
life the days are not all equal. To reach the end of a day, na-
tures that are slightly nervous, as mine was, make use, like
motor-cars, of different ‘speeds.’ There are mountainous,
uncomfortable days, up which one takes an infinite time to
pass, and days downward sloping, through which one can
go at full tilt, singing as one goes. During this month—in
which I went laboriously over, as over a tune, though never
to my satisfaction, these visions of Florence, Venice, Pisa,
from which the desire that they excited in me drew and kept

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