mild. After breakfast I went down through the wood to the sea, not

a mile distant, and a very fine bit of coast, with rich colour in the rocks and water, and Dunstanborough Castle on its crag as the great feature. The place reminds me a little of Penrhôs. When I returned from driving with Lady Grey to Alnwick, the Belhavens arrived, and before dinner the Bishop of London and Mrs. Tait, and the Durhams."

"_Sept. 4._--My dearest mother will like to know how intensely I have enjoyed being at Howick. The Greys make their house so pleasant and the life here is so easy. Then Lady Belhaven[289] is always celebrated as a talker, and it has been delightful to sit on the outskirts of interesting conversations between my host and Sir George Grey or the Bishop.

"On Saturday afternoon I drove with the Durhams and Lady Belhaven to Dunstanborough. The sea was of a deep Mediterranean blue under the great cliffs and overhanging towers of the ruined castle. Lord Durham[290] and I walked back three miles along the cliffs--a high field-walk like the old one at Eastbourne.

"On Sunday the Bishop preached at the little church in the grounds. It has been rebuilt and decorated with carvings by Lady Grey and her sisters-in-law. In the chancel is the fine tomb of the Prime Minister Lord Grey. I went with Durham afterwards all over the gardens, which are charming, with resplendent borders of old-fashioned flowers; and after afternoon church, we all went down through the dene to the sea, where there is a bathing-house, with a delightful room fitted up with sofas, books, &c., just above the waves. All the French herring-fleet was out, such a pretty sight. The Bishop read prayers in the evening to the great household of forty-eight persons. He is a very pleasant, amiable Bishop.

"I enjoyed seeing so much of Durham; no one could help very much liking one who is very stiff with people in general, and most exceedingly nice to oneself. But Lady Durham[291] is always charming, so perfectly naïve, natural, and beautiful. She is devoted to her husband and he to her. Some one spoke of people in general not loving all their children. She said: 'Then that is because they do not love their husbands. Some women think no more of marriage than of dancing a quadrille; but when women love their husbands, they love all their children equally. Every woman must love her first child: the degree in which they love the others depends upon the degree in which they love their husbands.'

"Sitting by her at dinner, I asked if she had ever read 'Les Misérables'? 'No. When I was confirmed, the clergyman who was teaching me saw a French novel on the table, and said, "My dear child, you don't read these things, do you?" I said "No," which was quite true, for it belonged to my French governess, and he then said, "Well, I wish you never would. Don't make any actual promise, for fear you should not keep it, but don't do it unless you are obliged;" and I never have.'

"I spoke to her of the inconsistency involved by the confirmation ceremony, by which young ladies renounced the pomps and vanities of the world, being generally the immediate predecessor of their formal entrance upon them.

"'Yes; I never thought of that. But certainly my pomps and vanities were of very short duration. I went to three balls, two tea-parties, and one dinner, and that was all I ever saw of the world; for then I was married. One year I was in the school-room in subjection to every one, ordered about here and there, and the next I was free and my own mistress and married.'

"'And did not you find it rather formidable?' I said. 'Formidable to be my own mistress! oh no. One thing I found rather formidable certainly. It was when a great deputation came to Lambton to congratulate George upon his marriage, and I had to sit at the end of the table with a great round of beef before me. I wanted them not to think I was young and inexperienced. I wanted to appear thirty at least; so I _would_ carve: and then only think of their saying afterwards in the newspaper paragraphs, "We are glad to learn that the youthful Countess is not only amiable but intelligent." I was glad that they should think I was amiable, but when they said I was intelligent, I was perfectly furious, as if George's wife could possibly have been anything else.

"'I was brought up a Tory, but as long as I can remember I have felt myself a Radical. I cannot bear to think of the division between the classes, and there is so much good in a working-man. I love working-men: they are my friends: they are so much better than we are.

"'When my little George of four years old--such a little duck he is!--was with me at Weymouth, I told him he might take off his shoes and stockings and paddle in the water, and he went in up to his chest; and then the little monster said, "Now, mama, if you want to get me again, you may come in and fetch me, for I shan't come out." I was in despair, when a working-man passed by and said, "Do you want that little boy, ma'am?" and I said "Yes," and he tucked up his trousers and went in and fetched George out for me; but if the _man's_ little boy had been in the water, I am afraid I should not have offered to fetch him out for him.

"'And when I was going to church at Mr. Cumming's in Covent Garden (I daresay you think I'm very wrong for going there, but I can't help that), it began to pour with rain, and a cabman on a stand close by called out, "Don't you want a cab, ma'am?" I said, "Yes, very much, but I've got no money." And the cabman said, "Oh, never mind, jump in; you'll only spoil your clothes in the rain, and I'll take you for nothing." When we got to the church door, I said, "If you will come to my house you shall be paid," but he would not hear of it, and I have liked cabmen ever since. Oh, there is so much good in the working-men; they are so much better than we are.'"

"_Winton Castle, N.B., Sept. 5, 1865._--My sweetest mother will like to think of me here with the dear old Lady Ruthven.[292] I left Howick at mid-day yesterday, with the Bishop and Mrs. Tait and their son Crauford, an Eton school-boy. It had been a very pleasant visit to the last, and I shall hope to repeat it another year, and also to go to the Durhams. We had an agreeable journey along the cliffs. I had become quite intimate with the Taits in the three days I was with them, and liked the Bishop very much better than Mrs. Tait, though I am sure she is a very good and useful woman.[293] At Tranent Lady Ruthven's carriage was waiting for me. I found her in a sadly nervous state, dreadfully deaf, and constantly talking, the burden of her refrain being--

'Mummitie mum, mummitie mum, Mummitie, mummitie, mummitie mum.'

But in the evening she grew much better, and was like other people, only that she would constantly walk in and out of the dark ante-chambers playing on a concertina, which, as she wore a tiara of pearls and turquoises, had a very odd effect in the half light; and then at eleven o'clock at night she would put on her bonnet and cloak and go off for a walk by herself in the woods. Charming Miss Minnie Fletcher of Saltoun is here. She told me that--

"Sir David Brewster and his daughter went to stay with the Stirlings of Kippenross. In the night Miss Brewster was amazed by being awakened by her father coming into her room and saying, 'My dear, don't be alarmed, but I really cannot stay in my room. It may be very foolish and nervous, but there are such odd noises, such extraordinary groanings and moanings, that I positively cannot bear it any longer, and you must let me stay here. Don't disturb yourself; I shall easily sleep on the sofa.'

"Miss Brewster thought her father very silly, but there he stayed till morning, when he slipped away to his own room to dress, so as not to be found when the servant came to call his daughter. When the maid came she said, 'Pray, ma'am, how long are you going to stay in this house?' Miss Brewster was surprised, and said she did not know. 'Because, ma'am, if you are going to stay, I am sorry to say I must leave you. I like you very much, ma'am, and I shall be sorry to go, but I would do anything rather than again go through all I suffered last night; such awful groanings and moanings and such fearful noises I can never endure again.' Miss Brewster was very much annoyed and laughed at the maid, who nevertheless continued firm in her decision.

"In the afternoon Miss Brewster had a headache, and at length it became so bad that she was obliged to leave the dinner-table and go up to her room. At the head of the stairs she saw a woman--a large woman in a chintz gown, leaning against the banisters. She took her for the housekeeper, and said, 'I am going to my room: will you be so kind as to send my maid to me?' The woman did not answer, but bowed her head three times and then pointed to a door in the passage and went downstairs. Miss Brewster went to her room, and after waiting an hour in vain for her maid, she undressed and went to bed. When the maid came up, she asked why she had not come before, and said she had sent the housekeeper for her. 'How very odd,' said the maid, 'because I have been sitting with the housekeeper the whole time.' Miss Brewster then described the person she had seen, upon which the maid gave a shriek and said, 'Oh, then you have seen the ghost.' The maid was in such a state of terror, that when Mrs. Stirling came up to inquire after her headache, Miss Brewster asked her about the woman she had seen, when, to her surprise, Mrs. Stirling looked quite agonised, and said, 'Oh, then there is more misery in store for me. You do not know what that ghost has been to me all through my married life.' She then made Miss Brewster promise not to tell the persons who slept in the room pointed at, that theirs was the room. It was a Major and Mrs. Wedderburn who slept there. Mrs. Stirling and Miss Brewster then both wrote out accounts of what had happened and signed and sealed them. Before the year was out, they heard that the Wedderburns were both killed in the Indian Mutiny."

"_Winton Castle, Sept. 8._--My visit here has been very pleasant indeed. The Speaker and Lady Charlotte Denison came on Tuesday afternoon with the Belhavens. He is a fine-looking elderly man, with a wonderful fund of agreeable small-talk. Lady Charlotte[294] is very refined, quite unaffected, and very pretty still: they are both most kind to me. Miss Fletcher has been here all the time to help Lady Ruthven, for whom it is well that she has such a kind, pleasant greatniece only a mile off, to come and help her to amuse all her guests, as she has had fifty-six parties of people _staying_ in the house in the last year. We saw a large party of the great-great nephews and nieces of Lady Ruthven and Lady Belhaven on Wednesday, when we went to spend the afternoon at Lord Elcho's. It is a fine place, Amisfield--a huge red stone house in a large park close to the town of Haddington, where there is a beautiful old cathedral, but in ruins, like all the best Scotch churches. Lady Elcho[295] has the stately refinement of a beautiful Greek statue. Her children are legion, the two eldest boys very handsome and pleasant. We went over the house, with old tapestry, &c., to be seen, and the gardens with fine cedars, and then all Lord Wemyss's twenty-four race horses were brought out in turn to be exercised round the courtyard and admired: after which we had Scotch tea--scones, cakes, apricot-jam, &c.

"I have made rather friends with John Gordon,[296] a younger brother of Lord Aberdeen, who has been staying here. He is a second Charlie Wood in character, though only eighteen, and I have seldom seen any one I liked as well on short acquaintance. His family are all supposed to be dreadfully shy, but he seems to be an exception.

"Yesterday Lady Belhaven and Lady Ruthven went to Edinburgh, and I stayed with Miss Fletcher, and walked with her in the afternoon to Saltoun, where we had tea with Lady Charlotte and saw the curiosities. Lady Charlotte Fletcher[297] said:--

"'The French royal family were often here at Saltoun when they were at Holyrood--Charles X. and the Duchesse d'Angoulême, and the Duchesse de Berri and her daughter, the Duc and Duchesse de Guise and the Duc de Polignac.... The Duchesse d'Angoulême and the Duc de Polignac used to go down to the bridge in the glen and stay there for hours: they said it reminded them so much of France, the trees and the water. The Duc de Polignac said our picture of the leave-taking of Louis XVI. and his family contained figures more like than any he had seen elsewhere. We turned it to the wall and locked the door when they came, for fear the Duchesse d'Angoulême should see it, but the little Mademoiselle de Berri was playing hide-and-seek through the rooms, and she got in by the outer door, and it was the first thing she observed, and she insisted on seeing it.... She did me a little drawing, and left it behind her.

"'The family were very fond of coming here, because my father, Lord Wemyss, had been kind to them when they were here during the first Revolution. On the Duchesse de Berri's birthday, she was asked what she would like to do in honour of it, and she chose a day at Saltoun. It was very inconvenient their all coming with the children at a few hours' notice, such a large party, but she wrote a pretty note, saying what a pleasure it would be to see her old friends again, and another afterwards, saying what a delight it had been, so that we were quite compensated.'

"On Sunday, when it was church-time, Lady Ruthven said, 'We'll just gang awa to the kirk and see what sort of a discoorse the minister makes; and if he behaves himself, well--we'll ask him up to dinner!' She sat in kirk, with her two dogs beside her, in a kind of chair of state just under the pulpit, where she might have been mistaken for the clerk. She is as demonstrative in church as elsewhere, and once when Miss Fletcher came unexpectedly into the gallery after she had been some time without seeing her, she called out, 'Eh, there ye are, Minnie, my darling,' before the whole congregation, and began kissing her hands to her. When a child screamed in kirk, and its mother was taking it out, the minister interrupted his discourse with, 'Na, bide a wee: I'm no that fashed wi' the bairn.'--'Na, na,' said the mother, 'I'll no bide: it's the bairn that's fashed wi' ye.' Talking afterwards of the change of feeling with which church-services were usually regarded now-a-days, Lady Charlotte Fletcher said:--

"'Old Lady Hereford, my aunt, was quite one of the old school. She had a large glass pew in church, and the service was never allowed to begin till she had arrived, settled herself, and opened the windows of her pew. If she did not like the discourse, she slammed down her windows. After the service was over, her steward used to stand by the pew door to receive her orders as to which of the congregation were to be invited to dine in her hall that day.'

"While the party were talking of the change of manners, Lord Belhaven said:--

"'I just remember the old drinking days:[298] they were just dying out when I entered the army. Scarcely any gentlemen used to drink less than two bottles of claret after dinner. They used to chew tobacco, which was handed round, and drink their wine through it, wine and tobacco-juice at the same time. A spittoon was placed between every two gentlemen. It was universal to chew tobacco in country-houses: they chewed it till they went in to dinner, and they began again directly the ladies left the room, when tobacco and spittoons were handed round.

"'There were usually the bottles called "Jeroboams" on the table, which held six bottles of port. The old Duke of Cleveland[299] always had his wine-glasses made without a foot, so that they would not stand, and you were obliged to drink off the whole glass when you dined with him.

"'I remember once dining at a house from which I was going away the next morning. I got to bed myself at twelve. When I came down to go off at eight, I asked when the other gentlemen had left the diningroom. "Oh," said the servant, "they are there still." I went in, and there, sure enough, they all were. When they saw me, they made a great shout, and said, "Come, now, you must drink off a bumper," and filled a tumbler with what they thought was spirits, but to my great relief I saw it was water. So I said, "Very well, gentlemen, I shall be glad to drink to your health, and of course you will drink to mine,"--so I drank the water, and they drank the spirits.'"

"_Castlecraig, Noblehouse, Sept. 9._--I came out this morning by the railway to Broomlee, a pretty line, leading into wild moorland, and at the station a dogcart met me, and brought me six miles farther, quite into the heart of the Pentlands. The ascent to this house is beautiful, through woods of magnificent alpine-looking firs. Addie Hay[300] was waiting for me. You would scarcely believe him to be as ill as he is, and he is most cheerful and pleasant, making no difficulties about anything. He is often here with my present host, Sir William Carmichael."

"_Winton Castle, Sept. 10._--Yesterday I saw the beautiful grounds of Castlecraig--green glades in the hills with splendid pines, junipers, &c., and part of the garden consecrated as a burial-ground, with mossgrown sculptured tombs of the family ancestors on the green lawn.

"At Eskbank Lady Ruthven met me, and I came on with her to Newbattle. It is an old house, once an abbey, lying low in a large wooded park on the banks of the Esk--a fine hall and staircase hung with old portraits, and a beautiful library with long windows, carved ceiling, old books, illuminated missals, and stands of Australian plants. Lady Lothian is very young and pretty,[301] Lord Lothian a hopeless invalid from paralysis. She showed me the picture gallery and then we went to the garden--most lovely, close to the rushing Esk, and of mediæval aspect in its splendid flowers backed by yew hedges and its stone sundials. After seeing Lady Lothian's room and pictures, we had tea in the garden. The long drive back to Winton was trying, as, with the thermometer at 70°, Lady Ruthven would have a large bottle of boiling water at the bottom of the close carriage.

"Lady Ruthven is most kind, but oh! the life with her is so odd. One day a gentleman coming down in the morning looked greatly agitated, which was discovered to be owing to his having looked out of his window in the middle of the night, and believing that he had seen a ghost flitting up and down the terrace in a most ghastly clinging white dress. It was the lady of the castle in her white dressing-gown and night-gown!"

"_Wishaw, Sept. 14._--I came here (to the Belhavens) after a two days' visit to Mrs. Stirling of Glenbervie, whence I saw Falkirk Tryste--the great cattle fair of Scotland. It was a curious sight, an immense plain covered with cattle of every description, especially picturesque little Highland beasts attended by drovers in kilts and plumes. When I saw the troops of horses kicking and prancing, I said how like it all was to Rosa Bonheur's 'Horse Fair,' and then heard she had been there to study for her picture.

"We dined yesterday at Dalzel, Lady Emily Hamilton's,[302] a beautiful old Scotch house, well restored by Billings. To-day is tremendously hot, but though I am exhausted by the sun, I am much more so by all the various hungers I have gone through, as we had breakfast at half-past ten and luncheon at half-past five, and in the interval went to Bothwell--Lord Home's,--beautiful shaven lawns above a deep wooded ravine of the Clyde, and on the edge of the slope a fine old red sandstone castle."

"_Lagaray, Gareloch, Sept. 17._--How I longed for my mother on Friday in the drive from Helensburgh along a terrace on the edge of the Gareloch, shaded by beautiful trees, and with exquisite views of distant grey mountains and white-sailed boats coming down the loch! I was most warmly welcomed by Robert Shaw Stewart[303] and his wife.... Yesterday we went an immense excursion of forty-five miles, seeing the three lakes--Lomond, Long, and Gareloch."

"_Carstairs House, Lanarkshire, Sept. 18._--Nothing could exceed the kindness of the Shaw Stewarts, and I was very sorry to leave them. The Gareloch is quite lovely, such fine blue mountains closing the lake, with its margin of orange-coloured seaweeds.... The Monteith family were at luncheon when I arrived at this large luxurious house--the guests including two Italians, one a handsome specimen of the Guardia Nobile--Count Bolognetti Cenci, a nephew by many greats of the famous Beatrice. After luncheon we were sent to the Falls of the Clyde--Cora Linn--a grand mass of water foaming and dashing, which the Italians called 'carina'!"

Before returning home, I went again to Chesters in Northumberland, to meet Dr. Bruce, the famous authority on "The Roman Wall" of Northumberland, on which he has written a large volume. It was curious to find how a person who had allowed his mind to dwell exclusively on one hobby could see no importance in anything else. He said, "Rome was now chiefly interesting as illustrating the Roman Wall in Northumberland, and as for Pompeii, it was not to be compared to the English station of Housesteads."

At the end of September I returned home, and had a quiet month with the dear mother, who was now quite well. I insert a fragment of a letter from a niece who had been with her in my absence, as giving a picture of her peaceful, happy state at this time:--

"Auntie and I have spent our evenings in reading old letters and journals, which have made the past seem nearer than the present. Hers is such a sweet peaceful evening of life. There have been many storms and sorrows, but her faith has stood firm, and she is now calmly waiting her summons home. Oh! I pray that she may be spared to us yet awhile, now so doubly dear to us, the one link left with the loved and lost."

We left Holmhurst at the beginning of November, and went to Italy by the Mont Cenis, with Emma Simpkinson, the gentle youngest sister of my Harrow tutor, as our companion. Fourteen horses dragged us over the mountain through the snow in a bright moonlight night, during the greater part of which I crouched upon the floor of the carriage, so as to keep my mother's feet warm inside my waistcoat, so great was my terror of her having any injury from the cold.

MY MOTHER _to_ MISS LEYCESTER.

"_Spezia, Nov. 11, 1865._--The day was most lovely on which we left Genoa, and so was the drive along the coast, reminding us of Mentone in its beauty--the hills covered with olive-woods and orange-groves, the mountains and rocky bays washed by the bluest of blue waves. We dined at Ruta, a very pretty place in the mountain, and slept at Chiavari. Saturday was no less beautiful, the _tramontana_ keen when we met it, like a March day in England, but the sun so burning, it quite acted as a restorative as we wound up the Pass of Bracco after Sestri--lovely Sestri. We had the carriage open, and so could enjoy the views around and beneath us, though the precipices were tremendous. However, the road was good, and occasionally in some of the worst places there was a bit of wall to break the line at the edge. Nothing could be more grand than the views of the billowy mountains with the Mediterranean below. At Borghetto was our halting-place, and then we had a rapid descent all the way here, where we arrived at half-past six."

"_Pisa, Nov. 14._--To continue my history. Sunday was again a splendid day, and the Carrara mountains most lovely, especially at sunset. On Monday we drove to Porto Venere, and spent the morning in drawing at the ruined marble church. We dined, and at half-past five set out, reaching Pisa at half-past seven. And here was a merciful preservation given to me, where, to use the words of my favourite travelling Psalm (xci.), though my feet 'were moved,' the angels had surely 'charge over me.' Augustus had just helped me down from the train and turned to take the bags out of the carriage. When he _re_-turned to look after me, I lay flat on the ground in the deep cutting of the side railway, into which, the platform being narrow, unfinished, and badly lighted, I had fallen in the dark. I believe both Augustus and Lea thought I was dead at first, so frightful was the fall, yet, after a little, I was able to walk to the carriage, though of course much shaken. Three falls have I had this year--in the waves of the Atlantic, in Westminster Abbey, and at Pisa--and yet, thanks be to God, no bones have been broken."

At Pisa we stayed at the excellent Albergo di Londra, which was kept by Flora Limosin, the youngest daughter of Victoire[305] and foster-sister of Esmeralda. Victoire herself was living close by, in her own little house, filled with relics of the past. I had not seen her since Italima's death, and she had many questions to ask me, besides having much to tell of the extraordinary intercourse she had immediately after our family misfortunes with Madame de Trafford--the facts of which she thus dictated to me:--

Félix and Victoire followed Italima from Geneva to Paris. Victoire says--"We rejoined Madame Hare at the house of Madame de Trafford. I went with her and Mademoiselle to the station in the evening. Madame Hare did all she could to console me. It was arranged that Constance should accompany them, because she was Miss Paul's maid. I had no presentiment then that I should never see Madame Hare again. After they were gone, we remained at the house of Balze, our son-in-law, at the end of the Faubourg S. Germain, but every day I went, by her desire, to see Madame de Trafford, at the other end of the Champs Elysées. She was all kindness to me. She did all she could to console me. When she had letters from Madame Hare, she read them to me: when I had them, I read them to Madame de Trafford. Matters went from bad to worse. One day Madame de Trafford had a letter which destroyed all hope. It was three days before she ventured to read it to me. I have still the impression of the hour in which she told me what was in it. She made me sit by her in an armchair, and she said, 'Il ne faut pas vous illusionner, Victoire: Madame Hare ne reviendra _jamais_; elle est absolument ruinée.' I remained for several hours unconscious: I knew there was no hope then. I was only sensible that Madame de Trafford gave me some strong essence, which restored me in a certain degree. Then she did all she could to console me. It was the most wonderful heart-goodness possible. She took me back that day to my son-in-law's house. I was thinking how I could break it to Félix: I did not venture to tell him for a long time. At last he saw it for himself; he said, 'Il y'a quelque chose de pire à apprendre, ou vous me cachez quelque chose, Victoire,' and then I told him. The next day Madame de Trafford said that she could not endure our sufferings. 'Après trente ans de service, après tant de dévouement, elle ne pouvait pas souffrir que nous irions à la mendicité. Vous n'avez rien,' she said, 'je le sais plus que vous.' I did not like her saying this. 'Yes, we have something,' I said, 'we are not so badly off as that.'--'Tais-toi, Victoire, vous n'avez rien,' she repeated, and she was right, it was her second-sight which told her. She bade me seek in the environs of Paris for a small house, any one I liked, in any situation, and she would buy it for me. If there was a large house near it, so much the better--that she would buy for herself. She said she knew I could not live there upon nothing, but that she should give me an annuity, and that Félix 'à cause de son rhumatisme,' must have a little carriage. I was quite overwhelmed. 'Mais, Madame, nous ne méritons pas cela,' I said. 'Oui, Victoire, je sais que vous le méritez bien, et _je le veux_.' I said it was impossible I could accept such favours at her hands. She only repeated with her peculiar manner and intonation--'_je le veux_.' The next day we both went to her. Her table was already covered with the notices of all the houses to let in the neighbourhood of Paris. 'Nous allons visiter tout cela,' she said, 'nous allons choisir.' Both Félix and I said it was impossible we could accept such kindness, when we could do nothing for her in return. 'Est que je veux _acheter_ votre amitié?' she said. She repeatedly said that she wished nothing but to come and see us sometimes, and that perhaps she should come every day. Thus we went on for fifteen days, but both Félix and I felt it was impossible we could accept so much from her; besides, Félix suffered so much from his rheumatism, and he felt that the climate of Pisa might do him good; besides which, our hearts always turned to Pisa, for it seemed as if Providence had willed that we should go there, in disposing that Madame Jacquet, who had a claim to our house for her life, should die just at that time. We made a pretext of the health of Félix to Madame de Trafford, but it was fifteen days before she would accept our decision. 'Eh bien, vous voulez toujours aller à votre masure la bas à Pise,' said Madame de Trafford. She called our house a 'masure.' 'Eh bien, j'irai avec vous, je veux aussi aller à Pise, moi.' She wrote to M. Trafford, who came over to take leave of her, as he always does when she leaves Paris, and she arranged her apartment.... 'Oh, comme c'est une femme d'ordre, et comme son appartement est beau, le plus beau que j'ai jamais vue, même à la cour.' Then she left Paris with us.

"Voilà sa prévenance--the going to Pisa was in order that she might undertake all the expenses of our journey. Quand elle est chez elle, elle est très économe, mais quand elle voyage, elle voyage grandement. Where another person would give two francs, Madame de Trafford gives ten. She is always guided by her _seconde vue_: she reads the character in the face. She wished us to travel first-class, and she insisted on taking first-class tickets for us all, but Félix absolutely refused to go in anything but a second-class carriage. I travelled with Madame de Trafford. We went first to Turin. Thence, 'pour donner distraction à Félix, étant ancien militaire,' Madame de Trafford insisted on taking us to the battle-fields of Solferino and Magenta. Elle nous a fait visiter tout cela, et vraiment grandement. At last we reached Pisa. It was then that Madame de Trafford first revealed to us that she intended to rent our house. She insisted upon paying for it, not the usual rent, but the same that she paid for her beautiful apartments in the Hôtel de la Metropole, and nothing could turn her from this; she was quite determined upon it. Every day she ordered a large dinner; although she only ate a morsel of chicken herself, everything was served and then removed. Félix served her. It was in order that we might have food. It was the same with wine: she always had a bottle of wine, Madeira or whatever it might be: a new bottle was to be uncorked every day; she only drank half a glass herself, but the same bottle was never allowed to appear twice.

"Up to that time I had never entirely believed in her second-sight. It was just after we arrived in Pisa that I became quite convinced of it. I was astonished, on her first going into our house, to see her walk up to one of the beds and feel at the mattresses, and then she turned to me and said, 'On vous a volé, Victoire; vous avez mis ici de la bonne laine, et on a mis la malsaine et vieille laine.' I did not believe her at the time. I had sent money to Pisa to pay for the re-stuffing of those very mattresses: afterwards I unripped the mattresses, and found it was just as she said. From time to time in England we had bought a little linen, because the house was let without linen. M. Hare had left a thousand francs to Félix and me. This was paid to us in London; therefore we had spent it in carpets and linen. The carpets we sent at once to Pisa. The linen was also sent, but it was left packed up in boxes under the care of the woman who looked after the house. Soon after we arrived, Madame de Trafford asked if I had any linen. I said 'Yes,' and going to the boxes, unlocked them, and brought the sheets and towels which she required. She felt at them, and then she said, 'On vous a volé encore ici, Madame Victoire; vous avez mis de telles et telles choses dans une telle et telle boîte.'--'Oui, c'est ainsi,' I replied. 'Eh bien, on vous a volé telles et telles choses dans une telle et telle boîte.' I rushed to look over the boxes, and it was just as she said. The third time was when we went to Florence, for she would take me to spend some days with her at Florence. She bought me a beautiful black silk dress to wear when I went with her, and it was one of her _prévenances_ that we should not go to any hotel I had been in the habit of going to, for she wished me to be entirely with her _sans aucune remarque_. When we went to Florence, the two large boxes Madame de Trafford had brought with her were left in the salon at Pisa. When we came back she said, with her peculiar intonation, 'Je vous prie, Victoire, de compter mes mouchoirs: savez-vous combien j'ai?'--'Mais oui, Madame; vous en avez cinque paquets avec des douzaines en chaque.'--'Eh bien, comptez-les: on m'a volé trois dans un paquet, deux dans un autre,' &c. _Effectivement_ it was just as Madame de Trafford had said: it must have been the same person who had taken my linen before.

"It was always the custom at the convent of S. Antonio, which is close to our house, that any poor people who chose to come to the door on a Saturday should receive something. Madame de Trafford, from her window, saw the people waiting, and asked me what it meant. When I told her, she desired me to go to the convent and find out exactly what it was they received. Madame de Trafford will never be contradicted, so I went at once. When I came back I told her that it was one kreutz or seven centimes. She thought this much too little, and bade me give each of the people a paul. I sent the money down to them. The result was that next time, instead of ten, two or three hundred poor people came. They all received money. It made quite a sensation in the quarter. The house used to be quite surrounded and the streets blocked up by the immense crowds at that time. It became necessary to fix a day. Thursday was appointed, that was the day on which Madame de Trafford gave her alms. One day from the window she saw a poor woman with a child in her arms. 'Voilà une qui est bien malheureuse,' she said; 'descendez, je vous prie, et donnez lui de l'argent sans compter.' One cannot disobey Madame de Trafford. I went down directly, and gave a handful of silver to the woman, shutting the door upon her thanks and leaving her petrified with astonishment.

"One day we went to Leghorn by the eleven-o'clock train (for she always made me go with her). We descended at the hotel, and then she desired me to order a carriage--'le plus bel équipage qu'on pourrait avoir.' Soon afterwards the carriage came to the door: it was a very poor carriage indeed, and the coachman wore a ragged coat and a wide-awake hat. She seemed surprised, and asked me if I could not have done better for her than that, and, knowing her character, I was quite angry with the master of the hotel for ordering such a carriage; but in reality there was no other, all the others were engaged. So at length we got in, but when we had gone some distance she began to fix her eyes upon the driver, and said, 'Mais est-ce qu'on peut aller avec un cocher qui a un trou comme ça dans son habit?' and she desired him to drive back to the hotel. As we went back she said to me, 'Ce pauvre jeune homme doit être bien malheureux, dites lui de venir à l'hôtel.' When we got back to the inn, she desired me to procure everything that was necessary to dress the young man, everything complete, and of the best. But I could not undertake myself to dress the young man, so I asked the master of the hotel to do it for me. At Leghorn this is not so difficult, because there are so many ready-made shops. So the landlord procured a complete set of clothes, coat, trousers, waistcoat, boots, hat, everything, and Madame de Trafford gave orders that he should be shaved and washed and sent in to her. When he came in, the change was most extraordinary; he was such a handsome young man that I should not have known him. But Madame de Trafford only turned to me and said, 'Mais je vous ai ordonné de lui procurer un habillement complet, et est-ce que vous pensez que avec un habit comme ça, il peut porter cette vilaine vieille chemise?' for she perceived directly that they had not changed his shirt, which I had never thought of. The shirt was procured, but there was always something wanting in the eyes of Madame de Trafford. 'Mais que fera ce jeune homme,' she said, 's'il est enrhumé, quand il n'a pas de mouchoirs de poche,' and then I was obliged to get other shirts and socks, and cravats and handkerchiefs--in short, a complete trousseau. And then a commoner dress was wanted for the morning: and then the tailor was ordered to come again with greatcoats. Of these he had two; one cost much more than the other, but Madame de Trafford chose that which cost the most.

"Le jeune homme regardait tout ça comme un rêve. Il ne le croyait pas, lui, et il disait rien du tout: il laissa faire. Il disait après à Félix qu'il pensait que c'était des mystifications, et il ne croyait pas à ce qu'il voyait.

"At last, when all was completed and paid for in his presence, four o'clock came, and he mounted on his box and drove us to the station. All the little boys in the street, who had known him in his old dress, ran along by the side of the carriage to stare at him. At last, when we reached the station and were actually going off, he began to believe, and flung himself on his knees before all the people in his gratitude to Madame de Trafford. 'Je me suis soulagée d'un poids en laissant ce jeune homme ainsi,' said Madame de Trafford to me.

"After this," continued Victoire, "came the great floods in the marshes near Pisa. When Madame de Trafford heard of the sufferings which they caused, she bade me order a carriage and drive out there with her. We drove as far as we could, and then we left the carriage and walked along a little embankment between the waters to where there were some cottages quite flooded, from which some poor women crept out along some planks to the bank on which we were. Before we left the hotel, Madame de Trafford had said, 'Mettez vos grandes poches' (because she had made me have some very large pockets made, very wide and deep, to wear under my dress and hold her valuables when we travelled), and then she had said that I was to fill them up to the brim with large piastres, without counting what I took. I had shovelled piastres into my pockets by handfuls till I was quite weighed down. I did not like doing it, but I was obliged to do as she bade me. Then she said, 'Have you taken as much as your pockets will hold? I wish them to be filled to the brim.' When we arrived and saw the poor women, she said, 'Donnez-leur des piastres, mais donnez-les par poignets, et surtout ne comptez pas, ne comptez jamais.' So I took a large heap of piastres, and put them into the hands of Madame de Trafford that she might give them to the women. Then she began to be angry--'Je vous ai dit de les donner, je ne les veux pas.' So I began to give a handful of piastres to one woman and another, all without counting; even to the children Madame de Trafford desired me to give also. At first they were all quite mute with amazement, then the women began to call aloud to me, 'E chi é questa principessa benedetta, caduta dal cielo? dite chi é che possiamo ringraziarla.'--'Qu'est-ce qu'ils disent donc,' said Madame de Trafford. 'Mais, Madame, ils demandent quelle princesse vous êtes qu'ils puissent vous remercier.'--'Dites les que je ne suis pas princesse,' said Madame de Trafford, 'que je ne suis qu'une pauvre femme faite en chair et os comme eux.'

"Then Madame de Trafford asked them if there were no more poor people there, and they went and fetched other poor women and children, till there was quite a crowd. To them also she ordered me to give piastres--'toujours sans compter'--till at last, through much giving, my pockets were empty. Then Madame de Trafford was really angry--'Je vous ai dit, Madame Victoire, de porter autant que vous pouviez, et vous ne l'avez pas fait.'--'Mais, Madame, vous ne m'avez pas dit de mettre quatre poches, vous m'avez dit de mettre deux poches: ces deux poches étaient remplis, à present les voilà vides.'

"When we were turning to go away, all the people, who had not till that moment believed in their good fortune, fell on their knees, and cried, 'Oh, Signore, noi ti ringraziamo d'avere mandato questa anima benedetta, e preghiamo per ella.'--'Mais retournez bien vite à la voiture, mais montez donc bien vite, Madame Victoire,' said Madame de Trafford, and we hurried back to the carriage; and the coachman, concerning whom she had taken care that he should not see what had happened, was amazed to see us coming with all this crowd of poor women and children following us. When we were driving away, Madame de Trafford said, 'Quel jour heureux pour nous, Madame Victoire, d'avoir soulagé tant de misère; quel bonheur de pouvoir faire tant de félicité avec un peu d'argent.'"

After remaining many weeks at Pisa with Victoire, Madame de Trafford had accompanied her to Rome, whither she went in December 1859 to arrange the affairs of Italima at the Palazzo Parisani, and thence, having fulfilled her mission, and seen Victoire comfortably established in her Pisan home, Madame de Trafford had returned to Paris.

In 1865 the journey from Pisa to Rome was still tiresome and difficult. We went by rail to Nunziatella, and there a cavalcade was formed (for mutual protection from the brigands), of six diligences with five horses apiece, with patrols on each carriage, and mounted guards riding by the side. The cholera had been raging, so at Montalto, one of the highest points of the dreary Maremma, we were stopped, and those who were "unclean"--_i.e._, had omitted to provide themselves with clean bills of health at Leghorn--were detained for eight days' quarantine. We had obtained "clean" bills, from the Spanish Consul, grounded upon the hotel bills of the different places we had slept at since crossing the Alps, and, with others of our kind, were taken into a small white-washed room filled with fumes of lime and camphor, where we were shut up for ten minutes, without other hurt than that any purple articles of dress worn by the ladies came out yellow. Most dreary was the long after-journey through a deserted region, without a house or tree or sign of habitation, till at 10 p.m. we came in sight of the revolving light of Civita Vecchia, beautifully reflected in the sea. Then I had to watch all the luggage being fumigated for three midnight hours. However, November 18 found us established in Rome, in the high apartment of the Tempietto (Claude Lorraine's house), at the junction of the Via Sistina and Via Gregoriana, with the most glorious view from its windows over all the Eternal City, and a pleasant Englishwoman, Madame de Monaca, as our landlady. Hurried travellers to Rome now can hardly imagine the intense comfort and repose which we felt in old days in unpacking and establishing ourselves in our Roman apartment, which it was worth while to make really pretty and comfortable, as we were sure to be settled there for at least four or five months, with usually far more freedom from interruptions, and power of following our own occupations, than would have attended us in our own home, even had health not been in question. Most delightful was it, after the fatigues and (on my mother's account) the intense anxieties of the journey, to wake upon the splendid view, with its succession of aërial distances, and to know how many glorious sunsets we had to enjoy behind the mighty dome which rose on the other side of the brown-grey city. And then came the slow walk to church along the sunny Pincio terrace, with the deepest of unimaginable blue skies seen through branches of ilex and bay, and garden beds, beneath the terraced wall, always showing some flowers, but in spring quite ablaze with pansies and marigolds.

The first time we went out to draw was to the gardens of S. Onofrio, where, when we were last here, we used to be very much troubled by a furious dog. We rang the bell, and the woman answered; she recognised us, and, without any preliminary greetings, by an association of ideas, exclaimed at once, "Il cane e morto." It was very Italian.

So many people beset me during this winter with notes or verbal petitions that I would go out drawing with them, that at last I wrote on a sheet of paper a list of the days (three times a week) on which I should go out sketching, and a list of the places I should go to, and desiring that any one who wished to go with me would find themselves on the steps of the Trinità de' Monti at 10 A.M., and sent it round to my artistic acquaintance. To my astonishment, on the first day mentioned, when I expected to meet one or two persons at most, I found the steps covered by forty ladies, in many cases attended by footmen, carrying their luncheon-baskets, camp-stools, &c. I introduced four ladies to each other that they might drive out together to the Campagna, and I generally tried to persuade those who had carriages of their own to offer seats to their poorer companions. For a time all went radiantly, but, in a few weeks, two-thirds of the ladies were "_en delicatesse_" and, at the end of two months, they were all "_en froid_," so that the parties had to be given up. Of the male sex there was scarcely ever any one on these sketching excursions, except myself and my cousin Frederick Fisher,[308] who was staying at Rome as tutor to the young Russian Prince, Nicole Dolgorouki. He was constantly with us during the winter, and was a great pleasure from his real affection for my mother, who was very fond of him.

In the spring Esmeralda came to Rome, and I used often to go to see her in the rooms at Palazzo Parisani. She was very fragile then, and used to lie almost all day upon an old velvet sofa, looking, except for the heavy masses of raven hair which were still uncovered, almost like an uncloistered nun, with her pale face and long black dress, unrelieved at the throat, and with a heavy rosary of large black beads and cross at her waist.

_From my_ JOURNAL.

"_Rome, Dec. 21, 1865._--Cardinal Cecchi died last week, and lay in state all yesterday in his palace, on a high bier, with his face painted and rouged, wearing his robes, and with his scarlet hat on his head. Cardinals always lie in state on a high catafalque, contrary to the general rule, which prescribes that the higher the rank the lower the person should lie. Princess Piombino lay in state upon the floor itself, so very high was her rank.

"The Cardinal was carried to church last night with a grand torchlight procession, which is always considered necessary for persons of his rank; but it is expensive, as everything in Rome costs double after the Ave Maria. The fee for a frate to walk at a funeral is four baiocchi in the daytime, but after the Ave it is eight baiocchi. When the Marchesa Ponziani was taken to church the other day, all the confraternities in Rome attended with torches.[309]

"To-day at 10 A.M. the Cardinal was buried in the church at the back of the Catinari. According to old custom, when he was put into the grave, his head-cook walked up to it and said, 'At what time will your Eminence dine?' For a minute there was no response, and then the major-domo replied, 'His Eminence will not want dinner any more (_non vuol altro_).' Then the head-footman came in and asked, 'At what time will your Eminence want the carriage?' and the major-domo replied, 'His Eminence will not want the carriage any more.' Upon which the footman went out to the door of the church, where the fat coachman sat on the box of the Cardinal's state carriage, who said, 'At what time will his Eminence be ready for the carriage?' and when the footman replied, 'La sua Eminenza non vuol altro,' he broke his whip, and throwing down the two pieces on either side the carriage, flung up his hands with a gesture of despair, and drove off.

"The other day Mrs. Goldsmid was in a church waiting for her confessor, who was not ready to come out of the sacristy. While she was waiting, two men came in carrying something between them, which she soon saw was a dead frate. His robe was too short, and his little white legs protruded below. They put him on a raised couch with a steep incline and left him, and her agony was that he would slip down and fall off, and then that the priests would think she had done it. She became so nervous, that, as she kept her eyes fixed on the body, it seemed to her to slip, slip, slip, till at last she made sure the little man was coming down altogether, and going to the sacristy door, she rang the bell violently, and entreated to be let out of the church.

"Mrs. Goldsmid says that the Pope, Pius IX., cannot stop spitting even when he is in the act of celebrating mass.... Being very jocose himself, he likes others to be familiar enough to amuse him. The other day a friend asked Monsignor de Merode why the Pope was so fond of him: he said it was because, when he saw the Pope in a fit of melancholy, he always cut a joke and made him laugh, instead of condoling with him.

"The Pope is always thoroughly entertained at the stories which are circulated as to his 'evil eye' and its effects, as well as those about the 'evil eye' of the excellent and strikingly handsome Monsignor Prosperi. When the fire occurred in the Bocca di Leone, and the Pope was told of it, he said, 'How very extraordinary, for Monsignor Prosperi was out of Rome, and I was not there.'

"When the Pope, who does not speak good French, was talking of Pusey, he said, 'Je le compare à une cloche, qui sonne, sonne, pour appeler les fidèles à l'église, mais qui n'entre jamais.'

"I think there can scarcely be any set of men whose individuality is more marked than the present Cardinals.... Antonelli's manner in carrying the chalice in St Peter's is reverent in the extreme. Cardinal Ugolini, who is almost always with the Pope, never fails to ruffle up his hair in walking down St. Peter's or the Sistine."

"_Christmas Day._--The Pope heard of the death of his sister, an abbess, this morning, just as he was going to be carried into St. Peter's, but the procession and the chair were waiting, and he was obliged to go. The poor old man looked deadly white as he was carried down the nave, and no wonder."

"_January 15, 1866._--Went, by appointment, with Mrs. Goldsmid to the Church of SS. Marcellino e Pietro--the church with a roof like that of a Chinese pagoda, in the little valley beneath St. John Lateran. Inside it is a large Greek cross, and very handsome, with marbles, &c. The party collected slowly, Mrs. De Selby and her daughter, Mrs. Alfred Montgomery, Madame Sainte Aldegonde, the Bedingfields, a French Abbé, Mrs. Dawkins, and ourselves. Soon a small window shutter was opened to the left of the altar, and disclosed a double grille of iron, beyond which was a small room in the interior of the monastery. In the room, but close to the grille, and standing sideways, with lighted candles in front of it, was a very beautiful picture of the Crucifixion. It was much smaller than life, and seemed to be a copy of Guido's picture in the Lucina. The figure hung alone on the cross in the midst of a dark wind-stricken plain, and behind it the black storm clouds were driving through the sky, and beating the trees towards the ground. As you looked fixedly at the face, the feeling of its intense suffering and its touching patience seemed to take possession of you and fill you. We all knelt in front of it, and I never took my eyes from it. Very soon Mrs. Goldsmid said, 'I begin to see something; do you not see the pupils of its eyes dilate?' Mrs. Montgomery, in an ecstasy, soon after said, 'Oh, I see it: how wonderful! what a blessing vouchsafed to us! See, it moves! it moves!' Mrs. De Selby, who is always sternly matter-of-fact, and who had been looking fixedly at it hitherto, on this turned contemptuously away and said, 'What nonsense! it is a complete delusion: you delude yourselves into anything; the picture is perfectly still.' Mrs. Dawkins now declared that she distinctly saw the eyes move. Lady Bedingfield would not commit herself to any opinion. The French Abbé saw nothing.

"Meanwhile Madame Ste. Aldegonde had fallen into a rapture, and with clasped hands was returning thanks for the privilege vouchsafed to her. 'Oh mon Dieu! mon Dieu! quelle grâce! quelle grâce!' Shortly after this the French Abbé saw it also. 'Il n'y a pas le moindre doute,' he said; 'il bouge les yeux, mais le voilà, le voilà.' They all now began to distress themselves about Mrs. De Selby. 'Surely you must see _something_,' they said; 'it is impossible that you should see _nothing_.' But Mrs. De Selby continued stubbornly to declare that she saw nothing. While Madame Ste. Aldegonde was exclaiming, and when the scene was at its height, I could fancy that I saw something like a scintillation, a speculation, in one of the eyes of the Crucified One, but I could not be certain. As we left the church, the other ladies said, apropos of Mrs. De Selby, 'Well, you know, after all, it is not a thing we are _obliged_ to believe,' and one of them, turning to her, added consolingly, 'And you know you _did_ see a miracle at Vicovaro.'

"Mrs. Goldsmid declared that she was so shocked at my want of faith, that she should take me immediately to the Sepolti Vivi, to request the prayers of the abbess there. So we drove thither at once. The convent is most carefully concealed. Opposite the Church of S. Maria del Monte, a little recess in the street, which looks like a _cul de sac_, runs up to one of those large street shrines with a picture, so common in Naples, but of which there are very few at Rome. When you get up to the picture, you find the _cul de sac_ is an illusion. In the left of the shrine a staircase in the wall leads you up round the walls of the adjoining house to a platform on the roof. Here you are surrounded by heavy doors, all strongly barred and bolted. In the wall there projects what looks like a small green barrel. Mrs. Goldsmid stooped down and rapped loudly on the barrel. This she continued to do for some time. At last a faint muffled voice was heard issuing from behind the barrel, and demanding what was wanted. 'I am Margaret Goldsmid,' said our companion, 'and I want to speak to the abbess.'--'Speak again,' said the strange voice, and again Mrs. G. declared that she was Margaret Goldsmid. Then the invisible nun recognised the voice, and very slowly, to my great surprise, the green barrel began to move. Round and round it went, till at last in its innermost recesses was disclosed a key. Mrs. Goldsmid knew the meaning of this, and taking the key, led us round to a small postern door, which she unlocked, and we entered a small courtyard. Beyond this, other doors opened in a similar manner, till we reached a small white-washed room. Over the door was an inscription bidding those who entered that chamber to leave all worldly thoughts behind them. Round the walls of the room were inscribed: 'Qui non diligit, manet in morte'--'Militia est vita hominis super terram'--'Alter alterius onera portate,' and on the side opposite the door--

'Vi esorto a rimirar La vita del mondo Nella guisa che il mira Un moribondo.'

Immediately beneath this inscription was a double grille, and beyond it what looked at first like pitch darkness, but what was afterwards shown to be a thick plate of iron, pierced, like the rose of a watering-pot, with small round holes, through which the voice might penetrate. Behind this plate of iron the abbess of the Sepolti Vivi receives her visitors. She is even then veiled from head to foot, and folds of thick serge fell over her face. Pope Gregory XVI., who of course could penetrate within the convent, once wishing to try her faith, said to her, 'Sorella mia, levate il velo.'--'No, mio Padre,' replied the abbess, 'é vietato dalle regole del nostro ordine.'

"Mrs. Goldsmid said to the abbess that she had brought with her two heretics, one in a state of partial grace, the other in a state of blind and outer darkness, that she might request her prayers and those of her sisterhood. The heretic in partial grace was Mrs. Dawkins, the heretic in blind darkness was myself. Then came back the muffled voice of the abbess, as if from another world, 'Bisogna essere convertiti, perchè ci si sta poco in questo mondo: bisogna avere le lampane accese, perchè non si sa l'ora quando il Signore chiamerà, ma bisogna che le lampane siano accese coll' olio della vera fede, e se ve ne manca un solo articolo, se ne manca il tutto.' There was much more that she said, but it was all in the same strain. When she said, 'Se ve ne manca un solo articolo, se ne manca il tutto,' Mrs. Goldsmid was very much displeased, because she had constantly tried to persuade Mrs. Dawkins that it was _not_ necessary to receive _all_, and the abbess had unconsciously interfered with the whole line of her argument. Afterwards we asked the abbess about her convent. They were 'Farnesiani,' she said; 'Sepolti Vivi' was only 'un nome popolare;' but she did not know why they were called Farnesiani, or who founded their order. She said the nuns did not dig their graves every day, that also was only a popular story. When they died, she said, 'they only enjoyed their graves a short time, like the Cappuccini (a year, I think), and then, if their bodies were whole when they were dug up, they were preserved; but if their limbs had separated, they were thrown away. She said the nuns could speak to their 'parenti stretti' four times a year, but when I asked if they ever _saw_ them, she laughed in fits at the very idea, 'ma perchè bisogna vederli?' Mrs. Goldsmid was once inside the convent, but could not get an order this year, because, when it had been countersigned by all the other authorities, old Cardinal Patrizi remembered that she had been in before, and withdrew it.

"I heard afterwards that generally when the crucifixion at S. Marcellino is shown, a nun of S. Teresa, with her face covered, and robed from head to foot in a long blue veil, stands by it immovable, like a pillar, the whole time."

"_January 27._--Gibson the sculptor died this morning. He was first taken ill while calling on Mrs. Caldwell. She saw that he could not speak, and, making him lie down, brought water and restoratives. He grew better and insisted on walking home. She wished to send for a carriage, but he would not hear of it, and he was able to walk home perfectly. That evening a paralytic seizure came. Ever since, for nineteen days and nights, Miss Dowdeswell had nursed him. He will be a great loss to Miss Hosmer (the sculptress), whom he regarded as a daughter. They used to dine together with old Mr. Hay every Saturday. It was an institution. Mr. Gibson was writing his memoirs then, and he used to take what he had written and read it aloud to Mr. Hay on the Saturday evenings. Mr. Hay also dictated memoirs of his own life to Miss Hosmer, and she wrote them down."

"_January 29._--I had a paper last night begging me to be present at a meeting about Gibson's funeral, but I could not go. The greater part of his friends wished for a regular funeral procession on foot through the streets, but this was overruled by Colonel Caldwell and others. A guard of honour, offered by the French general, was however accepted. The body lay for some hours in the little chapel at the cemetery, the cross of the Legion of Honour fixed upon the coffin. It was brought to the grave with muffled drums, all the artists following. Many ladies who had known and loved him were crying bitterly, and there was an immense attendance of men. The day before he died there was a temporary rally, and those with him hoped for his life. It was during this time that the telegraph of inquiry from the Queen came, and Gibson was able to receive pleasure from it, and held it in his hand for an hour.

"Gibson--'Don Giovanni,' as his friends called him--had a quaint dry humour which was all his own. He used to tell how a famous art-critic, whose name must not be mentioned, came to his studio to visit his newly-born statue of Bacchus. 'Now pray criticise it as much as you like,' said the great sculptor. 'Well, since you ask me to find fault,' said the critic, 'I think perhaps there is something not quite right about the left leg.'--'About the leg! that is rather a wide expression,' said Gibson; 'but about what part of the leg?'--'Well, just here, about the bone of the leg.'--'Well,' said Gibson, 'I am relieved that _that_ is the fault you have to find, for the bone of the leg is on the other side!'

"Gibson used to relate with great gusto something which happened to him when he was travelling by diligence before the time of railways. He had got as far as the Mont Cenis, and, while crossing it, entered into conversation with his fellow-traveller--an Englishman, not an American. Gibson asked where he had been, and he mentioned several places, and then said, 'There was one town I saw which I thought curious, the name of which I cannot for the life of me remember, but I know it began with an R.'--'Was it Ronciglione,' said Gibson, 'or perhaps Radicofani?' thinking of all the unimportant places beginning with R. 'No, no; it was a much shorter name--a one-syllable name. I remember we entered it by a gate near a very big church with lots of pillars in front of it, and there was a sort of square with two fountains.'--'You cannot possibly mean Rome?'--'Oh yes, Rome--that _was_ the name of the place.'"

"_February 4._--I spent yesterday evening with the Henry Feildens.[310] Mrs. Feilden told me that in her girlhood her family went to the Isle of Wight and rented St. Boniface House, between Bonchurch and Ventnor. She slept in a room on the first floor with her sister Ghita: the French governess and her sister Cha slept in the next room, the English governess above. If they talked in bed they were always punished by the English governess, who could not bear them; so they never spoke except in a whisper. One night, when they were in bed, with the curtains closely drawn, the door was suddenly burst open with a bang, and something rushed into the room and began to whisk about in it, making great draught and disturbance. They were not frightened, but very angry, thinking some one was playing them a trick. But immediately the curtains were drawn aside and whisked up over their heads, and one by one all the bed-clothes were dragged away from them, though when they stretched out their hands they could feel nothing. First the counterpane went, then the blankets, then the sheet, then the pillows, and lastly the lower sheet was drawn away from _under_ them. When it came to this she (Ellinor Hornby) exclaimed, 'I can bear this no longer,' and she and her sister both jumped out of bed at the foot, which was the side nearest the door. As they jumped out, they felt the mattress graze against their legs, as it also was dragged off the bed. Ghita Hornby rushed into the next room to call the French governess, while Ellinor screamed for assistance, holding the door of their room tightly on the outside, fully believing that somebody would be found in the room. The English governess and the servants, roused by the noise, now rushed downstairs, and the door was opened. The room was perfectly still and there was no one there. It was all tidied. The curtains were carefully rolled, and tied up above the head of the bed: the sheets and counterpane were neatly folded up in squares and laid in the three corners of the room: the mattress was reared against the wall under the window: the blanket was in the fireplace. Both the governesses protested that the girls must have done it themselves in their sleep, but nothing would induce them to return to the room, and they were surprised the next morning, when they expected a scolding from their mother, to find that she quietly assented to the room being shut up. Many years after Mrs. Hornby met the lady to whom the property belonged, and after questioning her about what had happened to her family, the lady told her that the same thing had often happened to others, and that the house was now shut up and could never be let, because it was haunted. A murder by a lady of her child was committed in that room, and she occasionally appeared; but more frequently only the noise and movement of the furniture occurred, and sometimes that took place in the adjoining room also. St. Boniface House is mentioned as haunted in the guide-books of the Isle of Wight."

"_Feb. 12._--Went in the morning with the Feildens to S. Maria in Monticelli--a small church near the Ghetto. The church is not generally open, and we had to ring at the door of the priest's lodgings to get in: he let us into the church by a private passage. In the right aisle is the famous picture over an altar. It is a Christ with the eyes almost closed, weighed down by pain and sorrow. The Feildens knelt before it, and in a very few minutes they both declared that they saw its eyes open and close again. From the front of the picture and on the right side of it, though I looked fixedly at it, I could see nothing, but after I had looked for a long time from the left side, I seemed to see the eyes languidly close altogether, as if the figure were sinking unconsciously into a fast sleep.

"In the case of this picture, Pope Pius IX. has turned Protestant, and, disapproving of the notice it attracted, after it was first observed to move its eyes in 1859, he had it privately removed from the church, and it was kept shut up for some years. Two years ago it was supposed that people had forgotten all about it, and it was quietly brought back to the church in the night. It has frequently been seen to move the eyes since, but it has not been generally shown. The sacristan said it was a '_regalo_' made to the church at its foundation, and none knew who the artist was.

"In the afternoon I was in St. Peter's with Miss Buchanan when the famous Brother Ignatius[311] came in. He led 'the Infant Samuel' by the hand, and a lay brother followed. He has come to Rome for his health, and has brought with him a sister (Sister Ambrogia) and the lay brother to wash and look after the Infant Samuel. He found the 'Infant' as a baby on the altar at Norwich, and vowed him at once to the service of the Temple, dressed him in a little habit, and determined that he should never speak to a woman as long as he lived. The last is extremely hard upon Sister Ambrogia, who does not go sight-seeing with her companions, and having a very dull time of it, would be exceedingly glad to play with the little rosy-cheeked creature. The Infant is now four years old, and is dressed in a white frock and cowl like a little Carthusian, and went pattering along the church in the funniest way by the side of the stately Brother Ignatius. He held the Infant up in his arms to kiss St. Peter's toe, and then rubbed its forehead against his foot, and did the same for himself, and then they both prostrated themselves before the principal shrine, with the lay brother behind them, and afterwards at the side altars, the Infant of course exciting great attention and amusement amongst the canons and priests of the church. A lady acquaintance of ours went to see Brother Ignatius and begged to talk to the Infant. This was declared to be impossible, the Infant was never to be allowed to speak to a woman, but she might be in the same room with the Infant if she pleased, and Brother Ignatius would then himself put any questions she wished. She asked who its father and mother were, and the Infant replied, 'I am the child of Jesus Christ and of the Blessed Virgin and of the holy St. Benedict.' She then asked if it liked being at Rome, 'Yes,' it said, 'I like being at Rome, for it is the city of the holy saints and martyrs and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.' When we saw the party, they were just come from the Pope, who told Brother Ignatius to remember that a habit could not make a monk.

"Miss Dowdeswell has been to see us, and given us a terrible account of the misapplication of the Roman charities. She says the people would rather beg, or even really die of want, than go into most of the institutions--that the so-called soup is little more than water, and that the inmates are really starved, besides which the dirt and vermin are quite disgusting. The best hospital is that of the 'Buon Fratelli,' where the people who obtain entrance are kindly treated, but it is exceedingly difficult to get admittance, and the hospital authorities will always say it is full, scarcely ever taking in more than nine patients, though there is accommodation for thirty, and each person admitted has to pay ten scudi. At S. Michele, which is enormously endowed, and which professes to be free, the patient is not only compelled to have a complete outfit of bedding and everything else she requires, but must pay three scudi a month for her maintenance as long as she remains, yet for this will not have what she could procure for the same sum elsewhere."

"_Feb. 15._--Went with the Eyres to Benzoni's studio. Amongst many other statues was a fine group of a venerable old man raising a little half-naked boy out of a gutter. 'Ecco il mio benefattore,' said Benzoni. It was the likeness of Conte Luigi Taddini of Crema, who first recognised the genius of Benzoni when making clay images in the puddles by the wayside, and sent him to Rome at his own expense for education. Count Taddini died six years after, but, in the height of his fame, Benzoni has made this group as a voluntary thank-offering and presented it to the family of his benefactor in Crema. He was only twelve years old when adopted by Taddini.

"A curious instance of presentiment happened yesterday. Some charitable ladies, especially Mrs. McClintock,[312] had been getting up a raffle for a picture of the poor artist Coleman, whom they believed to be starving. The tickets cost five scudi apiece, and were drawn yesterday. Just at the last moment Mrs. Keppel, at the Pension Anglaise, had a presentiment that 77 would be the lucky number, and she sent to tell Mrs. McClintock that if she could have 77 she would take it, but if not, she would not take any number at all. Seventy-seven happened to be Mrs. McClintock's own number. However, she said that rather than Mrs. Keppel should take none, she would give it up to her and take another. Mrs. Keppel took 77 and she got the picture."

"_Feb. 24, 1866._--The other day little Nicole Dolgorouki came in to dinner with a pencil in his hand. The Princess said, 'Little boys should not sit at dinner with pencils in their hands;' upon which the child of eight years old coolly replied, 'L'artiste ne quitte jamais son crayon!'

"When the Mother and Lea were both ill last week, our Italian servants Clementina and (her daughter) Louisa groaned incessantly; and when Clementina was taken ill on the following night, Louisa gave up all hope at once, and sent for her other children to take leave of her. This depression of spirits has gone on ever since Christmas, and it turns out now that they think a terrible omen has come to the house. No omen is worse than an upset of oil, but, if this occurs on Christmas Eve, it is absolutely fatal, and on Christmas Eve my mother upset her little table with the great moderator lamp upon it. The oil was spilt all over her gown and the lamp broken to pieces on the floor, with great cries of 'O santissimo diavolo' from the servants. 'Only one thing can save us now,' says Louisa; 'if Providence would mercifully permit that some one should break a bottle of wine here by accident, that would bring back luck to the house, but nothing else can.'

"The Borgheses have had a magnificent fancy ball. Young Bolognetti Cenci borrowed the armour of Julius II. from the Pope for the occasion, and young Corsini that of Cardinal de Bourbon. The Duchess Fiano went in the costume of the first Empire, terribly improper in these days, and another lady went as a nymph just emerged from a fountain, and naturally clothed as little as possible. The Princess Borghese[313] was dreadfully shocked, but she only said, 'I fear, Madame, that you must be feeling horribly cold.'

"When the French ambassador sent to the Pope to desire that he would send away the Court of Naples, the Pope said he must decline to give up the parental prerogative which had always belonged to the Popes, of giving shelter to unfortunate princes of other nations, of whatever degree or nation they might be, and 'of this,' he added pointedly, 'the Bonapartes are a striking example.' The French ambassador had the bad taste to go on to the Palazzo Farnese, and, after condoling with the King of Naples[314] upon what he had heard of his great poverty, said, 'If your Majesty would engage at once to leave Rome, I on my part would promise to do my best endeavours with my Government to obtain the restoration of at least a part of your Majesty's fortune.' The King coldly replied, 'Sir, I have heard that in all ages great and good men have ended their days in obscurity and poverty, and it can be no source of dread to me that I may be numbered amongst them.'

"The Queen-mother of Naples[315] is still very rich, but is now a mere nurse to her large family, with some of whom she is to be seen--'gran' bel' pezzo di donna'--driving every day. When the King returned from Caieta, she was still at the Quirinal, and went down to the Piazza Monte Cavallo to receive him; but with him and the Queen came her own eldest son, and, before noticing her sovereign, she rushed to embrace her child, saying, 'Adesso, son pagato a tutto.'

"One sees the Queen of Naples[316] daily walking with her sister Countess Trani[317] near the Porta Angelica, or threading the carriages in the Piazza di Spagna, where the coachmen never take off their hats, and even crack their whips as she passes. She wears a straw hat, a plain violet linsey-woolsey dress, and generally leads a large deerhound by a string. She is perfectly lovely.

"The great Mother, Maria de Matthias,[318] has lately come down from her mountains of Acuto to visit my sister, who has arrived in Rome, and the confessor of the Venerable Anna Maria Taigi has also visited her. I have read the life of this saint, and have never found out any possible excuse for her being canonised, unless that she married her husband because he was a good man, though he was 'ruvido di maniere e grossolano.'

"At dinner at Mr. Brooke's, I met the quaint and clever Mrs. Payne, Madame d'Arblay's niece. She said that England had an honest bad climate and Rome a dishonest good one.

"Count Bolognetti Cenci is marvellously handsome, face and figure alike perfect. Some people maintain that Don Onorato Caiëtani is equally handsome. He has the extraordinary plume of white hair which is hereditary in the Caiëtani family. His father, the Duke of Sermoneta, said the other day, with some pardonable pride, 'Our ancestors were reigning sovereigns (in Tuscany) long before the Pope had any temporal power.'

"We have been to the Villa Doria to pick 'Widowed Iris,' which the Italians call 'I tre Chiodi del Nostro Signore,'--the three nails of our Saviour's cross.

"My sister declares that when Madame Barrère, late superior of the Order of the Sacré Cœur, was in her great old age, a Catholic lady who was married to a Protestant came to her and implored her to promise that, as soon as she entered heaven, her first petition should be for her husband that he might be a Catholic. Soon after this the Protestant husband was taken alarmingly ill, but gave his wife no hope that he would change his religion; yet, to her great surprise, when he was dying he bade her send for a priest. She considered this at first as a result of delirium, but he insisted upon the priest coming, and, rallying soon after, was received into the Roman Catholic Church. In a few days came the news of the death of Madame Barrère, and on inquiry it was found that the moment of her death and that of the Protestant sending for the priest exactly coincided."

"_March 13._--The Roman princes are generally enormously rich. Tortonia is said to have an income which gives him 7000 scudi (£1200) a day. He is very charitable, and gives a great many pensions of a scudo a day to poor individuals of the _mezzoceto_ class. The Chigis used to be immensely rich, but were ruined by old Princess Chigi, who gambled away everything she could get hold of. When one of her sons was to be made a Monsignore, a collection was arranged amongst the friends of the family to pay the expenses, but they imprudently left the rouleaux of money on the chimney-piece, where the old Princess spied them, and snapping them up, _gioccolare_-d them all away. The Massimi are rich, but the old Prince[319] is very miserly. The other day he told his cook that he was going to give a supper, but that it must not cost more than fifteen baiocchi a head, and that he must give minestra. The cook said it was utterly impossible, but the Prince declared he did not care in the least about 'possible,' only it must be done. The supper came off, and the guests had minestra. The next day the Prince said to his cook, 'Well, now, you see you could do it perfectly well; what was the use of making such a fuss about it?' The cook said 'Yes, I _did_ it, but would you like to know where I got the bones from that made the soup?' The Prince shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Oh no, I don't want in the least to know about that; so long as you do your suppers for my price, you may get your bones wherever you like.' The cook told his friends afterwards that he got them at the Immondezzajo!"

"_March 25._--Last January my sister wanted to engage a new maid. The mistress of a famous flower shop at Paris recommended her present maid, 'Madame Victorine,' who came to the hotel to see Esmeralda, who was delighted with her, only thinking her too good for the place. The new maid only made two stipulations: one was that she should always be called _Madame_ Victorine; the other, that she should not be expected to have her meals with the other servants. My sister said that as to the first stipulation, there would be no difficulty at all; that she had always called her mother's maid 'Madame Victoire,' and that she could have no objection to calling her Madame Victorine; but that as to the second stipulation, though she insisted upon nothing, and though Madame Victorine would be perfectly free to take her food away and eat it wherever she pleased, yet she did not advise her to make any difficulty of this kind, as they were going to Italy, where the servants have jealous natures, and would be peculiarly liable to resent anything of the sort. Upon this Madame Victorine waived her second stipulation.

"Esmeralda was surprised, when Madame Victorine came to her, to find how well she had been educated and little traces of her having belonged to a higher position several times appeared by accident, upon which occasions Madame Victorine would colour deeply and try to hide what she had said. Thus, once she was betrayed into saying, 'I managed in that way with my servants;' and once in the railway, 'I did so when I was travelling with my son.' My sister observed not only that all her dresses were of the best silk though perfectly plain, but that all her cuffs, collars, and handkerchiefs were of the very best and finest material. But the oddest circumstance was, that once when Esmeralda was going to seal a letter, having no seal about her, she asked Madame Victorine if she had one. Madame Victorine lent her one, and then, colouring violently, as if she remembered something, tried to snatch it away, but Esmeralda had already pressed it down, and saw on the impression a coronet and a cipher. When my sister first told Madame Victorine that she was too good for the place, she seemed greatly agitated and exclaimed, 'Oh don't, don't change your mind, do take me: I will consent to do anything, only do take me.'

"One day since they have been at Palazzo Parisani, Esmeralda was looking for something amongst her music. 'You will find it in such an opera,' said Madame Victorine. 'Why, do you play also?' said Esmeralda, much surprised. 'Yes,' said Madame Victorine, colouring deeply. 'Then will you play to me?' said my sister. 'Oh no, no,' said Madame Victorine, trembling all over. 'Then I hope you will play sometimes when I am out,' said Esmeralda, and this Madame Victorine said she would do, and it seemed to please her very much."[320]

"_March 26._--The Santa Croce are perhaps really the oldest family in Rome. They claim descent from Valerius Publicola, and the spirit of his life, that which characterised 'the good house that loved the people well,' still remains in the family. The other day Donna Vincenza Santa Croce was speaking of the Trinità de' Monti,[321] and the system of education there, and she said, 'I do so dislike those nuns: they are so worldly: they do so give in to rank, for when a girl of one of the great noble houses is there, they will make all the other girls stand up when she comes into a room! But this, you know, is not right, for it is only goodness and talent, not rank, that ought to make people esteemed in the world.' And was not this the spirit of Valerius Publicola speaking through his descendant?"

"_March 27._--Last Sunday (Palm Sunday) was the last day of the 'mission' which the Pope had appointed in the hope of warding off both the cholera and the destruction of his own power. All the week processions had paraded the streets and monks had preached in the piazzas, rousing the feelings of the people in behalf of the Holy Father, and last Sunday it all came to a close. Giacinta, 'the Saint of St. Peter's,' came to tell my sister about the scene at Santo Spirito, where she was. A Passionist Father took a real crown of thorns and pressed it upon his head three times, till the thorns sank deep into the flesh, and the blood ran in streams down his face and over his dress. The people cried and sobbed convulsively, and were excited to frenzy when he afterwards took a 'disciplina' and began violently to scourge himself before all the congregation. One man sobbed and screamed so violently that he was dragged out by the carabinieri. Whilst the feelings of the people were thus wrought up, the father besought and commanded them to deliver up all books they possessed which were mentioned in the Index, tambourines and things used in dancing the saltarella, and all weapons,--and all through that afternoon they kept pouring in by hundreds, men bringing their books, and women their tambourines, and many their knives and pistols, which were piled up into a great heap in the courtyard of the Santo Spirito and set on fire. It was a huge bonfire, which burnt quite late into the evening, and whilst it burnt, more people were perpetually arriving and throwing on their books and other things, just as in the old days of Florence under the influence of Savonarola.

"Last Thursday at the Caravità, the doors of the church were 'closed at one hour of the day' (_i.e._, after Ave Maria), only men being admitted, and when they were fast, scourges were distributed, the lights all put out, and every one began to scourge both themselves and their neighbours, any one who had ventured to remain in the church without using a 'disciplina' being the more vigorously scourged by the others. At such times all is soon a scene of the wildest confusion, and shrieks and groans are heard on all sides. Some poor creatures try to escape by clinging to the pillars of the galleries, others fly screaming through the church with their scourgers pursuing them like demons.

"They say that the reason why St. Joseph's day was so much kept this year is that the Pope is preparing the public mind to receive a dogma of the Immaculate Conception of St. Joseph--perhaps to be promulgated next year: St. Anne is to be reserved to another time."

"_April 1, Easter Sunday._--Passion Week has been very odd and interesting, but not reverent. It was very curious to see how--as Mrs. Goldsmid says, 'the Church always anticipates,' so that the Saviour, personified by the Sacrament, is laid in the tomb long before the hour of His death, and Thursday, not Saturday, is the day upon which all the faithful go about to visit the sepulchres.[322] My sister decorated that of S. Claudio with flowers and her great worked carpet. The Mother recalls John Bunyan's confession of faith--

'Blest cross, blest sepulchre,--blest rather He, The Man that there was put to shame for me.'

"We went to the Benediction in the Piazza S. Pietro--a glorious blue sky and burning sunshine, and the vast crowd making the whole scene very grand, especially at the moment when the Pope stretched out his arms, and, hovering over the crimson balcony like a great white albatross, gave his blessing to all the world. Surely nothing is finer than that wonderful voice of Pius IX., which, without ever losing its tone of indescribable solemnity, yet vibrates to the farthest corners of the immense piazza.

"Afterwards we went to S. Andrea della Valle to see the 'sepolcro;' but far more worth seeing was a single ray of light streaming in through a narrow slit in one of the dark blinds, and making a glistening pool of gold upon the black pavement.

"On Good Friday, after the English service, we went to Santo Spirito in Borgo, where, after waiting an hour and a half, seeing nothing but the curiously ragged congregation, we found that the 'Tre Ore' was to be preached in broad Trasteverino, of which we could not understand a word. We went into St. Peter's, which was in a state of widowhood, no bells, no clock, no holy water, no ornaments on any of the altars, no lamps burning at the shrine, and all because the Sacrament was no longer present. We went again in the afternoon, when the whole building was thickly crowded from end to end. I stood upon the ledge of one of the pillars and watched two graceful ladies and a gentlemanly-looking man in black buffetted in the crowd below me: they were the King and Queen of Naples and the Countess Trani. Some zealous Bourbonists kissed their hands at risk of being trampled on.

"To-day St. Peter's and all the other churches have come to life again: the Sacrament has been restored: the bells have rung: and fire and water have been re-blessed for the year to come. All private Catholic houses too have had their blessings. A priest and a boy surprised Lea by coming in here and blessing everything, and she found them asperging the Mother's bed with holy water, all at the desire of our fellowlodger, Mr. Monteith of Carstairs, whom Louisa described as dropping gold pieces into their water-vessel. At Palazzo Parisani, as well as below us, a 'colazione' was set out, with a great cake, eggs, &c., and after being blessed was given away.

"Antonelli has just been made a priest, in the vague idea, I suppose, that it might some day be convenient to raise him to the papacy.

"Mr. Perry Williams, the artist, thought the old woman who cleans out his studio looked dreadfully ill the other day, and said, 'You look very bad, what on earth is the matter with you?'--'Cosa vuole, Signore, ho avuto una digestione tutta la notte.'"

"_April 3._--This morning poor little Miss Joyce lay in a chapelle ardente at S. Andrea delle Fratte, and all the English Catholics, with the Borgheses and Dorias, who were her cousins, attended the requiem mass. She was only alarmingly ill for thirty-six hours, of brain fever, caused by a dose of twenty-five grains of quinine after typhus, which she had brought back from Naples. She had been the gayest of the gay all the season, and a week ago was acting in tableaux and singing at Mrs. Cholmondeley's party. It is said that at least one young lady is killed every year by being taken to Naples when she is overdone by the balls and excitement here.

"My sister gave a small party yesterday evening. The Duke and Duchess Sora were there. The Duchess has a wonderfully charming expression. K., a young Tractarian, was introduced to her. She said afterwards, 'J'ai pensé longtemps qu'il était catholique, et puis j'ai tourné, j'ai tourné, j'ai tourné, et voilà qu'il était protestant!'"

"_April 8._--On Thursday, at the Monteiths', I met Lady Herries, Mrs. Montgomery, my sister, and many other Catholics. They were all assembled before dinner to receive Cardinal de Reisach, a very striking-looking old man, whose white hair and brilliant scarlet robes made a splendid effect of colour.

"On Friday, at 2 P.M., I joined the Feildens to go to the Palazzo Farnese. Mrs. F. wore a high grey dress without a bonnet: little Helen was in black velvet, with all her pretty hair flowing over her shoulders; Mr. Robartes, Mr. Feilden, and I wore evening dress. The whole way in the carriage my companions declared they felt more terrified than if they were going to a dentist, as bad as if they were going to have their legs taken off. We drove into the courtyard of the Farnese and to the foot of the staircase. Several other people were just coming down. We were shown through one long gallery after another to a small salon furnished with green, where the Duca della Regina and an old lady received us. Soon the door was opened at the side, and in very distinct tones the Duke mentioned our names. Just within the door stood Francis II. He looked grave and sad, and his forehead seemed to work convulsively at moments; still I thought him handsome. The Queen sat on a sofa at the other side of the room. She was in a plain black mourning dress with some black lace in her hair (for Queen Marie Amelie, her husband's aunt). The room was a boudoir, hung round with family portraits. There was a beautiful miniature of the Queen on the table near which I sat.

"I went up at once to the King and made as if I would kiss his hand, but he shook mine warmly and made me sit in an arm-chair between him and the Queen. Mrs. Feilden in the meantime had gone direct to the Queen, who seated her by her side upon the sofa, and taking little Helen on her lap, kissed her tenderly, and said she remembered her, having often seen her before. I said, 'Ce petit enfant a tant de dévouement pour sa Majesté la Reine, qu'elle va tous les jours à la Place d'Espagne seulement pour avoir le bonheur de voir sa Majesté quand elle passe.' The Queen's eyes filled with tears, and she hid her face in Helen's hair, which she kissed and stroked, saying, 'Oh mon cher enfant, mon cher petit enfant!'

"The King then said something about the great rains we had suffered. I mentioned the prophecy if it rained on the 4th April--

'Quattro di brillante, Quaranta di durante,'

and the King said that in Naples there was a superstition of the same kind as that of our St. Swithin in England.

"As another set of people came in, we rose to go, kissing the Queen's hand, except Helen, who kissed her face. The King[323] shook hands and walked with us to the door, expressing a wish that we should return to Rome; and replying, when I said how much my mother benefited by the climate here, that Madame my mother ought always to make the most of whatever climate suited her health and remain in it. In the anteroom the Duca della Regina and the old lady were waiting to see Helen again.

"To-day Mrs. Ramsay asked me the difference between the Italian words _mezzo-caldo_ and _semi-freddo_. One would think they were the same, but _mezzo-caldo_ is hot punch and _semi-freddo_ is cold cream!"

I have put in these extracts from my journal, as they describe a state of things at Rome which seemed then as if it would last for ever, but which is utterly swept away now and rapidly passing into oblivion. The English society was as frivolous then as it is now, but much more primitive. It was the custom in those days, when any one gave a larger party than usual, to ask Mrs. Miller, a respectable old Anglo-German baker who lived in the Via della Croce, to make tea and manage the refreshments, and one knew whether the party that one was invited to was going to be a large or small one by looking to see if there was "To meet Mrs. Miller" in the corner.

Our days were for the most part spent in drawing, and many were the delightful hours we passed in the Villa Negroni, which has now entirely disappeared, in spite of its endless historic associations, or in the desolate and beautiful _vigne_ of the Esquiline, which have also been destroyed since the Sardinian occupation of Rome. Indeed, those who visit Rome now that it is a very squalid modern city, can have no idea of the wealth and glory of picturesqueness which adorned its every corner before 1870, or of how romantic were the passing figures--the crimson Cardinals; the venerable generals of religious orders with their flowing white beards; the endless monks and nuns; the pifferari with their pipes; the peasant women from Cori and Arpino and Subiaco, with their great gold earrings, coral necklaces, and snowy head-dresses; the contadini in their sheep-skins and goat-skins; the handsome stalwart Guardia Nobile in splendid tight-fitting uniforms; and above all, the grand figure and beneficent face of Pius IX. so frequently passing, seated in his glass coach, in his snow-white robes, with the stoic self-estimation of the Popes, but with his own kindly smile and his fingers constantly raised in benediction.

The heat was very great before we left Rome in April. We went first to Narni, where we stayed several days in a very primitive lodging, with the smallest possible amount of furniture, and nothing to eat except cold goat and rosemary, but in a glorious situation on the terrace which overlooks the deep rift of the Nar, clothed everywhere with ilex, box, and arbutus; and we spent long hours drawing the two grand old bridges--Roman and Mediæval--which stride across the river, even Lea being stimulated by the intense beauty to a trial of her artistic powers, and making a very creditable performance of the two grand cypresses on the slope of the hill, which have disappeared under the Sardinian rule.

We spent a happy day at Spoleto, with its splendid ilex woods. Here my friends Kilcoursie[326] and Pearson joined us, and I went with them to spend the morning at the Temple of the Clitumnus, and returned just too late for the train we had intended to leave by. It is very characteristic of the slowness of those early days of Italian railways, that though we did not order our carriage till some time after the train was gone, we reached Perugia by road, in spite of the steep hill to be climbed, before the train which we were to have taken arrived on the railway. This evening's drive (April 23) is one of the Italian journeys I look back upon with greatest pleasure, the going onwards through the rich plain of vines and almonds and olives, and all the blaze of spring tulips and gladioli, and the stopping to buy the splendid oranges from the piles which lay in the little market under the old cathedral of Foligno; then seeing the sky turn opal behind the hills, and deepen in colour through a conflagration of amber, and orange, and crimson, of which the luminousness was never lost, though everything else disappeared into one dense shadow, and the great cypresses on the mountain edges were only dark spires engraven upon the sky. How many such evenings have we spent, ever moving onwards at that stately smooth _vetturino_ pace--and silent, Mother absorbed in her heavenly, I in my earthly contemplations; dear Lea, tired by her long day, often sleeping opposite to us against the hand-bags.

We spent several days in Florence in 1866, when the streets were already placarded with such advertisements as 'I Menzogne di Genese, o l'Impostatura di Mosé'--typical of the change of Government. I paid several visits to the Comtesse d'Usedom (the Olympia Malcolm of my childhood), who was more extraordinary than ever. When I went to luncheon with her in the Villa Capponi, she talked incessantly for three hours, chiefly of spirits.

"I believe in them," she said, "of course I do. Why, haven't I _heard_ them?" (with a perfect yell). "Why, I've seen a child whom we knew most intimately who was perfectly possessed by spirits--evil spirits, I mean. There is nothing efficacious against _that_ kind but prayer and the crucifix. Why, the poor little thing used to struggle for hours. It used to describe the devils it saw. They were of different kinds. Sometimes it would say, 'Oh, it's only one of the innocent blackies,' and then it would shriek when it thought it saw a red devil come. It was the red devils that did all the mischief. All the best physicians were called in, but they all said the case was quite beyond them. The possession sometimes came on twice in a day. It would end by the child gasping a great sigh, as if at that moment the evil spirit went out of it, and then quite calmly it would open its eyes, wonder where it was, and remember nothing of what had happened. The doctors urged that the child should not be kept quiet, but taken abroad and amused, and mama writes me word now that it is quite well.

"I never saw the ghosts at Rugen," said Madame von Usedom, "but there is one of Usedom's houses there which I have refused ever to go to again, for I have heard them there often. The lady in the room with me saw them too--she saw three white sisters pulling her husband out of his grave.

"We have an old lady in our family, a relation of Usedom's, who has that wonderful power of second-sight.... When we left you at Bamberg (in 1853), we went to Berlin, and there we saw Usedom's relation, who told me that I was going to have a son. She 'saw it,' she said. _Saw it!_ why, she saw it as plain as daylight: I was going to have a son: Usedom's first wife had brought him none, and I was going to give him one.

"When I left Berlin, we went to Rugen, but I was to return to Berlin, where my son was to be born. Well, about three weeks before my confinement was expected, the old lady sent for a relation of Usedom's, who was in Berlin, and said, 'Have you heard anything of Olympia?'--'Yes,' he said, 'I heard from Usedom yesterday, and she is going on as well as possible, and will be here in a few days.'--'No,' said the old lady, 'she will not, for the child is dead. Yesterday, as I was sitting here, three angels passed through my room with a little child in their arms, and the face of the child was so exactly like Usedom's, that I know that the child is born and that it is in heaven.' And so it was. I had a bad fall in Rugen, which we thought nothing of at the time. I had so much strength and courage that it did not seem to affect me; but a week after my boy was born--dead--killed by that fall, and the image, oh! the very image of Usedom."

From Florence we went to Bellagio on the Lago di Como, and spent a week of glorious weather amid beautiful flowers with nightingales singing in the trees all day and night. Many of our Roman friends joined us, and we passed pleasant days together in the garden walks and in short excursions to the neighbouring villas. When we left Bellagio, the two Misses Hawker, often our companions in Rome, accompanied us. We ascended the Splugen from Chiavenna in pitch darkness, till, about 4 A.M., the diligence entered upon the snow cuttings, and we proceeded for some time between walls of snow, often fifteen feet high. At last we stopped altogether, and in a spot where there was no refuge whatever from the ferocious ice-laden wind. Meantime sledges were prepared, being small open carts without wheels, which just held two persons each: my mother and I were in the second, Lea and an Italian in the third, and the Hawkers in the fourth: we had no man with our sledge. The sledges started in procession, the horses stumbling over the ledges in the snow, from which we bounded up and down. At last the path began to wind along the edge of a terrific precipice, where nothing but a slight edging of fresh snow separated one from the abyss. Where this narrow path turned it was truly horrible. Then came a tunnel festooned with long icicles; then a fearful descent down a snow-drift almost perpendicularly over the side of the mountain, the horses sliding on all fours, and the sledges crashing and bounding from one hard piece of snow to another; all this while the wind blew furiously, and the other sledges behind seemed constantly coming upon us. Certainly I never remember anything more appalling.

At the bottom of the drift was another diligence, but the Hawkers and I walked on to Splugen.

We spent an interesting afternoon at Brugg, and drew at Königsfelden, where the Emperor Albert's tomb is left deserted and neglected in a stable, and Queen Agnes's room remains highly picturesque, with many relics of her. In the evening we had a lovely walk through the forest to Hapsburg, where we saw a splendid sunset from the hill of the old castle. With a glimpse at Freiburg-im-Breisgau, we reached Carlsruhe, with which we were very agreeably surprised. The Schloss Garten is really pretty, with fine trees and fountains: the town is bright and clean; and all around is the forest with its endless pleasant paths. We found dear Madame de Bunsen established with her daughters Frances and Emilia in a nice old-fashioned house, 18 Waldhornstrasse, with all their pictures and treasures around them, the fine bust of Mrs. Waddington in itself giving the room a character. Circling round the aunts were Theodora von Ungern Sternberg's five motherless children, a perpetual life-giving influence to the home. We went with them into the forest and to the _faisanerie_, and picked masses of wild lilies of the valley. In the palace gardens we saw the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, a very handsome couple: she the only daughter of the King of Prussia. At the station also I saw again, and for the last time, the very pleasing Queen Emma of the Sandwich Islands, and presented the Bunsens to her.[329] On the eve of Trinity Sunday we reached home.

_From my_ JOURNAL.

"_July 30, 1866.--Holmhurst._--Another happy summer! How different my grown-up-hood has been to my boyhood: now all sunshine, then all reproach and misery. How strange it is that my dearest mother remembers nothing of those days, _nothing_ of those years of bitter heartache which my uncles' wives cost me. But her present love, her beautiful full heart devotion, are all free-will offering, not sacrifice of atonement. Our little Holmhurst is most lovely and peaceful."

In August we spent a fortnight at the Deanery at Westminster with Arthur and Augusta Stanley, the latter _fit les delices_ of all who came under her influence, and both were most kind in asking every one to meet us that they thought we could be interested to see. To me, however, no one was ever half so interesting as Arthur himself, and his conversation at these small Deanery dinner-parties was most delightful, though, as I have heard another say, and perhaps justly, "it was always versatile rather than accurate, brilliant rather than profound." From London we went to look after our humble friends at Alton, where all the villagers welcomed my mother with a most touching wealth of evergreen love, and where forty old people came to supper by her invitation in the barn. The owls hissed overhead in the oak rafters; the feast was lighted by candles stuck into empty ginger-beer bottles, and in quavering voices they all drank the mother's health. She made them a sweet little speech, praying that all those who were there might meet with her at the great supper of the Lamb. I had much interest at Alton in finding out those particulars which form the account of the place in "Memorials of a Quiet Life." The interest of the people, utterly unspoilt by "civilisation," can hardly be described, or the simplicity of their faith. Speaking of her long troubles and illness, "Betty Smith" said, "I ha' been sorely tried, but it be a' to help I on to thick there place." William Pontyn said, "It just be a comfort to I to know that God Almighty's always at whom: _He_ never goes out on a visit." Their use of fine words is very comical. Old Pontyn said, "My son-in-law need na treat I ill, for I niver gied un no _publication_ for it." He thanked mother for her "respectable gift," and said, "I do thank God ivery morning and ivery night, that I do; and thank un as I may, I niver can thank un enough, He be so awful good to I." He said the noise the threshing-machine made when out of order was "fierly ridic'lous," and that he was "fierly gallered (frightened) at it"--that he was "obliged to _flagellate_ the ducks to get them out of the pond."

I drove with Mr. Pile to see the remains of Wolf Hall, on the edge of Savernake Forest, where Henry VIII. married Jane Seymour. The house, once of immense size, is nearly destroyed. The roof of the banqueting-hall is now the roof of a barn. The beautiful fragment of building remaining was once the laundry. Hard by, at Burbage, is "Jane Seymour's Pool."

After leaving Alton, as if making the round of my mother's old homes, we went to Buntingsdale, Hodnet, and Stoke. While at the former, I remember the Tayleurs being full of the promptitude of old Mrs. Massie (whose son Edward married our cousin Sophy Mytton). When above ninety she had been taken to see the church of Northwich, where some one pointed out to her a gravestone with the epitaph--

"Some have children, and some have none; Here lies the mother of twenty-one."

Old Mrs. Massie drew herself up to her full height and at once made this impromptu--

"Some have many, and some have few; Here _stands_ the mother of twenty-two."

And what she said was true.

My mother turned south from Shropshire, and I went to Lyme, near Disley, the fine old house of the Leghs, whose then head, W. T. Legh, had married Emily Wodehouse, one of the earliest friends of my childhood. It is a most stately old house, standing high in a very wild park, one of the only three places where wild cattle are not extinct. The story of the place is curious.

"Old Colonel Legh of Lyme left his property first to his son Tom, but though Tom Legh was twice married, he had no sons, so it came to the father of the present possessor. Tom's first wife had been the celebrated Miss Turner. Her father was a Manchester manufacturer, who had bought the property of Shrigley, near Lyme, of which his only daughter was the heiress. She was carried off from school by a conspiracy between three brothers named Gibbon Wakefield and a Miss Davis, daughter of a very respectable master of the Grammar School at Macclesfield. While at school, Miss Turner received a letter from home which mentioned casually that her family had changed their butler. Two days after, a person purporting to be the new butler came to the school, and sent in a letter to say that Mr. Turner was dangerously ill, and that he was sent to fetch his daughter, who was to return home at once. In the greatest hurry, Miss Turner was got ready and sent off. When they had gone some way, the carriage stopped, and a young man got in, who said that he had been sent to break to her the news that her father's illness was a fiction; that they did not wish to spread the truth by letting the governess know, but that the fact was that Mr. Turner had got into some terrible money difficulties and was completely ruined, and he begged that his daughter would proceed at once to meet him in Scotland, whither he was obliged to go to evade his creditors. During the journey the young man who was sent to chaperon Miss Turner made himself most agreeable. At last they reached Berwick, and then at the inn, going out of the room, he returned with a letter and said that he was almost afraid to tell her its contents, but that it was sent by her father's command, and that he only implored her to forgive him for obeying her father's orders. It was a most urgent letter from her father, saying that it rested with her to extricate him from his difficulties, which she could do by consenting to marry the bearer. The man was handsome and pleasant, and the marriage seemed no great trial to the girl, who was under fifteen. Immediately after marriage she was taken to Paris.

"Meantime all the gentlemen in the county rallied round Mr. Turner, and he contrived somehow to get his daughter away whilst she was in Paris. Suspicion had been first excited in the mind of the governess because letters for Miss Turner continued to arrive at the school from Shrigley, and she gave the alarm. There was a great trial, at which all the gentlemen in Cheshire accompanied Mr. Turner when he appeared leading his daughter. The marriage was pronounced null and void, and one of the Gibbon Wakefields was imprisoned at Lancaster for five years, the others for two. It was the utmost punishment that could be given for misdemeanour, and nothing more could be proved. The Gibbon Wakefields had thought that, rather than expose his daughter to three days in a witness box, Mr. Turner would consent to a regular marriage, and they had relied upon that. Miss Turner was afterwards married to Mr. Legh, in the hope of uniting two fine properties, but as she had no son, her daughter, Mrs. Lowther, is now the mistress of Shrigley."

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Lyme Hall, August 29, 1866._--I have been with Mrs. Legh to Bramhall, the fine old house of the Davenports, near Stockport, with the haunted room of Lady Dorothy Davenport and no end of relics. Out of the billiard-room opens the parish church, in the same style as the house, with prayer-books chained to the seats. We returned by Marple, the wonderfully curious old house of Bradshaw the regicide."

"_Sept. 1._--To-day we had a charming drive over the hills, the green glens of pasture-land, the steeps, and the tossing burns recalling those of Westmoreland. I went with Mrs. Legh into one of the cottages and admired the blue wash of the room, 'Oh, _you_ like it, do ye?' said the mistress of the house; 'I don't--so that's difference of opinions.' The whole ceiling was hung with different kinds of herbs, 'for we're our own doctors, ye see, and it saves the physic bills.'

"The four children--Sybil and Mob (Mabel), Tom and Gilbert Legh, are delightful, and Sybil quite lovely. It is a pleasure to hear the little feet come scampering down the oak staircase, as the four rush down to the library to ask for a story at seven o'clock--'A nice horrible story, all about robbers and murders: now do tell us a really horrible one.'"

"_Thornycroft Hall, Cheshire, Sept._ 3.--The family here are much depressed by the reappearance of the cattle plague. In the last attack sixty-eight cows died, and so rapidly that men had to be up all night burying them by lantern-light in one great grave in the park.... How curious the remains of French expressions are as used by the cottagers here. They speak of _carafes_ of water, and say they should not oss (oser) to do a thing. The other day one of the Birtles tenants was being examined as a witness at the Manchester assizes. 'You told me so and so, didn't you?' said the lawyer. And the man replied, 'I tell't ye nowt o' the kind, ye powther-headed monkey; ask the coompany now if I did.'"

From Thornycroft I went to stay (only three miles off) at Birtles, the charming, comfortable home of the Hibberts--very old friends of all our family. Mrs. Hibbert, _née_ Caroline Cholmondeley, was very intimate with my aunt Mrs. Stanley, and a most interesting and agreeable person; and I always found a visit to Birtles a most admirable discipline, as my great ignorance was so much discovered and commented upon, that it was always a stimulus to further exertion. It was on this occasion that Mrs. Hibbert told me a very remarkable story. It had been told her by Mrs. Gaskell the authoress, who said that she felt so greatly the uncertainty of life, that she wished a story which might possibly be of consequence, and which had been intrusted to her, to remain with some one who was certain to record it accurately. Three weeks afterwards, sitting by the fire with her daughter, Mrs. Gaskell died suddenly in her arm-chair. Mrs. Hibbert, in her turn, wished to share her trust with some one, and she selected me.

In my childhood I remember well the Misses T., who were great friends of my aunt Mrs. Stanley, and very clever agreeable old ladies. "Many years before," as Mrs. Gaskell described to Mrs. Hibbert, "they had had the care of a young cousin, a girl whose beauty and cleverness were a great delight to them. But when she was very young, indeed in the first year of her 'coming out,' she engaged herself to marry a Major Alcock. In a worldly point of view the marriage was all that could be desired. Major Alcock was a man of fortune with a fine place in Leicestershire: he was a good man, of high character, and likely to make an excellent husband. Still it was a disappointment--an almost unspoken disappointment--to her friends that the young lady should marry so soon--'she was so young,' they thought; she had had so few opportunities of judging persons; they had looked forward to having her so much longer with them,' &c.

"When Mrs. Alcock went to her new home in Leicestershire, it was a great comfort to the Misses T. and others who cared for her that some old friends of the family would be her nearest neighbours, and could keep them cognisant of how she was going on. For some time the letters of these friends described Mrs. Alcock as radiantly, perfectly happy. Mrs. Alcock's own letters also gave glowing descriptions of her home, of the kindness of her husband, of her own perfect felicity. But after a time a change came over the letters on both sides. The neighbours described Mrs. Alcock as sad and pale, and constantly silent and preoccupied, and in the letters of Mrs. Alcock herself there was a reserve and want of all her former cheerfulness, which aroused great uneasiness.

"The Misses T. went to see Mrs. Alcock, and found her terribly, awfully changed--haggard, worn, preoccupied, with an expression of fixed melancholy in her eyes. Both to them and to the doctors who were called in to her she said that the cause of her suffering was that, waking or sleeping, she seemed to see before her a face, the face of a man whom she exactly described, and that she was sure that some dreadful misfortune was about to befall her from the owner of that face. Waking, she seemed to see it, or, if she fell asleep, she dreamt of it. The doctors said that it was a case of what is known as phantasmagoria; that the fact was that in her unmarried state Mrs. Alcock had not only had every indulgence and consideration, but that even the ordinary rubs of practical life had been warded off from her; and that having been suddenly transplanted into being the head of a large establishment in Leicestershire, with quantities of visitors coming and going throughout the hunting season, had been too much for a very peculiar and nervous temperament, and that over-fatigue and unwonted excitement had settled into this peculiar form of delusion. She must have perfect rest, they said, and her mind would soon recover its usual tone.

"This was acted upon. The house in Leicestershire was shut up, and Major and Mrs. Alcock went abroad for the summer. The remedy completely answered. Mrs. Alcock forgot all about the face, slept well, enjoyed herself extremely and became perfectly healthy in body and mind. So well was she, that it was thought a pity to run the risk of bringing her back to Leicestershire just before the hunting season, the busiest time there, and it was decided to establish her cure by taking her to pass the winter at Rome.

"One of the oldest established hotels in Rome is the Hôtel d'Angleterre in the Bocca di Leone. It was to it that travellers generally went first when they arrived at Rome in the old _vetturino_ days; and there, by the fountain near the hotel door which plays into a sarcophagus under the shadow of two old pepper-trees, idle contadini used to collect in old days to see the foreigners arrive. So I remember it in the happy old days, and so it was on the evening on which the heavily laden carriage of the Alcock family rolled into the Bocca di Leone and stopped at the door of the Hôtel d'Angleterre. Major Alcock got out, and Mrs. Alcock got out, but, as she was descending the steps of the carriage, she happened to glance round at the group under the pepper-trees, and she uttered a piercing shriek, fell down upon the ground, and was carried unconscious into the hotel.

"When Mrs. Alcock came to herself, she affirmed that amongst the group near the door of the hotel she had recognised the owner of the face which had so long tormented her, and she was certain that some dreadful misfortune was about to overwhelm her. Doctors, summoned in haste, when informed of her previous condition, declared that the same results were owing to the same causes. Major Alcock, who disliked bad hotels, had insisted on posting straight through to Rome from Perugia; there had been difficulties about horses, altercations with the post-boys--in fact, 'the delusion of Mrs. Alcock was owing, as before, to over-fatigue and excitement: she must have perfect rest, and she would soon recover.'

"So it proved. Quiet and rest soon restored Mrs. Alcock, and she was soon able to enjoy going about quietly and entering into the interests of Rome. It was decided that she should be saved all possible fatigue, even the slight one of Roman housekeeping: so the family remained at the Hôtel d'Angleterre. Towards January, however, Mrs. Alcock was so well that they sent out some of the numerous letters of introduction which they had brought with them, and, in answer to these, many of the Romans came to call. One day a Roman Marchese was shown upstairs to the Alcocks' room, and another gentleman went up with him. The Marchese thought, 'Another visitor come to call at the same time as myself,' the waiter, having only one name given him, thought, 'The Marchese and his brother, or the Marchese and a friend,' and they were shown in together. As they entered the room, Mrs. Alcock was sitting on the other side of the fire; she jumped up, looked suddenly behind the Marchese at his companion, again uttered a fearful scream, and again fell down insensible. Both gentlemen backed out of the room, and the Marchese said in a well-bred way that as the Signora was suddenly taken ill, he should hope for another opportunity of seeing her. The other gentleman went out at the same time.

"Again medical assistance was summoned, and again the same cause was ascribed to Mrs. Alcock's illness: this time she was said to be over-fatigued by sight-seeing. Again quiet and rest seemed to restore her.

"It was the spring of 1848--the year of the Louis Philippe revolution. Major Alcock had a younger sister to whom he was sole guardian, and who was at school in Paris, and he told his wife that, in the troubled state of political affairs, he could not reconcile it to his conscience to leave her there unprotected; he must go and take her away. Mrs. Alcock begged that, if he went, she might go with him, but naturally he said that was impossible--there might be bloodshed going on--there might be barricades to get over--there might be endless difficulties in getting out of Paris; at any rate, there would be a hurried and exciting journey, which would be sure to bring back her malady: no, she had friends at Rome,--she must stay quietly there at the hotel till he came back. Mrs. Alcock, with the greatest excitement, entreated, implored her husband upon her knees that she might go with him; but Major Alcock thought this very excitement was the more reason for leaving her behind, and he went without her.

"As all know, the Louis Philippe revolution was a very slight affair. The English had no difficulty in getting out of Paris, and in a fortnight Major Alcock was back in Rome, bringing his sister with him. When he arrived, Mrs. Alcock was gone. She was never, never heard of again. There was no trace of her whatever. All that ever was known of Mrs. Alcock was that, on the day of her disappearance, some people who knew her were walking in front of S. John Lateran, and saw a carriage driving very rapidly towards the Porta S. Giovanni Laterano, and in it sat Mrs. Alcock crying and wringing her hands as if her heart would break, and by her side there sat a strange man, with the face she had so often described."

I have my own theories as to the explanation of this strange story of Mrs. Alcock, but as they are evolved entirely from my own imagination, I will not mention them here.

From Cheshire I went to North Wales to pay a visit to our cousinhood at Bodryddan, which had been the home of my grandmother's only brother, the Dean of St. Asaph. The place has been spoilt since, but was very charming in those days. Under an old clock-tower one entered upon a handsome drive with an avenue of fine elms, on the right of which a lawn, with magnificent firs, oaks, and cedars, swept away to the hills. At the end rose the stately old red brick house, half covered with magnolias, myrtles, and buddlea, with blazing beds of scarlet and yellow flowers lighting up its base. Through an oak hall hung with armour a fine staircase led to the library--an immense room with two deep recesses, entirely furnished with black oak from Copenhagen, and adorned with valuable enamels collected at Lisbon. The place had belonged to the Conwys, and that family ended in three sisters, Lady Stapleton, Mrs. Cotton, and Mrs. Yonge: they had equal shares. Mrs. Cotton bought up Lady Stapleton's share, and left it with her own to the two daughters of her sister Mrs. Yonge, of whom the elder married my great-uncle, Dean Shipley, and was the mother of William and Charles Shipley and of the three female first cousins (Penelope, Mrs. Pelham Warren; Emily, Mrs. Heber; and Anna Maria, Mrs. Dashwood) who played so large a part in the early history of my father and his brothers, and who are frequently mentioned in the first volume of these memoirs.

When Dean Shipley married, he removed to his wife's house of Bodryddan. Miss Yonge lived with them, and after her sister's death the Dean was most anxious to marry her, trying to obtain an Act of Parliament for the purpose. For some years their aunt, Lady Stapleton, also continued to hold a life-interest in the property. Of this lady there is a curious portrait at Bodryddan. She is represented with her two children and a little Moor, for whom her own little boy had conceived the most passionate attachment, and from whom he could never bear to be separated. One night, after this little Moor was grown up, Lady Stapleton, returning very late from a ball, went to bed, leaving all her diamonds lying upon the table. Being awakened by a noise in the room, she saw the Moor come in with a large knife in his hand, and begin gathering up her jewels. Never losing her presence of mind, she raised herself up in bed, and, fixing her eyes upon him, exclaimed in a thrilling tone of reproach, "Pompey, is that you?" This she did three times, and the third time the Moor, covering his face with his hands, rushed out of the room. Nothing was heard of him till many years afterwards, when the chaplain of a Devonshire gaol wrote to Lady Stapleton that one of his prisoners, under sentence of death for murder, was most anxious to see her. She was unable to go, but heard afterwards that it was Pompey, who said that on the night he entered her room he had intended to kill her, but that when she spoke, such a sense of his ingratitude overwhelmed him, that he was unable to do it.

As an ecclesiastical dignitary, Dean Shipley would certainly be called to account in our days. He was devoted to hunting and shooting, and used to go up for weeks together to a little public-house in the hills above Bodryddan, where he gave himself up entirely to the society of his horses and dogs. He had led a very fast life before he took orders, and he had a natural daughter by a Mrs. Hamilton, who became the second wife of our grandfather; but after his ordination there was no further stain upon his character. As a father he was exceedingly severe. He never permitted his daughters to sit down in his presence, and he never allowed two of them to be in the room with him at once, because he could not endure the additional talking caused by their speaking to one another. His daughter Anna Maria had become engaged to Captain Dashwood, a very handsome young officer, but before the time came at which he was to claim her hand, he was completely paralysed, crippled, and almost imbecile. Then she flung herself upon her knees, imploring her father with tears not to insist upon her marriage with him; but the Dean sternly refused to relent, saying she had given her word, and must keep to it.

She nursed Captain Dashwood indefatigably till he died, and then she came back to Bodryddan, and lived there with her aunt Mrs. Yonge, finding it dreadfully dull, for she was a brilliant talker and adored society. At last she went abroad with her aunt Louisa Shipley, and at Corfu she met Sir Thomas Maitland, who gave her magnificent diamonds, and asked her to marry him. But she insisted on coming home to ask her father's consent, at which the Dean was quite furious. "Why could you not marry him at once?"--and indeed, before she could get back to her lover, he died!

After the death of Mrs. Yonge, Mrs. Dashwood lived at Cheltenham, a rich and clever widow, and had many proposals. To the disgust of her family, she insisted upon accepting Colonel Jones, who had been a neighbour at Bodryddan, and was celebrated for his fearfully violent temper. The day before the wedding it was nearly all off, because, when he came to look at her luggage, he insisted on her having only one box, and stamped all her things down into it, spoiling all her new dresses. He made her go with him for a wedding tour all over Scotland in a pony-carriage, without a maid, and she hated it; but in a year he died.

Then she insisted on marrying the Rev. G. Chetwode, who had had one wife before and had two afterwards--an old beau, who used to comb his hair with a leaden comb to efface the grey. On her death he inherited all she had--diamonds, £2000 a year, all the fine pictures left her by Mr. Jones, and all those Landor had collected for her in Italy.

But to return to Dean Shipley. To Mrs. Rowley, who was the mistress of Bodryddan when I was there, the Dean had been the kindest of grandfathers, and she had no recollection of him which was not associated with the most unlimited indulgence. The Dean was much interested in the management of his estate, but he insisted that every detail should pass through his own hands. For instance, while he was absent in London, a number of curious images and carvings in alabaster were discovered under the pavement at Bodryddan: news was immediately sent to him, but he desired that everything should be covered up, and remain till he came home. On his return, he put off the examination from time to time, till, on his death, the place was forgotten, and now no one is able to discover it.

Mrs. Rowley was the beautiful Charlotte, only daughter of Colonel William Shipley, and had led an adventurous life, distinguishing herself by her bravery and heroism during the plague while she was in the East, and on various other occasions. By her marriage with Colonel Rowley, second son of the first Lord Langford, she had three children,--Shipley Conwy, the present owner of Bodryddan; Gwynydd, who has married twice; and Efah, who, after her mother's death, made a happy marriage with Captain Somerset.

In her early married life, Mrs. Rowley had lived much in Berkeley Square with her mother-in-law, old Lady Langford, who was the original of Lady Kew in "The Newcomes," and many pitched battles they had, in which the daughter-in-law generally came off victorious. Lady Langford had been very beautiful, clever, and had had _une vie très orageuse_. She had much excuse, however. She had only once seen her cousin, Lord Langford, when he came to visit her grandmother, and the next day the old lady told her she was to marry him. "Very well, grandmama, but when?"--"I never in my life heard such an impertinent question," said the grandmother; "what business is it of yours _when_ you are to marry him? You will marry him when I tell you. However, whenever you hear me order six horses to the carriage, you may know that you are going to be married." And so it was.

At the time I was at Bodryddan, the most devoted and affectionate deference was shown by Mrs. Rowley to every word, movement, or wish of her only brother, Colonel Shipley Conwy. He looked still young, but was quite helpless from paralysis. Mrs. Rowley sat by him and fed him like a child. It was one mouthful for her brother, the next for herself. When dinner was over, a servant came in and wrung his arms and legs, as you would pull bell-ropes, to prevent the joints from stiffening (a process repeated several times in the evening), and then carried him out. But with all this, Colonel Shipley Conwy--always patient--was very bright and pleasant, and Mrs. Rowley, who said that she owed everything to my father and his interest in her education, was most cordial in welcoming me. I never saw either of these cousins again. They spent the next two winters at the Cape, and both died a few years afterwards.

A little later, I went to stay at Dalton Hall in Lancashire, to visit Mrs. Hornby, a cousin of my Aunt Penrhyn, and a very sweet and charming old lady, who never failed to be loved by all who came within her influence. She told me many old family stories, amongst others how--

"The late Lord Derby (the 13th Earl) was very fond of natural history even as a boy. One night he dreamt most vividly of a rare nest in the ivy on the wall, and that he was most anxious to get it, but it was impossible. In the morning, the nest was on his dressing-table, and it could only have got there by his opening the window in his sleep and climbing the wall to it in that state.

"Another instance of his sleep-walking relates that he had a passion, as a little boy, for sliding down the banisters, but it was strictly forbidden. One night his tutor had been sitting up late reading in the hall, when he saw one of the bedroom doors open, and a little boy come out in his night-shirt and slide down the banisters. This he did two or three times, and when the tutor made some little noise, he ran upstairs and disappeared into his bedroom. The tutor followed, but the little boy was fast asleep in bed."

Apropos of sleep-walking, Mr. Bagot (husband of Mrs. Hornby's daughter Lucy) told me a story he had just seen in the _Times_:--

"A large pat of butter was lately on the breakfast table of a family. When it was divided, a gold watch and chain were found in the midst of it. The maid who was waiting gave a shriek, and first rushed off to her room, then, coming back, declared it was hers. The family were much surprised, but what she said turned out to be true. She had dreamt that she was going to be robbed of her watch and chain, and that the only way of hiding them would be to wrap them up in a pat of butter, and she had done it in her sleep."

A sister-in-law of Mrs. Hornby--a Mrs. Bayley--was staying at Dalton when I was there. She told me--first hand--a story of which I have heard many distorted versions. I give it in her words:--

"My sister, Mrs. Hamilton (_née_ Armstrong), was one night going to bed, when she saw a man's foot project from under the bed. She knelt down then and there by the bedside and prayed for the wicked people who were going about--for the _known_ wicked person especially--that they might be converted. When she concluded, the man came from under the bed and said, 'I have heard your prayer, ma'am, and with all my heart I say Amen to it;' and he did her no harm and went away. She heard from him years afterwards, and he was a changed man from that day."

Apropos of the growth of a story by exaggeration, Mrs. Bayley said:--

"The first person said, 'Poor Mrs. Richards was so ill that what she threw up was almost like a black crow.' The second said, 'Poor Mrs. Richards was so ill: it was the most dreadful thing, she actually threw up a black crow.' The third said, 'Poor Mrs. Richards has the most dreadful malady: it is almost too terrible to speak of, but she has already thrown up ... three black crows.'"

Mrs. Bayley was a very "religious" person, but she never went to church; she thought it wrong. She called herself an "unattached Christian," and said that people only ought to go to church for praise, but to do their confessions at home. When I left Dalton, she presented me with a little book, which she begged me not to read till I was quite away. It was called "Do you belong to the Hellfire Club?" It was not an allegorical little book, but really and seriously asked the question, saying that, though not generally known, such a club really existed, where the most frightful mysteries were enacted, and that it was just within the bounds of possibility that I might secretly belong to it, and if so, &c., &c. A similar little book was once thrust into my hand by a lady at the top of St. James's Street.

On the 29th of October 1866 we left England for Cannes, stopping on the way at Villefranche, that we might visit Ars, for the sake of its venerable Curé.

_To_ MY SISTER.

"_Nov. 1866._--It was a pretty and peculiar drive to Ars: first wooded lanes, then high open country, from whence you descend abruptly upon the village, which, with its picturesque old church, and the handsome wooden one behind it, quite fills the little hollow in the hills. The village itself is almost made up of hotels for the pilgrims, but is picturesque at this season, with masses of golden vine falling over all the high walls. We left the carriage at the foot of the church steps, and ascended through a little square crowded with beggars, as in the time of the Curé.[330] The old church is exceedingly interesting. In the middle of the floor is the grave of the Curé, once surrounded by a balustrade hung with immortelles, which are now in the room where he died. At the sides are all the little chapels he built at the different crises of his life, that of S. Philomene being quite filled with crutches, left by lame persons who have gone away cured. Beyond the old church opens out the handsome but less interesting modern building erected by the Empress and the bishops, with a grand baldacchino on red granite pillars, and on the altar a beautiful bas-relief of the Curé carried to heaven by angels. In the old church a missionary was giving the pilgrims (who kept flocking in the whole time) a very beautiful and simple exposition on the life of Christ as a loving Saviour, quite carrying on the teaching of the Curé.

"At half-past twelve a Sister of Charity came to show the Curé's room. It is railed off, because the pilgrims would have carried everything away, as they have almost undermined the thick walls in their eagerness to possess themselves of the bits of stone and plaster; but you see the narrow bed, the poor broken floor, his chair, his table, his pewter spoon and earthenware pot,--the picture which was defiled by the Demon,--the door at which 'the Grappin' knocked,--the narrow staircase from which he shouted 'Mangeur de truffes,'--the still poorer room downstairs where the beloved Curé lay when all his people passed by to see him in his last sleep,--the little court shaded by ancient elder-trees in which he gave his incessant charities,--and close by the little house of his servant Catherine. She herself is the sweetest old woman, seeming to live, in her primitive life, upon the gleanings and the teaching of the past. She sate on a low stool at Mother's feet, and talked in the most touching way of her dear Curé. When Mother said something about the crowds that came to him, she said, 'I have always heard that when the dear Saviour was on earth, He was so sweet and loving, that people liked to be near Him, and I suppose that now when men are sweet and loving, and so a little like the dear Saviour, people like to be near them too.' In a small chapel of the school he founded they showed some blood of the Curé in a bottle--'_encore coulant_.' Many other people we saw who talked of him--'Comme il était gai, toujours gai,' &c. The whole place seemed cut out of the world, in an atmosphere of peace and prayer, like a little heaven: no wonder Roman Catholics like to go into 'Retreat' there."

We stayed afterwards at Arles, and made the excursion to S. Remy, one of the most exquisitely beautiful places I have ever seen, where Roman remains, grand in form and of the most splendid orange colouring, rise close to the delicate Alpines.

At Cannes we were most fortunate in finding a house exactly suited to our needs--a primitive bastide, approached by a long pergola of vines, on the way to the Croix des Gardes, quite high up in woods of myrtle and pine upon the mountain-side.[331] It was far out of the town and dreadfully desolate at night, but in the daytime there were exquisite views through the woods of the sea and mountains, and a charming terraced garden of oranges and cassia--the vegetation quite tropical. Close to the turn into our pergola was a little shrine of S. François, which gave a name to our cottage, and which the peasants, passing to their work in the forests, daily presented with fresh flowers. Delightful walks led beyond us into the hilly pine woods with a soil of glistening mica, and, if one penetrated far enough, one came out upon the grand but well-concealed precipices of rock known as the Rochers de Bilheres. Just below us lived Lord Mount-Edgecumbe, the "Valletort" of my Harrow days, with his sweet invalid wife, and their three little girls, with the little Valletort of this time, were a perpetual pleasure to my mother in her morning walk to the Croix des Gardes. Old Madame Bœuf, our landlady, used to come up every morning in her large flapping Provençal hat to work with her women amongst the cassia: the sunshine seemed almost ceaseless, and all winter we used to sit with open windows and hear our maid Marguerite carolling her strange patois ballads at her work.

On the other side of Cannes, at the Hôtel de Provence, we had a large group of friends, Lady Verulam and her sons; Lord and Lady Suffolk and their two daughters; and the Dowager Lady Morley with her son and daughter. With the latter I became very intimate, and joined them in many long and delightful excursions to remote villages and to the unspeakably grand scenery above the Var. Lady Suffolk too became a dear and much honoured friend.

A still greater pleasure was the neighbourhood, in a small house by the torrent at the foot of our hill, of the dear old Lady Grey of our Nice days, and her niece Miss G. Des Vœux. I generally dined with them once or twice a week, and constantly accompanied them on delightful drawing excursions, taking our luncheon with us. In the spring I went away with them for several days together to the wild mountains of S. Vallier and S. Cesaire. Lady Grey painted beautifully, though she only began to be an artist when she was quite an old woman. She always went out sketching with thirty-nine articles, which one servant called over at the door, another answering "Here" for each, to secure that nothing should be left behind.

Beneath us, at the Hôtel Bellevue, were Lady Jocelyn and her children, with Lord and Lady Vernon and Mr. and Lady Louisa Wells, whom we saw frequently; also three admirable Scotch sisters, Mrs. Douglas, Miss Kennedy, and Mrs. Tootal. Hither also came for two months our dear friend Miss Wright ("Aunt Sophy"), and she was a constant pleasure, dropping in daily at tea-time, and always the most sympathising of human beings both in joy and sorrow.

Altogether, none of our winters was so rich in pleasant society as this one at Cannes, and we had nothing to trouble us till the spring, when Lea was taken very seriously ill from the bite either of scorpion or tarantula, and, while she was at the worst and unable to move, my mother became alarmingly ill too with a fever. I was up with them through every night at this time; and it was an odd life in the little desolate bastide, as it was long impossible to procure help. At length we got a Sœur de Charité--a pretty creature in a most picturesque nun's dress, but efficient for very little except the manufacture and consumption of convent soup, made with milk, tapioca, and pepper.

Still, for the most part, my mother had not been so well or so perfectly happy for years as in our little hermitage amid the juniper and rosemary. It was just what she most enjoyed, the walks all within her compass--perfect country, invariably dry and healthy, perpetual warmth in which to sit out, and endless subjects for her sketch-book. Lea, rejoiced to be rid for some months of her tiresome husband, found plenty of occupation in her kitchen and in attending to the poultry which she bought and reared; while I was engrossed with my drawings, of which I sold enough to pay our rent very satisfactorily, and with my "Lives of the Popes," a work on which I spent an immense amount of time, but which is still unfinished in MS., and likely to remain so. My mother greatly appreciated the church at Cannes, and we liked the clergyman, Mr. Rolfe, and his wife. His sermons were capital. I do not often attend to sermons, but I remember an excellent one on Zacharias praying for vengeance, and Stephen for mercy on his murderers, as respectively illustrating the principles of the Old and New Testament--Justice and Mercy.

I dined once or twice, to meet Mr. Panizzi[334] of the British Museum, at the house of a quaint old Mr. Kerr, who died soon afterwards. It was him of whom it used to be said that he had been "trying to make himself disagreeable for sixty years and had not quite succeeded." When he was eighty he told me that there were three things he had never had: he had never had a watch, he had never had a key, and he had never had an account.

I frequently saw the famous old Lord Brougham, who bore no trace then of his "flashes of oratory," of his "thunder and lightning speeches," but was the most disagreeable, selfish, cantankerous, violent old man who ever lived. He used to swear by the hour together at his sister-in-law, Mrs. William Brougham,[335] who lived with him, and bore his ill-treatment with consummate patience. He would curse her in the most horrible language before all her guests, and this not for anything she had done, but merely to vent his spite and ill-humour. Though a proper carriage was always provided for him, he would insist upon driving about Cannes daily in the most disreputable old fly he could procure, with the hope that people would say he was neglected by his family. Yet he preferred the William Broughams to his other relations, and entirely concealing that he had other brothers, procured the reversion of his title to his youngest brother, William, much to the annoyance of the Queen when she found it out. Lord Brougham was repulsive in appearance and excessively dirty in his habits. He had always been so. Mr. Kerr remembered seeing him at the Beefsteak Club, when the Prince Regent was President, and there was the utmost license of manners. One day when he came in, the Prince Regent roared out, "How dare you come in here, Brougham, with those dirty hands?"--and he insisted on the waiters bringing soap and water and having his hands washed before all the company. In early life, if anything aggravated him at dinner, he would throw his napkin in the face of his guests, and he did things quite as insulting to the close of his life at Cannes, where he had a peculiar prestige, as having, through his "Villa Louise Eleanore,"[336] first brought the place into fashion, which led to the extension of a humble fishing village into miles upon miles of villas and hotels.

_To_ MISS WRIGHT (after she had gone on to Rome).

"_Maison S. François, Cannes, Feb. 2, 1867._--On Tuesday we made an immense excursion of thirteen hours to the 'Seven villages of the Var.' The party consisted of Lord Morley and Lady Katherine, Lord Suffolk and Lady Victoria, Lord Henry Percy, Lord Mount-Edgecumbe, and myself. We left by the 7.40 train and had carriages to meet us at Cagnes. These took us as far as the grand Sinai-like granite peaks of S. Janet, and thence we walked. The whole terrace is most grand for seven miles above the tremendous purple gorge of the Var, overhung here and there by splendid Aleppo pines or old gnarled oaks; and as we reached just the finest point of all, where the huge castle of Carrozza stands out on a great granite crag, the mist curtain drew up and displayed range on range of snow mountains, many of them close by--really a finer scene than any single view I remembered in Switzerland. The whole of our party, hitherto inclined to grumble, were almost petrified by the intensity of the splendour.

"M. Victor Cousin's sudden death at dinner has been a great shock to the Cannes world. It was just at that time that our attention was so sadly occupied by the illness and death of dear old Sir Adam Hay. The Hays gave a picnic at Vallauris, to which I was invited, and Sir Adam caught a cold there, which excited no attention at the time, as he had never been ill in his life before. Four days afterwards Addie Hay took Miss Hawker and me in their carriage to Napoule, where we spent a pleasant day in drawing. When we came back, his father was most alarmingly ill, and absent children had been already telegraphed for. All that week I went constantly to Villa Escarras, and shared with the family their alternations of hope and fear, but at the end of a week dear Sir Adam died, and all the family went away immediately, as he was to be buried at Peebles."

During the latter part of our stay at Cannes, the society of Madame Goldschmidt (Jenny Lind) was a great pleasure to my mother, and in her great kindness she came often to sing to her. We went with the Goldschmidts to Antibes one most glorious February day, when Madame G. was quite glowing with delight in all the beauties around and gratitude to their Giver. "Oh, how good we ought to be--_how_ good with all this before our eyes! it is a country to die in." She spoke much of the sweetness of the Southern character, which she believed to be partly due to the climate and scenery. She talked of an old man, bowed with rheumatism, who worked in her garden. That morning she had asked him, "Comment ça va t'il? Comment va votre santé?"--"Oh, la volonté de Dieu!" he had replied--"la volonté de Dieu!" In his pretty Provençal his very murmur was a thanksgiving for what God sent. She spoke of the dislike English had to foreigners, but that the only point in which she envied the English was their noble women. In Sweden she said they might _become_ as noble, but that hitherto the character of Swedish women had been oppressed by the bondage in which they were kept by the laws--that they had always been kept under guardians, and could have neither will nor property of their own, unless they married, even when they were eighty. She said that she was the first Swedish woman who had gained her liberty, and that she had obtained it by applying direct to the king, who emancipated her because of all she had done for Sweden. Now the law was changed, and women were emancipated when they were five-and-twenty.

Then Madame Goldschmidt talked of the _faithfulness_ of the Southern vegetation. In England she said to the leaves, "Oh, you poor leaves! you are so thin and miserable. However, it does not signify, for you have only to last three or four months; but these beautiful thick foreign leaves, with them it is quite different, for they have got to be beautiful always."

We drove up the road leading to the lighthouse, and then walked up the steep rocky path carrying two baskets of luncheon, which we ate under the shadow of a wall looking down upon the glorious view. Madame Goldschmidt had been very anxious all the way about preserving a cream-tart which she had brought. "Voilà le grand moment," she exclaimed as it was uncovered. When some one spoke of her enthusiasm, she said, "Oh, it is delightful to soar, but one is soon brought back again to the cheese and bread and butter of life." When Lady Suffolk asked how she first knew she had a voice, she said, "Oh, it did fly into me!"

At first sight Madame Goldschmidt might be called "plain," though her smile is most beautiful and quite illuminates her features; but how true of her is an observation I met with in a book by the Abbé Monnin, "Le sourire ne se raconte pas." "She has no face; it is all _countenance_," might be said of her, as Miss Edgeworth said of Lady Wellington.

It was already excessively hot before we left Cannes on the 29th of April. After another day at the grand ruins of Montmajour near Arles, we diverged from Lyons to Le Puy, a place too little known and most extraordinary, with its grand and fantastic rocks of basalt crowned by the most picturesque of buildings. Five days were happily spent in drawing at Le Puy and Espailly, and in an excursion to the charming neighbouring campagne of the old landlord and landlady of the hotel where we were staying. Then my mother assented to my wish of taking a carriage through the forests of Velay and Auvergne to the grand desolate monastery of the Chaise Dieu, where many of the Popes lived during their exile in France, and where Clement VI. lies aloft on a grand tomb in the centre of the superb choir, which is so picturesquely hung with old tapestries. Our rooms at the hotel here cost half a franc apiece. Joining the railway again at Brioude, we went to the Baths of Royat, then a very primitive and always a very lovely place, with its torrent tumbling through the walnut woods, its gorge closed by a grand old Templars' church, and its view over rich upland vineyards to the town and cathedral of Clermont. On the way home we visited the great deserted abbey of Souvigny near Moulins, and bought the beautiful broken statuette which is one of the principal ornaments of Holmhurst.

* * * * *

In June I went to Oxford to stay with my friend Henry Hood, and was charmed to make acquaintance with a young Oxford so different from the young Oxford of my days, that it seemed altogether another race--so much more cordial and amusing, though certainly very Bohemian. During this visit I cemented an acquaintance with Claude Delaval Cobham, then reading for the orders for which he soon felt himself unsuited. In some respects, he is one of the cleverest men I have met, especially from his unusual linguistic acquirements, combined with extreme correctness. I have frequently received kindness from him since and valuable advice and help in literary work, and though I have sometimes conceitedly rebelled against his opinion at the time, I have never failed to find that he was in the right.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Oxford, June 1, 1867._--We went this morning in two pony-carriages to Cuddesden, where Claude Cobham now is, and spent the afternoon in walking and sitting in the Bishop's shady and weedy garden.

"The other day, coming out of this garden, the Bishop heard two navvies on the other side of the road talking. 'I zay, Bill, ain't yon a Beeshop?' said one. 'Yees,' said Bill. 'Then oi'll have some fun oot o' him.' So he crossed the road and said, 'I zay, zur, be you a Beeshop?'--'Yes, at your service,' said the Bishop. 'Then can you tell us which is the way to heaven?'--'Certainly,' said the Bishop, not the least discomposed; 'turn to the right and go straight on.'"

"_June 3._--I enjoy being at Oxford most intensely, and Hood is kindness itself. A wet day cleared into a lovely evening for the boat-race, which was a beautiful sight, the green of the water-meadows in such rich fulness, and the crowd upon the barges and walks so bright and gay."

"_6 Bury Street, June 12_.--The first persons I met in London were Arthur and Augusta Stanley, who took me into their carriage, and with them to the Park, whence we walked through Kensington Gardens, and very pretty they looked. Arthur described his first sight of the Queen on that spot, and Augusta was full of Princess Mary's cleverness in being confined in the same house on the same day on which the Queen was born.

"Then I went to Lady Wenlock, a most charming visit to that sweet old lady, now much feebler, but so animated and lively, and her life one long thanksgiving that her paralysis has left all her powers unimpaired. She told me many old stories. I also called on Lady Lothian, who is greatly disturbed at Madame de Trafford's power over my sister. She says she quite considers her 'possessed,' and that she ought to be exorcised. To-day I dined with Lady Grey. She told me that as Charlie Grey was crossing to America, his fellow-passengers were frightfully sea-sick, especially a man opposite. At last an American sitting by him said, 'I guess, stranger, if that man goes on much longer, he'll bring up his boots.'"

"_June 15._--I have been sitting long with Lady Eastlake. She spoke of how the great grief of her widowhood had taught her to sift the dross from letters of condolence. She says that she lives upon hope; prayer is given her in the meanwhile as a sustenance, not a cure, for if it were a cure, one might be tempted to leave off praying: still 'one could not live without it; it is like port wine to a sick man.'

"She says she finds a great support in the letters of Sir Charles to his mother--his most precious gift to her. She said touchingly how she knew that even to her he had a slight reserve, but that to his mother he poured out his whole soul. In those letters she had learnt how, when he was absent, his mother hungered after him, and perhaps, in all those blessed years when she had him, his mother was hungering after him. In giving him up, she felt she gave him up to her: he was with her now, and from those letters she knew what their communion must be. 'I know he is with her now, for "I have seen my mother, I have seen my mother," he twice rapturously exclaimed when he was dying.' How touching and how consoling are those visions on this side of the portal. Old Mr. Harford, when he was dying, continually asked his wife if she did not hear the music. 'Oh, it is so wonderful,' he said, 'bands upon bands.' She did not understand it then but she knows now.

"'It was beautifully ordered,' said Lady Eastlake, 'that my "History of Our Lord" was finished first: I could not have done it now. And through it I learnt to know his library. My darling was like a boy jumping up and down to find the references I wanted, and, if possible, through the book I learnt to know him better.'

"She spoke of his wonderful diligence. When he was a boy he wrote to his mother, 'London will be illuminated to-morrow, I shall draw all night.'"

* * * * *

In July I spent a few days with the Alfords at the Deanery of Canterbury, which was always most enjoyable, the Dean so brimming with liveliness and information of every kind. In the delightful garden grows the old historic mulberry-tree,[342] about which it used to be said that the Deans of Canterbury sit under the mulberry till they turn purple, because those Deans were so frequently elevated to the episcopal bench, and bishops formerly, though it is rare now, always wore purple coats. I dined out with the Dean several times. I remember at one of the parties a son of Canon Blakesley saying to me--what I have often thought of since--"I find much the best way of getting on in society is never to be able to understand why anybody is to be disapproved of." Both the Dean's daughters were married now, and he cordially welcomed my companionship, always treating me as an intimate friend or relation. No one could be more sympathetic, for he had always the rare power of condemning the fault, but not the action of it.[343] I insert a few snatches from his table-talk, though they give but a faint idea of the man.

"We have been studying Butler's Analogy ever since we came back from Rome, for we've had eight different butlers in the time. The last butler said to me, 'It's not you who govern the Deanery, and it's not Mrs. Alford, but it is the upper housemaid.'"

"Archbishop Harcourt was very fond of hunting, _so_ fond that he was very near refusing the archbishopric because he thought if he accepted he should have to give it up. He consulted a friend, who said that he must take counsel with others. 'Of course I should never join the meet,' said the Archbishop, 'but you know I might fall in with the hounds by accident.' After some time the friend came back and said that on the whole the party considered that the Archbishop might hunt, provided he did not shout."

"Archbishop Manners Sutton had a wonderfully ready wit. One day a blustering vulgar man came up to him and said, 'I believe, Archbishop, that I am a relation of yours: my name is Sutton.' The Archbishop quietly replied, 'Yes, but you want the Manners.'"

"When some one was abusing our font the other day, I could not help saying that, for a font, I thought renaissance peculiarly appropriate."

"I met Lady Mounteagle the other day: you know she was the sister--

'Of the woman tawny and tough[344] Who married the Master rude and rough Who lived in the house that Hope built.'

You know Hope gothicised the Master's Lodge at Trinity. At the Whewells' 'perpendiculars,' as their large parties were called, no one was allowed to sit down: if any one ventured to do so, a servant came and requested him to move on."

"When Alice was a little girl, I was explaining the Apostles' Creed to her. When we came to the point of our Saviour descending into hell she said, 'Oh, that is where the devil is, isn't it?'--'Yes.'--'Then why didn't the devil run at him and tear him all to pieces?'"

In August we spent some time at the Deanery of Westminster, where Arthur and Augusta Stanley were always hospitality itself, and, with more than the usual kindness of hosts, always urged, and almost insisted, on our inviting our own friends to dinner and luncheon, making us, in fact, use their house and fortune as our own.

_From my_ JOURNAL.

"_July 28, 1867._--In the evening, from the gallery of the Deanery which overhangs the abbey, Mother, Mrs. Hall, and I looked down upon the last service. Luther's hymn was sung and the Hallelujah chorus, and trumpets played: it was very grand indeed. The Bishop of Chester and the Wordsworths dined. Yesterday Arthur showed thirty working-men over the Abbey. He pointed out where Peel was buried. One of them received it very gravely in silence, and then, after several minutes, said, 'Well, it is very extraordinary. I've lived all my life in the next county, and I never knew that before: I always thought he was buried at Drayton. Now that's what I call _information_.'"

"_August 3._--It has a weird effect at night to look down upon the Abbey, and see the solitary watchman walking along the desolate aisles and the long trail of light from the lantern he carries flickering on each monument and death's-head in turn. Hugo Percy, who was here the other evening, asked him about his nights in the Abbey. 'The ghosts have been very cross lately,' he said. 'Palmerston was the last who came, but Mr. Cobden has not come yet.'

"We have been to Buckingham Palace to see the rooms which were arranged for the Sultan, which are dull and handsome. The chief fact I derived from the housekeeper was that the Sultan never 'goes to bed' and never lies down--in fact, he cannot, for a third of the imperial bed at either end is taken up by a huge bolster, in the middle of which he _sits_ all night, and reclines either way in turn. There was a picture of the late Sultan in the room, and of Frederick, Prince of Wales, sent from Windsor for the occasion. One room was entirely hung with portraits of French kings and their families."

From London I went to visit Bishop Jeune,[345] who was most wonderfully kind to me, really giving up his whole time to me whilst I was with him, and pouring forth such stores of information as I had not received since the days of Dr. Hawtrey; and it was a great pleasure to feel, to be quite sure--which one so seldom is--that he liked my visit as much as I liked being with him.

_From my_ JOURNAL.

"_August 10, 1867._--On the 8th I went to Peterborough, where I have had a most agreeable visit at the Palace. When I arrived at half-past seven, the family were all gone to dine with Dr. James, an old Canon in the Close, whither I followed them. He was a charming old-fashioned gentleman, most delightful to see.

"In the morning the Bishop, wearing his surplice and hood, read prayers at a desk in the crypted hall of the Palace. Afterwards we walked in the garden. I spoke of there being no monument in the Cathedral to Catherine of Arragon. 'It is owing to that very circumstance,' said the Bishop, 'that you are here to-day. If Catherine of Arragon had had a tomb, I should never have been Bishop of Peterborough. When people reproached Henry VIII. with having erected no monument to his first wife, he said, "The Abbey of Peterborough shall be a cathedral to her monument," and he instituted the bishopric; the last abbot was the first bishop.' As we passed the lavatory of the old convent, the Bishop said that a touching description was still extant of its dedication and of the number of cardinals, bishops, and priests who were present. 'How few of them,' he said, 'would have believed that not only their buildings, which they believed would last for ever, could become an indefinite ruin, but that their Church, whose foundations they believed to be even more eternally rooted in the soil, should be cast out to make way for another Church, which is already tottering on its base and divided against itself.' He said he 'firmly believed that the ends both of the Church and monarchy were close at hand, that the power of government was even now in the hands of a few individuals, who were in their turn in the hands of a few Irish priests.'

"While passing through the garden in returning to the Palace, the Bishop showed me a white fig-tree growing out of the old wall of the refectory and abundantly bearing fruit. 'This,' he said, 'I believe to be the white fig-tree which is nearest to the Pole.' Passing a fine mulberry-tree he said, 'We owe that to James I., as he was so excessively anxious to promote the manufacture of silk, that he recommended to every one the cultivation of the mulberry-tree, but especially to the clergy, and those of the clergy planted it who wished to stand well with him. Therefore it is to be found in the neighbourhood of many of our cathedrals.'

"Afterwards the Bishop showed the old chronicle of the Abbey, which he had had splendidly restored at Oxford. He read me some Latin verses which had evidently been inserted by one of the monks descriptive of his amours. 'Yet,' said the Bishop, 'these sins of the monk were probably only sins of the imagination, quite as vivid as real ones. You know,' he added, 'there are far more acted than enacted sins, and the former are really far the more corrupting of the two.'

"In the afternoon we drove to Croyland. The Bishop talked the whole way. I spoke of his patronage, and envied the power it gave him; he bitterly lamented it. He said, 'I have in my gift three canonries, two archdeaconries, and sixty livings, and if any of these fell vacant to-morrow, I should be at my wit's end whom to appoint. On the average, two livings fall vacant every year, and then comes my time of trouble. A bishop who would appoint the best man would be most unpopular in his diocese, for every one of his clergy would be offended at not being considered the best.' With regard to the canonries, I suggested that he could find no difficulty, as he might always choose men who were employed in some great literary work. The Bishop allowed that this was exactly what he desired, but that no such men were to be found in his diocese. There were many very respectable clergy, but none more especially distinguished than the rest. He said that when he was appointed bishop, Dr. Vaughan advised him never to become what he called 'a carpet-bag bishop,' but that this, in fact, was just what he had become: that when he was going to preach in a village and sleep in a clergyman's house, he did not like to trouble them by taking a man-servant, and that he often arrived carrying his own carpet-bag. That consequently he often never had his clothes brushed, or even his boots blacked, but that he brushed his boots with his clothes-brush as well as he could, as he was afraid of ringing his bell for fear of mortifying his hosts by showing that he had not already got all that he wanted. He said, however, that the work of a bishop was vastly overrated, that there was nothing which did not come within the easy powers of one man, yet that a proposition had already been made to exclude the bishops from the House of Lords, to reduce their incomes to £1500, and to double their number. He said that he believed all Conservatives had better at once emigrate to New Zealand, and that he wondered the Queen did not invest in foreign funds; that it was utterly impossible the monarchy could last much longer; that the end would be hastened by the debts of the two Princes.

"When we reached Croyland we went into the Abbey Church, where the Bishop pointed out the baptistery used for immersion, and several curious epitaphs, one as late as 1729 asking prayers for the dead. The drive was most curious over the fens, which are now drained, but of which the soil is so light that they are obliged to marl it all over to prevent its being blown away. The abbey itself is most picturesque. It was built by St. Guthlac, a courtier, who retired hither in a boat, but who came from no desire of seclusion and prayer, but merely because he longed for the celebrity which must accrue to him as a hermit. His sister, Pega, became the foundress of Peakirk. The Bishop spoke much of the sublimity of the conception under which these great abbeys were founded--'One God, one Pope as God's interpreter, one Church, the servant of that Pope, unity in everything.' He spoke of the Jesuit influence as used to combat that of the Gallican Church, and he said that there were now only three Gallican bishops.

"Coming home, the Bishop talked about Wales, and asked if I had ever compared the military tactics of the Romans with regard to Wales with those of Edward I. 'The Romans,' he said, 'built the castle of Lincoln for the repression of the savage people of the fens, and with the same idea built a line of fortresses between England and Wales for the repression of the Welsh; but the consummate skill of Edward I. saw a better plan than this, and he built a line of fortresses along the coast, which could be provisioned from the sea, so that if the Welsh made a raid into England, he could bring them back by falling upon their wives and children.

"In the evening the Bishop read aloud French poetry, a ballad of the early part of the seventeenth century, on which Goldsmith had evidently founded his 'Madame Blaise,' the powerful 'Malbrook,' and many old hymns; also a beautiful hymn of Adolph Monod on the Passion of Christ, which he said showed too much philosophy. He described how he had preached in Westminster Abbey in French during the great Exhibition, and the immense power of declamation that French gave; that he had apostrophised those lying in the tombs, the dead kings round about him, as he never should have ventured to do in English. He spoke of the transitions of his life, that his childhood had been passed amongst the rocks of Guernsey, and that he had loved rocks and wild rolling seas ever since. That as a child he was never allowed to speak French, as only the lower orders spoke it, but that he went to the French college of S. Servan, and there he learnt it. Then came his Oxford life, after which, thinking that he was never likely to have any opening for making his way in England, he went off to Canada in despair, intending to become a settler in the backwoods. The rough life, however, soon disgusted him, and in a year he returned to England, where he became fellow and tutor of his college. Thence he was appointed Dean of Jersey, and ruled there over the petty community. Then he was made Master of Pembroke (where he remained twenty years), Vice-Chancellor, Dean of Lincoln, and Bishop of Peterborough. He spoke of the honour of Oxford men and the consistency of the Hebdomadal Board, compared with others he had to deal with. In Jersey, as a matter of course, all his subordinates voted with their Dean. When he came to Oxford he expected the same subserviency, and looked on all his colleagues with suspicion, but he was soon convinced of their uprightness. He said touchingly that, when near the grave, on looking back, it all seemed much the same--the same pettiness of feeling, the same party strife, only he did not worry himself about it; they were all in the hands of One who died for all alike; that now there were changes in everything--only One was unchanged.

"Speaking of the morality of Italy, he said that his friend Mr. Hamilton, head of a clan, had met 'Sandy,' one of his men, travelling between Rome and Naples. After expressing his surprise at seeing him there, he asked what he thought of Rome and Naples. 'Wal,' said Sandy, 'I jist think that if naething happens to Rome and Naples, Sodom and Gomorrah were very unjustly dealt with.'

"'I met Gioberti in Italy,' said the Bishop, 'and asked him about the Pope. "C'est une femme vertueuse," he replied, "mais c'est toujours une femme."'

"The Bishop said that, when younger, he wished to have written a series of Bampton Lectures (and began them) on the History of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. He intended to begin with a description of three scenes--first, the supper in the upper chamber at Jerusalem; then the Pope officiating at the altar of the Lateran; then a simple Scotch meeting in the Highlands--and he would proceed to describe what had led to the differences between these; how the Agape was arranged as a point at which all divisions and dissensions should be laid aside; how it was set aside after sixty years by the Roman Emperor; then of the gradual growth of the Eucharist, till oaths were taken on the wafer, and deeds were sealed with it to give them a solemnity; and till, finally, it came to be regarded as the actual body of Christ; then of the gradual rise of all the different theories, the impanation, the invination of the Saviour.

"This morning the Bishop asked if I knew what was the difference between the entrance of a field in France and England. 'In England,' he said, 'it is a _gate_ to let people in; in France a _barrière_ to keep people out: from this you might proceed to theorise that England was a country where sheep might stray, but France not: England a country for milk and flesh, France for corn and wine.'

"The Bishop said he knew our Roman acquaintance Mr. Goldsmid well. 'I met Nat Goldsmid in Paris about the time of the Immaculate Conception affair, and I said to him, "Goldsmid, now why has your Church done this? for you know you all worshipped the Virgin as much as you could before, and what more can you do for her now?"--"Yes," he said, "that is quite true; we all worshipped the Virgin before, but we have done this as a stepping-stone to declaring the infallibility of the Pope. A Pope who could take upon himself to declare _such_ a dogma as this must be infallible!"'

From Peterborough I went to stay at Lincoln with Mrs. Nicholas Bacon, mother of the premier baronet, a very pretty old lady, who reminded me of the old lady in "David Copperfield," finding her chief occupation in rapping at her window and keeping the Minster green opposite free from intruding children, and unable to leave home for any time because then they would get beyond her--"so sacrilegious," she told them, it was to play there. Going with her to dine with that Mrs. Ellison of Sugbrooke who has bequeathed a fine collection of pictures to the nation, I met the very oldest party of people I ever saw in my life, and as one octogenarian tottered in after another, felt more amazed, till Mrs. Ellison laughingly explained that, as Mrs. Bacon had written that she was going to bring "a very old friend" of hers, she had supposed it would be agreeable to him to meet as many as possible of his contemporaries! Afterwards, when staying with Mr. Clements at Gainsborough, I saw Stowe, which, as an old cathedral, was the predecessor of Lincoln--very curious and interesting. Thence I went to Doncaster, arriving in time to help Kate[346] with a great tea-party to her old women. She asked one old woman how she was. "Well," she said, "I be middling _upwards_, but I be very bad _downwards_. I be troubled with such bad legs; downright dangerous legs they be." After visits at Durham, Cullercoats, and Ridley Hall, I went to stay with the Dixon-Brownes at Unthank in Northumberland.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Unthank, August 27, 1867._--I spent yesterday morning in my Northern home (at Ridley), which is in perfect beauty now--the Allen water, full and clear, rushing in tiny waterfalls among the mossy rocks, all the ferns in full luxuriance, and the rich heather in bloom, hanging over the crags and edging the walks. At six o'clock the flag was raised which stops all trains at the bottom of the garden, and I came the wee journey of seven miles down the lovely Tyne valley to Haltwhistle. Unthank is the old home of Bishop Ridley, the house to which he wrote his last letter before the stake, addressed to 'my deare sister of Unthanke,'--and it is a beautiful spot in a green hollow, close under the purple slopes of the grand moor called Plenmellor. The house is modern, but has an old tower, and a garden splendid in gorgeous colouring sweeps up the hill behind it. To-day we went up through a romantic gill called 'The Heavenly Hole' to Plenmellor Tarn, a lovely blue lake in the midst of the heather-clad hills. We spoke of it to an old man there, 'Aye,' he said, 'it's jist a drap of water left by the Fluid, and niver dried up.'"

"_Bonnyrigg, August 30._--This shooting lodge of Sir Edward Blackett is quite in the uninhabited moorlands, but has lovely views of a lake backed by craggy blue hills--just what my sweet mother would delight to sketch. Lady Blackett is very clever and agreeable.[347] We have been a fatiguing walk through the heather to 'the Queen's Crag,' supposed to be Guinevere turned into stone."

"_Bamborough Castle, Sept. 7._--I always long especially for my dearest mother in this grand old castle, to me perhaps the most delightful place in the world, its wild scenery more congenial than even beautiful Italy itself. Nothing too can be kinder than the dear old cousins.[348] ... It was almost dark when we drove up the links and under all the old gateways and through the rock entrance: the light burning in Mrs. Liddell's recess in the court-room. And it was pleasant to emerge from the damp into the brightly lighted tapestried chamber with the dinner set out. All yesterday the minute-gun was booming through the fog to warn ships off the rocks--such a strangely solemn sound.

"Mr. Liddell was speaking to an old Northumbrian here about the organ yesterday, and he said, 'I canna bear the loike o' that kist o' whistles a buzzin' in my ears.'"

"_The Lodge, North Berwick, Sept. 9._--I find my sweet hostess, Mrs. Dalzel,[349] little altered, except perhaps more entirely heavenly than before in all her thoughts and words. 'I am very near the last station now,' she says, 'and then I shall be at home. I am the last of fifteen, and I can think of them all _there_--my mother, my sisters, one after another, resting upon their Saviour alone, and now with Him for ever!' 'When one is old, the wonderful discoveries, the great works of man only bewilder one and tire one; but the flowers and the unfolding of Nature, all the wonderful works of God, refresh and interest as much as ever: and may not it be because these interests and pleasures are to be immortal, amid the flowers that never fade?'

"Mr. Dalzel does not look a day older, but he sat at dinner with a green baize cloth before him to save his eyes. We dined at five, and another Mrs. Dalzel came, who sang Scottish songs most beautifully in the evening. Mr. Dalzel prayed aloud long extempore prayers, and we dispersed at ten. Before dinner I went to the sands with Mrs. Allen Dalzel,[350] who was very amusing:--

"'The old Dalzel house is at Binns near Linlithgow. The first Dalzel was an attendant of one of the early Kenneths. The king's favourite was taken by his enemies and hanged on a tree. "Who will dare to cut him down?" said the king. "Dalzel," or "I dare," said the attendant, who cut him down with his dagger. Hence came the name, and hence the Dalzels bear a dagger as their crest, with the motto "I dare," and on their arms a man hanging.

"'At Binns there are trees cut in the shape of men hanging. There is also a picture of the "tyrannous Dalzel," who persecuted the Covenanters, and who made a vow at the death of Charles I. that he would never shave again or change his costume. He lived for fifty years after that, but he never cut his beard, and he is represented in his odd suit of chamois leather, with a high-peaked hat and his hair down to his waist.

"'His comrade was Grierson of Lag, whose eye was the most terrible ever seen. Long after the persecution was over, he was told that a servant in the house had a great curiosity to see him. "Let him bring me a glass of wine," said Grierson. The servant brought it in upon a salver. Grierson waited till he came close up, and then, fixing his eye on him, exclaimed, "Are there ony Whigs in Galloway noo?" and the effect was so terrible, that the servant dropped the salver, glass and all, and rushed out of the room.

"'I used to go and teach Betty O'Brien to read when we lived at Seacliffe. Her mother was a clean tidy body, and, though she had not a penny in the world, she was very proud, for she came from the North of Ireland, and looked down upon all who came from the South. I asked her why she did not make friends with her neighbours, and she said, "D'ye think I'd consort wi' the loike o' them, just Connaught folk?" So on this I changed the subject as quick as I could, for I just came from Connaught myself.

"'Her daughter, however, married one of those very Connaught Irish--what she called "the boy O'Flinn," and she would have nothing to do with her afterwards; and she lay in wait for "the boy O'Flinn," and threw a stone at him, which hit him in the chest so badly that he was in bed for a week afterwards. When I heard of this, I went to see her and said, "Well, Betty, you're Irish, and I'm Irish, and I think we just ought to set a good example and show how well Irishwomen can behave." But she soon cut short my little sermon by saying, "They've been telling tales o' me, have they? and it's not off you they keep their tongues neither: they say you're a _Roman_!" I did not want to hear any more, and was going out of the cottage, when she called after me in a fury, "_I_ know what you've been staying so long in Edinburgh for; you just stay here to fast and to pray, and then you go there to faast and drink tay."'"

"_Sept. 10._--I wish for my dearest mother every hour in this sanctuary of peace and loving-kindness, with the sweet presence of Mrs. Dalzel. What she is and says it is quite impossible to give an idea of; but she is truly what Milton describes--

"Insphered In regions mild of calm and air serene, Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call earth."

"Her constant communion with heaven makes all the world to her only a gallery of heavenly pictures, creating a succession of heavenly thoughts, and she has so sweet and gentle a manner of giving these thoughts to others, that all, even those least in unison with her, are equally impressed by them. Most striking of all is her large-heartedness and admiration of all the good people who disagree with her. Her daughter-in-law has quite given up everything else in her devotion to her: it is really Ruth and Naomi over again.

"This afternoon we drove to Tantallon and on to Seacliffe, a most beautiful place on the coast, where Mrs. Dalzel lived formerly. A delightful little walk under a ruined manor-house and through a wood of old buckthorn trees led down to the sea, and a most grand view of Tantallon rising on its red rocks. We walked afterwards to 'Canty Bay,' so called because the Covenanters sang Psalms there when they were being embarked for the Bass.

"'How curious it would be,' Mrs. Dalzel has been saying, 'if all the lines on people's faces had writing on them to say what brought them there. What strange tales they would tell!'

"'Oh, what it is to be at peace! at perfect peace with God! in perfect reliance on one's Saviour! I often think it is like a person who has packed up for a journey. When all his work is finished and all his boxes are packed, he can sit down in the last hour before his departure and rest in peace, for all his preparations are made. So in the last hours of life one may rest in peace, if the work of preparation is already done.'

"'I used to count the future by years: now I only do it by months; perhaps I can only do it by weeks.'

"'My eldest brother lived in a great world. He was very handsome and much admired. As aide-de-camp to Sir Ralph Abercromby, George IV. made him his friend, and many people paid court to him. At last one day he came to my dear mother, who was still living in her great age, and who had found her Saviour some years before, and said to her, "Mother, I feel that my health is failing and that this world is rapidly slipping away from me, and I have no certain hope for the next: what would you advise me to do?" And my mother said to him, "My dear son, I can only advise you to do what I have done myself, take your Bible and read it with prayer upon your knees, and God will send you light." And my brother did so, and God granted him the perfect peace that passeth understanding. He lived many years after that, but his health had failed, and his Bible was his constant companion. When I went to see him, he used to lay his hand on the Book and say, "_This_ is my comforter." A few years before he died, a malady affected one of his legs which obliged him to have the limb amputated. When the operation was about to commence, the doctor who was standing by felt his pulse, and did not find it varied in the least. "General Macmurdo," he said, "you are a hero."--"No," said my brother solemnly, "but I hope I am a Christian." And the doctor said he felt the power of Christianity from that day.'

"'From the shore of another world all my past life seems like a dream.'[351]

"I think if one stayed here long, one would quite feel the necessity of sinning occasionally to avoid the danger of becoming intolerant of petty faults and unsuitablenesses, from living with those so entirely without them."

"_Carstairs, Sept. 18._--This is a large and comfortable house, and Mr. Monteith is busied with various improvements in the grounds. One improvement I should certainly make would be the destruction of a horrible tomb of a former possessor of the place, an atheist relation, with an inscription 'to the Infernal Deities.' No wonder that the avenue leading to the tomb is said to be haunted."

It was during this summer that old Lady Webster died.[352] She had long been a conspicuous figure in our home neighbourhood, and had seemed to possess the secret of eternal youth. In my childhood she reigned like a queen at Battle, but the Websters had several years before been obliged to sell Battle to Lord Harry Vane (afterwards Duke of Cleveland), chiefly because there were five dowager Lady Websters at once, all drawing jointures from the already impoverished property. Of these ladies, three, usually known as "the good Lady Webster," "Grace, Lady Webster," and "the great Lady Webster," lived much at Hastings. When the great Lady Webster died, she left several sons, and it was a subject of much comment at the time that, when her will was opened, she was found to have left nothing to any of them. Her will was very short. She left everything she possessed in the world to her dear and faithful companion Madame Bergeret. It excited many unkind remarks, but those who learnt the real facts always admitted that, in the crowning act of her life, Lady Webster had only acted with that sense of justice and duty which had ever been her characteristic. The story is this:[353]--

Towards the latter part of the last century there lived at an old manorial farm in Brittany a female farmer named Bergeret. Her ancestors had owned the farm, and had cultivated their own land for hundreds of years, and Madame Bergeret herself was well known and highly respected through all the neighbouring country, charitable to her poorer neighbours, frank, kind, and unfailingly hospitable to those in her own rank of life. She lived bounteously, kept an open house, and spent in beneficence and hospitality the ample income which her lands brought her.

One day she was surprised by a visit from her next neighbour, a man named Girard, in her own class of life, whose family had always been known to her own, and who had possessed the neighbouring farm. He told her that he felt she would be shocked to hear that he had long been acting a part in making himself appear much better off than he was; that he had lost a great deal of money in speculation; that all was on the eve of being divulged; that if he could manage to keeps things going till after the next harvest, he might tide over his misfortunes, but that otherwise he must be totally ruined, lose everything he had, and bring his wife and children to destitution; and by the recollection of their old neighbourhood and long intimacy he adjured Madame Bergeret to help him. Madame Bergeret was very sorry--very sorry indeed, but she told him that it was impossible; and it really was. She lived amply up to her income, she had laid nothing by: she was well off, but all she had came from her lands; her income depended upon her harvest; she really had nothing to give to her poor neighbour, and she told him so--told him so with a very heavy heart, and he went away terribly crestfallen and miserable.

When Girard was gone, Madame Bergeret looked round her room, and she saw there a collection of fine old gold plate, such as often forms the source of pride to a Breton yeoman of old family, and descends like a patent of nobility from one generation to another, greatly reverenced and guarded. Madame Bergeret looked at her plate, and she said to herself, "If this was sold, it would produce a very large sum; and ought I, for the sake of mere family pride, to allow an old and honourable family to go to destitution?" And she called her neighbour back, and she gave Girard all her gold plate. The sum for which he was able to sell it helped him through till after the harvest; soon afterwards he found an opportunity of disposing of his Breton lands to very great advantage, and removed to another part of the country. He thanked Madame Bergeret, but he did not seem to realise that she had made any great sacrifice in his behalf; and she, resting satisfied in having done what she believed to be right, expected no more.

Some years afterwards, Madame Bergeret, being an old woman, placed her Breton lands in the hands of an agent, and removed with her two children to Paris. The great French Revolution occurred while she was there, and the Reign of Terror came on, and Madame Bergeret, who belonged to a Royalist family of loyal Brittany, was arrested: she was thrown into the prison of La Force, and she was condemned to death.

The Madame Bergeret I knew in another generation recollected being with her little brother in a room on the Rue St Honoré on the day on which a hundred and twenty persons were to suffer in the Place Louis XV. She saw them pass down the street to execution in twenty-two tumbrils; but when the last tumbril came beneath the window, the friends who were with her in the room drew down the blinds; not, however, before she had recognised her own mother in that tumbril, with all her hair cut off, that the head might come off more easily.

All the way to the place of execution, Madame Bergeret consoled and encouraged her companions, and she assented to their petition that she should suffer last, that she would see them through the dread portal before her. Therefore, when her turn at length came, the ground around the scaffold was one sea of blood, for a hundred and nineteen persons had perished that day. Thus, on descending the steps of the cart, Madame Bergeret slipped and stumbled. This arrested the attention of the deputy who was set to watch the executions. He started, and then rushed forward saying, "This woman has no business here. I know her very well; she is a most honest citoyenne, or, if she is not, I know quite well how to make her so: this woman is not one to be guillotined." It was Girard.

Now Madame Bergeret was quite prepared for death, but the sudden revulsion of her deliverance overcame her and she fainted. Girard carried her away in his arms, and when she came to herself she was in bed in a house in a quiet back-street of Paris, and he was watching over her. He had removed to Lyons, and, with the sudden changes of the time, had risen to be deputy, and being set to watch the executions, had recognised the woman who had saved him. By the help of Girard, and after many hairbreadth escapes, Madame Bergeret reached the coast, and eventually arrived in England. She then made her way to the only person she knew, a lady who had once spent some time in her Breton village, a Mrs. Adamson. Her daughter played with and was brought up with the little Miss Adamson. When Miss Adamson married Sir Godfrey Webster of Battle Abbey, Mademoiselle Bergeret (her mother being dead) went with her and lived at Battle as a sort of companion to Lady Webster and nursery-governess to her boys. For fifty years she never received any salary, and having, through the changes of things in France, inherited something of her mother's Breton property, she twice sacrificed her little all to pay the debts of the Webster family. Therefore it was that, in the close of life, Lady Webster felt that her sons might provide for themselves, but that, having very little to bequeath, the one person she could not leave destitute was "her dear and faithful companion and friend, Madame Bergeret."

Five months before her death, Lady Webster was very full of the terrible deaths which had lately occurred from railway accidents, and, on leaving home, she said to Madame Bergeret, "Here is this paper, and if I should be killed by an accident or not live to come home, you may read it; but at any rate keep it for me, and perhaps, if I come back, some day I may want it again." Lady Webster came back well and did not ask for the paper, and when she died, it was so sudden, a few minutes after talking quite cheerfully to Madame Bergeret, that in the shock she remembered nothing about it, and it was only long afterwards, when they were making a great fuss about there being no will, that she suddenly thought of the paper entrusted to her, and, when it was read, found Lady Webster had left her all she possessed.

Madame Bergeret dying herself about a year afterwards, left everything back to the Webster family. She was a quiet primitive old woman, who used to sit in the background at work in Lady Webster's sitting-room.

After my return home in the autumn of 1867, my mother was terribly ill, so that our journey abroad was a very anxious one to look forward to. I tried, however, to face it quite cheerily. I have read in an American novel somewhere, "It is no use to pack up any worries to take with you; you can always pick up plenty on the way;" and I have always found it true.

_To_ MISS WRIGHT _and_ JOURNAL.

"_Nice, Nov. 17, 1867._--My dear Aunt Sophy will be delighted to see this date. So far all our troubles and anxieties are past, and the sweet Mother certainly not the worse, perhaps rather better for all her fatigues. It is an extraordinary case, to be one day lying in a sort of vision on the portals of another world, the next up and travelling.

"When we reached Paris she was terribly exhausted, then slept for thirty-six hours like a child, almost without waking. At the Embassy we were urged to go on to Rome, all quiet and likely to subside into a dead calm; but so much snow had fallen on Mont Cenis, that in Mother's weak state we could not risk that passage, and were obliged to decide upon coming round by the coast. On Monday we reached Dijon, where twenty-four hours' sleep again revived the Mother. It was fiercely cold, but Tuesday brightened into a glorious winter's day, and I had a most enchanting walk through sunshine and bracing air to Fontaines. It is picturesque French country, a winding road with golden vines and old stone crosses, and a distance of oddly-shaped purple hills. Fontaines itself is a large village, full of mouldering mediæval fragments, stretching up a hillside, which becomes steeper towards the top, and is crowned by a fine old church, a lawn with groups of old walnut-trees, and the remains of the château where St. Bernard was born. Over the entrance is a statue of him, and within, the room of his birth is preserved as a chapel. The view from the churchyard is lovely, and the graves are marked by ancient stone crosses and bordered with flowers. Within are old tombs and inscriptions--'Ce git la très haute et très puissante dame,' &c.

"We came on to Arles by the quick night-train, and stayed there as usual two days and a half--days of glaring white sirocco and no colour, and at Arles we found ourselves at once in Southern heat, panting, without fires and with windows wide open."

"_Pisa, Dec. 1._--We left Nice on the 21st, and slept at Mentone, quite spoilt by building and by cutting down trees. I saw many friends, especially the Comtesse d'Adhemar, who flung her arms round me and kissed me on both cheeks. We spent the middle of the next day at S. Remo and slept at Oneglia. The precipices are truly appalling. I have visions still of the early morning drive from Oneglia along dewy hillsides and amongst hoary olives, and through the narrow gaily painted streets of the little fishing-towns, where the arches meet overhead and the wares set out before the shop-doors brush the carriage as it passes by.

"The second day, at Loiano, I was left behind. I went just outside the hotel to draw, begging my mother and Lea to pick me up as they went by. The carriage passed close by me and they did not see me. At first I did not hurry myself, thinking, when they did not find me, that they would stop for me a little farther on; but seeing the carriage go on and on, I ran after it as hard as I could, shouting at the pitch of my voice; but it never stopped, and I quite lost sight of it in the narrow streets of one of the fishing-villages before reaching Finale. At Finale I was in absolute despair at their not stopping, which seemed inexplicable, and I pursued mile after mile, footsore and weary, through the grand mountain coves in that part of the Riviera and along the desolate shore to Noli, where, just as night closed in, I was taken up by some people driving in a little carriage, on the box of which, in a bitter cold wind, I was carried to Savona, where I arrived just as our heavy carriage with its inmates was driving into the hotel. It was one of the odd instances of my dear mother's insouciance, of her 'happy-go-lucky' nature: 'they had not seen me, they had not looked back; no, they supposed I should get on somehow; they knew I always fell on my legs.' And I was perfectly conscious that if I had not appeared for days, my mother would have said just the same. We spent a pleasant Sunday at Savona, the views most beautiful of the wonderfully picturesque tower, calm bay of sapphire water, and delicate mountain distance.

"The landlord of the Croce di Malta at Genoa engaged a _vetturino_ to take us to La Spezia. The first day, it was late when we left Sta. Margherita, where we stayed for luncheon. The driver lighted his lamps at Chiavari. Soon both my companions fell asleep. I sat up watching the foam of the sea at the bottom of the deep black precipices without parapets as long as I could see it through the gloom: then it became quite dark. Suddenly there was a frightful bolt of the horses, scream after scream from the driver, an awful crash, and we were hurled violently over and over into the black darkness. A succession of shrieks from Lea showed me that she was alive, but I thought at first my mother must be killed, for there was no sound from her. Soon the great troop of navvies came up, whose sudden appearance from the mouth of a tunnel, each with a long iron torch in his hand, had made the horses bolt. One of them let down his torch into the mired and broken carriage as it lay bottom upwards. 'Povera, poveretta,' he exclaimed, as he saw Lea sitting pouring with blood amongst the broken glass of the five great windows of the carriage. Then Mother's voice from the depth of the hood assured us that she was not hurt, only buried under the cushions and bags, and she had courage to remain perfectly motionless, while sheet after sheet of broken glass was taken from off her (she would have been cut to pieces if she had moved) and thrown out at the top of the carriage. Then there was a great consultation as to _how_ we were to be got out, which ended in the carriage being bodily lifted and part of the top taken off, making an opening through which first Lea was dragged and afterwards the Mother. Then my mother, who had not walked at all for many weeks, was compelled to walk more than a mile to Sestri, in pitch darkness and pouring rain, dragged by a navvy on one side and me on the other. Another navvy supported Lea, who was in a fainting state, and others carried torches. We excited much pity when we arrived at the little inn at Sestri, and the people were most hospitable and kind. I had always especially wished to draw a particular view of a gaily painted church tower and some grand aloes on the road near Sestri, and it was curious to be enabled to do so the next day by our forcible detention there for want of a carriage.

"On the 29th we crossed once more the grand pass of Bracco, with its glorious scenery of billowy mountains ending in the delicate peaks of Carrara; and we baited at a wretched village where Mother was able to walk in the sunny road. Yesterday we came here by the exquisite railway under Massa Ducale, and were rapturously welcomed by Victoire[358] and her daughter."

"_Palazzo Parisani, Rome, Dec. 10._--We had a wearisome journey here on the 3rd, the train not attempting to keep any particular time, and stopping more than an hour at Orbetello for the '_discorso_' of the guard and engine-driver,[359] and at other stations in proportion. However, Mother quite revived when the great masses of the aqueducts began to show in the moonlight. They had given up expecting us in the Palazzo, where my sister has lent us her apartments, and it was long before we could get any one to open the door.

"It has been bitterly cold ever since we arrived and the air filled with snow. The first acquaintance I saw was the Pope! He was at the Trinità de' Monte, and I waited to see him come down the steps and receive his blessing on our first Roman morning. He looked dreadfully weak, and Monsignor Talbot seemed to be holding him tight up lest he should fall. The Neapolitan royal family I have already seen, always in their deep mourning.[360]

"The Pincio is still surrounded with earthworks, and the barricades remain outside the gates: a great open moat yawns in front of the door of the English Church. The barrack near St. Peter's is a hideous ruin. The accounts of the battle of Mentana are awful: when the Pontificals had expended all their ammunition, they rushed upon the Garibaldians and tore them with their teeth.

"Terrible misery has been left by the cholera, and the streets are far more full of beggars than ever. The number of deaths has been frightful--Princess Colonna and her daughters; old Marchese Serlupi; Müller the painter and his child; Mrs. Foljambe's old maid of thirty years; Mrs. Ramsay's donna and the man who made tea at her parties, are amongst those we have known. The first day we were out, Lea and I saw a woman in deep mourning, who was evidently begging, look wistfully at us, and had some difficulty in recognising Angela, our donna of 1863. Her husband, handsome Antonio the fisherman, turned black of the cholera in the Pescheria, and died in a few hours, and her three children have been ill ever since.

"Mrs. Shakspeare Wood has been to see us, and described the summer which she has spent here--six thousand deaths in Rome between May and November, sixty in the Forum of Trajan, thirty in the Purificazione alone. The Government wisely forbade any funeral processions, and did not allow the bells to be tolled, and the dead were taken away at night. Then came the war. The gates were closed, and an edict published bidding all the citizens, when they heard 'cinque colpi di cannóne, d'andare subito a casa.' The Woods laid in quantities of flour, and spent £5 in cheese, only remembering afterwards that, having forgotten to lay in any fuel, they could not have baked their bread."

"_Dec. 13._--Yesterday I went to Mrs. Robert De Selby.[361] She described the excitement of the battles. In the thick of it all she got a safe-conduct and drove out to Mentana to be near her husband in case he was wounded. She also drove several times to the army with provisions and cordials. If they tried to stop her, she said she was an officer's wife taking him his dinner, and they let her pass. One of the officers said afterwards to her mother, 'La sua figlia vale un altro dragone.'

"She told me Lady Anne S. Giorgio (her mother),[362] was living in the Mercede, and I went there at once. She was overjoyed to see me, and embraced me with the utmost affection. She is also enchanted to be near the Mother, her 'saint in a Protestant niche.' She is come here because 'all the old sinners in Florence' disapproved of her revolutionary tendencies. Lady Anne remembered my father's great intimacy with Mezzofanti. She said my father had once a servant who came from an obscure part of Hungary where they spoke a very peculiar dialect. One day, going to Mezzofanti, he took his servant with him. The Cardinal asked the man where he came from, and, on his telling him, addressed him in the dialect of his native place. The man screamed violently, and, making for the door, tried to escape: he took Mezzofanti for a wizard.

"Lady Anne recollected my father's extreme enjoyment of a scene of this kind. There was a Dr. Taylor who used to worship the heathen gods--Mars and Mercury, and the rest. One day at Oxford, in the presence of my father and of one of the professors, he took his little silver images of the gods out of his pocket and began to pray to them and burn incense. The professor, intensely shocked, tried to interfere, but my father started up--'How _can_ you be so foolish? _do_ be quiet: don't you see you're interrupting the comedy?' The same Dr. Taylor was afterwards arrested for sacrificing a bullock to Neptune in a back-parlour in London!"

"_44 Piazza di Spagna, Dec. 29._--We moved here on the 20th to a delightfully comfortable apartment, which is a perfect sun-trap. Most truly luxurious indeed does Rome seem after Cannes--food, house, carriages, all so good and reasonable. I actually gave a party before we left my sister's apartment, lighting up those fine rooms, and issuing the invitations in my own name, in order that Mother might not feel obliged to appear unless quite equal to it at the moment. Three days after I had another party for children--tea and high romps afterwards in the long drawing-room.

"On the 21st I went with the Erskines, Mrs. Ramsay, and Miss Garden, by rail to Monte Rotondo. The quantity of soldiers at the station and all along the road quite allayed any fears of brigands which had been entertained regarding the mile and a half between the village and the railway. The situation proved quite beautiful--the old houses crowned by the Piombino castle, rising from vineyards and gardens, backed by the purple peak of Monte Gennaro. Beyond, in the hollow, is the convent where Garibaldi was encamped, and farther still the battlefield of Mentana.

"On the 23rd there was a magnificent reception at the Spanish Embassy. Every one went to salute the new ambassador, Don Alessandro del Castro, and the whole immense suite of rooms thrown open had a glorious effect. There was an abundance of cardinals, and the Roman princesses all arrived in their diamonds. The Borgheses came in as a family procession, headed by Princess Borghese in blue velvet and diamonds. The young English Princess Teano looked lovely in blue velvet and gold brocade. On Christmas Day I went to St Peter's for the coming in of the Pope, and stayed long enough to see Francis II. arrive with his suite. In the afternoon I took Lea to the Ara Cœli and Sta. Maria Maggiore. At the Ara Cœli great confusion prevails and much enthusiasm on account of a new miracle. When people were ill, upon their paying a scudo for the carriage, the Santo Bambino was brought by two of the monks, and left upon the sick-bed, to be fetched away some hours after in the same way. A sacrilegious lady determined to take advantage of this to steal the Bambino; so she pretended her child was ill and paid her scudo; but as soon as ever the monks were gone, she had a false Bambino, which she had caused to be prepared, dressed up in the clothes of the real one, and when the monks came back they took away the false Bambino without discovering the fraud, and carried it to the place of honour in the Church of Ara Cœli.

"That night the convent awoke to fearful alarm, every bell rang at the same moment, awful sounds were heard at the doors; the trembling brotherhood hastened to the church, but loud and fast the knocks continued on the very door of the sanctuary ('bussava, bussava, bussava'). At last they summoned courage to approach the entrance with lights, and behold, a little tiny pink child's foot, which was poked in under the door; and they opened the door wide, and there without, on the platform at the head of the steps, stood, in the wind and the rain, quite naked, the real Bambino of Ara Cœli. So then the real child was restored to its place, and the lady, confounded and disgraced, was bidden to take the false child home again.

"Our donna, Louisa, was in ecstasies when she told us this story--'Oh com' è graziosa, oh com' è graziosa questa storia,'--and she never can understand why we do not send for the Bambino to cure Mother of all her ailments, though, in consequence of the theft, it is now never left alone in a house, but is taken away by the same monks who bring it. Lea was imprudent enough to say she did not believe the Bambino would ever do _her_ any good; but when Louisa, looking at her with wondering eyes, asked why, said weakly, 'Because I have such a bad heart,' in which Louisa quite acquiesced as a reason.

"It had been a sad shadow hitherto over all this winter that my sweetest Mother had been so ill. At Parisani I had many sad days and nights too. She suffered almost constantly from pain in the back, and moaned in a way which went to my very heart.... Twice only in the fortnight was Mother able to get out to the Forum and walk in the sun from the Coliseum to the Capitol, and she felt the cold most terribly, and certainly the Palazzo was very cold.

"At first, when we came to this house, Mother was better, and she was delighted with these rooms, which fulfilled a presentiment she had told me of before we left home, that this winter she should have the pleasantest apartment she had ever had yet. But on the 21st she was chilled when driving with Mrs. Hall to Torre Quinto, and that evening quite lost her power of articulation. It only lasted about an hour.... She was conscious of it afterwards, and said, 'It was so odd, I was not able to speak.' Some days after, though able to articulate, she was unable to find the words she needed, calling the commonest things by their wrong names, and this was the more alarming as more likely to be continuous. On Thursday she was well enough to drive with me to the Aqua Acetosa, and walk there in the sun on the muddy Tiber bank, but that evening she became worse, and since then has scarcely been out of bed."

"_Dec. 30._--On Saturday I was constantly restless, with a sense of fire near me, but could discover nothing burning in the apartment. I had such a strong presentiment of fire that I refused to go out all day. When Lea came in with my tea at 8 P.M., I told her what an extraordinary noise I continually heard--a sort of rushing over the ceiling, which was of strained canvas--but she thought nothing of it. Soon after she was gone, a shower of sparks burst into the room and large pieces of burning wood forced their way through a hole in the ceiling. Shouting to Lea, I rushed up to the next floor, and rang violently and continuously at the bell, shouting 'Fuoco, fuoco;' but the owners of the apartment were gone to bed and would not get up; so, without losing time, I flew downstairs, roused the porter, sent him off to fetch Ferdinando Manetti, who was responsible for our apartment, and then for the _pompieri_. Meantime the servants of Miss Robertson, who lived below us, had come to our help, and assisted in keeping the fire under with sponges of water, while Lea and I rushed about securing money, valuables, drawings, &c., and then, dragging out our great boxes, began rapidly to fill them. Mother was greatly astonished at seeing us moving in and out with great piles of things in our arms, but did not realise at once what had happened. I had just arranged for her being wrapped up in blankets and carried through the streets to Palazzo Parisani, when the _pompieri_ arrived. From that time there was no real danger. They tore up the bricks of the floor above us, and poured water through upon the charred and burning beams, and a cascade of black water and hot bricks tumbled through together into our drawing-room."

_To_ MISS WRIGHT.

"_Jan. 1._--Alas! I can give but a poor account of her who occupies all my real thoughts and interests. My sweetest Mother is still very, very feeble, and quite touchingly helpless. She varies like a thermometer with the weather, and if it is fine, is well enough to see Mrs. Hall and one or two friends, but she is seldom able to be dressed before twelve o'clock, and often has to lie down again before four. I seldom like to be away from her long, and never by day or night feel really free from anxiety."

JOURNAL.

"_Jan. 2, 1868._--I have been out twice in the evening--to Mrs. Ramsay to meet M. de Soveral, the ex-minister of Portugal, and his wife and daughter, and to Mrs. Hall to meet the Erskines. Mrs. Hall described a sermon she had lately heard at the Coliseum, the whole object of which was the glorification of Mary Queen of Scots. It was most painful, she said, describing how Elizabeth, who turned only to her Bible, died a prey to indescribable torments of mind, while Mary, clinging to her crucifix, died religiously and devoutly.

"The Marchesa Serlupi has given a fearful account of the Albano tragedy. The old Marchese had come to them greatly worn out with his labours in attendance on the Pope during the canonisation,[363] and he was seized with cholera almost at once. When the doctor came, his hair was standing on end with horror. He said he had not sat down for eighteen hours, hurrying from one to another. He said the old Marchese had the cholera, and it was no use doing anything for him, he would be dead in a few hours. The Marchesa thought he had gone mad with fright, which in fact he had. When he was gone, she gave remedies of her own to the old man, which subdued the cholera at the time, but he sank afterwards from exhaustion. During that time the dead all around them were being carried out: the Appian Way was quite choked up by those who were in flight, and people were dying among the tombs all along the wayside.

"As soon as the old Marchese was dead, the Serlupi family determined to fly. As the Marchesa had been constantly nursing the old man, she would not take her child with her, and sent him on first in another carriage. When they got half way, a man came up to them saying that the person who was with the child in the other carriage was in the agonies of death, and they had to take the child into their own carriage. At the half-way house they stopped to inquire for a party of friends who had preceded them: five had fled in the carriage, three were already dead! There was only one remedy which was never known to fail: it was discovered by a Capuchin monk, and is given in wine. It is not known what the medicine is, and its effect entirely depends upon the exact proportions being given. The Marchesa used to send dozens of wine to the Capuchin, and then give it away impregnated with the medicine to the poor people in Rome.

"To-day my darling has been rather better, and was able to drive for an hour on the Pincio. Yesterday evening she prayed aloud for herself most touchingly before both me and Lea, that God would look upon her infirmities, that He would forgive her weakness, and supply the insufficiency of her prayers. Her sweet pleading voice, tremulous with weakness, went to our hearts, and her trembling upturned look was inexpressibly affecting."

"_Feb. 4._--When we first came here, we were much attracted by Francesca Bengivenga, a pleasant cordial woman who lets the apartment above us, and who lived in a corner of it with her nice respectable old mother. Lea went up to see them, and gave quite a pretty description of the old woman sitting quietly in her room at needlework, while the daughter bustled about.

"On January 9 we were startled by seeing a procession carrying the Last Sacraments up our staircase, and on inquiry heard that it was to a very old woman who was dying at the top of the house. Late in the evening it occurred to Lea that the sick person at the top of the house might perhaps be in want, and she went up to Francesca to inquire if she could be of any use. Then, for the first time, we heard that it had been Francesca's mother who had been ill, and that she had died an hour after the priests had been. Francesca herself was in most terrible anguish of grief, but obliged to control herself, because only a few days before she had let her apartment, and did not venture to tell her lodgers what had occurred in the house. So whenever the bell rang, she had to dry her tears by an effort, and appear as if nothing had happened. We urged her to reveal the truth, which at length she did with a great burst of sobs, and the tenants took it well. The next day at four o'clock the old woman was carried away, and on the following morning I pleased Francesca by attending at the _messa cantata_ in S. Andrea delle Fratte.

"On January 10 Charlotte and Gina Leycester arrived. By way of showing civilities to acquaintance, I have had several excursions to the different hills, explaining the churches and vineyards with the sights they contain. On the Aventine I had a very large--too large a party. With the Erskines I went to San Salvatore in Lauro, where the old convent is partially turned into a barrack, and was filled with Papal Zouaves, who spoke a most unintelligible jargon which turned out to be High Dutch. A very civil little officer, however, took us into a grand old chapel opening out of the cloisters, but now occupied as a soldiers' dormitory, and filled with rows of beds, while groups of soldiers were sitting on the altar-steps and on the altar itself, and had even piled their arms and hung up their knapsacks on the splendid tomb of Pope Eugenius IV., which was the principal object of our visit.[364] We went on hence to the Vallicella, where we saw the home and relics of S. Filippo Neri--his fine statue in the sacristy, his little cell with its original furniture, his stick, his shoes, the crucifix he held when he was dying, the coffin in which he lay in state, the pictures which belonged to him, and the little inner chapel with the altar at which he prayed, adorned with the original picture, candlesticks, and ornaments.

"Another excursion has been to the Emporium, reached by an unpleasant approach, the Via della Serpe behind the Marmorata, an Immondezzajo half a mile long; but it is a fine mass of ruin, with an old gothic loggia, in a beautiful vineyard full of rare and curious marbles. Close by, on the bank of the Tiber, the ancient port of the Marmorata is now being cleaned out.

"My dearest Mother continues very ailing and terribly weak, but I am hopeful now (as the cold months are so far advanced), that we may steer through the remainder of the winter, and that I may once more have the blessing of taking her back to England restored to health and power. Every Friday she has been seriously ill, but has rallied afterwards. On Friday 17th, she was very ill, and I was too anxious about her to rest at all during the night, but perpetually flitted ghost-like in and out of her room. Last Friday again she was, if anything, worse still, such a terrible cloud coming over all her powers, with the most complete exhaustion. I scarcely left her all day. When these sad days are over, life becomes quite different, so heavy is the burden lifted off, and it is difficult to realise all that they have been, the wearing anxiety as to what is best to be done, the terribly desolate future seeming so near at hand, all the after scenes presenting themselves so vividly, like fever phantoms, to the imagination, and then sometimes the seeming carried with my dearest one to the very gates of the unseen world.... She is always patient, always self-forgetful, and her obedience to her 'doctor,' as she calls me, is too touching, too entirely confiding and childlike. Oh, if our unity is broken by death, no one, _no one_ will ever realise what it has been. Come what will, I can bless God for this winter, in which that union has been without one tarnished moment, one passing difference, in which my sweetest one has entirely leant upon me, and I have entirely lived for her.

"_Feb. 9._--There is no improvement in my dearest Mother. If there is a temporary rally, it is followed by a worse attack and intense fits of exhaustion, and the effort of going up and down stairs fatigues her so much that it is difficult to judge how far it is wise to gratify her constant craving for air. On Tuesday, Lea and I took her to the Monte Mario, and she sat in the carriage while we got out and picked flowers in the Villa Mellini. That day she was certainly better, and able to enjoy the drive to a certain degree, and to admire the silver foam of the fountains of St. Peter's as we passed them. I often think how doubly touching these and many other beautiful sights may become to me, if I should be left here, when she, with whom I have so often enjoyed them, has passed away from us to the vision of other and more glorious scenes.

"It is in these other scenes, not _here_, that I often think my darling's mind is already wandering. When she sits in her great weakness, doing nothing, yet so quiet, and with her loving beautiful smile ever on her revered countenance, it is surely of no earthly scenes that my darling is thinking.

"In the night I am often seized with an irresistible longing to know how she is, and then I steal quietly through the softly opening doors into her room and watch her asleep by the light of the night-lamp. Even then the face in its entire repose wears the same sweet expression of childlike confidence and peace.

"I dined with Mrs. Robert Bruce one day, meeting Miss Monk and Cavendish Taylor, and went with them afterwards to see the 'Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein' acted. It was in a booth in the Piazza Navona, such as is generally used for wild beasts at a fair, and where one would expect an audience of the very lowest of the people; but instead the place was crowded with the most _élite_ of the Roman princes and their families. The acting was wonderful, and the dresses and scenery very beautiful. It is said that the actors are a single family, fourteen sons, three daughters, and their cook!

"At the Shakspeare Woods' I met Miss Charlotte Cushman, the great American tragic actress, who has been living here for some years. She was the Mrs. Siddons of her time in America, and places were taken weeks beforehand for the nights when she acted. She does a great deal of good here and is intensely beloved. In appearance she is much like Miss Boyle,[365] with white hair rolled back, and is of most winning and gracious manners. I went to a party at her house last night, and never saw anything more dignified and graceful than her reception of her guests, or more charming than her entertainment of them. She sang, but as she has little voice left, it was rather dramatic representation than song, though most beautiful and pathetic.

"The American Consul, Mr. Cushman, told me he had crossed the Atlantic forty-seven times. The last time he returned was during the cholera at Albano, and he described its horrors. A hundred and fifty people died in the village on the first day, and were all thrown immediately into a large pit by a regiment of Zouaves, happily quartered there, and were tumbled in just as they happened to fall. The next day, so many more died, that soldiers were sent down into the pit to pack the bodies closer, so as to fit more in. The bodies already in the pit were so entangled, that several arms and legs were pulled off in the process. The Zouaves employed in the work all died."

I often saw Miss Cushman afterwards, and greatly valued her friendship. Hers was a noble and almost unique character, a benignant influence upon all she came in contact with. Her youth had been a long struggle, but it gave her a wonderful sympathy with young artists striving as she herself had done, and for them her purse, her hand, and her heart were always open. When she was only a "stock actress," the wife of the manager, who played herself and was jealous of her talents, got her husband to give her a very inferior part: it was that of Nancy Sykes in "Oliver Twist." Miss Cushman saw through the motive, and determined to prepare herself thoroughly. She disappeared. She went down to the worst part of the town, and remained for four days amongst all the lowest women there, till she understood them thoroughly and could imitate their peculiarities to perfection. Her first appearance, when she strolled on to the stage chewing a sprig of a tree, as they all do, took the house by storm, and from that time it was at her feet. The play of "Guy Mannering" was written to suit her in the part of Meg Merrilies. She would take an hour and a half to get herself up for it, painting all the veins on her arms, &c., and her success was wonderful.

She had been originally intended for an opera-singer, but, just when she was to appear, she had a dangerous illness, and, when she recovered, her voice was gone. But she wasted no time in regrets: she immediately turned to being an actress. This power of making the best of whatever _was_, formed one of the grandest traits of her character.

She died of what, to many, is the most terrible of all diseases. She insisted on an operation; but when she went to have it repeated, the great surgeons told her it was no use, and advised her to devote her remaining life to whatever would most take her out of herself and make her forget her pain. Then she, who had left the stage so long, went back to it as Meg Merrilies again and had all her old triumphs. And the last time she appeared, when she, as it were, took leave of the stage for ever, she repeated the words "I shall haunt this old glen," &c., in a way which sent a cold shiver down the backs of all who heard them.

Miss Stebbings' interesting Life of Miss Cushman is inadequate. It dwells too much on the successful part. What were really interesting, and also useful to those beginning life, would have been the true story of the struggles of her youth, and how her noble nature overcame them.

JOURNAL.

"_Feb. 10._--My dearest Mother is better and up again, sweet and smiling. Last week, after poor Mrs. C. had died, Mrs. Ramsay, not knowing it, sent to inquire after her. 'E andata in Paradiso,' said her old servant Francesco, quite simply, when he came back."

"_Feb. 25._--On the 16th old Don Francesco Chigi died, a most well-known figure to be missed out of Roman life. He was buried with perfectly mediæval pomp the next day at the Popolo. The procession down the Corso from the Chigi Palace was most gorgeous, the long line of princely carriages and the running footmen with their huge torches and splendid liveries, the effect enhanced by the darkness of the night, for it was at nine o'clock in the evening.

"Yesterday I rushed with all the world to St. Peter's to stare at the bridal of Donna Guendalina Doria, who had just been married at S. Agnese to the Milanese Conte della Somaglia. The Pope gave her his benediction and a prayer-book bound in solid gold and diamonds. Thirteen carriages full of relations escorted her to St. Peter's, but very few had courage to come with her into the church. She looked well in a long lace veil and white silk cloak striped with gold.

"My sweet Mother has gained very little ground the last fortnight. Yesterday for the first time she went out--carried down and upstairs by Benedetto and Louisa, and drove with Charlotte to the Villa Doria. But in the evening her breathing was difficult. To-day I drove with Lady Bloomfield[366] and Jane Adeane to the Campagna, and when I came back I found that she had been quite ill the whole time. The dear face looks sadly worn."

"_Feb. 27._--When I went into my darling's room at 3 A.M., both she and Lea were sleeping quietly, but when I went again at six, the Mother had been long awake, and oppressed with great difficulty of breathing. At half-past nine Dr. Grilli came and begged for another opinion.... How did I bear it when he said that my darling was in the greatest danger, that if she would desire any spiritual consolations, they ought to be sent for! Then I lost all hope. 'No,' I said, 'she has long lived more in heaven than on earth.' 'Quello se vede,' said Dr. Grilli.

"I questioned whether she should be told the danger she was in, but I decided not; for has not my darling been for years standing on the threshold of the heavenly kingdom? Death could to _her_ only be the passing quite over that threshold, and to us the last glimpse of her most sweet presence here.

"2 P.M.--Charlotte Leycester and Emma Simpkinson have been with me in the room all morning by turns. I cannot but think her slightly better. The shutter has just been opened that she may see the sun, which poured into the room. My darling was sitting up then and smiled to see it.

"5-1/2 P.M.--Waiting for the consultation of doctors. How I dread it, yet I cannot but think they will find my darling better. I have a feeling that there must still be hope. At two I went in a carriage to the Villa Negroni,[367] as the most solitary place I knew, and there spent an hour on that terraced walk beneath the house in which I was born, where my two mothers walked up and down together before my birth, and where I have often been, oh! so happy in the sunshine of her presence who is life to me.

"Coming back, I went into the Church of the Angeli. A white Carthusian was kneeling there alone. I knelt too and prayed--not that God would give my darling back to me unless it were His will, but oh! so earnestly that there might be no pain in her departure.

"Mrs. Woodward and Miss Finucane want to come and sit up--always good and kind. Grilli has been this evening with Dr. Bertoldi, and says everything depends on how she passes the next night: if she sleeps and the breathing becomes easier, we may hope, but even then it will be most difficult to regain the ground lost. In this I buoy myself up that _they_ know nothing of her wonderful power of rallying.

"When Charlotte went away for the night, she said, 'I shall think of you, dear, and pray for you very much to-night.'--'Yes, into the Lord's hands I commend my spirit,' said my darling solemnly.

"_9 A.M. Feb. 28, Friday._--Last night, when I wished her good-night, she said in her sweetest manner, 'Don't be too anxious; it is all in His hands.' Lea went to bed and Emma Simpkinson sat upon the sofa. I went in and out all through the night. Since 4 A.M. she has been less well!

"6 P.M.--I went rapidly to-day in a little carriage to St. Peter's, and kneeling at the grating of the chapel of the Sacrament by Sixtus IV.'s tomb, I _implored_ God to take two years out of my life and to add them to my Mother's. I could not part with her now. If there is power in prayer, I _must_ have been heard. I was back within the hour.

"When Charlotte came, she repeated to the Mother the texts about the saints in white robes, and then said 'Perhaps, dear, you will be with them soon--perhaps it is as in our favourite hymn, "Just passing over the brink."'--'Yes,' said my darling, 'it cannot last long; this is quite wearing me out.' I heard this through the door, for I could not bear to be in the room. Then Charlotte said, 'The Lord be with you,' or similar words, and my darling answered 'Yes, and may He be with those who are left as well as with those who are taken.' At this moment I came in and kissed my darling. Charlotte, not knowing I had heard, then repeated what she had said. 'She is praying that God may be with you and with me,' she said. I could not bear it, and went back to the next room. Charlotte came in and kissed me. 'I cannot say what I feel for you,' she said. I begged her not to say so now, 'as long as there was anything to be done I must not give way.'"

"_3 P.M. Saturday._--The night was one of terrible suffering. Mrs. Woodward sat up, but I could not leave the room. In the morning my darling said, 'I never thought it would have been like this; I thought it would have been unconscious. The valley of the Shadow of Death is a dark valley, but there is light at the end.... No more pain.... The Rock of Ages, that is my rock.' Then I read the three prayers in the Visitation Service. 'It will be over soon,' she said; 'I am going to rest.'

"'Will you give me some little word of blessing, darling?' I said. 'The Lord keep you and comfort you, my dear child,' she said. 'Don't fret too much. _He_ will give you comfort.' I had begged that Mrs. Woodward would call in Lea, who was now kneeling between us at the bedside. 'And you bless poor Lea too,' I said. 'Yes, dear Lea; she has been a most good and faithful and dear servant to me. I pray that God may be with her and John, and keep them, and I hope that they will be faithful and loving to you, as they have been to me, as long as you need them.... Be reconciled to all who have been unkind to you, darling; love them all, this is my great wish, love--love--love--oh, I have tried to live for love--oh! love one another, that is the great thing--love, love, love!'

"'The Lord bless and comfort you, dear,' she said to Charlotte. 'Be a mother to my child.'--'I will,' said Charlotte, and then my darling's hand took mine and held it.

"'We look for the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ,' said Charlotte. 'Yes, and it was here that it first dawned upon me ... through much tribulation.... He will be with me, and He will be with those who are left.'

"'We look for the King in His beauty,' said Charlotte. 'Yes, beauty such as we have never seen,' my darling said. 'Eye hath not seen nor ear heard the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. Oh, I have been able to serve Him very little.'--'Yes, darling, but you have loved Him much.'

"'I send my love to all my dear ones in England; none are forgotten, none.' Then, after a pause, 'Tell your sister that we shall meet where there is no more controversy, and where we shall know thoroughly as we are known.'

"In the night the terrible pain came on, which lasted many hours and gave us all such anguish. 'And He bore all this,' she said, and at one of her worst moments--'He that trusteth in Thee shall never be put to confusion.' What these trembling words were to us I cannot say, with her great suffering and the sadly sunken look of her revered features. Mrs. Woodward cried bitterly.

"'Mine eyes look to the hills, from whence cometh my help,' said Charlotte when she came in. 'You have loved the Psalms so much, haven't you, dear?'--'Yes, the Psalms so much.'--'All Thy waves and storms pass over me,' said Charlotte, 'but the Rock resisteth the flood.'--'Yes, the _Rock_,' said my darling. 'The floods lift up their waves, but the Lord is mightier.'--'He is mightier,' she repeated. 'The Lord is a refuge and a strong tower,' said Charlotte. 'He is _indeed_,' she answered with emphasis; 'it is a dark valley, but there is light beyond, for He is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.'

"She bade me in the early morning not to leave her, and I sat by her without moving from 6 A.M. till 1 P.M. 'Oh, you will all be _so_ tired,' she said once. When she was very ill, Charlotte leant over her and said, 'I am oppressed, O Lord, undertake for me: may the everlasting arms be beneath you.'--'Yes,' she said."

"_March 1, Sunday morning._--How long it is! At 6 P.M. she was very restless and suffering. At last she gave me her hand and lay down with me supporting the pillows behind. She spoke quite clearly, and said, 'My blessing and darling, may you be blessed in time and eternity!' This quiet sleep seemed to soothe and rest her, and afterwards Lea was able to take my place for an hour. But the night was terrible. Mrs. Woodward and Miss Finucane both sat up with me. Once she said, 'Through the grave and the gate of death ... a glorious resurrection.' At seven, she was speaking again, and leaning over her I heard, 'How long, how long? when will the Bridegroom come?'"

"_4 P.M. Monday, March 2._--A rather less suffering night. Dear Miss Garden sat up with me, saying she felt as if it was her own mother who was lying there, and Mother rambled gently to her about 'going home.' At 7 A.M. she fell asleep sweetly with her hand clasped in both of mine. I did not venture to move, and sank from my knees into a sitting position on the floor; so we remained for nearly an hour. When she waked, her moan was more definite. 'Oh, for rest! oh, for rest!' I said, 'Darling, rest is coming soon.'--'Yes,' she said, 'my health will all come back to me soon; no infirmities and no pains any more."

"10 A.M.--When Charlotte went at nine, I thought my darling sinking more rapidly, and Dr. Grilli when he came told us it was all but impossible she could rally. She looks to me at moments quite passing away. I would not call my darling back for worlds now: if God took her, I could only be lost in thankfulness that her pains were over. Oh, that she may be soon in that perfect health which we shall not be permitted to see. I scarcely leave her a moment now, though it is agony to me if she coughs or suffers. Can I afford to lose one look from those beloved eyes, one passing expression of those revered features? So I sit beside her through the long hours, now moistening her lips, now giving her water from a spoon, now and then a little soup-jelly, which she finds it easier to swallow than the soup itself, and now and then my darling gently gives me her hand to hold in mine. 'Rest in bliss,' she said to Mrs. Woodward, 'rest ever in bliss.' Afterwards Charlotte said, 'When thou passest through the waters, they shall not overflow thee: underneath thee are ... the everlasting arms."

"12-1/2 P.M.--Charlotte has repeated sentences from the Litany--'By Thine agony and bloody sweat.' We thought she scarcely understood at first, then her lips, almost inaudibly, repeated the sentences. Soon she said, 'It is _so_ long coming!' Then Charlotte read, 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they _rest_ from their labours.' She opened her eyes, looked up at Charlotte, and said, 'Oh, how well I know you!'

"1 P.M.--After some minutes' quiet she opened her eyes with surprise and said, 'I thought I was safe home; I thought I was, yet I can move, so I suppose it will not be yet.'

"2 P.M.--Her face has lost all its troubled look, and though she still moans, there is a happy appearance of repose stealing over her features.

"3 P.M.--When C. L. came in she said, 'Oh, Charlotte, I thought it was all over. I did not hear the noise of the waves any more. Oh, they were so very tormenting, and then, when I did not hear them, I thought it was over, and then I heard your voice, and I knew I was still here.... I have no more pain now.... It was very long, but I suppose He thought He would knock out all that was bad in me.'

"_Midnight, Monday._--After a terrible afternoon, she had such an extraordinary rally in the evening that we all began to hope. But soon after there was another change. Her features altered, her face sunk, but her expression was of the most transcendent happiness. Thinking the last moment was come, we knelt around the bed, I alone on the right; Charlotte, Lea, and Mrs. Woodward on the left; the nurse, Angela Mayer, at the foot. Charlotte and Mrs. W. prayed aloud. Then my darling, in broken accents, difficult to understand, but which I, leaning over her, repeated to the others, began to speak--'I am going to glory ... I have no pain now ... I see the light ... Oh, I am _so_ happy ... no more trouble or sorrow or sin ... so extremely happy ... may you all meet me there, not one of you be wanting.'

"I, leaning over her, said, 'Do you know me still, darling?'--'Yes, I know and bless you, my dearest son ... peace and love ... glory everlasting ... all sins and infirmities purged away ... rest ... love ... glory ... reign for ever ... _see Christ_.

"'Oh, be ready!

"'Mary and Arthur and Kate and Emmie and Mamie, faithful servants of Christ, to meet me there in His kingdom.

"'Let peace and love remain with you always. This is my great wish, peace and love ... peace and love.'

"After saying this, my mother solemnly folded her trembling hands together on her breast, and looking up to heaven, said, 'Oh, Lord Jesus, come quickly, and may all these meet me again in Thy kingdom!' As she said this, my darling's eyes seemed fixed upon another world.

"After this I begged the others to leave me alone with her, and then my dearest one said to me, 'Yes, darling, our love for one another on earth is coming to an end now. We have loved one another very deeply. I don't know how far communion will be still possible, but I soon _shall_ know; and if it be possible, I shall still be always near you. I shall so love to see and know all you are doing, and to watch over you; and when you hear a little breeze go rustling by, you must think it is the old Mother still near you.... You will do all I wish, darling, I know. I need not write, you will carry out all my wishes.'--'Yes, dearie,' I said, 'it will be my only comfort when you are gone to do all you would have wished. I will always stay at Holmhurst, darling, and I will continue going to Alton, and I will do everything else I can think of that you would like.'

"'Yes, and you must try to conquer self ... to serve God here, and then we may be together again in heaven.... Oh, we _must_ be together again there.'

"Lea now came in, and my darling stroked her face while she sobbed convulsively. 'Your long work is done at last,' Mother said; 'I have been a great trouble to you both, and perhaps it is as well I should be taken away now, for I am quite worn out. Tell John and all of them that I am sorry to leave them, but perhaps it was for the best; for this is not an illness; it is that I am worn out.... You and Augustus will stay together and comfort one another when I am gone, and you will bear with one another's infirmities and help one another. The great thing of all is to be able to confess that one has been in the wrong. Oh, peace and love, peace and love, these are the great things.'

"'Have I been a good child to you, dearest?' I said. 'Oh, yes, indeed--dear and good, dear and good; a little wilful perhaps you used to be, but not lately; you have been all good to me lately--dear and good.'--('Yes, that he has,' said Lea.)--'Faithful and good,' my darling repeated, 'both of you faithful and good.'

"Charlotte now came in. 'Here is Charlotte.'--'Dear Charlotte! Oh yes, I know you. I do not know whether there will be any communication where I am going, but if there is, I shall be very near you. I am going to rest ... rest everlasting. Be a mother to my child. Comfort him when I am gone ... give him good advice.... You know what suggestions I should make.... You will say to him what I should say ... and if he could have a good wife, that would be the best thing ... for what would you do, my child, in this lonely world?... No, a good wife, that is what I wish for you--a good wife and a family home.

"'And now I should like to speak to kind Mrs. Woodward' (she came in). 'Thank you so much; you have been very good and kind to me, dear Mrs. Woodward. I am going fast to my heavenly home. I have said all I meant to have written all the time I have been ill, and have never been able ... my mouth has been opened that I might speak.'"

"7 A.M. _March 3._--'Oh, it is quite beautiful. Good-bye, my own dearest! I cannot believe that you will look up into the clouds and think that I am only there ... but you will also see me in the flowers and in my friends, and in all that I have loved.'

"8 A.M.--With the morning light my dearest Mother has seemed to become more rapt in holy thoughts and visions, her eyes more intently fixed on the unseen world. At last, with a look of rapture she has exclaimed, 'Oh, angels, I see angels!' and since then pain seems to have left her.

"8-1/2 A.M.--(To Lea.) 'You will take care of him and comfort him, as you have always taken care of me: you have been a dear servant to me.'--'Yes,' said Lea, 'I will always stay with him and take care of him as long as I live. I took care of your dear husband, and I have taken care of you, and I will take care of him as long as he wants me.' 'Darling sweet,' I said to her. 'Yes, darling sweet,' she repeated, with inexpressible tenderness. 'I always hear the tender words you say to me, dear, even in my dreams.' Then she said also to Mrs. Woodward, 'You have been very kind to us; you will comfort Augustus when he is left desolate: you know what sorrow is, you have gone through the valley.... It seems so much worse for others than for me.... For then I shall begin really to live.'

"All this time my darling lay with her eyes upturned and an expression of rapt beatitude. The nurse says that in her forty years' nursing she never saw any one like this, so quiet, so happy. 'Nothing ever puts her out or makes her complain: I never saw anything like it.'[368]

"8-1/2 A.M.--'It is very difficult to _realise_ that when you are absent from the body you are present with the Lord.'

"10 A.M.--Dr. Grilli says she may live till evening, even possibly into the night. She has just said, a little wandering, 'You know in a few days some pretty sweet violets will come up, and that will be all that will be left to you of the dear Mother.'

"11-1/2 A.M.--She has taken leave of Emma Simpkinson and Miss Garden. When I came in she took my hand and said, 'And you, darling, I shall always think of you, and you will think of me. I shall spring up again like the little violets, and I shall put on an incorruptible body. I shall be always floating over you and watching over you somehow: we shall never be separated; and my body will rest beside that of my dear husband. So strange it should be here; perhaps, if it had been anywhere else, I might have wished to get better, but as it was here, the temptation was too great. I am quite worn out. I thought I could not get better after my last illness, and I _was_ given back to you for a little while, though I have always felt very weak, but I shall be quite well now.'

"10 A.M. _March 4._--All night she wandered gently, saying that she would 'go out and play with the little children; for there can be nothing bad amongst very little children.' In the morning Charlotte still thought there was a chance of her rallying, but Emma Simpkinson and I both think her sinking, and Dr. Grilli says that 'sussulti tendinósi' of the pulses have come on, and that there is not the slightest hope. It can probably only be two hours, though it may last till evening. He has formally taken leave, saying that medicine is useless, and that it is no use for him to return any more. Since the early morning my darling has been lying with her hand in mine, leaning her head against mine on the pillow, her eyes turned upwards, her lips constantly moving in inarticulate prayer. She has asked, 'What day is it? I think it is my birthday to-day.' I have not told her it is her father's birthday, as I believe it will be her own birthday in heaven.

"11 A.M.--She has again appeared to be at the last extremity. Raising her eyes to heaven and taking my hand, she has prayed fervently but inaudibly. Then she prayed audibly for blessings for me and Lea, and, with a grateful look to Emma, added, 'And for dear Emma too.'

"1 P.M.--She wandered a little, and asked if the battle was over. 'Yes,' said Lea, 'and the victory won.'

"1-1/2 P.M.--'I am all straight now, no more crookedness.... You must do something, dear, to build yourself up; you must be a good deal pulled down by all this.... Rest now, but work, work for God in life.

"'Don't expect too much good upon earth.

"'Don't expect too much perfection in one another.

"'Work for eternity.

"'Only try for love.

"2 P.M.--'Oh, how happy I am! I have everything I want here and hereafter.'

"2.10.--(With eyes uplifted and hands clasped.) ... 'Living water. The Lamb, the Lamb is the life.'

"2.15.--C. L. repeated at her request 'Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.'

"2.30.--The dear Mother herself, with her changed voice, clasped hands, and uplifted eyes, has repeated the hymn 'Just as I am, without one plea.'

"3 P.M.--'I am glad I am not going to stay. I could not do you any more good, and I am _so_ happy.'

"4 P.M.--(With intense fervour.) 'O God, O God! God alone can save--one and eternal. Amen! Amen!'

"4.15.--'Let us be one in heaven, dear, as we are one on earth.'

"4.30.--'Oh, let me go.... I have said I was ready to go so often, but you won't give me up.' I said, 'I think you had better try to sleep a little now, darling.'--'Yes, but let it be the last: I have had so many, many last sleeps.'--'You are in no pain now, dearie?' I said. 'Oh no, no pain; there is no pain on the borderland of heaven.

"'May He who ruleth all, both in heaven and earth, bless you, my child--bless you and keep you from ill. Love, love, perfect love, love on earth and then love in heaven.... I can hear words from the upper world now and none from the nearer. They have taught me things that were dark to me before.'

"5 P.M.--'Peace be with you, peace and love.

"'Sin below, grace above.

"'We sinners below, Christ above.

"'All love, all truth in Jesus Christ, my Lord and my God.'

"5-1/2 P.M.--'Oh, let it be. It could not be better--no doubt, no difficulty.... All the good things of this world, what are they?... soon pass away--pride, vanity, vexation of spirit; but oh! love! love!' It was after saying these words that my darling's face became quite radiant, and that she looked upward with an expression of rapture. 'I see a white dove,' she said, 'oh, such a beautiful white dove, floating towards me.' Soon after this she exclaimed, 'Oh, Lord Jesus, oh, come quickly'.... When she opened her eyes, 'What a wilful child you are! you will not let your mother depart, and she is _so_ ready.'--'Is it he who keeps you?' said C. L. 'No, a better One; but let me go or let me stay, O Lord, I have no will but Thine.'"[369]

"2 A.M. _March 5._--During the night she has prayed constantly aloud for various relations and friends by name, and often for me. Once she said, 'Ever upright, ever just, sometimes irritable, weak in temperament, that others should love him as I have done ... and a good wife, that is what I have always thought.'

"8 P.M. _March 5._--Twice to-day there has been a sudden sinking of nature, life almost extinct, and then, owing to the return of fever, there has been a rally. She became excited if I left her even for a moment, so through last night and to-day I have constantly sat behind her on the bed, supporting her head on a pillow in my arms.

"10 P.M.--Emma Simpkinson is come for the night, but there is a strange change. My mother is asleep! quietly asleep--the fever is reduced after the aconite which I insisted upon, and which the homœopathic doctor said _must_ end her life in half-an-hour.

"_Friday evening, March 6._--All day there has been a rally, and she has now power to cough again. Grilli had given the case up, so at noon to-day I had no scruple in sending for Dr. Topham, writing full explanation of the strange case. He says it is the most extraordinary he has ever seen and a most interesting study--'Before such a miracle of nature, science can only sit still.' Life still hangs on a thread, but there is certainly an improvement. She knows none but me."

"_Saturday evening, March 7._--What a quiet day of respite we have had after all the long tension and anxiety. My darling's face has resumed a natural expression, and she now lies quite quiet, sleeping, and only rousing herself to take nourishment."

I have copied these fragments from my journal of two terrible weeks, written upon my knees by my mother's side, when we felt every hour _must_ be the last, and that her words, so difficult to recall afterwards, would be almost our only consolation when the great desolation had really fallen. But no description can give an idea of the illness--of the strange luminousness of the sunken features, such as one reads of in lives of Catholic saints--of the marvellous beauty of her expression--of the thrilling accents in which many words were spoken, from which her sensitive retiring nature would have shrunk in health. Had there been physically any reason for hopefulness, which there was not--had the doctors given any hope of recovery, which they did not, her appearance, her words, her almost transfiguration would have assured us that she was on the threshold of another world. I feel that those who read must--like those who saw--almost experience a sort of shock at her being given back to us again. Yet I believe that God heard my prayer in St. Peter's for the two years more. During that time, and that time only, she was spared to bless us, and to prepare me better for the final separation when it really came. She was also spared to be my support in another great trial of my life, to which we then never looked forward. But I will return to my journal, with which ordinary events now again entwine themselves.

"_March 10, 1868._--My darling is gradually but slowly regaining strength, the doctor saying he can give no medicine, but that he can only stand still in awe before the marvels of nature, whilst we, the watchers, are gradually rallying from the great strain and tension of the last week.

"Yesterday was Santa Francesca Romana's day. I went to her house, the old Ponziani Palace, now the Ezercizii Pii, hung outside for the day with battered tapestry and strewn within with box. The rooms inside are the same as when the Saint lived in them, with raftered ceilings, and many of them turned into chapels. Downstairs is the large room which she turned into a hospital, and there is a bright open courtyard planted with orange-trees, though certainly nothing of the 'magnificent Ponziani Palace' described by Lady Georgiana Fullerton in her book.

"Thence to the Tor de' Specchi, where a cardinal, a number of Roman ladies, and a crowd of others were passing through the bright old rooms covered with frescoes and tapestry, and looking into the pleasant courtyards of the convent with their fountains and orange-trees. Upstairs is a fine chapel, where the skeleton of the Saint lies under the altar, dressed as an Oblate (with the face exposed), but in a white veil and white gloves! The living Oblates flitting about were very interesting picturesque-looking women, mostly rather old. Several relics of Santa Francesca are preserved. On a table near the entrance was the large flat vase in which she made ointment for the poor, filled with flowers.

"On Sunday, when many ladies went to the Pope, he made them a little sermon about their guardian angels and Sta. Francesca Romana."

"_March 15._--My sweet Mother is in almost exactly the same state--a sort of dormouse existence, and so weak that she can scarcely hold up her head; yet she has been twice wheeled into the sitting-room.

"I have been with the Fitzmaurices to the Castle of S. Angelo, very curious, and the prisons of Beatrice Cenci and her stepmother, most ghastly and horrid. There are between seven and eight hundred men there now, and many prisoners. Over the prison doors passers-by had made notes in chalk: one was 'O voi che entrate qui, lasciate ogni speranza;' another, 'On sait quand on entre, on ne sait pas quand on sort;' another, 'Hôtel des Martyrs.'

"On Friday evening I rushed with all the world to the receptions of the new cardinals--first to the Spanish Embassy, then to the Colonna to see Cardinal Bonaparte,[371] who has a most humble manner and a beautiful refined face like Manning at his best; and then to the Inquisition, where Cardinal de Monaco was waiting to receive in rooms which were almost empty."

"_March 30._--The dear Mother makes daily progress. She has the sofa in her bedroom, and lies there a great deal in the sunny window.

"I went to Mrs. Lockwood's theatricals, to which, as she said, 'all the people above the rank of a duchess were asked down to the