and humour, and I read immediately after the greater part of the Waverley Novels, and was never moved again in the same way or to the same degree. One circumstance is suspicious: my critical estimate of the Waverley Novels has scarce changed at all since I was ten. _Rob Roy_, _Guy Mannering_, and _Redgauntlet_ first; then, a little lower; _The Fortunes of Nigel_; then, after a huge gulf, _Ivanhoe_ and _Anne of Geierstein_: the rest nowhere; such was the verdict of the boy. Since then _The Antiquary_, _St. Ronan’s Well_, _Kenilworth_, and _The Heart of Midlothian_ have gone up in the scale; perhaps _Ivanhoe and Anne of Geierstein_ have gone a trifle down; Diana Vernon has been added to my admirations in that enchanted world of _Rob Roy_; I think more of the letters in _Redgauntlet_, and Peter Peebles, that dreadful piece of realism, I can now read about with equanimity, interest, and I had almost said pleasure, while to the childish critic he often caused unmixed distress. But the rest is the same; I could not finish _The Pirate_ when I was a child, I have never finished it yet; _Peveril of the Peak_ dropped half way through from my schoolboy hands, and though I have since waded to an end in a kind of wager with myself, the exercise was quite without enjoyment. There is something disquieting in these considerations. I still think the visit to Ponto’s the best part of the _Book of Snobs_: does that mean that I was right when I was a child, or does it mean that I have never grown since then, that the child is not the man’s father, but the man? and that I came into the world with all my faculties complete, and have only learned sinsyne to be more tolerant of boredom? . . . VIII. THE IDEAL HOUSE Two things are necessary in any neighbourhood where we propose to spend a life: a desert and some living water. There are many parts of the earth’s face which offer the necessary combination of a certain wildness with a kindly variety. A great prospect is desirable, but the want may be otherwise supplied; even greatness can be found on the small scale; for the mind and the eye measure differently. Bold rocks near hand are more inspiriting than distant Alps, and the thick fern upon a Surrey heath makes a fine forest for the imagination, and the dotted yew trees noble mountains. A Scottish moor with birches and firs grouped here and there upon a knoll, or one of those rocky seaside deserts of Provence overgrown with rosemary and thyme and smoking with aroma, are places where the mind is never weary. Forests, being more enclosed, are not at first sight so attractive, but they exercise a spell; they must, however, be diversified with either heath or rock, and are hardly to be considered perfect without conifers. Even sand-hills, with their intricate plan, and their gulls and rabbits, will stand well for the necessary desert.