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During my childhood and youth the charm seemed to reside in the thing itself, to have its habitation in the old walls and the honeysuckle of my garden; I thought it lay along the sandy shores of the Island and upon the grassy meadows and rocky moorland about me.

Later on, in pouring out my admiration every where, as I did, I drew too heavily upon the well-spring--I exhausted it at the source.
And, alas! I find the land of my childhood, to which I will no doubt return to die, changed and shrunken, and only for a moment, in certain spots, am I able to recreate the illusions I have lost;--there I am for the most part weighed down by the crushing memories of bygone days.

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