I acknowledge myself a worldling, but I suppose that all is not lead or
iron within me, from my sense of scenes like this. In my wildest hour,
the sight of fields and gardens has been a kind of febrifuge to me--has
conveyed a feeling of tranquillity to my mind; as if it drank the
silence and the freshness, as the flowers drink the dew. I have often
thus experienced a sudden soothing, which checked the hot current of my
follies or frenzies, and made me think that there were better things
than the baubles of cabinets. But it did not last long.

I mention this evening, because it decided my future life; or at least
the boldest, and perhaps the best portion of it. We had an hour or two
of the little variations of placid amusement which belong to all
parsonages in romances, but which here were reality; easy conversation
on the events of the county; a little political talking with the vicar;
a few details of persons and fashions at the castle, to which the ladies
listened as Desdemona might have listened to Othello's history--for the
Castle was so seldom visited by them, that it had almost the air of a
Castle of Otranto, and they evidently thought that its frowning towers
and gilded halls belonged to another race, if not to another region of
existence; we had, too, some of the last new songs, (at least half a
century old, but which were not the less touching,) and a duet of
Geminiani, performed by the two elder proficients on a spinet which
might have been among the "chamber music" of the Virgin Queen; all
slight matters to speak of, and yet which contributed to the quietude of
a mind longing for rest--sights of innocence and sounds of peace, which,
like the poet's music--

"Might take the prison'd soul
And wrap it in Elysium."