Alec, whose home was happy, knew nothing of that sense of discomfort which is sometimes the herald of a greater need.

But he was soon to take a new start in his intellectual relations; nor in those alone, seeing the change was the result of a dim sense of duty.

The fact of his not being a scholar to the mind of Murdoch Malison, arose from no deficiency of intellectual _power_, but only of intellectual _capacity_--for the indefinite enlargement of which a fitting excitement from without is alone requisite.
The season went on, and the world, like a great flower afloat in space, kept opening its thousandfold blossom.

Hail and sleet were things lost in the distance of the year--storming away in some far-off region of the north, unknown to the summer generation.

The butterflies, with wings looking as if all the flower-painters of fairyland had wiped their brushes upon them in freakful yet artistic sport, came forth in the freedom of their wills and the faithful ignorance of their minds.
The birds, the poets of the animal creation--what though they never get beyond the lyrical!--awoke to utter their own joy, and awake like joy in others of God's children.