town come back (far in the west) with its churches and trees and
faces! To this late hour of my life, and even to the end of it did
Coleridge trace impressions left by the painful recollection of these
friendless holidays. The long warm days of summer never return but
they bring with them a gloom from the haunting memory of those 'whole
day's leave', when by some strange arrangement, we were turned out for
the live-long day, upon our own hands whether we had friends to go to
or none. I remember those bathing excursions to the New River, which
Lamb recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he can--for he
was a home-seeking lad, and did not care for such water-parties. How
we would sally forth into the fields; and strip under the first warmth
of the sun; and wanton like young dace in the streams; getting
appetites for the noon; which those of us that were penny less (our
scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not the means of
allaying--while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes were at feed
about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings; the very beauty
of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty
setting a keener edge upon them! How faint and languid, finally, we
would return toward nightfall to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing,
half-reluctant, that the hours of uneasy liberty had expired.

"It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about the streets
objectless; shivering at cold windows of print-shops, to extract a
little amusement; or haply, as a last resort, in the hope of a little
novelty, to pay a fifty times repeated visit (where our individual
faces would be as well known to the warden as those of his own
charges) to the lions in the Tower, to whose levee, by courtesy
immemorial, we had a prescriptive right of admission."

In short, nearly the whole of this essay of Elia's is a transcript of