hem to spare a plank
at least out of the cheerful store-room, in whose hot window-seat I
used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plat before, and the hum
and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about
me--it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns; or a pannel of
the yellow room.

Why, every plank and pannel of that house for me had magic in it.
The tapestried bed-rooms--tapestry so much better than painting--not
adorning merely, but peopling the wainscots--at which childhood ever
and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as
quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a momentary eye-encounter
with those stern bright visages, staring reciprocally--all Ovid on the
walls, in colours vivider than his descriptions. Actaeon in mid sprout,
with the unappeasable prudery of Diana; and the still more provoking,
and almost culinary coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately
divesting of Marsyas.

Then, that haunted room--in which old Mrs. Battle died--whereinto I
have crept, but always in the day-time, with a passion of fear; and
a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold communication with the
past.--_How shall they build it up again?_

It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but that
traces of the splendour of past inmates were everywhere apparent.
Its furniture was still standing--even to the tarnished gilt leather
battledores, and crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery,
which told that children had once played there. But I was a lonely
child, and had the range at will of every apartment, knew every nook
and corner, wondered and worshipped everywhere.

The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of thought, as
it is the feeder of love, and silence, and admiration, So strange a
passion for the place possessed me in those years, that, though there
lay--I shame to say how few roods distant from the mansion--half hid
by trees, what I judged some romantic lake, such was the spell which
bound me to the house, and such my carefulness not to pass its strict
and proper precincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored for me; and
not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder devotion, I
found, to my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook had been the Lacus
Incognitus of my infancy. Variegated views, extensive prospects--and
those at no great distance from the house--I was told of such--what
were they to me, being out of the boundaries