第17章

RESIDENCE AT DOWN FROM SEPTEMBER 14, 1842, TO THE PRESENT TIME, 1876.

After several fruitless searches in Surrey and elsewhere, we found this house and purchased it.I was pleased with the diversified appearance of vegetation proper to a chalk district, and so unlike what I had been accustomed to in the Midland counties; and still more pleased with the extreme quietness and rusticity of the place.It is not, however, quite so retired a place as a writer in a German periodical makes it, who says that my house can be approached only by a mule-track! Our fixing ourselves here has answered admirably in one way, which we did not anticipate, namely, by being very convenient for frequent visits from our children.

Few persons can have lived a more retired life than we have done.Besides short visits to the houses of relations, and occasionally to the seaside or elsewhere, we have gone nowhere.During the first part of our residence we went a little into society, and received a few friends here; but my health almost always suffered from the excitement, violent shivering and vomiting attacks being thus brought on.I have therefore been compelled for many years to give up all dinner-parties; and this has been somewhat of a deprivation to me, as such parties always put me into high spirits.From the same cause I have been able to invite here very few scientific acquaintances.

My chief enjoyment and sole employment throughout life has been scientific work; and the excitement from such work makes me for the time forget, or drives quite away, my daily discomfort.I have therefore nothing to record during the rest of my life, except the publication of my several books.Perhaps a few details how they arose may be worth giving.