To Phillip Evans

My dear Phil,

Here I sit weary and jaded, every muscle of my body quivering thro’ pure fatigue. I have just returned from a day’s work sufficient to expunge any ordinary mortal from the catalogue of human existence. I’m completely fagged – these York hills are sufficient to wring the energy out of the body of a Hercules and to reduce his strength to that of childhood. On this day week I started from Leeds to set out and test the survey of one of the lines I levelled. Some serious differences exist between me and the West Junction levellers, and the matter has been referred to the decision of a third party;¹ he has already tried the point where the most important discrepancy exists and, Heaven be praised! he agrees almost to an hairsbreadth with your old messmate.² I made Leeds my quarters until Monday, when I started to my present locality.³ We had a slight sprinkle of snow on the Sunday night, and towards 3 o’clock on Monday it fell so heavily that I was compelled to ‘retire from the field’; from that time to the present each succeeding night has contributed its ‘fleecy store’; the sum total of the deposits up to the present forms a very beautiful counterpane about 15 inches in thickness. Charles Swain⁴ in one of his poetic vagaries has rung a stanza from his lyre in praise of

‘The snow, the snow, the silvery snow’–⁵

had he been with me this morning I fancy he would touch another string; it strikes me that he has little idea of the pleasure of tugging through it knee deep ‘from morn till frosty eve’. I was forced to step out of my warm bed at half past seven and immerse my physiognomy⁶ in a basin of water so cold that when I raised my head you might mistake my nasal promontory for a huge misshapen root of mangel warzel⁷ instead of a stout orthodox structure of skin and gristle! This ordeal ended, I sat down to a most comfortable breakfast, beside a fire which sparkled like the joy of boyhood, but what is comfort under such circumstances? Why it merely serves to render your subsequent misery more distressing. Breakfast over, I buttoned on my leggings and sallied forth warming my cheek with the last half inch of an expiring Havannah.⁸ The first object of interest I met was a thick wood thro’ which the line ran and through which I must set it out. I stood for a while gazing with a feeling distinct from admiration on the ‘Silvery snow’ which loaded the branches; there it clung in all its vestal purity – fit type of the constancy of woman, it required but a breeze to annihilate its embrace. It seemed a species of desecration to disturb it; but it was useless to hesitate – forward! was the word, and forward I went; every movement of course brought a most interesting shower about my ears. From my soul I wished Mr Swain in my situation, stooping and stretching his neck to get through the tangled oak and hazle, ever and anon greeted by the descent of his ‘bright beautiful’ commodity, soft and cool as the dew of Hermon⁹ and exciting a thousand pleasurable sensations as it thawed and trickled down his back! Byron also sings:

‘There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

There is a rapture on a lonely shore’.¹⁰

I wonder could his lordship form an idea of the delight which a surveyor extracts from the conjunction of a ‘pathless wood’ with a spirit level!¹¹

RI MS JT/2/13a/73-74

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