strange surprise how vividly remembered and how affectionately greeted!
We drove by the small old house at the left, with its double gable and
pretty grass garden, and trim yews and modern lilacs and laburnums,
backed by the grand timber of the park. It was the parsonage, and old
bachelor Doctor Crewe, the rector, in my nonage, still stood, in memory,
at the door, in his black shorts and gaiters, with his hands in his
pockets, and a puckered smile on his hard ruddy countenance, as I
approached. He smiled little on others I believe, but always kindly upon
me. This general liking for children and instinct of smiling on them is
one source of the delightful illusions which make the remembrance of
early days so like a dream of Paradise, and give us, at starting, such
false notions of our value.

There was a little fair-haired child playing on the ground before the
steps as I whirled by. The old rector had long passed away; the shorts,
gaiters, and smile--a phantom; and nature, who had gathered in the past,
was providing for the future.

The pretty mill-road, running up through Redman's Dell, dank and dark
with tall romantic trees, was left behind in another moment; and we were
now traversing the homely and antique street of the little town, with its
queer shops and solid steep-roofed residences. Up Church-street I
contrived a peep at the old gray tower where the chimes hung; and as we
turned the corner a glance at the 'Brandon Arms.' How very small and low
that palatial hostelry of my earlier recollections had grown! There were
new faces at the door. It was only two-and-twenty years ago, and I was
then but eleven years old. A retrospect of a score of years or so, at
three-and-thirty, is a much vaster affair than a much longer one at
fifty.