There is a Scripture text apropos of this, which I have longed many a day to sermonize upon, but we are far enough from Holborn Hill already; and apart from moral and mental considerations, it is a sufficient reason for building cities in hilly places, if the hard-worked, captive people are thus kept in remembrance of the country, and its peace and health. This is a luxury as well as a good; delight to the senses, as well as medicine for the mind. Some of us love nature with a large and personal love. I am sure I do, for one. Thinking of her, immured in London as I am, I think also of that prisoner in the Bastille, who prayed Monseigneur for “some tidings of my poor wife, were it only her name upon a card.” Were I a prisoner long, I should pray not only for that, but for some tidings of my mistress Nature, were it only her name in a leaf. And whereas some of us who have sweethearts go prowling about the dear one’s house, searching through the walls for her, so at favourable opportunities I search for my mistress through the bricks and stones of Holborn Hill. In the noon of a midsummer day, with the roar of carts, waggons, Atlas and other omnibusses rattling in my ears, with that little bill of Timmins’s on my mind, how have I seen it clad in green, the stream running in the hollow, and white dandelion tufts floating in the air. There a grasshopper chirped; a bee hummed, going his way; and countless small creatures, burrowing in the grass, buzzed and whirred like a company of small cotton-spinners with all their looms at work. Practically, there is no standing timber within several miles of the place; but if I have not seen trees where an alamode beef business is supposed to be carried on, I am blind. I have seen trees, and heard the blackbird whistle.