Page:The Laboring Classes of England.djvu/25

 solitude of the place but the numerous little songsters that kept up a continual concert, as if to make it more enchanting to his imagination.

These visits to his summer retreat he speaks of as seasons of real pleasure; they were also attended with some advantages in point of health. For a number of years he had enjoyed but a delicate state of health, owing to constant confinement, the smells of the factories, &c.; but these Sunday excursions got him a better appetite for his victuals, and he became more healthy and strong.

He also derived considerable pleasure and improvement from the study of nature, in watching the habits of birds, bees, ants, butterflies, and any natural curiosity that came in his way; and when the evening began to close in around him, and compelled him to return to the habitations of men, he felt a reluctance to leave his quiet and solitary retreat.

On some occasions, when returning from his retreat in the woods on a Sunday evening, he has stood upon an eminence at a distance, and watched the gaily-attired inhabitants taking their evening walk in the fields and meadows around the town, and could not help contrasting their situation with his. They were happy in themselves, anxious to see and be seen, and deriving pleasure from mutual friendship and intercourse; he, with the seeds of misery implanted in his frame, surrounded by circumstances calculated to make him truly unhappy, shrinking from the face of men to a lovely wood, to brood over his sorrows in secret and in silence. They were enjoying the fruits of their industry; but the reward for his, was misery, wretchedness and disease.

So great was the love of books in this youth, that he seized upon all within the circle of his acquaintance, no matter upon what subject, with avidity. On one occasion he was tempted to have recourse to a little of what