86 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. II. 



quite successful in the means I adopted for blinding them as to 

 my real projects. I have, of course, tossed away to the furthest 

 and most dusty corner of my room those grim and unwelcome 

 volumes, which I had too long been under the necessity of 

 brooding over, till I could have found in the dark the passages 

 referring to the various unwelcome topics. 



" Now that I am released, I shall turn to more congenial 

 topics, more especially to my beloved chemistry, in which I hope 

 and trust to make a figure ; and I have some leeway to make up 

 in literature, both ancient and modern, which I trust I shall be 

 able to compass. 



" I have heard with pleasure of your having taken with you 

 your classic works. They cannot fail often greatly to interest 

 at times, when weather and other contingencies prevent you en- 

 joying those delights which are more properly rural ; for in spite 

 of all poets, novelists, and romancers delight to sing of concerning 

 the pure, holy, delightful, and inspiriting beauties and pleasures 

 of the country ; and though most merchants, tied down from day 

 to day to their mercantile pursuits, love to ' babble about green 

 fields,' and to sigh for running brooks, and secluded glens, and ro- 

 mantic dells, and cloud- capt mountains, and clear pellucid lakes, 

 and frowning cliffs, and gloomy precipices, and all the other 

 romantic, picturesque, and exquisite pleasures of the country, 

 yet it is very possible, as I believe must be the confession of 

 every one who has often spent a week or two in the country, to 

 spend a most stale, flat, and unprofitable day, in spite of all the 

 elements of the sublime being within sight and easily accessible. 



" In truth, we are a most discontented race of shuttle -cocks, 

 who are unhappy with staying here or there, mountain or val- 

 ley, hill or dale, river or lake, town or country, but must be 

 driven about, now east, now west, now north, now south, in a 

 restless, wandering mood, which is ever thirsting after some un- 

 attainable good, some unrealizable project. The temple of Alad- 

 din was bereft of all pleasure in his eyes, although built of the 

 most gorgeous materials, gold, silver, and precious stones, ivory, 

 ebony, and scented woods (for the full inventory of which see 

 the 'Arabian Nights Entertainments') because it lacked the 

 roc's egg, which it was thought would be the crowning pinnacle 



