190 A GARDEN KALENDAR 



more reverent love ; or I gaze on the marble effigy of 

 Bishop Christopher Wordsworth at Lincoln, and remember 

 the earnest words which were said to me by Bishop 

 (afterwards Archbishop) Magee, " I never left his presence 

 without feeling that he had done me good." 



Less vividly, but always with a strong emotion, our 

 sympathies and admirations are quickened when we enter 

 the abodes which were occupied long ago by men of 

 renown and honour. We remember with a new interest 

 the records of their achievements, the benefits which they 

 have bestowed as churchmen, statesmen, soldiers, sailors, 

 lawyers, philosophers, physicians, authors, and artists, 

 upon their country and their fellow-men. To illustrate 

 from my own experience, I recall my visits to the little 

 church and parsonage at Bemerton, Pope's villa at 

 Twickenham, the home of Horace Walpole at Strawberry 

 Hill, of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, of Lord Byron 

 at Newstead, and, on the other side of the Atlantic, of 

 Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Longfellow, Lowell, 

 Bryant, and Whittier. On all these happy occasions I have 

 experienced a return of first love, redintegratio amoris, a 

 "time of refreshing," a kindling of the fire that smouldered, 

 an awaking of the zeal which slept. The intense feelings 

 of pleasure and of pain, of terror and of mirth, of tender 

 pity and of righteous wrath, which first absorbed our 

 thoughts in day-time and our dreams at night ; the rever- 

 ence which was so solemn and sincere ; the aspirations 

 which were so high and so pure ; all the impressions 

 made upon us, real or romantic, false or true, brief or 

 steadfast, by the books of our boyhood and youth, are 

 in the mind and in the heart once more ; the fears we 

 felt, alone in the darkness, of ghosts and robbers after 

 perusal of Irving's "Tales of a Traveller," the tears we 

 shed for the faithful hound in the " Talisman," our breath- 

 less delight in " Ivanhoe," and in the musical rhythm of 

 " Marmion " and " The Lady of the Lake," our secret 

 intention when we read the " Corsair " to follow the 



