He had the greatest delight in topography. "That is why," he used to
say, "I delight in a flat country. The idea of _space_ is what I want.
I like to see miles at a glance. I like to see clouds league-long
rolling up in great masses from the horizon—cloud perspective. I
rejoice in seeing the fields, hedgerow after hedgerow, farm after
farm, push into the blue distance. It makes me feel the unity and the
diversity of life; a city bewilders and confuses me, but a great
tract of placid country gives me a broad glow of satisfaction."

He went for a walking tour in the fens, and returned enchanted. "By
Ely," he said, "the line crosses a gigantic fen—Whittlesea mere in
old days—and on a clear day you can see at least fifteen miles
either way. As we crossed it a great skein of starlings rose out of
a little holt, and streamed north; the herons or quiet cattle stood
along the huge dykes. You could see the scattered figures of old
labourers in the fields, and then for miles and miles the squat
towers, at which you were making, staring over the flat, giving you
a thrill every time you sighted them, and right away west the low
hills that must have been the sandy downs that blocked the restless
plunging sea; they must have looked for centuries over rollers and
salt marsh and lagoon, felt the tread of strange herds and beasts
about them till they have become the quiet slopes of a sunny park
or the simple appendages of a remote hill farm."

But his greatest delight was in music. He knew a smattering of it
scientifically, enough to follow up subjects and to a certain extent
to recognize chords. There occurs in one of his letters to me the
following passage, which I venture to quote. He is speaking of the
delight of pure sound as apart from melody: