I visited, by turns, every chamber--they were all desolate and unfurnished, one excepted, in which the owner had left a harpsichord, probably to be sold--I touched the keys--I played some old Scottish tunes, which had delighted me when a child. Past associations revived with the music-blended with a sense of _unreality_, which at last became too powerful--I rushed out of the room to give vent to my feelings. I wandered, scarce knowing where, into an old wood, that stands at the back of the house--we called it the _Wilderness_. A well-known _form_ was missing, that used to meet me in this place--it was thine, Ben Moxam--the kindest, gentlest, politest, of human beings, yet was he nothing higher than a gardener in the family. Honest creature, thou didst never pass me in my childish rambles, without a soft speech, and a smile. I remember thy good-natured face. But there is one thing, for which I can never forgive thee, Ben Moxam--that thou didst join with an old maiden aunt of mine in a cruel plot, to lop away the hanging branches of the old fir trees.--I remember them sweeping to the ground. I have often left my childish sports to ramble in this place--its glooms and its solitude had a mysterious charm for my young mind, nurturing within me that love of quietness and lonely thinking, which have accompanied me to maturer years. In this _Wilderness_ I found myself after a ten years' absence. Its stately fir trees were yet standing, with all their luxuriant company of underwood--the squirrel was there, and the melancholy cooings of the wood-pigeon--all was as I had left it--my heart softened at the sight--it seemed, as though my character had been suffering a _change_, since I forsook these shades. My parents were both dead--I had no counsellor left, no experience of age to direct me, no sweet voice of reproof. The LORD had taken away my _friends_, and I knew not where he had laid them. I paced round the wilderness, seeking a comforter. I prayed, that I might be restored to that _state of innocence_, in which I had wandered in those shades. Methought, my request was heard--for it seemed as though the stains of manhood were passing from me, and I were relapsing into the purity and simplicity of childhood. I was content to have been moulded into a perfect child. I stood still, as in a trance. I dreamed that I was enjoying a personal intercourse with my heavenly Father--and, extravagantly, put off the shoes from my feet--for the place where I stood, I thought, was holy ground.