half-hours, just before sunset, when the mountains glowed with richest
colour; when through the rift of thinning clouds some vast peak named
like a torch, and the mist blew out like purple banners, and the
watercourses sparkled like ropes of brilliants hung on the scarred
rocks, and the air was fresh and fragrant with all the perfume of
health. Fog we seldom had, and when it came, it rarely lasted beyond
midday. And then there were the warm delights of winter evenings, when
the wood fire blazed upon the hearth, and the gale roared against the
windows.

I have already remarked that books read in the solitude of the country
always make a deeper impression on my mind than books read in the
uneasy leisure of towns. I found this doubly true when I came to live
in the country. I came to my books with a keener and healthier brain.
The great masters of literature resumed their sway over me; Scott,
Shakespeare, Cervantes, long-neglected, took powerful hold upon my
mind. It is not to dwellers in the town that great writers ever make
their full appeal. They are too occupied with the trivial dramas of
life among a crowd, too disturbed by the eddy and rush of the life
around them. But for the dweller in solitude these great writers erect
a theatre, which is the only theatre he knows. He is able to attend to
the drama presented to him, and to be absorbed by it. He discusses the
actors and their doings as though they were real personages. Effie
Deans and Varley, Ophelia and Don Quixote, were for us creatures whom
we knew. It was the same with later writers. Byron's poetry once more
appealed to me by its revolutionary note, Shelley was interpreted
afresh to me by these mountains which he would have loved. One
incident I recollect which may serve to illustrate this new hold which
imaginative literature took upon me. I opened one evening _Great
Expectations_, and began to read it aloud. The next morning, at five