activity. So the impulse would pass away, and he would relapse into his
former quiescence. But this partial isolation ministered to the growth of
a love of Nature which, although its roots were coeval with his being,
might not have so soon appeared above ground, but for this lack of human
companionship. Thus the boy became one of Nature's favourites, and enjoyed
more than a common share of her teaching.

"But he loved her most in her stranger moods. The gathering of a blue
cloud, on a sultry summer afternoon, he watched with intense hope, in
expectation of a thunder-storm; and a windy night, after harvest, when the
trees moaned and tossed their arms about, and the wind ran hither and
hither over the desolate fields of stubble, made the child's heart dance
within him, and sent him out careering through the deepening darkness. To
meet him then, you would not have known him for the sedate, actionless
boy, whom you had seen in the morning looking listlessly on while his
schoolfellows played. But of all his loves for the shows of Nature, none
was so strong as his love for water--common to childhood, with its mills
of rushes, its dams, its bridges, its aqueducts; only in Herbert, it was
more a quiet, delighted contemplation. Weakness prevented his joining his
companions in the river; but the sight of their motions in the mystery of
the water, as they floated half-idealized in the clear depth, or glided
along by graceful propulsion, gave him as much real enjoyment as they
received themselves. For it was water itself that delighted him, whether
in rest or motion; whether rippling over many stones, like the first
half-articulate sounds of a child's speech, mingled with a strange musical
tremble and cadence which the heart only, and not the ear, could detect;
or lying in deep still pools, from the bottom of which gleamed up bright
green stones, or yet brighter water-plants, cool in their little grotto,
with water for an atmosphere and a firmament, through which the sun-rays
came, washed of their burning heat, but undimmed of their splendour. He