My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

FRIENDS AND OCCUPATIONS 297and the aspects of nature among those islands, atwhich he seemed pleased. Of course, it avoids muchdetail, but the amount of detail it gives is correct, andit is just about as much as a rather superior sailorwould observe and remember.We then bade him good-bye, went downstairsand had tea with the ladies, and walked back toHaslemere station. I was much pleased to have metand had friendly converse with the most thoughtful,refined, broad-minded, and harmonious of our poetsof the nineteenth century.Finding my house at Godalming in an unsatisfactorysituation, with a view almost confined to thesmall garden, the south sun shut off by a house andby several oak trees, while exposed to north and eastwinds, and wishing for a generally milder climate, Ispent some weeks in exploring the country betweenGodalming and Portsmouth, and then westward toBournemouth and Poole. We were directed by somefriends to Parkstone as a very pretty and shelteredplace, and here we found a small house to be let,which suited us tolerably well, with the option ofpurchase at a moderate price. The place attractedus because we saw abundance of great bushes of theevergreen purple veronicas, which must have been adozen or twenty years old, and also large specimensof eucalyptus ; while we were told that there had beenno skating there for twenty years. We accordinglytook the house, and purchased it in the followingyear; and by adding later a new kitchen and bedroom,and enlarging the drawing-room, converted itfrom a cramped, though very pretty cottage, into aconvenient, though still small house. The garden onthe south side was in a hollow on the level of thebasement, while on the north it was from ten to