“There had been some little rain, and it was still rather dull and damp when I set out; but I should have gone if it had been worse, and really the evening ended almost brightly. I enjoyed the freshness of everything, and the wild-birds seemed to enjoy it; they did not appreciate it as I did, but they enjoyed it more. The notes of many a songster rang out from the thick cover of the wood on my left, and amongst the well-known notes some strange music was mixed, now and then becoming louder and more distinct. These must have been the wonderful soft strains of the nightingale. The woodpeckers were laughing wildly, and the rooks returning to the tops of the elms, and talking as is their wont; the youngsters responding eagerly, and seeming as if they were chattering and being fed at the same time. The cows were placidly grouped about the hedges, or wandering leisurely to and fro, favouring the passerby with a whiff of their scented breath. On the other side, flooded fields were rich in the most luxuriant vegetation; whilst continually, and, as it grew later, more continually, the cuckoos answered one another from many a deep shade. I was glad to think that you would be thinking me there, and hoped you would not fancy that I should give up the excursion.” Nor, passing now from reminiscences of his Oxford life, was his love of the country and its associations, here sufficiently evinced, confined to one particular sort of scenery; and the wild moorlands of his native county attracted him as strongly as the quiet and peaceful beauties of Oxfordshire, or even more so. During the Easter vacation of 1864 he had been on a short walking tour into the Yorkshire dales with one of his brothers and some other friends. “There is always a sense of freedom,” he writes from near Leeds soon afterwards, “in getting away to the moors and mountains which surround us, and lie so near that they seem to invite Leeds men to visit them. For though the river at Kirkstall is sadly changed from the stream that leaves Malham Tarn, and the mountain air has lost somewhat of its freshness when it sweeps over this place, the sight and sound of railways are a constant reminder that a few minutes’ consignment to the train, and the payment of a few shillings, are sufficient charm to place one in the world of nature. May those moors and valleys long continue desolate, if desolation may be understood to mean no presence but that of the spirit of nature. I care not what that spirit may be, but I feel a breathing life and an unsurpassable harmony, where man has not utterly defiled the face of the country. What I long for,” he concludes, “is a fishing tour in the neighbourhood of Kilnsey or Wensleydale. I must be incorrigibly idle, and born to hate anything that even looks like work; and yet I want to be active, to do something, to find a field for my energies, such as they are.”