gave it. Yet the process is considered to be the making of
him.

Whether Somerset became permanently made under the action of
the inevitable lunge, or whether he lapsed into mere dabbling
with the artistic side of his profession only, it would be
premature to say; but at any rate it was his contrite return
to architecture as a calling that sent him on the sketching
excursion under notice. Feeling that something still was
wanting to round off his knowledge before he could take his
professional line with confidence, he was led to remember that
his own native Gothic was the one form of design that he had
totally neglected from the beginning, through its having
greeted him with wearisome iteration at the opening of his
career. Now it had again returned to silence; indeed--such is
the surprising instability of art 'principles' as they are
facetiously called--it was just as likely as not to sink into
the neglect and oblivion which had been its lot in Georgian
times. This accident of being out of vogue lent English
Gothic an additional charm to one of his proclivities; and
away he went to make it the business of a summer circuit in
the west.

The quiet time of evening, the secluded neighbourhood, the
unusually gorgeous liveries of the clouds packed in a pile
over that quarter of the heavens in which the sun had
disappeared, were such as to make a traveller loiter on his
walk. Coming to a stile, Somerset mounted himself on the top
bar, to imbibe the spirit of the scene and hour. The evening
was so still that every trifling sound could be heard for