"I had it all in my mind,-its roads and railroads, its towns and parishes, its members of Parliament, and the different hunts which rode over it. I knew all the great lords and their castles, the squires and their parks, the rectors and their churches.... Throughout these stories there had been no name given to a fictitious site which does not represent to me a spot of which I know all the accessories, as though I had lived and wandered there."- An Autobiography
"There is a county in the West of England not so full of life, indeed, nor so widely spoken of as some of its manufacturing leviathan brethren in the north, but which is, nevertheless, very dear to those who know it well. Its green pastures, its waving wheat, its deep and shady and, - let us add - dirty lanes, its paths and stiles, its tawny colored, well-built rural churches, its avenues of beeches, and frequent Tudor mansions, its constant country hunt, its social graces, and the general air of clanship that pervades it, has made it to its own inhabitants a favored land of Goshen" - Dr Thorne
