Feeling that something still was wanting to round off his knowledge before he could take his professional line with confidence, he was led to remember that his own native Gothic was the one form of design that he had totally neglected from the beginning, through its having greeted him with wearisome iteration at the opening of his career.

Now it had again returned to silence; indeed--such is the surprising instability of art 'principles' as they are facetiously called--it was just as likely as not to sink into the neglect and oblivion which had been its lot in Georgian times.
This accident of being out of vogue lent English Gothic an additional charm to one of his proclivities; and away he went to make it the business of a summer circuit in the west.
The quiet time of evening, the secluded neighbourhood, the unusually gorgeous liveries of the clouds packed in a pile over that quarter of the heavens in which the sun had disappeared, were such as to make a traveller loiter on his walk.

Coming to a stile, Somerset mounted himself on the top bar, to imbibe the spirit of the scene and hour.

The evening was so still that every trifling sound could be heard for miles.
There was the rattle of a returning waggon, mixed with the smacks of the waggoner's whip: the team must have been at least three miles off.

From far over the hill came the faint periodic yell of kennelled hounds; while from the nearest village resounded the voices of boys at play in the twilight.