in the weekly holiday and its long rambles through wood and field.
"The sweet security of streets" had no charm for him. He rejoiced in Nature
and her changing scenes and seasons. She was always to him comfort,
refreshment, balm. She never turned her face from him,
and through all his years he "leaned on her breast with loving trustfulness
as a little child."

But he had other teachers. He studied all classic literature.
"The |Aeschylean drama had no attraction for him; he reveled in
the rich and elegant strains of Virgil, and of the many toned lyre of Horace
and the silver lute of Catullus." From the full and inexhaustible fountain
of English letters he drank unceasingly. Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton,
Burns, Wordsworth, and, later, Tennyson were his immediate inspiration.

His college life at the University of Georgia was interrupted by sickness
and cramped by lack of means, and his literary plans were foiled by necessity.
Nevertheless, he left his Alma Mater with a mind stirred to its depths,
and with a large store of learning, and had already sounded with clear note
those chords which were afterwards so vocal in melody.

Dr. J. Dickson Bruns has left this graphic description of Timrod's
personal appearance, and of some prominent traits of his social character: --

"In stature," he says, "Timrod was far below the medium height.
He had always excelled in boyish sports, and, as he grew to manhood,
his unusual breadth of shoulder still seemed to indicate a physical vigor
which the slender wrists, thin, transparent hands, and habitually lax attitude
but too plainly contradicted.

"The square jaw was almost stern in its strongly pronounced lines,