VOLUME V

LONDON GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD 1900

[_All rights reserved_]

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.

At the Ballantyne Press

CONTENTS

PAGE

WHILST WRITING THE BUNSEN MEMOIRS 1

ROYAL DUTIES AND INTERESTS 75

A HALT IN LIFE 241

HOME SORROWS 326

IN THE FURROWS OF LIFE 382

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. V

MARY LEA GIDMAN. _From a miniature by Barber._ _Photogravure_ _Frontispiece_

PAGE CHANTRY OF HENRY V., WESTMINSTER 12

LOWTHER LODGE 23

HOLMHURST, THE POULTRY-YARD 31

TITTENHANGER 51

SOPHIE, QUEEN OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY. _Photogravure_ _To face_ 80

THE ROSENBORG PALACE, COPENHAGEN 100

ROESKILDE 101

CASTLE OF ELSINORE 102

THE JUNCTION OF LAKE MALAR AND THE BALTIC, STOCKHOLM 103

RIDDARHOLMEN 104

THE CHURCH OF OLD UPSALA 105

GRIPSHOLM 107

BOLKESJÖ 111

THE CHURCH OF HITTERDAL 112

THRONDTJEM FIORD 114

THRONDTJEM CATHEDRAL 115

S. OLAF’S WELL, THRONDTJEM 116

IN THE ROMSDAL 117

GUSTAF, CROWN PRINCE OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY. _Photogravure_ _To face_ 138

CORNETO 142

CATHEDRAL OF CORNETO 143

PERUGIA 154

ASSISI 155

IN THE ENTRANCE-HALL, HOLMHURST 165

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. (_Full-page woodcut_) _To face_ 176

IN THE FIR-WOOD, HOLMHURST 189

LA SAINTE BAUME 192

THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER 197

THE LOLLARDS’ PRISON, LAMBETH 206

THE WAKEFIELD TOWER, TOWER OF LONDON 207

IN THE VERANDAH, HOLMHURST 235

VERANDAH STEPS, HOLMHURST 236

FROM S. GREGORIO, MESSINA 245

TAORMINA 246

ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE, SYRACUSE 248

FROM THE WALLS OF EPIPOLAE 249

ON THE RIVER CYANE 250

ACI CASTELLO 251

TEMPLE OF CONCORD, GIRGENTI 252

IN THE TEMPLE OF JUNO LUCINIA, GIRGENTI 254

IN THE TEMPLE OF HERCULES, GIRGENTI 255

TEMPLE OF CASTOR AND POLLUX, GIRGENTI 256

PALERMO, FROM S. MARIA DI GESU 259

SOLUNTO 261

CLOISTERS, MONREALE 263

GATE OF MOLA 267

TARANTO 268

CASTEL DEL MONTE 269

TOMB OF BOHEMUND, CANOSA 270

MRS. DUNCAN STEWART. (_Full-page woodcut_) _To face_ 288

NORWICH FROM MOUSEHOLD 331

LAKE OF AVERNUS, NEAR NAPLES 345

CAPRI 347

SCILLA 349

FROM THE CAMPO DELLA CARITÀ, VENICE 351

REV. CANON HUGH PEARSON. _Photogravure_ _To face_ 354

GATEWAY, KENSINGTON PALACE 361

SASSENPOORT, ZWOLLE 364

MILL NEAR AMSTERDAM 365

HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE GATEWAY 379

ON THE TERRACE, HOLMHURST 388

IN THE KITCHEN, HOLMHURST 389

CATHEDRAL OF ST. ISAAC, ST. PETERSBURG 391

ST. SOPHIA OF NOVGOROD 393

KREMLIN, MOSCOW 394

THE NEW JERUSALEM 395

THE DNIEPER, KIEFF 396

THE HOLY CHAPEL OF KIEFF 397

CITADEL OF CRACOW 398

NOYON 409

SOISSONS 410

CHÂTEAU DE COUCY 411

SHRINE OF ST. ERASMUS, WESTMINSTER ABBEY 429

LE CROZANT 434

SOLIGNAC 435

ROCAMADOUR 436

CLOISTER OF CADOUIN 438

ARCADES OF MONTPAZIER 439

AT FONTEFROIDE 441

CONQUES 443

CROMER 450

GATEWAY OF BUCKHURST 456

XIX

WHILST WRITING THE BUNSEN MEMOIRS

* * * * *

“Here we have no communion; company enough, but no fellowship. Meanwhile, the grand perennial Communion of Saints is ever open to us. Let us enter in and worthily comport ourselves there.”--CARLYLE.

“Ce n’est ni le génie, ni la gloire, ni l’amour, qui mesurent l’élévation de l’âme; c’est la bonté.”--PÈRE LACORDAIRE.

It was soon after the death of my dear and honoured old friend, the Baroness Bunsen, that her daughters, Frances and Emilia, wrote to consult me about a Memoir of her beautiful and helpful life. I promised all the help I could give, but did not understand, till several months later, that they wished me to undertake the whole biography myself. This, however, I rejoiced to do, being assured that beyond her own children, no one had a warmer love and appreciation for the friend of my whole life, and delighting to be raised, whilst dwelling amongst her written words and thoughts, into the serene and lofty atmosphere of her inner life.

The work which I had undertaken began at this time to bring me into constant and intimate connection with all the branches of the Bunsen family, especially with Lady Llanover, the sister of my dear old friend.

* * * * *

“_Llanover, March 18, 1877._--I left London on my birthday and went to the Harfords at Blaise Castle. It was bright but bitter March weather, and though the woods were full of flowers, there was no enjoyment of them. I had much talk with sweet Mrs. Harford about old days and the many passed-away things and people dear to us both. Sir George and Lady Grey were staying at Blaise, to my great pleasure.

“Yesterday I came here by the ferry over the Severn. Lady Llanover’s old ramshackle carriage met me at the Nantyderry Station, and brought me to Llanover. I had received endless solemn warnings about what I was to say and not to say here, what to do and not to do; but with a person of whom one is not likely to see much in after life, one never feels any alarm. Lady Llanover is very small and has been very pretty. We have a mutual bond in our love for her sister, whose memory is enshrined in her inmost heart with that of her mother, Mrs. Waddington, to whom she was quite passionately devoted. Of the Bunsen family she talked from 4 till 10.30 P.M. ‘You see I have still the full use of my lungs,’ she said.

“At eight we had tea. There is no dinner, which I like, but every one would not. After tea she gathered up all the lumps of sugar which remained and emptied them with a great clatter into a box, which she locked up. With £20,000 a year, the same economy pervades everything. Her great idea is Wales--that she lives in Wales (which many doubt), and that the people must be kept Welsh, and she has Welsh schools, Welsh services, a Welsh harper, always talks Welsh to her servants, and wears a Welsh costume at church.”

* * * * *

_To_ MISS WRIGHT.

“_March 24, 1877._--I may tell you now, as it is no longer a secret, that I have acceded to the wish of all her family in undertaking to write the Life and edit the beautiful letters of my dear old friend the Baroness de Bunsen. How perfectly great and noble her character was, and the intense interest of all she wrote, few know better than myself, and, beyond her own family, no one loved her more; so, when my ‘London’ is done, I shall give myself gladly to this sacred task, and trust that it may be, as _her_ writings cannot fail to be, a blessing to many.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Holmhurst, April 6, 1877._--I look back on my visit to Llanover as quite a bit apart in my life. It was important that I should please, as much of the success of the memorials of her sister, which I have undertaken to edit, must depend upon Lady Llanover’s favourable co-operation. It was equally important that I should assert my own absolute independence of will and action, and knock under in nothing. So it was a difficult course to steer. The very warnings I had received were enough to annihilate self-confidence. I was not to believe anything Lady Llanover said about different members of her family, for she was always guided by her own prejudices and sympathies. I was not to be guided by her opinion on any subject, yet was never to contradict her. I was not to make to her any one of the promises she was sure to attempt to exact from me: above all, I was never to leave any letter or paper about in my room, as there were always ‘tame panthers stealing about the house,’ who would master the contents and make it known to their mistress.

“I began by disregarding _all_ this advice, and taking Lady Llanover as if I had never heard a word about her, and I am sure that it was the best way. I listened to all she had to say, and received part of it to profit by. I left all my papers about, and if the mistress of the house learnt what was in them, I hope it was beneficial to her. I found her difficult to deal with certainly, but chiefly because, with endless power of talking and a vocabulary absolutely inexhaustible, it is next to impossible to keep her in the straight conversational path along which she ought to be travelling: she will linger to pick all the flowers that grow in the lanes diverging along the wayside. Thus, though on an average we talked for six hours a day, not more than one of those hours could be utilised.

“There is a great deal to admire in Lady Llanover: her pertinacity in what she _thinks_ right, whether she _is_ right or not: her insistence on carrying out her sovereign will in all things; but chiefly her touching devotion to the memory of the mother from whom she, the youngest and favourite daughter, was scarcely ever separated. The whitewashed ‘Upper House’ in the park is kept fresh and bright and aired, as if the long-lost mother were constantly expected. In her sitting-room a bright fire burns in winter, and fresh flowers are daily placed on the little table by her old-fashioned sofa. The plants she loved are tended and blooming in the little garden; the pictures and books are unremoved from the walls; the peacocks she used to feed, or their descendants, still spread their bright tails in the sun under her windows.

“It is in the kitchen of the ‘Upper House’ that Lady Llanover’s Welsh chaplain performs service on Sundays, for to the church she and her people will not go, as the clergyman is--undesirable. Lady Llanover on Sundays is even more Welsh than on week-days. She wears a regular man’s tall hat and short petticoats like her people, and very becoming the dress is to her, and very touching the earnestness of the whole congregation in their national costume, joining so fervently--like one person--in the services, especially in the singing, which is exquisitely beautiful. I suppose it may be only from the novelty, but this earnest service, these humble prayers on the worn benches in the brick-floored kitchen, with the incidents of manual labour in the background, and farmhouse scenes outside the windows, seemed more of a direct appeal to God than any formal prayers I ever heard in a church--the building called a church. I feel more and more that I shall probably end my days--a Dissenter!

“We had more of the Welsh music in the evening. We went and sat in the armchairs in the hall, and the household filed in above, and filled the music-gallery, and sang most gloriously, especially the burial-hymn ‘It is finished,’ which was sung in parts all the way from the house to the churchyard at the funerals of Mrs. Waddington and Lord Llanover and his son. At other times, the blind harper attached to the house came in and harped to us, and four little boys sat in a circle on the floor and sang.

“One afternoon we went to the churchyard overlooking the Usk. A great pine-tree, the seed of which was brought from Rome by Mrs. Waddington, overshadows the burial-place of the family, and, in accordance with a line in some poet she liked, her grave is covered with the simple camomile. By its side is the colossal altar-tomb of Lord Llanover. It is generally supposed to be merely commemorative, but Lady Llanover herself unlocked a door concealed beneath the carving, and we went in. There are three coffins--of Lord Llanover, his eldest son, and his grandson Stephàn, son of Mrs. Herbert of Llanarth, whom she, the Roman Catholic mother, insisted should be brought here, the priests accompanying the corpse to the churchyard gate, and there delivering it to the Welsh people, who sang their beautiful hymns over it. There was a fourth place in the tomb, which Lady Llanover, tearless in her desolation, showed me as hers, which she must soon occupy. The poor Welsh women were busy ‘dressing the graves’ in the churchyard--the graves are always dressed for Palm Sunday.

“At Llanover, in the weird house of dead associations, it was a relief when pleasant, handsome young Arthur Herbert came the last day. Almost the only other guest was Miss Geraldine Jewsbury, the intimate and faithful friend of Mrs. Carlyle. I found it difficult to trace in the ancient spinster the gifted brilliancy I had heard described, though of her strong will there was abundant evidence.[258] During an illness of Mrs. Carlyle there was a comic instance of this. Miss Jewsbury had unlimited faith in black currant jelly for a cold. Now Mrs. Carlyle’s throat was very bad, and Miss Jewsbury took some of her jelly to her. ‘But I will not take it; I will not take it, Geraldine,’ said Mrs. Carlyle, with her strong inflexion on the ‘ine.’ So Miss Jewsbury sat by the head of the bed and kept her black currant jelly well out of sight. But a moment came when Mrs. Carlyle fell fast asleep, and--if the truth must be told--opened her mouth very wide. It was Miss Jewsbury’s opportunity, and she filled a spoon full of jelly, and popped it into the open mouth. ‘Good God! Geraldine, what was that?’ exclaimed Mrs. Carlyle, waking up. ‘_That_ was the black currant jelly.’--‘Good God, Geraldine! I thought it was a leech gone the wrong way.’

“Since I returned, I have greatly enjoyed a fortnight’s halt in life at home. When here, with charming rooms full of books and pictures, inexhaustible employment within and without, and the dear Lea, the one living relic of _our_ past, I wonder how I can ever go away.”

* * * * *

“_April 14._--The other day I dined at Lord Charlemont’s. Lady Charlemont[259] is astonishing. I sat near her at dinner. First she startled me by saying what a bore her neighbour on the other side was: it was Lord Campbell. Then she said, ‘I am so happy. I have found some one who breaks the first commandment.’--‘What! “Thou shalt have none other gods but me?”’--‘Yes, and the man who breaks it is Dr. Schliemann; he adds Jupiter and Venus and a lot of others, all on the same level.’

“Sir Julius Benedict was at dinner, a most amusing person. He described how he was at Mentmore, and sat up very late in the hall reading, the rest of the gentlemen having gone to the smoking-room, and Baron Rothschild having gone to bed. He was surprised after some time to see Baron Rothschild come down again and cross the entrance hall in conversation with a strange gentleman. Soon after, when Sir Julius had gone to his own room, a guest in the house knocked at the door and apologised for disturbing him, but begged to know if he knew Sir James Fergusson by sight. He said, ‘Yes, perfectly,’ and then he remembered who the stranger was whom he had seen crossing the hall with the Baron: it was Sir James Fergusson; he had not recognised him at the moment.

“The guest said, ‘You do not know what an awkward difficulty you have relieved us from; a gentleman has arrived who seems to think he is expected, and whom nobody knows, and he says he is Sir James Fergusson.’ And it was.

“Sir James had been called out from dinner by a servant from Mentmore, who said that there had been no time to write, but that he had been sent off to fetch him, for the Baroness was so alarmingly ill that there was not a moment to be lost. Sir James rushed off in a cab to Euston Square, and asked for a special train. It was Sunday, and there was none to be had without great delay; but the station-master, hearing the urgency of the case, and whom it was for, said that the express, just starting, should be allowed to stop at the station for Mentmore. On arriving there, Sir James was surprised to find no carriage, but procured a trap from the inn, and drove as hard as he could. As they reached the house, the servant got down and went round it, saying he was going in the other way.

“The servant was quite mad, and the insanity first showed itself in this odd form.

“Sir Julius also told us that--

“‘One day an American bishop called in his carriage at Hunt & Roskell’s. He asked to see some bracelets, mentioning that he was returning to America and wished to take a present to his wife. ‘Nothing very expensive,’ he said; ‘he could not afford that, but something about £70 or £80.’ Eventually he agreed to take a bracelet that cost £100. He said that he would pay for it with a £100 note which he had with him: it happened to be the only money he had at the moment, but he would wait while they sent it to the bank to ascertain that it was all right; he should really prefer doing this. They sent it to the bank and received answer that it was perfectly correct.

“‘Having paid for his bracelet, the bishop took it, and was just about to step into his carriage, when a policeman tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Hallo, Jim! you’re up to your old tricks again, are you? You’ll just come along with me,’ and he brought him back into the shop. Hunt & Roskell said there was some mistake, that the gentleman was an American bishop, that he had just bought a £100 bracelet and paid for it with an excellent £100 note. ‘Just let me look at the note, will you?’ said the policeman. He looked at it and said, ‘Yes, it’s just as I thought; this note is one of a particularly clever batch of forgeries, which are very difficult to detect, and the man is no more a bishop than you are. We will go off to the police-station at once. I will take the note and go on with the prisoner in the carriage, and you must send your men in a cab to meet us and bear witness.’ So the policeman took the bishop and the bracelet and the note, but when Hunt & Roskell’s men reached the police-station, they had not yet arrived; and they have never been heard of since!’”

* * * * *

“_April 15._--Dined with Mrs. Rogerson, daughter of my dear Mrs. Duncan Stewart. Irving was there. I ventured to tell him how I thought his play was spoilt by the changes he had recently made, and _why_, and he was quite simple, as he always is, not the least offended, and in the end agreed with me, and said he should alter the changes as I suggested, and send me a box that I might come and see the improvement. He said how, ever since he heard me tell a story at Lord Ducie’s, he had wished I should do something in public. He ‘did not know if I wanted money, but thought I could make any sum I liked.’ He ‘believed he could guarantee’ my making £8000 a year! He advised my doing what he had intended doing himself when he had been ‘making a mere nothing of ten guineas a week, and felt _that_ could not go on.’ He intended to have got Wilkie Collins to write him a story, and to take a room at the Egyptian Hall, fit it up in an old-fashioned way, sit down by the fire, and then take the audience, as it were, at once into his room and confidence. ‘But in your case,’ he said, ‘you need not apply to Wilkie Collins.’”

* * * * *

“_April 16._--Miss Northcote’s wedding in Westminster Abbey. I had a capital place in a stall just behind Princess Louise and Princess Mary of Teck. The church was crowded, and though it was a bitter wind outside, it was quite glorious within, all the forest of arches tinted with golden sunlight. Arthur gave the blessing _magnificently_, as he always does. There were 350 people at the breakfast afterwards, which was at Lord Beaconsfield’s house in Downing Street. There were endless little tables. I sat at one with Lady Aberdare, Lady Middleton, and young Lord Colchester. I was glad to see the dear little Lady Winifred Herbert again, growing up fast, but with the same sweet innocent expression, walking about with Jim Cranbourne, who is a charming boy.”

* * * * *

“_April 23._--Dined with Lady Charlemont. Old Mr. Planché was there, and talked much about the favourable characteristics of the present Duke of Wellington; how before his father died he said how grief for his death would be aggravated by perpetual consciousness of his own name and position. ‘Think what it will be when the Duke of Wellington is announced and only _I_ come in!’ Poor Mr. Planché, celebrated as a wit and story-teller in former times, is becoming painfully aware of having outlived the patience of his auditors!

“Lady Charlemont said, ‘Whenever I make a _very_ naughty quotation from ‘Don Juan,’ I always preface it by saying, ‘As Dr. Watts touchingly observes.’”

* * * * *

“_April 26._--Dined at Mrs. Stratford Dugdale’s. Lord Crewe was there, with the most extraordinary and diabolic-looking red flower in his button-hole. He always has one of these weird orchids, and delights to surprise people with them.”

* * * * *

“_April 28._--A pleasant morning with Mrs. Hollond, Sir Hampton Lorraine, and others at Grosvenor House. The rooms were quite lovely, and the flowers more so--great blue-green bowls filled with cowslips; great glasses of blue bells, with a few yellow jonquils intermixed.

“Luncheon afterwards at Mrs. Duncan Stewart’s. Mrs. Rogerson told the story of a cat she had known who would lie on the rug with its head on the side of a little dog called Flossy. People said, ‘How selfish the cat is; she only lies there because it is warm.’ But Flossy died and the cat was missing. It was found on Flossy’s grave, and lay there all night. It was brought in and milk was given to it, but it refused to eat, and as soon as it was left alone in the room where it was shut up, it dashed straight through the window and went back to the grave again. If they took hot milk out to it at the grave, it ate it, but away from the grave it would eat nothing. It lay there day and night. At last they built it a little pent-house over the grave, and it lay there, partially sheltered, till, six weeks afterwards, it died.

“Mrs. Rogerson knew another story of a terrier and a cat, who were deadly foes and always quarrelling. The cat had kittens, and the kittens were all put out of the way and were buried. The cat was inconsolable and went mewing about the house. The terrier could not make it out, and followed her everywhere; he did not snap at her any more; on the contrary, he seemed to do all he could to console her. At last he had an inspiration. He found out where the kittens were buried, and scratched and scratched till he got them up, and one by one he brought the dead kittens and laid them down before the cat. It was a very small consolation to poor pussy, but she and the terrier never quarrelled again, and were the greatest friends as long as they lived.”

* * * * *

“_May 2._--A pleasant party at Lady Leslie’s beautiful house to meet the Tecks. She looked more amenable than ever, yet the Princess all over.”

* * * * *

“_May 4._--Dined with Sir Dighton and Lady Probyn in the strange houses built like the Tower of Babel by Mr. Hankey. Went to a quaint collection of anybodies and nobodies at Lord Houghton’s afterwards. He spoke of the ‘unexpected places in which gold is found’ in literature.”

* * * * *

“_May 6._--To Lady Salisbury, whom I found in her bright sunny boudoir looking on the Park. Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice and Mr. Ralli came in and talked politics furiously. Lady Maude told me of Lord Sligo’s visit to Paris immediately after the siege, and how he had driven about in the same cab for some days, and then found he had been sitting all the time on an explosive bomb which was under the seat. The cabman, when remonstrated with, as the slightest jolt might have made it explode, said he ‘had not left it at home, because he thought the children might get playing with it.’”

* * * * *

“_May 11._--At dinner at Lady Jane Ellice’s I met Lady Waterford and Lady Folkestone.[261] The latter sang most beautifully and pathetically. She _felt_. ‘One cannot feel always,’ she said; ‘one cannot feel with an audience who say, “How sweet.” Lady Waterford told of Sir Philip and Lady Durham. Lady Durham died quite suddenly. She had been out in the garden the day before, seeing the gardener and ordering some bouquets she wanted. After her sudden death, Sir Philip found a paper in her dressing-box. It said--‘Something so very odd has happened to me, that I think I had better write it down. In the garden I saw a figure which beckoned to me and beckoned to me, and I followed it. I followed it a long way, and at last it reached the churchyard, and then it disappeared.’”

* * * * *

“_May 12._--Dined at Mrs. Rogerson’s, where I took down the Countess Bremer, who has always lived at the Hanoverian Court. She is that ‘Margaret Bremer’ who is celebrated for her answer to the blind King, who loved to shock her by his improper stories. ‘What do you think of that, Margaret?’ he asked, after telling her one of his worst. ‘I think that your Majesty has a very clean way of telling a very dirty story,’ she replied.”

* * * * *

“_May 15._--Dined at Sir John Shaw-Lefevre’s. Having two round tables made the party most pleasant. It included the beautiful and charming Lady Granville, Lady Russell, Lady Aberdeen, and Wallace of the Russian book.”

* * * * *

“_May 17._--A party at Lord Houghton’s; every one there, from Princess Louise to Mrs. Anthony Trollope, a beautiful old lady with snow-white hair turned back. These crowded parties remind me of Madame de Staëls description--‘Une société aux coups de poing.’”

* * * * *

“_May 26._--I have been for three days at Cobham, where the woods covered with bluebells were like expanses of Italian sky brought down and laid on the earth. There was a large party in the house--Lady Haddington and her bright Lady Ruth; Murray Finch Hatton and his wife, as delicate as a drooping lily; Meysey Clive, a charming natural fellow, and his Lady Catherine; Lord and Lady Pelham, &c. The life was most easy; we drew, read, talked, and showed the house to Lord and Lady Onslow, who arrived while touring in a four-in-hand.”

* * * * *

“_May 30._--On Saturday I was at a pleasant party at Lord Houghton’s, meeting scarcely any one but authors, and a very odd collection--Black, Yates, and James the novelists; Sir Francis Doyle and Swinburne the poets; Mrs. Singleton the erotic poetess (Violet Fane), brilliant with diamonds; Mallock, who has suddenly become a lion from having written a clever squib called ‘The New Republic,’ and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe with her daughter. I was introduced to Mrs. Howe, having asked Lord Houghton who was the charming, simply-dressed woman with the sensible face, and then found she was sister of my Roman friend Mrs. Terry. She wrote the hymn, singing which the troops took Pittsburg. We asked her about it. She said she could not help feeling the little annoyance so many felt on similar occasions--that she should be only known as the authoress of one thing, one little waif out of all her work, and that people should treat her as if she had _only_ written that.”

* * * * *

“_June 3._--I have dined several times with Miss Wright to meet the Charles Wilbrahams. She sings beautifully. He had much that was curious to tell about the project of a French engineer for deepening the course of the brook Kishon, so as to let in the Mediterranean. Kishon rises near Tabor, and if the Mediterranean could once pass the watershed, it would run down on the other side into the great hollow of the Dead Sea, which is now so far below its own level. The engineer, of course, had never thought of Ezekiel xlvii., in which the fishermen of Engedi, now some 3000 feet above the level of the sea, are described as casting in their nets.

“Mr. Wilbraham was amusing with some of his American experiences. He told of two young girls who were stopped going through a turnpike gate. ‘What are your charges?’--‘Half a dollar for man and horse.’--‘Well, then, just stand on one side, will you, for we are two girls and a mare, so we’ve nothing to pay.’ He said he had asked an American at Florence what he thought of the Venus de Medicis. ‘Wal, I guess I’m not so partiklar overpowered by stone gals,’ was the reply.

“I constantly meet Froude the historian at Miss Wright’s, a somewhat shy, sardonic, and silent man. His sphinx-like character, the very doubt about him, makes him interesting: one never really knows what he would be at.”[262]

* * * * *

“_June 4._--Dined at Lord Egerton of Tatton’s. Old Mrs. Mildmay told a rather improper story there, which was received with shouts of merriment. She was at a country-house where there was a very pleasant man named Jones, and there was also a lady who had a maid called Jones: the people in the house knew this, because there was a confusion about letters. The lady’s husband went away for the day, and, as she was going to walk to the station in the evening to meet him, the mistress of the house asked Mr. Jones to walk with her. When the train came in, the husband was not there, but just then a telegram was brought in. ‘Oh,’ said the lady, ‘Oh-o-o, I’m sure my husband is dead: I can’t open it.’--‘Nonsense!’ said Mr. Jones; ‘if he is dead, he cannot have sent you a telegram.’--‘Well, I can’t open it; I know it’s something dreadful--I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.’ So at last, Mr. Jones opened it for her and read it aloud, not seeing at once what it contained. It was--‘I am all right, unavoidably detained. If you are at all nervous, _get Jones to sleep with you!_’”

* * * * *

“_June 6._--Lady Manners and her daughters drove me down to Osterley. The great wide park looked dark and dull under a leaden sky, the house gloomy and ghostly as Bleak House. The old Duchess, stumping about with her inlaid ebony stick, seemed part of the place. I dined at Sir Edward Blackett’s, a beautiful house with Raffaellesque and pink tapestry decorations, prepared for the Duke of Gloucester on his marriage with the Waldegrave, but never lived in by him.”

* * * * *

“_June 7._--Dined with George Lefevre. Mr. Bright was there, said to be the man who reviewed me so unmercifully in the _Athenæum_, and I was very glad to see the kind of man he is. He talked incessantly, never allowing a word to any one else; still after a time one found out he was interesting. He talked most of Miss Martineau, then of Hawthorne with great praise--‘the kindest, most generous of men and friends.’ Of his son, Julian Hawthorne, he said that he had ‘written a book which it took _very_ long to read.’”

* * * * *

“_June 13._--An excursion with the Lefevres to the Rye House, which I knew so well in my boyhood. It was like spending an afternoon in Holland, so very Dutch are those long expanses of rich meadow-lands, those streams with their boats and tall water-plants. We sat in burning sunshine to draw the old terra-cotta tower, and then had tea and eggs and bacon in the garden of the little inn, which was covered with scarlet geranium in full flower up to the attic windows.”

* * * * *

“_June 19._--The news of poor old Cousin Susan’s[263] death. It is the glueing down of another much-read page of life, which can never be seen again. I feel ashamed of not grieving more for one whom I have known so well, but have always more feared than loved. The agent wrote desiring me to come down at once, but, backed by Lady Barrington’s decision that I had better keep out of the way till the will was decided, I excused myself. Yet I am sorry not to be at the funeral, and the old house of many associations, and the little Beltingham chapel with its view over the gleaming Tyne, are very constantly in my mind. All the cousins are quite sure that I am the heir, but I do not think that it is so. Cousin Susan knew that I did not wish it, and I have always urged the claims of the Strathmore boys.”

* * * * *

“_June 20._--I have received from Milligan the news of Cousin Susan’s will. It is exactly the will I begged her to make--all to Mr. Bowes for life, then to the Strathmores. These pleasant boys deserve their good fortunes. I would only rather she had selected _one_ of them to have more definitely preserved her memory.”

* * * * *

“_June 28._--After a party at Lowther Lodge, I went to Lady Marian Alford, whom I found with a very ancient aunt, Lady Elizabeth Dickens. Lady Marian showed me her drawings. There was one glorious sketch of a Roman model, yet most unlike a model. ‘She is,’ said Lady Marian, ‘the model who is so hated by the other models because of her stateliness. “She walks down the Corso as if it belonged to her,” they say. She had two beautiful children--a boy and a girl. Last time I went to Rome, I saw her alone. “Where is your boy?” I asked.--“Oh, dead,” she answered.--“And the girl?”--“Oh, dead, _dead_ too,” she replied, pressing her hands to her forehead. And I pitied her, and I asked her about it, and she said, “I will tell you how it was.” And she told me how she was coming downstairs with her boy in her arms and the girl behind her, and that just as she reached the house-door, a church-bell began to toll. “E un giustiziáto!” said one of the neighbours. And then, she could not tell how, it was somehow borne in upon her that her boy--her son--might, if he grew up, also some day fall into sin, also some day, perhaps, even be _giustiziáto_; and she turned round to the Madonna on the wall, and prayed that, if it were to be so, if such agony were possible for her, that she would take her son _then_, that she would take him away _then_, from the evil to come. And her husband, who heard her, said angrily, “Che sono queste stragonfiáte;” and he beat her; but the Madonna had heard her, and that night her boy was taken ill, and in twenty-four hours he was dead.

“‘And then she said, “That night I went again to the Madonna, and I said, ‘You have taken my boy, and, oh! if I may ever have _arrossire_ for my girl, take the girl also, take her away in her innocence;’ _e la Madonna mi ha fatto anche questa caritá_, and I, I am alone, but my children are safe.”’

* * * * *

“_July 1._--To Holland House, most lovely in all the freshness of new-mown hay, and the old elm avenue dewy from a shower. It was a delight to see Mrs. Augustus Craven, altered from the lovely ‘Pauline de la Ferronays,’ but still beautiful, and I had the happiness of finding that she liked to talk to me about her loved and lost ones.

“A very interesting dinner at Miss Davenport Bromley’s. Signor Francheschi described his life in Corsica, especially the weird women, who come like the Fates, as hired mourners, to bewail the dead, yet throw themselves so completely into their profession that they become quite absorbed in grief, and torrents of tears flow down their cheeks.

“One night he had to travel. In a desolate road he saw two strange ghastly horsemen approaching, with men walking on either side of their horses and holding them. The moonlight glared upon their fixed and horrid countenances. As they came near he heard the footmen talking to them. ‘We must hasten; they are waiting for you; they are even now lamenting you.’ Then he saw that the riders were dead. They were murdered men found by the highway, and had been set on horseback to be brought home. In Corsica it is the custom never to cease speaking to the dead.”

* * * * *

“_July 7._--A capital party at Lowther Lodge to meet Princess Louise and Lord Lorne. The garden was illuminated with magnesium light, and looked both beautiful and--boundless!”

* * * * *

“_July 15._--Luncheon at Lady Combermere’s, where Lord Houghton described his experience of executions. He had been to numbers of those in Newgate. Up to the time of George III. the sign-manual was necessary for every execution, and it was an odd thing that George III., usually a humane man, used to hang every one. He would sit at the council-board and ask each of the ministers in turn whether a man was to suffer death. They would bow their heads in assent. Lord Melbourne was especially ready to do this when he was sitting at the council-board. One day, however, there was a case of a man who had murdered his wife under most brutal circumstances. The evidence was quite incontrovertible, and all were surprised that Lord Melbourne, usually so ready, shrugged his shoulders and seemed to have the greatest difficulty in making up his mind to give an assent to the death-warrant. One of the ministers, in going out, asked why it was. ‘Why, poor man, those women are so damned provoking,’ said Lord Melbourne.

“Mr. Browning said he recollected seeing as many as twenty-one persons sitting together on the condemned bench in Newgate Chapel, many only for stealing a handkerchief. One day in chapel he was jostled by some one pushing in past him, and turned round annoyed. ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but I am going to _suffer_,’ said the man.”

* * * * *

“_July 12._--Monday was a most beautiful day for the party at Chiswick, for its beautiful Italian gardens with glorious cedars. All London was there, including the Prince of Wales, with his little boy George, and the Tecks.”

* * * * *

“_July 29._--Since I wrote last the curious episode of Mrs. L. has occurred.

“On the 14th I left my lodgings in the afternoon to go to the Athenæum, when a tremendous cataract of rain came on, in which I took refuge in the covered entry of Pall Mall Place. A number of other people took refuge there also. Amongst them, I was attracted by the agonised face of a woman crouching in a corner--a lady, for so she seemed by her face, and in a certain degree by her dress; for though her gown looked as if it had been dragged through every Slough of Despond in Europe, the rest of her dress seemed to belong to the better class. As for her expression, I cannot forget it, it was of such agonised, hopeless, bewildered despair. I suppose I looked pityingly at her, for she turned to me, and in sharp wolfish accents said, ‘I am not a beggar, I am not, I am only starving to death, I am starving to _death_!’ I think I begged her to tell me what had brought her to such a pass; at any rate she told me--‘I am Mrs. L.’ To many this would not convey anything, but, from having always been occupied with architecture, it conveyed something to me, and I said, ‘What! the widow of L., the architect?’--‘Yes,’ she said, and she described in the same sharp, broken, gasping accents how she had been with her husband in Paris at the time of the siege, and how he had wished to get her away and had arranged for her escape to England, and how at the moment that he was parting with her and putting a purse into her hand to pay the expenses of her journey, a shell burst near them, and her jaw was blown off. ‘When I came to myself in the hospital,’ she said, ‘I found that the shell which had blown off my jaw, had blown my husband to pieces.’ She then described how she came to England, and how the Soane Museum, which takes care of the widows of architects, had given her a pension of £75 a year. ‘You wonder,’ she continued, ‘that, having this pension, I should have reached the condition I am in, but the fact is I have been a very wicked woman. When our pension is granted, we take a vow never to lend money, which is absolutely forbidden by the rules of the Museum; but a friend of mine was in great want, and I trusted her and became security for her, and she has absconded, and they have come upon me for the debt, and yesterday morning early all my things were seized, and I could not apply to the Museum, because then they would take away my pension, and I was turned adrift in the streets with nothing at all in the world.’ And then the poor woman corrected herself and said, ‘I have told a lie. I have not quite nothing in the world. I have a silk gown. I had that on when I was turned out, but I knew it would be worse for me to spend a night homeless in the streets in a silk gown, and I went to a servant I knew, and got her to take care of it for me, and to lend me the worst gown she had.’

“‘Since yesterday morning,’ she said, ‘I have tasted nothing whatever. You wonder I have not fainted. I have not done that because I am so dreadfully ill; I am in a burning fever. Yesterday I walked up to Hampstead, because there was a governess I knew there, and I thought she would help me; but when I arrived, I found her gone to Scotland with her family, and I walked all about Hampstead and Highgate, and the police insulted me, they did not protect me, they insulted me worst of all; and all through the day I have walked in the streets.’ I asked her, ‘Have you no friend in the world?’--‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I have one person who is a friend; at least there is one person who I think would help me if I could get to her, because my mother was once very kind to her, and that is Mrs. H. of the Mansfield Park School at Uxbridge, and to her, if I could have even a cup of coffee to strengthen me, I should set out and walk.’

“I got her to go and have some tea, which, as I foresaw, made her violently sick; and then, when she was a little better, I sent her by the train to Uxbridge. Immediately returning to the Athenæum, I wrote a lady who lives close to Uxbridge, briefly telling her the story, that Mrs. L. would probably arrive very ill, perhaps almost dying, and begging her to go at once to Mansfield Park and look after her.

“This was on Saturday. On Sunday there is no postal delivery. On Monday morning I received two letters. One was from Mrs. H., overwhelmingly grateful for what I had been able to do for Mrs. L., saying that she had received benefits from her mother which nothing could ever repay, and that she had been only too thankful to receive and care for the daughter. The other letter was from the lady to whom I had written, saying that there was no such place as Mansfield Park, that there was no such person as Mrs. L., and enclosing letters from the police and post-office at Uxbridge certifying this. I explained this in my own mind by remembering that, while telling me her story under the entry, Mrs. L. had said, ‘There is a little affectation about the name of Mansfield Park; it misleads people, for after all it is only a farmhouse.’

“On Monday evening the servant at my lodgings said that Mrs. L. herself had called: I was gone out to dinner. The next morning before I was up she came again, and waited till I was dressed.

“She was then quite calm and happy. She told how, when she got to Uxbridge, after being dreadfully ill in the train, her heart failed her--‘perhaps after all Mrs. H. would not receive her.’ However, she described with tears the touching kindness of Mrs. H.--that she had washed her, dressed her, put her in her own bed, tended her, and finally given her a cheque for £20, which she showed me. Her brother also, a travelling wine merchant in France, whom she had not seen for years, and to whom she had written without a hope of finding him, had also telegraphed that he was on his way to her assistance.

“She was overwhelmingly grateful to me.

“Then I asked her of her past. She said she had been the daughter of a planter in Havannah, but her fine voice induced her, against the will of her family, early to take to a public life. At the Exhibition of 1851 she (as Mademoiselle Mori) sang the anthem of which Jenny Lind sang one verse. She afterwards became a sculptress, and studied under Gibson at Rome (and she described his peculiar studio accurately). She was his only female pupil, and had the charge of his studio. He taught her his mode of colouring marble, and in her statue of ‘Waiting for the Spring,’ she used it in colouring the primroses and violets in a girl’s lap. The Queen bought this statue in the Exhibition building of 1862 before the Exhibition opened. Then she married Mr. L. and went to Paris.

“‘While I was in Paris,’ she said, ‘a very curious thing happened to me. I gave birth to three boys at once. When such an event occurs in France, the sovereigns are always god-parents, and the Emperor and Empress were pleased to have the christening of my three boys in Notre Dame, where they stood sponsors at the font.’--‘And are the boys all dead?’ I said. ‘Oh, dear no, they are all alive.’--‘Then where in the world are they?’ I said. ‘Oh, they live with the Empress: she would not part with them, and my three boys are her little pages. Now they are gone with her into Spain to see her mother.’

“She then described how the Empress often sent her money to go down to Chislehurst to see her boys, and how the Prince Imperial often called to see her, and called her ‘Grannie’ because of the boys, or left her a £10 note. ‘I should have gone at once to the Empress had she been in England,’ said Mrs. L., ‘but I would have died rather than have begged from any one: I would have died on a doorstep.’--‘Then what made you confide in me?’ I asked. ‘Oh, surely you must see that,’ she replied. ‘Of course you must see that. It was the likeness. Of course people must have told you of the great, the wonderful likeness before. I was quite prepared for death, I had made up my mind to die, and then God in His great mercy sent the likeness of my Emperor to me; and I knew then that God did not mean me to die yet.’

“She wants to paint a picture in memory of what she calls my ‘saving her.’[265]

“On the 18th, I had an interesting visit to Apsley House, for which the Duke had sent me the following order:--‘Admit Mr. Hare to see Apsley House on any day _on which the street outside is dry_.’ The street was quite dry, and, moreover, I went in a cab and arrived perfectly spick and span; but the servant laughed as he produced a pair of huge list slippers to go on over my boots, before I was allowed to go into any of the rooms. ‘His Grace left these himself, and desired you should wear them when you came.’ Yet the floors of Apsley House are not even polished.

“On the 19th I went to Lady Ducie’s, to see the Macdonald family act the Pilgrim’s Progress. They go through the whole of the second part, George Macdonald,[266] his wife, his twelve children, and two adopted children. Christiana (the eldest daughter) was the only one who acted well. Nevertheless, the whole effect was touching, and the audience cried most sympathetically as Christiana embraced her children to go over the great river.

“On the 21st there was a delightful party at Holland House to meet the Prince of Wales, and on Wednesday I was thankful to come home.

“Never has little Holmhurst been pleasanter than this year, and I have so enjoyed being alone, the repose of the intense quietude, the radiance of the flowers, the delicious sea-breezes through windows open to the ground, the tame doves flitting and cooing in the branches of the tall lime-tree.”

* * * * *

_To_ MISS WRIGHT.

“_August 6, 1877._--I came home on Wednesday week, and have been alone ever since, and over head and ears in work. I have seen nobody except last Tuesday, when, though I thought no one knew I was at home, fourteen afternooners appeared. Miss Hamilton, who has taken a fancy to do my portrait, has done it very cleverly against a window, with ivy hanging down outside, only it is a sentimental suggestion of

‘He sat at the window all day long And watched the falling leaves.’”

* * * * *

“_August 19._--I have had a pleasant visit of three days to Cobham, and felt much inclined to accede to Lord and Lady Darnley’s wish at the end, that I would consider my visit just begun, and stay another three days. It is indeed a glorious old place externally, and the gardens and immense variety of walks under grand old trees, are enchanting in hot weather. I had many happy ‘sittings out’ and talks with Lady Darnley, and could not sufficiently admire, though I always observe it, how her perfectly serene nature enables her to carry out endless people-seeing, boundless literary pursuit, and inexhaustible good works, without ever fussing herself or any one else, leaving also time to enter into all the minute difficulties of her friends in the varied gyrations of their lives.... I was taken to see Cowling Castle, a romantic old place; just on the edge of those marshes of the Thames which Dickens describes so vividly. We also saw his house, close to Dover road.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Walton Heath, Oct. 6._--After a delightful visit from Harry Lee at Holmhurst, I have come here to Miss Davenport Bromley at a quaint cottage, partly built out of a church, in a corner of the vast Walton Heath, but full of artistic comfort and brightness within. We drove on Thursday to Box Hill, which is most beautiful, the high steep chalky ground covered with such a luxuriance of natural wood, box grown into trees and the billows of pink and blue distance so wonderfully luxuriant and wooded. The time of year is quite beautiful, and all the last festival of nature in the clematis wreaths and the bryony with its red berries dancing from tree to tree.

“We have been to see a quaint old house of the Heathcotes. There is a great stone hall with a high gallery, from which a young lady threw herself in her rage at her lover marrying some one else, and was killed on the spot. Her picture hangs on the staircase wall, and her ghost walks on the stairs, pretty, in white, something like a shepherdess. A housemaid cut a great cross in the picture, ‘to let the ghost out,’ as the old woman who showed the house said, and the hole has never been mended. This country is full of little traditions. There is a green lane close by, down which a headless lady walks, and a phantom coach drives along the road: a countryman who met old M. de Berg on the common declared that he had seen it--that it had driven over him.

“Yesterday we went to Gatton (Lord Monson’s), which formerly belonged to Sir Mark Wood. It is a curious place: the ugly church fitted inside with beautiful Flemish carving and glass, and the house having a hall of coloured marbles, copied from the Corsini Chapel at Rome--minus the upper story.

“I have much enjoyed learning to know Miss Bromley better. She is the kindest of women, wonderfully clever and full of insight into every minutest beauty of nature. Her devotion to animals, especially pugs, is a passion. Another pleasure has been finding Mrs. Henry de Bunsen here. She told me--

“‘There was, and there is still, living in Cadogan Place, a lady of middle age, who is clever, charming, amiable, even handsome, but who has the misfortune of having--a wooden leg. Daily, for many years, she was accustomed to amble every morning on her wooden leg down Cadogan Place, and to take the air in the Park. It was her principal enjoyment.

“‘One day she discovered that in these walks she was constantly followed by a gentleman. When she turned, he turned: where she went, he went: it was most disagreeable. She determined to put an end to it by staying at home, and for some days she did not go out at all. But she missed her walks in the Park very much, and after a time she thought her follower must have forgotten all about her, and she went out as before. The same gentleman was waiting, he followed her, and at length suddenly came up to her in the Park and presented her with a letter. He said that, as a stranger, he must apologise for speaking to her, but that he must implore her to take the letter, and read it when she got home: it was of great importance. She took the letter, and when she got home she read it, and found that it contained a violent declaration of love and a proposal of marriage. She was perfectly furious. She desired her lawyer to enclose the letter to the writer, and say that she could not find words to describe her sense of his ungentlemanly conduct, especially cruel to one afflicted as she was with a wooden leg.

“‘Several years elapsed, and the lady was paying a visit to some friends in the country, when the conversation frequently turned upon a friend of the house who was described as one of the most charming, generous, and beneficent of mankind. So delightful was the description, that the lady was quite anxious to see the original, and was enchanted when she heard that he was likely to come to the house. But when he arrived, she recognised with consternation her admirer of the Park. He did not, however, recur to their former meeting, and after a time, when she knew him well, she grew to esteem him exceedingly, and at last, when he renewed his proposal after an intimate acquaintance, she accepted him and married him.

“‘He took her to his country-house, and for six weeks they were entirely, uncloudedly happy. Then there came a day upon which he announced that he was obliged to go up to London on business. His wife could not go with him because the house in Cadogan Place was dismantled for the summer. “I should regret this more,” he said, “but that where two lives are so completely, so entirely united as ours are, there ought to be the most absolute confidence on either side. Therefore, while I am away, I shall leave you my keys. Open my desk, read all my letters and journals, make yourself mistress of my whole life. Above all,” he said, “there is one cupboard in my dressing-room which contains certain memorials of my past peculiarly sacred to me, which I should like you to make yourself acquainted with.” The wife heard with concern of her husband’s intended absence, but she was considerably buoyed up under the idea of the three days in which they were to be separated by the thought of the very interesting time she would have. She saw her husband off from the door, and as soon as she heard the wheels of his carriage die away in the distance, she clattered away as fast as she could upon her wooden leg to the dressing-room, and in a minute she was down on all fours before the cupboard he had described.

“‘She unlocked the cupboard. It contained two shelves. On each shelf was a long narrow parcel sewn up in canvas. She felt a tremor of horror as she looked at them, she did not know why. She lifted down the first parcel, and it had a label on the outside. She trembled so she could scarcely read it. It was inscribed--“In memory of my dear wife Elizabeth Anne, who died on the 24th of August 1864.” With quivering fingers she sought for a pair of scissors and ripped open the canvas, and it contained--a wooden leg!

“‘With indescribable horror she lifted down the other parcel, of the same form and size. It also bore a label--“In memory of my dearest wife Wilhelmine, who died on the 6th of March 1869,” and she opened it, and it contained--another wooden leg!

“‘Instantly she rose from her knees. “It is evident,” she said, “that I am married to a Blue Beard--a monster who _collects_ wooden legs. This is not the time for sentiment, this is the time for action,” and she swept her jewels and some miniatures that she had into a handbag and she clattered away on her own wooden leg by the back shrubberies to the highroad--and there she saw the butcher’s cart passing, and she hailed it, and was driven by the butcher to the nearest station, where she just caught the next train to London, intending to make good her escape that night to France and to leave no trace behind her.

“‘But she had not consulted Bradshaw, and she found she had some hours to wait in London before the tidal train started. Then she could not resist employing them in going to reproach the people at whose house she had met her husband, and she told them what she had found. To her amazement they were not the least surprised. “Yes,” they said, “yes, we thought he ought to have told you: we do not wonder you were astonished. Yes, indeed, we knew dear Elizabeth Anne very well; she was indeed a most delightful person, the most perfect of women and of wives, and when she was taken away, the whole light seemed blotted out of Arthur’s life, the change was so very terrible. We thought he would never rally his spirits again; but then, after two years, he met dearest Wilhelmine, to whom he was first attracted by her having the same affliction which was characteristic of her predecessor. And Wilhelmine was perhaps even a more charming person than Elizabeth Anne, and made her husband’s life uncloudedly happy. But she too was, alas! early snatched away, and then it was as if the whole world was cut from under Arthur’s feet, until at last he met you, with the same peculiarity which was endeared to him by two lost and loved ones, and we believe that with you he has been even more entirely, more uncloudedly happy than he was either with Wilhelmine or Elizabeth Anne.

“‘And the wife was so charmed by what she heard, that it gave quite a new aspect to affairs. She went home by the next train. She was there when her husband returned; and ever since they have lived perfectly happily between his house in the country and hers in Cadogan Place.’

“Mrs. De Bunsen said that a cousin of hers was repeating this story when dining at the Balfours’. Suddenly he saw that his host and hostess were both telegraphing frantic signals to him, and by a great effort he turned it off. The lady of the wooden leg and her husband were both amongst the guests.”

* * * * *

“_Milford Cottage, Oct. 8._--I came here with Miss Bromley on Saturday to visit Mrs. Greville and her most engaging mother, Mrs. Thellusson. It is a red house, standing almost in the village street, but with a French-looking garden behind, with clipped hedges and orange trees in tubs. It was left to Mrs. Greville by her husband, an old gentleman whom she married when the Thellussons were ruined, and he said, ‘You had better marry me; there is nothing else that I can do for you.’ He always treated her with the greatest generosity and kindness, but died very suddenly, intending to leave his wife very rich. There was, however, some mistake about the will, and she only inherited this cottage and just enough to live upon. I found at Milford, Lady Elizabeth Bryan, a Paget, who goes out visiting with four dogs, one of whom, Constance Kent, is most beautiful, and she has adopted a little cousin and presented her with six-and-thirty dolls. I went to see the adopted daughter in bed; two little dogs were cuddled in her bosom, and seven dolls lay at her feet with their heads out. Lately, the little girl has displayed signs of vanity, paraded her small person before a mirror, and exulted in fine clothes, and on these occasions she is always dressed in ‘Sukey,’ a little workhouse girl’s gown, to remind her that ‘in the sight of God she is no better.’

“This afternoon I have been with Mrs. Greville to Mr. Tennyson at Haselmere. It is a wild, high, brown heath, with ragged edges of birch, and an almost limitless view of blue Sussex distances. Jammed into a hollow is the house, a gothic house, built by Mr. Knowles, the editor of the _Nineteenth Century_--‘that young bricklayer fellow that Alfred is so fond of,’ as Mr. Carlyle calls him. Though the place is a bleak, wind-stricken height, where the flowers in the garden can never sit still, the house is pleasant inside and well and simply furnished, but is without any library whatever. Tennyson is older looking than I expected, so that his _unkempt_ appearance signifies less. He has an abrupt, bearish manner, and seems thoroughly hard and _un_poetical: one would think of him as a man in whom the direst prose of life was absolutely ingrained. Mrs. Greville kissed his hand as he came in, which he received without any protest. He asked if I would like to go out, and we walked round the gardens. By way of breaking the silence I said, ‘How fine your arbūtus is.’--‘Well, I would say arbūtus,’ he answered, ‘otherwise you are as bad as the gardeners, who say Clemātis.’ When we returned to the house, Hallam Tennyson brought in his mother very tenderly and put her on a sofa. She is a very sweet-looking woman, with ‘the glittering blue eyes’ which fascinated Carlyle, and a lady-abbess look from her head-dress--a kind of veil. Mrs. Greville revealed that she had broken her promise of not repeating an unpublished poem of Tennyson’s by reciting it to Mr. Carlyle, who said, ‘But did Alfred give you leave to say it?’ and Tennyson said, ‘You are the wickedest old woman I ever met with: it is most _profligate_ conduct’--and he half meant it too. Tennyson then insisted that I should tell him some stories. I did not like it, but found it was no use to resist; I should have to do it in the end. He asked for ‘a village tragedy,’ so I told him the story of Caroline Crowhurst: he said he should write it in a play or a poem. Then I told him the stories of Mademoiselle von Raasloff and of Croglin Grange. He was atrociously bad audience, and constantly interrupted with questions. He himself repeated a little story, which Mr. Greene of the ‘English History’ had told him--of a man who felt that his fiddle, to which he was devoted, was the source of temptation to him by leading him to taverns where he got drunk. On the Mississippi river, he said, he heard a voice saying to him that he must destroy the fiddle; so he went down, kissed the fiddle, and then broke it to pieces. ‘_I_ put in that kiss,’ said Tennyson, ‘because I thought it sounded better.’

“On the whole, the wayward poet leaves a favourable impression. He could scarcely be less egotistic with all the flattery he has, and I am glad to have seen him so quietly. The maid who opened the door was Mrs. Cameron’s beautiful model, and there were pictures of her by Mrs. Cameron all about the house.

“For the poet’s bearish manners the Tennyson family are to blame, in making him think himself a demigod. One day, on arriving at Mrs. Greville’s, he said at once, ‘Give me a pipe; I want to smoke.’ She at once went off by herself down the village to the shop, and returning with two pipes, offered them to him with all becoming subservience. He never looked at her or thanked her, but, as he took them, growled out, ‘Where are the matches? I suppose now you’ve forgotten the matches!’--‘Oh dear! I never thought of those.’

“Mrs. Greville has a note of Tennyson’s framed. It is a very pretty note; but it begins ‘Dear Madwoman.’”

* * * * *

“_Babworth, Oct. 14._--This house overflows with loveliness in the way of amateur art, and the drawings of its mistress, Mrs. Bridgeman Simpson, are most beautiful. She is the kindest and most good-natured of hostesses.... Yesterday we went to Sandbeck, an ugly dull house in a flat, and looking bare within from paucity of furniture. Lord Scarborough, once a bold huntsman, is now patiently awaiting a second stroke of paralysis in a wheel-chair. Lumley, a pleasant boy, just going to join his regiment at Dublin, drove me after luncheon to Roche Abbey, a very pretty ruin in a glen.”

* * * * *

“_Oct. 15._--Mrs. Simpson’s very charming Polish sister-in-law, Mrs. Drummond Baring, recounted yesterday evening a curious story out of the reminiscences of her childhood, of which her husband from knowledge confirmed every fact. Her father, Count Potocka, lived in Martinique. His wife had been married before, and her beautiful daughter, Minetta, idolised by her second husband, had made a happy marriage with the Marquis de San Luz, and resided at Port Royal about five miles from her parents. The father was a great naturalist, and had the greatest interest in introducing and naturalising all kinds of plants in the West Indies. Amongst other plants, he was most anxious to introduce strawberries. Every one said he would fail, and the neighbouring gardeners especially said so much about it that it was a positive annoyance to them when his plants all seemed to succeed, and he had a large bed of strawberries in flower. His step-daughter, Minetta, came to see them, and he always said to her that, when the strawberries were ripe, she should have the first fruit.

“A ball was given at Port Royal by the Governor, and there her parents saw Minetta, beautiful and radiant as ever; but she left the ball early, for her child was not well. As she went away, she said to her stepfather, ‘Remember my strawberries.’

“Her parents returned home in the early morning, and a day and a night succeeded. Towards dawn on the second morning, when night was just breaking into the first grey daylight, the mother felt an irresistible restlessness, and getting up and going to the window, she looked out. A figure in white was moving to and fro amongst the strawberries, carefully examining each plant and looking under the leaves. She awoke her husband, who said at once, ‘It is one of the gardeners, who are so jealous that they have come to destroy my plants;’ and jumping up, he put on his _gola_--a sort of dressing-gown wrapper worn in Martinique--and, taking his gun, rushed out. On first going out, he saw the figure in white moving before him, but as he came up to the strawberry beds it seemed to have disappeared. He was surprised, and turning round towards the house, saw his wife making agonised signs to him to come back. Such was her livid aspect, that he threw down his gun upon the ground and ran in to her. He found her in a dead faint upon the floor. When she recovered, she said that she had watched him from the window as he went out, and that, as he reached the strawberry beds, the figure seemed to turn round, and she saw--like a person seen through a veil and through the glass of a window, and, though perfectly distinct, transparent--her daughter Minetta. Soon after describing this, she was seized with violent convulsions. Her husband was greatly alarmed about her, and was just sending off for the doctor, who lived at some distance, when a rider on a little Porto Rico pony came clattering into the court. They thought it was the doctor, but it was not; it was a messenger from Port Royal to say that Minetta was dead. She had been seized with a chill on returning from the ball, and it had turned to fatal diphtheria. In her last hours, when her throat was so swelled and hot, she had constantly said, ‘Oh, my throat is so hot! Oh, if I had only some of those strawberries!’”

* * * * *

“_Thoresby, Oct. 17._--Lord Manvers sent for me after luncheon three days ago, and we came with a horse fleet as the wind through the green lanes of Clumber, and across part of the (Sherwood) forest, to this immense modern palace by Salvin. All around is forest. No one was at home when I arrived, so I went out for a walk, and was joined by Lord Manvers on returning.... Lady Manvers is quite delightful, and so are her son and daughter, so I have been very glad of two days alone with the family; and the forest is enchanting from its varieties of gnarled oak, silver birch, endlessly contorted fir, and gigantic beeches, with ever-varying lights on the golden and crimson fern in its first beautiful decay. Now guests have arrived, including Mr. Frederick Tayler, the artist,[267] whose blottesque treatment of the green in the forest with only gamboge, indigo, and sepia is very interesting to see. He was very funny about the late Lord Manvers, who was a wit, and who, when Lord Ossington was rather boastful about his lake, said--‘Come, come now, Ossington, don’t speak of a lake; just wipe it up and say no more about it.’

“In the afternoon we drove through ‘the Catwhins’ to Clumber--a dull ugly low-lying house. There is much fine china, but it is a dreary place.”

* * * * *

“_Glamis Castle, Oct. 26._--I had a delightful visit to the salt of the earth at Hutton,[268] where Mr. and Mrs. Pease were entertaining a large party, chiefly of semi-Quaker relations, including Miss Fox of Falmouth, who is most interesting and agreeable. Mrs. Pease is as delightful as she is beautiful, and the place is an oasis of good works of every kind. Thence I came here, meeting Mr. Waldegrave Leslie and Lady Rothes at the station. As we drove up to the haunted castle at night, its many turrets looked most eerie and weird against the moonlit sky, and its windows blazed with red light. The abundance of young life inside takes off the solemn effect--the number of charming children, the handsome cordial boys, the winning gracious mistress; only Lord Strathmore himself has an ever sad look. The Bishop of Brechin, who was a great friend of the house, felt this strange sadness so deeply that he went to Lord Strathmore, and, after imploring him in the most touching manner to forgive the intrusion into his private affairs, said how, having heard of the strange secret which oppressed him, he could not help entreating him to make use of his services as an ecclesiastic, if he could in any way, by any means, be of use to him. Lord Strathmore was deeply moved, though he said that he thanked him, but that in his most unfortunate position _no one_ could ever help him. He has built a wing to the castle, in which all the children and all the servants sleep. The servants will not sleep in the house, and the children are not allowed to do so.

“I found a large party here, and was agreeably surprised to see Lady Wynford come down to dinner. Then Lady Holmesdale appeared, with her piteous little white-mouse aspect; Mr. and the charming Mrs. Streatfeild, Lady Strathmore’s sister; Miss Erica Robertson, and Lord and Lady Rosehill.

“There is much of interest in the life here--the huge clock telling the hours; the gathering in early morning for prayers by the chaplain in the chapel, through a painted panel of which some think that the secret chamber is concealed, though others maintain that it is entered through Lord Strathmore’s study, and occupies the space above ‘the crypt’--an armour-hung hall where we all meet for dinner, at which the old Lion of Lyon--gold, for holding a whole bottle of claret, which the old lords used to toss off at a draught--is produced. There are lions everywhere. Huge gilt lions stand on either side in front of the drawing-room fireplace, lions are nut-crackers, a lion sits on the letter-box, the very door-scraper is guarded by two lions.

“The boys are charming, so very nice that one cannot believe any curse can affect them. Claudie (Glamis) is very handsome, and looks strikingly so in his Scotch dress. Frank is ill now, but most engaging.

“To-day, as I was drawing, Mr. Waldegrave Leslie gave a curious account of his life at Lady Rothes’ castle--that they themselves inhabit the ghost-room, and that the ghost comes frequently, and not only groans, but _howls_; they often hear it. When Lady Rothes’ brother died, the episcopal service was read over him in the house by a clergyman, and the ghost then howled so horribly that the service was quite inaudible, and eventually had to be stopped. He said they did not mind the ghost, but that Lady Rothes’ Dandie Dinmont dog was distracted with terror when it came, and crept upon the bed quivering convulsively all over.

“Lady Rosehill has been meeting Mr. (Dicky) Doyle, the genial fairy lover, who told her that one day when a man was walking down Pall Mall with a most tremendous swagger, somebody walked up to him and said, ‘Sir, will you have the kindness to tell me, _are_ you anybody in particular?’”

* * * * *

“_Oct. 29._--Yesterday was Sunday, and we had three services in the chapel, which is painted all over with figures of saints by the same man who executed the bad paintings of the Scottish kings at Holyrood. The sermons from Mr. Beck, the chaplain, head of ‘the Holy Cross’ in Scotland, were most curious: the first--apropos of All Saints--being a mere catalogue of saints, S. Etheldreda, S. Kenneth, S. Ninian, &c., and their virtues; and describing All Saints’ festival as ‘the Mart of Holiness’: the second--apropos of All Souls--speaking of prayers for the dead as a duty inculcated by the Church in all ages, and taking the words of Judas Maccabeus as a text.”

* * * * *

“_Gorhambury, Nov. 20._--It was dark when I reached the St. Albans Station yesterday. Lord Verulam’s carriage was in waiting for guests: I got into it with three others. ‘Lord Beaconsfield was with us in the train,’ said the young lady of the party, ‘and I am sure he is going to Gorhambury, and oh! I _am_ so glad he has taken a fly.’ We drove up to the great porticoed house in the dark, and a small winding staircase took us to a great lofty hall, furnished as a sitting-room. Here we found Lady Verulam, two of her daughters, Lady Catherine Weyland, &c. Other guests appeared at dinner--the sallow basilisk face of Lord Beaconsfield: his most amusing secretary, Montagu Corry: Lord Exeter, with long black hair: Lady Exeter, tall, very graceful and refined-looking, but with the coldest manner in the world: a young Lord Mount-Charles: Scudamore Stanhope, remarkably pleasant: Charlie Duncombe, very pleasant too: Lady Mary Cecil: Dowager Lady Craven, always most agreeable.

“Lord Verulam is permanently lame and on two crutches, but most agreeable and kindly. This morning I sat to draw the ruin of Lord Bacon’s house (Lady Craven saved it when it was going to be pulled down). The place is full of relics of him, his observatory in the park: the ‘Kissing Oak,’ beneath which Queen Elizabeth embraced him: the ‘Queen’s Ride,’ used when she came to visit him: curious painted terra-cotta busts of his father and mother and of himself as a child, in the library: and in the dining-room a large portrait of his brother, which he (the brother) painted himself, the most prominent feature being his legs, of which he was evidently exceedingly proud.

“In the afternoon I drove with Lady Exeter, Lady Catherine Weyland, and Lady Jane Grimston to St. Albans, and went over the abbey with Mr. Chapel, the delightfully enthusiastic clerk of the works, who repeatedly exclaimed, ‘It is the pride of my life, sir; it is the pride of my life.’ He has most beautifully put together, from the fragments found, the two great shrines of the place, of St. Alban and St. Amphipolis (Arthur Stanley doubts the existence of the latter saint, and thinks the name was only that of a cloak), not adding or inventing a single bit; and the whole interior of the abbey has been hitherto done in the same way, being perhaps the one church in England really restored, not remodelled. In returning we stopped at St. Michael’s to see the tomb of Lord Bacon, represented as he sat in his chair--‘sic sedebat.’”

* * * * *

“_Nov. 21._--At dinner last night and all day Lord Beaconsfield seemed absorbed, scarcely noticed any one, barely answered his hostess when spoken to. Montagu Corry[269] said that his chief declared that the greatest pleasure in life was writing a book, because ‘in that way alone man could become a creator:’ that his habit was to make marionettes, and then to live with them for some months before he put them into action. Lately he had made some marionettes; now he was living with them, and their society occupied him entirely.

“To-day Lord Verulam showed me many of the relics of the house--the decision of his ancestor, Judge Crook, releasing Hampden: a deed of free-warren from Henry II. confirming to one of his ancestors another deed of his grandfather Henry I.: the portrait of Edward Grimston (1460), the oldest known authentic portrait in England, representing a man who fought at Towton, but afterwards made peace with Edward IV., lived in retirement, and is mentioned in the Paston Letters.

“Lord Verulam told me of his discovery that Lord Lovat was seventy-three at the time of his execution, not eighty, as is generally affirmed. The supposed date of his birth and the date of his learning to fence tend to confirm this, and his _smiling_ when he looked upon his coffin-plate on the scaffold and the line he quoted from Horace.”

* * * * *

“_Nov. 25._--On Friday I drove with Lord Verulam in his victoria to Wrothampstead. The old house there is one of the long many-gabled houses, vine-covered, with windows and chimneys of moulded brick, standing, backed by fine trees, in a brilliant garden. Inside it is gloriously panelled, and has a staircase approached by balustraded gates with a tapestried room at the top of it. It belongs to a Mr. Lawes, who for a long time was supposed to be wasting all his time and most of his money in chemistry, but at length by his chemistry he discovered a cheap way of making a valuable manure, and ‘Lawes’s manure’ has made him a millionaire.

“Yesterday we went to Tittenhanger, already familiar to me from Lady Waterford’s descriptions. It is a charming old house, utterly Cromwellian, most attractive and engaging, depending for its effect upon its high overhanging roofs, and the simple, admirable brick ornaments of its windows. The rooms are full of beautiful pictures and china, but Lady Caledon was not there, and it is always a loss not to see the owner _with_ a place.

“It was on hearing some one mention this house that Sydney Smith made the impromptu--

‘Oh, pray, where is Tittenhanger? Is it anywhere by Bangor? Or, if it is not in Wales, Can it, perhaps, be near Versailles? Tell me, in the name of grace, Is there really such a place?’

“Lady Lilian Paulet was very absurd at dinner with her story of an American who said that, going down Piccadilly, he met a mad dog, so, as he could not avoid him, he thrust his hand down its throat and pulled out its inside; after which the dog ran on still, but it could no longer say ‘bow-wow,’ it could only say ‘wow-bow.’

“It was amusing _seeing_ Lord Beaconsfield at Gorhambury: _hear_ him I never did, except when he feebly bleated out some brief and ghastly utterance. His is an extraordinary life. He told Lord Houghton that the whole secret of his success was his power of never dwelling upon a failure; he ‘had failed often, _constantly_ at first, yet had never dwelt on it, but always gone on to something else.’”

* * * * *

“_Burghley, Nov. 29._--I have been glad to come to the place which is often called ‘the finest house in England’--a dictum in which I by no means agree. The guests are a row of elderly baronets of only hunting and Midland-county fame. An exception is Sir John Hay, a thorough old _gentleman_ (an Admiral) and very agreeable. I took a Miss Fowke in to dinner, and complained to her of the number of old baronets. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘they are old and they are numerous, and the central one is my father.’

“The house is immense, but has little internal beauty. There is a series of stately rooms, dull and oppressive, with fine tapestry and china, and a multitude of pictures with very fine names, almost all misnamed--a copy of the well-known Bronzino of the Medici boy being called Edward VI.; a copy of the well-known Correggio in the National Gallery being marked as an original by Angelica Kauffman, &c.[271] In a small closet is a number of jewelled trinkets, including Queen Elizabeth’s watch and thimble, and there hangs the gem of the picture collection--‘The Saviour Blessing the Elements,’ a very expressive but most unpleasing work of Carlo Dolci. It is the halo of the great Lord Burghley which gives the place all its interest. He lies on his back in a scarlet robe under a canopy in St. Martin’s Church at the entrance of the town, and close by is a cenotaph to his father and mother, who are buried at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. All the five churches of Stamford have merit, and the town is interesting and picturesque.

“Lord Exeter, with his lank black hair and his wrinkled yellow jack-boots high above the knee, looks like a soldier of Cromwell. In the evening he and the whole family dance incessantly to the music of a barrel-organ, which they take it in turn to wind.[272]

“The great idol of family adoration is ‘Telemachus’--the memory of Telemachus, or rather a whole dynasty of Telemachi, for they are now arrived at Telemachus X. The bull Telemachus I. gained more than £1000 at small county cattle-shows. His head is stuffed in the hall; his statue in silver stands in the dining-room (where there are also silver statues of Telemachus II. and III.), and his portrait hangs on the wall.”

* * * * *

“_Dec. 6._--On Tuesday, at King’s Cross, I met Elizabeth Biddulph, Marie Adeane, Alethea Grenfell, and the Dalyells, and we came down together, a merry party, to Hertford, whither the Robert Smiths sent to fetch us to their picturesque new house of Goldings. Alethea is full of the story of Jagherds (near Corsham)--that ‘in the difficulty of finding a house there suitable for the clergyman, an old manor-house was suggested, which seemed to meet all requisites. The Bishop (Ellicott) himself went to see it, and was quite delighted with it, and the clergyman went to reside there. But his servants would not stay, his governesses would not stay; all said they were worried out of their lives by the figure of a lady in blue, which appeared all over the house and on all possible occasions; and at last the clergyman himself gave in and went away. With the next clergyman the same thing happened, and he appealed to the Bishop. The Bishop said he never could tell why he suggested it, but in his answer he said, “If the apparition comes again, I should advise you to throw as much sympathy as you can into your manner, and ask what you can do for it.” Soon after he heard from the clergyman that this had quite succeeded. The blue lady had appeared again, and the clergyman immediately, with an appearance of the utmost sympathy in his countenance, said, “Madam, is there nothing in the world I can do for you?”--upon which a seraphic smile came over the face of the spirit, and it vanished away and never appeared again.’

“Lately the Bishop had a letter from an old clergyman at Wisconsin in America, who wrote to him that an aged parishioner of his had sent for him on his deathbed, saying that he could not die happy without recounting the facts of a crime which he had witnessed in his boyhood. He had been taken by a gang of highwaymen who held their headquarters at Jagherds Court in Wiltshire, and while there was witness to many deeds of violence committed by them. Amongst others, they carried off a young lady, and in the row and quarrels which ensued, the young lady was murdered at Jagherds Court.

“The old clergyman, not knowing what to do with this confession, thought the best way was to write it to the Bishop of the diocese in which Jagherds was situated, and he wrote it to the Bishop of Gloucester, who verified the whole, finding his correspondent a veritable clergyman, &c. The Bishop of Gloucester told the story last week at Lord Ducie’s.”

* * * * *

“_Holmhurst, Dec. 16._--I have been intensely busy. The life of Madame de Bunsen _unfolds_ itself in her letters more than any life I have ever heard of. I long for the time to come when I may begin to unite, my links, but at present I have only been making extracts--such extracts! Her power of expression is astonishing. I discover so much that I fancy I have felt myself, and never been able to put into words. I see in the vast piles of MS. the means of building a very perfect memorial to her.”

* * * * *

“_Ampthill, Christmas Day, 1877._--I came here yesterday from Holmhurst.... It was a great pleasure to find charming old Sir Francis Doyle here with his son and daughter. Sir Francis talks incessantly and most agreeably, and makes the mornings as interesting as the evenings. ‘C’étaient des matinées excellentes, pour lesquelles je me sentirais encore du gout,’ as Talleyrand used to say. Sir Francis has just been saying, apropos of how little one knows the true characters of those one meets:--

“‘H. told me a curious thing one day. He went to dine with a cabinet minister (I suppress the name), and there came down a lady, the governess, cherished by the family--“a perfect treasure.” He recognised her at once as a lady he had known very well, very intimately indeed. She sank after that, sank into the lowest depth of that class of life. “I used to help her with money,” he said, “as long as I could, but at last she sank too low even for that, quite out of my sphere of possibilities altogether, and here I found her reinstated. As I was questioning what I ought to do, she passed near me and said only, ‘I have sown my wild oats.’ I never told of her: I had nothing to do with placing her where she was.”’

“With the same intention Sir Francis told a curious story of ‘Two Shoes,’ a boy at Eton:--

“‘Two Shoes took a box to a boy-friend of his who was in another house and said, “A number of curious things are happening in my house, and this box contains things of value to me; I wish you would let it stay here for a little.” The boy said, “Yes, you may leave your box, provided only that it contains no money: I will not be responsible for anything with money in it.” Two Shoes said there was no money in the box, and it was left. Afterwards, when the box was moved, a great rattle as of sovereigns was heard inside, and as the tutor of the house whence it had been taken declared himself robbed at the same time, the boy in whose charge the box was left thought it necessary to declare what had happened. The sixty sovereigns lost by the tutor were found in the box. Two Shoes was expelled.... H. went down into ---- shire lately, and there he found Two Shoes confidential solicitor to half the county.’

“Apropos of the secret crimes of so-called ‘religious people,’ Sir Francis said--

“‘I am quite sure that Abigail murdered her husband; that one is quite left to understand. He could not have died of the shock of having escaped David. Oh, no; she was a religious woman, so she waited till six o’clock on the Sabbath evening, and then she poisoned him.’

“His stories of old times and people are endless. He said--

“‘I always keep a reminiscence of poor Lady Davy to laugh at. It was one of those great days at Stafford House, one of their very great gala days, and Lady Davy was in the hall in the greatest anxiety about her carriage; and she, little woman, walked up to one of those very magnificent flunkeys, six feet high at least and in resplendent livery, and besought him to look after her carriage. I never saw any one _so_ civil as that man was. “I have called your Ladyship’s carriage three times,” he said, “and it has not answered, but if your Ladyship wishes, I will try again.”

“‘I saw the second act of that little drama. I went through the door, beyond the awning, just when the footman was stalking haughtily and carelessly among the link-boys and saying disdainfully, “Just give old Davy another call.”’

“At dinner the conversation turned on Lord and Lady Lytton. She was a Miss Doyle, a distant cousin of Sir Francis, and shortened his father’s life by her vagaries and furies. After his father’s death Sir Francis left her alone for many years; then it was represented to him that she had no other relations, and that it was his duty to look after her interests, and he consented to see her, and, at her request, to ask Sir E. Bulwer to give her another hundred a year. This Sir Edward said he was most willing to do, but that she must first give a written retractation of some of the horrible accusations she had brought against him. When Lady Bulwer heard that this retractation was demanded of her, she turned upon Sir Francis with the utmost fury, and abused him with every vile epithet she could think of. She afterwards wrote to him, and directed to ‘Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, Receiver of her Majesty’s Customs (however infamous), Thames Street, London.’ ‘But,’ said Sir Francis, ‘I also had my day. I was asked as to her character. I answered, “From _your_ point of view I believe her character to be quite immaculate, for I consider her to be so perfectly filled with envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, as to have no possible room left for the exercise of any tenderer passion.”’ Lady Bulwer appeared on the hustings against her husband. His son told Sir Edward, ‘Do you know my Lady is here?’--‘What, Henry’s wife!’--‘No, _yours_.’ She said, ‘He ought to have gone to the colonies long ago, and at the Queen’s expense.’”

* * * * *

“_Ampthill, Dec. 26._--This morning Sir Francis was attracted by the portrait of old Lady Carlisle hanging by the drawing-room door, and he said, ‘That portrait always reminds me of something Lady Carlisle said once. I was speaking to her of the death of one of her sisters, and she said, “We were all very sorry, very sorry indeed; but she (pointing to another sister), she _cared_.”’

“For my benefit Sir Francis narrated the story of the thirty-nine Yaconines.

“In Japan, there was one Daimio who was in rivalry with another, and who was superseded by him, and of course his honour could not stand that, so he committed ‘the happy despatch.’ His followers ought to have avenged him, it was Japanese etiquette that they should, but they did not; they, lamented and howled, but they did nothing, and the chief of them in his agony lay down in the gutter and remained there fasting for several days. Then one day the head-follower of the successful Daimio, passing by, saw him in the gutter, and spurned him with his foot and said, ‘You beast, you coward, you brute! do you intend to lie there and let your master go unavenged?’ but the man still lay crouched and grovelling and took no notice.

“But a time came when the followers of the successful Daimio were dispersed, and then the thirty-eight servants of the dead man arose and went to him, and kneeling around him said with courtesy, ‘We do not wish to cut your throat, do not compel us; take the happy despatch;’ but the Daimio would not take their advice, he could not bring his mind to it; so then the Yakonines performed their duty, and they cut his throat. When they had done that, the thirty-eight Yakonines summoned all the people together to attend them, for they were about to perform their final duty, their ‘happy despatch’ to the manes of their master, and the thirty-eight performed it, amid the acclamations of the people over their fidelity even to death. But when, afterwards, men came to count the corpses, behold there were thirty-nine: the enemy who had spurned the Yakonine as he lay in the gutter repented when he saw that he had accused him falsely, and had silently joined the procession of death: there were thirty-nine Yakonines who died.”

* * * * *

“_Dec. 27._--Last night a French play was acted, ‘Madame Choufleuri reçoit chez elle.’ Mr. Lowther, who was merely an old French gentleman spectator, created for himself a part which was a whole dumb dramatic performance in itself.

“I had a charming drive to-day with Lady Ashburton to Woburn, the rest having preceded us. There is a long winding double avenue in the park. The stables are so enormous that we mistook them for the house, and were surprised when we turned the other way. However, the door of the real house was most dilapidated and unducal. Long passages, surrounding an open court, and filled with portraits, led to a large sitting-room, where we found most of our own party and the guests of the house. The Duchess was kind and cordial. We all went to luncheon in the Canaletti room, enlivened by endless views of Venice, which, regardless of their artistic merits, are most pleasing to the eye through their delicate green-grey tints. Afterwards we went through the rooms, full of portraits, one of Lucy Harington in a ruff, very fine. In one corner is a set of interesting Tudor portraits, including a large one of Jane Seymour; hideous I thought, though Froude, when he saw it, said he did not wonder Henry VIII. cut Anne Boleyn’s head off to marry so bewitching a creature. A great portrait of the famous Lord Essex in a white dress has a mean feeble face and stubby red beard. The Duke[273] offered to take us to the church. Lady Ashburton, Lady Howard of Glossop, and I drove there with him. We passed ‘the Abbot’s Oak,’ where the last abbot was hung. Froude says he went up to London and was swallowed up by his fate. The Duke asked what this meant. It did mean that he was hung, drawn, and quartered, ‘but Froude was very angry at the question; historians never like being asked for details.’ The banks of a stone quarry are planted with cedars and evergreens, and the drive to the church is very pretty. The church was built by Clutton, who was turned loose into a field and told to produce what he could. He _did_ produce a very poor mongrel building, neither gothic nor romanesque. The Duke said, ‘Would you like to see what is going to be done with me when I am dead?’ and he showed us the hole in the floor where he was to be let through ‘to the sound of solemn music,’ and then took us down into the vaults beneath to see the trestles on which his coffin was to repose! I long tried in vain to get Lady Ashburton to leave the endless letters, some of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who stayed with her grand-daughter and complained that the house was so dreadfully out of repair that the rain came into her bedroom, but another year that was to be remedied. We were deep in a ‘Boethius de Consolatione,’ printed in Tavistock Abbey, when the Duchess came in. ‘Would you like to see my golden image?’ So we went by a long open cloister, with wooden pillars rose-entwined, to see where the statue of the Duchess stands on a hill, all gilt like the figure of the Prince Consort, so that one really could _see_ nothing except that it was a standing figure, and I could _say_ nothing except that it was very well placed. Then we were taken through the sculpture-gallery, in which the great feature is a glorious sarcophagus, with a relief of the body of Hector being weighed against gold, Priam and Hecuba standing by with tears upon their cheeks.”

* * * * *

“_Dec. 28._--The hours at Ampthill were especially pleasant from five to seven, when one was allowed to sit with Lady Wensleydale, who, in the beautiful halo of her evergreen old age, is all that is most winning and delightful--with full memory of her ‘wealthy past’ and gratitude for present peace, hemmed in by loving care of children and grandchildren.”

* * * * *

“_Ascot Wood, Dec. 29._--Sir John Lefevre has been talking of an old acquaintance of his named Balm, who was very extravagant. Some one said to him once, ‘_Balm, Balm_, if you are not _sage_, you’ll spend a _mint_ in time (_thyme_), and then you’ll _rue_.’

“He described a dinner-party at which he was present with ten others, including Sydney Smith, who made them all laugh so much that they were obliged to _stand up_. It was the only time he ever saw it--‘Laughter holding both its sides.’”

* * * * *

“_Jan. 6, 1878._--At Ascot Station I met Mark Napier, who resigned his first-class ticket and the companionship of Plato’s ‘Republic,’ his usual reading in the train, to travel with me. His conversation is always full of thought and interest. I went to Cobham in the evening, and liked my visit, as I always do, meeting many people, including Mrs. Russell Barrington, who dresses like a figure by Burne Jones, and is even ambitious of becoming a Botticelli.”

* * * * *

“_Crewe Hall, Jan. 6._--The number of hats in the hall told me on arriving here that there was a large party in the house, but I find no remarkable elements except Lord Houghton and Mr. Nugee, a clergyman still in appearance, but one who has gone out of the Church at the High end, and has a sort of monastery for training ecclesiastics somewhere in London. He preached to-day in the chapel, standing on the steps of the altar, a discourse like that of a French preacher, most dramatic, most powerful, most convincing--yet, oh! how difficult it is to carry away anything even from the sermons one likes best.

“Lord Crewe welcomed me very cordially, and made himself so pleasant that I thought his eccentricities had been exaggerated, till suddenly, at dinner, he began a long half-whispered conversation with himself, talking, answering, _acting_, and nothing afterwards seemed able to rouse him back to ordinary life. During the fire which destroyed the interior of Crewe some years ago, Lord Crewe bore all with perfect equanimity, and said not a word till the fire-engines came and were at work. Then he turned to his sister, Lady Houghton, who was present, and said, ‘I think I had better send for my goloshes.’[274]

“It is a very fine house, with noble alabaster chimney-pieces inlaid with precious marbles, but since the fire all has been too much overlaid with decoration, and in many respects indifferent decoration. The Sir Joshuas are glorious and numerous.

“This afternoon Lord Houghton told an interesting story which he heard from Mrs. Robert Gladstone:--

“‘She went to stay in Scotland with the Maxwells of Glenlee. Arriving early in the afternoon, she went to her room to rest. It was a lovely day. Mrs. Maxwell lay upon the sofa at the foot of her bed. Soon it seemed to her as if the part of the room opposite to her was filled with mist. She thought it came from the fireplace, but there was no fire and no smoke. She looked to see if it came from the window; all without was bright clear sunshine. She felt herself _frisonner_. Gradually the mist seemed to assume form, till it became a grey figure watching the clock. She could not take her eyes from it, and she was so terrified that she could not scream. At length, with terror and cold, her senses seemed going. She became unconscious. When she came to herself the figure was gone. Her husband came in soon after, and she told him. He took her down to five-o’clock tea. Then some one said, “You are in the haunted room,” and she told what had happened. They changed her room, but the next morning she went away.

“Soon afterwards Mrs. Stamford Raffles went to stay at Glenlee. It was then winter. She awoke in the night, and by the bright firelight burning in her room saw the same effect of mist, collecting gradually and forming a leaning figure looking at the clock. The same intense cold was experienced, followed by the same unconsciousness, after a vain endeavour to awaken her husband, for her limbs seemed paralysed.

“‘The Maxwells soon afterwards became so annoyed that they gave up Glenlee.’

“Lord Houghton also told the story of General Upton:--

“‘Whilst at Lisbon he saw a military friend of his in England pass across the end of the room. On reaching England he went to see his friend’s family, found them in deep mourning, and learnt that his friend was dead. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I know that; he died on such a day, for I saw him.” Upon this the family became greatly agitated, and vehemently denied that he had died till several days later. “_Nothing_ will convince me,” said General Upton, “but that he died on that particular day.” Upon this the widow flung herself on her knees before him and implored him for God’s sake not to bring utter ruin upon her by saying this to any one else. “Very well,” he said; “I do not want to injure you, but the best way will be to tell me the whole truth.” Then she confessed. It was one of those cases in which the time for a pension was not quite due for a few days, and she concealed the death till those days were past.’

“Lady Egerton, who is here, told of young De Ritchie, whose wife died in Fiji. He obtained leave of absence immediately, and wishing to break the shock of his wife’s sudden death to her friends, merely telegraphed that they were coming home at once, for Ranee was very ill. On the day they were expected to arrive, the grandparents said to the little boy left in their charge that they were going to meet his papa and mama, who were coming home. The child looked very grave and said, ‘Papa, yes; Mama, no: poor Mama sleep in Fiji;’ and nothing would make it say any more. Dr. De Ritchie (the grandfather) was so impressed with this, that he was hardly surprised when, on going to Southampton, he met his son alone.

“Sir Watkin Wynne described a curious event on his property. A poor woman earnestly implored that a certain tree near her cottage might be cut down, for she had dreamt that her husband would be killed by it. She besought it so earnestly that the tree was ordered to be cut down. In falling, the rope attached to the tree caught the poor man, and crushed him against the wall, and he was killed.”

* * * * *

“_London, Jan. 22._--A very pleasant dinner at Lady Ashburton’s. Miss Hosmer[275] was there, very full of her strange discovery of being able to turn limestone into marble, and then to colour it to any tint she wishes--a discovery perhaps not unknown to the ancient Romans.”

* * * * *

“_Jan. 26._--Dined with old Lady Lyndhurst,[276] who has all the clever vivacity acquired by her early life in France. Speaking of bullying at public schools, she said, ‘I discovered that my Lord had been a bully when he was a boy, and I can assure you I thumped him well at eighty for what he had done at fourteen.’”

* * * * *

“_Battle Abbey, March 10, 1878._--I came here yesterday, finding Lady Marian Alford, and to-day Lord Houghton came. Speaking of Mrs. L. E---- ‘s poverty, the Duchess said, ‘It is so sad; really often she has actually not bread to eat.’--‘Yes,’ said Lord Houghton, ‘but then she has so many kind friends who give her _cake_.’

“Lady Marian described the railway adventure of a friend of hers. Two ladies got into a carriage at King’s Cross, one old and the other young. Into the same carriage got a gentleman and sat down between them. As soon as the train started, he looked round at one and then at the other. Then he took from his pocket six razors and laid them upon the seat opposite to him. Then he looked round at each of them again. Then he took from his pocket an orange and laid it down in front of the razors. Then he began to cut up the orange, using one razor for each pig. He looked round at each of his victims again. Then he walked across the carriage and sat down opposite the old lady, who instantly wound her boa three times round her throat. He said, ‘Do you like orange?’ She said, ‘Very much indeed,’ and he took up a pig on the point of one of the razors and popped it into her mouth. He then said, ‘Will you have another?’ She said, ‘Yes, presently, but wait a few minutes: I like to have time to _savourer_ my orange.’--‘How many minutes?’ he demanded. She answered, ‘Five.’--‘Very well,’ he said, and he took out his watch and counted the minutes, and then he took up another pig on the end of another razor and popped it into her mouth. Each time she prolonged the minutes, and the gallant old lady actually kept the madman at bay till an hour had elapsed and the train stopped at Peterborough, and she and the other lady were able to escape.

“Lord Houghton’s vanity is amusingly natural. Something was said of one of Theodore Hook’s criticisms. ‘You know even _I_ never said anything as good as that,’ said Lord Houghton, and quite seriously. Yet how truly kind Lord Houghton is, and how amusing, and he does most truly, as Johnson said of Garth, ‘communicate himself through a very wide set of acquaintance.’ In his _histoires de société_ he is unrivalled.”

* * * * *

“_March 12._--Yesterday Lord Houghton and I sat very long after breakfast with the Duke, who talked of his diplomatic life. He was appointed from St. Petersburg to Paris, and the revolution which enthroned Louis Philippe occurring just then, he hurried his journey. When he reached Frankfort, Chad, who was minister there, assured him that he would not be allowed to enter France, but, provided with a courier passport, he pushed on, and crossed the frontier without difficulty. At Paris the barricades were still up. The town was in the hands of the Orleanists (they bore the name then). On the evening of his arrival the Duke was introduced to Lafayette, ‘quite a grand seigneur in manner.’ Lafayette asked him if he did not know Lord and Lady Holland, and on his answering in the affirmative, begged that he would write to assure Lord Holland that he meant to save the lives of the late ministers, because he was accused of intending to have them executed.

“The Duke talked much of the wonderful gallantry of the Emperor Nicholas--how when the rebel troops were drawn out opposite his own in the square at St. Petersburg, he stalked out fearless between them, though the Governor of St. Petersburg was shot dead at his feet. The rebel troops were only waiting to fire till they saw a rocket, the signal from Prince Troubetskoi, whose courage failed him at the last. Troubetskoi was sent to Siberia, whither his wife insisted upon following. He was sentenced for life, so was legally dead, and she might, had she preferred it, have married any one else.

“We drove to Normanhurst in the afternoon. Mrs. Brassey showed her Japanese and Pacific curiosities; the house is full of them, like a bazaar. We returned through a very lovely bit of Ashburnham.”

* * * * *

“_April 3._--I came to London on the 19th, and dined that day with Lady Margaret Beaumont, hearing there of the dear kind old Lord Ravensworth being found dead that day on the floor of the Windsor rooms at Ravensworth, when his daughter Nellie sent for him because he did not come in to luncheon.”

* * * * *

“On Monday, March 25, as I was breakfasting at the Athenæum, I glanced into the paper, and the first thing which met my eyes was the news of the total loss of the _Eurydice_, with dear good Marcus Hare and more than three hundred men. It was a terrible shock, and seemed to carry away a whole mass of one’s life in recollections from childhood.... It is many days ago now, and the dreadful fact has seemed ever since to be hammering itself into one’s brain with ceaselessly increasing horror. How small now seem the failings in Marcus’s unselfish and loving character, how great the many virtues. It is difficult also to realise that there is now scarcely any one left who really cares for the old traditions of the Hare family, the old portraits, the old memorials, which were always so much to him, and which I hoped, through him, would be handed down to another generation.”

* * * * *

“_April 14._--On the day on which the _Eurydice_ was lost, Sir J. Cowell and Sir John McNeill were standing together in a window of Windsor Castle which overlooks a wide extent of country. Suddenly Sir J. McNeill seemed to be dreaming and speaking aloud. ‘What a terrible storm,’ he said. ‘Oh, do you see that ship? It will be lost: oh, how horrible! Good God, it’s gone!’ It was at that moment that the _Eurydice_ went down.[277]

“I have little to tell of London beyond the ordinary experiences, except perhaps having been more than ever shocked by the slanderous malignity of so-called ‘religious people,’ as I have been charmed by the chivalrous disinterestedness of many who do not aspire to that denomination. One often finds Archbishop Whately’s saying too true--‘The God of Calvinists is the devil, with God written on their foreheads.’ Of the many dinner-parties I have attended, I cannot recollect anything except that some one--I cannot remember who--spoke of D’Israeli as ‘that old Jew gentleman who is sitting on the top of chaos.’

“Last Sunday I went to luncheon at Mrs. Cavendish Bentinck’s. I arrived at two, having been requested to be punctual. No hostess was there, and the many guests sat round the room like patients in a dentist’s anteroom, or, as a young Italian present said, when I made his acquaintance--‘like lumps of ice.’ Lady Waterford came in and Mr. Bentinck, and we went in to luncheon. There was a table for about forty, who sat where they liked. Mrs. Bentinck came in when all were seated, greeting nobody in particular. The lady next me, a perfect stranger, suddenly said, ‘I want you to tell me what I must do to get good. I do not feel good at all, and I want to be better: what must I do?’

“‘That depends on your peculiar form of badness,’ I replied.

“‘Well, I live where I have a church on each side of me, and a church on the top of the hill under which my house is situated. But they do me no good. Now I wonder if that is owing to the inefficiency of the churches, or to the depravity of my own heart?’

“‘Probably half to one and half to the other,’ I said.

“I asked afterwards who the lady was, but neither her hostess nor any one else had an idea.

* * * * *

“Yesterday I dined with the Pole-Carews. Mrs. Carew told me that Dr. Benson, Bishop of Truro,[278] told her:--

“‘At my table were two young men, one of them a Mr. Akroyd. He began to talk of a place he knew in one of the Midland counties, and how a particular adventure always befell him at a certain gate there.

“‘Yes,’ said the other young man, ‘your horse always shies and turns down a particular lane.’

“‘Yes,’ exclaimed Mr. Akroyd, ‘but how do you know anything about it?’

“‘Oh, because I know the place very well, and the same thing always happens to me.’

“‘And then I come to a gateway,’ said Mr. Akroyd.

“‘Yes, exactly so,” said the other young man.

“‘And then on one occasion I drove through it and came to a house.’

“‘Ah! well, _there_ I do not follow you,’ said the other young man.

“‘It was very long ago,’ continued Mr. Akroyd, ‘and I was a boy with my father. When we drove down that lane it was very late, quite dark, and we lost our way. When we reached the gateway, we saw within a great house standing on one side of a courtyard, brilliantly lighted up. There was evidently a banquet inside, and through the large windows we saw figures moving to and fro, but all were in mediaeval dress: we thought it was a masquerade.

“‘We drove up to the house to inquire our way, and the owner came out to speak to us. He was in a mediaeval dress. He said he was entertaining his friends, and he entreated us, as chance had brought us there that night, to come in and partake of his hospitality. We pleaded that we were obliged to go on, and that to stay was impossible. He was excessively civil, and said that if we must really go on, we must allow him to send a footman to guide us back into the right road. My father gave the footman half-a-crown. When we had gone some distance I said, “Father, did you see what happened to that half-crown?”--“Yes, my boy, I _did_,” said my father. It had fallen _through_ the footman’s hand on to the snow.’

“‘The gateway really exists in the lane. There is no house, but there was one once, inhabited by very wicked people who were guilty of horrible blasphemies--a brother and sister, who danced upon the altar in the chapel, &c.’”

* * * * *

“_Seaton, Devon, May 7._--I came here on Friday to visit Lady Ashburton, but found that erratic hostess gone off to Torquay, so had two days here alone with Mrs. Drummond’s two pleasant, lively boys. This is an enchanting little paradise, looking down over the sea from a cliff. Delightful walks ramble along the edge through miniature groves of tamarisk and ilex. On one side rises the bluff chalk promontory and high down of Bere Head; on the other, one looks across a bay to the cliffs near Lyme Regis, and Portland is seen in the blue haze.”

* * * * *

“_May 7._--Drove with Lady Ashburton and her daughter to Shute, a beautiful old house of the Poles, now a farmhouse, with a gateway like a college gate at the entrance of the park. We sat to draw in the courtyard, full of colour and beauty, and afterwards had a delicious tea in the farmhouse kitchen. In returning, we went to an old ruined house which was the original homestead of the great Courtenay family.”

* * * * *

“_May 8._--We were off at 7 A.M. into Somersetshire by train. We got out at Yeovil, in a lovely country of orchards in full bloom, and drove first to Brympton, the lovely old house of the Ponsonby Fanes. They inherited it from Lady Georgiana Fane, who is represented in the church, having had her own head added to the body of an ancestress who was headless. The place is perfectly delightful--such a broad staircase winding endlessly away, and quaint but fresh and airy rooms opening upon a terrace with balustrades and a staircase, and close by the most picturesque of churches.

“We went on to Montacute, Mrs. Phelips’s--a most grand old house of yellow-grey stone, partly of Edward VI.’s time.”

XX

ROYAL DUTIES AND INTERESTS

“Montre ce qui est en toi! C’est le moment, c’est l’heure, on retombe dans le néant! Tu as la parole! à ton tour! fournis la mesure, dis ton mot! revèle ta nullité, ou ta capacité. Sors de l’ombre! Il ne s’agit plus de promettre, il faut tenir. Le temps d’apprentissage est terminé!”--HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL.

“Stop thine ears to whatsoever men think of thee; accept it for nothing, but regard only the judgment of God.”--PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA.

“Let me never hear the word ‘trouble.’ Only tell me how the thing is to be done, to be done rightly, and I will do it if I can.”--QUEEN VICTORIA OF ENGLAND.[279]

“Look at the duty nearest hand, and what’s more, _do_ it.”--JANE WELSH CARLYLE.

Being at Lowther Lodge on the 21st of May, I was sent for by the Crown Princess of Germany, who was most kind and gracious. “I have read all your books. I always buy them as soon as ever they come out, and I have so much wished to see you.” She told me that she had been to Hurstmonceaux to visit my mother’s grave, and that she had one of her strong presentiments as to the place coming back into our family, adding, “And I do so hope it will.” She talked of the dear Madame de Bunsen with the greatest affection, and then of the many branches of the Bunsen family. When my little audience of about ten minutes was over, she said with great sweetness, “I am afraid I am keeping you much too long from all your other friends.” She pressed me to come to stay with her at Potsdam. I said that I was going to Berlin to visit the Bunsens. She said, “Oh, but you must come to _me_; I can show quite as many things, and I can certainly show you a great many more people than the Bunsens can.” I said that I feared my visit to Berlin would be during her approaching absence in Switzerland. She said, “Well, you can go to the Bunsens in the summer when I am away, and then in the winter you can come again to see me: Berlin is not so very far off.”

As spring advanced my Life of the Baroness Bunsen was so far completed as to be ready for the inspection of her children. I therefore decided to take it to them in Germany. Feeling how impossible it would be to meet all the various wishes and tastes of such a hydra-headed family, I determined only to feel bound by the wishes of the two unmarried daughters, Frances and Emilia, and any one of their brothers whom they might choose. They selected George.

I turned first towards the Rhineland to visit the Dowager Princess of Wied, and profit by her recollections of one who had ever been one of the most valued of her friends.

On the last day of May I reached Cologne, and found there a succession of telegrams from the Princess of Wied desiring me to come to her. She did not exactly say that she expected me to stay beyond the day, so I did not like to take my luggage, and was sorry, when I found my room ready and that I was expected for a long visit, that I had sent it on.

Early on June 1, I went to Bonn. The place struck me much from its being so embowered in green and flowers. In a villa thus surrounded I found the well-known authoress Fräulein von Weling,[280] whom I surprised in bargaining for ready-plucked chickens at her door. She is a very interesting person, received me with that cordial simplicity which is so charming in Germans, and in a minute had put on her bonnet to go with me to the cemetery by a quiet walk through nursery-gardens. The churchyard itself is half hidden in pinks and roses. In the centre stands an old chapel of extreme beauty, transferred stone for stone by the King of Prussia from a solitary position in the fields. Buried in flowers is the grave where the dear friends of my childhood rest side by side. Close by is that of their brother-like friend, the noble old Brandis, his invalid wife, and his son Johannes. Farther off, but still near, are the graves of the old Arndt, Niebuhr and his Gretchen, Schumann, and the widow and son of Schiller. Then we went to Bunsen’s house, with the three-windowed room where he died, the garden with its view over the Rhine to the Sieben Gebirge, and the pavilion where he gave his last birthday feast.

It is a long ascent of an hour and a half from Neuwied through orchards and meadows radiant with wild-flowers to Segenhaus, standing on the crest of the mountain, which is literally “the House of Blessing” to all around it. The beautiful spacious rooms, full of books and pictures, look down over a steep declivity upon an immense view of the Rhineland. The Princess came in immediately with a most warm welcome--a noble, beautiful woman in a black dress, something like that one sees in pictures of Spanish Queens-Dowager, with snow-white hair drawn back under a long black veil. After a life of love, having lost all those who gave its greatest charm, she still finds much happiness in making herself the mother of her people, and the centre of good to the Rhineland from her high forest-home. After a few minutes spent in explaining the towns in the vast map-like view below us, she said, “There is a lady here who is anxious to make your acquaintance, and who was delighted to hear that you were coming: it is the Queen of Sweden.” At that moment the doors were thrown open, and the Queen entered--of middle age, with a beautiful expression, and possessing, with the utmost regal dignity, the most perfect simplicity and even cordiality of manner. She desired me to sit by the Princess upon a divan facing her. She said that I must consider her at once as a friend; that, in a life of great troubles, the “Memorials” had been her greatest comfort; that she never went anywhere without them; that my mother had been for several years the intimate friend to whom she always had recourse, and in whose written thoughts she could always find something which answered to her own feeling and the difficulty of the moment. She asked after “Mary Lea,” and how old she was now. She also talked much and naturally of my Bunsen work, and entirely entered into all the difficulties of meeting the views of so large a family of varying dispositions.

The Princess took me away to see her own room with her family portraits and photographs. She spoke of her daughter, the Princess of Roumania,[281] “in her terrible position between Russia and Turkey.” Then she said, “I want to prepare you for something. At my daughter’s court there is a blind Roumanian noble who has an only daughter. She is deaf and dumb. I could not bear that they should never communicate, so I have taken her home with me, and I am teaching her to speak by making her hold her hand _on my throat_ as I speak very slowly; and she is already learning, and, though it takes almost all my time, I am already rewarded by her making sounds which are intelligible to me.” When we went back into the other room, the young lady was there, a most strange being, making sounds inarticulate, but intelligible to the Princess. When she saw that the Princess was going to speak, she rushed across the room and held her hand on her throat, which had an almost terrible effect, like garrotting.

After tea the Queen ordered her donkey, which was brought round by a handsome Swedish chasseur. We went out into the forest. The Queen rode: the Princess led the donkey: I walked by the side, and only the chasseur followed. We actually went on thus for three hours, through beautiful forest glades with exquisite sylvan views, the whole reminding me of descriptions in Auerbach’s “Auf der Höhe.” The Queen never ceased talking or asking. She wished to know the whole story of my mother’s trances at Pau, of Madame de Trafford, of Prince Joseph Bonaparte--“a sort of cousin of my husband’s.” She talked much and most touchingly of her own life and its anxieties. “What I feel most,” she said, “is the impossibility of ever being alone. I have much happiness, much to be thankful for, but I feel that what one has really to look forward to must come after death, and I do not wish to live.” With her truly “la grandeur est un poids qui lasse,” as Massillon said. When alone with her sister at the Segenhaus in the quiet forest-life, she finds most happiness, and they live in a higher world, mentally as well as physically. As we went down a steep bank the donkey stumbled, and the Queen cried out. “Pardon me that I have seemed to be afraid,” she said; “I have been so very ill, that my nerves are quite shattered;” and in fact a severe illness, long supposed to be mortal, had at this time obliged her for several years to leave Sweden in the winter, to be under a great doctor at Heidelberg. She asked me to come to Norway to visit her. “You must also know my husband,” she said, “and my four sons, my four blessings of God.” She repeatedly expressed her wish that I should be at Rome in the winter with the Prince Royal. “I am sending him out to learn his world.” She asked most warmly after Lea, and sent a message to her--“I know her so well.” She also desired I would give her tender sympathy to Hilda Hare,[282] “For can I not feel for her? my second boy is at sea.” She gave a charming description of her first tour through Norway to her coronation. “I sat in my carriole by myself, and a peasant sat upon the little portmanteau behind which held my things, and told me all about the places and people.” We walked on and on through the vast woods, with lovely glimpses of country through the open glades, and masses of huge foxgloves where the wood was cut down, and one really forgot the queen, the almost _tête-à-tête_ of three hours with a queen, in the noble great-souled woman, whose high ideal of life and all that it should be seemed for the time to ennoble all the world to one.

At the top of a high declivity the Princess unlocked a small gate. Within, in a little circular grove of lime-trees, were two marble crosses over the grave of the Prince of Wied and his martyr-like son Otto.[283] “And here,” said the Princess very simply, “is my grave also.” The plan of these green mausoleums has been adopted by the present family, and two more are planted to be ready for two generations.

Behind the palace of the Princess is the great white château of Monrepos, where her son lives with his wife, who is Princess Royal of the Netherlands. Above the lower range of windows is a line of huge stags’ heads, trophies of the chase of some former prince in the forest. The House of Wied are “_ehenwürdig_,” and so may always marry royalty.

I said something about never having seen the kitchen-garden of a German house, so when we came home the Princess took me to hers. The Queen then walked with us. The Princess prunes and grafts her own roses, &c., but she seems to have no perception whatever of any beauty in wild-flowers. We went in, and I was shown to a room, whence I came down to that in which the court ladies were assembled. It was rather formidable, but the Countess Ebba von Rosen, dame du palais of the Queen, talked pleasantly in English. Doors were thrown open, and the Queen and Princess entered and we went in to supper. The Queen made me sit by her: the four court ladies sat opposite: the Princess, on the other side of the Queen, made tea. Thick slices of bread and butter, like those of English school-feasts, and mutton-chops were handed round. When we went into the other room, I wrote down some names of books as desired, and then at 9.30 took leave. The Princess most cordially invited me to return, and the Queen again pressed me to visit her in her own country. The vision of the Queen’s serene noble face as she took leave has ever since remained with me, and I parted from both the royal sisters with a stronger feeling of affectionate regard than I have ever felt towards any one else upon so short an acquaintance.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL _and_ LETTERS _to_ MISS LEYCESTER _and_ MISS WRIGHT.

“_June 2._--I slept at Neuwied, and then crossing the Rhine in the morning mist, passed a few hours at Boppart, where the colouring of the river and old houses and the peculiar grey hills was most lovely. Charles de Bunsen met me at the station of Mosbach, and took me to his villa, much like one in Italy, with the same rich intermingled vegetation of fruit and flowers growing around it.”

* * * * *

“_June 4._--Yesterday, a very sultry day, we went to Wiesbaden. The heavy trees in the gardens looked dripping even more with heat than with rain, and there is a splendid dulness in the great rooms, formerly the gambling-house, and in the park beyond, with the many chairs under the trees on which people sit to listen to the band; but the fountain is pretty.

“Mrs. de Bunsen[284] was very amusing in her account of the crowded musical festival at Baireuth. When they complained that there were not enough carriages there, a native replied, ‘Pardon me! of carriages there are quite enough, but of people there are too many.’

“In and out, whilst I have been here, has come the next neighbour--‘the Herr Major.’ He is quite a character, and devotes his whole life to his garden. From Holland he--a poor man--ordered some fruit-trees for a very large sum, but they have been a total failure and have borne nothing. The other day Charles, driving with him, passed these trees, and knowing they were a sore subject, turned his head the other way and pretended not to see them. ‘Oh, thank you, dear friend; I appreciate what you are doing,’ said the Herr Major, enthusiastically clasping his hand. When the boys of Mosbach stole his fruit, he put up an electric wire on the wall which caused a bell to ring in his bedroom whenever any one got over it. A few nights ago the bell rang violently; the Herr Major took his stick and rushed down the garden in his night-shirt: it was only his own bulldog, which had jumped over the wall to pay a visit to a friend in Mosbach. Another time, when his fruit was stolen, the Herr Major issued a placard offering a reward of a hundred marks to any one who would deliver up the thief. The placard was read by two men sitting outside a beer-house, who were the men who had stolen the fruit. They immediately agreed upon their course of action; one man delivered the other up to justice, and he was sentenced to pay ten marks or to three days’ imprisonment; the other claimed the hundred marks, of which they had ninety to divide and to spend in drinking for whole days together to the health of the Herr Major.”

* * * * *

“_June 15._--I have had a charming week at Herrenalb, whither Charles and Theodore de Bunsen accompanied me. It was a real pleasure to be again with the dear Frances and Emilia de Bunsen, who are so like sisters to me, and the kind pleasant Sternbergs. We were occupied almost entirely with my book, the sisters taking it in turn to talk over all the different parts, but there were also delightful intervals of forest rambles, and sittings out under the old apple-trees with Emilia. Reinhold von Ungern Sternberg came for the Sunday with Herr von Klüden, the ‘_Bräutigam_’ of his sister Dora. The place is just what my sweetest mother would most have enjoyed for a summer residence--no grand scenery, but very high forest-clad hills all round the rich green meadows, with the crystal Alb tossing through them. The village of quaint black and white houses clusters round the old-fashioned inn and the water-cure establishment in the buildings of the suppressed monastery, of which a beautiful ruin of red sandstone--‘The Paradise’--still stands in the churchyard. In all directions are well-kept walks and drives, and comfortable seats at every picturesque point. The people are most friendly and primitive, all the men taking off their hats, and all greeting strangers with a friendly ‘Morgen’ or ‘Tag.’

“A terrible sensation has been created by the attack on the Emperor, and still more by the first false report of his death. Men and women were alike in tears, and the national disgrace is intensely felt. I hope, if the Emperor is better, that I may see the Crown Princess again at Berlin.

“I spent four hours at Heidelberg, and revisited all our old haunts, the gardens most lovely in their luxuriance of green. Thence I had intended to go to Weimar to visit the Grand Duchess, but at Eisenach received a telegram from her lady-in-waiting, the Countess Kalkreuth, to put off my visit, as they were gone off to Berlin, the Empress Augusta being sister of the Duke of Weimar. A wet morning at the Wartburg and an afternoon at Erfurth brought me to Jena. There my cousin Alexander Paul met me at the station, a pleasant, fat, frank Prussian officer, with a face very like that of the first Napoleon.[285]

“There is much charm in this old town of Jena and its simple population, increased by the five hundred students of the university. The houses of Schiller, Alex. v. Humboldt, &c., have inscriptions in honour of those who lived there: the streets wind picturesquely around the old Schloss and its gardens, and the trumpet still sounds every quarter of an hour from the tall grey tower of the noble old church. From my own window in Alexander’s house in the Cahl’sche Allée, I see on one side a robber castle, on the other a wonderful old church of the time of the ‘Heilige Bonifacius.’

“On Thursday afternoon we went to Dornberg, where three castles crown the cliff above the village with a narrow terrace running in front of them along the edge of the precipice. One castle is occasionally inhabited by the Grand Duke; another, very old and picturesque, was given by Carl August to Goethe, and having been inhabited by him in the last years of his life, still contains much furniture of his time: the third was the palace of--the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.

“Yesterday we went a fatiguing excursion to Schwartzberg, the palace of the Prince of Rudolstadt, by which we saw the finest parts of Thuringia. A railway took us to Schwarza, where, in a ball on the top of the church steeple, is a dart thrown by a Cossack as the Russian army passed through Germany. Thence we took an omnibus to the little Chrysopraz Hotel at Blankenberg, where, after beer and brown bread and butter under the trees, we walked up the Schwarzthal to Oppelei, where a Swiss cottage has been built by the Prince to indemnify a forester, whose daughter he had made his mistress! Hence, by a steep path, we ascended the Treppstein, whence there is a lovely view over the hollow in the forest-clad mountains, in the midst of which the great castle of the Prince of Rudolstadt rises above the little town. The Prince is not unpopular, though his life has an Eastern license. On the day when he succeeded to his tiny sovereignty he happened to be at Berlin. ‘Bonjour, souverain,’ said the Emperor when he met him, and, when he took off his hat--‘Pray put on your crown.’

“We dined at the charming little inn, where thousands of wild stags often assemble under the windows in the evenings, when the place is comparatively empty, but take flight into the woods before the summer guests. In returning, we were much amused with the old ‘Herr Apotheke’ of Rudolstadt, who had come out with a tin case to gather simples, and who insisted upon stopping to drink a tankard of beer wherever one was to be had.

“To-day we have been in a different direction, by rail to Roda, a charming little Thuringian town, and thence by carriage to the Fröhliche Wiederkunft, the old moated castle built by Friedrich Johann, father of Friedrich der Weise, on the spot where he met his family on his return from a long captivity abroad. The old Princess Therèse of Saxe-Altenbourg now lives there, she and her sisters--the Queen of Hanover, the Grand Duchess of Oldenbourg, and the Grand Duchess Constantine of Russia--having been daughters of the old Duke Josef, by whom the castle was restored. The news of the King of Hanover’s death had just arrived. ‘How many tears,’ said the old man who showed the castle, ‘did the old Duke my master shed in that chair over the King’s misfortunes.’ The story of the founder is most quaintly told in paintings on panels round one of the rooms, and there are pictures and memorials of Luther and of Friedrich Johann and his wife Sibylla over and over again.”

* * * * *

“_June 23._--A vision of many great towns is all that I carry away from the varied journey which has brought me to Hildesheim--the old cities of Wittenberg and Eisleben, with their glorious works of Lucas Cranach and varied memorials of Luther and Melancthon: Magdeburg, great and noisy, with its dull, restored cathedral: Halberstadt, also restored, but glorious in spite of its injuries, and with intensely picturesque streets of old houses: the romantic beauty of imperial Goslar: stately Quedlinburg, where German princesses constantly reigned as abbesses: beautiful Thale, at the entrance of the Harz, with its exquisite combination of wood and rock and water: Brunswick and its many market-places, full of old houses: dull Hanover, with the great deserted gardens of Herrenhausen.

“Aunt Marcia (Frau Paul von Benningsen[286]) and my cousins Jane and Clementine met me here at the station.”

* * * * *

“_Berlin, June 27._--My visit at Hildesheim had much of quiet interest. The town is wonderfully picturesque, and I was glad to make acquaintance with my cousins, who are perfectly _grandes dames_ and highly educated young ladies, though they cook and do almost all the housework themselves. I drew in the early mornings, and went to dinner each day with them at 12.30.

“The Hildesheim churches are magnificent, but spoilt, ruined, by so-called restoration--the old pavements torn up, the old ornaments removed and replaced by tawdry and vulgar imitation of Munich wall-painting.

“On Monday George de Bunsen met me with his carriage at the Berlin station, and brought me through the Thier-Garten, like a bit of wild forest, to the charming airy Villa Bunsen, standing in its own garden on the extreme outskirts of the town. Here I have a most luxurious room, filled with royal portraits, and every possible luxury. We dined _al fresco_ on the broad terrace amid the flowers. On the next evening there was a party of about fifty people--tea, and the garden and terrace lighted up, a very pretty effect; the ladies in bright dresses, the men with uniforms and orders, moving and sitting amongst the shrubs and flowers, amid which endless little supper-tables were laid at a late hour. Many were the historic names of those to whom I was introduced--Falk of the Falk laws, Mommsen the historian, Austin the poet, Mohl, and many ministers and generals. I found also Arthur Balfour, and many waifs and strays of old acquaintance. The ‘Congress’ is going on, but excites little or no general interest, and is scarcely mentioned here, German affairs being far too important.

“Berlin interests me extremely, though without preparation it can be of small interest. It is almost entirely modern. In the sixteenth century it must have been a tiny electoral town, the houses encircling the old Schloss by the Spree in the time of the Great Elector, whose statue, a grand though rococo work, stands close by on the bridge. Friedrich I., who got a kingdom by bribery, added the enormous castle, which, ludicrous as it then was in a kingdom of five millions, is now satisfactory in a kingdom of twenty millions. Close by, Frederick the Great built two domes, merely as features in the distant view of an otherwise featureless city, and to these his son added buildings which turned them into churches. Under Friedrich Wilhelm III. and IV. the great classical revival took place and endless fine buildings arose. The library is one of the few buildings which date from Frederick the Great. The architects were an endless time disputing over the designs, and at last he said, ‘Damn you all, don’t waste any more time; this commode opposite me is of a very good design, copy that,’ and accordingly the design of the commode was copied.

“The Museum was begun when the country was poor and had no money to spend. After the French war, when the country became rich, the design expanded and became magnificent. Of the sculptures, four works deserve especial attention--the ‘Adorante,’ the exquisite bronze boy who, in the early morning, stretches out his arms in adoration: the noble vivid bust of Julius Caesar in basalt, with agate eyes, so speaking though voiceless, so never to be forgotten, of which Rauch had three copies in different parts of his house that it might never be long absent from his mind: the bust of Sappho, with banded hair, recognised as the poetess from a Hermes; and the Augustus statue, more noble than that of Livia’s villa, because taken in earlier youth, when his one feeling was that he was born to command, and when no furrow of disappointment or care was yet traced on his brow.

“The collection of casts is most interesting, as showing the important statues of each subject, Venus, Minerva, Mercury, &c., side by side for instruction or contrast.

“The pictures are a grand collection, spoilt by over-cleaning. Especially worthy of remembrance are an Adoring Madonna by Filippino Lippi, with God the Father above in glory; two noble portraits by Giorgione; one by Lorenzo Lotto (possibly of Sansovino); some marvellously graphic pictures, eloquently expressed in well-considered touches, by Franz Hals; and a noble Holbein of ‘Kaufmann Georg Gigge aus Basel.’

“Last night we went late to the Zoological Garden. The most interesting thing was a solemn congregation of ibises listening in a row, each bird with one foot in the air, and its head attentively on one side, to an ibis preacher, who never ceased a continuous discourse to them, standing on a stone. The elephant is said to be five hundred years old; what a solemn silent witness! Apropos of the future of beasts, George de Bunsen talked much of the absence of all allusion to _any_ future in the Old Testament--that it grew up, partly in the Talmud, partly in the Apocryphal writers, in what Luther beautifully calls ‘the great empty leaf between the Old and New Testaments.’

“Montbijou, the curious little one-storied palace of Sophia Charlotte, wife of Friedrich I., is now a museum for relics of the House of Brandenbourg. The chairs, sledges, and table of Friedrich I. are very curious; the wheel-chairs of his unhappy second wife: the wax figures of his grand-daughters as babies; and their portraits as grown women--queens and duchesses. Here also are three masks from the dead face of the lovely Queen Louisa, that taken immediately after death most exquisitely beautiful.”

* * * * *

“_June 30._--The day after I last wrote, I went with the Bunsens and Mr. Waddington, the French Minister[287] (come for the Congress of Berlin) to Charlottenbourg. The palace there is charming--the large gardens, the groves of orange-trees in tubs, the great lawns sweeping away into woods, and above all the mausoleum in one of the thick groves, with the tombs of Queen Louisa and her husband. Hither the old Emperor and all the royal family come still once a year, on the anniversary of her death, to look upon the beautiful form of his young mother, snatched away in the very zenith of beauty and popularity, not living to see the re-establishment of the kingdom in whose cause she sacrificed her life. Exquisitely, perfectly beautiful is the intense repose of her lovely countenance, in what I must ever feel to be the most beautiful and impressive statue in the world. The statue of the King is very fine too, but in her angelic presence he is forgotten. And such was the feeling for _her_, that though he did not marry again for many years after he had lost her in his youth, his people at first would not believe it, and then never forgave it. Mr. Waddington felt nothing in the presence of this sublime statue. ‘Yes, it is very clever, it is a very clever figure indeed,’ he said. Never was any remark more completely out of tune, making it difficult for one to believe in the great power of the man.

“The next day I went to Potsdam--quite a place by itself in the world, with its endless great ultra-German palaces and stiff gardens, arid and dusty, though surrounded by many waters. Without Carlyle’s ‘Frederick the Great,’ they would be mere dead walls enclosing a number of costly objects; illuminated by the book, each room, each garden walk, thrills with human interest. In the Residenz Schloss are the rooms in which Frederick the Great passed his winters, with massive silver furniture and priceless ornaments, amid which the portrait of Wilhelmina in her childhood is a touching feature. In the Garrison Kirche is the tomb of the great king. The terrace at Sans Souci, in this dried-up land, is quite lovely with its fountains and orange-trees. Close behind is the famous windmill.

“When I returned to the station, I was surprised to find the Bunsens’ servant, sent on with my evening clothes, that I might accept an invitation (by telegram) to dine with the Crown Princess. I had only eight minutes before the royal train came up, and it was an awful scramble to wash and dress in a room the servant had taken at the station. However, when the royal train set off, I was in it. The palace-station of Wildpark was a pretty sight, red cloth laid down everywhere, and sixteen royal carriages waiting for the immense multitude of guests--quantities of ladies in evening dress (all black for the King of Hanover) and veils, splendid-looking officers, an Armenian archbishop and bishop in quaint black hoods and splendid diamond crosses. I went in a carriage with the Greek minister, and we whirled away through the green avenues to the great Neue Palais, with the sun striking warm on the old red and grey front. Count Eulenborg, Master of the Household, stood on the steps to receive us, and we passed into an immense hall, like a huge grotto, decorated with shells and fountains, where several of the court ladies were.

“At the end of the hall were some folding-doors closely watched by two aides-de-camp, till the rapping of a silver stick was heard from a distant pavement, when the doors were flung open, and Count Eulenborg came out, preceding the Prince and Princess. She immediately went up to Mrs. Grant (General Grant’s wife) and several other ladies, and then began to go the round of the guests. I had more than my fair share of her kindly presence. ‘Oh, Mr. Hare, I am so glad to see you again so soon. How little I expected it, and how sad the causes which have brought it about!’ And she went on to speak of how, at our last meeting, the Duchess of Argyll had been sitting with her at tea, and how three days after she died. ‘And for me it was only the opening act of a tragedy,’ she said. She talked of the shock which the news of the attack upon the Emperor was to her, coming to her in the picture-gallery at Panshanger, and of her hurried journey to him. The Crown Prince came up then, and led her away to dinner. Mrs. Grant was on his other side (General Grant, a very vulgar officious man, was also there). I had been directed to a place near the Archbishop and Bishop of Armenia, but as they only spoke Armenian, I was glad that a very handsome, agreeable aide-de-camp eventually took his place between me and them. The dinner was excellent, in a huge long marble hall, with windows opening to the ground on the terrace above the flower-garden. Occasionally I met a bright kindly smile as the Princess looked to see how I was getting on. There were about fifty guests, servants waiting noiselessly, not a footfall heard.

“After dinner we all went out on the terraces, and there the Crown Princess had the goodness to come again to me. She talked of all I had seen at Berlin, and of Sweden and Queen Sophie. She talked also of Queen Louisa, her husband’s grandmother, preferring her statue at Potsdam even to that at Charlottenburg, and wished to have sent an aide-de-camp with me to see it. She was so good as to desire that I should return to Potsdam, and when I showed her that I could not, said, ‘Oh, but you will now find your way again to Berlin to see me.’ The scene on the terraces was very pretty, looking upon the bright flowers beneath in the subdued light of a fine evening in this transparent atmosphere, the whole air scented with lime-flowers.

“At a quarter to nine all the carriages came again to take us away: Count Eulenborg announced them. In the ante-chamber I found the Crown Princess again. I kissed her hand, and she shook mine with many kind words, and sent affectionate messages to the Queen of Sweden.

“How we whirled away through the green avenues to Potsdam, where all the people turned out to see the cavalcade! I travelled back to Berlin with the young and very handsome Prince Friedrich of Hohenzollern (brother of the Prince of Roumania and the Comtesse de Flandres), who was saved in the annihilation of his regiment of guards in the second battle of Metz by being sent back with the standard.”

* * * * *

“_July 5._--I spent Sunday at beautiful old Lübeck, full of colour and rich architecture, rising spire upon spire above the limpid river. In the streets and market-place are the quaintest towers, turrets, tourelles, but all end in spires. A great fat constable went about on Sunday morning, keeping everybody from following any avocation whatever during church-time: when the services were over, they might do what they liked.

“Then came the long weary journey across West Holstein--peat flats varied by marshy swamps--and a night at Schleswig, a white, colourless old town moored as if upon a raft in the marshes, where the Princess of Wales’ grandmother and other royal potentates lie in exposed coffins upon the floor of the ugly rugged old cathedral, which has a belfry like a dovecot. Everywhere roses grew in the streets on the house-walls. The children were hurrying along, _carrying_ the shoes they were to wear in school.

“Peat and marsh again for many hours, the interminable straight lines of landscape only broken by the mounds, probably sepulchral, which are so common here. A straight line with humps at intervals would do for a view almost anywhere in Jutland, Fuhnen, or Seeland. After hours upon hours of this engaging scenery, we crossed the Middelfardt at Fredericia into Fuhnen, which we traversed by rail, and embarked again on the Great Belt at Nyborg. Then came four hours’ more rail in Seeland, and, at 10.30 P.M., long lines of light glistening on streets of water showed that we had reached Copenhagen. Here I met the two daughters of Sir Henry Holland (Caroline and Gertrude), with whom I had arranged to go on to Norway, and their niece, Miss Chenda Buxton. As they had already been waiting for me several days, I felt obliged to give up a visit to Baron Troll (the stepson of Madame de Bülow) and the château of Gaüno, but I had three full days for Copenhagen, and greatly enjoyed them, the air being that of the high mountains in Switzerland with a mixture of sea--the most bracing place I ever was in. There is a ‘Dragon Tower,’ which is quite ideally Danish; and the old palace of the Danish kings, Rosenborg, surrounded by a moat, is fairy-like in the beauty of its old age, in the midst of a stately and brilliant old garden, and filled with historical memorials, which carry you back into marvellous depths of Danish history, in which the Christians and Friedrichs, always alternating with each other, are most bewildering. The museums also are full of interest, especially the Thorwaldsen collection, with casts of all the works of the great sculptor, and many most grand originals, especially interesting to me, as being described in Madame de Bunsen’s letters from Rome in their first conception and progress.

“One day we went out to Roeskilde, to the great church near a fiord where the kings are buried. Some of the older sovereigns have grand tombs, but those of later date than the grandfather of our Charles I. lie in their black and silver coffins unburied upon the floor of the church, with very odd effect.”

* * * * *

“_Stockholm, Grand Hotel Rydberg, July 13._--On the evening of the 5th we crossed to Helsingfors in Sweden by a very rough passage of ten minutes, and had a wild evening walk in the storm, looking upon the opposite Danish coast, and Helsingborg with the great traditional castle of Hamlet, whose father was really a pirate-chief in Jutland.

“A journey of twenty-four hours brought us to Stockholm. We only lingered on the way to see the very fine Cathedral of Lund, the Oxford of Sweden. The scenery is not beautiful, but pretty--an exaggerated Surrey, low hills and endless fir-woods, with tiny glistening lakes.

“Stockholm has deeply interested us, and there is an odd feeling in being at a place and knowing that it is for once and once only in a lifetime. It is a modern city of ugly streets, but in a situation quite exquisite, on a number of little rocky islets between Lake Malar and the Baltic, surrounding, on the central islet, the huge palace, which is very stately and imposing from its size, and the old church of Riddarholmen, where Gustavus Adolphus and many other kings and queens are buried under the banner-hung arches. Next to the palace, the stateliest building is certainly this hotel, where our windows overlook all that is most characteristic in the place, the bridge which crosses the junction of the Baltic and Lake Malar, the mighty palace dominating the central island, the great white seagulls poised upon the blue waters, and the steam-gondolas, filled with people, darting to and from one island to another. These are the chief means of communication, and we make great use of them, the passages costing twelve öere, or one penny.

“We shall not go to see the midnight sun at Hammerfest; it would be very fatiguing, and indeed there can be little to see which we have not here; for we have only about two hours’ night in Stockholm, and by 2 A.M. it is light enough to read the smallest print. This has a very odd effect at first, but one soon gets used to it.

“Alas! we have been here a week, and, except one day, it has rained almost incessantly. One pities the poor Swedes in losing their short summer, for there are only about three months without snow, and every day is precious. The streets are sopping, but we have managed several excursions in the covered gondolas to quiet damp old palaces on the banks of lonely fiords. On our one fine day we went to Upsala by rail, and saw the cathedral where Gustavus Wasa lies aloft on a great tomb between his two pretty little wives, and we drove on to Old Upsala, where Odin, Thor, and Freya reigned as human beings and were buried as gods. In the tomb of Thor--a grassy mound--the Government still gives the mead of ancient times to foreign visitors. It is a very delightful place, like a dip in the Sussex downs, the quaint church, of immemorial antiquity, probably once a pagan temple, nestling behind the mounds of the heroes.

“Yesterday we heard a hundred Upsala students, the best singers in the world, sing the best national music in the Caterina Church. The King was there, a noble royal figure. He is _the_ sovereign of the age, artist, poet, equally at home in all modern languages and several ancient ones, profoundly versed in all his duties and nobly performing them. The Crown Prince was with him, a fine young fellow, spoilt in appearance by his mother’s Nassau mouth, and the Prince Imperial, who is here with his cousins on a visit. The Queen is still away. I had many introductions here, but as the Court is at the country palace of Drottningholm, have not thought it worth while to present them; generally, however, Swedes are quite charming, especially in their manner to strangers.

“Cheating or imposition in hotels or elsewhere is utterly unknown; the only fear is lest you should not be charged enough. We asked what we should do with our luggage if we went to Dalecarlia--‘Oh, you can leave it anywhere under a bush, no one would touch a thing,’ and I am sure that it is so.

“The Hollands are delightful companions, full of interest in everything, glad to draw, reading up all the history, learning Swedish, holding historical and retrospective examinations once a week. We do a great deal of ‘lessons’ together. Certainly that one’s travels should ‘leave a good taste’ behind entirely depends upon one’s companions. And we are never even reduced to the state which I find alluded to in a French guide-book--‘Dans une voiture découverte, quand il y a une personne de mauvaise humeur, les autres admirent le paysage.’ Mr. and Mrs. Eric Magnusson are in this hotel, and we see a good deal of them. He is an Icelander, but now a Professor at Cambridge, and sent here by the University to investigate and inspect the Runic inscriptions.”

* * * * *

“_July 15._--Yesterday we steamed down Lake Malar to Gripsholm, a very quaint castle with domed red towers, full of ancient pictures, and with the wonderful old room and bed where Queen Catherine Jagellonica (delightful name!), whose tomb we saw at Upsala, gave birth to her son Sigismund, afterwards King of Poland.”

* * * * *

“_Throndtjem, July 28._--Surely this old cradle of Northern Christianity is one of the most beautiful places in the world. No one had ever told us about it, and we came here only because it was the Throndtjem of sagas and ballads, and expecting a wonderful and beautiful cathedral; but it is really a dream of loveliness, so exquisite in the soft silvery morning lights on the fiords and purple mountain ranges, and the nearer hills covered with bilberries and breaking into steep cliffs, that one remains in a state of transport, which is at a climax when all is engraven upon an opal sunset sky, and when ships and buildings meet their double in the still transparent water. Each old wide street of curious wooden houses displays a new vista of sea, of rocky promontories, of woods dipping into the water, and at the end of the chief street is the grey massive cathedral of St. Olaf, where Northern art and poetry have exhausted their loveliest and most poetic fancies around the grave of the national hero. Here alone in Scandinavia I have gone back perpetually to the old days of my life, and felt how happy the mother would have been here, so much--almost everything--being within her own walk; and I seem to see our trio spending a quiet month at this homelike hotel (where the landlord and landlady--highly educated people of good family--receive their guests like friends in a country-house), and sallying forth to draw in all the sheltered coves and wooded rocks by the side of fiord or river. The air too is most bracing, an arctic feeling combined with the brightest sunshine.

“My companions and I get on perfectly, and I am filled with admiration of Miss Holland’s strong, decided nature, and her perfect knowledge of all she wishes and intends, combined with great good-nature. Both sisters take boundless interest in all they see, and the journeys seem shortened by alternate lessons in history, Norsk, &c., and games of different kinds, even charades, one side of the carriage acting against the other!

“But I must go back to Kristiania, which was steaming in intensity of heat when we reached it, the wet of Stockholm having cleared in Norway into cloudless sunshine which had hatched all the mosquitoes. There is no beauty in the mean little town, which was built by Christian IV. (brother of our Anne of Denmark), and has a good central church of his time. We went by rail to Kongsberg, a primitive place with a nice little hotel kept by a Dane, where, however (and at many other places), we were annoyed by the ludicrously consequential advent of General Grant and Co. Here we hired a carriage and carriole for a five days’ excursion in Tellemarken. What a drive!--by silent lakes or through deep, beautiful, ever-varying woods of noble pine-trees, rising from thickets of juniper, bilberries, and cranberries. The loveliest mountain flowers grow in these woods--huge larkspurs of rank luxuriant foliage and flowers of faint dead blue, pinks, stagmoss--wreathing around the grey rocks, and delicate lovely soldanellas drooping in the still recesses. But what a road, or rather what a want of one!--hills of glassy rock, up which our horses scrambled like cats, abysses where they gathered up their legs and flung themselves down headlong with the carriages on the top of them, till at the bottom we were all buried in dust, and picked ourselves up, gasping and gulping, and wondering we were alive, to begin the same pantomime over again.

“Our midday halt was at Bolkesjö, where the forest opens to green lawns, hill-set, with a charming view down their smooth declivities upon a many-bayed lake with mountain distances. Here, in a group of old brown farm-buildings, covered with rude picturesque painting and sculpture, is a farmhouse inhabited by its primitive owners through many generations. The little rooms and their furniture are painted and carved with mottoes and texts, and portraits with autographs of royal visitors hang on the walls. The entrance to the cellar was under the bed. ‘Ajö, ajö,’ exclaimed Miss Buxton, in our newly acquired Norsk, as the old landlady descended into it to get us some ale.

“We arrived at the little châlet of Tinoset on the wrong day for the steamer down its lake, and had to engage a private boat. The little lake was lashed by the wind into furious purple billows, and the voyage was most wretched. A horrid male creature from Middlesborough, whom we surnamed the ‘Bumble Bee,’ accompanied us. I was brutal enough to make him over to Miss Holland, by saying, ‘This lady will be deeply interested to hear all you have to say,’ and to her he buzzed on perpetually. He told us that the people of Middlesborough were astonished--and no wonder--at his building in the midst of that hideous red manufacturing place a black and white timber house in imitation of one at Coventry, and designing to be carved on its barge-board the charming inscription--

‘Ye beastes who passe admire ye goode Which thys manne didde whereer he coulde.’

“From our landing-place at Strand we had several hours’ drive along an unprotected precipice to the Rjukan-foss, the 560 feet high fall of a mountain torrent into a black rift in the hills. It is a boiling, roaring abyss of waters, with drifts of spray which are visible for miles before the fall can be seen itself, but the whole is scarcely worth the trouble of getting there, though a little mountain inn, with a well-earned dinner of trout and ale, and a quiet hour amongst the great grey larkspurs, furnish pleasant recollections.

“As we returned to Kongsberg, we stopped to see Hitterdal, the date-forgotten old wooden church so familiar from picture-books. Here we were told by our landlady that she would not give us any dinner--‘Nei, nei, nothing would induce her; perhaps the woman at the house with the flag would give us some.’ So, hungry and faint, Miss Holland and I sallied out as _avant-couriers_ to the house with the flag. All was silent and deserted except for a dog, who received us furiously. Having pacified him, and finding the front door locked, we made good our entrance at the back, examined the kitchen, pried into all the cupboards, lifted the lids of all the saucepans, and not till we had searched everything for food ineffectually, were met by the lady of the house, a pleasant young lady, speaking English perfectly, who informed us, with no small surprise at our conduct, that we had been committing a raid upon her private residence. Afterwards we found a lonely farmhouse, where also there had once been a flag, where they gave us a very good dinner. Two young girls, whom we had first met at the Rjukan-foss, dined with us, and made us acquainted with their parents. The father, an old man who smoked an enormously long pipe, turned out to be the Bishop of Christiansand.

“On the 25th we started from Kristiania for Throndtjem, the whole journey of three hundred and sixty miles very comfortable and only costing thirty francs. There is no great beauty in the scenery, but pleasant variety--rail to Eidswold, with bilberries and strawberries in birch baskets for sale at the railway-stations: a vibrating steamer on the long dull Miosen lake: railway again, with some of the carriages open at the sides: a night at Koppang, a large station, where several people, strangers to each other, are expected to share the same room. On the second day the scenery improves; the railway sometimes runs along, sometimes over the river, till the gorge of mountains opens beyond Storen into a rich open country, with turfy mounds which reminded us of the graves of the hero-gods of Upsala, till, beyond the deep cleft in which the river Nid runs between lines of old painted wooden warehouses, rises the burial-place of St. Olaf, the centre of Northern Christianity, the shrine of Northern faith, the stumpy-towered cathedral of Throndtjem.

“The most northern railway station and the most northern cathedral in Europe.”

* * * * *

“_August 8._--To the last the unspeakable beauty of Throndtjem grew upon us. It is not at first sight of its wide streets of low timber houses, or even of its fiord with purple mountain background, or of its glorious cathedral in the wide-spreading churchyard, which is the town-garden as well as the centre of all its sympathies, that you learn to admire it, but after many sunsets have turned the fiord into rippling gold, and sent an amethystine glow over the mountains, and after many rambles along the shores to rocky points and bosky hillocks.

“After much indecision, we determined to return from Throndtjem by road, and engaged two carriages at Storen, with a pleasant boy named Johann as a driver. At every ‘station’ we changed horses, which were sent back by a boy who perched on the luggage behind, and we marked our distances by calling our single carriole horses after the kings of England. Thus, setting off from Storen with William the Conqueror, we drove into the Romsdal with Edward VI., but (after a drive with Lady Jane Grey) setting off again with Bloody Mary, our kings of England failed us long before our driving was over, and we used up the kings of Rome also. It was a very wild interesting life, and there was a great charm in going on and on into the unknown, meeting no one, dining on trout and pancakes at a station at midday, sleeping in odd, primitive, but always clean rooms, and setting off again at 5.30 or 6 A.M. There are bears and wolves in the forest, but we never saw any. Their skins, shot during the winter, are hanging up in almost all our sleeping-places. The prices are extraordinarily low, and the homely, cordial people kissed our hands all round on receiving the smallest gratuity, twopence halfpenny being a source of ecstatic bliss. But the journeys were tremendous, as we were sometimes called at four, and did not get in till twelve at night.

There was for a long time nothing especially fine in the scenery, except one gorge of old weird pine-trees in a rift of purple mountain, and the high moorland above Jerkinn, where the great ranges of white Sneehatten rise above the yellow grey of the Dovre Fyeld, hoary with reindeer moss. From Dombaas, we turned aside down the Romsdal, which soon became beautiful, as the road wound above a chrysopraz river, broken by many rocky islets, and swirling into many waterfalls, but always equally radiant, equally transparent, till its colour is washed out by the melting snows in a ghastly narrow valley which we called the ‘Valley of Death.’

“The little inn at Aak is very delightful, with a large garden on the hillside, and the views indescribably glorious--of the tremendous peaks of pink granite, or fields of pathless snow embossed against a sky delicately blue above, but melting into clearest opal.... There was much in the place, as at Throndtjem, which recalled my former life, and I seemed to go back into a lost past, to read a page long pasted down and put away. In both places _we_ should have stayed for weeks; in both, I could see our trio sallying out every morning with campstools and books, making friends with the natives, or in the quiet of home life, with its home occupations in the little inn.

“And now, after many more stations, we have passed through Lilliehammer, and are again on the Miosen lake, speeding through the closing days of our tour.”

* * * * *

“_Orkeröd near Moss, on the Kristiania Fiord, August 9._--On reaching Kristiania last night, I found a most gracious telegram from the Queen, through Countess Rosen, desiring that I would spend my last days in Norway with her. So I came this morning by the early steamer. Most beautiful were the long changing reaches of the fiord, with the rocks covered with foliage, already waving towards autumn, the rich russet and golden tints of the trees repeating themselves in the water. At Moss (to the intense astonishment of a very vulgar American family on board, who had given themselves indescribable airs to me) a royal carriage with two chasseurs in cocked hats and plumes was in waiting, and the King’s chamberlain was standing on the pier to receive me. We drove swiftly up a rocky forest road to the large villa which a merchant of Kristiania has lent to the Queen for the benefit to her health from the pine air. Another merchant close by has lent his to the King, as the immense personnel of the court could not possibly live in one house. As we drove up through the garden, a tall figure in a wide-awake hat emerged from one of the windows upon the terrace. ‘Sa Majesté le Roi!’ said the chamberlain; so I jumped out of the carriage, and he came forward at once with ‘Is it Mr. Hare? The Queen has spoken of you so much, that you are not like a stranger. The Queen will be delighted to see you, and so am I. We were so glad to hear that you would come to see us in our quiet country life. You will find nearly the whole family, only my second son, Oscar, has left us to-day. I am especially glad that you will see the Prince Royal, my eldest son, Gustaf. You will have a very little room with us, for we are so full, but you will have a good bed, and that is the essential. Come now and take a walk with me in the garden.’ So we walked and he talked, chiefly about Rome. Then he took me to the Prince Royal, who was sitting under the trees with the Countess Rosen, two maids of honour, and Baron Holtermann, the marshal of the palace. There we sat some time and talked till the Queen emerged from the house. I went towards her, and met her amongst the flower-beds. She looks wonderfully well, far better than at Segenhaus. Nothing could be more cordial or kind than her reception of me. We walked on the terrace for some time, and she talked of the great event since we parted, the attack on the Emperor, and of the Crown Princess.

“Then we went to sit under the trees and we talked of Throndtjem. The Queen described her first journey thither to her coronation. The King had been making a tour round by the North Cape, and she went to meet him. She went in a succession of carrioles by Lilliehammer and then by the Romsdal. At all the little stations people met her with flowers. ‘Art thou the mother of the land?’ they said, ‘art thou the mother of the land? Thou lookest nice, but thou must do more than _look_ nice; that is not the essential.’ She said that even at Throndtjem the peasants touchingly and familiarly always called her ‘Du.’ ‘Art thou the mother of these tall boys?’ they said, and they would pray aloud that she might be blessed--in her husband, in her children, and in her home. One old woman asked the Countess Rosen to beg the Queen to go upon the roof of the house--‘then we shall all see her.’ The Queen also described her last journey back from Segenhaus. Her two horses, her dog, and her donkey travelled with her.

“Soon the beautiful donkey of our Segenhaus walk was brought round, with its crimson trappings, and the Queen mounted, and went off through the forest to the King’s house. I went in a kind of large open car with the Countess Rosen, the maids of honour, and the chamberlain. We reached the King’s villa before the Queen, and all drew up in two lines in the porch to receive her. There were also a great number of the people of Moss to see her arrive, as it is known she always does so at this hour. The King gave his arm to the Queen, and we all went to luncheon in a garden pavilion. Here the two youngest Princes came in,--Carl, a very handsome boy of seventeen, and Eugène, of twelve. The King called me to come up to a tiny round table at the end of the room on a daïs, where he and the Queen were alone, and made me sit with them on their divan. He said, ‘I shall now leave out your Mr. and only call you Hare, and upon that we will all drink healths;’ and he made me clink my glass with his and the Queen’s. The King talked much of the Prince Royal and his education, of all the languages he thought he ought to learn, and (perfectly without ostentation) of his own very great facility for learning--‘catching’--languages, and of the great advantage it had been to him through life. I had had no food since six o’clock in the morning and was almost fainting with hunger, so, in spite of the honour of sitting with the King and Queen, I greatly envied the court at their good luncheon below, as their Majesties (and consequently I) had only coffee cups for their soup, and a tiny slice of bread and cheese apiece.

“Then the Queen mounted her donkey again, the King lifting her up, while the young Princes, climbing the pillars of the verandah behind their mother, made a pleasant family group. The cap of the Queen’s chasseur fell off, and the King picked it up for him and playfully pushed it tight down upon his head. Then the King and Princes started to walk, and I for a long drive with the Countess Rosen and some of the court. And now I am resting and the Queen has sent me a number of English newspapers to read. A propos of the picture of Lord Beaconsfield receiving the Garter in the _Illustrated_, the King said, ‘Now, let us talk a little politics. I like and admire most things English, but I will not conceal from you that I do not admire Lord Beaconsfield. I did not think his conduct about Cyprus was quite straightforward.’”

* * * * *

“_August 10._--At four o’clock yesterday the whole court met in the drawing-room, so many gentlemen turning up from hidden corners, that it made twenty-four persons in all. The Prince Imperial recognised me immediately when he came in, and was exceedingly cordial and friendly. I was really glad to see him again. He is as nice as he can be, but as to appearance, his photographs flatter him, as he has such a bad complexion and his legs are too short. He is, however, quite delightfully frank and winning. He kissed the Queen’s hand very prettily and gracefully as she came in, looking very well with large bunches of natural double geranium upon the white lace of her dress and in her hair. He took the Queen, the King took Countess Rosen, and we all followed to dinner. I was desired to sit by the Prince Royal. His peculiar features are redeemed by a good expression when animated. He talks no English and atrocious French, and was difficult to get on with at first. Prince Carl, the third son, is very handsome, and seems to have a charming disposition. After dinner the princes were to go out fishing, and the head fisherman sent to say that there would be no room for little Prince Eugène, as there were so many of the Prince Imperial’s suite to be taken. Prince Carl came to the Queen and begged that Eugène might not be told, he would be so disappointed, and that he might stay at home in his place; and the Queen said, ‘Charles is always like that; he never can be persuaded to think of himself.’ I tried to talk of Rome to the Prince Royal, but whenever a maid of honour on the other side claimed his attention, was glad to subside into conversation with an old chamberlain. The King drank healths at dinner, the Prince Imperial’s, mine, Count Murat’s. The Prince Royal asked me to clink glasses with him. ‘Do you like that custom?’ he said. A Swedish noble, appointed to wait on the Prince Imperial, stood up when the King drank his health. Then I saw the other side of the King--in very cold stern rebuke. ‘In good society gentlemen do not stand up when their healths are drunk,’ and that in the severest tones. The Queen looked surprised, and a momentary chill fell upon the whole party. I am sure that the Swede, who was a very bumptious young man, had done or said something before which had displeased the King.

“When the princes were gone to their fishing, the Queen made me come and sit by her. She returned at once to the subject of the Prince Royal and her great anxiety that I should be much with him abroad. ‘He must _learn_ his world,’ she said, ‘he knows so little of it. He is thoroughly good, but what he wants is enthusiasm, he wants to be incited to knowledge, to learning his future out of the past, and oh! you can help him so much, and if you will, I shall always be so grateful to you: but remember, and I know it will always help you to be kind to my boy if you do remember, what my boy’s future must in all probability be. Oh, Mr. Hare, do when there is a chance, sow some little seeds of good in my son’s young heart, and remember that what you do is not only done for the Prince Royal, not even for his mother, who entirely trusts you, but for the thousands upon thousands of people whom he may one day be called upon to influence. Whatever happens, if you will only interest yourself for my boy, you will believe in his mother’s gratitude.’

“The Queen continued to talk long in this manner with the utmost animation, till the Countess Rosen, suddenly seeing some sign of illness unobserved by us, ran round and said, ‘Dear Majesty, you must not now speak any more,’ and led her away with a charming mixture of motherly affection and playful deference.

“When Countess Rosen returned, she said, ‘The King desired that as soon as the Queen had ceased speaking to you, you should go to him: he especially wishes to talk to you alone.’ I found the King under a tree in the garden, reading a book (the ‘Odes of Horace,’ I think), and, fearing to disturb him, I pretended to occupy myself with the flowers, but he perceived me at once, closed the book, and coming to me, took my arm, and walked up and down on the terrace. ‘The Queen has been speaking to you of our son,’ he said; ‘I know what the Queen has been saying, and I wish to continue her conversation. He is a good boy, but he has not been tried; he has no idea what the world is like, nor of the many temptations which lie in wait for a young man, above all for a prince. Now the Queen and I are quite agreed that it is our wish that you should be as much to our son as possible, and I wished to see you alone that you might believe that all that his mother wishes, his father wishes also.’ The King then talked in detail of the Prince’s probable life in Rome, of the places and people he must see. ‘Please understand at once that my son must go to the Quirinal,’ he said. He went on to talk more earnestly of England, of the difficulties of all the lines to be drawn, and of all the individual persons whom it might be well for the Prince to see, and also some to be avoided. He wished the Prince to have a quiet month in England, to accustom himself to language and people, before going to London: he thought of Torquay; I suggested St. Leonards. He talked of Lady Waterford, whom he remembered many years ago, and admired almost more than any woman living, and wished that she might be persuaded to give an invitation to his son.

“Speaking of the course of study which would be best for the Prince led the King to talk of the great pleasure a thorough knowledge of Latin had been to himself, both for its own sake and as making all other languages easy to him.

“The King talked much of the anxieties at Berlin, and of the cloud over the royal life there. ‘Oh, how thankful I ought to be, how thankful I continually _am_, for our quiet corner, for a reign which is one of love. I never felt this more than in the Queen’s lonely carriole journey to her coronation at Throndtjem, and it was renewed lately in our son’s journey to Tellemarken. And though our people care for us, they do not flatter us. When the Queen was in the little village churches, near the different small stations where she passed her Sundays, the simple village curates of those mountain districts did not hesitate to preach to their Queen of all that she ought to do, of all that her life ought to be for herself and others, and oh! we are so grateful to them.’

“While we were talking, the court ladies were playing at croquet on the lawn. The King afterwards joined them, and I took a short walk with Baron Holtermann, marshal of the palace, and then went in and sat down to read in the drawing-room. Presently the King put in his head from the Queen’s room--‘Yes, he is here,’ he said, and then he called me to come in to the Queen. They then both of them took my hands and spoke to me in a most touching manner about the Prince Royal. The Queen also spoke of the uncertainty of her life, and of renewed meetings in distant Norway, and of her hope of seeing me in another world. She gave me her portrait. I could not but feel it a very solemn moment and very affecting. They took me out on the balcony of the room for one quiet moment. ‘Remember _how_ we trust you,’ they said. And we looked down upon the fountain playing and the burnt grass and brilliant flowers in the moonlight and then we went back to the public rooms.

“The Prince Imperial and the Swedish princes now returned from fishing, singing at the pitch of their voices through the woods, and we all went upstairs to supper. Their Majesties and the whole court had--Swedish fashion--each a great bowl of sour milk, with a great hunch of bread and two preserved peaches in a glass. The Prince Royal, by whom I again sat, fortunately asked for sweet milk, so I was able to do so also. Then the King and princes went to the other house, and I took a sad farewell of the beloved Queen. If ever there was a woman who united the truest, widest spirit of Christianity with every earthly grace, it is Queen Sophie of Nassau.

“The Queen’s dresser was turned out of a room for me--a good room, but with neither soap nor bath, no chance or understanding of hot water, and the looking-glass quite unavailable! Swedes are accustomed to none of these things as necessaries in houses where they visit.

“At 8 A.M. Baron Holtermann fetched me to walk through the woods to the King’s house to breakfast, after which I walked with the King to the pier at the end of the garden. There the younger princes kissed their father, and the Prince Imperial (who was going away at the same time and whom the King would accompany to Kristiania) took leave of the court. It was an intensely hot day, the town of Moss and the shore of the fiord seeming to steam with hot mist and the flowers all drooping. A little steam-pinnace took us all to the luxurious steamer, where there was boundless space for sitting or walking or whatever we liked. The voyage was very long--five hours. I sat reading ‘Ticknor’s Memoirs,’ and the King and Prince Imperial came occasionally to talk to me. I found in the book an account of the Prince’s grandmother, Comtesse de Téba, in her prime, which interested the King very much. He said, ‘The Prince Imperial keeps me in a perpetual state of mental tension: he does ask me _such_ questions. I am always wondering what he will say next. He is almost _too_ intelligent a young man. He has just asked me to tell him how long a steamer takes to get up steam. I have seen hundreds of steamers getting up steam, but I never thought before how long it took. However, I have had to think now, and it takes five quarters of an hour. Oh, the Prince Imperial is very good mental exercise.’

“Half-way down the fiord, the Prince Imperial insisted upon it that he must bathe. At first the King said it was impossible, that the moment of his arrival at Kristiania was fixed, that the people were waiting to see him, that the steamer could not be delayed--in fact, that it was out of the question. But while the King was discoursing, the Prince Imperial stripped off every article of clothing he had on, and after rushing up and down the deck perfectly naked, jumped into the sea over the poop and swam like a fish. The King then was obliged to stop the steamer, as he could not leave the Prince Imperial in the middle of the fiord, and he told an aide-de-camp to undress and go to pick out the Prince. The Prince lay on the breast of the waves laughing at the King till the aide-de-camp reached him, and then he dived, disappeared for some time, and came up on the other side of the vessel. The Prince Royal then undressed and went in too, and two aides-de-camp, and they all swam and pursued each other like mermen. When at last the Prince was persuaded to re-embark, he sang and shouted in most uproarious spirits. Then came luncheon. The King proposed the Prince’s health--‘Mon cher hôte et mon cher neveu’--and then he proposed mine, saying, ‘I drink to your meeting with the Prince Royal at Rome, and you _will_ be kind to my boy?’

“We entered Kristiania in triumph--all the towers, houses, and masts of the vessels in the harbour decorated with flags, cannon firing, and crowds of people on the quays. At the station were crowds too, waiting for the royal carriages as they drove up. There was quite a procession of them. I went in the second carriage with Count Murat. At the station I had just time to present the Miss Hollands, then I took leave of the king.”

* * * * *

“_August 17._--The Prince Imperial travelled with us from Kristiania. It was an ovation to him the whole way--crowds at all the stations, and shouts of ‘Hoch, Hoch!’ instead of ‘Hurrah.’

“We parted company with the Prince at Helsingor, whence we went to Fredensborg, a dull château and pretty garden, and then to Frederiksborg, really magnificent, one of Christian IV.’s grandest buildings, on three islands in a lake.

“We have since seen Bremen with the grand calm face of the gigantic Roland-Säule raised above the busy market, and Münster with its old cathedral and Congress-hall, and now we are at Tournai, where there is a noble cathedral, contrasting in its serious thoughtfulness of design with the frippery and sameness of Cologne. And to-day, being in the octave of St. Roch, Tournai is hung with flags for a really beautiful procession--crosses, banners, images, reliquaries carried aloft by troops of young girls in white and blue and little boys in mediaeval dresses. Some of the tiny children in golden oak-chaplets, and with great golden oak-bouquets or golden lilies, are quite beautiful.

“And to-day, too, we pass out of the peculiar existence of the last two months into ordinary working life again. Great is the thankfulness I feel for all, especially for my kind and pleasant companions.”

* * * * *

I spent the late summer of 1878 very quietly at home, busied in completing the Life of the Baroness Bunsen. Many guests came and went, amongst them Miss Wright, whose constant kindness and affection had been so much to me for many years. Whilst with me she was very ailing, but it was only supposed to be rheumatism, and doctors, who examined her carelessly, sent her from Holmhurst to Buxton, which was fatal to her, for her real disorder was heart-complaint. I never shall forget the bitter anguish of the shock, gently and tenderly broken as it was by Mary Lefevre, when I read that I should never see again the loving devoted friend of so many years, who alone was always ready to help me in any difficulty, always glad to fight a battle for me, and whose humble nature so terribly overrated me, making me, however, long to struggle up in reality to that higher shelf on which I saw she had mentally placed me. Hers was one of--

“The many lives, made beautiful and sweet By self-devotion and by self-restraint, Whose pleasure is to run without complaint On unknown errands of the Paraclete.”[289]

Wonderfully, though simply and unconsciously, did she fulfil the ideal of a holy life which is given us in the 15th Psalm. But it was not till she was gone, till her outpouring of gentle tenderness was silenced for ever, that one realised all she had been, and that her loss left a void for life which could never be filled up. Constantly have I gone back with useless self-reproach--would that I had done more to make her happy! would that I had always been more grateful in reciprocating so much kindness!--and most constantly have I been reminded--

“How each small fretting fretfulness Was but love’s over-anxiousness, Which had not been had love been less.”

Years have passed away as I write, but I can scarcely bear to speak of her, even to write of her, even now. “How holy are the holy dead! How willingly we take _all_ the blame to ourselves which in life we were so willing to divide.”[290] “Nevermore” is one’s echo of regret, but “too late” is that of repentance.

Dear Lady Williamson passed away from us in the same autumn, deeply loved too, but in her blindness and deafness one felt that her life--her entirely noble and beautiful life--was lived out, which one could not feel dear “Aunt Sophy’s” to be. She seemed to die, her life unfulfilled.

Throughout the autumn I had heard frequently from the Queen of Sweden and Norway, through the medium of her principal lady in waiting, the Countess Ebba von Rosen. The entire confidence and noble friendship expressed in these letters made it impossible for me to hesitate, when, after the Prince Royal had spent some time in Paris, it became the strong wish of her Majesty that I should join him at Rome. It was in entire concert with the King and Queen that I drew up the scheme of a series of peripatetic lectures for the Prince, in which, by describing historic events on the places with which they were connected, I hoped to fix those events and their lessons in his recollection. Their Majesties also agreed to the plan of my inviting others to join the excursions of the Prince. It was, however, with great misgiving that I left England, feeling that I gave up my pleasant home and congenial occupations in England for the constant companionship of a young man who had not, in our short previous acquaintance, made a very favourable impression upon me, and who might--should he take that line--resent my exertions in his behalf, and look upon me rather as a spy for his parents than as a friend to himself. When I once reached Rome, however, these fears were soon set at rest, and during the whole nine months which I passed in constant intimacy with the Prince, I never once had to reproach him with want of consideration for myself personally, but, on the contrary, always received from him marks of the utmost esteem and affection.

On the evening of November 16 I left Holmhurst, having worked at the index of my Bunsen Memoirs till within ten minutes of my departure. Upon the passage of the Mont Cenis I came in for terrible snowdrifts. Suddenly, after passing the tunnel, the walls of snow increased on each side of the train so as almost to block out the light, and, with a dull thud, the train came to a standstill near the wretched village of Oulx. An avalanche had fallen upon the luggage train which was pioneering our way, and three poor men were engulfed in it. The cold was terrific, and the suffering was increased in my case, because, having usually been much tried by the overheating of foreign trains, I had brought no carriage-rug or other wraps with me. After some time a way was cut through the snow walls to a miserable tavern, where sixteen ladies decided to sleep or cower in one wretched room and twelve gentlemen in another, but I gladly made my way back to the carriage before the passage was blocked again. It was then two in the afternoon, and wearily the day wore on into night, and still more wearily passed the night hours, with snow always falling thickly. I had a little brandy in the carriage, but no food. The suffering from cold was anguish. There were several invalid ladies in the train, for whom I felt greatly, knowing what this catastrophe would have been in times past before I was alone. Before morning two more avalanches had fallen behind us and the return to France was cut off. The telegraph wires were all broken, and the guard assured us that it was possible we might be detained days, or even weeks. At midday, cold and hunger made me try the hovel once more, but the filth and smells again drove me back to the carriage. At 4 P.M., however, on the second day, a welcome shouting announced that our deliverance was at hand. No trains arriving at Turin, our position was suspected, and the town-firemen were sent out _en masse_ to cut a way for us. At 6 P.M. we were released from our twenty-eight hours’ imprisonment, but the way was so dangerous, that we did not reach Turin till long after midnight.

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_26 Piazza di Spagna; Rome, Nov. 25, 1878._--You will imagine how touching--I shall never grow used to it--was the slow approach by rail round the walls of Rome, crossing all the little lanes _we_ knew so well in our drives, and seeing, one after another, S. Paolo, the Caius Cestius, the Porta S. Sebastiano, S. Giovanni in Olio, Porta Maggiore, the Minerva Medica, and then the vast space once occupied by the beautiful Villa Negroni, but now parcelled out for straight streets and stuccoed houses.

“Yet, considering it is four years since I was here last, the changes are not great yet: the same old man with peaked hat and long beard and the same pretty girls stand waiting as models: the same old stonecutter is grinding away under the Tempietto, and Francesco threw open Miss Garden’s door and announced (simply) ‘Il Signorino,’ as if I had been there the day before.

“On Sunday, Umberto and Margherita of Savoy made a triumphal entry into Rome, and I went to the Palazzo della Consulta to see them arrive at the Quirinal. It was an exquisitely beautiful evening--not a breath of air stirring the many flags: the obelisk and statues and the grand fountain of Pius VII. were in deep shadow, but the sun was glinting through the old ilexes in the Colonna Gardens and illuminated S. Peter’s and the town in the hollow. There was an immense crowd of every class, from ex-guardia nobile to peasants in the costumes of Sora and Aquino, and through them all the vast procession of sixty carriages moved to the palace, with flags flying, and flowers falling, and cannon thundering, and the one little bell of the royal chapel tinkling away as hard as it could, because the other churches would make no sign. ‘I Sovrani,’ as all the people called them, looked very proud and happy, and Queen Margherita marvellously graceful, and pleased to see the millions of marguerites, which people were wearing in honour of her. The little Principe de Napoli is quite hideous, but they say well brought up under an English governess, and King Umberto in every way seems to wish to reform his dissolute father’s court, as well as to screen his memory, having taken the whole of his enormous debts upon himself, besides paying off Victor Emmanuel’s eight ‘domestic establishments’ out of his private purse. The King and Queen came out upon the balcony of the Quirinal, and were triumphantly received. (Next after the royal carriages had come a fourgon with the bouquets presented at the station.) Last night there was a torchlight procession, tens of thousands bearing torches, with music, banners, and gigantic marguerites, who passed through the Piazza di Spagna on their way to the Quirinal. _Still_, taxes are rather increasing them otherwise; the misery of the formerly prosperous Romans is extreme, and many think a revolution imminent.

“Monsignor Prosperi is dead. I wonder if you remember about that most extraordinary person, who was supposed to have the evil eye. The Romans believe that all the many misfortunes of this year, and the attacks on royalty, &c., are because it fell to his turn to _cantare la missa_ at S. Maria Maggiore on the first day of the year. No end of shipwrecks and railway accidents are attributed to him, and so the poor man’s death is a subject of general rejoicing. It is recollected that after the last visit he ever paid, the servant of the house fell down on the stairs, and cut his eye open with the Monsignore’s visiting-card which he held in his hand.”

* * * * *

On arriving in Rome, I had found a tolerable little apartment for myself in 29 Piazza di Spagna, and the Prince Royal established in the charming sunny first floor of the Palazzo Rocca-Giovine in the Forum of Trajan. Thither I used daily, often twice a day, to go to the Prince. From the first he welcomed me very cordially, and I could see that he was really glad of my coming, still I was uncertain whether there would ever be more than an interchange of courtesy and duty between us. I never hoped to be able to give him the real affection I afterwards so sincerely felt. Somewhat to my consternation, I was desired by the King to fix my first lecture for the Prince for one of the very first days after my arrival, in order that Baron Holtermann, marshal of the palace, who was returning to Stockholm, might take back a full account of “how it went” to their Majesties. The Queen added her special request that I would say nothing except in English, in order to force the Prince-Royal to learn that language.

As being the central feature and axis of ancient Rome, I chose the Capitoline for my first lecture. General and Mrs. Stuart and Lady Agnes Douglas met me there at the top of the steps, and waited for the Prince, who arrived on foot with Baron Holtermann and two other Swedish gentlemen. I doubt at first whether they understood a word I said in English, and the being obliged constantly to translate into French or bad German did not add to the liveliness of the lecture. Our procession passed from point to point in the most funereal manner. The Prince made no observation whatever, Romulus, the Tarpeian Rock, Marcus Aurelius passing equally unnoticed; only when we came to Palazzo Caffarelli he said, “Oh, that was where Mim Bunsen was born:” it had touched a chord of human interest.

I wonder what sort of account of this lecture Baron Holtermann can have taken to the Swedish court; but we did better next time, when, on the Palatine, the Prince’s spirits quite rose over all the murders of the emperors and empresses. In the latter part of the winter, the lectures, which took place three times a week, were quite an enjoyment, he was so merry, so kind and pleasant to every one, so glad to know everything.

Very soon, after consultation with M. de Printzsköld, the Queen’s chamberlain, who had accompanied the Prince to Rome, I proposed going twice a week to read English with the Prince in the late afternoon, which was gladly accepted, and on those occasions we read “Mademoiselle Mori” alternately, and translated “Tolla” into English. It was in the little conversations which inevitably interspersed themselves with these readings that I first learnt to know my Prince really well. The readings themselves he found it very difficult to attend to, and the exercises he prepared for me were much against the grain, so we did not make much progress till I obtained an order from the Queen that the equerries should do the same exercises as the Prince, which roused his ambition, and he went ahead at once, and always did much better than his companions. I think it is Adam Smith who says that “the great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.” After our lessons, I always dined with the Prince, sitting on his right hand. Afterwards the Prince and his Swedish gentlemen smoked, and as soon as it was possible to do it, I took my leave, except on evenings when I went out into the world with the Prince. But for the most part the Prince’s evenings were spent at home, the Italian court showing him no attention, and scarcely any of the Roman princes inviting him, except during the Carnival. Old Lady Morton was throughout exceedingly kind and helpful where the Prince was concerned, and gave several parties for him. At these, the Prince’s distant cousins, Princess Gabrielli, Countess Primoli, and Countess Campello, the round fat elderly daughters of Lucien Bonaparte, were always present.[291] They were pleasant sensible women, especially Countess Primoli (Princess Charlotte Bonaparte). Having all married beneath their rank, they always made a point of going in and out of a room in the order of their age, which had often a funny effect.

Of all the people who welcomed me back to Rome, the most cordial were the blind Duke and the Duchess of Sermoneta, whom I was delighted to find established for the winter in the upper floor of the old Caëtani Palace. Since her marriage, the Duchess had contrived to conciliate the whole Caëtani family, not only to herself, but to each other. She had also ransacked the unknown corners of the palace, and had found endless old hangings, old portraits, &c., things almost valueless in themselves, but which gave the bare walls a look of historic antiquity. I often took the Prince to the evening receptions of the Duchess, at which, as at all the princely Roman houses, some tea and very sour lemonade were considered quite sufficient as refreshments. Without the Prince, I often dined with the Sermonetas at their homely early excellent Italian dinner, and an oasis in commonplace life was meeting there the Abbot Marcaldi of La Cava, the Abbot Pescitelli of Farfa, and a most beautiful old Don Pietro Tailetti, canon of St. Peter’s--like a mediaeval picture. They had all wished to see me, from their pleasure in the chapter on the Benedictine rule in “Days near Rome.”

* * * * *

_To_ MARY LEA GIDMAN.

“_Dec. 11, 1878._--I always see the Prince now with increased satisfaction and an increasing certainty that he likes having me with him. I also feel that I _am_ able to be to him all that the Queen of Sweden wished, of which at first I was uncertain. In our walks he asks so many questions about what he sees, that I have to work hard in the evenings before to prepare myself to answer properly, for I find that I have forgotten much of the detail of my Roman history, &c.... Last week we went for the whole day to Corneto, eating an excellent breakfast provided by the Prince’s cook in the train. Professor Helbig, who had preceded us, met us at the station with a little omnibus. With this we went up into the high hills above old Tarquinii, and then descended with torches into the great sepulchres, where the dead of two thousand years ago are seen (in terra-cotta figures as large as life) sitting round at imaginary banquets, while the walls are covered with paintings of their deeds in life--hunting, fishing, dancing, &c., as fresh in colour as when they were painted. Then we went to visit a Countess Bruschi, who had a great collection of jewels and other beautiful things found in the tombs. This lady was the only person to whom we revealed who the Prince Royal was; but whilst we were at dinner the secret transpired, for there came from the Bruschi palace a bouquet of the most magnificent roses, like a sheaf, carried by two footmen, and another bouquet of camellias, arranged in a huge citron; and then the governor of the town arrived to make a little speech, to which the Prince gave a suitable answer, which I had to translate into Italian; and then all the people found out, and came to look at the Prince.”

* * * * *

On Christmas Day I received a telegram from the Queen of Sweden expressing her good wishes, and thanks for the kindness shown to her son. From a letter received about the same time from Countess Rosen I extract:--

* * * * *

“_Stockholm, Dec. 18, 1878._--H.M. the Queen charges me to convey to you her thanks for your letters, which are very welcome. The Queen says you manage to tell just what interests her most about the doings of the Crown Prince. Both the Queen and the King thank you heartily for all your kind interest in the Crown Prince, and they perceive already that you have succeeded in gaining a good and useful influence over him, and that you have kindled up his interest for all that now surrounds him. The Queen is charmed if you write often, but she is afraid that it takes up too much of your time, which is much taxed already through all that you do for the Prince....

“The Queen begs you to write with perfect frankness, even when everything is not quite as one would wish it to be. Be sure that what you say will never be misunderstood.”

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_Dec. 5, 1878._--I think my last letter may have expressed some of the depression I certainly felt as to the uncertainty of my position with the Prince Royal, and I know with how much pleasure you will hear that these clouds have completely cleared away. I have increasing, indeed I have now _perfect_ satisfaction in my position with the Prince, and in the internal conviction that I can and may be to him all that the Queen has wished. The great secret is, I suppose, that I am becoming really very fond of him. He not only daily unfolds new gifts and graces for every one, but he is hourly pleasanter and more charming in all his relations to me, and I have now the certainty that I am most welcome to him; but indeed he has always treated me with entire confidence, though you will easily understand that had he possessed the slightest shadow of small-mindedness, he must have looked upon me with a sort of suspicion, from the intimacy with which his parents have honoured me, and my constant letters--which he knows _must_ be about himself--to the Queen.

“To-day my lecture for him was on the Aventine. At S. Sabina I sent in notice of their visitor to the Abbot and the Father-General of the Dominicans, and in his honour the two ladies of our party, Countess Barnekow and Lady Agnes Douglas, were allowed to penetrate the inmost recesses of the convent, and to visit the cell of S. Dominic, with his exquisitely beautiful picture, and the cell of S. Pius V. As we came out of the church, the Abbot presented the Prince with a large basket of oranges and apples, and some leaves from the sacred tree of S. Dominic, and the Father-General with photographs of the convent pictures and view. Afterwards we visited the lovely Priorato garden, still full of flowers, and S. Prisca, and the wild, beautiful Vigna dei Gesuiti.”

* * * * *

It was one of the wise and kind thoughts of the Queen at this time to make it appear to the Prince that an eagerly coveted permission to go to Bucharest and Athens upon leaving Rome was granted in consequence of my petition in his favour. And indeed it was granted--as a Christmas gift--in consequence of my letters to the Queen as to the progress he was making, &c. I often wonder whether my letters to the court of Sweden of this winter have been preserved: I wrote such volumes, often illustrating them with sketches, &c.--“Memoires _pour servir_ pour la vie du Prince Royal.”

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_Dec. 19, 1878._--Ere this you will probably have received Madame de Bunsen’s Life ‘from the author.’ There is much in it which will interest you, some things you will not like. So it is with everything and everybody. But I am quite satisfied that it is the most truthful portrait _I_ could have painted, and I trust it may worthily commemorate my dear old friend.

“The news of Princess Alice’s death, announced in a sermon on Sunday, was quite a shock, as I had not heard of her being ill; and she was so kind to me when here, and so interested and amused in correcting ‘Walks in Rome.’

“My dear Prince is very well and happy and enjoying everything. I see him daily, generally for half each day, but have very little new to say about it. I have found a passage about Charles I., by Cowley I think, which expresses just what I hope may be said of him some day: ‘Never was there a more gracious Prince or a more proper gentleman. In every pleasure he was temperate, in conversation mild and grave, in friendship constant, to his servants liberal, to his Queen faithful and loving, in battle brave, in sorrow and captivity resolved, in death most Christian and forgiving.’

“The Queen writes through the Countess Rosen that she is delighted that I am going with the Prince to Florence, and that it was quite the Prince’s own idea; but she fears I shall find him rather a dull companion there, as he has very little taste for picture-galleries.”

* * * * *

“_Jan. 6, 1879._--I was very glad to part with 1878--a year of many sorrows--dear Miss Wright’s death the greatest. On the last evening I went to Mrs. Terry’s, where Miss Trollope sang exquisitely ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot’ in the last minutes of the year.

“My last lecture for the Prince was upon the last days of S. Paul, going to the pyramid of Caius Cestius, the last surviving witness of his life, to the desolate Tre Fontane, and then to the huge basilica which sprung from his martyrdom. At the Tre Fontane the Prince found a beautiful piece of old marble railing and a fine fragment of pietra-dura pavement, used to wall in a flower-bed; bought them, and he and I lugged them back to the carriage between us. He is now very happy, and (though there _are_ black days) enjoys everything very much. We have increased our little party by the handsome widowed ‘Anne, Countess of Dunraven,’ and the charming Countess Schulenberg, a North Prussian.

“The Prince and I dined with Lady Morton the other day, meeting Prince and Princess Altieri, Prince and Princess Sulmona, Countess Apponyi, &c. I was very glad that he should meet this completely ‘black’ party, as he has had few opportunities of meeting that phase of politics. On Thursday the Duchess Sermoneta gives another party for him, to which she has taken the fancy to ask all the ‘learned’ people in Rome. My poor Prince will not make much of them, but will be amused with many, especially with Donna Ursilia Lovatelli, who likes to converse in Sanscrit, and who had to be told that she must not bring with her more aides-de-camp than the Prince (four); as her ‘court,’ as she calls it, which likes to follow her, sometimes numbers sixty persons. Madame Minghetti will also bring _her_ court, which is far more Bohemian, amusing, and agreeable.

“But daily I feel more the force of something which I think was said by Charles V. of France: ‘On doit nourrir les princes des vertus, afin qu’ils surmontent en mœurs ceux qu’ils doivent surmonter en honneurs.’”

* * * * *

“_Dec. 29._--I am glad to hear of my book, which I have not seen, though it reached Stockholm long ago. It is a pleasure to have an outburst of approval from the Bunsens. Of reviews I think little, knowing how they scarcely ever have anything to do with the merits or demerits of a work, but only with the wish of an editor to advantage or injure an author: besides, the newspapers all copy one another, only changing the words.

“We have had burning sun and intense scirocco here, which of course means a great deal of rain, and there have been torrents each day, but lovely effects between, such masses of cloud rolling over St. Peter’s, with brilliant light falling through upon the many-domed town, and tremendous conflagrations at sunset. I spent Christmas Eve at the Palazzo Colonna, where the Duchess Marino had an immense Christmas-tree for her servants and friends, and a merry party of children. A prettier sight than the tree was the little Duchess herself, in a white silk dress, with a long lace veil looped upon her head and enveloping her figure, ceaselessly carrying presents to servants, poor women, &c. She is really charming, with simple, sincere, cordial manners, and her husband is most pleasant, the very best type of an Italian gentleman. Donna Olympia Colonna was at the tree--very bridal-looking, bright, and pretty.

“With the Prince I have ever more entire satisfaction. I constantly see more of him, and have daily increasing affection for him. Of course the position is not perfect, but I expect this in everything, and am quite sure of his absolute confidence to a degree which I never expected. I am happy in feeling that Rome _is_ doing for him all that the Queen hoped, but which I did not, and that he will return to her indescribably improved in every way. I suppose people who have children of their own are familiar with it, but I could not have conceived before the interest of watching the gradual unfolding and expansion of a character to which one utterly devotes oneself; and with him all was new, it was entirely fallow ground to work upon.

“One day we went to Frascati by rail, taking with us Count and Countess Barnekow and Count and Countess Lievenhaupt, Swedes, and Lady Agnes Douglas. While Lady Agnes did the honours of some of the villas, M. de Printzsköld and I got an excellent though thoroughly Roman dinner ready at the little inn, and afterwards the ladies had donkeys, the Prince a horse, and we others walked up to Tuseulum. Here the Prince was very happy picking up mosaics in the long grass, and eventually insisted on excavating, and lugging back to Rome in his arms, a great mass, as big as that in the verandah at Holmhurst. We came down by the great desolate villa of Mondragone, and returned to Rome in the evening laden with fern and butcher’s-broom, which, with its bright scarlet berries, is the Roman apology for holly.

“The Prince _hates_ the churches, and generally has to be bribed to bear them with equanimity by the promise of a little marble-hunt in some vineyard afterwards, when it is amusing to see the whole party fall to grubbing simultaneously among the artichokes. It has been hard work refusing the endless people who want to go with us, but besides Lady Dunraven we have only admitted pretty little Miss Trollope, the historian’s daughter. I like Princess Teano very much, and am charmed with her anxiety to make the very most of all she sees, and Lord Hylton’s boy, George Jolliffe, is delightful, brimming with enthusiasm and intelligence.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Feb. 20, 1879._--Each day, as I have known the Prince Royal better, I have liked him more. He has no sense of beauty and no care for it, and he has naturally very few of my tastes, but he has the most transparent, truthful, simple, loyal character I have ever known, and he has ever been unspeakably kind and affectionate to me. We have been wonderfully thrown together, even all the little circumstances intended by others to divide us having acted the other way, and made us cling to each other with truest friendship.

“All the earlier part of the winter I continued my lectures for him, in which we visited almost every remarkable object in Rome. Our party was much increased latterly, one of its most interesting elements being the Prussian Countess Schulenberg, with whom I formed a great friendship. I wish now that I had written down the many conversations of interest I had with her; she left suddenly in January to take care of a sick cousin in Germany.

“One of the last evenings of the year was spent in the Palazzo Colonna with the sweet little Duchess of Marino. She is a great addition and enlivenment to the dull egotistical Roman society, and is brimming with good intentions and high aspirations, many of which she is really able to carry out. Greatly, for instance, did she astonish modern Rome, with its vulgar attempts at exclusiveness, by opening her rooms for a grand party in the noble old Roman style, in which princes and sculptors met on equal terms, and artists were as cordially received as if they were ambassadors.

“Amongst the acquaintance who came to me with the New Year were the Dutch Minister and Madame de Westenberg, his American wife, from whom I have received much cordiality. Other people with whom I have been intimate are the admirable Swedish Count and Countess Barnekow, the latter especially charming, and full of life and intelligence. The Count has been taking the post of consul here this year, but they have been welcomed in all societies. There is something quite charming in their relation to their children--little girls--and their influence over them. Of these, the second, Elisabet, was compelled at six years old to have her finger amputated. The mother prepared her for it, and told her how terribly it would add to her distress if she did not bear the operation bravely. The child said she could bear it if only they did not tell her it was nothing: she knew it was dreadful, but if no one attempted to deceive her she could bear a dreadful thing. She sat on the surgeon’s knee while the finger was being taken off; she never uttered a sound, and when the operation was over, she kissed him to show she bore no malice!

“On the 16th of January I went, away with my Prince for a tour in Tuscany. I very soon found that for me the trial of the tour would be his hatred of fresh air. He never would have the carriage window opened, even on the hottest day and with steaming hot-water pans. Otherwise all was luxury, kindness, and comfort. We arrived at Perugia on the most glorious evening I ever remember: violet mists were rolling through the valleys, the snow mountains were rosy in the sunset. It was such a scene as can only be enjoyed in Italy, and in Italy can only be found in Umbria, perhaps only at Perugia. But the Prince was much more interested in an illuminated church where there was a function in honour of S. Mauro. Next day we drove to Assisi, where he was far more delighted at buying a little old silver box in a sidestreet than with all the old churches and monasteries. He travelled under the name of the Comte de Tullgarn, and at Perugia no one found out who he was, which made him very happy. At Florence, however, he was unfortunately discovered, and we found great preparations--two smart carriages waiting at the station, twenty-six candles and three lamps burning in our rooms, with prices in proportion, and a serenade of music outside the windows.

“Therefore, as soon as we arrived, I began to look up Florentine acquaintance, and called on the charming Marchesa Elisabetta Torrigiani, who lives with her four sons, three of them married, in the greatest harmony, in the fine old Torrigiani palace. We dined with them, and were greatly delighted with the three beautiful daughters-in-law, especially the Marchesa Cristina, wife of Don Filippo, a member of the once-sovereign house of Malaspina. The Marchese Pietro placed his carriage at our disposal. The family of Corsini were also most civil to us, and their head, the Marchesa Lajatico, gave a great ball in honour of the Prince. Other parties were given to us by the Marchesa Cavoni, Baron de Talleyrand, Sir Digby and Lady Murray, and the Fenzis. One evening we spent with the C. de Bunsens, who asked many interesting people, including Sir James Lacaita, Villari the historian, and the old Duc de Dino, to meet us. One beautiful day we drove out to Castagnuolo, where we were entertained in the ancient hill-set villa by the Marchese della Stufa and Mrs. Ross, and the Prince fed all the rare birds, and visited the farm and the wine-making.

“On leaving Florence, the Prince and I had a really happy day together at Pisa. M. de Printzsköld was then sickening with Arno fever, and when we were at Siena was unable to go out with us: with the others we drove to the mediaeval castle of Belcaro, whose owner, the Marchese Camajori, had long been slightly known to me, and wandered much about the old streets and into the shops of the antiquaries.”

* * * * *

We returned to Rome on the 25th. My regular lectures were over then, but as the Prince missed our little parties, I had some for him to the villas and galleries. At this time, as often afterwards, those who surrounded the Prince gave me the opportunity of testing the truth of Lord Chesterfield’s observation, that “courts are the best key to characters; there every passion is busy, every character analysed,” as well as the dictum of La Bruyère, that at court “les joies sont visibles mais fausses, et les chagrins cachés mais réels.”

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_Rome, Feb. 3, 1879._--I feel as if it must be dull reading letters only about the Prince, but as I have not even the possibility of seeing much of any one else, what else can I say? I am obliged to give up everything to his lessons, his invitations, and to trying to help him to make the most of all he sees. He enjoyed Pisa, where I saw the Limosins,[296] and we drove through the forest of San Rossore to the Gombo, where the Prince and I sat long in the warm afternoon upon the little pier above the sea waves, which the dear Mother enjoyed so much there in 1857. I often wonder if she knows what I am doing now, but I feel sure she would be glad and satisfied that so much time should be given up to one who must one day influence tens of thousands. I have many struggles now and much to contend with in the _position_, but with the Prince himself have nothing but satisfaction. I tumbled downstairs on Saturday night, and was so much hurt as to be all yesterday without seeing him: so to-day at eleven the donna announced--‘Un signorino.’ I was sitting for my picture and was afraid of moving, so waited for the visitor to come round from behind my chair, when behold the Prince, who had escaped from his gentlemen, seized a little carriage in the street, and come off to me. I mention this as an example of the ever-pleasant terms I am on with him, and which make it impossible not to be fond of him.

“I am glad you like the Bunsen Memoirs on the whole. I knew you would not agree with details. She always wondered, as I have always done, _how_ those who really love their Saviour, and wish to follow His precepts, can reconcile themselves to setting up the great idol of Sabbatarianism, _the_ sin against which He was most eager and earnest in warning His disciples, and against which more of His teaching was directed than any other single offence. She also thought, as I have always done, that, next to churches (often misused), theatres (also often misused) were instruments which could be made most widely useful in leavening great numbers of people at once; and therefore she considered that an immaculate company and a play of high principles ought always to be encouraged.”

* * * * *

“_Feb. 13._--I have had a series of lectures for the Prince in the Vatican galleries and St. Peter’s, and at the latter, by kindness of Monsignor Théodoli, had all the chapels of the crypt illuminated, and the precious plate and vestments (Charlemagne’s robes, &c.) exhibited. We climbed up to the cross, but the ladies of our little party succumbed on the different roofs, except Lady Dunraven, who went with us to the ball.

“On the 4th I was with the Prince at a ball at the Palazzo Caffarelli, the German embassy, which is much done up since Bunsen’s days and exceedingly magnificent. The great hall was entirely surrounded with palm-trees, under one of which I stood, with the Swedish Countess Barnekow, to watch the procession come in and the state quadrille--which Queen Marguerite danced with M. de Keudel, and my Prince with Mme. de Keudel--alone on the long sides of the room, with a perfect tourbillon of ambassadors and ambassadresses at the narrow ends. A much prettier ball was that at Palazzo Caëtani. This the Prince had to open with the Queen, so we had to be there by eleven, but _because_ the King and Queen were to be there, all the great nobles stayed away, so for once Palazzo Caëtani did not shine. The Queen looked lovely, but, ever since the attack on the King, has been more nervous than ever, perpetually picking at her gloves, twisting her fan, and shaking out the folds of her dress. Her beautiful hair was full of marguerites in diamonds. The King looked glaring and demoniacal, yet really is going on very well, and does all he can to sweep away the abuses and immoralities of his father’s court, unpopular as it makes him with his father’s sycophants. Yesterday I was with the Prince at a great ball at Prince Altieri’s--the blackest of the ‘black’ houses--where I had the great pleasure of seeing again my sister’s dear friend the Duchess Sora, who has lived in a sort of exile hitherto, ever since the Sardinian occupation of Rome.

“Yesterday morning I went with the Prince to the antiquity market in the Campo de’ Fiore. We left the carriage in the courtyard of the Cancelleria, and made a raid upon the old bookstalls, till our arms were quite full, and then we deposited our burthens and made another. The Prince is getting on wonderfully with his English, and will talk fluently by the time he reaches London. I see him ceaselessly. He has been twice to my lodgings to-day, and I have been out with him besides. He dances till 4 A.M. every night now (it is Carnival), but is never tired, and up at eight.”

* * * * *

“_Feb. 24._--My present work is likely to end for a time on Thursday, when my dear Prince goes to Naples and Sorrento. On looking back, I have unmixed satisfaction that I came. He leaves Rome quite a different person from the Prince I found here--much strengthened, and I am sure much improved in character, as well as speaking and reading English and French (which he did not know before), and being able to take a lively animated part in a society in which he was previously a cypher. Of course, I personally have been able to do very little more than introduce him and constantly throw him with those who have influenced him, and I have been most ably seconded and helped in everything I wished for him by Lady Morton, the Sermonetas, Princess Teano, and--in her own way--by Lady Paget. To me he has been unfailingly pleasant. I have never had a difficulty with him.

“We have been together several times in the Vatican, with Monsignor Pericoli, at the sale of Pius IX.’s things--quantities of things, from valuable pictures and sculptures to empty jam-pots; but touching in many ways, especially the boxes of the well-worn Papal slippers. All is obliged to be sold, as the produce is divided into three parts--one to the family, one to the cardinals-in-waiting, and the third to the Church. The Prince bought some valuable amethysts, and I have the Papal despatch-box engraved with his arms, a picture which hung in his room, and a pair of the Papal slippers.

“For the last ten days we have been in all the dirt and squalor of the silly, filthy Carnival, which is more _mesquin_ and contemptible than ever; but the Prince is only twenty, and it has amused him. I have only been obliged to go with him to the Corso one day, when we went to one-o’clock luncheon with the Dutch Minister, and were astonished to find every shutter closed, chandeliers and candles lighted, ladies in white satin and diamonds, gentlemen in evening dress; in fact, midnight at midday! so that the Prince and I felt rather shy. However, Mrs. Bruce cheered us by appearing in a bonnet.”

* * * * *

I saw much at this time of Madame Minghetti, the wife of the senator, still wonderfully beautiful and captivating, though a grandmother. Her rooms were draped with every possible nuance of colour which can harmonise together, great palm-trees and bananas shaded the sofas and arm-chairs, and the heavy curtains only let in witching rays of half light upon a gorgeous gloom. Here, in her receptions in the early Sunday afternoon, she would sit upon the floor and sing, break off in the middle of a line to receive or embrace some one, and, in an instant, be again in her place, singing as before and taking up the line which was left unfinished.

Another new friend was the pretty lively Princess of Salm Reifferscheid, whom, with her husband, I invited to accompany us to Tivoli, when the Prince gave me a carriage and told me to ask whom I liked. At Tivoli our party had a charming day, riding on eleven donkeys, penetrating into the depths of the cascades, having luncheon in front of the temple, and sitting in the sun opposite the cascatelle. At sunset we were at the Villa d’Este, and went down into the hollow to look up at the grand old villa, golden through the dark cypresses.

I saw, however, comparatively little of those who usually make the pleasure of my Roman winter, and devoted myself to the Prince. There is no use--none--in trying to be, or to do, two things at once.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Here is a story which I have heard lately:--

“Lady Vernon[297] dreamt. She dreamt that she saw the butler, with a knife in one hand and a candle in the other, crossing the entrance hall, and she woke with a great start. After a little she composed herself to sleep again, and she dreamt--she dreamt that she saw the butler, with a knife in one hand and a candle in the other, on the middle of the staircase, and she woke with a great shock. She got up; she thought she could not be quite well, and she took a little sal-volatile. At last she fell asleep again, and she dreamt--she dreamt that she saw the butler, with a knife in one hand and a candle in the other, standing at her bedroom door; and she awoke in a great terror, and she jumped out of bed, and she said: ‘I’ll have an end of this, I’ll have an end of these foolish imaginations,’ and she rushed to the door, and she threw the door wide open. And there at the door _stood_ the butler, with a knife in one hand and a candle in the other. And when he suddenly saw Lady Vernon in her white night-dress, with her hair streaming down her back, _he_ was so dreadfully frightened that he dropped the candle on the ground and rushed off down the staircase, and off to the stables where there was a horse ready saddled and bridled, on which he meant to have ridden away when he had murdered Lady Vernon; and he rode away without ever having murdered her at all, and he was never, never, _never_ heard of again.”

* * * * *

On the 3rd of March, a well-known partnership of upwards of sixty years was closed at Rome by the death, in his little apartment at 55 Via Sistina, of William Howitt the author leaving his sweet old Mary[298] alone with her unmarried daughter Margaret. Though never very remarkable, the many books of William and Mary Howitt were always excellent, and the writers were deeply respected. I attended Mr. Howitt’s funeral on the 5th, walking with Mrs. Terry, Baron Hoffmann, and Prince George of Solms, immediately after the daughter and son-in-law. The ceremony was a very touching one, and the coffin buried in wreaths of camellias, lilies, and violets. As William Howitt was a Quaker, the service was different from ours, but hymns were beautifully sung over his coffin in the chapel and at the grave, where the American clergyman, Dr. Nevin, gave a really touching and beautiful address, as the daughter was pouring basket after basket of flowers into the open grave.

I dined with the Prince on the day before that fixed for his departure to Naples. When our last moment together came, he took me into his room and parted from me there, with many most affectionate words, and gave me the Order of St. Olaf, which the King of Sweden and Norway had conferred upon me, begging me to wear it for his sake.[299] I left him with the truest affection, and with, I think, unbounded confidence and regard on both sides.

* * * * *

_From the_ COUNTESS ROSEN.

“_February 23._--As the Prince’s stay in Rome is now drawing to its close, their Majesties charge me once more to express to you their most heartfelt thanks for all your kindness to the Prince, all the good and useful influence you have had over him, and all your arrangements to combine the useful with the amusing in order to kindle his interest. Their Majesties have always been so happy to know that you were at his side and smoothed all his difficulties. In his own letters the Prince shows that he has learnt to love and appreciate you, and is thankful for all you have done for him.”

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_Feb. 28, 1879._--You ask if I was alarmed over my lectures with the Prince, and found them difficult. No, not very. From the first I thought of what Johnson told Sir J. Reynolds, and I tried to do the same. He told him that he had ‘early laid it down as a fixed rule to do his best on every occasion, and in every company: to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put it in, and that by constant practice and by never suffering any careless expressions to escape him, or attempting to deliver his thoughts without arranging them in the clearest manner, it had become habitual to him.’ So you see that I have been fortifying myself by wise advice! And I am sure that it is the _way_ in which things are said that fixes them in the mind.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Fabj. Altini, the sculptor, says Thorwaldsen declared clay to be the life of art, plaster its death, and marble its resurrection.

“Mrs. F. Walker told me how she went out one evening at Freshwater to meet her brother-in-law and niece as they were returning from an excursion along the cliffs. On her way she saw a lady in deep mourning, with a little boy, emerge apparently from a side path to the one on which she was, and walk on before her. She noticed the lady’s peculiarly light step. Mother and son stopped at a little railed-in enclosure at the top of the hill, and gazed over the railings; then they went on again in front of her. At length, beyond them, Mrs. Walker saw Mr. Palmes and his daughter coming to meet her. Between her and them she saw the lady and boy suddenly disappear--apparently go down some side path leading to the sands; but, when she came to the place, there was _no_ path, the cliff was perfectly precipitous. Miss Palmes equally saw the lady and boy coming towards her, and was greatly agitated by their sudden disappearance.

“Afterwards they found that the same sight was constantly seen there. It was the little boy’s grave into which the two had gazed. He had fallen over the cliff just there and been killed, and was buried by his mother’s wish inside that little circular railing.”

* * * * *

The Prince was in Rome for one night on his way from Naples to Munich, I went to him in the early morning, and was with him till 2 P.M., when he left, spending the time in driving about with him, chiefly to the antiquity shops, in which he always had the greatest delight. The very day after he left I fell in with other royalties, of whom at first I seemed likely to see a great deal. I was at the Princess Giustiniani Bandini’s, when the Hereditary Grand Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Weimar were announced--a very simple homely pair. The lady-in-waiting, hearing my name, most cleverly recollected all about me, and I was presented, and very cordially and kindly received. A few days after, Princess Teano asked me to meet them at dinner. Only the Keudells of the German Embassy and the Minghettis dined besides the family, but an immense party came in the evening. The Hereditary Grand Duke is a weak-looking little man with a very receding forehead. The Grand Duchess (who was his cousin) is a fine big woman--“bel pezzo di carne”--with intense enjoyment and good-humour in everything. “How can anybody be ill, how is it possible that anybody can be unhappy in Rome!” Both talked English perfectly. They arranged then that I should show them the Palatine. But a few days afterwards I heard from the Duchess Sermoneta that the Grand Duchess had said to her that, owing to the furious jealousy of the German archaeologists, she was unable to go with me.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_March 17, 1879._--At Mrs. Terry’s I have met again her sister, Mrs. Julia Ward-Howe, the American poetess. When she wanted me to talk to her and I did not, she said, ‘In your case, Mr. Hare, I must pervert a text of Scripture--“to do good and to _communicate_ forget not.”’

“I have seen much, almost daily, of Lord Hylton’s young son, George Jolliffe, for whom I have an affection ever increased by his confidence in me, which makes me feel more of responsibility as an instrument of possible good in his case than I have ever done in any other. He is a delightful companion in Rome, so full of interest and enthusiasm in all we see.... We went together yesterday to the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, where the old blackened portico was hung with bright tapestry, and the whole staircase and rooms strewn with box, because it was the day on which S. Filippo Neri raised the Massimo child from the dead. Most surprising were the masses of people--cobblers and contadini elbowing cardinals up the long staircase, washerwomen on their knees crowding princesses round the altar. Prince Massimo, in full evening dress, received in the anteroom of the chapel, and the Princess (daughter of the Duchesse de Berri) invited every one she knew to have ices and coffee.

“I went afterwards to Miss Howitt, who talked cheerfully about her father. ‘Rome might possibly not be the place to live in, but it certainly was the place to die and be buried in.’ She spoke of the extraordinary shots made at her father’s life by the English newspapers--how one of them described her mother’s daily walk on the Pincio by the side of a Bath-chair which ‘contained an ancient man,’ &c., the fact being that her mother never walked, that her father always walked, and moreover that there was no Bath-chair in Rome.

“Last night I was at the British Embassy till 1 A.M. I conquered shyness sufficiently to go and talk to the Grand Duchess, though she sat in a row of princesses. The younger Marchesa Lajatico was there--most graceful and charming.”

* * * * *

“_March 20._--A young American drove me to the meet at Centocelle. It was a lovely day of soft scirocco, fleecy clouds floating over the pale pink mountain distances and the Campagna bursting into its first green, across which the long chains of aqueduct arches threw their deep shadows. Crowds of people and carriages were out, but we followed Princess Teano, who knew all the ups and downs of the ground, and drove with young Lady Clarendon so cleverly, that we were in at the death in the great ruins of Sette Basse.”

* * * * *

“_March 21._--Tea with Countess Primoli (Princess Charlotte Bonaparte) in her little boudoir at the end of a long suite of quaint old-fashioned rooms. She talked very pleasantly, but with too constant reference to the Empress and Prince Imperial as ‘my family.’ I went afterwards to see the Favarts at Ville Lante. It is a beautiful place, and the noble face of Madame Favart is worthy of its setting. Consolo was there and played marvellously on the violin, every nerve seeming to vibrate, every hair to leap in unison with his chords.”

* * * * *

“_March 23._--Once more I am on the eve of leaving Rome, more sorry to part with my little winter rooms than I ever expected to be; even my ugly squinting donna, ‘Irene,’ having proved very good and faithful. The time here has been full of interests, independent of royal ones--one of them, the going out to India of Frank Marion Crawford, the son of my dear friend Mrs. Terry. He would probably have done no work in Europe, though he has evinced an ambitious perseverance by voluntarily pursuing the study of Sanscrit--‘because it was so difficult,’ and this has enabled him to accept a vacant professorship in the University at Bombay.”[300]

* * * * *

“_Florence, March 27._--I left Rome on Tuesday--a lovely morning, and I looked my last at the glorious view from the Medici Terrace with a heavy heart.

“Now I am in the old Palazzo Mozzi at Florence, as the guest of the Sermonetas. On the side towards the Via dei Bardi the palace rises up gaunt and grim like a fortress, but at the back it looks into a beautiful garden, with terraces climbing up the steep hillside to the old city wall. The rooms are large and dreadfully cold, but the Duchess has made them very picturesque with old hangings and furniture. The Duke talks incessantly and cleverly. I asked him why his Duchess signed ‘Harriet Caëtani,’ not ‘Sermoneta,’ and he explained how all the splendour of the family arose from the fact that they were Caëtani; that many of the greatest of the old families, such as the Frangipani, had no titles at all: that even the Orsini had no title of place, and that it was only modern families, like the Braschi, who cared to air a title. The oldest title in Italy was that of Marchese, which came in with the French: Duke came with the Imperialists; but the title of Prince, for which he had the utmost contempt, was merely the result of Papal nepotism: Borghese was the first Prince created.

“The Duke declared that the word ‘antimonial’ was really ‘antimonacal.’ The alchemists who lived in the old convents used to throw out of the windows the water which they had used in their search after the philosopher’s stone: pigs drank the poisoned water and died: monks (monaci) ate the pigs and died also: hence the expression.

“The Duke is very adverse to open windows: ‘If I want the air I can go out into the piazza,’ he says. To his relations, for the most part, he greatly objects--‘Questi sono i flagelli di questo mondo.’ A monk or nun, he says, is ‘Un insétto chi puo vivere senza aria a senza acqua.’

“We have been at a large party at the Palazzo Torrigiani, and it has been a great pleasure to see again the many members of the large, pleasant, amiable Florentine society.”

* * * * *

Having undertaken to devote myself exclusively to the Prince Royal had made me give up all my usual employments during this Roman winter of 1878-79. The chief event in my life disconnected with the Prince was my being asked to open the session of the British and American Archaeological Society. This I long refused, urging that many others were more worthy and competent, but it was insisted upon, and, to my great surprise, I found myself speaking to a crowded meeting words which I had written down before, but which I never found any need of referring to. Here they are (for I have preserved them nowhere else) from the notes I made:--

* * * * *

“The Secretary of this Society conferred upon me a most unexpected honour when he asked me to open this meeting. I could have wished that he had selected some one more worthy of that honour, for not only am I unaccustomed to public speaking, but I may truly say that I never made a speech in my life. I will therefore hope that my many deficiencies--my more than many deficiencies, may be either overlooked or pardoned.

“But, though the Secretary could have found many persons in Rome better able to address you, with more power of doing justice to their subject than myself, he could not have found one to whom Rome was dearer, about whose heart all its sympathies were more tenderly and closely entwined. Long and intimate family association, perhaps the very fact of having a birthplace in the once beautiful Villa Strozzi, have added to that sense which comes to so many, of looking upon Rome as a second home--a home as familiar almost, quite as tenderly beloved, as the home in far-away England. How truly Chateaubriand has said that those who have nothing left in life should turn their footsteps to Rome: there the very stones can waken into speech; there the very dust beneath our feet can kindle into memories of a past ever fresh and ever sacred. To those who come here first as strangers, the decay, the stagnation, the ruin of everything may be oppressive; they may see only the bareness of the stuccoed streets, they may grumble at the rough pavements, they may be wearied with the petty discomforts and difficulties of daily and practical life:--but no matter! If they only stay here long enough, the love of Rome will insidiously creep upon them; they will feel it difficult to tear themselves away from it; and, when they have left it, it will ever come back to them--in silent hours, in visions of the night--grand ruins lying in silent slumbrous solitude; desolate vineyards flower-carpeted; beautiful villas, where the ancient ilex avenues are peopled with marble statues, relics of a mythical past which in Rome seems almost as real as the present; and above all, the recollection of a mighty purple dome embossed upon a sky whose sunset glory recalls the splendours of the New Jerusalem--first a sapphire, then a chalcedony, then an emerald, then a chrysopraz, last an amethyst.

“In regard to how many Roman scenes do we echo such thoughts as Clough has expressed in his beautiful lines to the Alban Mount:--

‘Alba, thou findest me still, and, Alba, thou findest me ever, Now from the Capitol steps, now over Titus’s arch, Here where the large grassy spaces stretch from the Lateran portal, Towering o’er aqueduct lines lost in perspective between, Or from a Vatican window, or bridge, or the high Coliseum, Clear by the garlanded line cut of the Flavian ring. Beautiful can I not call thee, and yet thou hast power to o’ermaster, Power of mere beauty; in dreams, Alba, thou hauntest me still.’

“What Madame Swetchine says of life, that you find in it exactly what you put into it, is also true of Rome, and those who come to it with least mental preparation are those least fitted to enjoy it. That preparation, however, is not so easy as it used to be. In the old days, the happy old days of vetturíno travelling, there were so many quiet hours, when the country was not too beautiful, and the towns not too interesting, when Gibbon, and Merivale, and Milman were the pleasantest of travelling companions, and when books of art and poetry served to illustrate and illuminate the graver studies which were making Italy not only a beautiful panorama, but a country filled with forms which were daily growing into more familiar acquaintance. Perugia and Spoleto, Terni and Civita Castellana, led fitly up then to the greater interests of Rome, as courtiers to a king. But in the journeys of the present, the hurried traveller has not these opportunities of preparation, and must rest upon his home-knowledge, and such reading as he can find time for in Rome itself. To such travellers--to those, I mean, who wish to take away from Rome something more than a mere surface impression--I would give one piece of advice gathered from long experience: Never see too much; most of all, never see too much at once; never try to ‘do’ Rome. Better far to leave half the ruins and nine-tenths of the churches unseen, and to see well the rest, to see them not once, but again and often again, to watch them, to learn them, to live with them, to love them, till they become a part of your life and your life’s recollections.

“Thus, too, in the galleries. What can be carried away by those who wander over all the Vatican at once but a hopeless chaos of marble limbs, at best a nightmare of Venuses and Mercurys and Jupiters and Junos? But if the traveller would benefit by the Vatican, let him make friends with a few of the statues, and pay them visits, and grow into greater intimacy:--then will the purity of their outlines, the majestic serenity of their godlike grace, have power over him, raising his spirit to a perception of creations of beauty of which he had no idea before, and enabling him to discern the traces of that noblest gift of God which men call ‘genius’ in the humblest works of those who, while they have found the true and right path which leads to the great end, are still very far off.

“I would urge those who are sight-seeing at Rome to read twice about that which they see, before they see it, to prepare themselves for the sight, and after they have seen it, to fix the sight in their recollection. I would also urge all archaeologists to believe that it is not in one class of Roman interests alone that much is to be learnt; that those who devote themselves exclusively to the relics of the kings and the Republic, to the walls, or to the vexed questions concerning the Porta Capena, and who see no interest in the reminiscences of the Middle Ages, and the memorials of the saints and of the popes, take only half the blessing of Rome, and the half which has the least of human sympathy in it. They are blind of one eye, because they see with the other: they are like the foolish Athenians, who have lately pulled down the noble Venetian towers on the Acropolis because they were not Greek.

“Besides this, one should recollect that important relics of Pagan Rome are to be found elsewhere--at Nismes and Treves beyond the Alps, and at many places in Northern Italy; but the memorials of Christian Rome, and of its early bishops and martyrs, are to be found only in Rome and its neighbourhood.

“Those who wish to fix the scenes and events of Roman history securely in their minds will do best to take them in groups. Suppose, for instance, that people wish to study the story of St. Laurence. Let them first visit the beautiful little chapel in the Vatican, where the whole story of the saint’s life is portrayed in the lovely frescoes of Angelico da Fiesole. Let them stand on the green sward by the Navicella, where he distributed the treasures of the church in front of the house of St. Ciriaca. Let them walk through the crypto-porticus of the Palatine, up which he was dragged to his trial. Let them lean against the still existing bar of the basilica, where he knelt to receive his sentence. Let them visit S. Lorenzo in Fonte, where he was imprisoned, and baptized his fellow-prisoners in the fountain which gives the church its name. Let them go hence to S. Lorenzo Pane e Perna, built upon the scene of his terrific martyrdom, which is there portrayed in fresco. Let them see his traditional chains, and the supposed gridiron of his suffering at S. Lorenzo in Lucina; and, lastly, at the great basilica of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura let them admire the mighty church which for 1200 years has marked the site of that little chapel which Constantine built near the lowly catacomb grave in which the martyr was laid by his deacon Hippolytus.

“Let us turn to a very different character. Let us turn to Rienzi. How vivid will his story seem to those who go first to the old tower of the Crescenzi near the Bocca della Verità, which belonged to his ancestors, and then to the street behind S. Tommaso where he was born--the son of a publican and a washerwoman, for to such humble offices were the Crescenzi then reduced. They will find Rienzi again at the little church of S. Angelo in Pescheria, whither he summoned the citizens at midnight to hold a meeting for the re-establishment of ‘the Good Estate,’ and in which he kept the Vigil of the Holy Ghost--and at the Portico of Octavia, on whose ancient walls he painted his famous picture allegorical of the sufferings of the Romans under the oppression of the great patrician families, thus flaunting defiance in the eyes of the Savelli, who could look down upon the picture from the windows of their palace above the Theatre of Marcellus. At S. Giorgio in Velabro the pediment still remains under the old terra-cotta cornice where an inscription proclaimed that the reign of the Good Estate was begun. We must follow Rienzi thence, bareheaded, but in full armour, to the Capitol, and to the Lateran, where he took his mystic bath in the great vase of green basalt in which Constantine is falsely said to have been baptized. We must think of his flight, after his short-lived glories were over, by the light of the burning palace, down the steps of the Capitol, and of his wife looking out of the window to witness his murder at the foot of the great basaltic lioness, which looks scarcely older now than on the night on which it was sprinkled with his blood. Lastly, we may remember that his body was hung, a target for the stones of those by whom he was so lately adored, in the little piazza of S. Marcello in the Corso, and that, in strange contradiction, it was eventually burnt by the Jews in the desolate mausoleum of Augustus, surrounded by Roman emperors, in a fire of dried thistles, till not a fibre of it remained.

“Let us take one more character from a much later time. Let us take Beatrice Cenci. In the depths of the Ghetto, ghastly and grim, still stands the old palace of Francesco Cenci, whose colossal rooms and dark passages were the scene of her long misery. Hard by is the little church which one of that wretched family built in the hope of expiating its crimes. As we walk through the wearisome Tor di Nona on our way to S. Peter’s, we may think of the old tower which gave the street its name, in which the beautiful young girl is said to have undergone for forty hours the torture of the ‘vigilia,’ followed by the still more terrific agony called ‘tortura capillorum.’ At Sta. Maria Maggiore we may look upon the stern face of Clement VIII., the cruel judge who knew no mercy, and who, in answer to all pleadings in their behalf, bade that the whole Cenci family should be dragged by wild horses through the streets of Rome. The ancient Santa Croce palace still stands, in which the Marchesa Santa Croce was murdered by her two sons on the night in which a last effort was being made for the pardon of Beatrice--an event which sealed her fate. In the Corte Savelli we may think of her terrible execution. Before the high altar of S. Pietro in Montorio she reposes from her long agony. And finally, we must go to the Palazzo Barberini, where, in the picture which Guido Reni is said to have painted in her prison, we may gaze upon the pale composure of her transcendent loveliness.

“It is by thus entwining one sight with another, till they become the continuous links of a story, that they are best fixed in the mind. They should also be read about, not merely in guide-books, but in the works of those who, from long residence in Italy and the deep love which they bear to it, have become impressed with the true Italian spirit. Amongst such books none are more delightful than the many volumes of Gregorovius, from his ‘History of the City of Rome’ to his enchanting ‘Lateinische Sommer,’ and his graphic little sketches of the burial-places of the Popes. I have often been laughed at for constantly recommending and quoting novels in speaking of Rome and its interests; yet in few graver works are such glimpses of Rome, of Roman scenery, Roman character, Roman manners to be obtained as in Hawthorne’s ‘Marble Faun,’ which English publishers so foolishly call ‘Transformation;’ in ‘Mademoiselle Mori;’ in the ‘Improvisatore’ of Hans Christian Andersen; in the ‘Daniella’ of George Sand; and, will my audience be unutterably shocked if I add, in the Pagan-spirited ‘Ariadne’ of Ouida. The writers of these books have really known Rome and loved it, and yet several of them have only spent one or two winters here. The same knowledge, the same inspiration, is open to all of us, and the reason why English and American visitors so seldom carry away from Rome more than they bring to it is because they have never seen it at all; because the life in a hotel, with its English and French dinners, its English or French-speaking waiters, its newspapers and reading-rooms, is not a Roman life; because the shop-keepers in the Via Condotti, their washerwomen, or their masters of music and languages, are the only Italians these visitors have come in contact with; because their sights are doled out to them by conceited couriers or ignorant ciceroni; because they have no ideas of the peasants and their costumes beyond the models of the Via Felice and the Trinità de’ Monti.

“And all this might be so different! Can one look at the amethystine mountains which girdle in the Campagna around Rome without wishing to penetrate their recesses? In the mountain towns which hang like eagles’ nests to their rocks there are not only costumes, but every one wears a costume: there the true Italian life may be seen. By the railway which leads to Naples it is very easy now to reach many of these beautiful places and to have glimpses of a true Italy. The grand temples of Cori, the rock-perched Norba, and mysterious beautiful flower-peopled Ninfa may now be visited in one day from the station of Velletri, returning to Rome in the evening. At Sora near Arpino, the gloriously situated home of Cicero and of Marius, and at San Germano, close to Monte Cassino and to Aquino with its beautiful Roman arches of triumph, there are now very tolerable hotels; and oh! believe me, there is no enjoyment more intense than that of spring days on these lonely mountain heights carpeted with sweet basil and thyme, or in these old desolate cities where the women come up from the fountains with great brazen _conche_ poised upon their black locks, like animated caryatides.

“But I would also urge those who cannot make these excursions to do at least something which will give them an individual interest, a personal property in Rome itself. Let them collect marbles or plants, or even photographs, or let them make sketches, choosing perhaps some special line of interest, either the ancient Roman remains, or the memorials of the saints, or the mediaeval tombs, thus appropriating and having their own little personal share in the great field of archaeology. I remember that two English ladies,[301] long valued members of the society here, made a perfect collection of drawings of all the mediaeval towers in Rome, whether campanile of the churches, or old brick fortresses of the Anicii and Frangipani. I have known another lady, a much honoured American resident in this place,[302] who spent much of her time in making a perfect collection of drawings and photographs of all Italian subjects connected with Dante. And, depend upon it, that the very fact that these persons thus created for themselves a private centre around which all other interests should circle, gave them a wider grasp and an easier remembrance for all that came across them.

“Archaeology is generally regarded as a dead and dry study, though it need not be so. But its animating power is history, and to bring it into life it must be combined with history, not in its narrowest, but in its widest sense. To a life-long student of classical details, it may be a matter of vital importance whether a stone on the Palatine is of the time of the kings or the Republic; but to the casual visitor to Rome, to the ladies who form so great a portion of my present audience, this can scarcely be a question of thrilling excitement. To the unlearned, I believe it to be of more interest to reflect upon the gladiatorial combats and the Christian martyrdoms in the Coliseum than to discuss the exact manner in which its sheltering velarium was sustained.

“Let our Roman archaeology, then, be unlimited as to ages, let it grasp as much as it can of the myriad human sympathies which Rome has to offer or awaken; for thus, and only thus, can it do a great work, in arousing highest thoughts and aims, as it opens the ancient treasure-house and teaches the vast experience of more than two thousand years. Then, as John Addington Symonds says:--

‘Then from the very soil of ancient Rome You shall grow wise, and walking, live again The lives of buried peoples, and become A child by right of that eternal home, Cradle and grave of empires, on whose walls, The sun himself subdued to reverence falls.’

“Let archaeology help the beauties of Rome in leaving their noblest impress--in arousing feelings which are worthy of the greatest of Pagan heroes, of the sweetest of Latin poets, of the most inspired of sculptors and painters, as well as of Paul of Tarsus, who passed into Rome under the arch of Drusus, upon whom the shadow of the pyramid of Caius Cestius fell as he passed out of Rome to his martyrdom, in that procession of which it is the sole surviving witness, and who here in Rome is sleeping now, with thousand other saints, till, as St. Ambrose reminds us, he shall awaken _here_, in Rome, at the great resurrection.

“Rome, as Winckelmann says, is the high-art school which is open to all the world. It can supply every mental requirement, if people will only apply at the right corner of the fountain. This is what an archaeological society ought to help us to find: this is what I trust the British and American Archaeological Society may help us to find.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_April 29, 1879, London._--I have heard again the curious story of Sir T. Watson from Mrs. T., to whom he told it himself, so will write it down.

“Sir Thomas Watson, better known as Dr. Watson, was a well-known physician. During the last years of his life he was in failing health, and only saw patients at his own house, but till then he went about in England wherever he was sent for. One day he was summoned to attend an urgent case at Oxenholme in Cumberland. There was only one carriage in the train which went through to Oxenholme, and in a compartment of that carriage he took his seat. He tipped the guard, and said he should be glad to be alone if he could.

“The train at Euston was already in motion, when a young lady came running down the platform, with a porter laden with her hand-bags and cloaks. The man just contrived to open the carriage door, push the young lady in, throw in her things after her, and the train was off. The young lady, a very pretty, pleasing young lady, took the seat opposite Dr. Watson. Being a polite, gallant old gentleman, very soon Dr. Watson began to make himself agreeable: ‘What beautiful effects of cloud there were. How picturesque Harrow church steeple looked through the morning haze,’ &c. &c., and the young lady responded pleasantly. At last, as their acquaintance advanced, Dr. Watson said, ‘And are you travelling far?’ ‘Oh yes,’ said the young lady, ‘very far, I am going to Oxenholme in Cumberland.’ ‘How singular,’ said Dr. Watson, ‘for that is just where I am going myself. I wonder if you happen to know Lady D. who lives near Oxenholme.’ ‘Yes,’ said the young lady, ‘I know Lady D. very well.’ ‘And Mrs. P. and her daughters?’ said Dr. W. ‘Oh yes, I know them too.’ ‘And Mr. Y.?’ There was a moment’s pause, and then the young lady very naïvely and ingenuously said, ‘Yes, I do know Mr. Y. very well; and perhaps I had better tell you something. I am going to be _married_ to him to-morrow. My own parents are in India, and I am going to be married from his father’s house. Since I have been engaged to him, I have made the acquaintance of many of his friends and neighbours, and that is how I know so many people near Oxenholme, though I have never been there before.’

“Dr. Watson was charmed with the simple candour of the young lady. They went on talking, and they became quite friends. The train arrived at Rugby, and they both got out and had their bun in the refreshment-room. They were in the carriage again, and the train was already moving, when, in great excitement, the young lady called out: ‘Oh stop, stop the train, don’t you see how he’s urging me to get out. There! that young man in the brown ulster, that’s the young man I’m going to be married to.’ Of course it was impossible to get out, and the young lady was greatly distressed, and though Dr. Watson assured her most positively that there was no one standing where she described, she would not and could not believe him.

“Then Dr. Watson said, ‘Now, my dear young lady, you’re very young and I’m very old. I am a doctor. I am very well known, and from what you have been seeing I am quite sure, as a physician, that you are not at all well. Now, I have my medicine chest with me, and you had better let me give you a little dose.’ And he did give her a little dose.

“The train arrived at Stafford, and exactly the same thing occurred. ‘There, there! don’t you see him! _that_ young man with the light beard, in the brown ulster, don’t you see how he’s urging me to get out.’ And again Dr. Watson assured her there was no one there, and said, ‘I think you had better let me give you another little dose;’ and he gave her another little dose.

“But Dr. Watson naturally felt that he could not go on giving her a dose at every station all the way to Oxenholme, so he decided within himself that if the same thing happened at Crewe, the young lady’s state indicated one of two things: either that there was some intentional vision from Providence, with which he ought not to interfere; or that the young lady was certainly not in a state of health or brain which should allow of her being married next day. So he determined to act accordingly.

“And at Crewe just the same thing happened. ‘There, there! don’t you see him! he’s urging me more than ever to get out,’ cried the young lady. ‘Very well,’ said Dr. Watson, ‘we will get out and go after him,’ and, with the young lady, he pursued the imaginary figure, and of course did not find him. But Dr. Watson had often been at Crewe station before, and he went to the hotel, which opens on the platform, and said to the matron, ‘Here is this young lady, who is not at all well, and should have a very quiet room; unfortunately I am not able to remain now to look after her, but I will leave her in your care, and to-morrow I shall be returning this way and will come to see how she is.’ And he slipped a five-pound note into the woman’s hand to guarantee expenses.

“Dr. Watson returned to the railway carriage. There was another young lady there, sitting in the place which the first young lady had occupied--a passenger who had arrived by one of the many lines which converge at Crewe. With the new young lady he did not make acquaintance, he moved his things to the other side of the carriage and devoted himself to his book.

“Three stations farther on came the shock of a frightful accident. There was a collision. The train was telescoped, and many passengers were terribly hurt. The heavy case of instruments, which was in the rack above the place where Dr. Watson had first been sitting, was thrown violently to the other side of the carriage, hit the young lady upon the forehead and killed her on the spot.

“It was long before the line could be sufficiently cleared for the train to pass which was sent to pick up the surviving passengers. Many hours late, in the middle of the night, Dr. Watson arrived at Oxenholme. There, waiting upon the platform, stood the young man with the light beard, in the brown ulster, exactly as he had been described. He had heard that the only young lady in the through carriage from London had been killed, and was only waiting for the worst to be confirmed. And Dr. Watson was the person who went up to him and said: ‘Unfortunately it is too true that a young lady has been killed, but it is not your young lady. Your young lady is safe in the station hotel at Crewe.’”

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_Holmhurst, May 3._--I have had a visit from the people who formerly lived here, so surprised at the changes--at the continuation of the walk in the firwood, &c., but most at the number of pictures and books everywhere inside the house, a clothing of walls which they evidently thought most unsuitable in a dining-room and passages, and most of all were they rather shocked at finding an ancient Madonna and Child of the Luca della Robbia school over the kitchen fireplace, though in an Italian house you might almost expect one there.

“I have nothing else interesting to tell you, so I will send you some scraps from my notebook. Lord Brownlow, at a public meeting, heard a schoolmaster say--‘Education is that which enables you to despise the opinions of others, and conduces to situations of considerable emolument.’ Miss Cobbe told me--‘Conscience is that which supplies you with an excellent motive for doing that which you desire to do, and which, when it is done, leaves you filled with self-satisfaction.’

“Mrs. L. (who has plantations in South America) has been telling me of a nigger preacher there who said in the pulpit, ‘I am so blind I cannot see; I’ve left my specs at home,’ and all the congregation thought he was giving out the line of a hymn, and sung it lustily.”

* * * * *

“_May 13, 1879, 34 Jermyn Street, London._--This morning I went with Mrs. Duncan Stewart and a very large party to Whistler’s studio--a huge place in Chelsea. We were invited to see his pictures, but there was only one there--‘The Loves of the Lobsters.’ It was supposed to represent Niagara, but looked as if the artist had upset the inkstand and left Providence to work out its own results. In the midst of the black chaos were two lobsters curvetting opposite each other and looking as if they were done with red sealing-wax. ‘I wonder you did not paint the lobsters making love before they were boiled,’ aptly observed a lady visitor. ‘Oh, I never thought of that,’ said Whistler! It was a joke, I suppose. The little man, with his plume of white hair (‘the Whistler tuft,’ he calls it) waving on his forehead, frisked about the room looking most strange and uncanny, and rather diverted himself over our disappointment in coming so far and finding nothing to see. People admire like sheep his pictures in the Grosvenor Gallery, following each other’s lead because it is the fashion.”

* * * * *

“_May 14, Sunday._--An immense luncheon at Mrs. Cavendish Bentinck’s. I sat near Mr. Herbert, the artist of the great fresco in the House of Lords. He described things over which he became almost inspired--how in the Bodleian he found an old MS. about the Magdalen which made him determine to go off at once to St. Maximin in Provence (near La Sainte Baume, the mountain hermitage where she died) to see her skull: that when he reached St. Maximin, he found that the skull was in a glass case upon the altar, where he could not really examine it, and he was told that it was never allowed even to kings and emperors: that he represented with such fervour his object in making the pilgrimage, that at last the priests of the church consented to his sending twelve miles for a _vitrier_ and having the case removed: then he was allowed to place a single candle behind, and in that moment, as he described it, with glowing face and voice trembling with emotion--‘I saw the outline of her profile; the Magdalen herself, that dear friend of our Blessed Lord, was revealed to me.’

“Miss Leslie, who was sitting near, asked how it was known that the Magdalen came to St. Maximin. ‘How can you help knowing it,’ said Mr. Herbert, ‘when it is all written in the Acts of the Apostles!!’”

* * * * *

“_May 15._--Dined with Lord and Lady Aberdeen--a very large party, seventy-four pots of flowers upon the table. The dinner was very fine, but rather uninteresting--the after-dinner better.

* * * * *

“_May 16._--I received the sad news that poor Sir Alexander Taylor was on his death-bed in Lady Dashwood’s house at Hampstead, and went to him. He knew me and was pleased to see me, but immediately relapsed into unconsciousness. It was sad to stand by the utter wreck of one whom I had known so well.”

* * * * *

“_May 17._--News of poor Sir Alexander’s death. Even at such a solemn time one could not help smiling at his characteristic _last words_--‘Present my duty to the Princess Amalie’ (of Schleswig-Holstein).[304]

“At luncheon at Lady Florentia Hughes’s I met George Russell, who told me a story which Lord and Lady Portsmouth had just brought back from Devonshire.

“‘On the railway which runs from Exeter to Barnstaple is a small station called Lapford. A farmer who lives in a farmhouse near that station awoke his wife one night, saying that he had had a very vivid dream which troubled him--that a very valuable cow of his had fallen into a pit and could not get out again. The wife laughed, and he went to sleep and dreamt the same thing. Then he wanted to go and look after the cow. But the wife urged the piercing cold of the winter night, and he went to sleep instead, and dreamt the same thing a third time. Then he insisted upon getting up, and, resisting his wife’s entreaties, he went out to look after the cow. It was with a sense of bathos that he found the cow quite well and grazing quietly, and he was thinking how his wife would laugh at him when he got home, and wondering what he should say to her, when he was aware of a light in the next field. Crawling very quietly to the hedge, he saw, through the leafless branches of the hawthorns, a man with a lanthorn and a spade, apparently digging a pit. As he was watching, he stumbled in the ditch and the branches crackled. The man, hearing a noise, started, threw down the spade, and ran off with the lanthorn.

“‘The farmer then made his way round into the next field and came up to the place where the man had been digging. It was a long narrow pit like an open grave. At first he could make nothing of it, then by the side of the pit he found a large open knife. He took that and the spade, and began to set out homewards, but, with an indescribable shrinking from the more desolate _feeling_ of the fields, he went round by the lane. He had not gone far before he heard footsteps coming towards him. It was two o’clock in the morning, and his nerves being quite unstrung, he shrank from meeting whoever it was, and climbed up into the hedge to conceal himself. To his astonishment, he saw pass below him in the moonlit road one of the maids of his own farmhouse. He allowed her to pass, and then sprang out and seized her. She was most dreadfully frightened. He demanded to know what she was there for. She tried to make some excuse. “Oh,” he said, “there can be no possible excuse; I insist upon knowing the truth.” She then said, “You know I was engaged to be married, and that I had a dreadful quarrel with the man I was engaged to, and it was broken off. Well, yesterday he let me know that if I would meet him in the middle of the night, he had got something to show me which would make up for all the past.”--“Would you like to know what he had to show you? It was your grave he had to show you,” said the farmer, and he led her to the edge of the pit and showed it to her.

“‘The farmer’s dream had saved the woman’s life.’”

* * * * *

“_May 19._--The Prince (of Sweden and Norway) has arrived with his suite at Claridge’s. He received me most cordially and affectionately. We made many plans for sight-seeing and people-seeing, but in England I have no responsibility; Count Piper, the Swedish Minister, has it all.

“I dined at charming Lady Wynford’s, sitting near Lord Delamere, who was very full of a definition he had heard of the word ‘deputation.’ ‘A noun of multitude, which signifies many, but not much.’ It was attributed to Gladstone, who said, ‘I only wish I _had_ made it.’ Lord Eustace Cecil produced a definition of ‘Independent Member’ as ‘a Member on whom nobody can depend.’

“There was an immense gathering at Lady Salisbury’s afterwards; my Prince there and much liked. There, for the first time, I saw the Empress Augusta of Germany.”

* * * * *

“_May 22._--A party at Lady Denbigh’s to meet Princess Frederika of Hanover, a very sweet-looking and royal woman of simple and dignified manners.”

* * * * *

“_May 24._--Lady Salisbury’s party at the Foreign Office, the staircase, with its interlacing arches and masses of flowering shrubs, like the essence of a thousand Paul Veroneses. My Prince was there in a white uniform.”

* * * * *

“_May 27._--At dinner at Sir John Lefevre’s I met Mr. Bright. He has a grand old lion-like head in an aureole of white hair, and his countenance never seems to wake from its deep repose, except for some burst of enthusiasm on a subject really worth while. He spoke of Americans, ‘who say an infinity of foolish things, but always do wise ones.’ Mr. Bryce of ‘The Holy Roman Empire’ was there, a bearded man with bright eyes, who talked well. Afterwards there was a party at Lady Beauchamp’s to meet Prince and Princess Christian. How like all the princesses are to one another.”

* * * * *

“_May 29._--A dinner at Lord Carysfort’s and ball at Lady Salisbury’s. I presented so many relations to the Prince that he said that which astonished him more than anything else in England was ‘the multitude of Mr. Hare’s cousins.’”

* * * * *

“_May 30._--With the Prince to Westminster Abbey, after which Arthur met us in the Jerusalem Chamber and took us into the Deanery. In the evening with the Prince to Lady Margaret Beaumont’s.”

* * * * *

“_June 6._--With the Prince Royal to the Academy.”

* * * * *

“_June 7._--To the National Gallery with the Prince.”

* * * * *

“_June 8._--Luncheon with the Prince. We drove afterwards to see Lady Russell. Pembroke Lodge looked enchanting with its bright green of old oaks and its carpet of bluebells--a most perfect refuge for the latter years of an aged statesman. Lady Russell was waiting for us at the entrance, with Lady Agatha and Rollo. On the lawn we found many other members of the family, with Mr. Bouverie and Mr. Froude the historian. I presented them all, and we walked in the grounds. At tea Lord Bute came in from a neighbouring villa--always most pleasant and cordial to me.”

* * * * *

“_June 11._--Dined with old Lady Harrington, and left as early as I could to go to Mrs. Schuster’s, where Sarah Bernhardt was to act. She appeared first in the great scene of the ‘Phédre’--her face bloodless, her arms rigid, her voice monotonous and broken. Gradually, under the influence of her love, she became animated, but the animation began at the tips of her fingers, till it burst all over her in a flood of irrepressible passion.

“She did not seem to see her audience or to think of them. For the time being she was _only_ her part, and, when it was over, she sank down utterly exhausted, almost unconscious.

“She appeared again in a small part, in which she was a great lady turned sculptress. The part was nothing; she had little more to say than ‘Let me see more of your profile; turn a little more the other way;’ yet the great simplicity of her perfect acting made it deeply interesting, and, in the quarter of an hour in which the scene lasted, she had done in the clay a real medallion which was a striking likeness.”[306]

* * * * *

“_June 12._--Dined with Madame du Quaire--her table like a glorious Van Huysum picture from the fruit and flower piece in the centre. The hostess is famous for the warmth and steadfastness of her friendships. Mrs. Stewart says--‘Fanny du Quaire is the only person I know who would do _anything_ for her friends. If it were necessary for my peace that I should have poison, I should send for Fanny du Quaire, and she would give it me without flinching.’”

* * * * *

“_June 13._--Dined at Sir Charles Trevelyan’s. I took down a lady whose name seemed to be ‘Mrs. Beckett.’ I did not interest her, and she talked exclusively to Lord O’Hagan, who was on the other side of her. Towards the close of dinner she said to me, ‘We have been a very long time at dinner.’--‘To me it has seemed quite endless,’ I said.--‘Well,’ she exclaimed, ‘I do not wonder that you were chosen to speak truth to Princes.’

“I asked her how she knew anything about that, and she said, ‘I have lived a long time in a court atmosphere myself. I was for twelve years with the late Queen of Holland.’--‘Oh,’ I said, ‘_now_ I know who you are; you are Mrs. Lecky!’ and it was the well-known author’s wife.”[307]

* * * * *

“_June 14._--Luncheon with Lady Darnley, and a long quiet talk with her afterwards, then a visit to young Lord Lansdowne in his cool, pleasant rooms looking upon the garden.

“Dined with Count Piper, the Swedish Minister,[308] to meet the Prince Royal. I sat by Madame de Bülow, who is always pleasant. The only other lady unconnected with the Embassy was Mademoiselle Christine Nilsson, who sang most beautifully afterwards till Jenny Lind arrived. Then the rivalry of the two queens of song became most curious, Nilsson planting herself at the end of the pianoforte with her arms akimbo, and crying satirical bravas during Jenny’s songs, and Jenny avenging herself by never allowing Nilsson to return to the pianoforte at all. The party was a very late one, and supper was served, when the Prince offered Jenny his arm to take her down. She accepted it, though with great diffidence; which so exasperated Nilsson, that with ‘Je m’en vais donc,’ utterly refusing to be pacified, she swept out of the room and out of the house, though how she got away I do not know.”

* * * * *

“_June 15._--A quiet luncheon with Lady Reay. Afterwards to Mrs. Duncan Stewart, who told me:--

“‘A great friend of mine was living lately in Brittany, and, while there, made acquaintance with a lady and her daughter who were staying in the same place--the mother a commonplace woman, the daughter a pleasant interesting girl.

“‘A short time after, the mother and daughter came to England, and my friend, who was in very delicate health at the time, invited them to visit her. The mother was prevented coming at first, but sent her daughter and said that she would follow.

“‘One day my friend was sitting in her boudoir, of which the door was ajar, very little open. The girl had gone to her own room, which was immediately above the boudoir, saying that she had letters to write.

“‘Suddenly my friend was aware that _something_ was coming in at the door, not pushing it wider open, but gliding through the opening which already existed, and, to her horror, she saw, perfectly naked, propelling herself serpent-like upon her belly, with her hair rising like a crest over her head, and her eyes, without any speculation in them, staring wide open, the figure of a young girl, whom she recognised as her guest.

“‘With snake-like motion the girl glided in and out of the furniture, under the chairs, sofas, &c., but touching nothing, and with her eyes constantly fixed upon my friend, with an expression which was rather that of fear than anything else. At length she glided out of the room as she came in.

“‘As soon as my friend could recover herself a little, she pursued the girl to her room and quietly opened the door. To her horror, all the articles of crockery in the room, jug, basin, &c., were dispersed about the floor at regular intervals and in a regular pattern, and through them all, in and out, without touching them, the girl was gliding, snake-like, with her head erect, and her vacant eyes staring.

“‘My friend fled to her room and began to think what she should do; but such was her horror that she thinks she fainted; at any rate the power of action seemed to fail her. When she could move, she thought it her duty to go up to the girl’s room again, and perhaps was almost more horrified than before to find the room in perfect order and the girl seated dressed at the table, writing. She sent for the girl’s mother, who was terribly distressed. She allowed that her daughter had had these utterly inexplicable attacks before, but long ago, and she had hoped that she was cured of them.’

“Mrs. Stewart told this story to Mr. Fergusson the great naturalist, who only said, ‘I am not the least surprised: there is nothing extraordinary in it. There have been many other instances of the serpent element coming out in people.’”

* * * * *

“_June 16._--Met the Prince early at Paddington, whence we had a saloon carriage to Oxford, with Sir Watkin Wynne as director to watch over us. We went a whole round of colleges and to the Bodleian, where Mr. Coxe exhibited his treasures. Then the Prince wished to see the boats, so we walked down to the river. Just before us I saw an undergraduate in boating costume and ran after him.

“‘Can you take us on board the University barge?’

“‘No-o-o-o, I think not.’

“‘But my companion is the Prince Royal of Sweden and Norway.’

“Upon which the boy very soon found that he could take a Prince anywhere, and proud he probably was afterwards to narrate to whom he had been acting cicerone. In the barge, a number of undergraduates were looking at the Prince’s portrait in the _Graphic_. He looked at it too, over their shoulders, but they did not recognise him.

“It was a fatiguing day, and I felt greatly the utter apathy and want of interest in all the Swedes, who scarcely noticed anything, admired nothing, and remembered nothing.”

* * * * *

“_June 18._--Again to Oxford with the Prince. This time the town was in gala costume, and we drove through a street hung with flags, and through crowds of people waiting to see the Prince, to the Vice-Chancellor’s Lodge at Pembroke. Here the Prince dressed, and I went on at once with his gentlemen to the Theatre, where places were reserved for us just under the Vice-Chancellor’s throne. My Swedish companions were amused with the undergraduates’ expression of their likes and dislikes, till the great moment came and the great doors were thrown open, and, amid a flood of sunlight, the procession streamed in headed by all the gold maces. Immediately after the Vice-Chancellor came my Prince, looking tall and handsome in his white uniform with the crimson robe over it, and perfectly royal. _I_ knew that he felt nervous, but he could not have been half as nervous as I was. He played his part, however, perfectly. He received his degree standing by the Vice-Chancellor’s side, and the whole body of undergraduates sang a little impromptu song, to the effect of ‘He’s a charming Swedish boy.’

“We adjourned from the Theatre to the green court of All Souls, where, in the sunlit quadrangle, I brought up, one after another, all the principal persons to be presented to the Prince--Lord and Lady Dufferin, Rachel and Sir Arthur Gordon, Lord Selborne, the Dean of Christ Church and Mrs. Liddell, &c. There was a luncheon for 300 in the All-Souls library, and afterwards we drove with Mrs. Evans, the Vice-Chancellor’s wife, to the Masonic fête in the lovely Wadham garden, and then paid official visits, before leaving, to the Vice-Chancellor and Dean.

“In the evening I was with the Prince at Mrs. E. Guiness’s ball, on which £6000 are said to have been wasted. It was a perfect fairy-land, ice pillars up to the ceiling, an avenue of palms, a veil of stephanotis from the staircase, and you pushed your way through a brake of papyrus to the cloak-room.”

* * * * *

“_June 19._--We dined with the Aberdeens. I went before the Prince, and was with Aberdeen to receive him at the door, and then presented a quantity of people--Lord and Lady Carnarvon, Lord and Lady Brownlow, Lady Balfour, Dowager Lady Aberdeen, &c. The London Scottish Volunteers played soft music during dinner. Soon afterwards the Prince went away to the Scandinavian ball, rather disappointing many people who came to see him in the evening.”

* * * * *

“_June 20._--Oh, what a shock it has been that, while the balls last night were going on, telegrams announced the death of the dear young Prince Imperial! I am sure I cried for him like a nearest relation; there was something so very cordial and attaching in him, and there is something so unspeakably terrible in his death. The Prince was overwhelmed, and could not dine at Lowther Lodge, where there was a large party expressly to meet him, but he was quite right.”

* * * * *

“_June 21._--We can think of nothing else but the Prince Imperial and the awful grief at Chislehurst. Immediately on hearing the telegram, Lord Dorchester wrote to M. Pietri a letter of condolence. M. Pietri was away in Corsica, and the Empress opened his letter. It begged Pietri to offer deep sympathy to the Empress in her overwhelming affliction. She felt her son was dead, and when Lord Sydney and Mr. Borthwick arrived, they found her in tears; but when she heard the awful truth that her darling had been deserted and assegaied, she gave terrible shrieks and fainted away.

“Most of the day she was unconscious. Those who went to Chislehurst describe the scene as too heart-rending. The old servants could not rest, and walked in the garden in groups, wringing their hands and crying ‘O mon pauvre petit Prince! O mon pauvre cher petit Prince!’

“In the morning I went with the Prince to Lambeth,--all of us very sad and tearful. I had mentioned a rather later hour to the Archbishop, so that he was not ready to receive us, and Lord and Lady Charles Clinton, who were there, were dreadfully shy. When the Archbishop came, he showed us his library treasures, and climbed up the high Lollards’ Tower to take the Prince to the prison of the early Reformers; but I felt how fearfully dull the Archbishop must think all the Swedes, who made no observation whatever upon anything they saw.”

* * * * *

“_June 23._--With the Prince to the Rose and Crown Coffee-House. Lord and Lady Aberdeen and Lady Cairns met us there. It is a beautifully managed institution, and fresh and clean to a degree. All the workmen crowded in for dinner before we left, but I would not let Aberdeen let them know who was there till the last moment, when the news gave great satisfaction; but they behaved beautifully--no crowding or staring: the Prince wrote his name in their book.

“Luncheon afterwards with Lord and Lady Garvagh, meeting only Madame Rouzaud (Christine Nilsson).”

* * * * *

“_June 25._--Dinner at Lord Sandwich’s--a particularly good party. I sat by Lady Elcho, whose mind seems to be in perpetual moonlight, very calming and refreshing.”

“_June 26._--To the Tower of London with the Prince, who was very good-humoured and absurd. It is a long fatiguing sight. Our being at Trinity Square was curious in its results, as persons were just then visiting it (the site of the block at which More, Fisher, Laud, Strafford fell) with a view to its destruction, and the fact, afterwards adduced before the House of Lords, that the Prince Royal of Sweden and Norway was at that very moment being taken to see it as one of the great historical sites of London, proved its salvation.

“How wearisome it is to steer the Prince through people’s little intrigues. They have to-day involved a letter of six sheets to the Queen of Sweden. Yesterday I was free, as he went with the ‘Four-in-Hand Club,’--an odd arrangement for _me_ to have to make for him.”

* * * * *

“_June 27._--Went with the Prince by appointment to Hertford House, where Sir R. Wallace received us. His riches are untold and indescribable. He showed them very pleasantly, and had much that was interesting to tell about them.”

* * * * *

“_July 3._--To Syon with the Lockers and Leslies. So few people came at first, owing to the wet, that we were most cordially welcomed by the Duke and Lady Percy. Soon it cleared and half London began to pour in; but the long wide galleries never seem crowded. I reached the conservatories with Mary and Lily Hughes, and the gardener showed us some bamboos which, he said, grew twelve inches a day!”

* * * * *

“_July 4._--Oh, the constant variety of the tangle of London life! This morning was occupied by a special farewell service in Henry VII.’s chapel at Westminster for Arthur Gordon and Victor Williamson going out to Fiji. Arthur Stanley preached, standing behind the altar over Edward VI.’s grave, a most pagan little sermon about Alexander and Priam and the sacred fire of Troy as a comfort to wandering souls! We all received the Sacrament together, and then took leave of the travellers in the Chapter-House.”

* * * * *

“_July 5._--A reprieve from duties to the Prince, who has gone to Windsor and Aldershot. I had the great happiness of seeing Lady Castletown and Mrs. Lewis Wingfield again after four years. It is delightful to see any one who ‘knows how’ to enjoy themselves: every one wishes it, but scarcely any one has an idea how it is to be done.

“At dinner at Sir Rutherford Alcock’s I heard the startling news of the death of Frances, Lady Waldegrave.[311] To me she was only a lay figure, receiving at her drawing-room door, but I remember her thus ever since I was a boy at Oxford, when she was living at Nuneham. In spite of her faults, she had many and warm friends: Lord Houghton sobbed like a child on receiving the news in the midst of a large party. News which affected me more personally was the death of dear young Charlie Ossulston[312] from cholera in India.... I heard it at the Speaker’s party, which was most beautiful, with windows wide open to the river in the glory of full moonlight, with which the many lamp-reflections were vainly contending, gold against silver, upon the wavelets.”

* * * * *

“_Sunday, July 6._--To Bedford Chapel to hear Mr. Stopford Brooke preach on the world as an arena and men as gladiators. ‘But who are the witnesses on the encircling seats?’ These he described, from dwellers in the present life to a crowd, such as that painted ‘by artists of illimitable ideas but limited powers,’ of the glorious army of apostles, confessors, and martyrs, who all diverge from Christ as a centre.”

* * * * *

“_July 10._--A charming party at Syon, where I walked about with dear old Lady Barrington. A very pleasant dinner at Lord Brownlow’s, where was a whole succession of beautiful ladies--the lovely hostess herself, Lady Pembroke, Lady Lothian, Lady de Vesci, Lady Wharncliffe, Mrs. Reginald Talbot, &c. These high-bred beauties are indeed a contrast to those known as the ‘professional beauties.’ Most exquisite singing in the evening, then a party at the Duchess of Cleveland’s to meet the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh.”

* * * * *

“_July 11._--Dined at Sir Dudley Marjoribanks’--Brook House a beautiful interior with marvellous china. There was such a procession of Earls and Countesses, that it fell to my share to take Mrs. Gladstone in to dinner. Disraeli had said to her, ‘Now _do_ take care of Mr. Gladstone; you know he is _so_ precious.’”

* * * * *

“_July 12._--The dear Prince Imperial’s funeral. I was very sorry not to go, but my Prince evidently thought I could not, having known him so well and yet having no recognised place.

“Our whole hearts are with the Empress. How many instances there have been of her perfectly noble character since she has been in England. None are more striking than that which regarded M. Guizot. He had hated the Imperial government, he had reviled the Emperor: there was no ill which he did not wish him. But his youngest son, Guillaume, got into serious money troubles, and eventually he borrowed a large sum--£4000 it is said--from the Emperor. It was concealed from his father. Long, very long afterwards, when the Emperor was dead, M. Guizot found it out. It was agony to him. It was most difficult to him to pay the money, but he determined to do it at any sacrifice, and he wrote to tell the Empress so. The Empress answered by telegraph--‘L’Impératrice donne, mais elle ne prête pas.’”

* * * * *

“_July 15._--Lady Ashburton had asked the Hereditary Grand Duke of Baden to dinner as well as my Prince, so I went to help her by acting Master of the Ceremonies and receiving the royalties in the hall of Kent House. While I was waiting, watching at the window, a fair young man arrived unattended and ran upstairs. I took no notice of _him_. Then I received the Prince Royal properly, escorted him as far as Lady Ashburton’s curtsies, and came back to wait for the young Grand Duke. At last Lady Ashburton sent down to tell me he was _there_, had been there the whole time: he was the young man who ran upstairs.

“I had much talk with him afterwards--a tall, simple, pleasing-mannered youth, much more responsive than my Prince, and good-looking, though very German in appearance. There were glees at dinner, sung in the anteroom, and a large party and concert in the evening.”

* * * * *

“_July 16._--A beautiful party at Holland House. There was quite a mass of royalty on the lawn--the Prince and Princess of Wales and their little girls (in pink trimmed with red), the Edinburghs, the Connaughts, the Tecks, with their little girl and two nice boys in sailor’s dress, the Duchess of Mecklenbourg, the Prince of Baden, and my Prince. The royal children were all in raptures over some performing dogs, which really were very funny, as a handsome Spitz looked so ecstatically delighted to ride about on the lawn on a barrel pushed by a number of other dogs.

“Dined at Lord Muncaster’s, where I sat by Lady Cairns and Mrs. Cross, both worth listening to. The Muncasters, by M. Henri’s aid, have given quite an old Flemish interior to a handsome commonplace house in Carlton Gardens.

“A concert afterwards at Lady Brownlow’s--all the three beautiful sisters were there, and most lovely in their different phases.”

* * * * *

“_July 18._--Luncheon with young Lady Morley and dinner with her mother-in-law, then to a concert at Stafford House. The Duchess (of Sutherland) talked much and affectionately of my sister, whom so few remember now. The Spanish Students were ranged with their instruments on the broad landing of the staircase, and the whole scene was like that of the play of ‘Hamlet.’ The Prince of Wales walked about and talked, winning good opinions by the attention with which he always seems to listen to whoever is speaking to him.”

* * * * *

“_July 19._--Went down with the special train to Hatfield, and drove up from the station to the house with old Lady Ailesbury. An immense party of Dukes and Duchesses, &c., were already collected to welcome the royalties, Lady Salisbury receiving them in a large rough straw garden-bonnet. The Hereditary Grand Duke of Baden arrived early, and I was sent off with him to see the old Elizabethan buildings, the stables, &c. He is extremely pleasing, responsive, and conversable, and his admiration of the place was most intense and natural. I walked about with different friends till the royal party drove up in six carriages. They were all going to stay at Hatfield till Monday, fifty people, besides servants. I came back at eight.”

* * * * *

“_July 21._--Met the Prince Royal at Waterloo Station, where a great many people were collected to see him off. Lady Marian Alford joined us, and we floated into Hampshire in a royal saloon carriage. I went to my Prince in the little private compartment, and had a long talk with him, in which all the growing mists of the London season seemed to be swept away at once, and our intimate trust and affection for each other restored upon its old footing.

“Carriages from Lady Waterford met us at Holmsley, and we had a pleasant but rather cold drive through the forest. In the gothic porch of Highcliffe, Lady Waterford was waiting with Mr. and Lady Jane Ellice, and Miss Lindsay. Alwyn Greville came in the evening, and a few people to dinner. The ladies sang, Miss Lindsay recited, and the Prince also sang a little.”

* * * * *

“_July 22._--A misty day, but still, and Highcliffe delightful.

“The King had said so much to the Prince about Lady Waterford, that he is at his very best here, and he has had well-worth-while conversation with Lady Marian. We drove with Colonel Thursby’s four-in-hand to Herne Park, and in the afternoon looked for fossils on the cliffs, where M. de Printzsköld sank up to his knees in a bog of black mud. In the evening there was a little ball, opened by the dear Lady herself with the Prince.... The Prince was enchanted with everything, and said he would rather sit by either of ‘the three ladies’ at Highcliffe[313] than by the most beautiful young lady in England.”

* * * * *

“_July 23._--The Prince was so anxious that I should go with him to Devonshire that I consented to leave Highcliffe with him after breakfast. We had a pleasant journey through the rich Somersetshire orchards, and during a wait at Templecombe, a ramble with the Prince to the church. We have met the Swedish equerries again, and life is not always quite as easy as it has been without them: however, though we have our ups and downs, we have also our downs and ups, and ‘si gravis, brevis,’ is a proverb one can always remember.”

* * * * *

“_July 24._--Torbay is bluer than I ever saw the Bay of Naples, and the sun shines on the red rocks of Paignton and the white sails flitting over the limpid water. My windows look into the grounds of Rockend--the steep field, the little wood, the very windows of the house connected with many of the miseries of my childhood.[314] I have wandered on the terraces--to the rock walk; the seat where I used to see Uncle Julius and Aunt Esther sitting in the first year of their marriage; ‘Cummany’s Corner,’ where ladies-finger and coronilla grow still; the tower where Aunt Lucy used to meditate and pray. Almost all the friends--and enemies too--of my childhood have passed away now, and it is in places like this which recall them so vividly, that I feel the longing Webster describes in the ‘Duchess of Melfi’:--

“‘O that it were possible we might But hold some two days’ conference with the dead! From them I should learn something I am sure I never shall learn here.’”

“_July 26._--I took leave of the Prince in his bedroom before he was dressed. Our real separation must come soon; and though in many ways I shall feel wonderfully set free when my responsibility is over, my heart always yearns toward him.”

* * * * *

“_Lyme Hall, August 6._--After two days at Thornycroft in familiar scenes, I have come to Lyme to receive the Prince Royal. Only Mr. and Mrs. Davenport are here, with their pretty daughter, engaged to marry Tom Legh.”

* * * * *

“_August 7._--The Prince arrived from Manchester. I went to receive him at Disley Station and to present Mr. Legh, who had never seen him before. James II.’s rooms were prepared for him.”

* * * * *

“_August 8._--I sat out much of the day with Mrs. Legh, while the Prince played at lawn-tennis, and in the afternoon I drove with Mrs. Legh and Mrs. Davenport along the hills and moor, while he rode with the others. He is much delighted with the great Lyme dogs, and is to have one of them; to his great disappointment the wild cattle have almost ceased to exist. He will only be interested in facts, never in vision or its emotions, and it is no use to tell him that--

“‘Man’s books are but man’s alphabet, Beyond and on his lessons lie-- The lessons of the violet, The large gold letters of the sky: The love of beauty, blossomed soil, The large content, the tranquil toil.’”[315]

* * * * *

“_August 9._--Left Lyme with the Prince and the Davenports in a saloon carriage to Crewe. I sat alone with the Prince most of the time in the inner compartment. We parted at Crewe intending to meet again in three days’ time.”

* * * * *

“_Betton House, August 10._--With the dear old Tayleurs. To church at Mucklestone, and afterwards to Mr. Hinchcliffe’s charming vicarage garden. From the church tower Margaret of Anjou watched the battle of Blore Heath, and in the village the same family (with the same name) still officiate as blacksmiths, one of whose members shoed the Queen’s horse backwards to be ready for her escape if it was needed, and thus saved her.”

* * * * *

“_August 11._--To Buntingsdale, beautiful as in childish remembrance,[316] with the real scent of the lime-trees, which has often come back to me in dreams.”

* * * * *

“_Glamis Castle, August 13._--I arrived at Glamis at 9 P.M., and found an immense party in the house--Sir James and Lady Ramsay, Lord and (the very charming) Lady Sydney Inverurie, Lord and Lady Northesk, and many others. Lord Strathmore has made great preparations, and the Prince would have had the most royal reception here which he has met with anywhere; but, to the great inconvenience of every one, he has put off leaving Hopetoun, where he is, being ill with toothache.

“I have been sitting out much with Lady Sydney Inverurie, who went for her wedding tour to--Japan! She is most amusing about her children and the agony they keep her in as to how to answer their questions. One had just asked her ‘Who cut God’s hair?’ and upon her describing the events of Eden, asked why Adam and Eve did not climb over the walls and get out the other way, because the angel could not come after them, as God had commanded him to _stay_ at the gate.”

* * * * *

“_August 15._--I have greatly enjoyed this visit at Glamis, and am glad to feel the cousinly tie drawn closer to the Lyon boys individually as well as collectively. Miss Macdonald was very amusing in her stories.

“A Bishop (Wilberforce of course) remonstrated with a country curate in his diocese for driving tandem. The curate said, ‘Well, my Lord, I cannot see that there is more harm in my driving my horses before each other than in my driving them side by side.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said the Bishop, ‘there really is a fitness in things; for example, if I put my hands so (folding them together), no one can reproach me, but if I put them _so_ (cutting a snooks), they might reproach me very much indeed.’

“In the winter the Duchess of Leinster had a large Christmas party for her servants, and took particular pains to make it agreeable for them. Afterwards she asked her old housekeeper how she had enjoyed it. ‘Oh, your Grace, I should have enjoyed it very much indeed, if something most dreadful had not happened, which has made me perfectly miserable.’--‘What can it have been?’ said the Duchess. ‘Oh, it was something so dreadful, I really cannot tell your Grace: I was so dreadfully insulted by the butler, I really cannot repeat his words.’--‘Oh, but you really must,’ said the Duchess. ‘Well, your Grace, if I really must, I must tell your Grace that I was coming out from supper, and I had only had the wing of a pheasant and a little bit of jelly, and I met the butler, and he said to me “Is your programme _full_?” Now your Grace will allow that _that_ was so insulting that pleasure was not to be thought of afterwards.’

“Miss Erica Robertson said:--

“‘Bishop Wilberforce was going, in a visitation tour, to stay at a very humble clergyman’s house. The maid was instructed that, if he spoke to her, she was never to answer him without saying “My Lord.” When the Bishop had written his letters, he asked who would take them to the post. “The Lord, my boy,” said the terrified maid.’”

* * * * *

“_August 24._--I left Glamis on Monday, and went by Dalmally to Oban through the Brender Pass--beautiful exceedingly, the mountains so varied and encircling such varied waters.

“On Thursday, at dawn, I saw all the mountains meeting their shadows in the still waters of Oban Bay, and determined to go to Staffa. It was a crowded, rolling, smelly steamer, and I was very miserable, but rather better than worse when the fresh air in the Atlantic made up for the additional rolling. At twelve we reached Iona--different from what I expected, the island larger and the ruins smaller, and without the romantic effect of those on Holy Island. Still, of course, the interest is intense of the cradle of Scottish Christianity, the Throndtjem of Scotland. I found some pleasant boys, sons of a Glasgow merchant, sketching, and made great friends with them. An agony of Atlantic swell brought us to Staffa, but oh! how grand it is!--the grandest cathedral of nature, black with age and roofed with golden vegetation, rising out of the blue sea and lashed by the white foam. I drew a little on the basaltic columns opposite Fingal’s Cave, whilst the mass of the passengers were landing and scrambling about the cavern, and then my boy friends and I climbed the long staircases to the top, where the breezy downs are enamelled with flowers, and the view is most sublime--of the Atlantic, the islands in their fantastic shapes, the distant ghost of shadowy mountains in Skye, and the turbulent waves beneath. I never saw any single place which makes such an impression of natural sublimity.

“How the interests and emotions of life are mingled! In the train, on leaving Glamis, I heard of the death of my dear uncle-like cousin Lord Bloomfield, and while I was drawing Dunolly Sir John Lefevre was passing away! Though the delicate thread which bound his life to earth was so indescribably frail, it _had_ lasted so long, that it is difficult to realise that his loving sympathy and the holy example of his beautiful, humble, and self-forgetful life are removed from us. He was the best man I have ever known and the truest friend. His sweet courtesies were unbounded. His advice was always worth taking, for it was always unselfish, always carefully considered, and it always came from the heart. While I honoured him like a father, he was so genial that I could also love him as an intimate friend.”

* * * * *

“_Ascot, August 25, 1879._--I am thankful to have come here to the Lefevres’ to-day, so filled with crushing sorrow to all my dear cousins, though no one can help being comforted in the beautiful recollections of the beloved father--of his boundless love to all, and his painless passage, full of thankfulness and love to the last, to the full fruition of that love in the unseen.

“I walked with his children to the church, where his coffin already lay[317] in the chancel covered with garlands. Lord Eversley and Emma Lefevre were there, and many others. The grave was in a sheltered corner of the churchyard, a sunny peaceful spot, and there, with aching hearts, we laid him.”

* * * * *

“_Ledbury Court,[318] Sept. 13._--This is just the sort of place which is pleasantest--great comfort and no pretension, rather under than over a very good income. The house, many-gabled and quaint, is _in_ the old street of the town, but you drive into a large paved court with a porter’s lodge and pavilion, and clipped bay-trees in tubs like those of an old hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain. Behind, pleasant modern rooms and an oak library open upon lawns with brilliant flowers, beyond which a deer-park extends up wavy hills to a high terrace with a noble view over the western counties.

“On Wednesday we went to the musical festival at Hereford. The cathedral is entirely ruined by restoration--a disgusting polychrome roof, and a piteous glazed-tile floor replacing the ancient pavement consecrated by five centuries. After the Oratorio we went to luncheon with the Bishop, Dr. Attley, and at the palace I met many old friends.

“Yesterday we went to Eastnor. Lord and Lady Somers were away, but we saw the gardens, which would be beautiful if they were not spoilt by too many pines and araucarias, and the house, a hideous castle of Otranto, so unworthily occupying a noble situation. It contains a few fine pictures, but the rooms are frightful.”

* * * * *

“_Holme Lacy, Sept. 14._--My visit at Ledbury was a very happy one, Libbet so cheerful and pleasant, Charlie Adeane so engaging and affectionate, dear Lady Hardwicke so delightful, and Alick Yorke so amusing.

“I came here last night, met at the station by Sir Henry Stanhope. It has been a magnificent place, but was injured as much as possible by the late possessor with the assistance of the ignorant architect who built Lord Dudley’s house in Park Lane, who tried hard to turn it from a French château into a Grecian villa. Some of the ceilings, however, are quite glorious, and there are many fine portraits.... Lady Scudamore Stanhope, ‘the most popular woman in the county,’ was Sir Adam Hay’s eldest daughter Dora.”[319]

* * * * *

“_Cheltenham, Sept. 15, 1879._--I do not know when, if ever, I have seen anything so beautiful as the park at Holme Lacy. All Sunday afternoon I wandered with Sir Henry Stanhope in its glorious glades, with fern nine feet high, grand old oaks, white-stemmed beeches, and deep blue depths of mossy dingle. The garden too is quite a poem--such a harmony of colour backed by great yew hedges and grand old pine-trees. Seven hundred people on an average come to see it on the days it is shown, and no wonder.... We went to service at an old church full of tombs of the family, and afterwards to the rectory close by, where there is a wonderful old pear-tree, of which the branches always take root again when they fall off, and cover an immense extent, sometimes producing as much as 2000 gallons of perry.

“In coming hither I stayed to see Gloucester--scarcely worth while, all is so modernised. Yet the cathedral tower and crypt are beautiful, and the Norman nave fine. I saw there the tomb of an ancestor, Sir Onesiphorus Paul, of whom I knew nothing before, but it appears from his epitaph that he was ‘the first to put into practice the humane designs of Howard as to prison discipline.’”

* * * * *

“_Cheltenham, Sept. 16._--Mrs. Orlando Kenyon is staying here with the Corbetts. She was a Cotton, and is a very charming person. She described going with her cousin Miss Cotton (now Dowager Marchioness of Downshire) to Peover for a ball. Just as they were setting off news arrived of the death of her cousin’s grandfather, old Mr. Fulke Greville. However, as the visit was settled, it was decided that it should take place, only that Miss Cotton should not go to the ball and her cousin should. They slept together at Peover. In the night Miss Cotton woke Mrs. Kenyon and said, ‘I have had such an extraordinary dream. I have seen my mother moving backwards and forwards between the doors at the end of the room, not walking, but apparently moving in the air--floating with a quantity of gossamer drapery round her; and when I close my eyes, I seem to see her still.’ In the morning the cousins returned to Combermere.

“Just before dinner a servant called Mr. Cotton (Mrs. Kenyon’s father) and said Lord Combermere wanted to speak to him. ‘Oh,’ said Miss Cotton, springing forward, ‘then I am sure some news has come by the post,’ and she tried to insist upon following her uncle, but he would not allow her. Mr. Cotton came back greatly agitated, but insisted on their all going in to dinner. It was a most wretched meal. Afterwards he told the son and daughter that their mother had died (just after her father’s funeral) very suddenly, just when she had appeared at Peover.

“We went yesterday to Southam, the beautiful old house of the De la Beres. After the De la Beres became extinct, it was bought by Lord Ellenborough, and it contains a mixture of relics of the two families--charming old furniture and pictures, including a grand Holbein of Edward VI. One of the De la Beres saved the life of the Black Prince at Crecy, and a Prince of Wales’s helmet and feathers over a chimney-piece commemorate the fact. Three Miss Sergisons of Cuckfield Park inhabit the house now--kindly, pleasant old ladies.”

* * * * *

“_Llanover, Sept. 20._--From Cheltenham I went to the Vaughans at Llandaff. It is a hideous drive from Cardiff, but at length you ascend a little hill which is crowned by a knot of buildings--deanery, canonry, a few houses, a cross, and the picturesque ruins of the old palace, while the lofty steeples of the really beautiful cathedral shoot up from the depths below. It is, in fact, far more picturesque than many more important places, and the graveyard around the cathedral, and many picturesque corners inside, make it very attractive.

“Kate took me to Castle Coch--a restored castle of Lord Bute, beautifully situated. We went to the Palace and saw Mrs. Oliphant, the charming old wife of the Bishop of Llandaff. Bishop Perry and his very amusing wife took us with them to dine at Dufferin with a brother of Lord Aberdare, whom we found there.

“Yesterday I went for an hour to Caerphilly on the way here to Llanover, where I arrived at 7 P.M. The Hereditary Grand Duke of Baden had already arrived and gone up to his room. I first saw him when the party was assembled for dinner--Lord and Lady Raglan, Miss Johnes, Mr. Ram, Mr. and Mrs. Sandford, and Mr. and Mrs. Herbert of Llanarth, with two sons, daughter, and daughter-in-law. The Duke received me most cordially and pleasantly.

“After a very long dinner we all went into the hall, when, from the curtains at the end, all the servants tripped in, each footman leading a maid by each hand, in most picturesque Welsh costumes, made obeisance to the Prince, went backwards, and then danced the most complicated and picturesque of reels, with ever-varying figures. Lady Llanover’s own maid was the great performer, and nothing could exceed her consummate grace and dignity. Then a board was brought in and placed in the centre of the floor and three candles upon it, around and between which the footmen and the harper’s boys performed the wonderful candle-dance with the greatest agility.

“Lady Llanover’s excess of courtesies and overwhelming deference were rather oppressive to us all, and evidently frightened the poor boyish Prince dreadfully last night; but this morning she did not come down, and we have got on splendidly, and he delighted in being talked to like other people, and was as natural and nice as he could be. He is certainly a most bewitching Prince, so full of animation and fun, so right-minded and so courteous and simple.

“In three carriages we went to Llanarth to luncheon. I went with the royal carriage, which, with its smart scarlet postillions, certainly went slow enough; for the dear old lady, to do the Prince more honour, had engaged for the occasion not only the two horses used for the weddings at Abergavenny, but also the two used at funerals, and the steeds of death outweighed those of mirth, and kept us down to a funereal pace.

“Llanarth is a sunny, well-kept place. Its great relic is the portrait of Pope’s Arabella Fermor, whose sister was a direct ancestress of the present possessors. After luncheon, we all ranged on the steps and were photographed, and then went on to Raglan, where Lord and Lady Raglan (she a very charming person) did the honours of the really beautiful ruin. To my surprise, I heard the Duke beginning to compare it to Hurstmonceaux, not knowing my connection with the latter. I drove back with him, and told him many stories, and we made pleasant friendly acquaintance. He ran after me when we came in, and kept me to talk to him quietly, and spoke very nicely and kindly of his mother’s liking for my books. He has one of the most open, frank countenances I have ever looked upon.”

* * * * *

“_Llanover, Sept. 21._--This morning the Herberts went to mass at Llanarth, and we (English Church) had a queer service in the drawing-room, with a congregation of eight, and a clergyman in a surplice, &c. He gave a capital little sermon, but illustrated his text, ‘Pray without ceasing,’ by the story of the Welsh Prince for whom all the birds sang when they were asked. He was taken captive, and the birds immediately became silent. Then his captors commanded them to sing, but still all the birds in Wales held silence. Then they asked the captive Prince to desire them to sing, and he, kneeling down, prayed that God would open the mouths of the birds, upon which they all sang lustily. This was to prove that prayer was worth while even in the smallest things of life!

“The poor Prince has been victimised to-day to see all the relics of Mrs. Delany, the fetish of this house, and was afterwards taken to the lake to see two coracles, the boats of ancient Wales, in which Ivor and Arthur Herbert besported themselves.”

* * * * *

“_Holmhurst, Sept. 27._--On Monday, all Llanover was in motion for the Prince’s departure, more scarlet cloth than ever all over the place, the Welsh harpers harping at the door, the Welsh housemaids, in high hats and bright scarlet and blue petticoats, waiting with bouquets in the park, and every guest in the house compelled to go to the station to see the Prince off. Highly comical was the scene on the platform--the yards of red cloth hurriedly thrown down by two footmen wherever the poor boyish Prince, in his brown frieze suit and wideawake hat, seemed likely to tread. I wished to have travelled to Windsor by Gloucester, which is two and a half hours’ less journey; but no, that was impossible: the Queen of England sometimes has her own way; the Queen of South Wales _always_.

“Mrs. Herbert of Llanarth was sent to travel with the Prince to Malvern, Mr. Ram to Worcester, I to Oxford. However, one could hardly see too much of him, he is such a nice Prince--kind, courteous, clever, intelligent, simple, and sincere. Captain Sommer, the gentleman in waiting, is also a most superior person.

“I reached Ronald Gower in the evening. He met me at the Windsor station, and took me to his really charming little house, which is full of lovely things. It is an odd _ménage_, with the artistic valet, Robert Stubbs, supreme. It was a great pleasure to take up with Ronald the links of a much-relaxed, never-forgotten friendship, and to find him far nicer than I had remembered him.

“We spent Tuesday at Cliveden, a pouring day, but it did not matter. The Duchess of Westminster[320] is Ronald’s favourite sister, and was very pleasant and cordial to his friend. She is gloriously handsome, though so large. We talked for four hours without ceasing, and she took us into every corner of the beautiful house full of charming pictures, and then put on an ulster and hood and walked with us through the torrents of rain to the conservatories. One felt that she was a person to whom one could say anything without being misunderstood, and who would become an increasingly true friend. Her daughter, Lady Beatrice Cavendish, was there, and the handsome young husband, Compton Cavendish, Lord Chesham’s son, came in to luncheon and tea. All saw us off at 5 P.M. in the little cart with Piggy the pony.

“On Wednesday morning we went into the castle to see Lady Ponsonby, who lives in the old prison over Edward III.’s gateway--most curious, and fitted up in admirable taste, despairing to Mr. Ayrton.”

* * * * *

“_Osterley Park, Nov. 13._--I came here yesterday, most kindly welcomed by the good old Duchess of Cleveland, who is delightful. The greatness of her charm certainly lies in the absence of charm: no one ever had less of it. But what bright intelligence, what acute perceptions, what genuine kindness, what active beneficence! I found Julia, Lady Jersey, here, and Mr. Brandling, and a Mr. and Mrs. Bramston, relations of the Cleveland family. After dinner, the Duchess made me sit exclusively by her, saying kindly that she could not waste any of my short visit. She talked in a very interesting way of the great Duke of Wellington, and then of the present Duke. She said that when she asked the latter if the great Duke had never shown him any kindness, he said, ‘No, he never even so much as patted me on the shoulder when I was a boy, but it was because he hated my mother.’

“After luncheon to-day I walked with Brandling and Colonel Bramston to Boston Hall, the fine old house of the Clitherows.

“As Lady Caroline Paulet, the Duchess of Cleveland used to be very proud of her little foot. She wore an anklet, and would often sit upon a table, and let it fall down over her foot to show it. It was inscribed, ‘La légèreté de Camille et la vitesse d’Atalante.’ One day Lady Isabella St. John, who was equally proud of her little foot, said, ‘I wish you would let me try if I can get your anklet over my foot, Lady Caroline.’ And she put it on, and, to Lady Caroline’s great disgust, _kicked it off_, to show how easily her foot would go through it.

“In those long-ago days--one cannot imagine it now--she used to be very _décolletée_, and the Duchess Elizabeth (Miss Russell), who did not like her, once flung a napkin at her across the table, saying, ‘Caroline, here is something to cover your nakedness with.’

“How many and amusing are the anecdotes remembered of that Duchess Elizabeth, who went on receiving a pension from the Duke of Bedford, as his cast-off mistress, after she was married to the Duke of Cleveland. She had been a washerwoman. She left Newton House, where she lived as a widow, to her nephew Mr. Russell, whose grandson married a Lushington. She gave £70,000 to her niece Laura when she married Lord Mulgrave, and the marriage very nearly went off because the Normanbys stuck out for £100,000. ‘Laura is not my only niece, remember that,’ she said, and then they became frightened. She used to call Lord Harry Vane ‘My ‘Arry.’ One day, with Mr. Francis Grey, the conversation turned upon Venus. ‘I do not like her,’ she said; ‘she had a bad figure, and by no means a good character.’ Her companion laughed and said, ‘She mistakes her for a living person,’ and so she did.”

* * * * *

“_Nov. 14._--Life is very pleasant in this fine old house, and its long sunny gallery full of books and pictures is a delightful resort on winter mornings. We breakfast at ten, during which Mr. Spencer Lyttelton, who is frequently here, does his best to shock people for the day, but is certainly very clever and amusing. I never saw any one who called a spade a spade as he does, but I believe he likes every one to think him worse than he is. This morning I walked with Brandling in the long shrubberies, the great trees casting perfectly blue shadows upon the park white with hoar-frost and the lake thinly coated with ice.

“In the afternoon we went to Ham House--a most curious visit. No half-inhabited château of a ruined family in Normandy was ever half so dilapidated as this home of the enormously rich Tollemaches. Like a French château too is the entrance through a gateway to a desolate yard with old trees and a sundial, and a donkey feeding. All the members of the family whom I knew were absent, but I sent in my card to Mr. Algernon Tollemache, who received us. As the door at the head of the entrance-stair opened, its handle went through a priceless Sir Joshua of Louisa, Countess of Dysart: it always does go through it. We were taken through a half-ruined hall and a bedroom to an inner room in which Mr. Algernon Tollemache (unable to move from illness) was sitting. It presented the most unusual contrasts imaginable--a velvet bed in a recess backed by the most exquisite embroidery on Chinese silk; an uncarpeted floor of rough boards; a glorious Lely portrait of the Duchess of Lauderdale; a deal board by way of washing-stand, with a coarse white jug and basin upon it; a splendid mirror framed in massive silver on a hideous rough deal scullery table without a cover; and all Mr. Tollemache’s most extraordinarily huge boots and shoes ranged round the room by way of ornament.

“The vast house is like a caravansary; in one apartment lives young Lord Dysart, the real owner; in another his Roman Catholic mother, Lady Huntingtower, and her two Protestant daughters; in a third, his great-aunt, Lady Laura Grattan; in a fourth, his uncle, Mr. Frederick Tollemache, who manages the property; in a fifth, Mr. and Mrs. Algernon Tollemache, who made a great fortune in Australia.

“We were sent over the house. All was of the same character--a glorious staircase with splendid carving in deep relief; the dismal chapel in which the different members of the family, amongst them Lady Ailesbury[321] and Lady Sudeley,[322] have been married, with the prayer-book of Charles I., in a most wonderful cover of metallic embroidery; marvellous old rooms with lovely delicate silk hangings of exquisitely beautiful tints, though mouldering in rags; old Persian carpets of priceless designs worn to shreds; priceless Japanese screens perishing; beautiful pictures dropping to pieces for want of varnish; silver grates, tongs, and bellows; magnificent silver tables; black chandeliers which look like ebony and are solid silver; a library full of Caxtons, the finest collection in the world except two; a china closet with piles of old Chelsea, undusted and untouched for years; a lovely little room full of miniatures, of which the most beautiful of all was brought down for us to examine closer. ‘Do you see that mark?’ said Mr. Tollemache. ‘Thirty years ago a spot appeared there upon the miniature, so I opened the case and wetted my finger and rubbed it: I did not know paint came off(!). Wasn’t it fortunate I did not wipe my wet hand down over the whole picture: it would _all_ have come off!’[323]

“And the inhabitants of this palace, which looks like that of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, have wealth which is inexhaustible, though they have scarcely any servants, no carriage, only bread and cheese for luncheon, and never repair or restore anything.

“All the family have had their peculiarities. The late Lord Huntingtower was at one time separated from his wife, and when he was persuaded that he ought in common justice to allow her to return to Ham, he assented, but he draped the gates and portico with black cloth for her reception, and he put a band of black cloth round the left leg of every animal on the estate, the cows in the field, the horses in the stable, even the dogs and the cats. _His_ grandfather, Lord Huntingtower, was more extraordinary still. When he bought a very nice estate with a house near Buckminster, he bought all the contents of the house at the same time. There was a very good collection of pictures, but ‘What do I want with pictures? All that rubbish shall be burnt,’ he said. ‘But, my lord, they are very _good_ pictures.’ ‘Well, bring them all down here and make a very great fire, and I will see them burnt.’ And he did.

“There is a ghost at Ham. The old butler there had a little girl, and the Ladies Tollemache kindly asked her to come on a visit: she was then six years old. In the small hours of the morning, when dawn was making things clear, the child, waking up, saw a little old woman scratching with her fingers against the wall close to the fireplace. She was not at all frightened at first, but sat up to look at her. The noise she made in doing this caused the old woman to look round, and she came to the foot of the bed, and grasping the rail with her hands, stared at the child long and fixedly. So horrible was her stare, that the child was terrified, and screamed and hid her face under the clothes. People who were in the passage ran in, and the child told what she had seen. The wall was examined where she had seen the figure scratching, and concealed in it were found papers which proved that in that room Elizabeth, Countess of Dysart, had murdered her husband to marry the Duke of Lauderdale.”[324]

* * * * *

“_Holmhurst, Nov. 24._--Here I am at home again, and we are very busy increasing the walks round the tiny property with the money which dear Aunt Sophy left. They will present quite a miniature variety of scenery now--the ilex walk recalling Italy, and the fir-wood the Black Forest, but the thick wood at the bottom, and its tiny glens and brook and bridges, could only be in England. In this wood we are trying to coax a thousand interesting flowers to ‘grow wild,’ and puzzle the botanists of the twentieth century.

“I spent the last three days of my absence with Hugh Pearson in his canonry at Windsor, a delightful old house overlooking the steep ascent of the hill, where different members of the royal family are constantly dropping in to visit the dearest man in the world, as the princesses of George III.’s time did to visit Mrs. Delany--and no wonder!

“Willie Stephens[325] and I had much interesting talk with the beloved H. Pearson; after being with other people, there is an ease in talking to him which is like exchanging a frock-coat for a shooting-coat.

“On Friday poor Prince Alemayu of Abyssinia (King Theodore’s son) was buried in Windsor Castle. After he came from Abyssinia the Queen adopted him, and he had no one else to look to, for his mother died of consumption on her way to England, and his only other near relation, his uncle, the present King, would certainly have cut his head off at once if he had returned to Abyssinia. He was at Rugby at Jex Blake’s house, and then at a private tutor’s to prepare him for the army, but he always passed his holidays in the castle with Lady Biddulph, and was like a younger brother to Victor Biddulph, her son. Every one liked him. Lately he had been at a tutor’s near Leeds, where he became ill of inflammation of the lungs, probably rapid consumption. Lady Biddulph did not believe in the danger, but Mrs. Jex Blake went to him, and her account of his last hours was most touching. He said to her, ‘No doubts: no doubts at all,’ and then he died.

“On Thursday he was brought to Windsor, and we went to look at his coffin in the little mortuary chapel, draped with black and white, in front of Princess Charlotte’s monument.

“The funeral was at twelve on Friday. The chapel was full. Most exquisitely beautiful was the singing--the gradual swell of ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life’ as the procession formed at the west door and moved slowly up the nave into the choir. The coffin was piled with flowers upon a violet and white pall. Lady Biddulph and her children knelt on one side. Prince Christian, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (as guardian of the Prince), and Mr. Lowe were amongst the mourners. The Dead March was played most grandly as the procession moved out again to the little graveyard by the west door, where the snow had fallen thick upon the flowers by which the newly-made grave was surrounded.

“I have heard a very eerie story from Lady Waterford:--There is a place in Scotland called Longmacfergus. Mr. and Mrs. Spottiswoode lived there, who were the father and mother of Lady John Scott, and they vouched for the story. The villagers of Longmacfergus are in the habit of going to do their marketing at the little town of Dunse, and though their nearest way home would be by crossing the burn at a point called ‘the Foul Ford,’ they always choose another and longer way by preference, for the Foul Ford is always looked upon as haunted. There was a farmer who lived in Longmacfergus, and who was highly respected, and very well-to-do. One night his wife was expecting him back from the market at Dunse, and he did not appear. Late and long she waited and he did not come, but at last, after midnight, when she was very seriously alarmed, he knocked violently at the door and she let him in. She was horrified to see his wild and agonised expression, and the awful change which had taken place in his whole aspect since they parted. He told her that he had come home by the Foul Ford, and that he must rue the day and the way, for he must die before morning. He begged her to send for the minister, for he must see him at once. She was terrified at his state, and implored him rather to send for the doctor, but he said, ‘No, the minister--the minister was the only person who could do him any good.’ However, being a wise woman, she sent for both minister and doctor. When the doctor came, he said he could do nothing for the man, the case was past his cure, but the minister spent several hours with the farmer. Before morning he died, and what he said that night to the minister never was told till many years after.

“Naturally the circumstances of the farmer’s, death made the inhabitants of Longmacfergus regard the Foul Ford with greater terror than before, and for a few years no one attempted to use it. At last, however, there came a day when the son of the dead farmer was persuaded to linger longer than usual drinking at Dunse, and after being twitted by his comrades for cowardice in not returning the shortest way, he determined to risk it, and set out with a brave heart. That night _his_ wife sat watching in vain for his return, and she watched in vain till morning, for he never came back. In the morning the neighbours went to search for him, and he was found lying dead on the bank above the Foul Ford, and--it is a foolish fact perhaps, but it has always been narrated as a fact incidental to the story, that--though there were no marks of violence upon his person, and though his coat was on, his waistcoat was off and lying by the side of his body upon the grass; his watch and his money were left intact in his pockets.

“After his funeral the minister said to the assembled mourners and parishioners, that now that the second death had occurred of the son, he thought that he should be justified in revealing the substance of the strange confession which the father had made on the night he died. He said that he had crossed the wooden bridge of the Foul Ford, and was coming up the brae on the other side, when he met a procession of horsemen dressed in black, riding two and two upon black horses. As they came up, he saw amongst them, to his horror, every one he had known amongst his neighbours of Longmacfergus, and who were already dead. But the man who rode last--the last man who had died--was leading a riderless horse. As he came up, he dismounted by the farmer’s side, and said that the horse was for him. The farmer refused to mount, and all his former neighbours tried to force him on to the horse. They had a deadly struggle, in which at last the farmer seemed to get the better, for the horseman rode away, leading the riderless horse, but he said, ‘Never mind, you will want it before morning.’ And before morning he was dead.”

* * * * *

It was with a feeling of strangeness that, in the autumn of 1879, I felt that my royal duties were over. I did not see the Prince of Sweden again after his return from Scotland.

I have heard since at intervals from the Prince (whose career I always follow with deepest interest), and from the beloved Queen, by the hand of Countess Rosen; but their letters have referred rather to the past than to the present or future: my part in the Prince’s life is probably over.

XXI

A HALT IN LIFE

“When I recall my youth, what I was then, What I am now, ye beloved ones all; It seems as though these were the living men, And we the coloured shadows on the wall.” --MONCKTON MILNES.

“Pain and joy, deception and fulfilled hopes, are just the rain and the sunshine that must meet the traveller on his way. Button or wrap your cloak around you from the first, but do not think for a single moment that one or the other have anything to do with the _end_ of your journey.”--JOSEPH MAZZINI.

“Quand la vie cesse d’être une promesse, elle ne cesse pas d’être une tâche; et même son vrai nom est épreuve.”--AMIEL.

“Non aver tema, disse il mio Signore, Fatti sicur, chè noi siamo a buon punto: Non stringer, ma rallarga ogni vigore.” --DANTE, “_Purgatorio_,” Canto ix.

In May 1878, my publishers, Messrs. Daldy and Isbister, had astounded the literary world by becoming bankrupt. They had been personally pleasant to deal with; I had never doubted their solvency; and I was on terms of friendly intercourse with Mr. Isbister. In April 1878 he wrote to me saying that he knew I applied the interest of money derived from my books to charitable purposes, and that he would much rather bestow the large interest he was prepared to give for such purpose than any other, and he asked me to lend him £1500. I had not the sum at the time he asked for it, but, about a week later, being advised to sell out that sum from some American securities, I lent it to him. Then, within a month, the firm declared itself bankrupt, owing me in all nearly £3000, and the £1500 and much more was apparently lost for ever.[326] In accepting contracts for my different books, I had always fully understood, and been given to understand, that I never parted with the copyright. I believe that most publishers would have informed an ignorant author that the very unusual forms of agreement they prepared involved the copyright, but I was allowed to suppose that I retained it in my own hands. I first discovered my mistake after their bankruptcy, when, besides owing me nearly £3000, Messrs. Daldy and Isbister demanded a bonus of £1500 (which I refused, offering £850 in vain) for giving me the permission to go on circulating my own books through another publisher.

As it was impossible to come to terms, my unfortunate books lapsed. In the autumn of 1879 Messrs. Daldy and Isbister offered to submit to an arbitrator the question of the amount to be paid to my so-great debtors for the liberty of continuing to publish my books. Three eminent publishing firms chose an arbitrator, but when he sent in his estimate they would not agree to it.

These circumstances made such a discouragement for any real work, that for two years I did nothing of a literary character beyond collecting the reminiscences contained in these volumes. The first year was chiefly occupied by my duties towards the Crown Prince of Sweden and Norway. In the second year I had a comparative holiday. It is therefore that I call it “A Halt in Life.”

* * * * *

In November 1879 an event occurred which would at one time have affected me very deeply--the death of the Mary Stanley who for many years ruled my adopted family by the force of her strong will, and who, after my dearest Mother was taken away from me, remorselessly used that power to expel me from the hearts and homes of those over whom she had any influence, in her fury at the publication of the “Memorials of a Quiet Life.” Yet, when her restless spirit was quieted by Death, I could only remember the kind “Cousin Mary” of my childhood, when my greatest delight was to go to her room at Norwich, and so many of my little pleasures came from her.

“Where thou hast touched, O wondrous Death! Where thou hast come between, Lo, there for ever perisheth The common and the mean. No little flaw or trivial speck Doth any more appear, And cannot, from this time, to fleck Love’s perfect image clear.”[327]

Hard to those in her own class, and with them ever occupied in asserting and insisting upon her own little imaginary dignities, Mary Stanley did more unselfish work for the poor than almost any one, and hundreds of whom nothing is known in the society in which she lived miss and mourn her. Probably only the poor knew the best, the really beautiful side of Mary Stanley’s life, which was _most_ beautiful.

I often wish, as regards her, I could have profited more by words of Mrs. Kemble which I read too late to apply them--“Do you not know that to misunderstand and be misunderstood is one of the inevitable conclusions, and I think one of the especial purposes, of our existence? The principal use of the affection of human beings for each other is to supply the want of perfect comprehension, which is impossible. All the faith and love which we possess are barely sufficient to bridge over the abyss of individualism which separates one human being from another; and they would not, or could not, exist, if we really understood each other.”

In December I went abroad to join the two Miss Hollands--my Norwegian companions--at Ancona, and go on with them to Sicily, a journey through deep snow and agonising cold. After I met the Hollands and their friend Miss Lily Howard, we went rapidly south, with Sir George Baker, his wife and daughter, semi-annexed to our party, and at Reggio we found summer--palms, bananas, blue skies and sunshine.

Our wretched journey made the first morning at Messina quite enchanting, as we climbed the heights, looking down upon the straits and to the purple peaks of Italy, their tips glistening with snow. Nespoli, daturas, and camellias grew as trees in full bloom; the gardens were a mass of salvias, trumpet-flower, and roses; heliotrope in full blossom hung over the high walls, and quantities of scarlet geraniums grew wild upon the beach.

More lovely still was Taormina, hanging like an eagle’s nest on the ledge of the mountain, and looking down into the blue sea, which breaks into emerald near the snowy line of breakers. On one side is Etna, quite gigantic, with pathless fields of snow even upon the lower heights; on the other are the grand ruins of the Theatre, from which, above the broken arches and pillars, the queen of fire and snow looms unspeakably sublime. Our pleasant primitive inn was in a quiet street, where all the daily incidents were lovely--the goats coming in the early morning to be milked: the peasants riding in upon their asses: the convent bells jangling: the women returning from the fountain with vases of old Greek forms upon their heads, burnished yellow, green, or red: the singing at Ave Maria and Benediction. We spent several days at Taormina, drawing quietly in the mornings amongst the rocky beds of pinks, and snapdragon, and silene: reading aloud in the evenings--Thucydides, Gregorovius, and then a novel for relaxation: the four ladies and their maid occasionally singing in parts as in Norway.

We were sorry to go on to Syracuse, for though many had told us of its intense interest and curiosity, no one had spoken of its extreme loveliness. Of its five towns, only the island-town of Ortygia remains. Acradina, Neapolis, Tycho, and Epipolae are desolate hillsides covered with pink-grey limestone, overgrown with wild figs, olives, prickly pears, and ten thousand lovely flowers; and from their sunny slopes you look to the blue mountains of Hybla and the rose-coloured rocks of Megara. Here and there, in the most exquisite situations, are Roman, and still more beautiful Greek ruins, which seem to have grown into the scenery and become part of it, gilded by lichen, fringed with flowers.

Each morning at Syracuse we engaged little carriages (costing one shilling the hour) for the day, and took with us a well-filled luncheon basket for ourselves and our charming young drivers, and we wandered, and studied, and drew for hours. We spent a whole day on the grand heights of Epipolae, looking on one side across a luxuriant plain to snowy Etna, and on the other across the vast ruined city to the blue sea, with Ortygia gleaming upon it like a jewel. Another whole day was given to ascending the rivers Anapus and Pisma to the mystic blue fountain of Cyane: the most romantic of boating excursions, the boatmen every now and then being obliged to jump into the water and push the boat over the shallows or through the thick water-plants: the papyrus with its exquisite feathery crests almost meeting overhead, or grouped into the most glorious masses on the islets in midstream: enchanting little views opening every now and then to palms and cypresses and blue rifts in the roseate rocks of Megara; now a foreground of oleanders, then of splendid castor-oil plants. In returning, we walked up a hill to the Temple of Jupiter Olympus, through a perfect blaze of dwarf blue iris, the loveliest flowers I ever saw.

We spent the four first days of the New Year at Catania, a dull town, though backed by the glorious snow-fields of Etna, and we made thence two excursions--to Aci Castello, a beautiful old castle on lava rocks, and to Aci Reale, with the spring into which Acis, the lover of Galatea, is supposed to have been changed.

At Girgenti we found an excellent hotel, with rooms opening to delightful balconies, overhanging--at a great height--one of the noblest views in the world, billow upon billow of purple hill, crested with hoary olives, and with masses of oranges and caroubas in all the sheltered nooks, a vast expanse of glistening sea, and a range of Greek temples in desolate loveliness. The landlord, Don Gaetano de Angelis, was a stately old Sicilian, who treated us far more like honoured guests than customers, and fed us so luxuriously and magnificently that we wondered how it was possible he could repay himself. He had lately married for the second time, a pretty merry child-wife in huge gold earrings, who paid us frequent visits, and was delighted with us and our drawings, and to sit for her portrait. They quite enjoyed the preparation of the luncheon basket, with which we always set off at 9 A.M., not returning till the sunset had turned the sea rose-colour and set the mountains aflame. Each day we picnicked amongst the asphodels and lilies in the shadow of one of the Greek temples, and were glad to find a shelter from the burning sun, which blazed in a sky that only turned from turquoise to opal. Some of the temples are nearly perfect, some mere masses of ruin, or one or two pillars with a beautiful bit of yellow architrave set in the most exquisite landscape--delicate pink mountain distances, and foregrounds of grand old olive-trees or almonds flushing into richest bloom, above a ground enamelled with flowers of every hue. We all agreed in thinking Girgenti more beautiful than any other place, and its people even more charming than the scenery, so full of kindly simplicity, from the Syndic to Pasqualuccio, the little goatherd, with coins in his earrings after the old Greek fashion, who gives each of his goats a _colazione_ of acanthus leaves, set out like plates on a dinner-table, on the fallen columns in the Temple of Juno.

The second day after our arrival, as we were returning home up the hill in the still warm evening light, we turned aside to the old deserted convent of S. Niccola. A merry crowd of gentlemen and ladies and little boys and girls were shouting and singing on the terrace, and dancing the tarantella to the music of three peasants on a bagpipe, tambourine, and triangle. Like a Bacchanalian rout of old times they came rushing down to meet us, twenty-six in number, chained together with garlands, and the girls all wreathed with wild scarlet geranium. They escorted us all over the garden, gathering flowers and fruits for us, the crowd of little children gambolling and dancing in front. Then they begged us to go back with them to the terrace, and began dancing again, and were delighted when Miss Howard and Miss G. Holland danced with them. Afterwards, standing on the terrace, our three ladies sang one of their beautiful part songs, tumultuously applauded with _prosit_ and _evviva_. The result was showers of visiting-cards from all the notables in Girgenti, especially from a family who rejoice in the singular name of the _Indelicati_. Then came invitations to a party and ball at Casa Gibilaro, the sons of the house, Cesare and Salvatore, coming to escort us up the steep street. Italian ladies sang, and so did our party, and all danced, and we taught the Girgentines Sir Roger de Coverley, which greatly enchanted them. The family of twenty-six--grandmother, uncles, aunts, cousins, were all there, living in the happiest union and affection, no daughter of the house ever marrying out of the place, and all meeting constantly. Carmela and Pasqualina Gibilaro were so enchanted with our two younger ladies, that they scarcely ever let go of their hands, and expressed their delight over them in the most naïve manner, and I became great friends with Salvatore and Antonio. One day, Salvatore and Pasqualina dined with us, and we afterwards went again to their house, where there was another dance, at which all the professors of the university (on delightful terms of merriment with their pupils) assisted, the Professor of Theology frisking about in the tarantella, and the Professor of Philosophy leading the cotillon. We wished this time to leave early, but our hosts insisted on our waiting till the arrival of ices, an unwonted luxury with them, but ordered in our honour. We had dined before, and since coming to the dance had been obliged to eat quantities of _pasticcie_, so were aghast when we found that we were each expected to eat an ice larger than an ordinary tea-cake. We managed as well as we could, but it was dreadful. I deposited more than half mine under a table. Miss Holland thought she was getting on pretty well with hers, when a Contessa Indelicato, on the opposite side of the room, seeing her flagging, filled a large spoon with her own ice, and rushing across, popped it into her mouth. With great promptitude Miss Howard instantly popped a spoonful of _her_ ice into the mouth of a Contessina Indelicato! Great were the lamentations and embraces from this amiable family when we left Girgenti, dear little Antonio Gibilaro going with us to the station.

I spent the last morning at Girgenti in drawing the sea glistening through the pink almond-trees, and the rocky road with its troops of goats and donkeys, and in the afternoon of January 11 we went on to Palermo.

Under the later Bourbon kings Sicily was perfectly safe and brigandage utterly unknown, for the principal officials in each village and parish were made responsible for its security; but the annihilation of the rural police under the Sardinian Government taking place at the same time with the abolition of capital punishment, had introduced brigandage; and though it had become rare since the formation of railroads, it was not considered safe for us to go far from Palermo without an escort, and we were obliged to give up Segeste. When we were at Palermo, murders for _vendetta_ were of constant occurrence, and only cost three hundred francs, as the punishment was so slight,--generally two years’ imprisonment without labour, and with a life of much greater comfort than the culprit could have enjoyed at home. Besides, the murderers are scarcely ever given up, as the _vendetta_ would then fall upon those who betrayed them. Some of our party went to visit Calatafimi, the brigand who carried off a gentleman from Cefalu, and, when he got only half the ransom required, laboriously snipped with scissors till his head came off, in a cave on Monte Pellegrino. He was found very merry, in most comfortable quarters, with quantities of fruit, newspapers, &c. When he was tired of being there, his family would bribe the gaoler, and he would get out.

The glorious weather we enjoyed in the south of the island turned to torrents of rain at Palermo, but it is said that there are only forty-two days in the year without rain there. On the rare occasions when it clears, Palermo is most lovely, backed by such grand mountains, the nearer ones rugged purple rocks, over which the snow-peaks peep out. The cathedral also is very beautiful, with a great courtyard in front of it planted with palm-trees and geraniums; but there are none of the glorious flowers of Girgenti; the climate is a constant damp chill, like that of Pau and Pisa, and I shall always associate the place with the ceaseless melancholy roar of the sea, the drip and splash of the rain, which fell day and night, and the monotony of the mouldy deserted walks. In the Lazaretto cemetery--a lovely little spot hedged with Barbary aloes--it was touching to see the tomb of my almost unknown father. He also hated the place and was deeply depressed there.

Our one really fine day was delightful. We drove along the shore to Bagaria, where all the old nobility have their country palaces, enormous and stately in form, with huge courts and immense armorial shields over their gates, but the windows generally half choked up or glassless, the courts overgrown with weeds, and the roofs tumbling in. Sad indeed would be the shock to an English girl who married a Sicilian prince for his title and his “palace,” upon her arrival at one of these old barracks, where she would be lucky if she could find one weathertight chamber.

Beyond Bagaria, Capo Zafferano strides into the sea--a grand mountain, covered with cactus almost to the top; and here, high on the rocks, are the ruins of Solunto, a Carthaginian city--broad streets edged by diminutive houses and temples in the style of Pompeii. We picnicked at Solunto in the cactus shade, and drew all day the glorious view across the bay to the purple crags and fantastic forms of Monte Griffone.

Another day we went to Monreale, the grand semi-Saracenic cathedral, covered with mosaics, on the heights behind Palermo. It reminds me of a story the late Lord Clanwilliam used to tell, which I will insert here:--

* * * * *

“A Knight of Malta, who, by the rules of his Order, was both a soldier and a priest, was once travelling in Sicily. Being at Palermo, he strolled up to Monreale; it was a lovely evening, and in the great cathedral, where the shade was so welcome after the heat of the way, the effect was exquisitely beautiful, as the sunset streamed through the long windows upon the mosaic walls. Being an artist, the knight took out his sketch-book and began to draw, first one lovely arch and then another, till the waning light warned him that night was approaching. Then he made his way to the western door, but it was closed. He turned to the side doors, to the sacristy; they were closed also. It was evident that he was locked into the cathedral, and though he shouted and kicked at the door, he could make no one hear. Spending the night alone in a church had no terrors for him: it was only on account of the discomfort that he objected to it; so he found his way to a confessional far up the church, and made himself as comfortable there as he could with all the cushions he could collect.

“Most wondrously beautiful is the cathedral of Monreale when the moon casts its magic halo over the ancient mosaics, and so it was on this night, when the artist-soldier-priest sat entranced with its unspeakable loveliness. The whole building was bathed in softest light, each avenue of arches at once a poem and a picture, when the clock struck twelve. Then from the west door a figure seemed to be approaching, a cowled figure in monastic robes, and the stranger felt with satisfaction that he had been missed and that one of the monks of the adjoining monastery was come to seek him. But, as he watched the figure, he observed its peculiar movement, rather floating than walking up the nave, enveloped in its sweeping draperies, and as it passed he heard a low musical voice like a wiffling wind which said, ‘Is there no good Christian who will say a mass for my poor soul?’ and the figure passed on swiftly, on behind the altar, and did not return.

“Through an hour the Knight of Malta sat watching and expecting, and then, as the clock struck one, the figure again floated up the nave, and again the same sad low voice murmured, ‘Is there no good Christian will say a mass for my poor soul?’ Then the Knight came out of the confessional and pursued the vanishing figure, pursued it to a particular spot behind the altar, where it disappeared altogether.

“When the clock struck two, the figure appeared again, and when it again uttered the words, ‘Will no good Christian say a mass for my poor soul?’ the priest-soldier answered, ‘I will; but you must serve the mass,’ for there can be no mass without a server. The holy vessels were upon the altar, and the soldier-priest began the mass. Then the monk threw back his cowl and displayed a skull, but he served the mass, which the priest courageously went through to the end: then he fell down unconscious in front of the altar.

“In the morning, when the monks came into the church, the stranger was found still unconscious upon the altar steps. He was taken into the convent, and, when he came to himself, he told what had happened. Great search was made in the archives of the monastery, though nothing was found to account for it. But long after, when some repairs were being made in the cathedral, the body of a monk in his robe and cowl was found walled up, evidently for some crime, near the altar, just at the spot where the Knight had seen him vanish.”[338]

* * * * *

A railway took us from Palermo to Caldane, almost on the opposite coast, and there we were transferred to a wretched tumble-down diligence, which went swinging and jolting over the deep pools in the rocky road. Though there were no regular brigands on this road, the peasants, who were too idle to work, constantly formed themselves into great bands and attacked the diligences; so the Sardinian Government, too feeble to attempt managing the people themselves, sent a guard to defend us from them. Two soldiers with guns sat on the luggage, and loaded pistols peeped ominously from under the cloaks of the Sicilians within, one of whom was an _impiégato per la caccia dei briganti_. However, late at night we reached Caltanisetta, a great poverty-stricken city, with white houses, white rocks, and no vegetation, high in the sulphur district.

On going to the station the next morning, we heard that the railway near Messina was washed away, and that the last train had narrowly escaped a Tay Bridge disaster by the breaking of the high bridge at Ali. So we telegraphed to Taormina to send a carriage to meet us at Giardini, the place nearest the scene of the disaster. We did not reach Giardini till it was pitch-dark; the sea was raging close to the railway, and the rain had been falling all day in torrents. It was such a night as one scarcely ever sees, so tempestuous, so utterly black! There was no carriage for us, and no one to meet us; the telegraph had been swept away in the storm. Blankly and grimly did the officials see the large party deposited at the desolate station surrounded by waters, and great was the consternation of my four female companions when they found that it was just going to be closed and abandoned. We got a man to wade through the marsh to Giardini to try to get a carriage to come to us: the carriage tried, but an intercepting torrent was so swollen, it was impossible for it to cross without being swept out to sea. The man came back along the railway parapet, and told us that we must give up all hope of getting away. The officials refused to send any one with us; no one would face the furies of the night; nor could they lend us a lanthorn; they wanted it themselves. Happily I had made friends with a young man of Taormina--_capo della musica_--who happened to be at the station. He had a lanthorn, and kindly waited for us, till at last my companions consented to kilt up their dresses and venture out into the blackness. It was four miles by the road, about a mile and half by the precipices; we chose the latter. But the path through the precipices, which we had toiled up before in burning sunshine, was now a roaring torrent. However, there was nothing for it but to plunge in absolute blackness from stone to stone of the steep ascent, holding on to the broom and asphodels. At the most dangerous points the _capo della musica_, who made the little joke of “Io _solo_ sono sole,” kindly waited with his lanthorn till each of the party of eight was safely round the corner. Fortunately the rain almost ceased during the ascent, and at last, by scrambling, jumping, or grovelling, we found ourselves in the street of Taormina. The people of the inn were gone to bed, but soon the great event of a large party with ladies arriving on such a terrific night caused many windows to open in the friendly primitive street, and heads and candles to appear: the hotel was roused, and we were warmly welcomed.

For three days we remained in a state of siege with the elements howling around in our rock-fortress of Taormina, sometimes seeing Etna reveal itself above the black storm-clouds. Then we crossed to Reggio, and went on by night to Taranto, where we spent the morning in drawing the curious island-town, and took the train again to Trani. Hence we made an excursion--three hours in a carriage and one on foot--to Castel del Monte, the favourite castle of the great Frederick II., long since a ruin, but not roofless, and presenting a more perfect picture of mediaeval splendour in its suites of marble halls than any castle I ever visited. Yet it must always have been a most desolate place and the most uninteresting of royal residences. Trani itself is full of interest, and has a beautiful cathedral. Accounts we had read of “the all-glorious cathedral of Andria” beguiled us to toil next to that old episcopal city, which we found a complete delusion, and went on to Barletta, visiting thence the battlefield of Cannae and the curious old town of Canosa, where Ariosto’s hero Bohemund is buried. Then we proceeded to Foggia, where we saw the remains of Frederick II.’s palace, and thence we made another excursion to his favourite town of Lucera, full of Saracenic remains. The next day we saw Beneventum, another glorious cathedral, mosque, and a grand Roman gateway, and arrived at Naples on the 12th of February. My last days with my companions were spent at beautiful Amalfi, and after a few lovely days at Naples and Rome, I followed them to England.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Elton Hall, Peterborough, April 1, 1880._--I have been two days here at Lord Carysfort’s.... The house is a jumble of architecture of every style and age, from Henry VII. to the present, and, without ever being very picturesque, is thoroughly satisfactory and comfortable, with a delightful library and a number of fine portraits. The park overlooks long lines of flat, amid which rises Fotheringhay Church. An old watermill is called ‘Pereo Mill,’ because when Mary Queen of Scots arrived and saw all the waters out, as they so often are to this day, she thought all was over with her and exclaimed, ‘Pereo,’--I perish. We have driven to Fotheringhay, and seen again the mound and the one remaining stone of the castle. The church is like a lanthorn, so full of windows, and very fine, though perpendicular. By the altar are tombs with stately inscriptions on the wall over them to Richard and Cicely Plantagenet, father and mother of Edward IV., and to his grandfather Edward Plantagenet, who was killed in the battle of Agincourt. We went on to Oundle, a charming old town with a noble church. Here, in the street, is the house of Lord and Lady Lyveden, with a large garden on the other side. The two Lady Lyvedens were there. The old one, Lord Castletown’s sister, was once the beautiful little girl of Sir T. Lawrence’s masterpiece; the younger, a plain, simple, sensible woman, well fitted for a poor peer’s wife, is perfectly adored in the town of Oundle.

“Sir Frederick Peel is here with his young wife, who is charming, so very pretty, with quantities to say on all subjects.”

* * * * *

“_St. James’s Place, May 8._--To Mrs. Stewart’s. Lord Houghton was there, very cheery and kind. I was struck the other day by hearing some one say, ‘Lord Houghton is not only a friend in poverty, he is a friend in _disgrace_.’ Can there be higher praise? He was very amusing apropos of my employing Henningham and Holles to leave my cards, and said that Miss Martineau at first absolutely refused to conform to the ways of the world in paying visits, it was ‘such a waste of time;’ but it was suggested to her that she should send out ‘an inferior authoress’ with her trumpet in a hackney-coach to represent her and do her work, and that if the authoress only let the trumpet appear out of the coach-window, she would do just as well as herself.

“Dined at Lord Sherborne’s, meeting, amongst others, Lady Powerscourt, surely one of the sweetest of God’s creatures.”

* * * * *

“_May 13._--Having heard of George Paul’s death, I went to see Auntie.[343] It was strange to find the familiar figure of my childhood, who had been inexplicably separated from me for twelve years, and with her to see again many of the silent objects connected with Esmeralda and those sealed chapters of life. We spoke only on indifferent subjects, but I cannot think poor Auntie can have felt indifferent, though she refused to show me the slightest affection, or evince the least pleasure at seeing me.”

* * * * *

“_May 15._--I paid £50 into Auntie’s account at Coutts’s, and shall continue to do so at this date annually. More I think she would reject, but she will allow this to pass, and I am thankful even in the smallest degree to contribute to her comfort.”

* * * * *

“_May 19._--A luncheon party at Lady Ducie’s. Mrs. Stewart was there. Some one said Sir William Harcourt’s late election failure would be as good as a dose of physic to him--‘No,’ she answered, ‘it will be no good at all; it has been a dose of castor-oil administered to a marble statue.’”

* * * * *

“_May 25._--Luncheon at Lady Sherborne’s. Dear old Mrs. Stewart was there in great force, and recited Swinburne’s really grand lines apropos of the Prince Imperial’s proposed monument, exhorting the illustrious dead to veil their faces and leave Westminster Abbey on the arrival of his statue.

“Lady Airlie was at luncheon. She spoke of the almost necessity for a cloud over the most beautiful lives. She said how one might observe that in almost all the finest summer days the sun was clouded over for some hours.”

* * * * *

“_May 26._--Dined at the Thorntons’. Lord Houghton was there. He said how he had discussed with George Sand the question how far it was well to know authors whose works you admired. She had urged him never to know them, that they all put their best into their books; whatever you find afterwards can only be inferior material. Carlyle, Lord Houghton allowed, was just like his books; in his case you could know the man and not be disappointed: it is the same mixture of grim humour, irony, and pathos, of which his books are composed, which enables the man personally to produce such an indescribable impression. Carlyle always hated having his picture taken, but was persuaded to sit to Millais. When he went there, to the beautiful house full of priceless art-treasures, he asked what brought them there. ‘My art,’ answered Millais proudly. ‘Then there are more fools in the world than I imagined,’ said Carlyle.”

* * * * *

“_May 30._--Sat a long time with Lady Airlie, who talked of the power of prayer and the number of people who really believed in it. She said she prayed for everything, but always left it to God to decide for her, making a complete act of submission, but adding, ‘I should _like_ this or that best.’ The mystic Mr. Laurence Oliphant came in and talked for a long time. Being asked as to his past and future, he said he could only act ‘under direction,’ _i.e._, of spirits. He said the separation from the spiritual world was entirely dependent upon the constitution of the individual. No wonder that the hallucinations of this brilliant and fascinating visionary wreck the comfort as well as the practical usefulness at once of his own life and the lives of those dearest to him.

“A few days ago Ronald Gower came and took me to Frank Miles’s studio--a new-old house in Tite Street, Chelsea. Frank Miles is a charming handsome young Bohemian, who has a delightful garden in the country filled with every lily that ever was heard of. He paints all the ‘professional beauties,’ who hover round him and his studio like moths, but his pictures have no great power.”[344]

* * * * *

“_May 31._--I was at Stafford House in the evening, the hall brilliantly lighted, a deafening band on the staircase, and all the Campbell-Percy-Gower connection looking on.”

* * * * *

“_June 1._--I dined with the Boynes, and went afterwards to Lady Sudeley and Mrs. Cavendish Bentinck. At these great parties I find my difficulty in recognising people an immense disadvantage. Then, with those who do not care for contemporary history or art, there are so few topics of conversation, for almost every one in London is occupied ‘de rien faire, ou de faire des riens.’”[345]

* * * * *

“_June 4._--A party, where I heard Mrs. Caulfield sing and Genevieve Ward recite--first only some fables of La Fontaine, to which she gave a marvellous infinity of expression, and then a ballad. She is a simple and very striking-looking woman.”

* * * * *

“_June 9._--Dined with the Haygarths. Mr. Bouverie was there, and very entertaining with stories of the old Duke of Wellington, of whom he justly said that his character had greatly risen through the publication of his letters, while other characters had been lowered. ‘They will knock down a great many statues,’ the Duke had said in speaking of them to Mr. Bouverie in his lifetime.

“Apropos of the Duke’s love of military discipline, Mr. Bouverie mentioned how, when he was at Walmer, all the officers of the neighbouring garrison called except Lord Douro, who thought it would be absurd, as he was seeing his father every day. Consequently, the Duke asked all the officers to dinner except his own son, and at dinner said to the Colonel, ‘By-the-bye, who is your Major? for he has not called on me.’

“Another example of the Duke’s character as a martinet was that Lord Douro once met him in plain clothes. The Duke took no notice of him whatever. Lord Douro, knowing how angry his father must be, rushed in, changed his clothes for uniform, and met his father again. ‘Hallo, Douro! how are you? it is a long time since I have seen you,’ said the Duke; but he had seen him quite well a quarter of an hour before.”

* * * * *

“_June 10._--Dined with the Miss Duff Gordons, meeting Tosti the singer and tall young Carlo Orsi from one of the old _castelli_ in the Tuscan valley of Signa. He was very naïve about his coming to London, and his asking himself when he woke, ‘And can it be thou, Carlo, who art here?’ Mrs. Caulfield (_née_ Crampton[346]) and Tosti sang exquisitely in the evening.”

* * * * *

“_June 14._--With Mrs. Stewart to Alma Tadema’s studio--a small house on the north of the Regent’s Park. Inside it is a labyrinth of small rooms with gilt walls and ceilings, and doors hung with quaint draperies. A vague light fell through alabaster windows upon Madame Tadema in a cloth of gold dress backed by violet draperies. The Dutch artist, her husband, thinks her red hair glorious, and introduces her in all his pictures. In his studio is a strange picture of ‘The Triumph of Death’ by Breughel the Devil. I was glad to meet again Madame Riaño--Doña Emilia de Guyangos--gliding through the half-dark rooms after the ubiquitous wife of Tom Hughes.”

* * * * *

“_June 15._--Luncheon with Lady Dorothy Nevill in her charming house in Charles Street, which has all the attractions of an old manor. Lady Dorothy is very pretty still, like a piece of Dresden china. She and Lord Houghton were very amusing over Mr. Wolff,[347] who married her aunt, Lady Georgiana. Nothing could persuade him to cleanliness. Once they tried to insist upon his washing his hands, and took him to a jug, basin, and clean towel for the purpose, but he would only dip the ends of his fingers in the jug and dry them on his pocket-handkerchief. If he went to stay anywhere, he would never take any luggage. He was, however, persuaded for three days to take three clean shirts, but he arrived with them all _on_, and peeled gradually.

“Mr. Wolff went to stay with George Anthony Denison, who was frightfully bored with him. He stayed a week. As he was in the carriage going off from the door, Mr. Denison said to him, ‘Well, good-bye, my dear fellow; I’m sorry you’re going.’--‘Are you sorry I’m going?’ said a gruff voice from the carriage; ‘then I’ll stay another week.’”

* * * * *

“_June 16._--A huge party at Devonshire House--the staircase most beautiful.”

* * * * *

“_June 17._--To Lady Airlie to meet Miss Farrer and Emmeline Erskine--a long talk quietly about spirituality and the Quietists. Miss Farrer told me first-hand a story I have often heard before:--

“Her brother knew well a shopkeeper in Plymouth, who felt one day, he could not tell why, that he must go to Bodmin. To get there, it was necessary that he should cross a ferry. It was late at night, and he expected to have great difficulty in getting across, but, to his amazement, he found the boat ready for him. The ferryman said, ‘I am ready, because you called me an hour ago.’

“When the shopkeeper reached Bodmin, the town was full of crowds and confusion; the assizes were going on. He made his way to the court. A man was being tried for murder, and likely to be condemned. He protested his innocence in vain, and in an agony was just saying, ‘I was in Plymouth at the time, if I could only prove it.’ The shopkeeper was just in time to hear him, and exclaim, ‘I can prove it, my Lord; I remember the prisoner perfectly: he came into my shop at the very time in question.’ And it saved the man’s life.

“Emmeline told of Mr. Richmond’s little children, who, playing in a long almost dark gallery, saw their dead mother standing at the end, and went to their father and told him, ‘Mama is come back.’ An open cistern was found at the spot where they had seen her.”

* * * * *

“_June 18._--Dined with the Owen Grants. At ninety-three old Lord Kilmorey is dying. He took his immense drives as usual till a few days ago. Then, returning from one of them, he sent for George Higginson and Owen Grant, and said, ‘Now I am going to die; I think it is time, and I wish you to stay with me to the end.’ They sent for the doctor, who persistently declared that Lord Kilmorey had nothing whatever the matter with him. They remonstrated as to the pain it would give to many. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘yes, my sister Georgiana, perhaps she will feel it; I will wait till I have seen her.’ And he waited till he had seen old Lady Georgiana, talked to her very affectionately, took leave of her, and since then has eaten nothing.”

* * * * *

“_June 20._--Lord Kilmorey died to-day.”

* * * * *

“_June 24._--With the Mark Woods to Charlton, the fine old house of Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson, near Greenwich. It was built by James I. for his son Prince Henry, and is in wonderful keeping with its surroundings of broad terraces, old pine-trees, &c. In the richly polished chimney-piece of one of the rooms, a lady while dressing is said to have seen a murder reflected while it was being committed in the park, and her evidence to have found the man guilty.”

* * * * *

“_June 26._--In the evening I was at the Speaker’s party. His beautiful rooms were additionally illuminated by the glare from a great fire on the opposite bank of the river. The bridge, and the chain of omnibuses and cabs, with their roofs crowded with the black figures of spectators, and the background of flames, gave the whole scene the aspect of the Devil’s funeral with appropriate fireworks. In a great hooded car, nodding against the flame, the Devil’s widow seemed to follow. We watched from the windows for nearly two hours--inside, bright uniforms, low dresses, glistening diamonds: outside, flames and a black shimmering river. At last the fire-engines got the victory, a roof fell in, the glare began to fade, the bereaved demons returned from the ceremony, and the illuminations were extinguished. No human life was lost, only the two great bloodhounds which were the guards of the timber-yard, and which for years have gained the prize in every dog-show.”

* * * * *

“_June 29._--Lady Lucy Grant had a pleasant party in her pretty garden. Old Madame Mohl was there, a wreck, but a curious reminiscence of the past. In the little garden-studio Miss Grant’s reredos for Edinburgh Cathedral was lighted up. In the main features it is fine, but the women are all exactly the same height as the men, and all the figures stand in a line, with an equal amount of individuality, too little occupied with each other.”

* * * * *

“_July 7._--Dinner at Lord Ducie’s. I was delighted to sit once more by Madame de Riaño[348] and enjoy the flow of her ever-fresh originality.”

* * * * *

“_July 8._--The Duchess of Norfolk’s ball. The house had not been opened to a great party for forty years, but the noble suite of rooms, with their old ceilings and pictures, is well adapted for it.”

* * * * *

“_July 9._--Lord Denbigh has sent me what he calls ‘a bundle of wonders.’ It contains one curious history related by Henry Malet in August 1869.

“‘In the winter of 1854-55, at the end of December, I was in Paris, and among other people of whom I saw a good deal was Palgrave Simpson, the dramatic author. There was something about him I liked, and a certain originality in the tone of his mind interested me. One evening, after a bachelors’ dinner at Charlie Webster’s rooms, the conversation turned on clairvoyance. Palgrave Simpson expressed himself a believer in many of the clairvoyant phenomena which were then astonishing people in Paris, but nearly all the rest of us, except myself, laughed in his face, and told him that he must be insane to credit such nonsense. He and I walked home together, and I believe that I told him I should be glad of an opportunity of investigating some of the stories which had impressed him.

“‘Within a few days I received a sudden order to return at once to London and hold myself in readiness to embark for the Crimea with a large detachment of my regiment.

“‘Our departure was delayed from day to day, but about the end of March it was fixed for the first week in April. When the day was finally settled, I prevailed on my mother, who was in despair at the idea of my going on active service, to leave London with my brother and go to Frankfort, as I concluded that the actual blow of the separation would be lessened by this means.

“‘I am not quite positive as to the date of our sailing, but it was two or three days after my mother arrived at Frankfort.

“‘We were to parade in Wellington Barracks at 5 A.M., and, after midnight on the last night, I looked in at the Guards Club, and found there a note enclosing an antique ring. The note was from Palgrave Simpson and said, “Do not laugh at me, but while you are in the Crimea wear the enclosed ring. It was given to me by the last representative of an old Hungarian family on her death-bed. In her family it was an heirloom, and considered as a most precious talisman to preserve the wearer from any external harm.”

“‘I slipped the ring on my finger, I must own, without attaching any great importance to the matter, and turned in, after writing Palgrave Simpson a note to thank him for his kindness.

“‘The next morning I sailed at 10 A.M. from Portsmouth. We touched at Gibraltar, but it was not till our arrival at Malta that I heard from my family. Then I found a letter from my mother dated from Frankfort on the very day of our sailing from England. It said, “I have been quite broken-hearted about you, and could find no comfort anywhere; but now all is changed, for a most extraordinary reason. This morning, as I lay in bed in broad daylight, and after my maid had brought my hot water, just as I was about to get up, a most beautiful young lady, very fair, and dressed in grey silk, drew aside the curtain of my bed and leant over me and said, ‘Do not be unhappy about your son: no harm shall happen to him.’ I am quite certain I have had a vision, yet it seemed as if I were awake: certainly I was so the moment before this happened. The whole thing is as distinct as possible, and as unlike an effect of imagination. Of course I cannot account for it, but it has made me quite happy, and I _know_ you will come back safe.”

“‘On receipt of this letter I bethought me of the ring, and begged my mother in reply to describe minutely the appearance of the mysterious visitor. My mother said it was a young woman about twenty-seven years of age, rather pale, with very straight features, large grey eyes, and an abundance of brown hair worn in rather an old-fashioned manner: the sleeves of the grey silk dress were what we call “bishop sleeves.”

“‘I sent copies of my mother’s letters to Palgrave Simpson, and he answered me that the description was in the _minutest_ particular the counterpart of the lady who on her death-bed had given him the ring some sixteen or seventeen years before.

“‘It is to be observed that no communication whatever passed between me and my mother between the receipt of the ring and my arrival at Malta, and I will swear that I told no one the story.

“‘On my return from the Crimea I restored the ring to its owner, but he sent it back to me, begging me to keep it. Last year he wrote to me that he was threatened by a certain danger, and he wished to have back the talisman. I at once returned it to him, and it is now in his hands.’”

* * * * *

“_July 10._--Dining at Louisa, Lady Ashburton’s, I sat near George N. Curzon, eldest son of Lord Scarsdale, the sort of fellow I take to at once, and we made great friends in one evening, unfolding ourselves in a way which makes me sure we shall meet again.”

* * * * *

“_July 11._--Dined at Lord Foley’s. George Russell was there. He said he had said something about Lord Salisbury’s carriage to the Duchess Dowager of Cleveland. ‘I did not know Lord Salisbury had a carriage,’ said the old lady. ‘Surely, my dear Duchess?’--‘No; I have even heard it said that the present Marquis of Salisbury goes about in a vehicle called a brougham!’

“Sir Robert and Lady Sheffield were going down to visit some friends near West Drayton, where a carriage was to meet them. Arriving in the dark, they found a carriage waiting and jumped into it. After driving some way, they entered a park and drove up to the door of a great house. They were shown up to a long gallery, where a little old lady was arranging some books. ‘Ah! some companion,’ they thought, and for a time they took no notice of her. At last they said, ‘Is Lady ---- not coming down soon?’--‘I am not cognisant of the movements of my Lady ----,’ said the old lady very sharply, rapping her ebony stick violently on the floor; ‘but you are under a misapprehension. This is Osterley Park, and I--am the Duchess of Cleveland.’ And then subsiding into her most gracious manner,--‘And now, whilst my carriage is getting ready to take you on to Lady ----, I hope you will allow me to have the pleasure of giving you some tea.’”

* * * * *

“_July 14._--Dinner at Lady Charlemont’s. Mr. Synge, who declared at once his belief in ghostly apparitions, told a pretty story of a clergyman in Somersetshire who had ridden to the bank and drawn out all the money for his poor-club, which he was taking back with him, when he became aware of another horseman riding by his side, who did not speak, and who, at a certain point of the road beyond a hollow, disappeared. In that hollow highwaymen, who knew the clergyman was coming with the money, were waiting to attack him; but they refrained, ‘for there are two of them,’ they said. It was his guardian angel.

“Mr. Synge told us that his grandfather was the magistrate to whom the man came who said that he ought to warn Mr. Percival because he had twice dreamt of a man in a white plush coat with purple glass buttons who was going to murder him. But his grandfather restrained the man from saying anything on so slight a foundation as a dream. After the murder of Mr. Percival, the man went up to London, and in the prisoner in Newgate recognised at once the man he had seen, and found him wearing the white plush coat with the purple glass buttons.

“Lady Charlemont talked much of the Lord Chancellor Thurlow. He asked for the Bishopric of Durham for his brother. George IV. replied that he thought Lord Thurlow should have known that that Bishopric, being a principality, could only be given to persons of the very highest rank and connections. ‘It is therefore, your Majesty,’ said Lord Thurlow, ‘that I have asked for it for the brother of the Lord High Chancellor of England.’

“A clergyman desirous of a living went to the Bishop of London and asked him for an introduction to the Lord Chancellor Thurlow. The Bishop said, ‘I should be willing to give it, but an introduction from me would defeat the very end you have in view.’ However, the clergyman persisted in his request, and the introduction was given.

“The Lord Chancellor received him with fury. ‘So that damned scoundrel the Bishop of London has given you an introduction: as it is he who has introduced you, you will certainly not get the living.’--‘Well, so the Bishop said, my lord,’ replied the clergyman. ‘Did the Bishop say so?’ thundered Lord Thurlow: ‘then he’s a damned liar, and I’ll prove him so: you _shall_ have the living,’ and the man got it.

“At Arundel the guests were astonished by the butler coming in one day abruptly and saying to the Duke, ‘May it please your Grace, Lord Thurlow has laid an egg.’ It was one of the owls which existed at Arundel till the time of the present owner. Lord Thurlow’s daughter, going round their cages in the wall, had stopped opposite one of them, and, looking at the blinking bird, said, ‘Why, he’s just like papa.’ The bird was ever after called Lord Thurlow.”

* * * * *

“_July 16._--At Mrs. Ralph Dutton’s I took Mrs. Procter in to dinner--Barry Cornwall’s widow, always full of interest and excellence, and of many unknown kindnesses. She talked of her early days, of the charm of Monckton Milnes when young--his brightness and vigour: of the decadence of society now, when at least a thousand persons were invited to Grosvenor House whom our grandmothers would not consent to be in the same room with; but that society now required high seasoning, and royalty the strongest pepper of all: that in former days no guest would have continued in a house where he was received on entering by a wet sponge from ----: that the abbreviation of P. B.’s in use for ‘professional beauties’ was a sign of the depth to which we have fallen.

“Mrs. Stewart told me a characteristic story of Mrs. Procter’s wit. ‘The Lionel Tennysons--dear good excellent people--asked that woman Sarah Bernhardt, the actress, to luncheon, asked her to go all the way to them in Kensington, and invited some good, quiet, simple folk to meet her, just trusting in his prestige as the laureate’s son. I need hardly say that, though they waited luncheon for Sarah Bernhardt till four o’clock, she never came. She knew the company she was to meet, and she did not think it worth while. They told Mrs. Procter of it. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘if people will invite monkeys, they must provide them with _nuts_.’

“‘Dear Mrs. Procter is so satirical,’ says Mrs. Stewart, ‘that when I go to her and find other people in the room, I always stay till the last, that she may have no one to discuss me with.’

“When Mrs. Procter dies, her last daughter will probably go into a convent. She has had three daughters; two have become Roman Catholics, and one is already in a convent. ‘I have another daughter, but you will never see her,’ is the only way in which the mother alludes to this.”

* * * * *

“_July 17._--Sat by Matthew Arnold at breakfast. Speaking of the odd effect misspelt words often produced, he quoted a begging letter he had just received from a lady who said she had a decided claim upon charity, being ‘the sole support of an aged Ant’ (_sic_).

“Called on Mrs. Stewart. She said that the evening before she had asked Mr. Froude what she should reply to Mr. Tennyson if he asked her what she thought of his last wretched poems. ‘Oh, say, “Blessed sir, would I presume?”’ returned Mr. Froude.

“Two days ago I went to Lady Airlie’s, where a large party was collected to hear Mr. Browning read. I never heard any one, even a child of ten, read so atrociously. It was two of his own poems--‘Good News to Ghent’ and ‘Ivan Ivanowitch,’ the latter always most horrible and unsuitable for reading aloud, but in this case rendered utterly unintelligible by the melodramatic vocal contortions of the reader.”

* * * * *

“_July 23._--By invitation of Mrs. Stephen Winkworth to see Lewis Campbell’s translation of the ‘Agamemnon’ acted. Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin took the parts of both Clytemnestra and Cassandra, and was very grand in both, especially the latter. She has an infinity of action, but it is all graceful and very Greek. The chorus loses much, because each of the old men is made to say his speech separately, whereas in the original Greek they evidently all talked together.”

* * * * *

“_July 24, Milford._--I have ended a very happy season by leaving London immediately after the marriage of Evelyn Bromley Davenport with Tom Legh of Lyme. Here, at Mrs. Greville’s, I find Lady Archibald Campbell, a pale, beautiful young woman, strangely occupied with spiritualism, and Mr. Watts, one of the principal writers in the _Athenæum_, and the man who, living with Swinburne, has, by his personal influence, cured him of the habit of drinking.”

* * * * *

“_July 25._--A hot Sunday afternoon, spent chiefly in sitting on the terrace, where great orange-trees are set in tubs as in a French garden, and in listening to the discursive conversation of Mr. Watts and Lady Archie about Swinburne and Rossetti.

“I am very sorry, now that it is too late, that, in my last visit here, when asked to choose which I would be taken to see, I did not say George Eliot instead of Tennyson. Mrs. Greville went to see her with an aching heart after Lewes’s death, and ‘found them all in the drawing-room playing battledore and shuttlecock, nothing changed but the man.’

“Mrs. Greville’s mother, sweet Mrs. Thellusson, was one of the claimants for the great Thellusson fortune--an unsuccessful claimant. She is lovely still in her old age. Mrs. Greville has a picture of a young man in a dress of the beginning of this century. She described his return lately from India. ‘He came to Milford, and paid me endless attentions and made me endless presents; I really thought he wished to marry me, until he proposed to--my mother!’”[349]

* * * * *

“_Ammerdown Park, August 2._--I have been several days with Lady Waterford--always charming, always so full of holy teaching, that she recalls the closing lines of St. Patrick’s Hymn--

‘Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.’

Yet this visit leaves nothing especially to remember except a story of Lord Waterford pursuing a robber who had broken into his house, finding him in a public-house some four miles off, and convicting him amongst a number of other men by insisting upon feeling all their hearts; the man whose heart was still beating quickly was the one who had just done running.

“On Saturday I came to Wells, the lovely old city of orchards and clear running brooks, whence Lord Hylton fetched me to Ammerdown. Sir Augustus Paget and all his family are here, the daughter a lovely, bright, natural girl,[350] and the sons, Victor and Ralph, most charming, kind-hearted, winning fellows. We have been to Mells--an overgrown park with pretty natural features, which was the favourite manor of the Abbot of Glastonbury. At the dissolution, Mr. Horner was sent to take up the parchments of the abbatial lands to Windsor, and for better security took them in a pasty. On the way he put in his thumb and pulled out for himself the title-deeds of Mells, the best plum of all, which has ever since remained in the family of ‘Little Jack Horner.’”

* * * * *

“_Ryde, Oct. 10._--I have spent a quiet, peaceful summer: so little from the outer world seems to ruffle me now, and the storms of four terrible years have been succeeded by six years of calm. It has been a constant pleasure to visit the dear Mrs. Grove, now confined to the upper floor of her house. Charlotte Leycester has been long at Holmhurst, and other guests have come and gone, relics from my dearest Mother’s life, and waifs and strays from my own, by many of whom I am sadly overrated; the moral of which is, I suppose, that one should try really to clamber up to that high shelf on which one is placed in imagination. Of original work I have done little enough, except one article on ‘Lucca’ for _Good Words_.

“One of my chief occupations has been editing the life of the nun Amalie von Lassaux, translated from the German by Fräulein von Weling. As ‘Sister Augustine,’ her story possesses that interest which is always attached to a struggle in the cause of truth amid many persecutions and torments, rather mental than physical.

“I was away twice for a few days--first with young Mrs. Hamilton Seymour at Aylesford, a charming little old town on the sluggish Medway, with ‘The Friars’ close by, where pleasant Lady Aylesford lives in a beautiful old house, with oak staircase, gateway, water-gate, clipped yew-trees and terraces. Then I was two days at Hampton Court with witty old Lady Lyndhurst, and greatly delighted in the glories of the old palace and its gardens. And now I am with dear old George Liddell,[351] enjoying this otherwise dull watering-place through his genial hospitality.”

* * * * *

“_Melchet, Hants, Oct. 23._--From Ryde I went to Amesbury to stay with Sir Edmund and Lady Antrobus, who are some of the kindest and most hospitable people in London, and have a fine house in Piccadilly. Their house in Wiltshire is very fine too, though it has never been finished. Gay’s Duchess of Queensberry lived there, and in the grounds are a cave and summer-house where the poet wrote verses to her. But the great interest of Amesbury lies in its being the scene of Guinevere’s penance, and it recalls Tennyson’s poem in the swirling mists which arise with morning and evening. Each morning we drew at Stonehenge amongst the hoary and mighty stones standing out against the ethereal lights and shadows of the plain.

“Next, I went to Rushmore, to which the Lane Fox’s have succeeded, with the name of Pitt Rivers and £36,000 a year, since the death of the 6th Lord Rivers. It is a dull country-house on Cranbourne Chase--swooping moors sprinkled with thorn-trees or thick woods of hazel. I was taken to see Shaftesbury; Cranbourne, the fine old house of the Salisburys; and Wardour, with noble cedars too closely overhanging the ruins of its castle. Lord Arundel lives in the Park at Wardour, in an immense house which he is too poor to keep in repair. He has another place somewhere near the sea, where his grandfather went to reside, to the great discomfiture of a gang of smugglers, who had previously had sole possession, and who tried to frighten him away by ghostly sights and sounds, but in vain. One night Lord Arundel was sitting in his room, having locked the door, when some one knocked. He demanded who was there, when a voice said, ‘Open and you will see:’ He opened it, and found a very rough-looking man with a keg of spirits under his arm. The man said, ‘Well, my Lord, we’ve done our best to frighten you, but you won’t be frightened, so I’ve, come to make a clean breast of it, and I’ve brought you a little offering. I only hope you won’t be hard on us.’ ‘Oh, dear no, I won’t be hard on you,’ said Lord Arundel; and Lady Marian Alford, to whom he told the story at Rome when she was four years old, vividly remembers his vigorous assertion, ‘And the smuggler gave me the very best Hollands I ever had in my life.’

“From Rushmore, after a visit to the old Shipley home at Twyford, I came here to Lady Ashburton. Melchet is a magnificent house in a beautiful country, and is filled with art-treasures of every kind. Lady Marian is here, always pleasant with her ripple of conversation and anecdote. She has been very amusing about her mother’s parrot, which used to hop about upon the lawn. One day it was carried off by an eagle. Old John Tooch, one of the dynasty of John Toochs who worked in the garden, was mowing the lawn, and as the parrot, in the eagle’s gripe, was sailing over his head, he heard a voice in the air call out, ‘We’re ridin’ noo, John Tooch, we’re ridin’ noo;’ at which strange sound the eagle was so dreadfully frightened that he let the parrot fall, so that John Tooch took it home to its cage again.”

* * * * *

“_Melchet, Oct. 28._--Yesterday we went to Longford--Lord Radnor’s--a great castellated house in a dull park, with no view, but very fine pictures.

“In the morning the (Melchet) footman woke me with the news that the house had been broken into. The robbers had entered through the drawing-room window, perambulated the lower apartments, drunk up all the wine in the dining-room, and found all the valuables too big to carry off!”

* * * * *

“_Oct. 29._--A charming visit to Broadlands, Lord Mount-Temple’s--the people so full of genial goodness, the house most comfortable and gardens lovely. Lady Mount-Temple--in whom, as Miss Tollemache, Ruskin saw such statuesque severity with womanly sweetness joined--a marvellous union of beauty, goodness, and intelligence. The grounds, with fountain, river, well-grouped trees, and a Palladian summer-house, are like a beautiful Claude-Lorraine picture. The same landscape--of a river, winding amongst cedar-shadowed lawns--forms the predella to Rossetti’s picture of ‘The Blessed Damozel.’”

* * * * *

“_Holmhurst, Nov. 13._--Mr. and Mrs. Paterson have been here for the day. He told me two stories:--

“A lady was awoke in the night with the disagreeable sense of not being alone in the room, and soon felt a thud upon her bed. There was no doubt that some one was moving to and fro in the room, and that hands were constantly moving over her bed. She was so dreadfully frightened that at last she fainted. When she came to herself, it was broad daylight, and she found that the butler had walked in his sleep and had laid the table for fourteen upon her bed.

“A lunatic, who had escaped for some time from his asylum, was eventually captured. When he came in and saw the keeper who was accustomed to take care of him, he said, ‘Well, I’ve been very much occupied since I went away: I’ve been occupied in being married.’--‘Well, and whom have you married?’ said the keeper. ‘Oh, I’ve married the Devil’s daughter.’--‘Well, I hope it’s a happy union?’--‘Oh, very, thank you,’ said the lunatic; ‘only I don’t much like the old people.’”

* * * * *

“_Holmhurst, Nov. 24._--Last week I was for two days at Cambridge as the guest of Jock Wallop, the best and kindest of hosts, under whose popular auspices I saw the present undergraduate life to perfection. There is a most charming set of fellows there now, all delighted to be young, and not aiming at juvenile senility, as was the fashion in my day at Oxford.”

* * * * *

“_Dec. 16._--Several Midland county visits afford nothing to recollect. Certainly country-house visits are a lottery. One old lady said, ‘My dear, I _am_ so glad to see you. It is so delightful to see any one _at all_ pleasant. In London one can have any agreeable company one likes, but you know God Almighty fills one’s house in the country.’

“I have, however, been to George Curzon at Oxford. He is most delightful, and sure to become distinguished. At the meeting of the Conservative ‘Canning Club’ I heard a most capital paper on Ireland by young Edward Arnold. Afterwards I was three days at Sherborne, meeting, amongst other less interesting elements, the ever-charming Dowager Lady Craven. Lady Sherborne sang in a way which would move the heart of a basilisk. The country around Sherborne was the scene of innumerable battles in Saxon times, commemorated in the names of the fields and farms, which are supposed to owe their fertility to the carnage with which they had been covered. This supposition makes the peasants eager for the use of bone-dust, which they believe to be imported from the plains of Waterloo. If a field, after having been thus manured, still yields no crop, they say ‘Waterloo bean’t no use here!’”

* * * * *

I spent the Christmas of 1880 again with the kind Lowthers at Ampthill, meeting, as before, Louisa, Lady Ashburton, and going, as before, to spend a day at Woburn. In January 1881 I was at Bretton with the Beaumonts, meeting Julia, Lady Jersey, and a large party.

We went to see Nostell, a very grand but little known house of the Winns, full of splendid things, glorious tapestries, china, Chippendale furniture, but, most remarkable of all, a doll’s house of the last century, with miniature fairy furniture, exquisitely carved and painted, a doll trousseau with point lace, and a Liliputian service of plate.

We also went a long drive to Stainborough (Wentworth Castle), through a country which may be pretty in summer clearness, but which is hideously black in winter. The house is a great Italian palace, half Queen Anne, half older, with little temples in the grounds, the building of one of which is described by Evelyn. Inside there are fine tapestries, and many pictures of the Stuarts, ascribed to Vandyck, but probably copies. Lady Harriet Wentworth, who showed us everything herself, gave us the characteristic of her life when she said “I do so hate the _thraldom_ of civilisation.” Her stately rooms have no charm for her, and, though they are so immense, she declares she cannot breathe in them, and she lives entirely and has all her meals in the conservatory, with a damp, warm, marshy climate, from which she does not scruple to emerge through the bitter winds of the Yorkshire wolds (for the conservatory does not join the house) with nothing extra on. From Bretton I went to Tortworth--Lord Ducie’s--in Gloucestershire.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Jan. 11, 1881._--There is a large party here (at Tortworth), but one forgets all its other elements in dear Mrs. Duncan Stewart. ‘L’esprit pétille sur son visage.’ Never was there a more marvellous coruscation of wit and wisdom; and she not merely evades ever saying an ill-natured thing of any one, but, where there is positively _nothing_ of good to be said, has some apt line of old poetry or some proverb to bring forward urging mercy--‘Mercy, so much grander than justice.’

“Last night she wanted to introduce me to Mrs. Grey, an American lady who is staying here. ‘I cannot do it better,’ she said, ‘than in the words of Alfred d’Orsay when he brought up Landseer to me, saying, “Here, Mrs. Stewart, is Landseer, who can do everything better than he can paint,”--so here, Mrs. Grey, is Mr. Hare, who can do everything better than he can write.’

“To-day, at luncheon, Mrs. Stewart talked much of Paris, and of her intercourse with a French physician there. Dr. ---- spoke to her of the happy despatch, and unhesitatingly allowed that when he saw a patient condemned to hopeless suffering, he practised it. ‘But of course you insist on the acquiescence both of the patients and of their families,’ said Mrs. Stewart. ‘_Never_,’ shouted Dr. ----. ‘I should be a mean sneak indeed if I waited for _that_.’

“She talked much of George Sand and of her journey to Italy, from which three books resulted, _her’s_, ‘Elle et Lui:’ _his_, ‘Lui et Elle,’ and ‘Lettres d’un Voyageur.’

“She said his was most horrible.

“Afterwards Lord ---- was in a box at the opera in Paris with a number of other young men. There was a knock at the door, and George Sand came in. ‘Il y a place pour moi?’--‘Certainly,’ they said. By-and-by one of them inquired, ‘Et Musset?’--‘Oh, il voyage en Italie,’ she replied. Presently the door opened, and a man came in--haggard, dishevelled, worn to a degree. It was Musset. He shook hands with one and other of the young men. ‘Et pas un mot pour moi?’ said George Sand. ‘Non,’ he exclaimed. ‘Je vous haïs, je vous deteste! c’est que vous avez tué le bonheur de ma vie.’

“Mrs. Stewart talked of the great want of appreciation of Byron--of his wonderful satire, evinced by the lines in the ‘Age of Bronze’ on Marie Louise and Wellington: of his philosophy, for which she cited the lines on Don Quixote: of his marvellous condensation and combination, for which she repeated those on the burning of Moscow.

“She also talked of Trollope’s novels, and said how Trollope had told her of the circumstances which led to the death of Mrs. Proudie. He had gone up to write at the round table in the library at the Athenaeum, and spread his things all over it. It was early in the morning, and there is seldom any one there at that time. On this occasion, however, two country clergymen were sitting on either side of the fire reading one of his own books: after a time they began to talk about them. ‘It is a great pity Trollope does not get some fresh characters,’ said one. ‘Yes,’ said the other, ‘one gets so tired of meeting the same people again and again, especially of Mrs. Proudie.’ Then Trollope got up, and planting himself on the rug between them with his back to the fire, said, ‘Gentlemen, I do not think it would be honest to listen to you talking about my books any more, without telling you that I am the victim; but I will add that I quite agree with what you have been saying, and that I will give you my word of honour that Mrs. Proudie shall die in the very next book I write.’”

* * * * *

“_Jan. 12._--Dr. Asa Grey, who is here, a Professor of Harvard University, is one of the most famous botanists living; but he is also a very charming person. Lowell describes how his

‘indefatigable hours Have been as gaily innocent And fragrant as his flowers.’[352]

“Mrs. Stewart talked of Madame Jerome Bonaparte, _née_ Paterson--her beauty, her cleverness, her father to whom she always wrote of her _succès de société_, looking down upon him; but he could always avenge himself; he could always write to her, ‘My dear Betsy.’ ‘She would tell him how she had been received at this court and at that, and then would come his answer with “My dear Betsy.” Oh, it was a terrible revenge.’

“She talked of the society of her youth, when it was real society, for people were never in a hurry. ‘One of the marked figures then was Lady Cork,[353] who, after eighty, always dressed in white, with a little white pulled bonnet and a gold-headed stick. Another, whom you are none of you old enough to remember, was Lady Morgan, a little old lady, who used to rouge up to the eyes. M. Fonblanque--he was the editor of the _Examiner_--used to say, “She is just a spark of hell-fire, and is soon going back to her native element.”

“‘I wonder,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘what has become of an early picture which I remember of Leighton’s. A lady went to all the great artists in London to get them to paint a dream of hers, and they refused, and Leighton, who was quite a young man, undertook it. She dreamt that she had died, and that she had gone up--up to Christ, and that He had turned her back, and she said, “Why, Lord?” and He replied, “Because your work on earth is not yet done.”

“‘Leighton painted the Saviour in a glory of yellow light, and the woman being turned back by Him.’

“This reminiscence led to one of a different kind from Mr. Ashley Ponsonby.

“‘Creswick the actor was once at a dinner where Irving absorbed all the conversation and allowed no one else to speak. At last he could stand it no longer, and turning round to his next neighbour, said, “I had such an extraordinary dream last night.” Of course, the whole party were attention at once.’

“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I dreamt that I was dead, and that I went up to the gates of heaven and knocked at them. ‘Who are you?’ said St. Peter. ‘I am Mr. Creswick.’--‘What, Creswick the Academician?’--‘No, Creswick the actor.’--‘Oh, then I can’t let you in here; we don’t admit any actors here,’ said St. Peter, and he turned me away. Dreadfully crestfallen, I went and sat down under a juniper-tree, and watched other people arriving at the gates. Many of my friends came and were let in. Then I took heart and went and knocked again, and when St. Peter said again that I must go away, for he could not admit any actors, I said, ‘But really that is not the case, for you have let in Mr. Irving.’--‘That is true,’ said St. Peter, ‘but--he _was no actor_.’”

“‘Take care,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘or you will become that most dreadful of all things, a self-observant valetudinarian. I was once in the house with a lady, who, after talking of nothing else for an hour, said, “I won’t speak of my own health, for, when I was young, a dear old wise and judicious woman said to me, ‘When anybody asks you how you are, always say you are very well, for nobody cares.’”

“‘Many people fall into sin,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘merely because they are tired of the monotony of innocence.’

“‘He was very fallible,’ she said, ‘and yet capable of becoming that greatest of all things--a good man.’

“‘I think it was a bishop who said, “Most people now go to seek their ancestors at the Jardin des Plantes; for my part, I am content with the Garden of Eden.”’

“‘Mr. Pigott is a finished critic, but with the innocence of a child picking daisies.’

“‘It was one of the cases in which the highest and the lowest motives combine, and oh! in life there are so many of those cases.’”

* * * * *

“_January 12._--Mrs. Stewart has been talking of the cases in which a lie is justifiable. Of herself she said, ‘There was once a case in which I thought I ought to tell a lie, but I was not sure. I went to Dr. and Mrs. Bickersteth, and I asked them. They would only answer, “We cannot advise you to tell a lie;” they would not advise it, but they did not forbid it. So when a husband came to question me about his wife, I equivocated. I said, “She was certainly not seduced by that man.” He said to me very sternly and fiercely, “That is no answer; is my wife innocent? I will believe you if you say she is.” And I said, “She is.” I said it hesitatingly, for I knew it was false, and _he_ knew it was false; he knew that I had lied to him, and he did not believe me in his heart; but he was glad to believe me outwardly, and he was grateful to me, and that husband and wife lived together till death. I believe that was one of the cases in which it is right to tell a lie. You will say that it might lead me to tell many others, but I don’t think it has. Stopford Brooke once said that strict merciless truth was the most selfish thing he knew.”

“Mrs. Stewart also told us--

“Dudley Smith, as a very young man, went out to China, and was employed in the opium trade. He then married and had several children. When he was thirty-three his conscience began to work, and he felt the abuses of opium. He left the trade and became a wharfinger, in which profession he made some money, though it was not nearly so lucrative as the occupation he had given up, in which he had made £12,000.

“When he was thirty-five, though he had then a wife and several children, Dudley Smith brought the £12,000 to his man of business, saying that it burnt a hole in his pocket, and desiring him to so invest it as to realise £500 a year for a mission to the Chinese, from whom it was taken. This story is delightful to me. It reminds me of a saying of old Mr. Planchet’s, which meant, though I cannot remember the exact words--

‘Of heroes and heroines I am sick grown; The only real ones are those that are unknown.’

We have been to luncheon at Berkeley Castle to-day. Lady Fitzhardinge, fat to a degree, is charming, and has the most wonderful knowledge of all the delicate _finesses_ of form and colour, and the application of them to furniture. Her rooms are quite beautiful, everything composing the most harmonious picture, down to a string of blue beads suspended from a yellow vase. Lord Fitzhardinge came in to luncheon with Lord Worcester, Lord Guildford, and another man--four statues! Not one of them spoke a word, I believe because not one of them had a word to say, except about racehorses, about which we none of us could say anything. The castle relics are most interesting--Sir Francis Drake’s furniture, Queen Elizabeth’s plate, bequeathed to her cousin Lord Hunsdon, and the last prayer of Edward VI., written out by his sister herself, in the tiniest of little jewel-embossed volumes.”

* * * * *

“_Jan. 15._--Mrs. Stewart has been talking much of her great delight in the works of Ampère, and of the intense devotion, the passionate love of the younger Ampère for Madame Recamier. She was guilty of a _trahison_ to him, though. When he was at Weimar, he wrote to her a private letter, telling her particulars about all the people there, which he had better not have told, but he wrote them in strict confidence. She made that letter public. ‘My dear Mr. Hare,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘I have never read any letter more exquisitely, more tenderly pathetic than that which Ampère wrote her when he heard this--a letter struggling between his old respect and admiration and the feeling that his idol had fallen, that he could not but reproach her.

“When Lowell (the American poet and minister) was describing his wife’s terrible illness, he said, ‘My dear Mrs. Stewart, I would have given Job ten and won.’

“After Lady Fitzhardinge came, Mrs. Stewart talked much of her acquaintance with Brother Ignatius. She was at the place of her son-in-law, Mr. Rogerson, in Scotland. One day out walking, Mrs. Rogerson met a young man, of wonderful beauty, dressed as a monk, with bare feet and sandals. He asked her whether they were near any inn, and said, ‘The fact is, I have with me two sisters, Sister Gertrude and another, and a brother--Brother Augustine. And the brother is very ill, possibly ill to death, and we cannot go any farther.’ So Mrs. Rogerson made them come to her house, and showed them infinite kindness, ‘giving them at once water for their feet and all Scripture hospitality.’ Brother Augustine was very ill, very ill indeed, and they all remained at Mrs. Rogerson’s house three weeks, during which Mrs. Stewart became very intimate with them, especially with Brother Ignatius and Sister Gertrude. They used to go out for the day together, ‘and then, in some desolate strath, Brother Ignatius would sing, sing hymns like an archangel, and then he would kneel on the grass and pray.’

“Many years afterwards, Mrs. Stewart heard that Brother Ignatius was going to preach in London--‘some very bad part of London,’ and she went. The room was packed and crowded, but she was in the first row. He preached, a beautiful young monk, leaning against a pillar. ‘There were at least a hundred of his attitudes worth painting,’ but there was nothing in his words. At last a little girl thought he looked faint, and brought him a smelling-bottle, which she presented to him kneeling. ‘He smelled at it, and then seeing me, an old woman, near him, he sent it on to me, and I smelled at it too. Afterwards I stayed to see him, and we talked together in a small room, talked till midnight. Then he gave me his blessing, gave it me very solemnly, and afterwards I said, ‘And God bless you too, my dear young man.’

“In the evening Mrs. Stewart spoke much of the Sobieski Stuarts--their gallant appearance when young, and their change into ‘the mildew of age.’

“Apropos of the last words of St. Evremond, ‘Je vais savoir le grand peut-être,’ Mrs. Stewart mentioned Mrs. Grote having said to her at their last meeting, ‘I trust, dear, that you are living, as I am, in _respectful hope_.’

“This led to much talk of Mrs. Grote, who had died (Dec. 29, 1878) when I was away at Rome with the Prince Royal, and Mrs. Stewart described how, when she returned from Hanover after the fall of the royal family, and was quite full of events there, she went down at once to visit the Grotes in the country. ‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Grote, ‘I cannot enter into your feelings about all your princesses and duchesses, but as regards your king, I can enter into them fully: he has lived “as it is written.”’ Mrs. Stewart wrote this to the King, who knows Shakspeare to his finger-ends, and he said it did him more good than anything else anybody wrote or said to him. As long as he lived, he and Mrs. Grote exchanged stories and messages afterwards, through Mrs. Stewart.

“Lady William Russell said with much truth of Mr. and Mrs. Grote, ‘He is ladylike, and she is such a perfect gentleman.’

“When Lady Catherine Clive was painting her town-hall at Hereford, she was very anxious to find new, not conventional, attributes for some of her allegorical figures; she especially wished for something instead of the scales of ‘Justice.’ Mrs. Stewart wrote this to Mrs. Grote: ‘Tell your friend,’ she answered, ‘not to try to struggle against conventionalities. Tell her to be content with the scales: she will come to find the cross conventional next.’

“When Lady Eastlake undertook to write Mrs. Grote’s life after her death, she asked Mrs. Stewart for all her ‘jottings’ of Mrs. Grote’s conversations, but she made no use of them. She was so anxious that every one should find the book too short, that she really omitted almost everything characteristic. She wrote her regrets afterwards to Mrs. Stewart, who answered, ‘You are suffering, my dear, from a granted prayer,’--for, in fact, the book was so short and dry that it passed almost unnoticed.

“Mrs. Stewart spoke again of how far a lie might be made right by circumstances--giving a wrong direction to a man who was in pursuit of another to kill him, &c., and, when some one objected, dwelt upon its being far greater to be noble for others than holy for one’s self. Some one said that in this case all should follow the inner voice, which would tell them truly what their real duty was. She replied, ‘Yes, having formed your character by the Master without, you may then act in a crisis by the voice within, which will never be false to your life’s teachings.... But perhaps,’ she added, ‘I should say, like Dr. Johnson, “I have been speaking in crass ignorance, according to the failings of my fallible human nature”’ (and she repeated some lovely lines on Mary Magdalen, from Moore’s ‘Rhymes of the Road’);[354] ‘and yet, may we all, whilst acting like fallible human beings as we are, trust respectfully in God’s mercy,--though speaking of no glorious future as reserved for us, lest He should say, “What hast thou done to deserve that?”’

“The letters written to the _Morning Post_ from Hanover during the last days of the monarchy, and signed H. S., were by Mrs. Stewart: those in the _Times_, bearing the same signature, were by another lady.

“After being for a time with Mrs. Stewart and hearing her talk, I feel how great the decay of conversation is since my childhood, when there were many people who knew how to _converse_, not merely to _utter_. Scarcely any one now ever says what they really think, and there is an unwholesome striving after aestheticism, Louis Quatorze, blue china, &c., which another age, if it remembers it, will think most ridiculous.”

* * * * *

“_London, Jan. 24._--To Miss Bromley, who had been on Saturday to take leave of Carlyle, to whom she has been the most faithful of friends for many years. He has been sinking for some time, full of power, pathos, and patience. He woke out of what was supposed to be a death stupor to recognise her, and pressed her hand to his lips.”

* * * * *

“_Feb. 26._--Went by appointment to see the Queen of Sweden, who is at Claridge’s Hotel for two nights. She was most kind and gracious, and said that she was glad to thank me in person for all that I had been to the Crown Prince. She talked of her illness and its anxieties; but there were many other people waiting for an audience, and there was no time for any real conversation.”

* * * * *

“_March 1._--Met Lady Lyveden at dinner at General Higginson’s. She described Mrs. Grote saying one day, ‘I have to go out this morning, my dear; it’s not my usual time, and in fact it’s very inconvenient to me, but then you know, my dear, it’s _an affliction job_.’

“Mrs. Grote, to the last, was very proud of her appearance. Her hands and feet she was especially proud of. One day Lady Lyveden asked her to come in the evening to meet some pleasant people in her neighbouring house in Savile Row. She would not do it. ‘I shall not come, my dear,’ she said, ‘because I never go out; but besides that, I _could_ not come, for, if I did, I should have to put my well-formed figure into one of your abominably low arm-chairs.’[355]

“There was a charm about her primitive household. There was not one of her servants who spoke of her otherwise than ‘the Missis.’

“After dinner, she would leave ‘the historian,’ as she called him, in his study, and come up to the drawing-room, where she would talk to her guests and be most entertaining. At nine o’clock, tea would be brought up--such a tea as one never sees now, with tablecloth, muffins, cakes, &c. Then she would say to the servant, ‘Bring up the historian’--and the historian was ‘brought up.’ He was vastly civil, of the old school, and wore a great deal of frill. He would take his place opposite the table, and immediately taking a large clean pocket-handkerchief from his pocket, spread it very deliberately over his knees, after which a dog jumped up and sat upon it. Then he would say, as to a perfect stranger, ‘And now, Mrs. Grote, will you kindly favour us with a sonata?’ and Mrs. Grote, who was an admirable musician, would play a very long sonata indeed; after which he would say, ‘Thank you, Mrs. Grote. I am sure Lady Lyveden joins with me in being very much obliged to you for your beautiful sonata.’[356]

“Lady Eastlake’s written portrait misses all the wit, all the acted comedy of Mrs. Grote’s real life. She made, however, a capital pencil sketch (which Lady Lyveden has) of Mrs. Grote, who was greatly pleased with it.”

* * * * *

“_March 9._--Met Princess Mary at luncheon at Lady Harrington’s, who only presented me by ‘Here is Augustus.’ The Princess was good enough to talk to me for a long time afterwards.”

* * * * *

“_March 22._--Dined at Lady Airlie’s, sitting by Lady Herbert of Lea, who talked much of her long residence in Sicily, with which she was connected through her mother. She went about a great deal amongst the poor at Palermo, generally accompanied by a Sister of Charity, and on one occasion nursed a sick brigand. Soon afterwards, her children, going to the Bay of Mondello to pick up shells, were seized by brigands, but as soon as they found whose children they were, they sent them back to her safe. Another day, Lady Herbert was returning from a village, whither she had been on some office of charity, to Palermo, as it was almost dark. There were high walls on either side of the way. Suddenly the Sister of Charity who was with her began to go so fast that she could not keep up with her. ‘Non posso, Sorella mia, non posso cammináre più,’ she said. ‘But look behind you,’ said the Sister. She looked, and saw three brigands following them. It would have been impossible to get away, so she waited till they came up and said, ‘Che vuole?’ They begged her to excuse them: they were sent by their chief to protect her as far as the walls of Palermo: _they_ knew her, but others might not, and they were ordered to ascertain that she came to no harm.

“A Hungarian Count and Countess were at dinner. He talked of fashion very amusingly. He said he had learnt much from his herdsman, a very clever man (‘he was hung afterwards, poor man, but he was very clever’), who chose the animal to bear the bell, which was accustomed to go in the centre of the herd. He asked why this was, and the herdsman answered, ‘Because the one who goes first naturally runs first into all dangers, and when he has done it once or twice, the herd begin to find it out, and they cease to follow him; and the one who goes last is constantly left behind, and the herd begin to find it out, and they cease to follow _him_; but the one that is in the middle, and chooses the safest place, that is the one they know to be wise, and so, in any time of danger, they will assuredly follow him. The Count spoke of the mania for husband-murder which prevailed at Marseilles till it became quite a fashion. Six women were tried at the same assizes for murdering their husbands. In some of these cases there seemed something of reason or excuse, but at last there came a lady whose husband had been all that was most charming and delightful, and where the crime seemed incomprehensible. The judge pressed her as to her motive, and at first she said, ‘Ces dames me l’ont mis dans l’esprit,’ and, when urged further, ‘Mais, cela se fait à Marseilles!’

“The London world has been full of the ‘Reminiscences of Carlyle,’ published with furious haste by Froude a fortnight after his death. They have dwarfed their subject from a giant into a pigmy. His journal and letters speak well of no one except his own family, and assail with the utmost vituperation all who differed from him. For his wife there is a long wail of affection, which would be touching if the devotion had not begun after her death. ‘Never marry a genius,’ she said to Lady Ashburton; ‘I have done it, and suffered from it; but then, after my death I shall have an apotheosis’--and she has had it. Much of Carlyle’s virulence arose from the state of his health: he used to say, ‘I can wish the devil nothing worse than that he may have to digest with my stomach to all eternity; there will be no need of fire and brimstone then.’”

* * * * *

“_March 28._--Dined at Lady Lyveden’s. Sat by Lady S., who was very pleasant. She talked of Tennyson, who had been to stay with her. He desired his sons to let her know that he should like to be asked to read some of his poems in the evening. Nevertheless, when she asked him, he made a piece of work about it, and said to the other guests, ‘I do it, but I only do it because Lady S. absolutely insists upon it.’ He read badly and with too much emotion: over ‘Maud’ he sobbed passionately.

“Afterwards, at Lady Ridley’s party, Lord Houghton talked to me about Carlyle--of how his grimness, which was unrelieved in the ‘Reminiscences,’ was relieved in the _man_ by much kindly humour. He said that he and Lady Houghton were almost the only people spoken well of in the book. Mr. Spedding used to say that Carlyle always needed that kind of indulgence which most of us need in a fit of violent toothache.”

* * * * *

“_April 3._--Dined with old Lady Combermere, who declared that only two people ever had any excuse for living in the country, and they were Adam and Eve!”

* * * * *

“_April 8._--An amusing luncheon at Lady Sebright’s, with an immense party of actors, actresses, painters, literati, and ‘great ladies.’ It seemed a reversion of the old order of things when the actresses had said they ‘must inquire a little into the characters of the great ladies’ they were asked to meet!”

* * * * *

“_Holmhurst, April 9._--Lea says, ‘It’s seven weeks from Guttit to Aaster, and seven weeks from Aaster to Whissuntide.... You needna’ to tak’ any trouble about the clocks, for when Lady Day comes it ‘ull mak’ ’em all right, for there’s just twelve hours of sunshine on Lady Day.’

“‘After New Year’s day every day is just a cock’s ted longer than the last: a cock’s ted, you know, is just the time a cock stops between its crowings.’

“‘When we were any ways contrairy, my father used to say, “Yes, it’s always too wet or too fine: it’s always too hot or too cold: that’s the way of the world.’”

* * * * *

“_London, May 12._--To Mrs. Duncan Stewart, whom I found, after her severe illness, sitting in a picturesque wrapper reading old _Figaros_. ‘So much in them, you know, so much more than in any other newspaper.’ They called up reminiscences of Lady Blessington, whom she thinks Lady Airlie like, though without her perfect beauty: then of the trial of ... for forgery, she being a grand-daughter of Stephanie Lafitte, ‘whom I remember, not in her wedding-dress, but in one of her trousseau dresses, for it was velvet. All French girls--and I was a French girl then--are brought up to observe and think a great deal about dress, and it is terrible, quite horrible to them, that an unmarried girl should have a velvet dress: thus the remembrance clings to me.’

“Mrs. Stewart had been most alarmingly ill, but said she had rallied from the moment Alfred Denison paid her a visit. She had said to him that she had a presentiment she should not recover, and he had answered her that he had never been ill without such a presentiment, and that it had never come true.

“Yesterday I went to the Hollands to meet Princess Louise, and to tell her some stories which she had graciously wished to hear. I knew that I was to do this, but it was sufficiently formidable notwithstanding. The Princess felt that it must be so, and was very sympathetic, and as nice as she could be, talking first of my books, and saying that my Italian volumes were never out of her hands when she was in Italy, &c. I had been allowed to choose the rest of the audience, and the Childers, Northcotes, Goschens, Lady Taunton, and Mrs. Dundas were there.”

* * * * *

“_May 18._--Luncheon with Catherine Vaughan at the Temple. She was very full of a story of Sir F. Gore Ouseley. He took a house near London, and a young man went to stay with him, an atheist and a reprobate. The next morning this man came down an altered person, saying that he had heard a supernatural voice in the night, which had so horrified him that it would change his whole life--the voice had blasphemed in the most awful language. That day was November 22. The young man went away, and he really did change his life.

“The following year, on November 22, Sir F. Gore Ouseley suddenly opened his door at night, and saw at the end of the passage a brilliant light, and in the light the figure of an old man in a dressing-gown--luminous, and all the rays of light issuing from his figure. Suddenly the light went out: there was nothing more to be seen.

“Some time after, Sir F. Gore Ouseley went to visit the owner of the house he had rented, who lived at a distance. Whilst waiting for him, he was attracted by the picture of an old gentleman over the chimney-piece, and recognised the very man he had seen. When the master of the house came in, he said, ‘Pray excuse me, but whom does that portrait represent?’--‘Oh,’ answered the owner, ‘that is no one you are likely to have heard of: it is a grandfather of mine, who was a very bad man indeed: so bad, that, in fact, we never mention him.’ Afterwards, Sir Frederick found that he had strangled his wife in the very passage where he appeared, and had then committed suicide.

“Mr. Austen, Rector of Whitby, was present when Catherine told this. He said that Professor Owen had gone to stay at a house in Essex, where the hostess apologised for putting him into the haunted room. The next morning he was asked if he had heard anything. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have heard something, but I should like to say nothing about it till I have slept in that room again.’ The second morning he said that each night he had heard loud cries of a child proceeding from the hearthstone, and begged that a mason might be sent for and the stone removed. This was done, and the skull of a child was found beneath the stone. They buried it in the garden, and the cries have never been heard since.”

* * * * *

“_Holyrood Palace, May 27._--On the evening of the 14th, at Cleveland House, first Lady Aberdeen, and then Aberdeen, asked me to come hither with them as equerry, during their residence for the Lord High Commissionership. I stayed in London for Miss Beaumont’s wedding with Coplestone Bampfylde, and joined them on Friday, arriving at 9 P.M., when ninety guests were at dinner in the brilliantly lighted picture gallery, in which all the kings of Scotland were, painted to order by the same hand and from the same model. After dining by myself in a small room, I joined the party in the reception-rooms, where I entered at once upon my duties, which, for the most part, seem to be to talk right and left to every one I see. Each evening the Synods of the different districts dine, some eighty or a hundred clergymen, and I have generally found from my clerical neighbours that they regard it as their carnival, looked forward to throughout the whole year, and giving them much to talk of when they return home. Sometimes military, legal, or other classes are mixed with them. In the afternoons we have generally gone in state to visit institutions of one kind or other, the most interesting being the really beautiful Infirmary, built entirely by the people of Scotland, and the marvellous printing establishment of Messrs. Nelson. When we were at the latter, most hands were busy over the revised New Testament, in which there are 7000 alterations from the older edition, 2000 of them being important.”

* * * * *

“_Holyrood Palace, May 28._--It is an interesting life here, but a very fatiguing one--the hours and hours of standing, as for real royalty; the etiquette of always addressing Aberdeen as ‘Your Grace,’ and getting up when he comes into a room; the whirlpool of invitations to be sent, in which one is always being swallowed up.

“I have had little enough of individual conversation, except with Ally Gordon, the very pleasant aide-de-camp, and with Dr. Russell the chaplain, who has talked much of Carlyle. He said to a friend who visited him a short time before his death, ‘We are both old men now, and I daresay you find, as I do, that it is well to rest upon the simple answer to the first question in our Shorter Catechism--‘What is your object in life?’--‘To glorify my Maker and to enjoy Him for ever.’

“On Sunday we were at St. Giles’s in the morning, and in the afternoon had a long service and sermon in the picture-gallery. These Scotch services are most wearisome, and the long prayers, _informing_ the Almighty upon subjects on which He is all-wise and we are utterly ignorant, are most revolting.

“One especially feels the length of these prayers in standing, in great heat, in the General Assembly, where we occupy places near the throne, which is raised in a gallery: the Moderator and ex-Moderator sit at a table beneath, and the five hundred members occupy the body of the house. The Moderator, Dr. Smith, is a most beautiful and benign old man, full of simple and true Christianity, who looks, with his courtly manners, as if he never could wear anything _but_ his court dress. To-day we and about a hundred other guests breakfasted with him at his hotel.

“The Holyrood which struck such ‘dismay and terror’ into the hearts of the French emigrant princes is to me most captivating. I am often reminded of Hogg’s admirably descriptive lines:--

‘When Mary turned her wond’ring eyes On rocks that seemed to prop the skies; On palace, park, and battled pile; On lake and river, sea and isle; O’er woods and meadows bathed in dew, To distant mountains wild and blue; She thought the isle that gave her birth The sweetest, wildest land on earth.’

“On Sunday afternoon I went up Arthur’s Seat with Ally Gordon and the ladies-in-waiting--Lady Margaret Hely Hutchinson and Lady Mary Ashburnham. Most exquisite was the view over the sunlit slopes of Edinburgh in its purple haze. Besides this, I shall have many recollections of the delightful gardens of Holyrood in this still hot weather, the apple-trees bursting into bloom, the hoary chapel with its gothic arches and windows, the Salisbury Crags, deeply purple above, and fading into mist below.”

* * * * *

“_May 29._--All has gone well and smoothly, and there is great interest in the Holyrood life--the moving diorama of people, with the varying lights and shades of character which they display, the old-world aspect of all that has to be done, with the pages in their crimson and white liveries, the chaplain and purse-bearer in their court dresses, and the mounted guard. It has all been made especially pleasant by being on such thoroughly friendly terms with the ladies-in-waiting and with one of the aides-de-camp, Ally Gordon: the extreme goodness of the other, who has been vehemently ‘converted,’ being a sort of barrier to intimacy.

“Old Miss Louisa Hope has been amongst the people who have come to Holyrood. She talked much of her friendship with Lord Brougham, with whom she corresponded constantly for many years. She had many religious conversations with him, and he often used to dwell with her, as in his public lectures, on the sublimity of that description of God, ‘eternal, immortal, invisible,’ which has been spoilt in the revised translation by changing the word ‘immortal’ into ‘incorruptible.’ After he had been betrayed into especially bad language in her presence, she wrote a strong remonstrance to him. He said nothing definite in answer, but thenceforth always addressed her as ‘Dearest Miss Hope.’ When she heard that he was not likely to live, Miss Hope wrote to him, saying that she trusted that, if he was able to write himself, he would give her some sign of his assurance as to a future life; but that, if he were not able to write himself, he would not notice her request. Lord Brougham wrote, ‘I trust entirely in the _graciousness_ of Him who died for me,’ and she was satisfied.

“Yesterday we drove out to Winton to Lady Ruthven. It was a lovely day, the sea deep blue, and the trees, especially the sycamores, in their richest foliage. We found the house just set in order after its devastation during the fire which consumed the dining-room three weeks ago, when everything was thrown out of the windows. Dear old Lady Ruthven herself sat all the time on a chair on the lawn watching the flames. She asked if every one was out of the castle, and being assured that it was so, said, ‘Is Peppy (her dog) safe?’--‘Yes, my lady.’--‘Is my blue vase safe?’--‘Yes, my lady.’--‘Then I am quite satisfied.’ And she bade every person on the property go to church the next day to return thanks for her preservation. She received me with the greatest affection, and bade me kiss her.[357]

“At the great dinner at Holyrood in the evening I took in a Mrs. Murray, who talked pleasantly about the old phase of Edinburgh society which she remembered. ‘There were three subjects--wine, law, and contradiction: wine is extinct now as a topic, but the other two, and especially the last, are as much to the fore as ever.’ She said that she had studied law herself, because it was the subject on which her husband was most interested, and she liked him to be able to discuss all his occupations with her.

“Another day I took in Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin, the marvellous amateur actress. She described her home life and the reading aloud to her boys. She read Landor, Alison, Scott. Only Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’ was a failure. They got through the first two cantos, then the youngest boy said, ‘Did the Childe never cheer up?’ and she was obliged to allow that he did not: so the book was closed.

“Yesterday I talked much with Mrs. Fraser--Professor Fraser’s wife. She described her visit to Hurstmonceaux--a week spent at the Rectory after her wedding tour, and going down twice to Lime, and my dear Mother sitting by the open window looking on the sunny lawn and flowers and the sparkling water.

“To-day, at St. Giles’s, Professor Flint preached a magnificent sermon on ‘I am the True Witness,’ describing how the doctrine which Christ preached was that of the kingdom; ‘that of the Church He left to others.’ His whole teaching was that inculcated by Diderot--‘Elargissez Dieu, montrez-lui à l’enfant, non dans le temple, mais partout et toujours.’”[358]

* * * * *

“_May 30._--Our stay is nearly at an end, and I am very sorry.... It is impossible to live with the two charming old sisters (Lady Aberdeen and Lady Ashburnham), so one in every thought and act, without being impressed by their extreme simplicity and goodness; and Scottish ideas of clanship are more captivated by the fact of ‘His Grace’ being followed everywhere by his mother and aunt, and their going hand in hand with him in every good work, than they could be by the most brilliant court. Yesterday the preaching and praying were tremendous. Now we are just off to a luncheon, then to visit the castle in state, then a soldiers’ home, a sculptor’s studio, an artist’s studio, a dinner of a hundred, and the Assembly again in state at 10 P.M. I cannot say how kind every one is to me at Edinburgh.”

* * * * *

“_London, July 10._--With Lady Paget to hear Spurgeon preach at his great Tabernacle near the Elephant and Castle. The vast congregation, the united sound of the thousands of voices in the hymn, the earnestness and zest of everything, were very striking: but far more so the strange, common, coarse preacher. The text was from Rev. xxii. 17, ‘Let him that heareth say Come.’ He described a sinner as like Leviathan, in whom there must be some weak spot betwixt its thousand scales, between which the dart of the exhorters could penetrate before death intervened and set the ‘wax-tablet’ of his character for ever. He spoke of the different ways of saying ‘Come,’ and acted them: that a ‘plain English, not half Dutch-Latin-Hebrew way of speaking,’ should be employed: that ‘prayer was as necessary as that a servant should tell her master who had called: that no servant was equal to answering for herself without referring to her master.’

“The rough similes just suited the congregation, and also the jokes, at which the people laughed aloud, but not irreverently. ‘A friend of mine was preaching in the street the other day, and one of those fellows passed by who has felt the hand touched by a bishop’s lawn sleeve upon his blessed pate (not that I think there is any good in that; I do not know if you do), and asked him by what authority he was preaching, and my friend answered, ‘By the authority of Jesus Christ, who said, “Let him that heareth say Come.”’ ‘Popes were represented sometimes with a dove whispering the words which they should speak into their ears--they were represented with a dove; I hope it was not really a raven.’”

* * * * *

I was suddenly called away in the middle of the season by the alarming illness of my dearest old nurse, and for several weeks was at Holmhurst with her, in the mysterious solitude of the shadow of death, in which so many of my earlier years were passed, and then I had the intense thankfulness of seeing life return into the dear old face connected with so much that no one else remembers.

XXII

HOME SORROWS

“Faire le bien, connaître le vrai, voilà ce qui distingue un homme d’un autre; le reste n’est rien. La durée de la vie est si courte, ses vraies besoins sont si étroits, que quand on s’en va, il importe si peu d’avoir été quelqu’un ou personne. Il ne faut à la fin qu’un mauvais morceau de toile et quatre planches de sapin.”--DIDEROT.

“Happy are they to whom the solemn angel comes unannounced and quietly, and who are mercifully spared a long baptism of suffering.”--WHITTIER.

“There is a melancholy in sunbright fields Deeper to me than gloom: I am ne’er so sad As when I sit amid bright scenes alone.” --GEORGE DARLEY, “_Sylvia_.”

It was on the 11th of July, after I had returned to London, that I was drawing in the cloisters of Westminster with Alethea Grenfell, when Miss Johnes (the charming correspondent of Bishop Thirlwall) passed by, and told me that Arthur Stanley was ill. I thought little of it at the time, as he was so often sick, and I had lately seen him looking better and happier than he had done since his sister Mary’s death. On Thursday 14th there was a great dinner-party at the Deanery. Catherine Vaughan dined, and as, at the last moment, Arthur was not well enough to appear, she went in to sit with him after dinner, and finding him very dispirited and unwell, gave up her intention of going to Llandaff next day, and moved to the Deanery instead. That day erysipelas came on, and she was prevented seeing him till 3 A.M. on the morning of Monday the 18th, when the doctors called her, saying that an alarming change had come on. Canon Farrar was then summoned, and administered the Sacrament, but when he came to the blessing, Arthur motioned him to silence, and gave the words of the longer Benediction himself, with the same solemnity with which he spoke them at Augusta’s funeral. Then also Arthur spoke some farewell words--of grateful affection for the Queen, of trustful exhortation for his successor in the Deanery, of thankful appreciation of the fidelity of his housekeeper, Mrs. Waters, and the services of his butler and Charlotte the housemaid. Those who surrounded him then thought that he was sinking, but he rallied, and in the morning all the symptoms were favourable.

At 10 A.M. on Monday, I broke through the cordon which surrounded the Deanery, and made my way up to Catherine, who was glad to have me with her. The large rooms were silent and hushed, though many persons, chiefly Bruces and Baillies, were moving in and out. It was the dead heat of July, not a leaf stirring. In the afternoon, Arthur was so much better that I went away, and even kept an engagement to dine out. But next morning came the shock of his death--Arthur--the “Cousin Arthur” of my childhood. He had become worse at 9.30 P.M. The Archbishop read prayers in the room; they all knelt around; he never spoke more; and before midnight it was over.

Catherine and I both took leave of the Deanery for ever the next morning, but I went back to Westminster for the sad services of Sunday and Monday. The funeral sermons were much more affecting than the funeral itself; _that_ was far less touching than Augusta’s, for _he_ was not there to be felt with and for; and yet the number and the unusual variety of true mourners made it a very remarkable sight.

To me it was a reopening of many beloved memories, and then a sealing them away for ever. On the day after his death his sister and Hugh Pearson, his dearest friend, wrote to me, asking me to undertake his biography, to which I gladly assented, feeling sure that I could do it well, and that no one could possibly know his life as well as myself. But Sir George Grove, one of his literary executors, did not permit my undertaking it.

The following weeks at Holmhurst were occupied on an article which I wrote upon Arthur in _Macmillan_[359] (Sept. 1881), or rather in hunting up material for it amongst the few papers I myself possessed, as the literary executors allowed me access to nothing else. Yet, in doing it, I could feel that, though somewhat estranged from him in late years, there was no other who knew _all_ his life, its surroundings, motives, and interests as I did. I went afterwards to Catherine, but first paid a short visit in Suffolk to the ever-kind and pleasant Mrs. Paterson and her husband at their charming Rectory of Brome. I extract from my journal.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Brome Rectory, Sept. 15, 1881._--On Tuesday I came here ... into thickly wooded Suffolk, which thoroughly needs its shelter of trees from its exposure to the north-east winds, for they say there is not a hill between it and the Ural Mountains. I only just missed meeting two Mr. Tyrrells, who have been building a church, not uncalled for, they said, as an expiatory offering, for one of their ancestors murdered William Rufus, and another the Princes in the Tower. We saw Eye, with its fine church and pretty black and white grammar-school. The magnates of this neighbourhood are Sir Edward and Lady Caroline Kerrison, who possess two places, of which Brome Hall has delightful old gardens, while Oakley contains the trunk of the tree under which St. Edward was said to have been shot by the Danes, and in which, when it was cut down, an arrow-head was found imbedded. Sir E. Kerrison has just demolished a fine old wooden bridge, the successor of that under which the king concealed himself, and where he was discovered to a newly married couple by the light gleaming on his spurs. They betrayed him to the Danes, who shot him. Dying, he cursed all persons who should cross that fatal bridge over the Waveney on their way to or from a marriage, and on such occasions the country people will always go two miles round to avoid it. Close by is a spot where the discovery of flint weapons in a pre-historic stratum has compelled an entire re-arrangement of geology, as proving the existence of the world some millions of years before it was supposed to have been created.

“Yesterday I went to Norwich, and how many memories were awakened by the first sight of its beautiful spire! The river, the gateways, the ferry, the cathedral were the same: only the beautiful palace was turned into a common fifth-rate house. All who met there have now passed away except Catherine Vaughan and Lea; but one seemed to see them all--the venerable white head of my uncle the Bishop in his stall; Sedgwick emerging from his house; Aunt Kitty in the broad garden-walk; my dearest Mother in the Abbey Room; Sarah Burgess[360] in her still existing little room down the steps; Arthur and Mary, Owen and Charlie--all gone!”

* * * * *

“_Sept. 25._--We went from Brome to see Roydon. Mr. G. E. Frere is squire there, an eccentric man of old family, who has planted the churchyard with flowers appropriate to each of the graves near them. One is covered with wormwood: it is that of two old sisters in the parish, horribly ill-tempered, who both became bedridden, but each was provided with a stick that she might whack her companion as she lay in the bed near her. We met Mr. H., an ugly man, intensely. proud of his worthless pictures. Warren, the son of ‘Ten Thousand a Year,’ the clergyman who preached such a capital sermon on the single word ‘but,’ dined with him, and when Mr. H. pointed out what he calls a Murillo, said, ‘Really a Gorillo--a family portrait, I suppose!’ We also went to see Wingfield, an interesting old fortified manor of the De la Poles, and their magnificent tombs in the church. One of them married Chaucer’s grand-daughter and was murdered at Calais in the time of Henry VI.; another married the sister of Edward IV.

“On leaving Brome, I made a tourette into Norfolk--to dilapidated Walsingham, once the most celebrated shrine in England: to Lynn, with a custom-house worthy of Flanders: to Castle Rising, a Norman tower almost hidden in its green ballium: to Wymondham, with a splendid semi-ruined church, perpendicular outside, but Norman within: and to the glorious ruins of Castle Acre. The Coke of Elizabeth’s time bought so much land in Norfolk, that the Queen ordered him to be told that he must not buy any more, he would own too much for a subject. He petitioned, however, that he might just buy three acres more, which would complete his estate. The Queen said, ‘Yes, he might certainly do that;’ and he bought Castle Acre, West Acre, and South Acre, three huge properties, only the nucleus of which has descended to Lord Leicester.

* * * * *

“On the 20th I came to Llandaff.... We have been to see the ruins of a deserted manor-house which belonged to Sir George Aubrey. It was abandoned on account of a family tragedy. Sir George’s only son, a little boy, one day refused to eat his pudding. ‘You must,’ said the father. The child said he really could not, and implored with strange anguish to be excused, but the father insisted. Three hours after the child died in frightful agonies. That day the cook, by mistake, had put arsenic into the pudding instead of sugar.

“Yesterday Lord and Lady Romilly[362] fetched me to their pretty little house of Porthkerry, overhanging the Bristol Channel, and to-day we have driven through pouring rain to visit Fon Mon (pronounced Fun-Mun), a very curious old house of the thirteenth century.”

* * * * *

“_Penrhos, Anglesea, Oct. 9._--From Llandaff I went to Tenby, an indescribably delightful place, with its varied coast, its wonderful caves, its rich festoons of clematis hanging over the cliffs, and its sapphire and chrysoprase seas. A girdle of old castles and abbeys surrounds the place, affording an endless variety of excursions. I saw something at Tenby of many members of the kindly respectable family of Allen, and the Dean of the same name welcomed me to St. Davids, which is truly marvellous in charm and interest--the cathedral, richly, exquisitely beautiful; the ruined palace and college; and the village, with its fine old cross, isolated in the solitude of a hollow in the vast swooping hills, sixteen miles from a railway, almost from any other inhabited place. It is said that if you take a sod from the churchyard and stand upon it on the shore of the neighbouring sea, you look across the mist of waters into all the glories of fairyland; and truly this seems almost the case without the assistance of the churchyard sod, all is so wondrously, uniquely, weirdly beautiful.

“On my way to this Stanley home of many memories, I went to visit the Williams’s of Parcian, in central Anglesea, where the very savageness of the country gives it an interest, and the desolate coves of its sea-shore, in one of which, with the beautiful name of Moelvra, the _Royal Charter_ was lost.

“Mr. (William) Stanley[363] is very kind, and has a great deal of shrewd cleverness of its own sort; but a great deal has been written about the charms and moral advantages of the life of a country gentleman who never leaves his own place; nothing of its still more evident disadvantages. Surely no life has so strong a tendency to generate self-importance, exclusive possession, tenaciousness of authority, jealousy of interference, hatred of independence in others.”

* * * * *

“_Kinmel, Oct. 14._--A kind invitation from Lord and Lady Penrhyn took me from Penrhos to Penrhyn Castle, which is a very stately building outside, though the huge stone corridors and richly decorated Norman rooms are very unsuited for home comfort. A regiment of young ladies, Miss Pennants--daughters, step-daughters, and step-grand-daughters of Lady Penrhyn[364] appeared at every meal. The lady of the castle herself is one of the most natural and unworldly women in the world; and Lord Penrhyn[365] was most agreeable with his personal reminiscences. He described the coronation of George IV., where he stood close to Queen Caroline as she entered the carriage to drive away, and he said the expression of her countenance was the most diabolical thing he ever looked upon. Lord Penrhyn rode after Lord Anglesea, the Waterloo hero, when he was followed by a hooting mob through St. James’s Park. Lord Anglesea backed his horse between the trees, set his teeth, and hissed back at the yelling people. Then he said, ‘If every man of you were a hundred men, and each of them had a hundred hands, and a bayonet in each hand, I should still do my--_duty!_’ Then the people cheered him.

“Lord and Lady Penrhyn took me to Pennisinant, Ogwen Bank, and the slate quarries. The two first cannot be much altered since my mother’s descriptions of them in her childhood, except by the growth of trees, and are very lovely, with mossy rocks breaking the cascatelle of the Ogwen, and old sycamores--now glorious in colour--on the grassy knolls, relieved against a wild background of purple mountains. At Ogwen Bank, the representation of our Lady Penrhyn’s pugs remains over the chimney-piece.

“The life at Penrhyn Castle was most easy and agreeable, with the freedom which only exists in very great houses, the plenty of time to oneself, and yet interesting society. The same may be said of Kinmel, which is like a great château in France.

“And here it has been a real pleasure to meet my sweet cousin Lizzie, Lady Loch,[366] and her charming husband, Sir Henry, Governor of the Isle of Man: she is really one of the best people I ever saw, as well as one of the pleasantest.”

* * * * *

“_London, Nov. 1._--Dined with Lady Lyndhurst in Eaton Square. She talked of her early life. ‘I lived in Paris with my father, and I saw nobody. I never expected to marry; why should I? I had no fortune and no attractions. The first time I saw my Lord was when he came to Paris with his first wife. He came to see my father, and we went out driving with him. He and my father sat forward, and another young lady and I sat back, and most terribly afraid I was of him, and not a word did I speak--a shy, awkward girl sitting bolt upright.

“‘When my Lord was a widower, he came to Paris again. I was seven-and-twenty then, and was keeping my father’s house. Lord Lyndhurst came to breakfast with my father, and I gave them their coffee and whatever they wanted, and then sat there reading my _Galignani_, and not thinking a bit about them. Suddenly Lord Lyndhurst asked me if I knew of any very sunny apartment to let. “Oh, yes,” I said; “there is a friend of mine who wants to let just what you wish for, and, if you will wait a minute, I will run and get the keys, and can show it you.” So I got the keys, and he went with me, and the apartment was a capital one and suited him very well; and then, to my surprise, he asked me if I should be at home in the afternoon, and I thought, “What on earth can the old man want to come again for?”--and I answered him that I did not know. And, in fact, I forgot all about it, and went out driving to the Bois; and when I came in, the servant said Lord Lyndhurst had been. It gave me a sort of shock, and I went to my room, and said to myself, “What on earth can this mean?” But the next day before I was up--_before I was up_, if you please--I had a note from Lord Lyndhurst asking when I should be at home; and he came at that hour, and he came twice a day for three months, and it became quite awkward, every one talked of it--Paris is so small a world. However, at the end of that time he proposed. Afterwards I said, “Now do tell me what the dickens made you want to marry me--a woman without family, without fortune, and most decidedly without beauty?” and he said he did not know. After he had engaged me to marry him, he had to go back to England to his law-courts, and my father told me that I had better begin to get my things ready and buy my trousseau; but I said, “No, I should most certainly do nothing of the kind, for I did not believe for an instant that my Lord would ever come back again.”

“‘But he did come back, and we were married, and I had twenty-six years of the most perfect happiness ever allotted to woman. My Lord had the most perfect temper in the world, and in all the years we were together, we never had even a difference of opinion. He never came in to breakfast, and he never took luncheon, so he never appeared in our rooms till dinner-time, but I trotted in and out of his library, and the oftener I went in, the better he was pleased.

“‘I had seen nothing of the world before I was married, but I saw plenty of it afterwards: indeed, a few years after, he was made Lord Chancellor, and that was the top of everything. The world was the one drawback to my happiness, for through almost the whole time of my married life I had to go out. My Lord’s eldest daughter was married three years after I married my Lord, and four years after, Soph, his second girl, was married; and then very soon there was my own girl to take out. Oh, how I hated it, but I never let my Lord know what I felt. We dined with him, and afterwards there was his whist, or people came to see him, and at ten o’clock he went to bed; then I went to my daily task of dressing to take the girls out, and sometimes I fairly cried as I was dressing.

“‘I was always up so late at night that I breakfasted in my own room, but there was always breakfast downstairs for the girls and Auntie--for my Lord’s elder sister, Miss Copley, always lived with us. Auntie was no trouble in the house, and I was very fond of her, for she perfectly adored my Lord. When I married, people wondered at my wishing to have my sister-in-law to live with me, but I said, “Bless you, have I not been brought up in France, where whole families live together, and have to accommodate themselves to each other? and it would be hard indeed if I could not get on with poor old Auntie, when she is so fond of my Lord.”

“‘It was at the marriage of my daughter to Sir Charles Du Cane that my Lord said he had nothing left to live for, his work was done. He comforted me by telling me that he was so very old--and so he was,--and that if he lived he must become helpless, and so perhaps would be unhappy, and then perhaps even his mind might go. He said, “You will take care of Auntie?” and I said, “Of course I will,” and Auntie was always with me afterwards, and I loved her dearly, and she died in this very room at ninety-three. She was always well and cheerful, but one day she asked for her cup of tea as usual, and afterwards she--fell asleep,--she was so very old.

“‘My dear Lord was very old too when he died, but to me he was always like a young man, he was so bright and cheerful and so kind--always the pleasantest of companions. However, I could believe it was time that he should go, because _he_ told me so.

“‘That is the story of my life, Mr. Hare, and now I am only waiting, hoping that some day,--perhaps some day not very far off,--I may see my dear Lord again.’”

* * * * *

“_Athenæum Club, Dec. 13._--Sir G. Dasent, sitting at the next table at breakfast this morning, said, ‘I see you always sit in the historical corner.’--‘Do I? how?’--“Why, it is the place where Sam Wilberforce always sat (behind the door leading to the kitchen), and so did Theodore Hook. It was from that corner that, when he had finished two bottles of port, he used to be heard calling out “Waiter, lemonade: bring more _lemonade_.” And they all knew what it meant: he hadn’t the face to ask for another bottle of port.’”

* * * * *

“_Heckfield Place, Dec. 30._--I have had a pleasant visit here, meeting Sir Erskine May, a most winning and agreeable person. He revived for me the old story of Mrs. Blomfield, who forgot her Royal Academy ticket for the ‘private view,’ and, when they tried to prevent her coming in, said, ‘Oh, but you must let me pass: I am the Bishop of London’s lady.’--‘No, Ma’am, I could not let you in,’ said the doorkeeper, ‘if you were the Bishop of London’s _wife_.’

“We went with Lord Eversley to see Bramshill, one of the places intended for Prince Henry, a most noble and beautiful old house.”

* * * * *

“_Jan. 13, 1882._--With Ronald Gower and Hugh Pearson over the three great houses of London in the same morning. Grosvenor House is the pleasantest to live in, but Stafford House the most magnificent. When the Queen was being received there by the late Duchess, she said, with her happy power of expression, ‘I come, my dear, from my house to your palace.’

“Hugh Pearson talked of Archbishop Longley’s singular tact in saying the right thing. Some one asked him what tact was. He said, ‘It will be difficult for me to describe what it is, but I will give you an instance of what it is _not_. This morning I received a letter from a clergyman beginning--“In consideration of your Grace’s many infirmities and failing powers.” Now the beginning of that letter was not tact.’”

* * * * *

“_Jan. 14._--To Lady Lyndhurst, whom I found in her room ill, and in great grief for the death of General Macdonald, her oldest friend, ‘who was the pleasantest, frankest, and handsomest of young men when I first came to England, and whom everybody has liked ever since. He was so well known, that when Mrs. Norton directed a letter to him “Jem at his Club,” the postman made no difficulties at all, but took it straight to him at White’s. There have been several pleasant notices of him in the papers since his death, but they have all committed the fatal blunder of calling him “Jim,” the thing of all others he would have disliked--he was always Jem with an _e_.’”

* * * * *

“_Athenæum, Feb. 3._--Sir G. Dasent sat by me at breakfast. He described how he had almost bought the famous Vercelli MS. for £150, when ‘a stupid old canon interfered, and thought it ought not to be taken out of the place. It was taken to Italy from England by a Cardinal S. Andrea, who was tutor to Henry II., and who collected everything relating to St. Andrew, because of his name, and the MS. begins with the legend of St. Andrew. It ought some day to be restored to England by an interchange, England sending over some Italian MSS.; and now that it has been removed to the National Collection, this has been facilitated.’

“Sir G. Dasent talked of St. Olaf again. ‘He is what I call a good wearing saint, for he has lasted nine hundred years. It was just when St. Olaf was “coming up” that Earl Godwin and his sons were banished for a time. Two of them, Harold and Tosti, became Vikings, and in a great battle they vowed that, if they were victorious, they would give half their spoil to the shrine of St. Olaf, and a huge silver statue which they actually gave existed at Throndjem till 1500, and, if it existed still, would be one of the most important relics in archaeology. The old kings of Norway used to dig up the saint from time to time and to cut his nails. When Harold Hardrager was going to England, he declared he must see St. Olaf again--“I must see my brother,” he said: and he also cut the saint’s nails. But then he thought that from that time it would be better that no one should see his brother any more--it would not be for the good of the Church; so he took the keys of the shrine and threw them into the fiord; but at the same time he said that it would be a good thing for men who came after to know what a king was like, and he caused St. Olaf’s measure to be engraved upon the wall of the church at Throndjem--his measure of six feet.’”

* * * * *

“_Feb. 21._--I sat at dinner by Mrs. Duncan Stewart, who talked with her usual power. ‘When I was young, I lived with my guardian and his wife at Havre de Grâce, and thence I married Mr. Duncan Stewart, who was a Baltic merchant, a prosperous and well-to-do man then, though he was ruined afterwards. We lived in Liverpool; but my husband loved hunting and fishing, and at certain times of the year he was “away after the grouse,” as every Scotchman is. I stayed with my children then, but I too had my time of the year for going away, and I always went to London, where I became very intimate with Lady Blessington and all that set--a very bad set, it must be allowed.

“‘One day when I was sitting alone in my house in Liverpool, and my husband was away with the grouse, a note of introduction was brought in for me from Mrs. Milner Gibson, whom I had known in London, with the cards of Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli. He was a young man then, all curly and smart, and his wife, though so much older than himself, was a very handsome, imperial-looking woman. I told them that I should be delighted to show them everything in Liverpool, as Mrs. Milner Gibson asked me.

“‘When I went to see them next day at the hotel, I asked Mrs. Disraeli how she had slept, and she said, “Not at all, for the noise was so great.” Then I said, “Why not move to my house, for my house is very quiet, and I am alone, and there is plenty of room?” And they came, and a most delightful ten days I had. We shut out Liverpool and its people, and we talked, and we became great friends, and when we parted it was with very affectionate regard on both sides; and afterwards they wrote to me every week, and when I went to London, my place was always laid at their table, and if I did not appear at their dinner, they always asked me why I had not come to them.

“‘After she died, we drifted apart, he and I, and though I saw him sometimes, it was never in the old intimate way. The last time I saw him though, we had a really good talk together. It was not till we were parting that I said to him, “I hope you are quite well,” and I shall never forget the hollow voice in which he said to me, “_Nobody_ is quite well.” After that I never saw him again, but I had a message from him through William Spottiswoode. “Tell Mrs. Stewart always to come to talk to me when she can: it always does me good to see her.”’

“Mrs. Duncan Stewart described Lady Beaconsfield as originally a factory-girl. Mr. Lewis first saw her going to her factory, beautiful, and with bare feet. He educated her and married her, died, and left her very rich, and then she married Disraeli. When asked _why_ she married her second husband, she would say, as if it was a feather in her cap, ‘My dear, he made love to me whilst my first husband was alive, and therefore I know that he really loved me.’

“It was at ‘Greenmeadow,’ a house four miles from Llandaff, that Disraeli served his apprenticeship as secretary to Mr. Lewis, living in the house with him and Mrs. Lewis in the position of a dependant. When the house overflowed with visitors from London, as was often the case, he was sent out to sleep at ‘The Holly Bush,’ a little public-house in the village. Both Greenmeadow and the Holly Bush exist still.”

* * * * *

On the 11th of March I again left England for Italy. I could not endure leaving Holmhurst and my dear old nurse, but it seemed necessary to go to finish collecting materials for my book on Southern Italy, as there were still so many places which I had not seen. At Rome I paid an interesting visit to the blind Duke of Sermoneta, still full of mental vigour, and of indignation at “la stupidézza del Vaticano e l’infámia del Quirinale.” Miss Garden had been to see him, and defended the policy of the Quirinal, saying Italy was a young country, would come round, &c. He retorted, “If you say that from politeness, as I think you do, you are wrong; but if you really think so, you must be an idiot.” This was my last visit to the kind old Duke, for he died in the following autumn.

At Naples, returning at night from the hotels in the lower town to those on the ridge of the hill, a gentleman engaged me in conversation and strolled along by my side. Suddenly, in the most desolate part of the road, he blew a whistle, and another man leapt out of the bushes, and both rushing upon me demanded “L’orológio e la bórsa.” I declared that I had neither watch nor purse. They insisted on my turning out all my pockets, which contained only three francs in paper and sixteen soldi in copper. Then they demanded my ring. I refused, and said it was no use for them to try to get it; it had not been off my finger for more than thirty years: it would not come off. They struggled to get it off, but could not. Then they whispered together. I said, “I see what you mean to do: you mean to cut off my finger and then drop me into the sea (which there--opposite the Boschetto--is deep water); but remember, I shall be missed and looked for.”--“No, we took good care to ascertain that first,” said my first acquaintance; “you said you had only been two days in Naples (and so I had): people who have been only two days in Naples are never missed.”--“But I do know Naples well--bisogna esaminarmi sopra Napoli,” I protested. “Dunque chi fu la Principessa Altamonti?”--“Fu figlia del Conte Cini di Roma, sorella della Duchessa Cirella.”--“E chi è il Principe S. Teodoro.”--“Fu Duca di S. Arpino, se maritava con una signora Inglese, Lady Burghersh, chi sta adesso Lady Walsingham.” After this they decided to let me go! But the strangest part of all was that the first brigand said, “After this scene you will not be able to walk home, and a carriage from the _guardia_ costs sixty centesimi; therefore that sum I shall give you back,” and they counted twelve soldi from the sum they had taken. It is this fact which makes me speak of the men who attacked me at Naples as brigands, not as robbers.

I spent a few days delightfully in beautiful Capri, but most miserable were my after travels in the desolate wind-stricken plains or malaria-teeming swamps of wretched Calabria, of which I had formed a lofty estimate from Lear’s almost wholly imaginary drawings. Each place I had to visit seemed uglier and more poverty-stricken than the last, but perhaps came to a climax at Cotrone, where the windowless prison-van (being the only vehicle in the town) was sent to meet us, arriving by the night-train at the distant desolate station, and where the stairs of the hotel were crowded with beggars, who had nowhere else to sleep, lying in heaps, and swarming with vermin.

I see that I wrote to Miss Leycester--“Calabria was indescribably horrible, its poisonous swamps and arid plains too hideous for words: nothing whatever but dry bread to eat: the so-called inns the filthiest of hovels: the people ruffians: the remains of the Greek cities a few stones apiece.” I pushed on to Reggio and Scilla. But soon I became so ill that I fled to Venice, where I was fit for nothing but to float in a gondola on the breast of ocean till I grew better.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Venice, April 25, 1882._--It was by a happy accident that I found myself here on St. Mark’s Day. Madame von Usedom[370] called for me in her gondola, and we went together to S. Marco at 10 A.M. Most glorious it looked, glints of sunlight falling here and there on the golden walls and waving peacock-hued pavement, and violet shadows resting on all the inner recesses of arcades and cupolas, through which the grand mosaic forms of the saints were dimly visible. Crowds of people were present, yet in that vast space many thousands can move with ease. It is only a few days since the Patriarch, newly elected and a cardinal, entered Venice in triumph, followed by three hundred gondolas, standing at the prow of his barge, in his new scarlet robes, blessing the people. He is a young man, but is greatly beloved,[371] and every eye followed him as the grand procession swept chaunting round the church, and he was almost borne along by his huge golden robes, held up by the white-mitred attendant bishops of Chioggia and Torcello.

“I returned afterwards with the Usedoms to luncheon, and Madame von Usedom talked, as usual, of the great change which is sweeping over religious belief, but of how, in most thinking minds, the great essentials remained untouched. She had told Tholuck that she was troubled about her belief in the Trinity. He replied that in being so she confounded Religion with Theology: that the doctrine of the Trinity was a purely theological question, and not the least necessary to religion.

“In the afternoon the Comtesse de Lützow took me to see Besarel, a very remarkable self-taught genius, and a very good simple man and sculptor in wood and marble: and then we floated peacefully for hours through the labyrinthine streets of this wonderful water-city. In the evening, as I was sitting with the Lützows and Lady Augusta Cadogan at one of the tables in the piazza in front of Florian’s caffè, a table near was occupied by a party in which the conspicuous figures were a lady, not old, but with snow-white hair, and a very beautiful young woman, sipping _graniti_ and listening to the music: they were Queen Mary and Princess Mary of Hanover.

“And all this late evening, as I am sitting up writing, a monotonous song is wafted through the windows from the boats on the canal--

‘One sombre sweet Venetian slumbrous tune,’

as J. A. Symonds calls it.”

* * * * *

I returned to England by way of Nüremberg, which seemed to me strangely smaller and less interesting than when I saw it as a boy, and was more thankful than ever before to find myself again, on the 10th of May, at Holmhurst, where my dear old Lea’s most sweet and beautiful old face welcomed me with a brighter smile than ever, and where I spent a happy month alone with her, going back into our “wealthy past,” and living again in memory many happy scenes in our long-ago.

At Venice a great sorrow had come to me--another blank in the narrowing circle of my beloved ones. It was the sort of sorrow from which “all at once one awakes and finds a whole wing of one’s palace has fallen,” as Emerson says. Dearest Hugh Pearson was dead. He was altogether the most perfectly good man I have ever known, and, strange to say, at the same time the most perfectly charming. He was, from his earliest youth, as free from self-consciousness as he was from selfishness, but rippled over with geniality, cordiality, warmth of interest, affection to all around him. He was really, not nominally, the father of his parish, and I believe there was scarcely one of his parishioners who was not fonder of him than of most of their own nearest relations. To the children of his village he was simply adorable, and his manner to them, his fun, his sympathy, his solicitude, the prettiest and most enchanting thing imaginable. “He was like James amongst the Apostles, who wrote nothing at all, and said nothing we know, and yet was one of the chosen three who were with the Master that day when His glory was revealed, and that night when His soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Trust came to him; he never sought it. He was at home in the human heart, but he never seemed to probe it.”[373]

I suppose dear Hugh Pearson was very ugly, but one loved him so much, one thought there was no face like his. Though he was so very much older than I was, there was no one with whom I was more intimate, and nothing I would not have confided to him. His goodness, his religion, were equally attractive and charming to all. One never felt with him as if God had been rather unfortunate in His good intentions. His christian spirit christianised everything it came in contact with. His memory is a possession, and I may exclaim like the Duke of Ormonde, “I would not exchange my dead friend for any living friend in Christendom.” In the later years of his life, he had yielded to urgent request in accepting a canonry at Windsor, where I had delighted to visit him; but his heart was always in his country vicarage of Sonning on the Thames, and with his dear people there. He had refused the Queen’s persistent offer that he should succeed Arthur Stanley at Westminster, saying that he wished to die as he had lived--“a private person.”

The end came suddenly. On Easter Sunday (April 9) he told his people that it was his fortieth Easter Sunday amongst them, but he was taken ill whilst he was preaching, and two days after mortification came on. On Wednesday, the last evening of his life, when it was known that there was no hope of saving it, he desired that all his people--his true children--might be admitted to see him once more, and for three hours multitudes of his parishioners, men, women, and children, passed weeping through his room. He was able to speak separately to many of them, to give them all his blessing, and with a message of peace--the last effort of his great loving heart--upon his lips, he passed into the perfect life.

He has left the most undimmed memory it is possible for man to leave. To none of those who knew him is it possible that there can be even a breath upon the mirror of his perfectly beautiful and lovable life. To no one could the words of Dante be applied with greater truth:--

“E se’l mondo sapesse il cor ch’ egli ebbe, Assai lo loda e più lo loderebbe.”

“O ye holy and humble men of heart, praise Him and magnify Him for ever.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_London, June 4, 1882._--In the last week I have spent three pleasant days with the Husseys at Scotney, a lovely place, where an old tower of Richard the Second’s time and a ruined house by Inigo Jones stand in a wooded hollow, surrounded by a moat so clear that its reflections are even brighter than the reality. On the hill above is a handsome modern house with a glorious garden of azaleas and herbaceous flowers formed out of an old quarry. Here at this season ‘tout fourmille de vie,’ as Buffon would say. In the Roman Catholic persecution a priest was long imprisoned in the dungeon of the old tower, but escaped by persuading his gaolers that robbers had broken into the stables and were carrying off the horses, and by swimming across the moat whilst they were gone to the rescue.

“The whole country-side is full of traditions of smuggling days. Goudhurst church, which crowns a steep hill-set village on the horizon of hills opposite Scotney, was fortified by smugglers, who held out there for three days against the military sent against them in George the Third’s time. They were forced to capitulate at last and a number of them were executed, one of them, no one knows why, being afterwards buried under the hearthstone in one of Mr. Hussey’s cottages. This siege of Goudhurst church is described in James’s novel. One of the best remembered instances of successful smuggling was when a great funeral was announced as arriving from the Continent. A gentleman, who had died in France, and who had lived far on the other side of London, was being taken home to be buried with his ancestors. A hearse with four horses met the coffin at Dover. Relays of horses were ordered, and they were changed at Ashford, at Lamberhurst, and several other places. But the funeral never went beyond London, for the coffin was full of lace, which was soon dispersed over the city.

“To the same wild times belongs the story of the outlawed Darrell, a former owner of Scotney. News came that he had died abroad, and his body was brought home to be buried at his native place. Great was the concourse of neighbours and acquaintance at his funeral, but amongst the mourners was a tall figure wrapped in a cloak, who, as the body was lowered, said, ‘That is not me!’ to the mourner who stood nearest to the grave, and immediately disappeared.

“A few years ago, Mr. Hussey mentioned the tradition that Darrell had attended his own funeral to the old sexton, and asked if he could throw any light upon it. He said, ‘Yes, forty years ago, when your uncle was buried, the coffin next to which he was placed was that of Mr. Darrell, which was falling to pieces, and so I looked into it, and was surprised to see no remains whatever of a body, but only fragments of stone.’

“On the first day of my visit an old Lady Smith Mariott dined, bringing with her a magic crystal ball, in which she was very anxious that we should ‘see something,’ and was greatly disappointed when we did not. The ball was given to her by the old Lord Stanhope,[374] a firm believer, and many strange things had been seen in it--figures, and sometimes figures in armour. Mr. Hussey heard of a curious sixteenth-century MS. on magic balls in the British Museum, and went to look at it, and it was strange to find it say that ‘men in armour frequently appeared, especially on Sundays.’

“In the evening the conversation turned on witchcraft, and on Mr. Maitland, author of the ‘Church in the Catacombs,’ chaplain of Archbishop Howley, who undertook to prove the absurdity of belief in witchcraft, but, on examination, found such incontrovertible evidence of its reality, that he abandoned the subject. Talk of strange relics led to mention of the heart of a French king preserved at Nuneham in a silver casket. Dr. Buckland, whilst looking at it, exclaimed, ‘I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before,’ and, before any one could hinder him, he had gobbled it up, and the precious relic was lost for ever. Dr. Buckland used to say that he had eaten his way straight through the whole animal creation, and that the worst thing was a mole--that was utterly horrible.[375]

“Speaking of Lady Waterford, led Mr. Hussey to recall some of the wild escapades which he remembered in Lord Waterford’s youth. At one time, when he was living in Dublin with his uncle the Primate, coming home late at night, he had a great quarrel with his carman about the fare, and left the man swearing outside the door. Coming into the hall, he found his uncle’s gown and trencher lying on the side-table, and putting them hastily on, and going out with a stick and gruff voice, said, ‘What do you mean by coming here and trying to cheat my nephew? I’ll teach you not to do such things for the future,’ and he thrashed him soundly. The man went away, saying that he had been thrashed by the Archbishop of Armagh in person.”

* * * * *

“_London, June 22._--Tea with Mrs. Duncan Stewart, who, talking of her youth, recounted how Washington Irving had taken her eleven nights consecutively to see Talma act, and of the acting of Madame Rachel; how, in the ‘Cinna’ of Corneille, she sat quietly in a chair whilst all the people were raging round her, and of the wonderful power with which she hissed out--

‘Je recevrois de lui la place de Livie, Comme un moyen plus sur d’attenter à sa vie.’

“Mr. and Mrs. Kendal were there, a pleasant handsome pair; and Madame Modjeska came in, and taking a live chameleon, which was clinging to the breast of Miss Thompson, her pet, posed with it perched on her finger, though it looked the very incarnation of devildom.”

* * * * *

“_June 23._--Drew with Windsor and the Husseys at Ham House. Lady Huntingtower had said to us the other day, ‘You have heard about the poor Duke of Richmond?’ We thought it was the live Duke, and inquired anxiously after him, but she said, ‘No, it is the portrait at Ham: we can see nothing but the Duke’s legs now.’ And thus at Ham we saw it--the utter ruin of a glorious Vandyke. They had sent for a common upholsterer from Richmond to varnish it, and he had covered it with something which had annihilated it altogether.

“An American being urged to go to see the Park at mid-day as a typical London scene, returned saying, ‘I was disappointed, the attendance was so slim.’”

* * * * *

“_July 5, 1882._--Dined with Miss Courtenay. Kinglake of the Crimea sat close to me--old now and very feeble, but apparently greatly beloved by those who know him well. Mr. Burton was on the other side, receiving congratulations on his purchases at the Hamilton sale. We had all been reading and generally enchanted with Mrs. Kemble’s ‘Later Reminiscences,’ and Mr. Reeve of the _Edinburgh Review_ was delighted to have much to say of his personal remembrance of her, much that certainly was not favourable. She says little of the separation from her husband (Mr. Butler) in her book, but Mr. Reeve remembered her intensely overbearing manner to him. Once when he was travelling with them in Belgium, Mr. Butler, with great difficulty, procured a very beautiful bouquet for her for the evening. He gave it to her. ‘I have been all over the town, my dear, to get this bouquet for you,’ he said. She sniffed at it, said contemptuously, ‘There are no gardenias in this bouquet,’ and threw it to the back of the fire.

“‘One day,’ said Mr. Reeve, ‘I was talking to Mr. Butler at a party, when she came up with “Pearce, I want to go.”--“In a minute, my dear.” In another moment she came again with “Pearce, I want to go directly.”--“Very well, my dear,” and he prepared to order the carriage. I said, “It is cruel of you to take him away just now; we were having a very deep conversation,” and I shall never forget the contemptuous tone in which she said, “Deep, with--Pearce!”

“‘Mrs. Kemble always disliked those who were afraid of her, but she hated those who were not.

“‘She loved scenic effect, and so did her sister Adelaide, who was her superior in many ways. When their father took his leave of the stage, all the audience wept; but Fanny and Adelaide, who had the stage-box, leant forward as much as possible over the side and wept copiously with their pocket-handkerchiefs.

“‘No one could do the Semiramide now, but Adelaide was sublime in it. She was very grand in the Norma, but in the Semiramide no one ever came up to her. Passion she understood, but in softer and quieter parts she was a failure.’”

* * * * *

“_July 10._--Luncheon in Sir Francis Seymour’s apartments at Kensington Palace to meet Don Carlos. He is an immense man, almost gigantic, and very handsome, and had a magnificent boar-hound with him--a very prince amongst dogs. He asked if I spoke Spanish. I said that I had spoken it in Spain, but was afraid of venturing upon it in London. So then he proposed Italian, in which it was easy to get on with him.”

* * * * *

“_Chevening, July 15._--Yesterday I came here to a house where I have much memory of past kindness, and where I find the young Lord and Lady Stanhope eminently desirous of carrying it on. Lochiel and his Lady Margaret are here; she a daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch, and most unusually natural and pleasant.”

* * * * *

“_July 16._--After luncheon, we had a pleasant walk to Knockholt Beeches--Lady Northcote, the two Stanhope brothers, Mr. Banks Stanhope, Lady Margaret, and I. Afterwards, sitting on the stone platform in front of the house, Sir Stafford Northcote told us--

“‘The great A. B. was tremendously jostled the other day in going down to the House. A. B. didn’t like it. “Do you know who I am?” he said; “I am a Member of Parliament and I am Mr. A. B.”--“I don’t know about that,” said one of the roughs, “but I know that you’re a damned fool.”--“You’re drunk,” said A. B.; “you don’t know what you’re saying.”--“Well, perhaps I am rather drunk to-night,” said the man, “but I shall be sober to-morrow morning; but you’re a damned fool to-night, and you’ll be a damned fool to-morrow morning.”’

* * * * *

“_July 18._--Dined with Lady Ossington, the most charming, kindest, and richest of old ladies, to meet the Duchess of Sermoneta. Lady Enfield was there, with white hair turned back high on her head, like a Sir Joshua in real life. Mr. Newton was very amusing with his riddles:--

‘My first Gladstone loves, My second Gladstone hates: My whole, pronounced slow, is what Gladstone wishes: My whole, pronounced quick, is where Gladstone ought to be.’ Answer, _Reformatory_.

“On the Greeks sending marble for a bust of Gladstone, he related the lines:--

‘When Woolner’s hand, in classic mood, carving the Premier’s pate is, Hellas, to show her gratitude, sends him the marble gratis. Oh, could this nation, but in stone, repay the gift genteelly, This country would send back her own Glad-stone to Hell-as freely.’”

In the beginning of September, my friend Harry Lee came to Holmhurst as usual for his autumn holidays, and, with the wish of giving him change and pleasure, I took him with me for a fortnight to Holland. We saw the whole of that little country, and enjoyed several of the places very much, especially the so-thoroughly Dutch Dort; quiet Alkmaar, with its charming old weigh-house; and Zwolle, with its fine old gateway. But the tour is not one which leaves much interest behind it. There is such a disadvantage in not being able to understand what people say, and all the Dutch we had anything to do with were so unaccommodating, so excessively grasping and avaricious. Besides, all my luggage, registered through to Brussels, disappeared and could not be traced, so that I had the odd experience of traversing a whole country with nothing more than a comb and a tooth-brush. Two months afterwards the luggage arrived quite safe at Holmhurst, covered with labels, quite intact, having made a long tour by itself quite in a different direction from the one we took, and without any explanation or any expense.[378]

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Babworth Hall, Notts, Oct. 7, 1882._--I have been spending four pleasant days with kind Mrs. Bridgeman Simpson, to meet old Lady Westminster,[380] who is the most winning, courteous, and charming of old ladies, finding something pleasant to say to every one, putting every one at their ease, and possessing that real dignity of simplicity which is so indescribably charming. On Wednesday I went with her to Clumber, where we saw the new and very ugly hall, with Italian artists putting down a mosaic pavement.

“Yesterday we went by appointment to Welbeck, arriving by the darksome tunnel, more than two miles long, upon which the late Duke spent £60,000, and £60,000 more apiece upon banking up (and spoiling) his sheet of water with brick walls and building a gigantic riding-school. The house itself stands well, considering the ugliness of the park, and is rather handsome. We were shown through a long suite of rooms containing a good many treasures, the most interesting being a glorious old chest of metal, in which the Bentincks, who came over with William III., brought over their jewels. In the last room we found Lady Bolsover, the Duke’s stepmother.

“The house, vast as it is, has no staircase worth speaking of. The late Duke lived almost entirely in a small suite of rooms in the old part of the house. He inherited the peculiarity of his mother, who would see no one, and he always hid himself. If he gave permission to any one to visit Welbeck, he always added, ‘But Mr. So-and-so will be good enough not to _see_ me’ (if they chanced to meet). He drove out, but in a black coach like a hearse, drawn by four black horses, and with all the blinds down; and he walked out, but at night, with a woman, who was never to speak to him, and always to walk exactly forty yards in front, carrying a lanthorn. When he went to London, it was in a closed brougham, which was put on a railway truck, and which deposited him at his own house at Cavendish Square, his servants all being ordered out of the way: no one ever saw him go or arrive. When he needed a doctor, the doctor only came to the door, and asked questions through it of the valet, who was allowed to feel his pulse.

“The Duke’s mania for a hidden life made him build immense suites of rooms underground, only approachable by a common flight of steps leading to a long tunnel, down which the dinner is conveyed from the far-distant kitchen on a tramway. From a great library one enters a billiard-room capable of holding half-a-dozen billiard-tables. A third large room leads to an enormous ball-room, which can contain 2000 people. The approach to this from above is by means of a gigantic hydraulic drop, in which a carriage can be placed, or twenty persons can be accommodated--the guests being thus let down to the ball-room itself. A staircase through the ceiling of one of the rooms, which is drawn up by a windlass, leads hence to the old riding-school, which is lighted by 1000 jets of gas. Hence a tunnel, 200 yards long, leads to a quadrangular piece of ground, unbuilt upon, but excavated in preparation for a large range of bachelor’s rooms, smoking rooms, and nurseries, to cover four acres of ground. Another tunnel, three-quarters of a mile long, leads thence to the stables, cow-houses, and dairies, like a large village. At the Duke’s death there were ninety-four horses in the stables, only trained for exercise or feeding. Beyond the stables is a large riding-school, in which there are 8000 jets of gas, an exercising ground under glass, with a gallop on straw and sawdust for a quarter of a mile. Close by is an enormous garden, of which six acres are used for strawberry beds, every alternate row being glazed for forcing the plants. Alongside of this is a glazed wall a quarter of a mile long. The garden is about thirty acres in extent, and requires fifty-three men. In the late Duke’s time there were forty-five grooms and helpers in the stables. The cow-houses are palaces, with a covered strawyard attached, and are surrounded by hydraulic screens, which are let down or raised according to the wind. There were eighty keepers and underkeepers.

“All is vast, splendid, and utterly comfortless: one could imagine no more awful and ghastly fate than waking up one day and finding oneself Duke of Portland and master of Welbeck.

“Coming home through the tunnel, Mr. Watson told me the curious story of the Misses Offley of Norton Hall. These ladies (descended from King Offa) saw in a vision their only brother, who was with a tutor in Edinburgh, upon the ridge of the house. Dreadfully alarmed, and perfectly certain of what they had seen, they went to a neighbour, a Mr. Shore, and told him they were sure that their brother was dead. Utterly failing to reassure them, in order to comfort them, Mr. Shore undertook to ride to Edinburgh (it was before the time of railways), and find out the truth. As he was crossing the boundary of Yorkshire, he met the funeral of the young man, who was being brought back to be buried at his own home. However, he went on to Edinburgh to see the tutor, and then discovered that, in his illness, young Offley had been persuaded to make a will entirely in favour of the tutor and his wife. Mr. Shore at once said that he would give the tutor £20,000 if he would give up all his claims under this will, but the tutor refused. The next day Mr. Shore went back and offered £10,000, and it was taken. The property was then worth £10,000 a year, but is now worth £20,000 a year.

“Staying here with Lady Westminster is her friend Mrs. Hallyburton (_née_ Owen, and first married to a Mr. Williams), who is the widow of Judge Hallyburton--‘Sam Slick.’”

* * * * *

Alas! whilst I was enjoying this Babworth visit, the greatest sorrow which still remained possible for me was preparing, and a few days later it fell. It would be difficult for any one who had not shared our life to understand how much my dearest old nurse, Mary Lea, was to me, or the many causes which, with each succeeding year, had drawn closer and closer the tender tie, as of mother and son, which existed between us. And since 1870 she had been more than ever dear to me--the one precious link with _our_ past which no other knew: the only person to whom I could talk on all subjects with entire certainty of understanding and sympathy. Each year, too, had made her more beautiful in her old age, and there were none who visited Holmhurst and failed to carry away an attractive remembrance of the lovely old woman, with her pretty old-fashioned dress and snowy cap, set in the homely surroundings of her sitting-room, full of pictures and curiosities, or in the poultry-yard, which was her pride and joy, brimming over with quaint proverbs, wise sayings, and interesting memories.

My dear Lea had not forgotten any of the places she had seen, or any of the varied circumstances of her life; and these scenes and events formed a mental picture-gallery in the circle of her inner consciousness, where she could amuse herself for ever. Life was never monotonous to her; there was so much that was beautiful, so much that was good, so much that was even grand to recollect; and then the surroundings of the present were full of simple pleasures; her room furnished with treasured memorials of the long-ago; her farmyard, with its manifold life, recalling her girlhood in a Shropshire farmhouse; her many kindly thoughts and deeds towards her neighbours at the hospice or in the village, one or other of whom loved to come in and chat for an hour daily with the beautiful old woman who had so much of mild wisdom in her discourse; her many visitors of the higher class to see the house, in whose coming she recognised and welcomed a kind of homage to her beloved mistress, and to whom consequently she would often pour out the most precious of her recollections; the garden and fields, which brought fresh interest with each succeeding season; but most especially her master, her nursling, the child of her heart, whose every employment, or friendship, or amusement, or duty, or work, or honour, was more to her than anything else in the world.

In this year especially I had been much with her, and the elder and younger relation seemed almost obliterated in the intimacy of our friendship and communion. Daily I used to take a little walk with my sweet old nurse upon my arm, and the upper path leading to the little pool above the field will always be connected with her, walking thus, and recalling a thousand memories out of the rich past, which was common to us, and to us alone. Here I walked with her the day before I went to Babworth, and am thankful that I did not give up doing so because a young man was staying with me. She seemed even more calmly happy than usual that day. Autumn tints and tones were pervading everything, but when I spoke of our seeing the plants again in their full beauty in spring, she said sweetly, “Those who _live_ till the spring will see them, dear sir.” There are some lines of Lewis Morris which recall what my dear nurse was at this time:--

“There is a sweetness in autumnal days, Which many a lip doth praise: When the earth, tired a little and grown mute Of song, and having borne its fruit, Rests for a little space ere winter come.

* * * * *

And even as the hair grows grey And the eyes dim, And the lithe form which toiled the live-long day, The stalwart limb, Begins to stiffen and grow slow, A higher joy they know: To spend the season of the waning year, Ere comes the deadly chill,

* * * * *

In a pervading peace.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Oct. 11, 1882._--Yesterday two terrible telegrams met me when I went to my breakfast at the Athenæum, telling me that my dearest Lea was dangerously ill, and bidding me return at once. In half-an-hour I was in the train, Ronald Gower travelling with me to Hastings, and an agonising journey it was. I found the carriage at St. Leonards, having been waiting five hours, with a perfectly hopeless account.

“Yet I found my dearest old nurse better than I had hoped, able to be glad to see me, even, though very suffering, to tell me little things which had occurred during my week’s absence. But at night she grew much worse, and hour after hour I had the anguish of watching, with Harriet and Mrs. Peters, over terrible suffering, which we were unable to alleviate. God sends one no discipline so terrible as this. Happy indeed are those who have only to suffer themselves, not to witness the suffering of their dear ones.

“To-day she is weaker. Yesterday she spoke of ‘when I am better.’ To-day she speaks of ‘when I am gone.’

“I sit all day in her room, watching the beloved beautiful old face, fanning her, repeating words of encouragement and comfort to her; and she always has a smile for me.

“Outside the window the beautiful laburnum tree which she loves is shaking off its leaves and preparing for winter, and oh! when its golden blossoms come again, this dearest friend of my whole life will be away!”

* * * * *

“_Thursday, Oct. 12._--Last night she slept quietly, and her two nurses by her. I went in and out continually, and she scarcely moved. In the morning she was better, and able to sit in the arm-chair near her bed. It was the day on which we always used to try to leave for Rome, and she spoke of it, and this drew her into many pleasant recollections, such as the dear Mother had on her last day here; of the anemones in the Villa Doria at Rome, and the especial corners in which the best were to be found; of the daisies in the Parco S. Gregorio, and of many happy hours spent in other favourite places. She also asked after all the different members of the family, and sent messages to some of them. In the afternoon she was so well that, by her wish, I went down to Hastings to see Ronald Gower, and when I came back, she liked to hear about it.

“But to-night (9 P.M.) she is weaker and the pain and wheezing have increased. I have just read to her, as usual, a litany for the night-watches and several other prayers. She said the ‘Amen’ to each most fervently, and repeated the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ after me. Afterwards I spoke of the comfort prayers and hymns were to the Mother in her illness: ‘Yes, her’s _were_ prayers,’ she said.

“Then she said, ‘I did not think I should be taken away from you so soon as this.’ I said, ‘Perhaps, dear Pettie, it may still be God’s will that you may be raised up to us again, and this is what we must wish and try for.’--‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘and I _do_ try for it--too much perhaps, more than is right perhaps; and yet I am quite resigned either to go or stay: the Lord’s will, that is the best.’

“Then she said, ‘Open that top drawer and take out a box. There are some things in it I wish you to have, things connected with your family which you will value, and my large silver brooch; I wish you to keep that. And I would like you to keep the little bits of chaney that were my mother’s--the lions, and the little cups and saucers that are in your Mother’s room; she liked to see them, and you will: I do not wish them ever to leave this house.’

“‘Dearest Pettie,’ I said, ‘if it should be God’s will that you should not be given back to us, would you wish to be laid by Mother at Hurstmonceaux, or should you be taken to your own mother’s grave at Cheswardine? Whatever you wish shall be done.’ ‘If you please,’ she murmured, ‘Hurstmonceaux would be best. I have been always with you. All my own are passed away. You are more to me than any one else. I should wish to be laid near your dear Mother, and then you would be laid there too.’--‘Yes, dear, we should all be together,’ I said.

“Then she said, ‘You have been _everything_ to me all your life: quite like my own child: _all_ that a child of my own could have been.’

“She always smiles sweetly to see me near her; but she is weaker, and everything is difficult. As Aurora Leigh says--

‘The poor lip Just motions for a smile, and lets it go.’”

* * * * *

“_Oct. 14._--Two terrible nights have we passed in trying to alleviate my dearest Lea’s great sufferings, but last night especially it was anguish to hear her moans and to be able to do _so_ little: but I flit in and out, and whether it is day or night, am seldom many minutes away from her, and I think _that_ is a comfort.”

* * * * *

“_Oct. 15._--Last night was better, but all to-day she has been terribly ill. It is such a struggle to breathe through her worn-out frame. I sit constantly by her side, and chafe her hands and bathe her forehead, and can be quite cheerful for her sake; and she smiles to see me always there whenever she wakes. ‘Oh, how good you are to me,’ she said to-day. ‘I cannot be good enough to you, my own dearest Pettie, to you who have always been so very good to me.’

“But I feel, though no one tells me so, that I am sitting in the shadow of Death.”

* * * * *

“_Monday, Oct. 16._--The doctor says she is sinking. She suffers less to-day, but is overwhelmed by the pressure on the lungs. I sit there--feed her--watch her, and smile.... I can do it for her sake. There will be time enough for grief when she cannot be grieved by it.

“She is all thankfulness,--only afraid of wearing us all out. ‘Thank Thee, O Lord, for my good victuals,’ she said, after taking her glassful of milk.

“Last night, waking from her sleep, she said, ‘Oh, I thought I was away and so very happy, and now I am come back to all this.’”

* * * * *

“_Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 17._--She is still here--still suffering. Oh, my poor darling! what anguish it is to see her, and how thankful I shall be to God now when He will set her free. One can bear to part with one’s beloved ones, but their suffering tears one to pieces. How truly Heine says, ‘Der Tod ist nichts; aber das Sterben ist eine schändliche Erfindung.’”

* * * * *

“_Wednesday, Oct. 19._--Yesterday morning there was agonising pain for three hours and then a respite. At 12 A.M. Hubert Beaumont walked in, having come off at once on hearing a hopeless account. He was much broken down at seeing his old friend so ill, but full of kindness and help for me and all of us.... All afternoon she was worse. Two doctors came.... At night she was terribly worse. Oh, it was so hard to see her suffer,--so very, very hard. Soon after midnight I gave dose after dose of laudanum, and when she was still, lay down--sank down, utterly worn-out. At 3 A.M. I heard Harriet’s voice, ‘Aunt is gone.’ All was still then--the agony lived through, the fight fought. As I rushed into the room, the colour was fading out of my darling Pettie’s cheeks, but her face and hands were still warm. A wonderful look of rest was stealing over the beloved features. I knelt down and said the bidding prayer. Truly we ‘gave thanks’ that our dearest one was at rest. Yet I felt--oh, so stunned, so helpless! Dear Hubert was a great comfort.

“All day we have sobbed at intervals. Many touching notes have come in; but I have felt dead in body and mind.”

* * * * *

“_Oct. 20._--My dearest Lea is laid in her coffin. It has been a day of bitter anguish. All have tried to console, but

‘Console if you will, I can bear it, ’Tis a well-meant alms of breath: But not all the preaching since Adam Can make Death other than Death.’”[381]

* * * * *

“_Oct. 21._--Hubert has been summoned away by his parents,--very miserable to go, poor boy. There has been a terrible storm all day, which has seemed more congenial than the lovely sunshine yesterday.

“In the evening Mrs. Peters had put lights in the room, and I went to look at my dearest Pettie in her coffin. The ‘afterglow’ had come on. All her old beauty had come back to her. There was not a wrinkle on her lovely dignified old face. Her snow-white hair just showed at the edge of her pretty little crimped cap: all was peace and repose. It comforted me to see her, and we surrounded her coffin with large branches of Michaelmas daisies, enlivened by sprays of fuchsia, and the autumn lilies which she loved.”

* * * * *

“_Oct. 23._--In the morning I went into her room to see my dearest Pettie for the last time. Lady Darnley had sent a box of lovely flowers, and I laid them round her. The marvellous beauty of her countenance continued: it was the most sublime majesty of Death:--

‘That perfect presence of His face, Which we, for want of words, call Death.’[382]

“John[383] came in to see her too, but can think of nothing but his own future. That does not seem to occur to me--not yet: I can think of nothing but her wealthy past, so rich, so overflowing in deeds of love, in endearing ways which drew all hearts to her, in noble, simple trust and faith, in heart-whole devotion and self-abnegation for the Mother and me.

“At eleven I set off alone, in a little carriage, by the familiar lanes. It was the loveliest of autumnal days, and all was in its richest, most touching beauty: the Ashburnham woods; the long Boreham hill, with the group of weird pine-trees called ‘The Crooked Aunts;’ Sybil Filiol’s paved walk winding by the roadside; Windmill Hill; Lime Cross; Lime; Flower’s Green and the Mother’s little school; Hurstmonceaux Place; and then the ascent to the church through the deep hollow way overhung by old oaks.

“Soon after 2 P.M. the little procession appeared over the brow of the hill, the bearers, in white smock-frocks, walking by the carriages. The coffin was laden with flowers, wreaths sent by different friends, and a long garland of Michaelmas daisies and laurustinus falling over the side. I followed the coffin alone first, then all the servants from Holmhurst and many poor women from Lime Cross.

“The first part of the service was in the chancel amidst all the old family monuments. The grave was by my Mother’s side, in the same little garden enclosure. It was strange to feel that the next funeral there must be my own, and to look down upon her coffin on which my own will rest some day.

“After the others were gone I walked in the old deer-park. I felt as if I was a spirit haunting the place. All was peace and loveliness, but how great the change from the time when I was there so constantly! ‘On dépose fleur à fleur la couronne de la vie.’[384] All the familiar figures of my childhood are swept away--all the uncles and aunts, brothers and sister; all the old neighbours; nearly all the old friends; the dear Mother; Marcus Hare; Arthur and Mary Stanley; and now my own dear Lea: all the old homes too are broken up, pulled down, or deserted; only I and the ruins of the castle seem left.

‘So live I in spirit, Lonely, my hidden life, by none to be known of, Never a sound nor cloud-picture but brings to my fancy Matter for thought without end and keen-edged emotion.’”[385]

* * * * *

“_Holmhurst, Nov. 14._--The winds are howling round and I sit alone in my home. The silence is sometimes awful, for I never hear the human voice now, for my only attendant, the faithful Anne, who waits upon me, is stone-deaf, so that all communication with her is in writing.

“It may seem odd, but my dear Lea’s removal really makes a greater blank in my life than even the Mother left behind. My Mother had so long taken the child’s place to be loved and taken care of: Lea, to her last hour, took as much care of _me_ as in the first year of my life. I have the piteous feeling that there is none now to whom I _signify_: it can really ‘matter’ to no one whether I live or die. My friends are very kind, and would be sorry to lose me, but in this rapid world-current a few days would see them well out of their grief. And my dearest Lea, who cared--who would have cared while life lasted, rests now under a white marble cross like my Mother’s, inscribed--

MARY LEA GIDMAN, June 2, 1800: Oct. 19, 1882. Through fifty-four years Devoted, honoured, and beloved In the Hare family.”

XXIII

IN THE FURROWS OF LIFE

“Days--when gone-- Gone! they ne’er go; when past they haunt us still.” --EDWARD YOUNG.

“What used to be joy is joy no longer: but what is pain is easier because they have not to bear it.”--GEORGE ELIOT.

“To live for the shorter or longer remainder of my days with the simple bravery, veracity, and piety of her that is gone, that would be a right learning from her death, and a right honouring of her memory.”--CARLYLE.

“Dieu donne la robe selon le froid.”--PASCAL.

JOURNAL.

“_Dec. 1882._--With what a numbed feeling of desolate sadness do I look back upon the last chapter. My home existence is so intensely changed by the blank which the dear old friend of my whole life has left. It was long before I could bear to go into her changed rooms, and I still wake nightly with the sad inward outcry, ‘Can it be--can it be? Is every one gone who shared _our_ home life? Is there no one left who is associated with all our wealthy past?’ ‘Entbehren sollst du--sollst entbehren.’ And when my friends urge me to marry, I feel the utter desolateness of attempting to make new ties with any one who knows nothing and cares nothing of those with whom all my earlier life was bound up. I have happily still a great power of enjoyment when anything pleasant comes to me, but oh! how seldom it happens. Griefs and worries--griefs and worries come round with wheel-like recurrence. I often think of Aubrey de Vere’s lines:--

‘When I was young, I said to Sorrow, “Come, and I will play with thee.” He is near me now all day; And at night returns to say, “I will come again to-morrow, I will come and stay with thee.”

“Archbishop Tait, long a kind friend, is dead. I hear that at his funeral, in the beautiful churchyard at Addington, a little robin perched on an adjoining tombstone and poured forth a flood of song, apparently unconscious of all present. ‘How our father would have liked to have seen it,’ said one of the daughters.”

* * * * *

“_Jan. 12, 1883._--Tea with Dowager Lady Donoughmore,[386] who was very pleasant. She described walking in Ireland with a stingy old gentleman. A beggar came up to them, and he said, ‘I have not got a penny to give you.’ The beggar retorted, ‘You’ve got an awful ugly face: I hope you may die soon, but I pity the worms that will have to eat you.’

“Lady Donoughmore, however, said that she had boundless experience of the natural poetry in the Irish peasantry. On receiving a shilling, an old woman said to her, ‘May ivery hair of yer honour’s head become a torch to guide yer sowle to heaven.’”

* * * * *

“_June 19._--Dined with Lady Airlie, only meeting Mrs. Duncan Stewart and Lady De Clifford. Mrs. Stewart talked much of Mr. Carlyle.

“‘Mr. Hannay knew Carlyle very well, and often went to see him, but it was in his poorer days. One day when Mr. Hannay went to the house, he saw two gold sovereigns lying exposed in a little vase on the chimney-piece. He asked Carlyle what they were for. Carlyle looked--for him--embarrassed, but gave no definite answer. “Well, now, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Hannay, “neither you nor I are quite in a position to play ducks and drakes with sovereigns: what _are_ these for?”--“Well,” said Carlyle, “the fact is, Leigh Hunt likes better to find them there than that I should give them to him.”

“‘I was sitting once by Mr. Bourton,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘and he was talking of Leigh Hunt. He said, “He is the only person, I believe, who, if he saw something yellow in the distance, and was told it was a buttercup, would be disappointed if he found it was only a guinea.”’

“Lady Airlie said she had known Leigh Hunt very well when she was a child. He had taken her into the garden, and talked to her, and asked her what she thought heaven would be like, and then he said, ‘I will tell you what I think it will be like: I think it will be like a most beautiful arbour all hung with creepers and flowers, and that one will be able to sit in it all day, and read a most interesting novel.’

“Of her early acquaintance with Washington Irving, Mrs. Stewart said, ‘It was at Havre. My guardian was consul there. People used to say, “Where is Harriet gone?” and he answered, “Oh, she is down at the end of the terrace, busy making Washington Irving believe he is God Almighty, and he is busy believing it.”’

“Mrs. Stewart told of Miss Ruth Paget, one of many sisters, who went down at night to the kitchen to let out her little dog for a minute, and found her brother Marco, who was a midshipman in the Mediterranean, sitting on the kitchen-table, swinging his legs, but pouring with wet. She said, ‘Good heavens, Marco, how did you come here?’ He looked at her, and only said, ‘Do not tell any one you have seen me.” She looked round for an instant to see if any one was coming, and when she turned, he was gone.

“Ghastly pale, she went upstairs. Her sisters said, ‘You look as if you had seen a ghost,’ and they tried to insist on her telling them what had happened to her. She put them off by complaining of headache and faintness; but she was terribly anxious.

“Three months afterwards she heard her brother was coming home, then that he had arrived at Portsmouth, then he came. The first time she was alone with him she said, ‘I must tell you something,’ and she told him how he had appeared to her, and then she said, ‘I wrote it down at the time, and here is the paper, with the date and the hour.’

“He looked shocked at first, and then said, that at that very moment, being absent from his ship without leave, his boat had been upset, and he had been as nearly drowned as possible--in fact, when he was taken out of the water, life was supposed to be extinct. His first fear on recovering was that his absence without leave would be detected by his accident and become his ruin, and his first words were, ‘Do not tell any one you have seen me.’”

* * * * *

“_June 21._--At Madame du Quaire’s I met Oscar Wilde and Mrs. Stewart. He talked in a way intended to be very startling, but she startled him by saying quietly, ‘You poor dear foolish boy! how can you talk such nonsense?’ Mrs. M. L. had recently met this ‘type of an aesthetic age’ at a country house, and described his going out shooting in a black velvet dress with salmon-coloured stockings, and falling down when the gun went off, yet captivating all the ladies by his pleasant talk. One day he came down looking very pale. ‘I am afraid you are ill, Mr. Wilde,’ said one of the party. ‘No, not ill, only tired,’ he answered. ‘The fact is, I picked a primrose in the wood yesterday, and it was so ill, I have been sitting up with it all night.’ Oscar Wilde’s oddities would attract notice anywhere, but of course they do so ten times more in the _plein midi_ of London society, where the smallest faults of manner, most of all of assumption, are detected and exposed at once.”

* * * * *

“_July 2, 1883._--I have just heard again the ghost story so often told by Mrs. Thompson Hankey:

“Two beautiful but penniless sisters were taken out in London by an aunt. A young gentleman from the north, of very good family and fortune, fell in love with one of them, and proposed to her, but she was with difficulty persuaded to accept him, and afterwards could never be induced to fix a date for their marriage. The young man, who was very much in love, urged and urged, but, on one excuse or another, he was always put off. Whilst things were in this unsettled state, the young lady was invited to a ball. Her lover implored her not to go to it, and when she insisted, he made her promise not to dance any round dances, saying that if she did, he should believe she had ceased to care for him.

“The young lady went to the ball, and, as usual, all the young men gathered round her, trying to persuade her to dance. She refused any but square dances. At last, however, as a delightful valse was being played, and she was standing looking longingly on, she suddenly felt herself seized round the waist, and hurried into the dance. Not till she reached the end of the room, very angry, did she succeed in seeing with whom she had been forced to dance: it was with her own betrothed. Furious, she said she should never forgive him. But, as she spoke, he disappeared. She begged several young men to look for him, but he could not be found anywhere, and, to her astonishment, every one denied altogether having seen him. On reaching home, she found a telegram telling her of his death, and when the hours were compared, he was found to have died at the very moment when he had seized her for the dance.

“Mrs Thompson Hankey knew all the persons concerned.

“Catherine Vaughan has just been taken to see an old woman in Scotland, whose daughter was married last year. She asked if she was getting on well. ‘Aye, she’s gettin’ on varra weel, varra weel indeed. She’s got a pig, and she’s got a cock, and she’s got a son: it’s true that she hates her mon, but one must aye have ae thing.’”

“Charlotte Leycester is to be left in possession of my little Holmhurst whilst I am away, and has such complete enjoyment of it, that I shall have no sense of wasting my home by a long absence, as would otherwise be the case.”

During the summer of 1883, I left England to join my oft-times travelling companions, the Miss Hollands, for a tour in Russia. I did not greatly enjoy this tour, partly because I felt so terribly knowing almost nothing of the language of the country, not being able to read even the names of the streets. I also suffered from not having had time to teach myself anything of the country before I went there: for, after I came home, and tried to instruct my mind by every book I could get hold of about Russia, I found my travels had been much more interesting than, from the very intensity of my ignorance, I believed them to be at the time.

At Kieff I left my companions, and found my way home alone by Warsaw and by Cracow, with its curious monuments and odious Jew population. After the great discomforts of Russia, a very few days in Germany seemed very charming, and I was especially glad to see beautiful old Breslau, and afterwards Wilhelmshohe near Cassel, in a perfect conflagration of splendid autumnal tints, truly realising Hood’s lines--

“How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fled.”

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_St. Petersburg, August 22, 1883._--A rest in the interesting group of North-German cities, Dantzic, Marienburg, Königsberg, prepared us for the thirty-six hours’ journey through monotonous fir-woods and cornfields, unvaried through 1000 miles, till two great purple domes rose on the horizon--St. Alexander Newski and the Cathedral of St. Isaac.

“It was difficult to believe we were in Europe on emerging from the station and seeing the endless droskies--sledges on wheels--drawn up, with their extraordinary-looking drivers, in long blue dressing-gowns (wadded like feather-beds, so as to make the wearer look like a huge pillow), with a girdle, and low cap. Then the gigantic streets, each about as broad as St. James’s Square, and the huge squares, in which the palaces, however vast, are so disproportioned to the immensity of space, that their architectural features are lost. Then the utter desolation, one carriage and two or three foot-passengers in the apparently boundless vistas. Altogether, St. Petersburg is quite the ugliest place I ever saw, even the Neva, huge as it is, so black and grim, and the smoke of the steamers giving the worst aspects of London. But yesterday evening we had a delightful drive of four hours on the islands in the Neva, which answer here to the Park, and are exquisitely varied--lovely winding alleys, bosquets of flowering trees, green meadows, little lakes, rushing brooks, every variety of cottage and villa and garden and bridge, at least twenty miles of them. Coming back, we stopped at the fortress-church to see the royal tombs--stately marble sarcophagi in groups; first Peter the Great and his family, then two groups of intermediate sovereigns, then the present family, surrounded (inside the church) by a grove of palms and laden with flowers. Close by is Peter the Great’s cottage, and the tiny early church in which he worshipped, and, at the former, the famous ‘icon’ which he carried in his wars, before which crowds of people were incessantly prostrating and kissing the pavement.”

* * * * *

“_Sept. 4._--We returned last night from Finland, of which I am glad to have visited a specimen, though there is not much to see, except gloomy little lakes, flat country, hundreds of miles of monotonous forests of young firs and birch, and little wooden villages. All is very much like an inferior Sweden, and the people understand Swedish, and have the Swedish characteristics of honesty and civility, which, at so short a distance off, make them an extraordinary contrast to the Russians. Our journey was amusingly varied by endless changes of rail, steamer, walk, char-a-banc, as the country allowed. At Imatra, our destination, a lake tumbles into a river by curious rapids.”

* * * * *

“_Moscow, Sept. 9._--We left St. Petersburg on Monday, and went to Novgorod the Great, one of the oldest cities in Russia, once enormous, but now dwindled to a large village, with a decaying kremlin and a wonderful cathedral like a mosque, a blaze of beautiful ancient colour within, quite splendid in its gold and silver decorations, and the shrines of sixteen famous saints (the Greek saints are most puzzling) who are buried there, and whose mummified hands, left outside their cerecloths, are exposed to the kisses of the faithful. A journey of nineteen hours’ rail brought us here on Thursday morning. The first impression of Moscow is disappointing--commonplace omnibuses at the station, ugly vulgar streets like the back-streets of Brighton, and, as the town is above twenty miles round and nine miles across, they seem endless. But you enter the Chinese town, in which we are now living, by gates in the strangest walls imaginable, and the street has all the crowd and clamour of Naples. Another series of very tall battlemented red walls and lofty gates announces the Kremlin. This is more striking than I expected--the three mosque-like cathedrals (there are five cathedrals and three hundred churches in Moscow), and the splendid view from the high terrace in front of them, which recalls that from the Pincio at Rome, only the Moskva is a very broad river, and every church has the strangest of towers--like bulbs, pine-apples, melons, fir-cones, gilt or blue or brightest green, covered with network, with stars, discs, moons, hung with chains like veils, every device that the wildest dream or maddest imagination can invent, and yet in this clear atmosphere of intense burning heat and with the arid low hills or burnt plains which surround the town, it all looks right. Inside, the cathedrals put all the churches in Italy and Spain to shame by their splendour, but one is sorry not to know more of their history. I can speak enough Russian now to get on humbly; but the alphabet beats me still: it is not only that there are so many letters, but that the old familiar forms of written letters mean something new.”

* * * * *

“_Kieff, ‘The Holy City,’ Sept. 21._--We made excursions from Moscow to all the great monasteries. There are few other sights of importance, but these, in Russia, are quite unique--immense spaces surrounded by walls, towers, and gates, which have stood many a siege, and which are like the towns in old woodcuts, and contain gardens, cemeteries, cathedrals, usually six churches with gilt domes and minarets, besides accommodation for 600 or 800 monks and nuns, who have their wells, gardens, farms, &c. One of those which I thought most attractive was Novo Devichi, rising from an arid sandy plain close to the town, but full of lovely flowers, which a kind old prioress came and gave us handfuls of. Then we went to the New Jerusalem, where the famous Nikon lived and is buried--many hours jolting along a no-road through the forests in a rough tarantass, but a beautiful place when you get there. Nikon chose it because he thought it so like the real Jerusalem, and changed the name of its river to Jordan, and _made_ a Kedron. It was a quiet countrified spot, and the only one I have seen which the Mother and Lea would have enjoyed in the old days, and there was a primitive inn with kindly, gentle people. We also went to the famous Troitsa, the home and grave of Philaret. In all these excursions, as everywhere else, we found the ‘difficulties’ of Russian travel entire imagination: nothing can be easier.

“Nevertheless, the journey to Kieff by a slow train was terrible, lasting two days and a night, and awfully hot--across a hideous brown steppe the whole way, with scarcely a tree to vary it. (There are forests _till_ Moscow, only steppes afterwards.) I was ill and wretched enough before this interesting place rose on its low hills above the Dnieper.

“To-day, however, has quite satisfied me that it was worth while to come. It is a most unique and beautiful place, the vast town, or rather three great towns, so embosomed in trees and gardens, that the houses are almost lost. But the greatest charm lies in the constant view over the glorious Dnieper, and the immense aërial plain beyond, with its delicate pink lights and blue shadows. Then Kieff is the Mecca of Russia, full of tombs of saints and holy images, and, though this is no special season, the thousands and thousands of pilgrims are most extraordinary--in sheep-skins and goat-skins, in fur caps, high-peaked head-dresses and turbans; in azure blue, bright pink, or pale primrose colour. I never could have believed without seeing it the reverence of the Russian religion, and it has seemed the same everywhere and in all classes. The bowing and curvetting and crossing before the icons is most extraordinary, and still more so the three prostrations which all make on approaching any holy place, bending down and kissing the dust in a way worthy of an acrobat, though treated as a matter of course by the devotees themselves. But the intense expression of devotion borne by these pilgrims (who have often _walked_ from Archangel!) is such as I have never seen on other faces, and some of the old men and women especially would make the grandest studies for pictures of saintly apostles and matrons. To see a smart young officer unhesitatingly prostrate himself and kiss the ground on sight of an icon (in the mud of this morning even), in the presence of equally smart companions, has something deeply touching in it, and one wonders if any young guardsman in England would do the same if and because he thought it right.”

* * * * *

“_In the Warsaw train, Sept. 25._--In this smoothly gliding train, which takes one in fifty-four weary hours across the steppes, it is as easy to write as in the study at home. I should be most comfortable if it were not that my companion (in the compartment for two) is the most odious type of American I ever came across. ‘I guess you will not want to have the windows of this carriage opened till you get to Warsaw, because I will not submit to it: I am in my right, and I will _not_ submit to it.’

“We were arrested again yesterday at Kieff, though then only by priests--veiled priests--for daring to sketch the outside of one of their sacred chapels; but after being hurried about from place to place for an hour, and shut up in a courtyard, with a wooden bench to sit upon, for another, we were regaled with a pile of beautiful grapes and apples, and sent about our business. This constant worrying when drawing has really made Russia very tiresome; but for those who do not want to draw, I do not see what difficulties travelling in the country can present, and Russians are always civil, even when arresting you.”

* * * * *

“_Warsaw, Sept. 27._--We arrived at the junction station of Brest more than two hours late, for on some of the Russian lines no hours are obligatory, and you are quite at the mercy of conductors and their whims for spending ten, thirty, or even forty minutes in gossiping at side stations. So the Warsaw train had left Brest, and we had five hours to wait for another. Ill and wretched, I left the horrible room where a crowd of people were smoking, spitting, and _smelling_, and made my way to a sort of deserted public garden, where cows were browsing on the lilacs. Here, from mere want of something to do, I began to sketch some cottages and bushes, when I was suddenly seized by two soldiers and carried off to the guard-house. Here a very furious bombastical old major cross-examined me, and went into a passion over each sketch in my book, with volleys of questions about each, and then he sent me with a military escort to the station to fetch my passport. It was right, of course, and at last, after several hours, I was dismissed with ‘Maintenant c’est fini;’ but after a quadruple walk of two miles each way, and over such a pavement as only Russia can supply.

“I never was at Warsaw before, and should not care to stay. The Vistula divides the town, which is full of palaces and gardens, but has older quarters full of Jews, which are like the old streets of Paris. This afternoon I drove to the old Sobieski palace of Villanov. Two horses were necessary, for just outside this capital city the roads are like the roughest of ploughed fields.”

* * * * *

I spent the autumn of 1883 very quietly at Holmhurst, but paid some visits in the winter.

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_Palace, Lichfield, Jan. 1, 1884._--After a pleasant Christmas at Kinmel, I came here yesterday to dear Augusta Maclagan. The immense quantity of work she does suits her, though it seems too much to those who do not know her. Town, Diocese, Chapter, and the society of the neighbourhood all work the willing horse alike. I cannot sufficiently admire the marvellous versatility of the Bishop, or his wonderful power of conversation, recalling that of Dean Alford in its simplicity and vivacity. He has led the most varied of lives, and has much of interest to tell of each part of it. He was for three years a soldier. When he was born, the whole house was disturbed by the most fearful row, and when they inquired what it was, the servant said, ‘Eh, it’s just Sandie and Nellie fighting over the bit bairnie.’ Sandie, who had been military servant to the father, an army doctor, said it must be brought up as a soldier. Nellie said, ‘Nay, it’s the seventh bairn, and if it’s a soldier, it must be the Lord’s soldier: the bairn must aye be a minister;’ and he was both. The Bishop is still passionately fond of riding and driving, and as soon as he gets out of Lichfield, mounts the box of his carriage and drives his own horses, ‘Pride’ and ‘Prejudice.’ He says people may consider it a terrible thing for a Bishop to be drawn hither and thither by these passions, but then it is assuredly a fine thing to have them well under control.

“The Lonsdales dined last night, and afterwards we sat up for a touching little midnight service in the palace chapel, in which the Bishop preached, but very briefly, saying just what I have so often felt, that it is not the expected, but the _unexpected_ events which come with the New Year--that God’s hand is full of ‘surprises.’

“Augusta has written so admirable, so intensely interesting a Memoir of her dear mother, that I cannot say how delightful I find it, or how beautifully it portrays that lovely and lovable life from life to death. It is only in MS., though one of the best biographies I ever read--‘the history of a life, not a stuffed animal.’

“The cathedral is most uniform in its beauty, even the modern monuments so fine. Of the older ones, the most interesting is that of Bishop Hackett, who was appointed by Charles II. after the destruction caused by the Puritans. He found the church a ruin, and it is touching to hear how he called his choir and the one remaining canon into the only bit which had still a roof, and prayed that he might have life and energy to restore it. Going back to his palace, he harnessed his coach-horses to the first cart that drew materials for the cathedral, and, though his income was so small, he spent £8000 upon it.

“The statue of our Lord over the west front was put up by the present Bishop in the place of a statue of Charles II., which was due to a Mrs. Wilson. She was of an old Lichfield family, and married far beneath her, a mere mason; but she said to him, ‘Now you are a clever man: you know how to carve; make a good statue of his Majesty for the cathedral, and it will be heard of at court, and you will be knighted, and I shall die “my lady.”’ And all this actually happened. When the statue of Charles was being taken down, the present Dean gave a groan of ‘Poor King Charles!’--‘Why do you call him poor King Charles?’ said the Bishop. ‘Because he is being dethroned by a _restoration_.’

“Bishop Selwyn always desired that he might not be buried in the cathedral, so a little mortuary chapel on the outside was restored for him, and you look from the church through arches upon his beautiful sleeping figure by Adams. When the Maori chiefs were in England, they came down especially to see it, and gazed upon it with their eyes streaming with tears. ‘They have laid him on a New Zealand mat, as a chieftain should lie,’ they said.”

* * * * *

“_Fawsley, Jan. 8, 1884._--I came here from Lichfield to find a very large party in this large and most comfortable house, with a hall of Henry VII.’s time. Sir Rainald Knightley, its owner, is a splendid type of an English gentleman, very conservative, very courteous, very clever, and devoted to country sports and interests, which alternate with the politics in which his more serious moments are spent. The only blemish on his perfectly happy married life with Miss Bowater, who enters into all his pursuits, whether duties or pleasures, politics, country business, hunting, &c., is that they have no children. He is surrounded by cousins--Charleses and Valentines--repeating in actual life the many Charleses and Valentines to whom there are monuments in the fine old church near the house. In the autumn, rheumatism takes him to Homburg, but he refuses to learn German, ‘the grinding gibberish of the garrulous Goth.’

“The parish has a population of fifty-eight, and there is only service once on Sundays, performed by the cousin who is in orders. It is alternately in the morning and afternoon, the difference being that the morning service begins at noon, and the afternoon service at a quarter past.

“Mrs. Charles Knightley drove me to Canons Ashby, the beautiful and romantic old place of the eccentric and impoverished Sir H. Dryden. I thought it looked like the background of a novel, and afterwards found that it was the background of--‘Sir Charles Grandison’!

“Lady Knightley took me to Shackborough--a pretty place. When Charles I. was going to the battle of Edgehill he met its proprietor of that day merrily hunting. He had never heard that there was a civil war going on, such was the paucity of political news! But he turned about and went with the king into the fight and was wounded there.

“At the beginning of this century, the daughter of the house became engaged to be married to an officer quartered at Weedon--a mésalliance which was greatly disapproved by her family. At last she was induced to break it off. But the officer persuaded her to grant him one last interview at the summer-house on the hill that he might give her back her letters. He gave her the letters with one hand, and with the other he shot her dead, and then shot himself.

“At Marston St. Lawrence, near this, is an old house, beautiful and moated. Here a Mrs. Blencowe was one day being dressed by her maid before the toilet-table. Suddenly she said, ‘Did you see anything’--‘Yes,’ said the maid. A hand had come out from behind the curtain. They had both seen it, and both screamed violently. Help came, and the room was searched, but no one was there.”

* * * * *

“_Ickwellbury, Jan. 27._--A man here, being asked by Mrs. Harvey how he liked going to church, said, ‘Well, I like it very much: I goes to church, and I sits down, and I thinks o’ nowt.’”

* * * * *

“_London, Feb. 23._--My dear Mrs. Duncan Stewart is dead. She never rallied from the sudden death of her son-in-law Mr. Rogerson. But she was able to see several people, to whom she spoke with that all-majestic charity which was the mainspring and keynote of her life. Her last words were ‘Higher, higher!’ and we may believe that she has passed into those higher regions where her thirst after life, not repose, meets its full fruition. I went to see her in the solemn peace of the newly dead, and last Thursday I saw her laid in a grave of flowers at Kensal Green, many faithful hearts mourning, many sad eyes weeping beside her coffin.[394]

“There were few equal to her. Mrs. Procter is most so. I met her the other day, and some one made her a pretty speech. She said, ‘When I was very young, Sydney Smith said to me, “My dear, do you like flattery?”--“Very much indeed,” I answered, “but I do not like it put on with a trowel.” What I really do like is--in the words of Sterne--a few delicate attentions, not so vague as to be bewildering, and not so pointed as to be embarrassing.’”

* * * * *

“_Firle, Lewes, April 18, 1884._--I came here to find a party of twenty in the house, including Sir Rainald and Lady Knightley. It is a large house, like a French château, close under the downs, but as my kind but singular little host, Lord Gage, likes every window open in these bitter winds, the cold is ferocious. On Wednesday I got Lady Knightley to walk with me (the inhabitants of this place had never heard of it!) 2½ miles across the marshes to Laughton Place, the ancient and original residence of the Pelhams--a moated grange, having an old red brick tower with terra-cotta ornaments, and many other curious remains, looking--stranded in the desolate fen, and with an abundance of animal life--like an old Dutch picture.

“Yesterday I walked with Sir Rainald to Glynde. It is a curious old house, approached through a gateway and stableyard and by clipped yew hedges, having a pleasant view over upland country and high gardens. A fine black oak staircase leads to a noble gallery-room, with deep alcoves, so pleasantly furnished with fine pictures, &c., that, though suitable to an enormous party, a single individual would never feel solitary in it. Miss Brand did the honours of the many good portraits very pleasantly, and, before we left, Lady Hampden came in from walking, and I was very glad to see her in her country home, having so often been in her house in the palace at Westminster.”

* * * * *

Ill-health in June made a happy excuse for my spending a delightful month abroad. I saw first the group of towns around Laon, charming old-fashioned Noyon, beautiful Soissons, and Coucy with its grand castle. Then Alick Pitt met me at Thun, and we spent a delightful time, joining the Husseys of Scotney Castle at Mürren and Rosenlaui, sketching and flower-picking, and reawakening every slumbering sense of the delights of Switzerland.

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_Pension Baumgarten, Thun, June 25, 1884._--You will be wishing to hear from this well-remembered place, where the mountains are quite as rugged and purple, the lake as limpid and still, the river as green and rushing, and the old town and castle as picturesque, as any youthful recollection could paint them. This pension, too, is perfectly delightful, with its coloured awnings over the wide terrace, its tubs of pomegranates and oleanders, its garden of roses, and its meadows behind, with the wooden châlets and the women making hay, and the delightful pathlets through the dark woods on the mountain-side.

“I had a calm crossing on Friday, and reached Laon by seven. On Saturday morning I saw the stately cathedral at St. Quentin, and spent the afternoon at Noyon, which has an exquisite cathedral, Calvin’s curious old house, and a most attractive little inn. Sunday I was at Coucy, where there is the finest ruined château in existence after Heidelberg, beautifully situated amongst wooded hills, in scenery so pretty, you would take it for the Vosges, not Picardy. Monday morning I spent at Soissons, with two fine cathedrals, one in ruins, and an interesting town, and then came on by night to Berne.

* * * * *

* * * * *

“The last night I was in London I dined with the Reptons to meet the Kildares--Lady Kildare quite the most beautiful creature I ever saw.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Oct. 10._--Since I returned from Switzerland, my home life has been quite happy and uneventful. Only ten days ago I had a telegram from ‘my Prince’ (of Sweden and Norway), asking me to come and spend Sunday afternoon and evening with him at Eastbourne, as he was only there for two days. He met me most cordially and affectionately, making me feel as if the seeming neglect of several years was only ‘royalty’s way,’ and pleasantly taking up all the dropped threads of life. We were several hours together, and while we were talking a sweet-faced young lady looked in. ‘I must come in: you are such a friend of the Prince: I have heard of you, too, all my life. I am so very glad to see you at last,’--and I felt at once that the Crown-Princess was a friend.

“She wanted to know what I thought of the Prince--the Prince wanted to know what I thought of her: I was glad to be able to answer both most satisfactorily.

* * * * *

“I saw her again at dinner, and she talked most delightfully, and was full of animation and interest. I came away with a happy feeling that my affectionate occupation of many months for the Prince had, after all, not been thrown away.”

* * * * *

“_Highcliffe, Oct. 26, 1884._--Lady Waterford says that the father of that Thérèse Longworth who called herself Lady Avonmore was a young clerk at Bordeaux at the time of the Noyades. Two beautiful young girls were tied together, and were going to be drowned. Suddenly a poissarde, seized with compassion from their looks, jumped upon a barrel and shouted, ‘Are there no young men here who will save the lives of these two beautiful girls by marrying them?’ Longworth and another young fellow were looking out of a window at the time and heard it, and said to one another, ‘Shall we do it?’ It was rather a gulp, for they were both very young at the time; but they went down and said they would, and they were both married there and then, by joining hands after the fashion of the Commune. The daughter of one of those marriages was Thérèse Longworth.”

* * * * *

Early in October I paid a visit to my distant cousins, Mrs. Quin and her brother, Edmund Boyle, who were staying at Ramsgate. The health of Sir Moses Montefiore, at the great age of one hundred, was then a great topic of the place. Mrs. Quin said something to him about another year at his age being only a waiting time, when he answered sharply, “What do you mean by feeling old? I only feel forty.” He said no one had ever mentioned the name of Christ to him except one person, and that was Cardinal Antonelli!

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Ruxley Lodge, Oct. 30._--I am enjoying a pleasant visit to Lady Foley and her sons; only Lady Jane Repton here besides. It is a charming house, full of books and pictures, in a beautiful country, with fine views of Windsor and Claremont. Once there was an old priory here, but only the fishponds are left. We went to-day to see the tomb of Pamela, mother of my Uncle Fitzgerald, at Thames Ditton. It was brought there from Montmartre, where it was broken by a bomb in 1870. It is inscribed, ‘Pamela, Ladye Edward Fitzgerald, par son ami dévoué, L. L.;’ and no one now knows who L. L. was. Close by are the graves of her daughter, Lady Campbell, and several of her grand-daughters.

“The Foleys are said to descend from ‘Foley the Fiddler,’ a mechanic who determined to make his fortune by finding out the secret of making nails by machinery in Sweden. Up to that time the secret had been successfully kept: the ironfounders had shut every one out, and let no one see their process. But Foley the Fiddler, pretending to be half-witted, went and played in the neighbourhood of the manufactory. The Swedish workmen danced to his music, and eventually were so delighted with him that they could not resist taking him to play inside the factory. When he had been there some time, he fancied he had seen all he wanted, and went home. He set up ironworks on the plan of what he had seen, but when he came to completing them, found that, after all, he did not understand the process perfectly. He went back, and the Swedish workmen were quite delighted to find him again fiddling outside the factory--‘a daft fiddler’--and they brought him in, and he learnt all he wanted, and went home and made a great fortune.”

* * * * *

_“Goldings, Herts, Nov. 20._--Isabel Smith says that a lady in Wales, a friend of Miss Frances Wynne, looked up suddenly one day after reading the obituary in the _Times_, and exclaimed, ‘Now, at last, my lips are unsealed.’ Then she told this:--

“One day she had been alone at her country-house in Wales, with her son and a friend of his. She had received all the money for her rents that day--a very large sum--and put it away in a strong box. Being asked, she said she did not mind the least having it in her room, and should sleep with the key under her pillow.

“When she had been in bed some time, she was aware that her door opened, and that a man in a cloak came into her room with a candle. He passed the candle before her face, but she lay with closed eyes, perfectly motionless. Then he felt for the key; he felt for a long time, but somehow he failed to find it. At last he went away.

“As soon as the door closed, she sprang out of bed, intending to go to her son’s room to warn him that a robber was in the house. But his room was a long way off, and she thought it would be better to go instead to the friend, whose room was nearer.

“As she opened the door suddenly, she saw a figure muffled up in a long cloak put down the candle. It was the same figure who had come into her room. She looked at him fixedly. ‘To-morrow at 9 A.M.,’ she said, ‘the dogcart will come to the door which was to have taken my strong box to the bank: you will go in that dogcart, and you will never enter my door again. If you never attempt to do this, I will never say a word on what has happened as long as you live.’ And she never did, even to her son.”

* * * * *

“_Nov. 21._--We have spent the day at Knebworth, an interesting place, though full of shams--a sham old house, with a sham lake, sham heraldic monsters, sham ancient portraits, &c. Lord Lytton, with his velvet collar and gold chains, recalled his father, who is represented on the walls, with his boots pointed like a needle, in a picture by Maclise. The ‘old’ rooms are chiefly modern in reality, but there is one really ancient bedroom--a room in which Queen Elizabeth once slept. Lady Lytton, beautiful, charming, and courteous, looked like a queen in the large saloons and galleries. We found Lady Marian Alford, Lady Colley--the pretty widow of Sir George--and Lady Paget, with her nice son Victor, amongst the guests.

“I wish one did not know that the real name of the Lyttons is Wiggett. William Wiggett took the name of Bulwer on his marriage with Sarah Bulwer in 1756, and his youngest son (the novelist) took the name of Lytton on succeeding to his mother’s property of Knebworth, she being one Elizabeth Warburton, whose very slight connection with the real Lytton family consisted in the fact that her grandfather, John Robinson was cousin (maternally) to Lytton Strode, who was great-nephew of a Sir William Lytton, who died childless in 1704.

“I have had the small trial of another ‘call’ of £300 on those unfortunate Electric Lights in which St. George Lane Fox involved me. I had saved up the money, so it was there, but it was provoking to have to pay what is almost certain to be lost, yet to be obliged to do so, as the only chance of seeing again any part of the £7000 which had gone before it. However, I am never more than very temporarily troubled by such things--there is no use. All I have ever made by my writings in fourteen very hard-worked years is gone now through St. G. Lane Fox--there is nothing else left to lose.”

* * * * *

“_Thoresby Park, Dec. 12._--This has been a most delightful visit at one of the great houses I like the best. Its inmates are always so perfectly brimming with kindness, goodness, and simplicity, and every surrounding is so really handsome, even magnificent, without the slightest ostentation. I arrived with Lord and Lady Leitrim--he quite charming, so merry, pleasant, and natural, and she one of the delightful sisters of charming Lady Powerscourt. It has been a great pleasure to find the Boynes here, and Lady Newark, who is an absolute sunbeam in her husband’s home--perfect in her relation to every member of his family. I have been again to Welbeck and Clumber, only remarking fresh at the former a fine Sir Joshua of a Mr. Cleaver, an old man in the neighbourhood, dressed in grey, and the melancholy interesting portrait of Napoleon by Delaroche, given by the Duc de Coigny.

“A Mrs. Francklin (sister of Lord St. Vincent), staying here, says that a young man, going to stay with Millais, saw distinctly a hand and arm come out of the fireplace in his room, and do it repeatedly. At last he told Millais, who said it had often happened before, and they had the hearthstone taken up, and found the bodies of a woman and child.”

* * * * *

“_Babworth, Dec. 14._--Mrs. Drummond Baring has been most agreeable in her talk of the society at Paris under the Empire, the _soirées intimes_, at which all etiquette was laid aside, and Prosper Merimée, Théophile Gautier, &c., were seen at their best. No one knew so much about the Empress as Merimée. He had known her well as a girl, and all the letters about the marriage had passed through his hands. Nothing could be more naïve than the Empress in her early married days. She _would_ go shopping. She clapped her hands with delight at the opera-bouffe, and the Emperor took them and held them, to the great delight of the people, who applauded vehemently.

“In the last days at the Tuileries, all the court ladies were only occupied in packing up their own things; all deserted their mistress except Madame le Breton. She and the Empress stayed to the last. The Empress asked General Tronchin how long the palace could hold out. He said, ‘Certainly three days.’ It did not hold out three hours. They fled as the people entered, fled precipitately by the long galleries of the Louvre, once in agony finding a door locked and having to look for the key. The Empress had no bonnet. Madame le Breton, with a bit of lace, made something for her head. They reached the street and hailed a cab. ‘Eh! ma petite mère,’ said the driver, ‘il parait que nous nous sauvons: où est le papa donc?’ But he took them and did not recognise them. They went in the cab to the Boulevard Haussmann. Then they found that they had no money to pay it, and Madame le Breton took off one of her rings. ‘We have forgotten our money,’ she said, ‘but you see how suffering my friend is. I _must_ take her on to the dentist, but I will leave this with you; give me your address and I will redeem it.’ And he let them go.

“They took a second cab to the house of Evans, the American dentist, and there found he was gone to his villa at Passy. They followed him there, but when they reached the villa, the servant said he was out, and positively refused to let them in. But Madame le Breton insisted--her friend was so terribly ill: Mr. Evans knew her very well: she was quite certain that he would see her: and at length she almost forced her way in, and, moreover, made the servant pay the cab. At last Mr. Evans came in. He had been to Paris, in terrible anxiety as to the fate of the Empress, knowing that the mob had broken into the Tuileries.

“Mrs. Baring said that when Plonplon, commonly called ‘_Fatalité_,’ was ill, the people said he was ‘_Fat alité_.’”

* * * * *

“_Hickledon, Dec. 17._--No words can say how glad I am to be here with the dearest friend of my young life--dearer still, if possible, with all his six children around him, who are learning also to be fond of me. We walk and talk, and are perfectly happy together in everything.

“We have been to visit Barnborough Church. A man met a wild-cat in Bella Wood, some distance off. He and the cat fought all the way along the hillside, and they both fell down dead in this church porch.

“Yesterday we went to Sprotborough to visit old Miss Copley. It is a very pretty place, a handsome house on a terrace upon a wooded bank above the river. Sir Joseph Copley and his wife Lady Charlotte (Pelham) quarrelled early in their married life. He overheard her at Naples, through a thin wall of a room, telling a friend that he was mad, and he never forgave it. They were separated for some years, then they lived together again, but there was no cordiality. They were really Moyles. A Moyle married a Copley heiress, and the Copleys long ago had married the heiress of the Fitzwilliams, for Sprotborough was the old Fitzwilliam place, and many of the family are buried there in the church. The Copleys divided into two branches, of Sprotborough and Wadsworth, and it is a pretty story that when the Copley of Sprotborough had nothing but daughters, he left the estate to the Copley of Wadsworth, and then, when the Copley of Wadsworth had nothing but daughters, he left it back to the representative of the other branch. Not far from Sprotborough, Conisborough stands beautifully on the top of a wooded hill: in ‘Ivanhoe’ its castle is the place where Athelstan lies in state when supposed to be dead.

“The Bishop of Winchester told Charlie Wood that his predecessor, Bishop Wilberforce, had always very much wished to see a portrait at Wotton (the Evelyns’ place) of Mrs. Godolphin, whose life he had written whilst he was at Alverstoke. This wish he had often expressed; but Mr. Evelyn had not liked the Bishop, and he had never been invited.

“On the day on which the Bishop set off with Lord Granville to ride to ‘Freddie Leveson’s,’ Mr. Evelyn, his brother, and a doctor were sitting late in the dining-room at Wotton, when the brother exclaimed, ‘Why, there is the Bishop of Winchester looking in at the window.’ They all three then saw him distinctly. Then he seemed to go away towards some shrubs, and they thought he must have gone round to the door, and expected him to be announced. But he never came, and an hour after a servant brought in the news that he had been killed only two miles off.

“Mrs. George Portal of Burgclere told Charlie Wood that when Allan Herbert was so ill at Highclere--ill to death, it was supposed--the nurse, who was sitting up, saw an old lady come into the room when he was at the worst, gaze at him from the foot of the bed, and nod her head repeatedly. When he was better, and after he could be left, the housekeeper, wishing to give the nurse a little distraction, showed her through the rooms, and, in Lord Carnarvon’s sitting-room, the nurse suddenly pointed at the portrait over the chimney-piece and said, ‘That is the lady who came into the sick-room.’ The portrait was that of old Lady Carnarvon, Allan Herbert’s mother, and the servants well recollected her peculiar way of nodding her head repeatedly.

“Mrs. George Portal was niece of Lady Anne Townshend, who was also aunt of that young Lord George Osborne who was killed at Oxford when wrestling with Lord Downshire in 1831. On the day of his death, she saw him pass through the room; she called to him, and he did not answer; she rang the bell for the servant, who declared he had never entered the house, and then she wrote the fact of having seen him to her husband, who was absent. Next morning came a messenger to tell Lady Anne of the death of her nephew, with whom she had been very intimate, and to beg her to break it to her sister--his mother, the Duchess of Leeds. Years after, when Mrs. George Portal was sorting her aunt’s letters after her death, she found amongst them the very letter to her husband in which she told what she had seen.”

* * * * *

“_Mount St. John, Dec. 20._--To-day was Lord Halifax’s birthday. The hounds met at Hickledon, wishing to do him honour, but it was almost too much for him. With me, I think it has been a pleasure to him to go back into old days, old memories, old sketch-books, &c. I cannot say how much I enjoyed my visit to the kind old man, as well as to my own dear Charlie--better, dearer, more charming than ever, and more in favour, one feels sure, with God as well as with man.

“Yet Charlie does not wish to die: his life here is so perfectly happy and useful, but he says that it must be ‘very unpleasant to God to feel that His children never wish to come home: he is sure _he_ should feel it so with his children.’ He says he is quite certain what the pains of Purgatory will be--‘they will be the realising for the first time the love of God, and not being able to do anything for Him: this life is our only chance.’ He says he is ‘sure that the next life will be in a more beautiful world, like this, only glorified, and so much, oh! so much better in everything. “Such cats!” my Uncle Courtenay says, “_such_ cats!”’

“Young Charlie came home yesterday, a most delightful boy, only less engaging perhaps than little Francis.[398] To me, these children of my dear brother-like friend are what no other children can ever be.

“This Mount St. John (where I am now visiting Mrs. J. Dundas, Charlie Wood’s sister) is a beautiful place, very high up in hills which are now snowy. There is a long chain of them, ending in Rolleston Scaur, where it is said that, in the earliest times of Christianity, the followers of the Druids met the first missionaries in a public discussion. The devil was disguised in the ranks of the former, who, for a long time, had the best of it; but, when Christian truth began to prevail, he was so disgusted that he flew away to the neighbouring isolated height of Hode’s Point, and a stone which stuck to his red-hot foot was deposited on its summit--a tangible proof of the story, as it is of a wholly different geological formation from its surroundings. The view from these hills is intensely beautiful, comprising York Minster in the hazy plain, and the many places which take their name from the god Thor--Thirkleby, Thirsk, &c.”

* * * * *

“_Dec. 24._--Yesterday we spent at Newburgh, cordially received, and shown all over the house by Lady Julia Wombwell--a most simple, pleasant, winning person. There is the look of an old Dutch house externally, in the clock-tower, clipped yews, and formal water. Inside, the house is very uncomfortable and cold, and has no good staircase. Mary, Lady Falconberg, Cromwell’s daughter, is said to have rescued her father’s body from Westminster at the Restoration, and to have buried it here at the top of the stairs leading to the maids’ rooms. The family, however, prudently refuse to open ‘the tomb’ and see if there is anything inside. Two portraits are shown as those of Mary, Lady Falconberg, and there really is an old silver pen which belonged to her father. There is a beautiful Vandyke of a Bellasye in a red coat, and a good Romney of a lady. The church has an octagonal tower and some tombs of Falconbergs. At the end of the village is the house of Sterne, who was curate there, with an inscription.”

* * * * *

“_Whitburn, Dec. 28._--Lizzie Williamson[399] says she wonders very much that, when our Saviour was on earth, no one thought of asking Him if people ill of hopeless and agonising complaints, idiots, cretins, &c., might not be put out of the way--‘the Bible would have been so much more useful if it had only given us a little information on these points.’

“I stayed a few hours in Durham as I passed through, and found what is so picturesque in summer unbearably black and dismal in winter. The present Dean (Lake), who has so spoilt the cathedral, is most unpopular. One day he had taken upon himself to lecture Mr. Greenwell, one of the minor canons, for doing his part in the service in thick laced boots. Greenwell was furious. Rushing out of the cathedral, he met Archdeacon Bland, the most polite and deliberate of men, and exclaimed, ‘I’ve been having the most odious time with the Dean, and I really think he must have got the devil in him.’--‘No, Mr. Greenwell, no, no, not that,’ said Archdeacon Bland in his quiet way; ‘he is only possessed by three imps: he is imperious, he is impetuous, and he is impertinent.’

“People are full of ‘The Unclassed,’ a powerful novel, though, as a very pretty young lady said to me the other day, ‘not at all the sort of book one would give to one’s mother to read!’

“Coming through Roker, I heard a woman say, ‘Wal, geese is geese, and ye canna mak um nought else.’ But some one else had this to report as a specimen Northumbrian sentence: ‘I left the door on the sneck, and, as I was ganging doun the sandy chare (lane), I met twa bairnies huggin a can o’ bumblekites, and a good few tykes were havin a reglar hubbledeshoo o’ a midden.’”

* * * * *

“_Brancepeth Castle, Jan. 3, 1885._--Mr. Wharton dined. He said, ‘When I was at the little inn at Ayscliffe, I met a Mr. Bond, who told me a story about my friend Johnnie Greenwood of Swancliffe. Johnnie had to ride one night through a wood a mile long to the place he was going to. At the entrance of the wood a large black dog joined him, and pattered along by his side. He could not make out where it came from, but it never left him, and when the wood grew so dark that he could not see it, he still heard it pattering beside him. When he emerged from the wood, the dog had disappeared, and he could not tell where it had gone to. Well, Johnnie paid his visit, and set out to return the same way. At the entrance of the wood, the dog joined him, and pattered along beside him as before; but it never touched him, and he never spoke to it, and again, as he emerged from the wood, it ceased to be there.

“‘Years after, two condemned prisoners in York gaol told the chaplain that they had intended to rob and murder Johnnie that night in the wood, but that he had a large dog with him, and when they saw that, they felt that Johnnie and the dog together would be too much for them.’

“‘Now that is what I call a useful ghostly apparition,’ said Mr. Wharton.”

* * * * *

“_London, Feb. 22, 1885._--At dinner at Miss Bromley’s I met the Misses Bryant, who live in 17 Somerset Street. On the ground-floor of the house is a large room said to be haunted, and in which such terrible noises are heard as prevent any one sleeping there. A man with a grey beard once committed suicide in that room. The other day some children, nephews and nieces of the Misses Bryant, came to spend the afternoon with them, and, to amuse them, one of the ladies got them to help her in arranging her garden upon the leads. While they were at work, the little boy looked over the parapet into the court below, and said, ‘Who is that old man with the grey beard who keeps looking at me out of that window? Oh! he is gone now, but he has put out his head and looked up at me several times.’ The window was that of ‘Greybeard’s room.’ Miss Bryant immediately ran down and asked the servants if any one with a grey beard had come into the house, but no one had entered the house at all, and ‘Greybeard’s room’ was locked up.”

* * * * *

“_March 7._--Two days ago I dined with Lady Sarah Lindsay to meet Colonel Hugh Lindsay and Lady Jane. Colonel Lindsay was full of spiritualism and the wonderful discoveries this generation seems on the verge of. He had himself seen a large table, which had been first set in motion, after the hands which touched it were taken away, float up to the ceiling, remain there for some time over their heads, and then float down again. ‘The conjurors Maskelyne and Cook could not have done this; they might have raised the table (by wires), but it would not have floated.’

“Colonel Lindsay spoke much of the wonderful Providence which keeps down voracious animals. He said that the aphis (of the rose, &c.) reproduced itself in such intense multitudes, that, if not kept down by weather and other insects, it would, _in ten days_, have assumed proportions equal in volume to many thousand times the inhabitants of the earth, the whole air would be darkened, and every living thing upon earth would be utterly consumed by them!

“Lady Sarah told of her grandmother, old Lady Hardwicke,[400] with whom a young lady came to stay. They dined at three o’clock, but when the girl came down, she was dreadfully agitated, and looked as if she had seen a ghost. When Lady Hardwicke pressed her as to the reason, she, after a time, confessed that it was because there was a spirit in her room. It came to her lamenting its hard fate whilst she was dressing, and she was sure there had been a murder in that room. Lady Hardwicke said, ‘Well, my dear, to-morrow you must let me come and stay with you when you are dressing,’ and she did. Soon the girl said, ‘There--there it is!’ and Lady Hardwicke really did hear something. ‘Oh, listen!’ cried the girl. ‘Once I was hap-hap-hap-y, but now I am me-e-e-serable!’ a voice seemed to wail: it was the old kitchen jack!”

* * * * *

“_March 19._--Edward Malet was married to Lady Ermyntrude Russell in Westminster Abbey at 4 P.M. Seldom was there a greater crowd in the streets near Westminster. I met Lady Jane Repton in the crush, and we made our way in together through the Deanery. The glorious building was crowded from end to end, and the music most beautiful. Perhaps the greatest of smaller features was Lady Ermyntrude’s dress, which the papers describe as ‘more pearly than pearl, and more snowy than snow.’”

* * * * *

“_March 28._--Dining at Mrs. Quin’s, I met Mrs. Ward, who was very amusing.

“She described the airs of Frances-Anne, Lady Londonderry.[401] One day she was extremely irritated with her page, and sent him to Lord Londonderry with a note, in which she had written in pencil, ‘Flog this fellow well for me: he has been quite unendurable.’ But the page read the note on the way, and meeting one of the great magnificent flunkeys, six feet high, said, ‘Just oblige me by taking this note in to my lord: I am forced to do something else.’ The flunkey brought out the answer, and met the page, who took it in to his lady. She was rather surprised, for it was--‘I’m afraid.’ Mrs. Ward was in the house when this happened.

“Mrs. Ward recollected, in her own childhood, when she was not three years old, sitting on the floor in her mother’s sitting-room cutting up a newspaper with a pair of blunt scissors. A lady came in to see her mother, and brought with her two very fat children, with great round staring eyes. The children were told to sit down by her on the floor, and she was bidden to amuse them. It was impossible: they only stared in hopeless irresponsiveness. Soon her mother began to talk as loudly as she could. It was to drown the voice of her own little girl, whom she heard repeating aloud a verse of the psalm she had been learning that morning, ‘Eyes have they, but they see not: ears have they, but they hear not: neither speak they with their lips.’

“In the afternoon I went with a crowd to see Herkomer’s portrait of my friend Katharine Grant--a magnificent _tour de force_, white upon white.”

On the 1st of May 1885 I set off on the first of a series of excursions in France for literary purposes, oftentimes of dismal solitude, and always of weary hard work, though full of interest of their own. I found then, as I have always done, how different seeing a thing with intention is to ordinary sight-seeing. A dentist at Rome once said to me, “Mr. Hare, you do not brush your teeth.”--“Yes, indeed I do,” I answered, “every night and morning.”--“Ah! yes; you brush them from habit, but not from motive;” and I discovered the result from my many past tours in France had been just the same. As usual, I found that the ordinary English travellers, who are always occupied in playing at “follow my leader” all the time they are abroad, had missed the best part of France, and that the churches and abbeys of the Correze and Creuse--almost unknown hitherto--are absolutely glorious; and some places in that part of France--Rocamadour, for instance--worthy of being compared with the very finest scenes in Italy. I described much of this tour in a series of papers in the _Art Journal_, as well as in my books on France. In the central provinces the accommodation was very good in its way, and the food always excellent, but in some of the places in the Eastern Pyrenees the dirt was scarcely endurable. The excellent hotel at Montpelier came as a real respite. Whilst there, I made some acquaintance with a banker of the place, who had a poetic Ruskin-like way of describing the wildness of the Cevennes, the grey rocks, desolate scenery, long lines of russet landscape. This so took hold of me, that I went to Lodêve and engaged a carriage for several days to explore the Cevennes thoroughly. It was wild enough certainly and rather curious, but an unbroken monotone; every view, every rocky foreground, even each dreary ruinous village, repeated the last, and after eight or nine hours I was utterly wearied of it; thus it was an intense relief when my driver came in the evening, with no end of apologies, and said he had received a telegram, bidding him return at once to Lodêve; and I was free to jump into the first diligence and reach the nearest station. Railway then took me to Mende, an exceedingly beautiful place, and afterwards to Rodez. Hence I went south again by S. Antonin and Bruniquel, whence beautiful recollections of the spring verdure and clear river come back to me. I made a little tour afterwards to Luchon and other places in the Pyrenees which I had not seen before, and returned straight home from Bordeaux. During this two months’ tour I do not think I ever once saw an English person, even in the railway, and I made no acquaintances.

I found Lourdes entirely changed since I was there last by its enormous religious pilgrimages, and no doubt, whether from the healing waters or the power of faith, many wonderful cures had taken place. It was strange, on nearing the miraculous fountain, to read the inscription, “Ici les malades vont au pas,” &c. A story was told of an officer who had a wooden leg and came to the fountain. When he put in his legs (he put them both in, the wooden leg and the other), as he did so he uttered a little prayer--“Faites, Seigneur, O faites que mes jambes soient pareilles.” When he drew them out, they were both wooden legs!

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_Châteauroux, May 6, 1885._--What weather! bitter north-east winds and torrents of rain ever since I landed in France.... I spent Sunday at Etampes, a little narrow town, one street wide and three miles long, with four churches of the utmost architectural importance.... Leaving Orleans, my ‘Untrodden France’ began, and very pleasantly, at pretty Vierzon on the rushing river Cher. There are rather oppressive moments of solitude, but in this awful weather I am especially glad not to have any grumblers against disagreeables which cannot be helped.”

* * * * *

“_Argenton, May 8._--Yesterday I was called at five for an excursion of forty miles up the valley of the Creuse, but it rained in such torrents it was impossible. At eight it cleared a little, and I set off, and _did_ it all, returning at eight, but it rained in a deluge more than half the time. There were, however, beautiful moments of sun-gleam, and the scenery very lovely. At Le Crozant, the great rendezvous of French artists, where a most charming old woman keeps a very primitive inn, it is even magnificent, finer than anything on Rhine or Moselle--stupendous rocks and a grand castle. Gargilesse, the place where Mme. George Sand lived so oddly, and wrote ‘Promenades autour de mon Village,’ is also a very curious and charming place, the village clustering around a romanesque church in the _enceinte_ of a great ruined castle above the river.”

* * * * *

“_Brive, May 15._--I feel like a child eating through a cake, feeling it a duty not to leave anything remarkable unseen in this part of France, so little known to the English. How unfairly those judge this country who measure France by what they see from the well-known railways to Strasbourg or Marseilles. Nothing can be more beautiful than these hills and valleys of the Creuse and Correze, nothing more rich than the forest-clad country, besides the interest of endless castles and later châteaux, of old towns where the greater proportion of the houses date from the thirteenth century, and of perfectly honest, primitive, and unspoilt people.

“I came to Limoges last Friday, and remained there five days, that is to say, was scarcely there at all, but returned to a good hotel there at night. I saw the great castle of Chalusset; the romanesque Abbey of Solignac; S. Junien, a most grand church; Le Dorat, almost as fine; Montmorillon, full of curiosities; and Chalus, where Richard Cœur de Lion was killed, and where, under the old castle he was besieging, the stone called Rocher de Malmont still rises in the water-meadows, upon which he was standing when the fatal arrow struck him.

“Then I came here, and am staying here in the same way, breakfasting daily at seven, off at half-past seven, and only returning to go to bed. All yesterday I was at the wonderful sanctuary of Rocamadour--the La Salette of these parts--a most curious place, beautiful exceedingly; indeed, though it sounds a very grand comparison, rather like--Tivoli! But it poured all day, with a bitter wind, and this has been the case every day, only this afternoon there have been lovely lights at the falls of Gimel in the exquisite mountain forests. I am so glad I have no companions: they would never have endured the discomfort. No words can say how tired I am every day, nor how wet, nor how dirty; but I shall be glad afterwards to have done it all.”

* * * * *

“_Sarlat in the Dordogne, May 21._--We are still in swelching torrents ... but this is a pleasant little hotel in an old cathedral town, with marvellous streets of houses of fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The weather makes no end of hindrances and discomforts, yet in this tour, as in all others, I have found that expected misfortunes never happen: there are plenty of others, but what one looks for never comes, and I have gone on steadily, missing nothing of the plan marked out, only sometimes delayed. The people are beyond measure pleasant and kind, and the cheapness of everything is a perpetual amazement.”

* * * * *

“_Carcassonne, May 28._--On Friday 23rd it poured in torrents, but I could not give in, so went by the earliest train as far into the hills as it penetrated, and then by omnibus to Souillac, one of the grand and glorious abbey churches, now parochial, which are so common in that part of France and nowhere else--full of colour and solemnity, though rugged to a degree, and into which you descend by long flights of steps.

“It poured in returning too, but I stopped at a wayside station, and a long walk through chalky mud and a ferry over the Dordogne took me to Fénelon, which is a noble old château splendidly placed on a peninsula looking down upon the meeting of many valleys and streams. It has always been kept up; its terraces were in luxuriant beauty of flowers, and the owner, Comte de Morville, was excessively civil in showing everything. I drew under an umbrella in torrents.

“Saturday I was up at five, and off by rail and road to Cadouin, another of those grand abbey churches, of the same character as the rest, but with the addition of a splendid gothic cloister. I arrived at nine, perished with wet and cold, but was resuscitated by the kind woman at the little inn, who made a hot fire on the great dogs of her hearth, and soon had hot coffee ready. It was, however, a long day, and I did not arrive till near midnight at Montpazier. This curious Bastide was built by Edward III. of England, and has never been touched since his time, and, whilst all is so changed in England, it was interesting to find in this remote French hill-country a town the same as when the Black Prince lived there, with old walls and gates, gothic house-windows, rectangular streets, and in the centre of all the market, surrounded by arcades like those at Padua, only here the arcades are so wide that you can drive _in_ them. It was a quaint, charming place, and I stayed till Monday, spending Sunday in the magnificent old Château de Biron.

“Then, by Cahors, with its wonderful old bridge over the Lot, I came to Montpezat, a very simple place and primitive inn--wild open down, old church, arcaded streets, flowers, goats, and old women in white-winged caps. Late that night I reached Moissac, a place where there is a wonderful church and cloister, which has been extolled as one of the archaeological marvels of the world, but its describers have evidently never seen St. Junien, Le Dorat, Souillac, Cadouin.”

* * * * *

“_Narbonne, June 4._--The wet weather has changed to intense heat. Saturday was an interesting day at Alet, a ruined cathedral, and pretty desolate place on the edge of the Eastern Pyrenees, with a very admirable old curé, with whom I made great friends. That afternoon brought me to Perpignan, an almost Spanish town on the frontier--filthily dirty, but I was obliged to stay there to see Prades, the fine lonely monastery of S. Michel de Cuxa, Amélie les Bains, and Arles-sur-Tech. The great excursion to the latter place was indeed a penance--ten hours in a jolting diligence, five each way, with burning sun and stifling dust, and four passengers forced into each place meant for three, so that _any_ movement was impossible, and as the diligence started at five, one was breakfastless. However, all miseries have an end, and Aries had to be visited, for St. Abdon and St. Sennen are buried there; but oh! how glad I was I had no companion to suffer too! On the way here I saw Elne, most Spanish and picturesque, with perhaps the most beautiful cloister in the world. Yesterday too was an interesting day, spent entirely at the great convent of Fontefroide, in the mountains nine miles from hence, spared at the late suppression of monasteries on account of the beneficent and useful lives of its monks--of whom there are still more than fifty--the benefactors of the whole of this part of the country, not only in teaching and preaching, but by taking the lead in all industrial and agricultural work. They receive all strangers, and gave me an excellent luncheon, though, being Wednesday, they had only boiled beans for themselves. The mountains all round the monastery were ablaze with cistus--white, pink, and rose-coloured, with yellow salvia and honeysuckle in masses.”

* * * * *

“_Lodéve, June 8._--From Montpelier I went to Aigues-Mortes, the old sea-town where St. Louis embarked for the Crusades, little altered since his time, unless, indeed, the mosquitoes are worse, for they are terrible.”

* * * * *

“_Lexos, Aveyron, June 15._--From Rodez and its great cathedral, and Mareillac in the heart of the vine country, I had an excursion of transcendent beauty through the most exquisite mountain valleys and chestnut forests, by rocks and waterfalls, to Conques. I was taken there by a single line in Fergusson’s ‘Architecture’ comparing it with Souillac, which I had already seen, but found perhaps the most beautiful spot in France, and, in that desolation, a glorious romanesque abbey church, grand as a cathedral of the first rank, in which, owing to its lonely position, all the curious mediaeval treasures remain unspoilt. Here, and indeed everywhere, I found the greatest kindness from the charming well-to-do peasantry. Every one seems well off: every one full of courtesy and goodness; and though all the men in blouses expect to be treated as equals, they are indescribably pleasant.

“Anything so cheap as ‘Untravelled France’ it is impossible to imagine. Even at Mende, where it is quite a good hotel, prices were: room--very good, 1 fr., dinner 2 fr., breakfast 50 c., service 50 c., bougie never anything, and these are the usual prices.

“Nothing can describe what the delicious, sweetness of the acacias has been, so abundant in all these town-villages, and now it is giving way to that of the limes.

“This is a wooden inn of the humblest kind, close in the shadow of a great junction station, at which I am for convenience, but the pleasantness of the people gives it a charm. This solitary existence is a placid, peculiar halt in life.”

* * * * *

I was the greater part of July in London.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_July 25, 1885._--Mrs. Rogerson, working in the east end of London, met with a family of poor children--very hopelessly poor children--whom she knew, with a dog. She stopped and told them that, as they could not keep themselves, she wondered they could keep a dog. The eldest boy answered rather savagely, ‘Father bought it: father gave sixpence for the dog, and right well he did too, for the rats wos so many, they wos, they used to eat our toes at night, and the dog keeps them all off.’

“The Maharajah of Johore asked me to his ball. When he goes out to luncheon or dinner he sends on his own cook to prepare for him, taking with him, to kill on the spot, the chicken which his master is to eat. When the cook kills it he says a sort of little prayer--‘Dear little brother, forgive me for the pain I am going to inflict upon you: it will only be momentary, and it really cannot be helped.’”

* * * * *

“_Campsea Ashe, Suffolk, August 22._--On the way here I saw Ipswich, its great feature being ‘the Ancient House,’ adorned outside with representations of the Seasons. Close to St. Peter’s Church is Wolsey’s Gate, covered with ivy, which led to his college. This place, which the William Lowthers have bought, in the flat corn-lands of Suffolk, has a fine old garden, with clipped yew hedges and long tanks like Wrest. It has been a most pleasant visit. I heard some one say once, ‘Mrs. Lowther is a most extraordinary woman: she never will let the grass grow under any one of her children’s feet even for a single instant;’ but it has made them all very agreeable, from the immense variety of occupations in which they are interested, and in which, consequently, they interest others. James Lowther, who is at home now, is certainly one of the pleasantest and best-informed young men of the day. He has just been very amusing about answers in Board Schools, telling, amongst others, of a child who was asked ‘If King Alfred had been alive now, what part would he have taken in politics?’ and replied, ‘If King Alfred had been alive now, he would have been far too old to have taken part in politics at all!’

“We had a pleasant picnic at Framlingham, a noble ruined castle, which, for Suffolk, stands almost on a height, and went to Sanbourn, the luxurious home of the rich family of Heywood, and to Glemham, where Lady North, mother of Lord Guildford, lives in a fine old house, which contains much good old furniture and china.

“We spent a long interesting day at the noble old moated house of Helmingham, where Lady Tollemache apologised amusingly for only having nine of her sons at home to assist her in doing the honours! It is a delightful place, with beautiful old gardens, and its inhabitants are delightful too. Lord Tollemache especially brims with goodness to all around him. He was very amusing in urging Miss Lowther, when she had as many sons as he has (!), to make their home pleasanter to them than any other place in the world, so that they should always prefer it to everything else. He showed us all his relics, especially his Anglo-Saxon MS. of the time of Alfred the Great, and several beautiful Bibles of the time of Edward I. There is a pretty picture of Mary Tudor as a child. Queen Elizabeth was at Helmingham, and stood godmother to a baby there, who lived to become Sir Lionel Tollemache: that baby is represented, with its three little sisters, in a curious picture in the hall.

“In the church is the tomb of Colonel Thomas Tollemache, who was distinguished in the wars of Queen Anne’s time. The Duke of Marlborough ordered him to attack Brest. There were reasons which made him very doubtful of success, and he represented to the Duke that the only chance of it lay in a surprise: still the Duke ordered him to attempt it. Brest was found thoroughly prepared, the hoped-for surprise was an utter failure, and Tollemache fell in the attack. The French Government had been forewarned, and it was afterwards found that it had been forewarned by Marlborough! When the Duc d’Aumale came to Helmingham, he said that the thing he was most anxious to see was the monument of this unfortunate officer, and that he had himself read, in the archives at Brest, the letter of the Duke of Marlborough warning the garrison of the coming attack.

“The last owner of Campsea Ashe, Mr. Shepherd, was the grandson of a gardener. The Mr. Shepherd who then owned Campsea adopted a nephew, a young Frere, grandfather of the well-known Sir Bartle. The nephew invited his friends to Campsea, and, after the fashion of the time, they sat up drinking. Very late, young Frere rang the bell and ordered another bottle of port. The butler, very cross, went up to his master’s room and woke him, saying that Mr. Frere wanted some more port and that he must have the key of the cellar. Old Mr. Shepherd, furious, gave the key, but next morning sent for a lawyer and disinherited his nephew, and, no one else being handy, and having a gardener he liked who bore his own name of Shepherd, he left him his fortune.”

* * * * *

“_Holmhurst, August 23._--In returning from Campsea Ashe I spent some hours at Colchester, and saw its two abbeys and its castle--rather curious than beautiful.”

* * * * *

“_Drayton House, Northamptonshire, Sept. 20._--I have been spending several days in this most pleasant old house, which is full of charm and interest--many-towered, with an entrance court, a deserted Georgian chapel, a grand hall full of fine pictures, a vaulted room dating from Edward III., cellars probably from Henry III., admirable buildings of Elizabeth and James I.

“The place belonged to the Greenes, who, with the Earl of Wiltshire, who married a daughter of the house, have grand tombs in the church. Then it passed to the Mordaunts, and was left by Lady Mary Mordaunt, the divorced wife of the Duke of Norfolk, to her second husband, Sir John Germaine, whose second wife, Lady Betty, left it to Lord George Sackville, from whom it descended to its present owner, sweet engaging Mrs. Sackville, who inherited it from her uncle, the last Duke of Dorset, and who has all the perfect simplicity of the truest high-breeding.

“The gardens are full of terraces, staircases, fountains, pleached walks, avenues, and leaden statues--beautiful exceedingly. There is a gallery of Mordaunt portraits in the house; in the old library at the top are no end of treasures, and out of it opens the Duchess of Norfolk’s boudoir, with old Japanese ornaments. Through a plank missing in the floor of an upper gallery you can look into quite a large room which no one has ever entered. Its windows are darkened by the overgrowth of the creepers outside, and the only object in it is a large box like a portmanteau. The Sackvilles have always lived here, yet not one of them has had the curiosity to descend into that room or to look into that portmanteau!

“I have been taken to see the curious old house of Lyveden--never finished--one of the three strange semi-religious erections of the Tresham of the Gunpowder Plot. This is supposed to be in honour of the Virgin, and is covered with the oddest devices, such as ‘the Seven Eyes of God,’ the money-bag of Judas, with the thirty pieces of silver round it, &c. The second of Tresham’s buildings is Rothwell townhall; the third a lodge at Rushton in honour of the Trinity, in which everything, down to the minutest ornament, is three-cornered.

“Then we have been to Boughton, the Duke of Buccleuch’s great desolate house, which contains two cartoons attributed, without any cause, to Raffaelle. The house was built by the Duke of Montagu, who was ambassador to Louis XIV., and the king lent him a French architect and gardener. He made it as like a French château as possible. Then he told his friends that he must plant an avenue to drive to London by, and when they remonstrated that an immense part of the way to London did not belong to him, he said, ‘Well, at any rate I will have an avenue of the same length,’ and he planted seventy-two miles of it in his park. These trees, hemming in the view in all directions, make the place indescribably dull. Just outside the park is the pretty village of Geddington, with a fine old church and bridge, and a beautiful Eleanor cross with slender detached columns. We went on thence to tea at Warkton with Mrs. Bridges, wife of the clergyman, a real patrician Venetian beauty, who has set all Northamptonshire quarrelling as to whether the glorious colour of her hair can be real; but it is. Half of the church her husband serves is a mausoleum of the Dukes of Buccleuch, who have four large and magnificent monuments in it.

“The old Duchess of Buccleuch, a homely-looking person, was very fond of joining people who came to see the place and talking to them. One day she walked by a visitor and said, ‘You know, all this belongs to the Duke of Buccleuch.’--‘And pray, whom did he marry?’--‘ME!’”

* * * * *

“_Cromer, Sept. 22._--I came yesterday to stay with the Lockers, who have lately taken the additional name of Lampson, with a fortune from her father, Sir Curtis Lampson. They are exceedingly happy together. ‘My winsome marrow,’ Mr. Locker has just said to his wife, ‘you know I never can go anywhere without you.’ In the evening, Mr. Locker was very pleasant in describing Rogers and his stories. Apropos of the dictum that the postscript of a well-told story is often its best feature, he told of Rogers describing a duel between a Frenchman and an Englishman, which was to be fought in the dark. The Englishman was a very humane man, and when it came to his turn to fire, fired up the chimney, that he might do his adversary no harm, but brought down the Frenchman, who had taken refuge there. ‘But when I tell that story in Paris,’ added Rogers, ‘it is the Englishman who is up the chimney.’

“He told of a Mr. Egerton who was with his regiment in Canada. Coming into the messroom one morning, he seemed much depressed, and being asked the reason, said he was troubled by an oddly vivid dream, in which he had seen his own coffin on the deck of a vessel, and in the dream had been even able to read the plate upon the coffin, which bore his name and the date June 16. He was so full of it, that the Colonel, to humour him, wrote down the circumstances and the date. This was in April. Afterwards he went to Upper Canada, where he was killed by Indians on the 16th of June, and his coffin was brought down the river as he had seen it. Mr. Locker told this story to Lord Algernon St. Maur, who said, ‘I can corroborate that story, for I was in the messroom when what you describe occurred.’

“Mr. Locker described Dickens’s way of telling stories. He heard him tell that of Lincoln’s dream, and of his describing the oppressive feeling he had, how he was ‘drifting, drifting, drifting,’ and how at that moment the members of council came in and he said, ‘Now we must go to business.’ It was on leaving that council that he was shot, so no one heard the end of that dream, or whether there would seem to be any forewarning in it.

“We have been to-day to Felbrigge, the fine old house of the Windhams, sold to a Norwich tradesman named Catton, whose daughters have adopted the older family as if it were their own, and are quite worthy of the old pictures, MSS., &c., all left in the house, _nothing_ having been taken away when the place was given up. ‘Mr. Windham comes every night to look after his favourite books in the library,’ said Miss Catton; ‘he often comes, and he goes straight to the shelves where they are: we hear him moving the tables and chairs about: we never disturb him though, for we intend to be ghosts ourselves some day, and to come about the old place just as he does.’ In the hall there is a grand bust of the statesman by Nollekens. Formerly it was on his monument in the church, but after some years the family put a copy there, and moved the original into the house. The church, however, still retains the most glorious brasses. One is that of a lady in waiting who came over with Anne of Bohemia, and whose daughter was herself invited to share the throne. But the man she really married was one of the early owners of Felbrigge.”

* * * * *

“_Sept. 24._--We have been with the Dick Gurneys in their fleet waggonette to Blickling, quite glorious, so perfect in colour, with an exquisite entrance, and a splendid herbaceous garden. In the church is the tomb which Lady Lothian has erected to her husband,[410] a most grand one, with the head of the reclining statue turned to one side, and the long beard drifted over the pillow.

“The innumerable Gurneys, Buxtons, and Hoares who populate Cromer come in and out of this house, as of each other’s, whenever they like, without ringing the bell.

“Last night Mrs. R. Hoare dined here. She says the people here always address their superiors in the third person, as in French. They always say ‘I’m very much fatagued,’ for bothered. ‘Well, Mrs. Smith, are you going to take the blue dress or the brown?’ she said when keeping a charity shop. ‘Why, ma’am, I’ve not fairly averdupoised,’ replied the woman; and it is a common expression for balancing.

“There are many remnants here in Cromer from Danish occupation. The ghosts, as in Denmark, are always without heads. There is great faith in the story of ‘Old Strop,’ a Danish dog who was washed ashore with the bodies of two Danish sailors, one of whom was buried at Overstrand and the other at Cromer. Every night the dog, headless, is believed to run from one grave to the other, and fishermen will always go round by the shore at night rather than by the shorter lane, which the dog is supposed to take.”

* * * * *

“_Sept. 25._--Mrs. Ritchie (Miss Thackeray) is here, most charming and interesting, as I have always thought her. She describes Tennyson and Mrs. Kemble as the noblest man and woman she knows.

“Mrs. Kemble found, when in England, that her husband was going to take advantage of an American law which allowed him to obtain a divorce if she was away from him two years. For her children’s sake it was imperative that she should prevent this. She hurried back, and just arrived in time by two or three days. Afterwards she herself quietly obtained a divorce in some way which gave her the charge of her children.... One of her daughters is Mrs. Leigh, whose husband, the Vicar of St. Mary, Bryanston Square, she is always trying to persuade to go out to the family plantations in Georgia. The other, Sarah, is the wife of a merchant in New York, and a replica--a much feebler replica--of her mother.

“Now, Mrs. Kemble is generally to be found knitting by her fireside. One day Mrs. Ritchie took her little girl to see her. ‘Here I am,’ Mrs. Kemble said to the child, ‘an old woman who never allows another person to put in a word when she is talking; and now, what do you think of me?’ The little girl, who was shy, did not know what to say, and looked as if she was going to cry. Mrs. Ritchie, to fill up the gap, said, ‘Oh, she thinks, Mrs. Kemble, that no one could possibly wish to put in a word when they could listen to you.’ ‘Ma fille, ne dites pas des choses comme ça,’ cried Mrs. Kemble furiously; and then, more quietly, ‘You should not say such things before the child: it is not right to teach her to be artificial.’

“‘Right is right,’ she said one day, ‘and wrong is wrong, but God forbid that I should judge of another whether he is right or wrong.’

“‘One day,’ said Mrs. Ritchie, ‘I found Mrs. Kemble sitting by her fireside looking rather disconsolate, and asked her what she was doing. “Oh, I’m knocking my head against the wall, my dear; that man who was here was so dreadfully stupid, I’m obliged to knock it out of me.”’

“Mrs. Kemble was at an inn in Switzerland with a lady with whom she never made acquaintance. They were both reading ‘Middlemarch,’ and came down with their books into the public room, and were engrossed in them. But one day the lady was so enchanted with a passage in her volume that she burst out with, ‘Well, this woman is one of the noblest of authors: whatever the peculiarities of her views on life may be, I will never believe that the woman who can write thus can be other than one with the very noblest aims.’ Then Mrs. Kemble turned upon her furiously with, ‘Who are _you_ that you should presume to _dare_ to judge such a woman as George Eliot? how can you _dare_ to judge her?’ and the lady jumped up, and, instead of being angry, embraced Mrs. Kemble upon the spot.

“For her own sharp sayings, Mrs. Kemble is repaid by her grandchildren. She wrote to one of her grandsons that she did not care for Wagner’s music, she could not understand what he meant by it. He answered, that a fly crawling up the wall of Cologne Cathedral might as well presume to judge of its architectural glories as she of Wagner! She did not seem to know whether to be angry or pleased at this.

“Dear Lady Marian Alford used to tell of her first meeting Mrs. Kemble at a garden-party. She had scarcely sat down by her when Mrs. Kemble said slowly, with her peculiar intonation and inflection upon each syllable--‘I do per-ceive a ... stink!’

“Being asked if she would employ Pakenham or M’Crackem as agent for sending her goods from Italy to England, Mrs. Kemble said, ‘Why, rather Pack’em than Crack’em, to be sure.’”

* * * * *

“_Sept. 30._--A charming visit to the Delawarrs at Buckhurst. I had no idea there was such a beautiful place in Sussex, such moss-grown oaks and beeches; such deep ferny and heathy glens; such still pools, in which all the autumnal tints are reflected; such winding forest-paths, up and down and in and out of which Lady Delawarr has driven me with her two ponies tandem; an infantine Medway, nearly to the source of which the eldest boy, Cantilupe, rowed me through channels so narrow that one could touch the great water-plants on either side. Then the house has many delightful books and pictures, including two Sir Joshuas; and there are two other old houses, semi-deserted, but with grand castellated gateways, infinitely picturesque; and there is a monumental chapel, where a marble Duke and Duchess of Dorset kneel eternally by the tomb of the many children who died before them.

“The ‘company’ has been varied and amusing--Miss (Doll) Farquharson of Invercauld, a perfect Niagara of amusing Scottish anecdote; Mr. Broadley, of terrible review reputation; and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth, who has propounded many quaint riddles of his own invention.

“Miss Farquharson described a minister at Invercauld, who, wishing to flatter the family, stated in his sermon that the Farquharson tartan was one of the oldest dresses in the world, as it was evident that Joseph’s coat of many colours was made of it, ‘thereby giving mortal offence to the Duffs, who sat in the opposite pew.’

“When the minister was changed, Miss Farquharson asked an old woman if she liked the new one as well as the old. ‘Eh, I like him weel eneuch, but he’s na sae frolicsome in the pulpit.’

“I made great friends with all the family at Buckhurst, down to the little Margaret of three, who peoples all the forest with imaginary bears and elephants, and talks to them, and of her adventures with them, exactly as if they were realities. We picnicked on an island in the lake, dreadfully damp, but it was very merry and pleasant.”

* * * * *

_“Burwarton, Shropshire, Oct. 23._--This is a beautiful place of Lord Boyne’s, high in the Clee hills, with glorious views of the Welsh and Malvern ranges, beyond exquisite wooded scenery. The house is modern, but has good pictures, several representing members of the Medmenham brotherhood, and one a Lady Paisley, an ancestress, who declared that she did not wish to go to heaven if poor people went there. Many pleasant people are here, especially a Mr. Bankes, who is very amusing about the primitive ways of the Isle of Purbeck. At one time the people of Corfe had been very good for some time, so that the lock-up had not been used, and the Mayor, one Robert Taylor, had filled it with his potatoes after they were dug up. But at last there was a man who was very naughty indeed, and he had to be put in the lock-up, though there was scarcely room for him even to stand in it, it was so full of the Mayor’s potatoes. Late that night, some people going past stumbled over a great heap lying in the middle of the road--quite a huge heap. It was the Mayor’s potatoes, which the prisoner had amused himself by throwing through the bars of the window: so then the Mayor was obliged to compromise matters, and to let his victim out on condition of his picking up all the potatoes and putting them back again.

“This Mayor, Robert Taylor, used to say, ‘I shall have to adjudicate upon such and such a case to-morrow.’ He kept a shop where he sold hats. One day he saw a neighbour walking by with a very smart shiny hat, and called out, ‘Thomas, good-day, Thomas; you’ve got a new hat, may I ask where you got it, Thomas?’--‘Well, I bought it at Wareham, Mr. Taylor.’--‘Oh, you bought it at Wareham, did you? Very good, Thomas.’ Some days afterwards Thomas was set upon by a man in a lonely road and very badly beaten, really very much hurt. He went to the Mayor and said, ‘Really, Mr. Taylor, I think I must take out a summons.’--‘A summons! must you, Thomas? Well, you may just go and take it out where you bought your hat.’

“The ignorance of the people in Purbeck is intense. A clergyman preached about Zachaeus climbing into the fig-tree, &c. An old widow woman, who had stayed at home, asked her son if he could tell her what the sermon was about. ‘Yes, that he could,’ he said, ‘for it was all about Jack Key (a bad character in the village), who had been up to summut, and was to have to give half of all his goods to the poor.’

“Here, at Burwarton, witchcraft is generally believed in. A tenant said the other day that his pig was bewitched by an old woman, and that it would certainly die, unless he could have her blood; by which he meant nothing murderous--a prick of a pin would do. Many of the neighbouring clergy are bad. At a small hill-parish near this an old woman asked the clergyman what he did for his rheumatism. ‘Well, I swear like hell,’ he said.”

* * * * *

“_Oakley Park, Oct. 17._--A lovely place, with glorious old oaks mentioned in Domesday Book. Ludlow is only 2½les off. Its castle, which stands grandly opposite the entrance to the drive, is associated with Prince Arthur, ‘Comus’ was acted there, and it was thence that the Princes were taken to the Tower. It was also from Ludlow that the pilgrims came who were met in the Holy Land by St. John when he gave them the ring to take back to Edward the Confessor, and this story is represented on the windows of the grand old church. Stokesay, which we have been to sketch, is inimitably picturesque. Nothing can be kinder than my present hostess, Lady Mary Clive, so considerate of all that can interest or amuse one,[412] even whilst talking incessantly of her two hobbies--Conservatism and Church matters. In the latter she is just now in her glory, as the house is full of clergy for the Church Congress at Ludlow, where all the ecclesiastics in the county are delighting, like dogs, to bark and bite. There is _table-d’hôte_ for them here at every meal, and the house is like a clerical hotel.”

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_Nov. 22, 1885._--Mother’s birthday! on which for so many years we have been through the Catacombs (lighted up this one day of the year) to visit the grave of S. Cecilia. My pleasant holiday and happy visits are already becoming dreamlike, and it is as if my last time alone here going on still, as I sit in my hill-set solitude. The wind whistles in the fir-trees; a cow lows in the meadow for a lost calf; Rollo snorts with fat, but is always ready to play with Selma the cat, though greatly annoyed at her having given birth to a numerous progeny _in_ his bed; new pigstyes are built, and a Lawsoniana hedge is planted round the little garden up the steps. ‘The Holmhurst muffin-bell,’ as St. Leonards calls it, already rung for a tea-party next Tuesday; and ‘the boys’ (now Heddie Williamson and Freddie Russell) are due for their half-holiday on Wednesday; George Jolliffe is coming to stay on the 4th; and for myself, there is constant work to be done on ‘Paris,’ where, as I labour down the highways, a thousand by-ways of interest and instruction are ever opening up.

“I have, however, a little disappointment in Smith and Elder’s account, nearly £300 to the bad again this year, and no gain whatever: so much for the supposed riches of ‘a very successful author.’

“Just now also I am being most tremendously bored with the visit of young ----, and am wondering if he will profit by one of George Washington’s admirable ‘Rules of Civility,’ which I am going to read aloud to him. ‘In the presence of others, sing not to yourself with a humming voice, nor drum with your fingers or feet.’”

* * * * *

“_Powderham Castle, Nov. 14._--I have been spending a week with Charlie Halifax in this beautiful place, which recalls the Little Gidding of ‘John Inglesant’ in its intense, its real saintliness--in the constant chapel services with wonderful singing of the servants, in the commemorative hymns for such saints as Martin and Bricius, in the spirit of harmony and universal love, which rules everything. Lord Devon[413] is absolutely seraphic. Charlie says he knows only two perfect forms of happiness, reciting the Holy Office or attending the Board of Guardians. ‘I know one thing troubles you in respect of heaven,’ says Charlie, ‘it is, that there are no boards of guardians there; but, dearest Lord Devon, if they are quite essential to your happiness, I am sure that a board will be created in some planet, with celestial paupers for you to relieve.’

“When with the Halifaxes, I always become brimful of good intentions. But then something comes back to me that I once heard a Countess Zitchi say, ‘Moi, je suis tout-à-fait comme Jésus Christ, seulement il me manque--la conduite!’

“We have had a delightful twenty-seven miles’ excursion to the very curious old desolate house of Fulford and a picnic in its deserted deer-park. Another day, Charlie, his uncle Francis Grey, and I, went to Berry Head, a wild rock-girt promontory, with ruined walls of an old fortress, looking on the bay crowded with Brixham trawlers.”

* * * * *

The latter months of 1885 found me quietly at home, exceedingly busy over my work on France. As at all other times, except in fine summer weather, I was chiefly alone, save when on Sundays some of my young men friends--“the boys”--were generally at Holmhurst for two nights, being usually those whose whole life is spent in bearing--

“The work-day burden of dull life, About the footsore flags of a weary world;”[414]

for I have always felt how much, in similar circumstances, I should have cared myself to have a friend and a homelike little refuge to go to. Besides, “although in a very humble and apparently confined sphere of action, who can tell the effect which our influence or that of our conduct may have upon others, and its reaction throughout future ages?”[415]

In latter years I have had better “material” in this respect; but it must be allowed that, except in very rare cases, those I tried to be useful to in former days turned out very ill. Here are just a few instances:--

* * * * *

No. 1 was a gentleman once in a good position, who had fallen into extreme poverty. I gave up being in London, I gave up going abroad, I always went in an omnibus instead of a cab, always travelled second class instead of first, to have £50 a year to give to No. 1. But when I found that my poor gentleman always took a hansom even to cross Eaton Square, I drew in my purse-strings.

No. 2 seemed very different. Rudely nurtured, he minded no difficulties, and was willing to live hardly. He only cared for work, and his work was science. He threw his whole life into it, and seemed on the eve of great discoveries--in fact, he made them. But he had no one to help him to buy the patents that were necessary, and I spent £800 for this, and altogether many thousand pounds in his behalf. He was to have repaid this sum if he became successful in life, but he made a very large fortune, and “forgot to pay it.” Then, having lost his fortune again, his originality and cleverness took another direction: he suddenly turned Buddhist, cared for nothing but the divine essence, and went off to India to join a brotherhood in which, after years of prayer and fasting, he might hope to obtain the distinction of “a little yellow garment.” He wrote then that his religion itself would prevent his ever again forgetting that he owed me four thousand pounds with interest. Yet, after his return, he repudiated his debt altogether, and denied that he had even the slightest obligation to me. All I had spent was thrown away! No. 2 was an utter collapse.

No. 3 wanted to be married. He had led a wild life, and his marriage would “be the saving of him;” with his marriage a new page of his life would be turned over; but to enable the marriage to be, a loan of money was necessary. I sent the money, but the marriage never took place, and the loan was never returned. No. 3 vanished into chaos.

No. 4 was very engaging and I became very fond of him. He was perpetually at my home, where I always treated him as a younger brother, giving him money when I was away for whatever he wanted. When he wished to give a party to his friends in London, the food, the wine, the flowers, came from Holmhurst. He had to work hard in a public office, so every year I gave him money for the change of a Continental tour, and on one occasion, when he had no other companion, I took him myself, and showed him the whole of a foreign country. This went on for nine years. Then a circumstance occurred which made me feel that he, in his turn, might, not even for one day, but for one hour, be useful to me. Under these circumstances I asked a favour of him. “No,” it was refused at once, “it might not be to his advantage: it might even possibly be rather inconvenient.” No. 4 collapsed.

No. 5 was a very young and ingenuous boy. I met him first when he was at Oxford, when his family--country gentlefolk--were trying to compel him to take Orders. He confided to me his misery about it, and his utter unfitness. I backed him up in resisting. From that time I saw a great deal of him. He was very affectionate to me, and I grew very fond of him. His family, irritated at his opposition to taking Orders, refused to go on spending money upon his education. I continued it, or thought I did, by letter, sending him daily questions to answer by post, and receiving _précis_ of History from him and correcting them. He was also very frequently at Holmhurst for a long time together, and had more of a real home there than with his own parents. Once, without my knowledge or that of his family, he went to London, and got into terribly bad companionship and disgracefully bad habits. He was plundered of all he possessed, and had to pawn his watch to get away. To prevent the discovery of this, which would have hopelessly estranged him from his family, I redeemed his valuables for a considerable sum. He then seemed penitent, promised amendment, and took refuge at Holmhurst again. About a year after I found him on the eve of wilfully making an acquaintance which was sure to cause his ruin. I pointed out to him the misery he was bringing upon himself, and he promised to give it up. Then I found that all the while he was promising to do nothing of the kind, he had been constantly writing to the person in question, with whom he had no previous acquaintance, making assignations for meetings, &c. From that time he got into one miserable scrape after another. He sank and sank. Whenever he has made a promise, he has always broken his word; nothing he says can be believed; his every act must be mistrusted.... Now, he has taken Holy Orders! This is the end of No. 5.

No. 6 was very dear to me. I had known him intimately from his earliest childhood. Exceedingly unprepossessing in appearance, he gave the most brilliant promise of a distinguished career. To me he showed the most unbounded affection and confidence, but he never told the truth. This led to a series of miserable deceptions which caused his expulsion from school and brought about his failure everywhere. Dreaded, mistrusted, he became alienated from his family, almost from his fellow-men. No opportunity of extravagant folly occurred but was greedily seized upon, to be followed by fresh falsehood. His whole life has been a sorrow to those who know him, and who think mournfully of its beautiful “might have been.”

I met No. 7 when he was eighteen. Of very lowly origin but gentle instincts, he had been turned adrift at seventeen upon London to earn his own living, and he seemed at first to be earning it bravely and honestly. He was clever and was anxious to improve himself, and he spent all his evenings in reading, and succeeded in teaching himself French. By his own unaided efforts he had really given himself an education. At first I used only to lend him books and do what I could to help his reading. Then I frequently invited him to Holmhurst, and paid for his coming there. He had a bad illness in London, when I went constantly to him in his miserable garret, and supplied all his little comforts. About a year after I first knew him, he yielded to a great temptation in misappropriating a large sum of money belonging to the firm he was serving, and spending it in a very disgraceful manner. It seemed as if he really did this under a diabolic influence, and as if he really believed that he should be able to replace the money before the theft was discovered. But the time drew very near when his accounts would be examined, and there was no chance--there never had been--that they would be found correct. Then the full agony of his position came upon him, and he confessed the whole to me and implored me to save him. The day before the examination of accounts I replaced the stolen money, and the defalcation was never discovered.

From this time he seemed to go on well, and I became much attached to him. Five times a year I paid his expenses to Holmhurst, to give him country air, treating him like my own son when he was with me. Then came a time when, after several years, he fell into feeble health, and had to leave his situation. I was then not perfectly satisfied with the way in which he was going on, and did not think him as frank and candid as he had been, but I took him home with me for a month to recruit. At Holmhurst he had every kindness and indulgence, and was received not only as an equal, but almost as a child of the house. At the end of a month, he told me that he had heard of some very suitable employment in London, and hoped that I would not object to his going to town to see about it. I said, “Certainly not; but what is the employment?” To my surprise, he said that he could not tell me then, but I should know later. I was more surprised because, when he left, he was so unusually affectionate--“I am very glad you are so fond of me, but I cannot imagine why you should show it especially to-day, as you are coming back in a few hours.” He never came back. It was many days before he wrote. Then I had a formal letter saying that, when he went up to London, he had been received into the Church of Rome at Brompton Oratory, and enclosing a list of his possessions left at Holmhurst, and directions for sending them. Since then he has sunk lower and lower. I have often heard of him, and always a worse account. He is utterly lost to me. That is the end of No. 7.

No. 8 was excessively good-looking, had pleasant manners, and was especially winning to ladies. I had known his family long ago, and his home, a very quiet rectory in a desolate fen district. When he was at Oxford, I found him, like No. 5, very unhappy at being expected to take Orders, for which he honestly felt himself unfitted, and I persuaded him to tell his father that it was impossible. Then, as he was penniless and had no prospects, it was necessary that a profession should be found for him, and I obtained a nomination for him for the Foreign Office from Lord Granville. He came to London to work for this, and he worked well. Feeling that it would be most undesirable for him to go on in London, especially to enter the Foreign Office, knowing no one in society, I took him out with me every day to parties, and introduced him everywhere, claiming all kindness for him as my intimate friend. His good looks and pleasing manners made him very welcome. But he fell in love with an Earl’s daughter. Strange to say, his suit was not rejected, though a probation of two years was required, during which he must begin to make an income. With this view, he abandoned all thought of the Foreign Office and took to the Stock Exchange. A week before the end of the two years’ probation, the lady, of her own accord, threw him over, but, as far as love went, her place was soon supplied. By this time, too, the young man had acquired _l’habitude de société_, had begun to despise his humble relations, to cut his old friends, and a shake of the Prince of Wales’s hand finally turned his head. He scarcely speaks to me now when we meet. He openly says that, as he has gained all he can from me, he naturally prefers “those who can be more useful” to him.

No. 9, poor fellow, was long a great anxiety to me. He was of good family. He fell often--fell into the most frightful vice and shame. He repented bitterly, and then fell again worse than before. But in one of his best and truest times of repentance, God saw that he was positively unable to cope with temptation, and he died--died most mercifully, full of faith, hope, and gratitude. This was the end of No. 9. Thinking of him has often brought to my mind Rossetti’s lines--

“Look in my face: my name is Might-have-been, I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell.”

And yet--

“La bontà infinita ha sì gran braccia, Che prende ciò che si rivolve a lei.”[416]

As I retrace here, on paper, the story of my failures, a sentence of Balzac comes into my mind: “Il vous arrivera souvent d’être utile aux autres, de leur rendre service, et vous en serez pen récompensé”; mais n’imitez pas ceux qui se plaignent des hommes et se vantent de ne trouver que des ingrats. N’est-ce pas se mettre sur un piédestal? puis n’est-il pas un peu niais d’avouer son peu de connaissance du monde?”[417]

And then Bunyan said in his last sermon (1692):--“Dost thou see a soul that has had the image of God in him? Love him: love him: say, This man must go to heaven some day. Do good to one another, and if any wrong you, pray to God to right you, and love the brotherhood.”

And there is a line of Tasso which comes back to me in all times of disappointment--

“Brama assai--poco spera--nulla chiede.”

END OF VOL. V.

_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO

_Edinburgh and London_

ERRATUM

_Page 405_, _for_ “Shackborough” _read_ “Shuckborough.”

“Story of my Life.”--End of Vol. V.

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

VOL. VI

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

BY

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE

AUTHOR OF “MEMORIALS OF A QUIET LIFE,” “THE STORY OF TWO NOBLE LIVES,” ETC. ETC.