My uncle's father-in-law was living in retirement at Scarborough when Hollins happened to fall vacant, so he became the tenant; but as the house was too large for him, my uncle divided it into two, and proposed to let the other half to my guardian and her sister.
They accepted, and the consequence was that we went to live in the country,--a most important change for me, as I soon acquired that passion for a country life which afterwards became a second nature, and which, though it may have been beneficial to my health, and perhaps in some degree to the quality of my work, has been in many ways an all but fatal hindrance to my success.
There are, or were, a great many old halls in Lancashire that belonged to the old families, which have now for the most part disappeared. They were of all sizes, some large enough to accommodate a wealthy modern country gentleman (though not arranged according to modern ideas), and others of quite small dimensions, though generally interesting for their architecture,--much more interesting, indeed, than the houses which have succeeded them. Hollins was between the two extremes, and when in its perfection, must have been rather a good specimen, with its mullioned windows, its numerous gables, and its formal front garden, with a straight avenue beyond. Unfortunately, my grandfather found it necessary to rebuild the front, and in doing so altered the character by introducing modern sash windows in the upper story; and though he retained mullioned windows on the ground floor, they were not strictly of the old type. My uncle also carried out other alterations, external and internal, which ended by depriving the house of much of its old character, and still more recent changes have gone farther in the same direction.
However, such as it was in my youth, the place inspired in me one of those intensely strong local attachments which take root in some natures, and in none, I really believe, more powerfully than in mine. Like all strong passions, these local attachments are extremely inconvenient, and it would be better for a man to be without them; but all reasoning on such subjects is superfluous.
Hollins is situated in the middle of a small but very pretty estate, almost entirely bounded by a rocky and picturesque trout-stream, and so pleasantly varied by hill and dale, wood, meadow, and pasture, that it appears much larger than it really is. In my boyhood it seemed an immensity. My cousins and I used to roam about it and play at Robin Hood and his merry men with great satisfaction to ourselves. We fished and bathed in one of the pools, where our ships delivered real broadsides of lead from their little cannons. These boyish recollections, and an early passion for landscape beauty, made Hollins seem a kind of earthly Paradise to me, and the idea of going to live there, instead of in a row of houses in a manufacturing town, filled me with the most delightful anticipations. My uncle put workmen in the house to prepare it, and on every opportunity I walked there to see what they were doing. Even at that age I knew much more about architecture than my elders, being perfectly familiar with the details of the old halls, and so I was constantly losing temper at what seemed to me the evident stupidity of the masons. There was an old master-mason, who did not like me and my criticisms, and he swore at me freely enough, in an explicit Lancashire manner. One day, simply by the eye, I perceived that he was four inches out in a measurement, and told him of it, when he swore frightfully. He then took his two-foot rule, and finding himself in the wrong, swore more frightfully than ever. This was my first experience in the thankless business of art-criticism, and it was the beginning of a false position, in which I often found myself in youth, from knowing more about some subjects than is usual with boys.