402 PRÆTERITA-II

with the partly quaint, altogether pure, strong, and always genial, home-life of my father and mother; nor less with their anxious devotion to their son, and the hopes they entertained for him. Nor, I suppose, was my own status at Denmark Hill without something honourably notable to men of the world, in that, refusing to enter my father’s business, I yet stayed serenely under his authority, and, in what seemed to me my own proper line of work, did my utmost to please him. And when (I anticipate now the progress of the next four or five years)-when on any, to us, peculiarly festive occasion,-the return from a journey, publication of a new volume, anniversary of a birthday, or the like,-we ventured to ask our artist friends to rejoice with us, most of them came, I believe with real pleasure. The early six o’clock dinner allowed them usually a pleasant glance over the meadow and the Norwood Hills in the evening light; the table was just short enough to let the talk flow round without wandering into eddies, or lingering into confidences; there was no guest whom the others did not honour; there was neither effort, affectation, nor restraint in the talk. If the painters cared to say anything of pictures, they knew they would be understood; if they chose rather to talk of sherry, my father could, and would with delight, tell them more about it than any other person knew in either England or Spain; and when the candles came, and the good jests, over the nuts and olives, there was “frolic wine”¹ in the flask at every right hand, such as that never Prince Hal nor Jack Falstaff tasted cup of brighter or mightier.

173. I somewhat admire in myself, at this time, though I perceive it to have been greatly owing to want of imagination, the simplicity of affection with which I kept hold on my Cumberland moors, Calais sands, and French costumes and streets,-as contrasted with the peaks of the Sierra Nevada, the surges of Trafalgar, and the towers of Seville

¹ [Herrick, Hesperides (“Ode for Ben Jonson”).]

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