after a
forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself with
myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity--for
it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have all his Time to
himself. It seemed to me that I had more time on my hands
than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I
was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no
end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious
bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. And here let
me caution persons grown old in active business, not
lightly, nor without weighing their own resources, to forego
their customary employment all at once, for there may be
danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know that my
resources are sufficient; and now that those first giddy
raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the
blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having all
holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung heavy upon
me I could walk it away; but I do not walk all day long, as
I used to do in those old transient holidays, thirty miles a
day, to make the most of them. If Time were troublesome, I
could read it away, but I do not read in that violent
measure, with which, having no Time my own but candlelight
Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight in bygone
winters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when the
fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure; I let it
come to me. I am like the man

"---- that's born, and has his years come to him,
In some green desert."

"The Genteel Style in Writing" is a delightful enforcement of the
"ordinary criticism" that "my Lord Shaftesbury, and Sir William
Temple, are models of the genteel style in writing," though Elia
prefers to differentiate them as "the lordly and the gentlemanly." The
essay is, for the most part, a plea, with illustrations, for a
consideration of Sir William Temple as an easy and engaging writer.
"Barbara S----" is a slight anecdote expanded into a sympathetic
little story of a child-actress who, instead of her half-guinea
salary, being once handed a guinea in error, virtuously took it back
and received the moiety.

"The Tombs in the Abbey" is an indignant protest--in the form of a
letter to Southey--against the closing of Westminster Abbey and St.
Paul's Cathedral, except during service times, to all but t