vibration of many nerves, that the whole delight of the
moment must depend.

*

You should have heard him speak of what he loved; of the
tent pitched beside the talking water; of the stars
overhead at night; of the blest return of morning, the peep
of day over the moors, the awaking birds among the birches;
how he abhorred the long winter shut in cities; and with
what delight, at the return of the spring, he once more
pitched his camp in the living out-of-doors.

*

It was one of the best things I got from my education as an
engineer: of which, however, as a way of life, I wish to
speak with sympathy. It takes a man into the open air; it
keeps him hanging about harbour-sides, which is the richest
form of idling; it carries him to wild islands; it gives
him a taste of the genial dangers of the sea; it supplies
him with dexterities to exercise; it makes demands upon his
ingenuity; it will go far to cure him of any taste (if ever
he had one) for the miserable life of cities. And when it
has done so, it carries him back and shuts him in an
office! From the roaring skerry and the wet thwart of the
tossing boat, he passes to the stool and desk; and with a
memory full of ships, and seas, and perilous headlands, and
the shining Pharos, he must apply his long-sighted eyes to
the pretty niceties of drawing, or measure his inaccurate