midnight
Even the Surrey Hills , of whose loveliness I have heard so much , are to me a distant fairy-land , whose gleaming ridges I am worthy only to behold afar . With the exception of two journeys , never to be forgotten , my knowledge of England is bounded by the horizon which encircles Richmond Hill . My earliest recollections are of a suburban street ; of its jumble of little shops and little terraces , each exhibiting some fresh variety of capricious ugliness ; the little scraps of garden before the doors , with their dusty , stunted lilacs and balsam poplars , were my only forests ; my only wild animals , the dingy , merry sparrows , who quarrelled fearlessly on my window-sill , ignorant of trap or gun . From my earliest childhood , through long nights of sleepless pain , as the midnight brightened into dawn , and the glaring lamps grew pale , I used to listen , with pleasant awe , to the ceaseless roll of the market-waggons , bringing up to the great city the treasures of the gay green country , the land of fruits and flowers , for which I have yearned all my life in vain . They seemed to my boyish fancy mysterious messengers from another world : the silent , lonely night , in which they were the only moving things , added to the wonder . I used to get out of bed to gaze at them , and envy the coarse men and sluttish women who attended them , their labour among verdant plants and rich brown mould , on breezy slopes , under God 's own clear sky . I fancied that they learnt what I knew I should have learnt there ; I knew not then that `` the eye only sees that which it brings with it the power of seeing . ''