LITERARY WORK IN DEVONSHIRE. 275 



It was not an attractive object to a romantic eye. It 

 is impossible to conceive anything much more dispiriting 

 than this brand-new little house, unpapered, undried, 

 standing in ghastly whiteness in the middle of a square 

 enclosure of raw " garden," that is to say of ploughed field, 

 laid out with gravel walks, beds without a flower or leaf, 

 and a " lawn " of fat red loam guiltless of one blade of 

 grass. Two great rough pollard elms, originally part of a 

 hedge which had run across the site of the lawn, were the 

 only objects that relieved the monotony of the inchoate 

 place, which spread out, vague and uncomely, " like the red 

 outline of beginning Adam." By taking the house in this 

 condition, however, it was a cheap purchase, and my father 

 felt that it would be a pleasure to discipline all this form- 

 lessness into beauty and fertility. He never repented of 

 his choice, nor ever expressed, through more than thirty 

 years, the wish that he had gone elsewhere. The Devon- 

 shire red loam is wonderfully stubborn, and for many 

 seasons the place retained the obloquy of its newness. 

 But at length the grass became velvety on the lawn, trees 

 grew up and hid the unmossed limestone walls in which 

 no vegetation can force a footing, and the little place grew 

 bowery and secluded. It was on September 23, 1857, that 

 the family settled in this house — named Sandhurst, by the 

 builder, in mere wantonness of nomenclature — and this 

 became their home. Philip Gosse's restless wanderings 

 were over. 



Before going down into Devonshire he had completed 

 two pieces of literary work, which, so far as his scientific 

 credit was concerned, he might very well have left undone. 

 They represent a mental condition of exhaustion and of 

 irritation. The first of these, a volume of collected essays 

 which had appeared in the magazine called Excelsior, was 

 published in the summer of 1857. The author gave it the 



