Love and loyalty within; noble friends at the hearthstone; soft or shining heavens above; mystery of forest and music of stream without: this is home in Arden.
VIII.

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.

books in the running brooks.
In the days before we went to Arden, Rosalind and I had often wondered what books we should find there, and we had anticipated with the keenest curiosity that in the mere presence or absence of certain books we should discover at last the final principle of criticism, the absolute standard of literary art.

Many a time as we sat before the study fire and finished the reading of some volume that had yielded us unmixed delight, we had said to each other that we should surely find it in Arden, and read it again in an atmosphere in which the most delicate and beautiful meanings would become as clear as the exquisite tracery of frost on the study windows.