animal painting

uniform and too still existence; of an existence whose very privileges
of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. What
good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the
storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to have been taught by
rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now
repined! Yes, just as much good as it would do a man tired of
sitting still in a 'too easy chair' to take a long walk: and just as
natural was the wish to stir, under my circumstances, as it would be
I lingered at the gates; I lingered on the lawn; I paced
backwards and forwards on the pavement; the shutters of the glass door
were closed; I could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and
spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house- from the grey hollow filled
with rayless cells, as it appeared to me- to that sky expanded
before me,- a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon
ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left
the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below