Our home stood at the corner of a lane towards the eastern extremity of the town, commanding a view of the Squire’s Park, and a glimpse of the mill-pool and meadows in the valley beyond.  This lane led up to Barnard’s Green, a breezy space of high, uneven ground dedicated to fairs, cricket matches, and travelling circuses, whence the noisy music of brass bands, and the echoes of alternate laughter and applause, were wafted past our windows in the summer evenings.  We had a large garden at the back, and a stable up the lane; and though the house was but one story in height, it covered a considerable space of ground, and contained more rooms than we ever had occasion to use.  Thus it happened that since my mother’s death, which took place when I was a very little boy, many doors on the upper floor were kept locked, to the undue development of my natural inquisitiveness by day, and my mortal terror when sent to bed at night.  In one of these her portrait still hung above the mantelpiece, and her harp stood in its accustomed corner.  In another, which was once her bedroom, everything was left as in her lifetime, her clothes yet hanging in the wardrobe, her dressing-case standing upon the toilet, her favorite book upon the table beside the bed.  These things, told to me by the servants with much mystery, took a powerful hold upon my childish imagination.  I trembled as I passed the closed doors at dusk, and listened fearfully outside when daylight gave me courage to linger near them.  Something of my mother’s presence, I fancied, must yet dwell within—­something in her shape still wander from room to room in the dim moonlight, and echo back the sighing of the night winds.  Alas!  I could not remember her.  Now and then, as if recalled by a dream, some broken and shadowy images of a pale face and a slender hand floated vaguely through my mind; but faded even as I strove to realize them.  Sometimes, too, when I was falling off to sleep in my little bed, or making out pictures in the fire on a winter evening, strange fragments of old rhymes seemed to come back upon me, mingled with the tones of a soft voice and the haunting of a long-forgotten melody.  But these, after all, were yearnings more of the heart than the memory:—­

     “I felt a mother-want about the world. 
          And still went seeking.”

To return to my description of my early home:—­the two rooms on either side of the hall, facing the road, were appropriated by my father for his surgery and consulting-room; while the two corresponding rooms at the back were fitted up as our general reception-room, and my father’s bed-room.  In the former of these, and in the weedy old garden upon which it opened, were passed all the days of my boyhood.