Leslie said that the virtue of geniality was of great value to a poet, and that if Byron had possessed the geniality of Goldsmith, he would have been as great a poet as Shakespeare, but that his misanthropy spoiled all his views of life. In saying this, Leslie probably underestimated the literary value of ill-nature. Much of Byron's intensity and force is due to the energy of malevolence. The success of Ruskin's earlier writings was due in part to the same cause. In periodical literature, it was pure _mechancete_ that first made the "Sat.u.r.day Review" successful.

Talking of Talfourd (who had lately died on the bench) Leslie said that he was a high liver, and that led him to give an account of Sir Walter Scott's way of life. At dinner he would eat heartily of many dishes and drink a variety of wines. At dessert he drank port; and last of all a servant brought him a small wooden bowl full of neat whiskey, which he drank off. He then either wrote or talked till midnight, and refreshed himself with a few gla.s.ses of porter before going to bed. Leslie did not mean to imply that Scott was intemperate for a man of a robust const.i.tution who took a great deal of exercise, but only that, like Talfourd, he was a high liver. It is remarkable, in connection with the subject of Scott's own habits, that eating and drinking are so often and so minutely described in his novels. His heroes and heroines always have hearty appet.i.tes, except when they are laid up with illness.

A few days after our visit to Rogers, I went to see Leslie's picture of "The Rape of the Lock," and met Robinson, the engraver, on my way. He told me to expect the finest modern picture I had ever seen. It was certainly one of the most perfect works of its cla.s.s. The action and expression of the sixteen figures were as lively as in a Hogarth, with more refinement. Leslie was completely in sympathy with Queen Anne's time, and reproduced it with unfailing zest and knowledge. He had been very careful about details. The interior at Hampton Court had been painted on the spot, and all the still life in the picture, even to a fan, had been studied with equal accuracy. Mrs. Leslie's mother sat looking at the picture, and making the liveliest comments on the subject and the actors. She would get up without hesitation to see something more nearly, and turn round with perfect balance of body to make her remarks to the company. She appeared to me then to be about sixty, but the age of her daughter made that impossible. _Her real age was ninety-three!_ It seemed incredible that she was older than Mr. Rogers.

Her grandchildren were playfully sarcastic at times, to draw her out in argument.

"We know, grandmamma, that you are a dandy yourself, so no wonder that you admire the dresses in the picture."

"Yes, yes, I _do_ like people to be dressed as well as possible,--as well, I mean, as they can really afford. I like them to wear the very best materials as tastefully as they can." Whilst she was looking at the picture, Mr. Leslie sat down by her side and read the pa.s.sage from "The Rape of the Lock" that his painting ill.u.s.trated. It was a very interesting scene--the master with his children about him, and his wife and her old mother all looking at his last and greatest work, whilst he was reading Pope's perfect verses so beautifully.

I have scarcely mentioned Leslie's sons yet. George, the future Academician, was an intimate friend of mine in those days. He was a clever talker, and he had the advantage--often precious to a taciturn companion like me--of never allowing the conversation to flag for a single instant. I think I never knew any one of the male s.e.x, with the exception of Francis Palgrave, who could keep up such an abundant stream of talk as George Leslie. This led some of his friends to think that he would never have any practical success in art, but he afterwards proved them to be in the wrong. He had a frank, straightforward, boyish nature, with a fund of humor, and a healthy disposition to be easily pleased.

His philosophy of life, under an appearance of careless gayety, was, perhaps, in reality deeper than that of my learned friend Mr. Mackay; for whilst the elderly scholar was laboring painfully and thanklessly to elucidate the past, the young artist was enjoying the present in his own way, and looking forward hopefully to the future. The buoyancy of spirits that George Leslie had in those days is an excellent gift for a young artist, because it carries him merrily over the difficulties of his craft. His brother Robert was older and graver. He painted landscape and marine subjects; but though his pictures have been regularly accepted at the Academy he has had no popular success. This may be attributed in great part to his habit of living away from London. Robert Leslie has all his life had very strong nautical instincts, and very likely knows more about shipping than any other artist. My belief is that one reason why he has not been a very successful painter is that he knows too much about nature, and lives too much in the presence of nature, which is always overwhelming and discouraging. After I knew him in London, Robert Leslie indulged his nautical instincts in sailing and yacht-building, as well as in painting marine pictures.

Aided only by a single workman, he constructed a vessel of thirty-six tons. With this and other yachts he has made himself familiar with the southern coasts of England, and has frequently crossed the Atlantic both on steamers and sailing-vessels. Now that we are both getting elderly men I heartily regret not to have seen more of Robert Leslie; but so it is in life,--so it has been particularly in _my_ life,--we are separated by distance from those who might have been our most intimate and most valued friends. [Footnote: Robert Leslie had a literary gift, and wrote some clever papers, which have been collected and published under the t.i.tle of "A Sea Painter's Log."]

Another friend, gained during my first stay in London, was Mr. Watkiss Lloyd, who has given up many of the best years of his life to intellectual pursuits. He has been much devoted to ancient Greek literature and history, and has studied Greek art with unflagging interest at the same time, so that he possesses an advantage over most scholars in knowing both sides of the h.e.l.lenic intellect. He has a manly, frank, and generous nature, with cheerful, open manners. Watkiss Lloyd is one of several superior men amongst my acquaintances who have not achieved popularity as authors. The reason in his case may be that as he has never been obliged to write for money, he has never cared to study the conditions of success. I told him once, when we were talking on this subject, that in my opinion it was most necessary to have a clear and definite idea of the kind of public one is addressing, and that we ought to write to an especial public, as St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians. Failure may be caused by having confused ideas about our public, or by writing only for ourselves, as if our works were destined to remain in ma.n.u.script like a private journal. A man may write what is clear for himself, when it will require to be read twice or three times by another. Besides this reason, I am inclined to believe that the constant study of ancient Greek is not a good preparation for popular English authorship. The scholar and the successful writer are two distinct persons. They may be occasionally combined in one by accident, but if the reader will run over in his mind the names of popular modern authors, he will find very few distinguished scholars amongst them.

However this may be, Watkiss Lloyd is something better than a popular author; he is an intellectual man, truly a lover of knowledge and of wisdom. Without shutting his eyes to the evils that are in the world, he does not forget the good. On one occasion, after a terrible malady that had occurred to one dear to him, I said that undeserved diseases seemed to me clear evidence of imperfection in the universe. He answered, that as we receive many benefits from the existing order of things that we have not merited in any way, so we may accept those evils that we have not merited either. This struck me as a better reason for resignation than the common a.s.sertion that we are wicked enough to deserve the most frightful inflictions. We do not really believe that our wickedness deserves cancer or leprosy.

I never wished to push myself into the society of celebrated persons for the purpose of getting acquainted with them, but I plead guilty to that degree of curiosity which likes to see them in the flesh. I knew Landseer by sight, and probably rather astonished him once in a London street by taking my hat off as if he had been Prince Albert. He used to pa.s.s an evening from time to time at Leslie's house, and I met him there. He then seemed a very jovial, merry English humorist, with a natural talent for satire and mimicry; but there was another side to his nature. If he enjoyed himself heartily when in company, he often suffered from deep depression when alone. I remember seeing him by himself when he looked the image of profound melancholy. At that time I had warmer admiration for his art than I have now, and the general public looked upon him as the greatest artist in England. No doubt he was very observant, and had a wonderful memory for animals and their ways, as well as some invention; he had also unsurpa.s.sable technical skill, of a superficial kind, in painting.

Harding was another very clever artist whom I met at Leslie's. I had correspondence with him a little as a teacher, and had studied his works. He had taught many amateurs, including Mr. Ruskin and a clever friend of mine in the North. I admired his skill, but disliked his extreme artificiality of style, and the more I went to nature the more objectionable did it appear to me. The kind of success which is attained by forcing nature into drawing-masters' set forms never tempted me in the least. Harding was at one time probably the most successful drawing-master in England. The word "clever" characterizes him exactly.

He was clever in the art of subst.i.tuting himself for nature, clever in the wonderful facility with which he used several graphic arts technically very different from each other, and clever especially in that supreme tact of the successful drawing-master by which he makes the amateur seem to get forward rapidly. He had immense confidence in himself, and in his own theories and principles.

Another well-known artist whom I met at Leslie's was Richard Doyle. He had great gifts of wit and invention, with a curiously small fund of science,--genius without the knowledge that might have given strength to genius. It is impossible, however, to feel any regret on this account, for if Doyle's drawings had been thoroughly learned they would have lost their _navete_. He was intelligent enough to make even his lack of science an element of success, for he turned it into a pretended simplicity. His own face was mobile and expressive, and it was evident that he pa.s.sed quickly from one idea to another without uttering more than a small percentage of his thoughts.

I remember dancing "Sir Roger de Coverley" when Landseer and Richard Doyle were of the set. They were both extremely amusing, but with this difference: that whereas Landseer evidently laid himself out to be funny in gesture and action, the fun in Doyle's case lay entirely in the play of his physiognomy. Leslie, too, had a most expressive face--not handsome (I mean, of course, the elder Leslie; his son George is handsome), but most interesting, and full of meaning.

CHAPTER XXII.

1854.

Miss Marian Evans.--John Chapman, the publisher.--My friend William Shaw.--His brother Richard.--Mead, the tragedian.--Mrs. Rowan and her daughter.--A vexatious incident.--I suffer from nostalgia for the country.

Mr. Mackay took me to one of the evening receptions that were given at that time by Mr. John Chapman, the publisher. On our way he spoke of Miss Marian Evans, then only known to a few as a translator from the German, and to still fewer as a contributor of articles to the "Westminster Review,"--a periodical that she partly directed. Neither the translations nor the articles revealed anything beyond good ordinary literary abilities. Mr. Mackay told me, however, that this Miss Evans was a very accomplished lady, and played remarkably well on the piano.

She was at Mr. Chapman's little conversazione, and performed for us. I remember being well pleased with the music, and thinking that she was one of the best amateurs I had heard, but I cannot remember what she played, nor anything about her talk, which would probably be a series of little private conversations with people that she already knew.

Mr. John Chapman was young at that time, and a very fine-looking man. He had entered upon the most unprofitable line of business that he could have chosen in the England of those days, the trade in philosophic free-thinking literature of the highest cla.s.s. The number of buyers was, of course, exceedingly limited, both by the thoughtful character of the works published, and by the unpopularity of the opinions expressed in them. The marvel is that such a speciality in publishing could be made to support itself at all. As a matter of fact, some of the wealthier free-thinkers published their works, or those of others, at their own expense, and some helped to maintain the "Westminster Review." Things have altered wonderfully since then. At the present day the literature of free inquiry is presented to the world by the richest and most eminent publishing firms, and free-thinkers have access to the most influential and the most widely disseminated periodicals.

Some readers of this autobiography may still look upon John Chapman's speciality with horror; but such a feeling would be unjust. The books he published were generally high in tone, and they certainly never condescended to the use of unbecoming language in dealing with matters held sacred by the majority of the English people. The only object of that modest propaganda was to win for Englishmen the right to think for themselves, and also to express their thoughts. That battle has been won, and, for my part, I feel nothing but respect for those who had courage to confront the stern intolerance of the past.

My society in London was not entirely confined to the pursuers of literature and art. I had a few other friends, especially one old school-fellow, William Shaw, afterwards an able London solicitor. His mind was an odd compound of manly sense in everything connected with his profession, and boyishness in other ways. He always retained that boyishness, which was probably an excellent thing for him as a relaxation from serious cares. He took little interest in the fine arts, but at a later period he had the wonderful goodness to give house-room to some of my unpopular and unsalable pictures, and went so far, in the way of friendship, that he actually hung them in his dining-room! He was very fond of recalling reminiscences of our childhood, especially what he characterized as "the great Fulledge railway swindle." When we were little boys we undertook the construction of a miniature railway on his father's land, and issued shares to pay for the rolling plant and the rails. We got together rather a handsome sum in this way from various good-natured friends, and after the expiration of some weeks could show them a rather long embankment. Then we got tired of spade work, and the enterprise languished. Finally the works came to a standstill, and I believe we spent the shareholders' money on something else, for a.s.suredly they never saw it again. After beginning so hopefully in the art of getting up bubble companies, it is perhaps to be regretted that we did not continue, as we might have been eminent financiers by this time. My friend was very active in his youth. I have seen him run by the side of a galloping horse in a field, holding by the mane, and vault on the animal's back, after which it went on faster than ever and leapt a little brook or a hedge. An odd incident occurs to my recollection just now. My friend had a susceptible heart, and a ravishing beauty was staying at a certain, country house, so we drove over to call there that he might see her. I went with him, and we had a dog-cart with a very lively horse. The drive was in the form of a great circle before the front door, so he tried to turn to the left; but the horse had decided for the right, and between them they effected a compromise by taking a straight cut over the lawn and flower-beds, which presented a deplorable appearance afterwards. Any one else would have felt a little confused after such an accident, but Shaw relied upon the good-nature of the ladies, who always forgave him everything in consideration for his winning ways and his handsome face.

William Shaw's brother, Richard, was the first member of Parliament who represented Burnley. I met him in London in 1854, and remember a description he gave of an old gentleman who was then living permanently at the Tavistock Hotel. That old gentleman was a perfect mystery; no one knew where he came from: he never either wrote or received a letter, he had no settled occupation, but read all the papers, and used to swear aloud quite dreadfully when he found any fact or opinion that displeased him. He compensated for this bad language by shouting "Bravo! bravo! Go it, my boy!" when he found an article to his mind. He once rambled twice round Covent Garden market without being able to find his way out, and on discovering that he had got back to the Tavistock, attributed all his difficulties to the waiter, and scolded him most furiously. The mystery about him, and his odd manners, would have been an attraction for d.i.c.kens.

Amongst other acquaintances that I made in London was Mead, the tragedian of Drury Lane Theatre. I recollect admiring his "Iago" very much. His countenance, which was agreeable and bland in private life, could be made to express all the evil pa.s.sions with astonishing power.

He was rather a skilful painter, having occasionally been able to sell a picture for twenty pounds. When he had a little time to spare, Mead would come and work on Pett.i.tt's great picture of the Golden Image. He once drew my portrait, and I drew his. My guardian was not quite pleased that I should know an actor, but Mead attracted me by the superior tone of his conversation. It was the first time in my life that I had met with an accomplished talker; I had known plenty of talkers who were only fluent, but Mead had always something interesting to say, and he invariably said it with easy finish and good taste. In a word, he was a master of spoken English, and did not fear to make use of his power, not having the usual English false shame which prevents our countrymen from saying things quite perfectly. Mead had tender feelings. Once after reading in a newspaper the account of some battle of no great importance, as we consider such events from a distance, he suddenly realized, in imagination, the effect of the news on the relatives of the killed and wounded, and burst into tears. Mead was good enough to accept on one or two occasions the simple kind of hospitality that I could offer him at my lodgings, and I find notes in the diary recording the happy swiftness of the hours I spent with him.

I never made the slightest attempt to enter what is specially called "London Society," though I had some friends or acquaintances who belonged to it. My time was entirely taken up with work and visits to a few houses. I am astonished on looking back to those days by the extreme kindness of people who were much older than myself, and for whom my society could have no other attraction than the opportunity it offered for the exercise of their own goodness. I had one merit, that of being an excellent listener, which has been a great advantage to me through life. A distinguished Frenchman once said to me, "You are the best listener I ever met;" but he had been accustomed to his own countrymen who are not generally patient or attentive for more than a few seconds at a time, and who have the habit of interruption.

It is possible, too, that my manners may have been good, for my dear guardian, so kind and mild about most things, could not tolerate anything like boorishness, and never hesitated to correct me. Another effect of her influence upon me was that I liked the society of well-bred ladies, and felt quite at ease in it. There was a most intelligent Danish family of ladies, Mrs. Rowan and her daughters, who received me very kindly. They spoke English wonderfully, with something like a slight c.u.mberland accent, and I believe their German was as good as their English. Mrs. Rowan had been a friend of Thorwaldsen the sculptor, and possessed three hundred and fifty of his original drawings, which I did not see, as she had lent them to Prince Albert. A singular and most vexatious incident is a.s.sociated in my memory with those drawings, and I am sure Mrs. Rowan could never think of them without remembering it. She had (too kindly) lent them to an artist, who returned them, indeed, but not without having exercised his own talents in improving them, as drawing-masters do to the work of their youthful pupils. The reader may imagine the depth of Mrs. Rowan's grat.i.tude. Her daughter, Frederica, whose name afterwards became generally known, was one of the most cultivated and agreeable women I ever met. Her nature had been a little saddened by family misfortunes (the Rowans had been a very wealthy family in Denmark), but her quiet gravity was of a n.o.ble kind, and if she took life seriously she had sufficient reasons for doing so.

My studies under Mr. Pett.i.tt went on very regularly all this time, and I made great _apparent_ progress, although, as will be seen later, it was not progress in the right direction. One little incident may be mentioned in proof that I could at least imitate closely. The reader is already aware that my master's system of teaching consisted in bringing a picture slowly forward in my presence, whilst I was to copy what had been done. One day, when the picture had got well forward, Mr. Pett.i.tt took up my copy by mistake and put it on his own easel. After he had worked upon it for a quarter of an hour I thanked him for the improvement. He said he had been quite unconscious of the difference, and told me to work on his own canvas to repay him for his labor on mine. Critics will please understand that I know how little this proves as well as they do. It proves nothing beyond a talent for imitation and the possession of some manual skill. I have sometimes thought in later life that if instead of going so much to nature I had mimicked some particular painter I might have obtained recognition as an artist.

Notwithstanding so much that was agreeable in my London life, it was still a hard trial of resolution for me to work in a close, ill-ventilated, and gloomy studio without any view from its window, and in the beginning of April I returned to the country. From that day to this I have never lived in London, which has probably been a misfortune to me, both as artist and writer. I have been there frequently on business, but have never stayed a day or an hour longer than the time necessary to get through what was most pressing. It is curious, but perfectly true, that I have never in my life felt the slightest desire to purchase or rent any house whatever in London, and there is not a house in all "the wilderness of brick" that I would accept as a free gift if it were coupled with the condition that I should live in it.

CHAPTER XXIII.

1854

Some of my relations emigrate to New Zealand,--Difficulties of a poor gentleman.--My uncle's reasons for emigration.--His departure.--Family separations.--Our love for Hollins.

In the month of April, 1854, an event occurred which was of great importance in our family.

My eldest uncle, Holden Hamerton, emigrated to New Zealand with all his children, and a son and daughter of my uncle Hinde accompanied them.

This suddenly reduced our circle by eleven persons, without counting a young family belonging to my cousin Orme.

My uncle, who was at that time a solicitor in Halifax, had reached a very critical period in the life of a _pere de famille_. His children were grown up and expensive, and he had tried various ways of economizing without any definite result. Amongst others, he had given up Hopwood Hall, his mansion in Halifax, and had converted the stabling at Hollins into a residence for his wife and the children who remained with her. The stables were large enough to make a s.p.a.cious dwelling. I remember the regret I felt on seeing the workmen pull down the handsome oak stalls, and remove the beautiful pavement, which was in blocks of smooth stone carefully bevelled at the angles. My unfortunate uncle lived like a bachelor in a small house in Halifax to be near his office, and only came to Hollins for the Sunday.

It is, of course, very easy to criticize a comparatively poor gentleman with a large family who is trying not to be ruined. It is easy to say that he ought to live strictly within his income, whatever it may be; but to do that strictly would require an iron resolution. He must cut short all indulgences, annihilate all elegancies, set his face against all the customs of his cla.s.s. His att.i.tude towards his wife and children must be one of stern refusal steadily and implacably maintained. If he relaxes--and all the influences around him tend to make him relax--the old habits of customary expense will re-establish themselves in a few weeks. He must cut his family off from all society, and with regard to himself he must do what is far more difficult--cut himself off from all domestic affection, behave like a heartless miser, and, at the very time when he most needs a little solace and peace in his own home, const.i.tute himself the executor of the pitiless laws that govern the human universe.

My uncle was not equal to all this. He could make hard sacrifices for himself, and, in fact, did reduce his own comforts to those of a poor bachelor, but he could not find in his heart to refuse everything to his family; so that although they made no pretension now to anything like an aristocratic position, my uncle still found himself to be living rather beyond his means, and the expense of establishing his sons and daughters in England being now imminent, and avoidable only in one way, he spent days, and I fear also nights, of anxiety in arriving at a determination.

A journey to Scotland settled the matter. My uncle visited his eldest son Orme, who was then at Greenock, and he discovered, as I had done, that my cousin was married. Of course I had kept his secret, having found it out by accident when a guest under his roof. The young man offered to accompany his father to New Zealand, and my uncle, who loved his eldest son, thought that this would be some compensation for leaving England. He did not know that Orme's irresistible instinct for changing his residence would make the New Zealand expedition no more than a temporary excursion for him.

Another reason for emigrating to New Zealand was this: My uncle's second son, Lewis, had abandoned the profession of the law and gone to Australia by himself, where he was now a shepherd in the bush. He would rejoin his father, and they would be a re-united family. All of them would be together in New Zealand except one, my cousin Edward, who lay in the family vault in Burnley Church. I had feelings of the strongest fraternal affection for Edward, and if the reader cares to see his likeness, he has only to look at the engraved portraits of Sh.e.l.ley, especially the one in Moxon's double-column edition of 1847. The likeness there is so striking that, for me, it supplies the place of any other.

Edward died at the age of seventeen. He had a gentle and sweet nature; but although he resembled Sh.e.l.ley so closely in outward appearance, he was without any poetical tendency. His gifts were arithmetical and mathematical, and whenever he had a quarter of an hour to spare he was sure to take a piece of paper and cover it all over with figures. His early death certainly spared him much trouble that he was hardly qualified to meet. He had that dislike to physical exercise which often accompanies delicate health, though there was no appearance of weakness till the beginning of his fatal illness.

I well remember my uncle's last visit to his sisters. He did not say that it was his last, but left some clean linen in the house, saying he would want it when he came again. In this way there was a little make-belief of hope; but I doubt if my aunts were really deceived, and I did not quite know what to think. My uncle seemed flushed and excited, and contradicted me rather sharply because I happened to be in error about something of no importance. It was a hard moment for him, as he loved his sisters, and had the deepest attachment to Hollins, where he was born, and where he had pa.s.sed the happiest days of his life. His last visit has remained so distinct in my memory that I can even now see clearly his great stalwart figure in the chair on the right-hand side of the fireplace. Then he left us and pa.s.sed the window, and since that day he never was seen again at his old place. I can imagine what it must have been to him to turn round at the avenue gate, and look back on the gables of Hollins, knowing it to be for the last time.

His wife and the rest of his family went away without inflicting upon themselves and us the pain of a farewell. I was present, however, at Featherstone when my cousin Hinde left for New Zealand. One of his sisters accompanied him out of pure sisterly devotion. She thought he would be lonely out in the colony, so she would go and stay with him till he married. He did not marry, and she never returned.

The colonial strength of England is founded upon these family separations, but they are terrible when they occur, especially when the parents are left behind in the old country. To us who remained this wholesale emigration in our family produced the effect of a great and sudden mortality. For my part I have received exactly one letter from the New Zealand Hamertons since they left. It was a very interesting letter, interesting enough to make me regret "there was but one."

My uncle's property sold well, and on leaving England he had still a balance of ten thousand pounds in his pocket, which was more than most emigrants set out with; but he built a good house on the estate he purchased, and it was ruined in the war. His wife was a woman of great courage and wonderful const.i.tutional cheerfulness, both severely tested by three months of incessant sea-sickness on the outward voyage. They met with one terrible storm, during which the captain did not hope to save the vessel, and my uncle and aunt sat together in their cabin clasping each other's hands, and calmly awaiting death.

After their departure my guardian and her sister remained at Hollins as tenants of the new proprietor. We still clung to the old place, but it did not seem the same to us. On the night of the sale by auction my aunt said to me, sadly, as we took our candlesticks to go to bed: "It is strange to think that we positively do not know under whose roof we are going to sleep to-night." The change was felt most painfully by her. My guardian had a more resigned way of accepting the evils of life; she had a kind of Christian pessimism that looked upon terrestrial existence as not "worth living" in itself, and a little less or more of trouble and sorrow in this world seemed to her scarcely worth considering, being only a part of the general unsatisfactoriness of things. Her sister had intense local attachments, and the most intense of them all was for this place, her birthplace, where she had pa.s.sed her youth. This attachment was increased in her case by a strong, deep, and poetic sentiment that I hardly like to call aristocratic, because that word will have other a.s.sociations (of pride in expensive living) for most readers. My aunt had the true sentiment of ancestry, and it was painful to her to see a place go out of a family. I have the same sentiment, though with less intensity, and there were other reasons that made me love Hollins very much. At that time the natural beauty that surrounded it was quite unspoilt. We were near to the streams and the moors that I delighted in, and the idea of being obliged to leave, as we might be at any time by the new proprietor, was painful to a degree that only lovers of nature will understand.

Even now, in my fifty-fourth year, I very often dream about Hollins, about the old garden there, and the fields and woods, and the rocky stream. Sometimes the place is sadly and stupidly altered in my dream, and I am irritated; at other times it is improved and enriched, and the very landscape is idealized into a n.o.bler and more perfect beauty.