CHARLES LAMB 239 



the elements, bespake their pristine state to have been gilt and 

 glittering ; the verdant quarters backwarder still ; and stretching 

 still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt of 

 the squirrel, and the day-long murmuring wood-pigeon, with that 

 antique image in the centre, god or goddess I wist not ; but 

 child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to 

 Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that fragmental 



mystery. — Essays of Elia {Blakesmoor i?t If shire). 



What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the 

 first time — the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street, 

 by unexpected avenues, into its (the Temple's) magnificent ample 

 squares, its classic green recesses ! What a cheerful, liberal look 

 hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks the 

 greater garden ; that goodly pile 



* Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight,' 



confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more fantastic- 

 ally shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown 

 Office-row (place of my kindly engendure), right opposite the 

 stately stream, which washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely 

 trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned from her 

 Twickenham Naiades ! a man would give something to have 

 been born in such places. 



What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where 

 the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and fall, how many 

 times ! to the astonishment of the young urchins, my contempor- 

 aries, who, not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, 

 were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic ! 

 What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with 

 their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which 

 they measured, and to take their revelations of its flight im- 

 mediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain 

 of light ! How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, 

 watched by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, 

 never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests 

 of sleep ! 



