And the generation of this peculiar element in his temper he could trace up to the days when his life had been so like the reading of a romance to him.

Had the Romans a word for unworldly?
The beautiful word umbratilis perhaps comes nearest to it; and, with that precise sense, might describe the spirit in which he prepared himself for the sacerdotal function hereditary in his family--the sort of mystic enjoyment he had in the abstinence, the strenuous self-control and ascesis, which such preparation involved.

Like the young Ion in the beautiful opening of the play of Euripides, who every morning sweeps the temple floor with such a fund of cheerfulness in his service, he was apt to be happy in sacred places, with a susceptibility to their peculiar influences which he never outgrew; so that often in after-times, quite unexpectedly, this feeling would revive in him with undiminished freshness.

That first, early, boyish ideal of priesthood, the sense of dedication, survived through all the distractions of the world, and when all thought of such vocation had finally passed from him, as a ministry, in spirit at least, towards a sort of hieratic beauty and order in the conduct of life.
[26] And now what relieved in part this over-tension of soul was the lad's pleasure in the country and the open air; above all, the ramble to the coast, over the marsh with its dwarf roses and wild lavender, and delightful signs, one after another--the abandoned boat, the ruined flood-gates, the flock of wild birds--that one was approaching the sea; the long summer-day of idleness among its vague scents and sounds.

And it was characteristic of him that he relished especially the grave, subdued, northern notes in all that--the charm of the French or English notes, as we might term them--in the luxuriant Italian landscape.
NOTES 13.