He wrote to his mother (Sunday, March 28, 1847): "I finished--and sealed up--and addressed--my last bit of work, last night by ten o'clock--ready to send by to-day's post--so that my father should receive it with this.

I could not at all have done it had I stayed at home: for even with all the quiet here, I have had no more time than was necessary.

For exercise, I find the rowing very useful, though it makes me melancholy with thinking of 1838,--and the lake, when it is quite calm, is wonderfully sad and quiet:--no bright colours--no snowy peaks.

Black water--as still as death;--lonely, rocky islets--leafless woods,--or worse than leafless--the brown oak foliage hanging dead upon them; gray sky;--far-off, wild, dark, dismal moorlands; no sound except the rustling of the boat among the reeds.
"_One o'clock._--I have your kind note and my father's, and am very thankful that you like what I have written, for I did not at all know myself whether it were good or bad." In the early summer he went to Oxford, for a meeting of the British Association.

He said (June 27, 1847): "I am not able to write a full account of all I see, to amuse you, for I find it necessary to keep as quiet as I can, and I fear it would only annoy you to be told of all the invitations I refuse, and all the interesting matters in which I take no part.