The soil was there, but how much do we not owe to tillage.

Read what Egremont on one occasion read to these men: '"He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margins with interpretations and load the memory with doubtfulness: but he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with or prepared for the well-enchanting skill of music and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you--with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner."' What were _that_ to you, save for the glow of memory fed with incense of the poets ?--save for innumerable dear associations, only possible to the instructed, which make the finer part of your intellectual being?
Walter was attempting too much, and soon became painfully conscious of it.
He came to the dramatists, and human interest thenceforth helped him.
He could read well, and a scene from those giants of the prime had efficiency even with Bower.

Hope revived in the lecturer.
To-night he was less happy than usual, for what reason he could not himself understand.

His thoughts wandered, sometimes to Eastbourne, sometimes to Ullswater; yet he was speaking of Shakespeare.

Bower was more owl-eyed than usual; the five doubtful hearers obviously felt the time long.