time being; and thither
they went--perhaps the best thing they could have done.

There, of course, they were somewhat more comfortable. A very cheap
country, a comfortable house rent free, and a lovely neighbourhood,
were a pleasant change after dear London lodgings: but it is a
question whether the change made Elsley a better man.

In the first place, he became a more idle man. The rich enervating
climate began to tell upon his mind, as it did upon Lucia's health. He
missed that perpetual spur of nervous excitement, change of society,
influx of ever-fresh objects, which makes London, after all, the best
place in the world for hard working; and which makes even a walk along
the streets an intellectual tonic. In the soft and luxurious West
Country Nature invited him to look at her, and dream; and dream he
did, more and more, day by day. He was tired, too--as who would not
be?--of the drudgery of writing for his daily bread; and relieved from
the importunities of publishers and printers'-devils, he sent up fewer
and fewer contributions to the magazines. He would keep his energies
for a great work; poetry was, after all, his forte: he would not
fritter himself away on prose and periodicals, but would win for
himself, etc. etc. If he made a mistake, it was at least a pardonable
one.

But Elsley became not only a more idle, but a more morose man. He
began to feel the evils of solitude. There was no one near with whom
he could hold rational converse, save an antiquarian parson or two;
and parsons were not to his taste. So, never measuring his wits
against those of his peers, and despising the few men whom he met
as inferior to himself, he grew more and more wrapt up in his own
thoughts and his own tastes. His own poems, even to the slightest turn
of expression, became more and more important to him. He grew more
jealous of criticism, more confident in his own little theories, about
this and that, more careless of the opinion of his fellowmen, and,
as a certain consequence, more unable to bear the little crosses and
contradictions of daily life; and as Lucia, having brought one and
another child safely into the world, settled down into motherhood, he
became less and less attentive to her, and more and more attentive to
that self which was fast becoming the centre of his universe.

True, there were excuses for him; for whom are there none? He was
poor and struggling; and it is much more difficult (as Becky Sharp, I
think,