xistence of New Road and Camberwell Green in general, no less than the
condemnation of intelligent persons to a routine of clerk's work broken
only by a three weeks' holiday in the decline of the year. On less
lively, fanciful, and amiable persons than my old friend, the New Road
and the daily desk do verily exercise a degrading and much to be
regretted influence. But Mr. Harrison brought the freshness of pastoral
simplicity into the most faded corners of the Green, lightened with his
cheerful heart the most leaden hours of the office, and gathered during
his three weeks' holiday in the neighborhood, suppose, of Guildford,
Gravesend, Broadstairs, or Rustington, more vital recreation and
speculative philosophy than another man would have got on the grand
tour.

12. On the other hand, I, who had nothing to do all day but what I
liked, and could wander at will among all the best beauties of the
globe--nor that without sufficient power to see and to feel them, was
habitually a discontented person, and frequently a weary one; and the
reproachful thought which always rose in my mind when in that
unconquerable listlessness of surfeit from excitement I found myself
unable to win even a momentary pleasure from the fairest scene, was
always: "If but Mr. Harrison were here instead of me!"

13. Many and many a time I planned very seriously the beguiling of him
over the water. But there was always something to be done in a
hurry--something to be worked out--something to be seen, as I thought,
only in my own quiet way. I believe if I had but had the sense to take
my old friend with me, he would have shown me ever so much more than I
found out by myself. But it was not to be; and year after year I went to
grumble and mope at Venice, or Lago Maggiore; and Mr. Harrison to enjoy
himself from morning to night at Broadstairs or Box Hill. Let me not
speak with disdain of either. No blue languor of tideless wave is worth
the spray and sparkle of a South-Eastern English beach, and no one will
ever rightly enjoy the pines of the Wengern Alp who despises the boxes
of Box Hill.

Nay, I remember me of a little rapture of George Richmond himself on
those fair slopes of sunny sward, ending in a vision of Tobit and his
dog--no less--led up there by the helpful angel. (I have always
wondered, by the way, whether that blessed dog minded what the angel
said to him.)

14. But Mr. Harrison was independent of these mere ethereal visions, and
surround