Papa continually takes opportunities in common conversation to give us information on many subjects which we are not likely to find explained in books. To-day some questions which I asked at tea occasioned him to give us an account of copyhold and freehold estates, and the qualifications of individuals for voting for members of Parliament, as they now stand. By one of these papa has a vote for the county. Papa also said that the alterations produced by the late Parliamentary and municipal reforms are greater than any others within his recollection, and are therefore to be especially remembered. He explained to us the principal changes made thereby.

Papa finished as much of the article “Boroughs” as has come out in the last monthly number of the Penny Cyclopædia; it unluckily concludes in the middle of the word “resolution” in a very interesting part. It will be a long time before we shall have the rest of it; but I have learnt a great deal from what has already been read.

A most beautiful day. All the birds were in motion. The coal-tit sang a little; the bunting, lark, and robin were in full song. The tits were all abroad, coursing each other, hunting for insects under the branches, and hopping about in the dead leaves at the roots [136] of nut trees, all the while uttering their innumerable chirps. The ox-eyes were particularly busy; they are noisy and boisterous birds, and comparatively clumsy in their movements. They are, however, lively and very handsome, but I do not like them so well as the blue and coal tits. The blue-tit has the brightest colours of them all; his shape and movements are elegant, and his cries in general are not harsh, like those of the ox-eye. The coal-tit has a much more innocent and good-tempered look than his congeners (the ox-eye, indeed, has quite a fierce, malignant face), and, above all, he has so much more music in his voice. His chirps are all much sweeter, lower, and less jabbering, and he has a regular song which possesses at least great cheerfulness and a clear, merry tone.

Amongst other amusements of my leisure hours, I am very fond of inventing plans of palaces and dwelling-houses on a large scale. These I first draw out in pencil on paper, and afterwards write minute descriptions of them, with the measurements, furniture, uses, etc., of all the apartments. One on which I am now employed is a magnificent stone palace, built round a court eight hundred feet square.

Towards the end of dinner, the conversation turned—I forget how—upon executioners and the different modes of execution in Europe. It appears that the punishment of death is inflicted at Vienna by beheading with the sword; in Naples by hanging; at Venice, formerly at least, by drowning; in France, still by the guillotine; in Tuscany there are now no capital punishments. The office of executioner is everywhere held odious; nobody will associate with one. In some parts of Germany all the dead fowls are the perquisite of the executioner, and are left for him to come and take them; and, indeed, executioners are sometimes suspected of poisoning them to get the bodies. Executioners must be very accomplished [137] artists, for great skill is required in the performance of their task. Mr. W. Spencer* told papa that once, when abroad, in a provincial town of France, he met a very pleasing and gentlemanly man, and conversed with him a good deal. Happening again to meet him at a table d’hôte, he was surprised to find that the stranger fought shy of him, and rebuffed him when he attempted to speak to him. As soon as they were alone together, “You do not perhaps know, sir,” said the unknown, “that by speaking to me in public you are endangering your character. I have lost caste; I am, in fact, infamous; nobody associates with me. I am one of the most celebrated executioners in Europe; and if you were to be seen talking to me by any one who knew me, you would totally lose your own reputation.”

Eliz. professes her intention of retrieving her lost character as a correspondent, forgetting that it is no one’s power to lose that which he has never possessed; and she drops a hope that mamma will not allow us to pull her quite in pieces for her delinquencies. This hope has unfortunately reached us a little too late, for three or four days ago the children completely dissected her.

I have been confined to the house, and partly to my bed, by a cough—a thing which I have not for many years had, except before my last fever. So that, unless I get out very soon, I am afraid that I shall miss the first singing birds of passage. I see from the windows that several crocuses are in blow. I am likely to miss the first violets and primroses also.

This is papa’s forty-third birthday. I gave him a little chronological history of Naples and Sicily from the time of William of Hauteville to the present day. It has employed me several days in writing, and has been very useful to me in brushing up my knowledge of the [138] history of this kingdom. Mr. Paroissien has very kindly made papa a present of a barometer of his own making. It is not particularly handsome, but extremely neat, and I should think a very accurate one. It is made of mahogany. Mr. P. put it together here, which occupied him about an hour. I find that the plates on which the signs of a barometer are written, and the dial-plate of clocks, are both made of plates of brass, covered with a silvery wash. Papa intends me to register the height of the barometer and thermometer, which are put up side by side in our hall, regularly twice every day, at eight in the morning and eight at night. This will, I hope, teach us to be weatherwise.

… While we were at prayers this morning, and papa was reading out of the Bible, a chaffinch came and alighted on the ledge of the open window, and, while sitting there, sung his loud song four times over, being answered between each repetition by another at a distance. He almost drowned papa’s voice.

I now conclude the fifth volume of my journal, which I have kept for six years, including a short diary during the year 1830. I find it such an useful practice, and so entertaining, that I am fully resolved to continue it all my life. It was first suggested to me by the possession of a small pocket-book, given me by a pupil when I was ten years old. I have ordered a sixth volume to be made by Fraser at Potton, and I shall have it on Monday, when I shall forthwith begin it. I have been long convinced that, as Abbot says in his “Young Christian,” the use of the pen is amongst the most valuable means of improving the mind.

I have been so unwell for many days with cold and rheumatism, that I am obliged strictly to keep the house, and partly my bed, so that I am quite unable to observe the birds, except a little from within the house. The weather is becoming very fine and warmer, [139] though the winds are cold. I hope I shall be able next Sunday to see the eclipse.

This is the eleventh day of uninterrupted hot summer-like days, and perhaps it is the last, for the barometer falls fearfully and the sky is stormy. The weather has during this period been really exquisite, and I have been unable to enjoy it owing to my fever, which continues in all its force. But even from within the house I can hear the excellent warbling of the birds, and I can see the rapid progress of vegetation, which now renders the view from the west windows quite enchanting. Nothing can equal the delightful beauty of the first tender green of spring.

The weather is now again excessively cold; … we have fires all day, and I crouch over them, yet we are on the verge of June. The lilies of the valley are in full bloom, and the gardens and meadows are golden with buttercups. The weeping ash is beginning to be leafy, and the walnuts are covered with a brown-green foliage. What I principally admire is the great beauty of the white and pink lilacs, now in full bloom in the laurel hedge. The cow-pasture, too, looks very beautiful from the west windows, all covered as it is with golden furze and broom.

To me, all this spring and part of the summer are quite lost, and it might almost as well have been continual winter. From the first day of March up to my illness, I have not been altogether out of the house more than sixteen different days, including going to church and a few drives, and some occasions on which I merely stepped out of the house for a few minutes; and during the whole year I have been in a state of very indifferent health, not to speak of this month of fever. So that I have been quite debarred this year from rising at four or five o’clock, and walking in the woods at will to watch the birds and hear their songs. I shall not now recover my strength [140] for many weeks; and my mind, even to my memory, is equally enfeebled. The very slightest fever completely upsets all one’s powers.

… I quite forgot to mention that I predicted the rain of June 2 on the preceding day, from hearing a thrush sing loudly, after a dead silence for a very long time during the drought. I have always found this a correct sign.

I was drawn out of doors for half an hour this evening and enjoyed it much; I came in stronger and better.… This morning the grand scarlet poppy blew.… Our roses are most splendid; the west side of the house is covered with them in the richest profusion, and one of the drawing-room windows is half hidden by them. The red roses [China] are also splendid, and reach as high up the house wall. Both species can be gathered from, and look in at, the second story.

I rose to-day an hour earlier than usual, i.e. at eleven o’clock. I am not strong enough yet to be up all day. This is the sixth Sunday on which I have not been able to go to church, that is, not since May 1. Indeed, if I could have gone, I should have seen, at least in the evening, what it is no loss to have missed seeing—a most shameful quarrel between two women for places, which delayed the service for full five minutes. A similar scene, I am told, took place last Sunday, when two girls actually fought and struck each other while the congregation were on their knees, and made a great hubbub till the clerk, with some difficulty, turned them out. Such conduct is really unexampled.

I get stronger, but my cough gives way very slowly, and my pulse continues high and strong. There is certainly danger of my lungs becoming affected, but we trust that, if it please God, the sea will restore me to health and remove the possibility of consumption. [141] I know, however, that I must prepare myself for the worst, and I am fully aware of papa’s and mamma’s anxiety about me.

[It was decided to take the invalid to Hastings for about two months.]

This is the last day we spend at Woodbury for these two months. The intense heat makes it impossible for me to get out till the evening, when we walked out and took a last view of our garden, which is quite blazing with flowers. I went to bed at half-past seven; while I was undressing Miss Harriet came to see me and bid me good-bye. The other Astells we saw yesterday. They have been all particularly kind to me during my long illness, furnishing me with books, and with strawberries, and everything I wanted, in the most friendly manner.

To-day was effected the chief object of our stay in town, the consultation with the physician. The choice of one was left to Arthur, who determined on Dr. James Clark. He was to come to Welbeck Street at four o’clock, but arrived an hour later. I went up to my bedroom, and mamma talked with him some time alone. She then called me down. Dr. James Clark is of middle height, rather thin, very dark, and of a grave and quiet demeanour, speaking very little. His aspect, however, is very pleasing and amiable. My illness has made me exceedingly nervous, and his presence agitated me greatly. I trembled all over, my heart throbbed, my pulse quickened, and the perspiration broke out from every pore. Dr. Clark examined me most minutely, tapped me, and tried his stethoscope on my chest, neck, back, side, shoulder. He said nothing about the result of his observations, but retired with mamma to another private conference. I, in the mean time, was left in a state of anxiety amounting almost [142] to agony. I could by no means compose myself; the doctor’s tapping had given me pain of the left side of my chest, and I had no small reason to apprehend the pulmonary disease had already begun. I prayed earnestly for submission to the Divine will, and that I might be prepared for death; I made up my mind that I was to be the victim of consumption.

At length mamma re-entered the room, and told me Dr. Clark’s opinion, viz. that my lungs are by no means at present diseased, but that there is the greatest danger of it, unless extreme care be taken of me. This was much more than I had dared to hope, and I thanked God for it.…

This was an intensely hot day, exceeding all the preceding ones. A gentleman who had paid great attention to the weather says it is the hottest day we have had these twenty years. It is quite equal to the usual Calcutta heat; indeed, in all probability we feel it more because we do not provide against it. It is very fortunate for me that I do not suffer from heat now nearly so much as other people, and can bear more clothing. My rheumatic tendency also makes me avoid every breath of air.

Instead of being either broiled or baked, as we had been threatened, we found, on entering Hastings, that the temperature was delicious, and the sea-breezes very cool and invigorating. When we were established in the hotel, I lost all my fatigue, my cough was almost gone, and I felt both strong and well.

… I forgot to mention yesterday that we saw walking on the Parade a singular-looking old gentleman, entirely in black, wearing over his coat a prodigious cape, which stuck out all round him; and on his head a very broad-brimmed, high-crowned straw hat. His clothes were all handsome, whence we supposed him rich. He was not tall; his gait and carriage were erect and firm. We found on inquiry that he was a rich old gentleman of eighty-five, [143] who has suffered much affliction, having lost his wife and three of his children very lately, and it appears, too, that he is unkindly treated by some of his surviving relatives. His mind seems affected by grief and old age, and he is continually weeping over his troubles with a person who was formerly his servant.

… The most notorious person in Hastings is a lady of great beauty, who is continually walking along the Parade in very gay habiliments, and excites considerable notice. We had heard a good deal of her, and this evening met her on the Parade. She is of a middling height, and very beautiful.… Nobody knows who she is; she gives herself out as the Honourable Mrs. Carr.

In the books we get from the library there are frequently marginal notes, in pen and pencil, by different readers. In the “Memoirs of Marie Antoinette” Madame Campan relates the horrid circumstances of the guards’ heads stuck on pikes,29 and adds that they were curled and powdered by the barbarians. The English editor states in a note that this latter fact is untrue. But some Frenchman, I suppose, has written below, “Tout au contraire; j’ai vu la procession, et les deux têtes dont on parle étoient frisées et poudrées.” …

Captain Hall says, “This interval (six weeks in America),30 though short, had been so busy that it appeared very long.” The commentator scrawls this stuff, “Generally speaking, any time spent busily appears to pass very rapidly, therefore our worthy writer must be naturally made of odd materials.” I opine that the “odd materials” appear in the composition of this scribbler. Captain Hall is very right. When in such a space of time a great deal has been done and seen, especially in the way of travelling, it does really appear on retrospection exceedingly long. This I can testify from present experience, for when I look back on all that we have done and seen in the last fortnight, and particularly [144] my rapid improvement in health, I can hardly realize that this day three weeks I was a hundred and fourteen miles distant, at Woodbury, suffering from cough and extreme debility, hardly able to walk, and almost forbidden to speak. It seems to me as if it was many months ago. It is when the occupations are unvaried and regular that time seems to fly so quickly.

… After tea, as it was a most delightful evening, I walked for a long time with papa and mamma on the Parade, which was much crowded. Here we passed and repassed twenty times “the pretty lady,” as we call her, whom I mentioned July 12, and had opportunities of observing her face much more minutely than we ever had before, so that we admire her infinitely more. Mamma declares that she is lovelier than any person she ever beheld; for my part, I never saw a beauty that could be compared to her. She is exquisitely, perfectly beautiful; her features are all but faultless, the only defect being that her nose (though very well shaped) is a little too large. It is difficult to say what is her greatest beauty, whether it is her unrivalled complexion, her perfectly arched dark eyebrows, her large black eyes with their long lashes, or her exquisite mouth. I cannot conceive a lovelier face. She is short, and her face and limbs small. Her expression has something in it that pleases and something that displeases, though the former predominates. There is a softness and melancholy, and look of distress, which are touching, and make one pity her; but at times she has a kind of wandering stare which I do not like. That she is unhappy I cannot doubt; she never smiles and seldom speaks. But it is strange that she dresses in the richest and most showy clothes, as if she wanted to attract attention. This evening she wore a white muslin gown, a blue silk shawl, a white satin bonnet with broad crimson ribbons, and other rich articles of dress. Her child too, about two years old, an ugly little fright, had [145] extravagantly rich clothes, its frock and tippet being of black velvet, bordered with swansdown. I forgot to add a swansdown boa to my description of the lady’s dress. She looks scarcely twenty; her youngest child is in arms. I shall never forget her, nor do I expect ever to behold her equal in beauty.*

I finished reading the first volume of Mrs. Trollope’s very entertaining,31 prejudiced, and ill-natured work, “Domestic Manners of the Americans”—a subject on which she had no business to write at all, and, at all events, it was very unfair of her to describe the manners of the half-civilized back settlements as those of the whole nation; which she certainly does, though at the outset she pretends not to do so.…

A staymaker, by name Mrs. Howes, of No. 82, High Street, who works for mamma, gave her to-day a touching account of the many afflictions she had endured. She was daughter to a wealthy farmer, and in early life was waited on by servants and rode in her own carriage. Her father dissipated his property, and she afterwards fell into the greatest poverty, so that she has been three days together unable to afford a fire, and has had only a crust of bread to eat. Ten years ago she fell from an upper story, a height of fifteen feet, and by the fall dislocated her hip, broke three ribs, and broke one leg. From these injuries she was about two years in recovering. Then she had the typhus fever, and was not well for fifteen months. This was followed by small-pox, and this last winter she has had an inflammation of the lungs; so that now she is very thin and looks extremely ill. In one twelvemonth she has had seven deaths in her family, of which three were her children and two her parents. Last year she had an execution in her house, her landlord, himself much distressed for money, [146] being able to wait no longer. She could easily have paid it all, but that the ladies for whom she worked would not pay their debts. There were no less than seven of these ladies in Wellington Square. Their unfortunate creditor went to them, represented her case, and begged relief, but got not a sixpence of her money; and the execution took place. Amongst other things her flowers, of which she had been particularly fond, were sold. One of these, a favourite fuchsia, worth seven shillings, a lady gave her a sovereign for, which was a great assistance to her in the distress she was now thrown into. After this she took another lodging, and by degrees began to prosper again in her profession. When the Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria were here, and all the tradespeople in the place sent presents to them, Mrs. Howes, having nothing else to offer, presented to the princess a pair of stays of blue silk, which cost her in making them fourteen pounds. She got nothing in return but a letter of thanks, which, however, did her some good, as it made her known; and now she writes on her cards “Appointed by their Royal Highnesses,” etc., etc.

The bathing women (for Louisa bathes in the sea every morning) told mamma a few particulars about the family at No. 36. It seems that there is a great mortality among them. As soon as they arrive at the age of twenty they die. The one whose hearse we saw was the fourth of them thus prematurely cut off, and one of them now is expected to have her turn—apparently the pale one, the elder of the two. What they die of we could not make out; probably consumption, though it seems to be a very rapid one. The one whom we distinguish as pretty does not seem to want cheerfulness; but the other looks melancholy, and I have never seen her smile. The boys, too, are pale and slightly made.

… We went to bed trembling for the weather to-morrow, the important day of our journey. [147] The air was perfectly calm and clear; the sunset was a bright pale yellow. There were some large purple clouds blotching the south and west. The moon rose small and red; her orb hazy and ill-defined, which we thought a bad sign.

[On August 29 the travellers reached Tunbridge, and spent three nights there.]

The first thing I did after I was dressed, which was a little after eight o’clock, was to sally forth to procure a draught of new milk, resuming my old practice at Woodbury before I went to Hastings. It was a sweet morning, and I enjoyed the draught the more from having walked for it. The milkwoman, Mrs. Wait, lives near the mill, just five minutes’ walk from the Miss Husseys’ abode, in a brick house whose grandeur surprised me. I was shown into a little parlour, where a glass tumbler of rich foaming milk was brought me by Mrs. Wait herself, who looks as if she fully understood its nourishing qualities. On returning, I walked about my cousins’ garden, exceedingly enjoying the dewy freshness of a country morning after having been confined in my morning walk for two months to the glare of a parade. It was quite delightful to me to hear once more the sweet songs of robin, wren, and swallow, and to be surrounded by flowers and trees not stunted by the sea air.… In driving through Tunbridge in this open carriage, I could observe much better than when in the coach what sort of place it is. It consists principally of a single street, almost a mile long, sufficiently wide, and for the greater part of the way sufficiently clean. It is an old town, and most of the houses have an antique look. One in particular I noticed, which had projecting stories and a cinquefoil moulding round the gable end; it would have been a good subject for Prout. The long street crosses the Medway, which even here is a very pretty little stream. It is bordered with willow-herbs and covered with [148] yellow water-lilies; it winds through thick shady trees, from the midst of which peeps the grey old castle, shrouded in luxuriant ivy, and crowned with tufts of foliage.

We are again at London, where we are to remain two nights, for the purpose of seeing Dr. James Clark again. We set off from Tunbridge at half-past ten o’clock in the Telegraph, a Tunbridge Wells coach. We were not so fortunate as to have the whole inside to ourselves, for we had two fellow-passengers, both ladies. One was about forty-five years old, in deep mourning, and evidently suffering both in mind and body. Her face was thin and ghastly, and, by her compressed lips and downcast eyes, she seemed to be struggling hard with tears. She spoke not a word the whole time, and noticed nothing that passed. The other was a jolly old woman, very fat, merry, and talkative, dressed up in gay silks, and wearing false flaxen hair. She bore in her countenance the trace of considerable beauty, and was fair and blue-eyed. We found her a very communicative and amusing travelling companion. Indeed, she gave utterance to a great deal more than we could hear or comprehend, owing to the rattling of the coach and the rapidity of her speech. She was a woman who knew the world, and led a gay life. She told us she lived seven miles from town, and had been staying with a friend at Tunbridge Wells.…

The Surrey side is by no means the worst part of London. The streets are, in general, very wide and pretty regular, and the houses not mean. We stopped a little while near the Elephant and Castle, and saw close to us, at the corner of two very broad streets, the Rockingham Arms, one of those pestilential gin-shops. It is a very fine large building, handsomely adorned with pilasters. Two ragged and sickly wretches, a man and woman, skulked out at a little door [149] while I was looking. I make no doubt there was a pawn-broker’s shop close by.

Dr. Clark spent nearly an hour in examining me, which he did with the greatest care and minuteness. He pronounces me much better in every respect, and finds my health more improved than he had expected. Indeed, I am scarcely like the same person, and I could perceive the greatest difference in my sensations when he tapped me with his hand. When he did it last time, it gave me great pain on the left side of my chest, but this time it gave me none. He observed that I was much fatter than when he saw me before. But he says that I still require as much care as ever, that it is extremely important to attend to my diet, that constant change of air by long drives is highly desirable, and, alas! that I must by no means remain during the winter in so cold a place as Woodbury. He recommends Torquay as the best place for me to go to, and says I ought to go in October. So that I am now going home to Woodbury for but a very short time.

Papa having last week taken our places in the Bedford Times coach, we set off at two o’clock. For some time we flattered ourselves that we were to travel alone, but such happiness was not ours; for at the Peacock Inn, Islington, we took up a lady in green silk, who presently doffed her gloves in order to display a finger quite manacled with gaudy rings. She was a tall woman, with a brown face and large features. We found her uncommunicative. Not so a gentleman of great size, who to our annoyance came inside for one stage, and kept up a constantly noisy conversation, of which every other sentence was obscured by a loud unmeaning laugh. Who he was, I cannot tell; not her husband, though she was a married woman, by name Mrs. Taylor. She, it seems, had just returned from a trip to Boulogne, which she much enjoyed, except with regard to the society, the “three [150] shilling people,” who throng the place from London. I found it amusing to listen to their conversation; they rattled away at a prodigious rate. The gentleman showed us a watch, which he said had been the property of the great Duke of Marlborough. It was a curious and clumsy machine, but very handsome and richly wrought.…

Mr. Astell called. Amongst other things, papa and he conversed about the new Poor-law,32 which seems to be generally approved of throughout the country, although there is unfortunately a considerable opposition arising. It neither is, nor was, a party question. The Bill was passed by the Whig Government, but it owed much to the support of Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, and was very popular in both Houses with all parties. Mr. Astell, for one, who is a high Tory, speaks of it with the highest approbation. He says it has already produced astonishing effects everywhere. In Gamlingay, for instance, the rates are already diminished two-thirds, and at Tempsford it is occasioning even a moral improvement in the population. If it goes on working thus, says Mr. Astell, there will, in a few years, be not a pauper in the country. This Bill is one of the most important political [151] changes which have been made within my recollection, amounting, as papa said, almost to a revolution among the labouring classes.

Intending to become very weatherwise, I am daily taking notes of the appearance of the sky at sunset, with, of course, the weather every day. I continue also noting down the barometer and thermometer twice a day, and I intend for the future to do it three times. That is, at half-past eight a.m., at one p.m., and at eight p.m.

Some interesting conversation passed when papa was with us this evening; principally about Dr. Arnold, of Rugby,33 Dr. Hampden, and Mr. Keble. Before papa came in, mamma and Aunt Mary began about Dr. Arnold, who is a prodigious favourite of ours. Mamma highly extolled his sermons, and then expressed her opinion of himself, and said how, when he preached, the school was so quiet and attentive that a pin might be heard to fall. Hereupon Aunt Mary broke out, saying that Dr. Arnold was quite odious now; his character was quite gone down, and such had been his conduct to one of the boys, that numbers were now withdrawn from his school. He had acted, she said, quite brutally, and had struck the boy himself. Here followed a long argument, mamma strenuously maintaining the character of Dr. Arnold for perfect conscientiousness, disinterestedness, and earnest anxiety about his school; repeating what Mr. H. Reynolds told us, as coming from an exceedingly bigoted high Tory, that he almost lived on his knees, and what we heard from Mr. P. Payne, son to Sir Peter Payne, that, instead of recreating himself on Sunday, he spent that day in writing sermons for his boys. All this Aunt Mary could not deny, but kept her opinion about the business of young Marshall, though mamma reminded her it was but an ex parte statement; and also blamed his violence in politics, which certainly is to be regretted. Mamma recommended her to read his sermons. Aunt [152] Mary said that, by grandpapa’s advice, she had begun the first volume; but not finding it interesting, she had left it off, and, having now a feeling against him, she did not intend to continue it. However, when mamma read to her one from his third volume (Sermon XIII.), she agreed that it was very excellent.

Having now got on the subject of party spirit and party violence, we came to Dr. Hampden. Here again mamma and Aunt Mary differed; and when papa came in, mamma called on papa to speak his opinion, which he did at some length. Mamma first asked whether, after all, his persecutors knew what his opinions really were.

Papa replied that they did not. Socinianism, he says, is a charge quite given up now; the utmost they can accuse him of is the making use of expressions which they do not approve of; and accordingly, in the bigoted Popish spirit now pervading the university, they think him fit for the faggot. That it was an indiscreet appointment, papa allows, for he before lay under some suspicion of heterodoxy; but still the whole business of his persecution, and the spirit in which it has been carried on, is a shame and a disgrace to Oxford. Nobody denies, not even his enemies, that he is a most worthy, pious, and amiable man. His writings papa has not seen; but whatever his opinions were, he has been treated in a most brutal and unchristian manner.

As to Dr. Arnold, and the affair of young Marshall, when papa heard that Dr. Arnold had been said to act brutally, he declared that no charge could possibly be more absurd or unfounded, and that none who knew him would venture to charge Dr. Arnold with any approach to brutality. The affair was this: that in the weekly examination one of the masters, by a mistake, accused Marshall of some fault which he had before committed, but of which he was not then guilty. The boy denied it, but was not believed, and was punished accordingly. It might have been an error of [153] judgment in Dr. Arnold to take the word of the master, and not that of the boy; but it is what is invariably done. As to the punishment, the beating, knocking, etc. (which was inflicted, not by Dr. Arnold or by his ushers, but by one of the monitors), it might or might not have been wrong, but it is done a hundred thousand times in every public school. The statement of the father in the newspaper undoubtedly contains falsehoods, and the whole business has been taken up as a party matter.

Dr. Arnold has been calumniated and misrepresented by his enemies in the grossest manner. The John Bull, whose business it is to propagate lies, is not ashamed to assert that he says the very reverse of what he actually does say—giving the very words of the parodied quotation—and then to hold him up to execration, calling on all parents who regard the religion and morality of their children to avoid sending them to Rugby, the only school in the kingdom where religion is neglected. Now, at Eton, the only true religious instruction ever received from Dr. Keats was, that on Sunday evening they were called in for a quarter of an hour to hear a sermon of Blair’s gabbled over, and at the same time the Greek and Latin exercises were given out for the next day. Yet John Bull takes no notice of this, and makes no appeal to parents about the religion of their children.

As another specimen of party spirit, no outcry is made against Keble for denying the Divine authority of the Christian Sabbath, although he notoriously and openly makes no distinction between it and week-days, and will play at cricket on Sunday evening;* but there is a vast commotion [154] when the same doctrine, in theory, is held by Whately, and others of that party, although he does not adopt it in practice, and considers a man of the Established Church conscientiously bound to keep it holy.

Such is the substance of the conversation, in which I took great interest.

In the evening came our long-expected pupil, Lord Ipswich. It is always a matter of anxiety, on the arrival of a pupil, to know what sort of a subject he will prove. There is nothing at all unfavourable in this young man’s appearance, and we hear much that is good of him from his father and mother. He is tall, erect, and thin; very light haired; his eyes blue, and his complexion florid. Papa says he is very like his father, whom, as well as the Duke of Grafton, he has formerly seen.

I now really pride myself on my weather-wisdom. I can always, by observing the sunset, accurately predict the weather of the following day. I trust the sunset even more than the barometer.

The sunset this evening was the most glorious I ever beheld. As I have described it in my registering book, I shall say less about it here. At the moment the sun (an orb of gold) was setting, the western horizon was glowing with a fiery copper pink, sprinkled with small rich purple clouds of surpassing brilliance. But after he was quite set, the scene was far nobler. The whole western sky was one mass of various colours—red, lemon, orange, pink, lilac—melting together, and continually increasing in brightness. Then the light decreased in extent, and amalgamated more and more; the western horizon glowing like a furnace, till no colour remained but a belt of bloody scarlet, such as I have never seen before. This scarlet colour contrasted strangely and harshly with the intense dark purple of the distances; a contrast which, if seen in a painting, would be pronounced very ugly and unnatural. In the earlier part of it the [155] eastern sky was blushing with curled and streaky clouds of a delicate pink, as if the sun was rising.

Even Mr. Wells was struck by it, and called out to Richard as he went by, “I say, Dickon, do come here, Dickon, and look at the sky! I never saw such an odd thing in my life!”

Richard. “It is most beautiful.”

Mr. Wells. “Beautiful! I don’t call that beautiful; why, it’s a regular blood-colour.” …

I do not expect to lose any more teeth; they have never ached before, and I attribute their goodness to the constant use of charcoal, of which I have the highest opinion. So has papa, who, having used charcoal daily ever since he was eight years old, never had toothache in his life, and never lost a tooth.

When suffering with the tooth which has just been drawn, I found great and instantaneous relief from a very simple remedy prescribed in Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal, where I read it two years and a half ago. This is nothing but to put into the hollow of the tooth a wetted bit of cotton, dipped into an equal mixture of pounded alum and salt.

Miss Pym, senior, and Miss Pym, junior, spent the day with us. The younger Miss Pym is about seventeen or eighteen years. She is an uncommonly pleasing and amiable girl; I should like to see much more of her than we have as yet done. She converses very agreeably. She told me some curious facts about the treatment of the scarlet fever. She and all her brothers and sisters, a family of nine, were taken ill together. They were attended by two doctors, who came on alternate days. One of the doctors was an old, the other a young, practitioner; the first preferred a warm, the other a cold, system of treatment. One-half of the family was under the hot, the other under the cold, doctor. The first were accordingly kept as [156] hot as possible, covered with blankets, made to drink medicines to promote perspiration, and had their bed-curtains always drawn close round them. The others were treated in a perfectly different manner. The furniture of their beds was entirely taken down; the carpets were taken up; the furniture of their rooms all removed except two chairs; they had no fire in their rooms, although it was the depth of winter, had their windows constantly opened, were fed only on a little tea and bread-and-butter, and every evening were taken from their beds and made to stand in a tub, while cold water and vinegar were poured over their heads. Thus the two systems had a fair trial. The consequence was that those who were kept cool got well much the quickest, and were much less reduced, while those who were kept hot were in every respect the most ill.

While the Miss Pyms were with us, Sir Peter Payne and his daughters called. Sir P. is a remarkably healthy old man of seventy-five. He was naturally very delicate, and says he never knew what good health was till he was sixty years of age. He attributes his present good health and strength to his constant hard exercise and his great temperance. He never drinks anything but a single glass of wine in soda-water; he eats scarcely any meat, and lives principally on pudding.

We have just heard of a most melancholy event—the sudden death of the eldest Miss Cust, at the early age of nineteen.… I almost doubt if her poor mother will ever recover the blow.

This day’s newspaper (the Evening Mail) gives the real account of Mrs. Graham’s frightful accident in the ascent in a balloon, which took place in the beginning of last August. We heard of it at Hastings from Mr. Henry Reynolds. How any one could survive such a fall I cannot imagine. She states that she fell nearly a thousand feet, and she was insensible for three weeks. We [157] heard at Hastings that, though the ground on which she fell was hard, the impression of her body remained upon it. As for the Duke of Brunswick, he very quietly and safely stepped out when the car was on the ground, before she went up again. They had ascended four miles from the earth. It was at the duke’s request that they went up so high. I cannot imagine a more frightful situation than hers when she was falling, for she was perfectly conscious, and fully expected death. The expansion of her silk pelisse, by lightening her fall, was what saved her.

I finished this evening all that I intend to do in the arrangement of the Penang ferns. It has been an intense labour. I have worked at it from morning till night, with scarce a moment’s intermission, till I have been nearly knocked up. The ferns amount to many hundreds in number, and are of all sizes, from the length of four feet five inches to two inches. All that are not above two feet I have put into the portfolio; but there are fifteen too long for that, which I am obliged to keep separate. Each fern I fasten in by sewing and gumming.

Papa buried poor Miss Cust to-day. The funeral, he says, was conducted with perfect decorum. It is the first he has ever been present at in which there was nothing whatever to disgust him. After the ceremony, Mr. Cust informed papa that Lady Anna Maria (who had not been present) wished to see him. Papa accordingly was taken to the study, where he was soon after joined by Lady Anna Maria. She entered with a firm calm step, sat down, took papa’s hand, and began to thank him, while the tears ran down her face; yet there was no agitation, no sobbing—she was quite collected and resigned. She was, papa said, a beautiful specimen of Christian sorrow. She spoke to him a long time about her daughter, and was every now and then interrupted by tears. Her deep grief and calm resignation touched papa greatly, and he came home full of [158] compassion and admiration for her, and a higher opinion of her even than he ever had before.

[It was decided that the invalid should spend the winter in Devonshire.]

This is my last day at Woodbury—my last morning, I should say; for we set off at eleven o’clock. I took a long farewell of house, garden, wood, heath, and every other object with which I am familiar. It was a direful morning; every object was obscured by rain, and all the country appeared to the least possible advantage, yet still I looked on it with great regret. But it was far more painful to part with papa and my brothers and sisters. Papa will come to Devonshire in December, so that I shall see him again in three months; but from the others I shall be parted for more than double that time.

[London.] … The sun was setting when we entered London, and I never saw this mighty metropolis to so much advantage, for the golden light of the dying orb illuminated it with splendour not its own, and gorgeously lighted up Regent’s Park, green with the recent rain, and bordered with terrace upon terrace of noble buildings. No less did it improve the aspect of the environs, which I now pronounce to be very pretty; at least, beyond Highgate Arch, and partly within.

Still, in itself, I do not yet know of any entrance to London more overpoweringly striking than that over Westminster Bridge, which we crossed in coming from Tunbridge. But in every place it is impossible not to feel that London is a most astonishing city. It seems an endless maze of streets and buildings, spreading and increasing in every direction, and threatening to swallow up all that is left of country in the little county which contains it.

Having on Monday taken our places in the Light Salisbury, we this morning left our lodgings in Wells Street, and went in a hackney-coach to the Spread Eagle office, in the Regent Circus, to meet the coach. As Richard is going to Devonshire, we left him behind, he is to return home tomorrow by the Regent.

We were at the Circus before eight, and waited for the coach about a quarter of an hour. We hoped at first that we should have it to ourselves, but in Piccadilly we took up a gentleman, who we afterwards found to be the clergyman of Swallowcliff near Salisbury. He was a grave silent man, who never spoke except to tell us the places we passed, but he was afterwards most useful in giving us information about the Exeter Coaches.

There was a dense fog in London, which continues more or less the whole way to Salisbury, accompanied with an incessant drizzling rain, tho’ the air was soft and warm, and there was no wind. The fog did not signify much, for there was very little to see or to hide, the road to Salisbury being in general very uninteresting.

During the journey I took notes of what we saw and of the length of time the coach was in changing horses. I forget where we first changed, but the second stage was Bagshot. Here they were only two minutes and a third, or 140 seconds, changing, but in general they were much longer. I shall note down here the different times occupied at the different places, which I took down till it was too dark.

• At Hertford Bridge, 195 seconds
• At Basingstoke we staid 18 minutes dining
• At Overton, 5 minutes

Of course, going out of London along the populous roads about the metropolis, there is nothing at all pretty or worth seeing. But it really is pretty a few miles west of Bagshot, and this is the only pretty part of the Salisbury road. Here the country assumes a different aspect from most that I [2] have seen; on each side there are healthy hills, in many places covered with open firwoods, mixed with gorse. It has a peculiarly uninhabited deserted appearance, which I like; not a house or a human being to be seen; nothing but hill beyond hill to the horizon, often a high healthy hill rising on one side of the road, and a valley covered with pine descending on the other.

About five miles from Bagshot we passed a little winding stream running by the road side, so limpid that every pebble might be seen at the bottom, and very prettily shaded with oaks. It was like a Devonshire stream. Here the moors became more and more extensive, and very marshy, especially to the left; on the right there is a constant succession of hills, like those in the margin.

Hertford Bridge, our next stage, is a long street. The country about is miserable, very flat and marshy, and thinly wooded. All the small timber is oak, all the larger elm. There are several plantations of oak, of curious appearance; the young oaks are planted in long straight rows, eighteen or twenty feet apart, each oak growing out of a little mound one or two feet high, which being often covered with gorse in full flower looks very pretty.

Forty miles from London all the country continues very flat, marshy and dreary, the soil being gravelly in general. Some where hereabouts a railroad is being erected between London and Southampton, it is raised on a kind of mole. Here we were in the county of Hampshire, reputed very beautiful, so that we had fallen on a bad specimen.

† Lord Digby’s place is in this hideous region, one mile on the London style of Basingstoke, our fourth stage, at which we arrived at thirteen minutes to two. Here we dined. Now I had a great horror of Basingstoke, because when Papa and Mamma went to Devonshire five years ago, they stopped here at a most horrid inn, and could get nothing to eat but putrid chops, the whole place too they described as filthy, abounding with bad smells. So that we rather dread- [3] †ed dining here, but we were agreeably disappointed. I cannot deny that every street was flanked by two open drains nearly overflowing, nor that the horses marched to their stables through the same passage by which we walked to dinner, and that the only reason we smelt no bad smells might have been that we had no leisure to do so. But when we entered the dining-room, a large apartment, we discovered the following goodly apparitions,-At the top a round of beef, at the bottom a fillet of veal, in the centre a ham, a chicken, potatoes, bread and butter, the whole forming a capital cold dinner. Mamma and I, with a very good appetite, fell on the fowl; one of his wings was already gone, we took the other, and stripped him besides of his breast, and a portion of one leg. In about a quarter of an hour we were summoned back to the coach, and left Basingstoke greatly raised in our esteem.

Our next stage was Overton. Some where here we passed the place of Mr. Portal, who supplies the Bank of England with paper. It is a very pretty place, altogether flat; the beeches are very beautiful, and are much improved by a tinge of rich autumn brown. In the church of Whitchurch there are some little Norman windows. Beyond Whitchurch is the place of the Earl of Portsmouth.

Here my notes fail me, and I cannot say I very distinctly recollect the remainder of the journey to Salisbury, nor indeed is there any thing interesting to remember. For seven or eight miles before we arrived at that city, we saw nothing but vast plains of unenclosed meadow land, not quite flat, but in low undulating hills, occasionally crossed by a narrow road of white chalk. Not a tree is to be seen, all is short unvaried green grass, except here and there a straggling line of low stunted bushes. As far as we could see, all was the same; the distant hills were obscured by the fog, but I suppose were of the same kind as those near us. Sometimes there were high green banks on each side of the road, which shut out the view of the plains beyond, but were equally bare of trees and shrubs. As we drew near Salisbury, wood became more abundant, one or two [4] fir plantations appeared, and at last some tall trees; a cottage or two also enlivened the extreme dreariness of the scene. We drove into Salisbury at nearly half-past six, when it was quite dark, so that we could see nothing of the city except what the lamp-light showed. It seemed to me a regular built place, with pretty broad streets; of its cleanliness or of the beauty of the houses I could judge nothing. †The cathedral I did not see. The coach put up at the White Heart, where we also quartered ourselves, and found it a very good commodious inn, free from the usual night-pest of such places. †After our long and uninteresting journey of 85 miles, we were †thoroughly fatigued, and hastened to bed as soon as we could.

†We had intended to travel from Salisbury to Exeter by the Traveller, a coach which we had learnt from Aunt Bell, started at 9 in the morning, and got in at 7 in the evening. But we heard from our fellow-traveller that this information was wrong, that it started at 6 and got in at 10, being then 16 hours on the road; that besides being so exceedingly slow, it is a six-inside, and stopped at every public house on the road. These statements being corroborated at the inn, we gave up the Traveller altogether, and finding that there was no other day coach, we resolved to go by the mail, which starts from 5 at Salisbury, and gets in at half-past 2. Fortunately there is an auxiliary mail, which travels only from Salisbury to Exeter, so that we were able to secure our places that night, instead of waiting for the chance of the mail from London. This our fellow-traveller very kindly did for us, which saved us a good deal of trouble. The fare was 2 £. 10 s. each, not too much for 87 miles in a mail.

Having transacted all the necessary business, we drank tea to our inexpressible satisfaction, in a very comfortable room, the floor of which was covered by an old Axminster carpet, which had once been very handsome. We then quickly went to bed.

†We were called at four o’clock, to prepare for our very long journey. We dressed of course by candle-light, the first time I have done so for this [5] †twelvemonth. I was not primed for my journey by a good night, for I had been woke by the squeaking horn of a coach, the up Traveller, I suppose, and I did not altogether sleep three hours. As soon as we were dressed, we went down stairs, and stepped into the fly which was to take us to the Black Horse, the inn whence the mail starts. The fly was drawn by a pair of mules, but they might as well have been donkeys, for it was too dark to see them, they took us very well however. We were in ample time for the mail, which was still waiting for the mail from London. We thought ourselves fortunate that they did not object to the quantity of luggage we took, which consisted of two trunks, a carpet-bag, a large deal box, and a small one. On getting in, we found, to our great pleasure, that we had the whole inside to ourselves. It was an excellent coach, as mails usually are, very roomy, and so spruce and clean that it looked like a gentleman’s carriage.

After waiting about ten minutes, the London Mail arrived; ours took the bags, and started at a little before five by the Salisbury time, and at a quarter past mine, which I set on Wednesday by the Horseguards. It was so dark that we could see nothing of Salisbury, and could barely distinguish the white walls which enclosed the roads for a little way beyond it. Being tired and drowsy, I took a nap, in spite of the cold, which we felt through all our wraps. I lost nothing by my sleepiness, for we were only passing the dreary Salisbury plain. When I awoke, which was after sunrise, I saw that, even if there was anything to see, it was useless to try to see it, for a heavy fog obscured every object which was above a hundred yards from the roadside. This fog cleared off by slow degrees, but was not entirely gone till we were within twenty or thirty miles of Exeter.

I took down the time of changing horses in the mail also, and I was surprised to find that it took so much longer than the stage yesterday. They are as follows:

[6]

First stage (I forget the place)	5 minutes.
Second do. do	9 minutes.
Shaftesbury	5m. 15 seconds.
Third stage	4m. 15s.
Sherbourne	3m. 30s.
Yeovil, breakfasted	30m.
Crewkhorne	5min. 15s.
Chard	7m.
Yarcombe	5m.
Honiton	7m. 30s.
Rockbear	at 3m. 30s. to 2 o’clock.

Allowing therefore and hour and a half for changing, including five minutes for other stoppages, and the half-hour for breakfast, the mail went at the rate of 10 7/8 miles, or very nearly eleven miles, an hour, which is speedy enough. I believe it is one of the quickest mails in England.

#After leaving Shaftesbury, the road being elevated, we had on both sides and extensive view, though not a very rich one. To our left were one or two pretty wooded hills, on whose summits rested clouds which obscured them, a thing which I have never seen before. Some miles, beyond, another new object, common in the west of England, caught my eye, an overshot mill, and a very pretty object it is. Other things too appeared which showed me that I was in a different kind of country from Bedfordshire. The cottages and walls were all built of stone, and thatched instead of tiled; and by the roadsides I saw heaps not of flints and pebbles, but of large slabs of sandstone. We passed too through a pretty bit of lane between high rocky banks of sandstone and slate.

Near Milbourne Port there are beautiful woods. At Sherbourne there is a large and handsome cross-church. Sherbourne is a picturesque place; one of the houses, built of stone, is a very old one, richly covered with ivy and Virginian Creeper, now scarlet with autumn. Shaftesbury and Sherbourne, and the road between them, are both in a little piece of Dorsetshire. Soon after leaving Sherbourne, we entered Somersetshire, through which we travelled for about twenty miles.

Yeovil is a very pretty place, and the entrance to it is down a beautiful steep lane, between rocky banks covered with ivy. Here we were allowed half an hour to breakfast at the Mermaid Inn, which we did with great relish, as it was nearly six hours since we had risen, and we had only eaten a biscuit or two. We left Yeovil at ten o’clock, by which time the fog had cleared off entirely except from the distances. The nine miles’ stage from Yeovil to Crewkhorne is very beautiful, and interested me exceedingly, by laying before me a country of a totally different kind from what [7] †I have been used to see, and which continued much the same, only increasing in beauty, all the way to Exeter. It is not merely the scenery that is different, but the aspect of all the towns and villages also. I will try to describe it.

In the first place the roads are so pretty; they frequently wind between very high rocky banks, crowned with wood, and beautifully festooned with ivy. Where there are not these banks, the hedges are adorned with red haws, hips, purple privet-berries, and blackberries, together with poppies, hawkweed, yarrow, and great ragwort, while beyond them the ground sometimes rises in broken hills, or sinks in little vallies, which are clothed sometimes with thick woods or groves, sometimes with orchards of moss-grown apple-trees covered with fruit, either of a pale green or bright crimson. The towns and villages too have a peculiar character; being built of stone, they look, and are, much more ancient than those of Bedfordshire. The cottages have all a solid substantial look; the grey stone with which they are built, the thatched roofs, the stone casements and old square dripstones, give them a highly picturesque look. They are frequently covered too with China roses, Virginian creeper, clematis, and ivy, and are surrounded by lovely little gardens, filled with holly-hocks, dahliahs, and many other plants in full blow. These gardens owe much of their beauty to the broken nature of the ground, and the old stone walls shaded with trees, which often intersect them. Out of one of these walls, I saw a clear little fountain gushing, at which a girl was filling her pitcher. Now and then we passed an overshot mill, with its pretty little stream; and beautiful lanes continually branched off from the road, and wandered among woods tinged with the very hues of autumn, the sycamore a bright scarlet, the oak and beech a rich brown, the larch and birch golden yellow, the spindlewood a deep violet. Near one village through which ran a stream, I saw one or two meadows strewed with what seemed to be hemp or flax drying. As we approached Crewkhorne the country became more and more diversified with high round hills thickly clothed with wood. I was much struck with the beauty of one hilly meadow, through which ran two little winding streams, the banks of which were flowery, and so deep that the water ran four or five feet beneath the level of the meadow.

It was nearly eleven when we reached Crewkhorne. The church of this place is extremely pretty, and [8] stands in the loveliest churchyard I ever saw, on a little eminence, adorned with the most grateful foliage.

Part of the road between Crewkhorne and Chard is very beautiful. They road is very high, and runs along the brow of a hill so perpendicular in its descent that the slope of it cannot be seen from the coach. Between the road and the extreme edge of the hill is a space covered with purple heath and golden furze, scattered at frequent intervals with pretty little open groves of pine and beech. The valley beneath is beautiful, the ground hilly and broken, and adorned with lovely woods of beech and oak, just tinged with the rich autumn brown. The distances are extensive, and equally rich and varied.

The stage from Chard to Yarcombe is uninteresting. Yarcombe is a very pretty place, the church and parsonage are beautiful, surrounded with wood, in a valley beneath the road.

From Yarcombe to Honeton and beyond it, the road is exquisite, far beyond my power to describe. The country here has all the features of Devonshire scenery, of the very most beautiful kind. All around there is nothing but hill above hill, wide wooden vallies, extensive distances of undulating hills, the road sometimes high, sometimes low, the ground rising on one side, and descending abruptly on the other, all equally covered with woods, principally pine, larch, and beech, and interspersed with picturesque rocks. The loveliest part of all is a few miles from Honeton. # On the left, rises a steep and beautiful hill, richly covered with heath and gorse in bloom, and crowned with thick woods; above that rises another hill, and above that another, so high and steep that we could only see their summits by stooping low. On the right, the ground descended abruptly into a deep valley, the sides of the hill being clothed with scattered woods, and sometimes shut out by the hedge; the whole valley, which is very extensive, is filled with groves, here and there a cottage, or a village, or a church tower, embosomed with trees; the opposite side of the valley is bordered with high hills, and the ends of it melt into distant woods of deep blue. This sort of scenery continued almost all the rest of the way. Beyond Honiton we continually saw lovely little pebbly streams winding by the roadside, and shaded with trees. The road was bordered with tall beeches and oaks. I now began to notice the colour of the soil, as it appeared in the rocks and banks; it was a bright delicate vermilion, varying to brick-red and light crimson.

As yet I have seen nothing out of the house, not being able to go out of doors to day, which I much regret. But every thing within is as pleasant and comfortable as can be, Aunt Bell’s extreme kindness would alone make it so. There is a nice little collection of books, which will afford me plenty of reading. The house, though close to a great town, is as quiet as can be. We breakfast at between eight and nine; then, if by ourselves, we dine at one and have tea at six, if Uncle William and his son dine with us, we dine at four and have tea at seven or eight.

Not being well, I could neither go out or go to church, but was on the sofa almost all day. Uncle William, as he usually does, drank tea here, and read to us a sermon of Chalmer’s. Uncle William is a very sensible right thinking man, and makes very excellent remarks on religious and moral subjects. Those he made this evening were very well worth hearing.

I must not forget to mention that after dinner, cousin William brings into the room to frisk about, a tame rabbit, a large black and white one, bearing on its nose the butterfly smut, the mark so much prized by fanciers. It is perfectly fearless, but does not choose to be touched except when she invites it; when she wishes it, she lies down stretched out, and then any body may stroke and caress her as long as they please. She will also at times sit very quietly on one’s lap.

Still kept to the house, and partly to my bed, able only to lie down and read, till evening, when I played at chess with William, who took his revenge for three games which I won of him yesterday evening. I read one or two of Grace Kennedy’s tales, which I never saw before. I like them middling well.

I pity poor Maria much, she can do scarcely anything all day, and from constant ill-health can take interest in nothing. She can work a little, which she [11] does by feeling only; but her sight is so bad that she can neither read nor write without her spectacles, which are very heavy, and pain her eyes to use. Now and then she sings, accompanying herself on the piano-forte, which, not having been taught, she does entirely by ear, having an excellent turn for music; but she has rarely spirits enough for this. She has a very good voice.

Still am I kept in the house, except a turn in the verandah a quarter of an hour. This turn, and a single walk round the Crescent garden the other day, constitutes all the exercise I have had during the five days since I came here. I long to get out. Mamma goes to Exeter every day, and I am always unable to accompany her, chiefly on account of the weather, which, though not remarkably cold, is very rainy and stormy.

Aunt Bell told me some curious particulars about her aunts Lady Mayo and Mrs. Smith, of whom, when a child, she saw a great deal, more indeed than a child ought to have seen. They always, as I knew before, are in the habit of rouging, and Aunt Bell says that they began it when they were only girls of seventeen or eighteen. First, in order to gain a little colour, they began to pinch and rub their cheeks, but finding that this irritated their cheeks, they next tried a red ribbon dipped in spirits of wine. But neither would this answer, and at last they found that nothing would do but a rouge-pot, which they have continued to use ever since. The operation of laying on the rouge Aunt Bell has constantly witnessed, and has also seen how hideous and yellow their cheeks looked without it. She says that she remembers how that once, at a time when Lady Mayo was forty years of age, she (Lady Mayo) was so distressed as actually to shed tears, because an ugly pimple appeared on her lip one day when there was to be a ball in the evening, and she was afraid nobody would dance with her! However, having made herself up as well as she could, she did dance after all, and very sufficiently too. Five or six of these ladies’ cast-off rouge-pots, which they gave to Aunt Bell, are now on the chimney-piece in the room Mamma and I sleep in here; they are of china, and are very elegant little ornaments. It must be said that the rouge greatly improves their appearance, and makes them look some years younger, but without it they would be like witches, after the long use of it.

At a quarter to eight in the morning, Mamma went by coach to Torquay, to spend a night with Aunt Paul. We expect her back to-morrow at about eleven o’clock.

I went to Exeter to day for the first time. We passed Lower Summerland place, a row of red brick houses running at right angles with the road, and went up Paris Street, then into High Street, and as far as Colson’s and Sparke’s shop, where I had to choose a gown. As the weather was rainy, we returned in a fly.

I think Exeter a beautiful town in respect of its situation amongst high hills, and it looks very well when we enter it from the London road, but I fancy that there is not a great deal that is very fine in the place itself. I have not yet seen the really handsome parts; what I have seen is mean and dirty, and the streets are narrow. But the houses look old, and some of them are very picturesque, in particular, one opposite Colson’s. The pavements are old and uneven, and filled with puddles, and open drains run by their side, not improving either the cleanliness or sweetness of the streets. I saw a few gay shops; we passed one or two bazaars of old furniture, in which there seemed to be some good oil-paintings. There are one or two stands of flys, great improvements on the hackney-coaches of London; that which we used to day was a very nice clean one.

†About a year and a half ago, when Grandmamma and Aunt Bell lived in Summerland Place, they all but witnessed a rather fearful coach accident. Summerland Place, as I said, is at right angles with the London road, and the corner-house, in which they lived, is close upon the very road. At that time, the road was divided into upper and lower, which ran parallel, and at length joined, but the upper was for some distance six or eight feet higher than the lower. The lower ran close to my Aunt’s garden-gate. Of course, in this situation, they always saw and heard the London Coaches coming into the town. One calm moonlight night, as they were sitting together, with Uncle William and Maria Dennis, they heard the Herald approaching at a furious rate, rattling along, and the [13] †guard’s horn blowing as usual, they were listening to it, when all on a sudden these sounds stopped short, a single moment of silence ensued, then a heavy roll and a shout, and then all was quiet again. Uncle William exclaimed “It’s over!” and they all, in a terrible fright, rushed out into the road. There, to be sure, they found the Herald lying overturned on the lower road; the horses had kept their legs, but instead of running away, stood trembling with terror. It seems that the coachman, being quite drunk, had driven the coach over the bank, and through the railing, from the upper road to the lower; the guard, who saw what was about to happen, called out to him to pull up, but he was too drunk to do so; a young woman who was sitting behind with the guard, asked him if she should jump down; he said no, she must keep fast where she was; he himself then jumped off safely, and over went the coach. The young woman fell off, and the coach fell on her; she was dreadfully hurt, and carried insensible into the house. A poor sailor too was very severely injured, his ancle was dislocated, and his foot hung loose. The loss to him was very great from this accident, for he had with great difficulty come to Devonshire to go on board a ship which was to sail immediately; of course he lost his passage. Nobody else, I believe, was hurt; the coachman, who deserved to have his neck broken, entirely escaped. Within five minutes of the accident a crowd of thieves and pickpockets assembled, at last the mob amounted to some hundreds, but I do not think anything was stolen. In about an hour the coach was raised up again by main force, and preceded as before. Great pains were taken to hush up the affair, no examination or enquiry was made, it never even found its way into print, and I dare say our family know more about it then any body else.

The nights are very stormy now; Dr. Miller, who called to day, says that a great mischief has already been done by them. At Sidmouth, a sea-wall erected last year, is destroyed; at Dawlish, the beach was covered, and the furniture floated in the houses, from which the inhabitants were obliged to escape to the inns, which were filled.

I went again into Exeter with Aunt Bell, and I saw it much better, for it was a fine day, and we remained out for two or three hours. We did not however go further than High Street. I stepped into the bazaar, and saw there some very handsome old furniture, high-backed chairs of carved oak with velvet cushions, old china, a bedstead with a counterpane of blue satin flowered with white, &c. &c. and particularly several paintings, of which I thought some very good. I do not know the names of the artists, but there are two or three which I think are Cuyp’s. I very much admire a painting of an old man with a hawk and a dog, it is admirably executed.

Mamma returned from Torquay this afternoon, having exceedingly enjoyed her journey and her stay there. About the same time that she came into the house came my three other cousins, Julia, Anna, and Phoebe, of whom I have only seen Anna before. I was very much delighted to see them, especially Anna, whom I have long been wishing to see again. Maria is here too, but Paulina is gone home with her mother. We spent a very merry evening, laughing, and talking almost incessantly, for they are all brimful of fun, and we had plenty to talk about.

All my four cousins sing very nicely, a talent for which I greatly envy them. They also play, and they have excellent ears. None of them draw, except Julia and Phoebe. Julia paints miniatures on ivory and card very beautifully, she showed me some, principally of her own sisters, of which the likenesses are very good. Phoebe draws heads in pencil.

I went to church to day, the first time I have been able to go for five months. It was St. Sidwell’s Church; we went in the afternoon, and heard Mr. Tripp, who I believe is a very excellent clergyman, but he has a dull heavy appearance, a great deal of dialect, and an unfortunate delivery. I was greatly struck and much affected by the singular (was it not providential?) circumstance, that on this occasion, the very first on which I have been able from long continued illness, to attend worship in the House of God,- that the sermon should have been on the text, “Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth,” and that the subject should have been the advantages and blessings to be derived from sickness. It was a very good sermon, though short.

[15]

St. Sidwell’s is a modern church, built in the Gothic style, and it is done, I think, with great taste. It is a pretty good-sized, and very elegant building. The exterior is light, and the stone of a good colour, not deformed with white-wash; of the interior I did not see much, as we were but just in time, but it seemed to me to be richly ornamented, and not in a bad style. The organ and singing are very good. We sat in the gallery; it was a close day and a crowded church, and we found it intensely hot. I found my shortness of breath return a little, and I was tired with my walk, but I do not think I got any harm by it, and I was much gratified at being able to go to church.

†Mamma went away to day, leaving me here, for seven months, a hundred and seventy-one miles from home. But I think I shall be as happy here as I can ever anywhere away from home, for Aunt Bell is exceedingly kind, and I love my cousins very much. Mamma travels in the most convenient way possible, for Papa’s cousin Bulkely Praed takes her to London in his own carriage, and there she will take up her quarters with the Malkins, who have removed from 12 Welbeck Street to 21 Wimpole Street.

There was a fog all day, continually increasing, so that I could not go out, and I am afraid Mamma has had a disagreeable day’s journey.

I sat for an hour and a half to Julia, who is taking me on card; the first time I have had my portrait taken. Being very short-sighted, she is obliged to wear spectacles when she draws.

In the afternoon I took a walk alone with Uncle William, who conducted round many parts of Exeter where I had not been. We first went through High Street and into Northernhay, a noble walk round the ruins of the castle, at a considerable elevation, so as to afford a very fine view of the surrounding country. It is shaded with lofty elms several hundred years old, of which no less than forty were blown down in the tremendous gale of Sept. 1, 1833. Besides which, this magnificent walk is further spoilt by what is called an improvement, namely, cutting down several more elms, and thereby leaving an unsightly gap. Nevertheless it is still magnificent. From Northern- [16] hay we went down North Street into the Cathedral yard, the first time I had been closer to the Cathedral than Baring Crescent. It is a noble building, though far inferior to Ely. The two towers are rich Norman; the West window is a very beautiful Decorated one; the West front is partly hidden by a fine screen, filled with niches with the statues perfect. We did not enter it. In the Cathedral Yard is the Institution, which we just stepped into; there are two fine rooms, principally filled with books, and containing some natural and artificial curiosities. Close to the Cathedral is a very frightful modern church, St. Mary Major’s, I believe, executed in the worst possible taste, a mixture of all sorts of styles. From hence we went to Southernhay, another very fine walk, but not equal to Northernhay, and thence to Barn Fields, a row of red brick houses. We then returned to Baring Crescent, entering at the end opposite that which leads to Paris Street. I was rather tired with my walk, and it was late and damp by the time we returned.

During the walk, my Uncle talked to me very kindly on various subjects, especially religious ones, and said a great deal on prayer and devotion which I shall remember, and which will, I hope, be useful to me.

I took another walk with my Uncle, still longer than the other, and I did a great deal, considering that I had previously walked beyond Heavitree with Julia. With my Uncle, I went first over Mount Radford, a very fine situation, and the houses built with better taste than usual. We passed many †rows of buildings in the most ugly, fantastical, non-descript style, a mixture of very barbarous Tudor English with an approach to Grecian and a great resemblance to Chinese; most of the houses are painted or washed a glaring white. The Deaf and Dumb Asylum, and the School-House, which are near each other, are in a very beautiful situation, commanding a noble and extensive view. We then went up the dirty Holloway Street, to Colleton Crescent. This consists of tall, large houses of red brick, quite uniform, and forming a single undivided mass of building, striking, not so much from its own beauty, as from that of its situation. It is perhaps the most elevated part of Exeter, on [17] the brow of a hill, beneath which flows the Ex, while beyond rise high hills, some bare, some wooded. The Ex is not a pretty river at Exeter, the banks are low and flat, and not very much wooded. There is an ugly canal cut beside it, with a few boats and barges on its surface, and new-made roads spoil the country immediately under the hill, but nevertheless the view is beautiful and extensive. In Colleton Crescent Mamma once lived with her family before she was married, when they came to Devonshire for health.

The streets about this part of Exeter are excessively narrow, steep, and dirty, running with liquid mud of deep red colour, and always flanked with an open drain on either side. The town spreads very much, and is increasing in all directions, all the new houses, as I said before, being very ugly and ridiculous.

We then went to the Bedford Circus, which is the greater portion of a circle of old red brick houses. Before it is a garden, on the other side of which is the Bedford Chapel, where Mamma went last Sunday to hear Mr. Scoresby, a very remarkable and excellent character. From thence we came straight home, and were at Baring Crescent by four o’clock.

The most prominent feature in Exeter is everywhere the Cathedral, which rises grandly from the midst of the city. Next to this in importance is St. Sidwell’s Church, which looks well from every point.

I saw for the first time my cousin Mackworth Praed, who dined here at seven o’clock. His little girl, Annie, is staying here for a few days under Aunt Bell’s care. She is about five years old, a clever little chit, with enormously high spirits, and very good-humoured.

Of course I observe little here in the way of natural history. But I saw two or three swallows both to day and yesterday, which is late in the season. Also, I noticed one or two pied wagtails, and I hear the robin sing everyday.

†After, I am sorry to say, a very idle week, I resolved to begin studying again. I took up Morgan’s arithmetic, and read over carefully some of the earlier part. But I find my brain muddy and rusty with disuse during my long illness, and I was quite fatigued in a very short time. However I shall practice study a little every day, and get myself into the way of it again.

Phoebe left us this morning, returning to Teignmouth, conveyed by Mackworth Praed, as Mamma was by Bulkely. Her absence makes a great difference; there is fun enough in all of them, but it is all concentrated in her. I suppose we shall have no more thundering shouts of laughter all the evening.

I took another walk with Julia; we went into Exeter by Summerland Street, and went about the town shopping and doing other errands. None of these are worth notice, except one to the Civet Cat, a shop of jewellery and other things, where I saw a most beautiful toy of Genevese construction, of which I have read in Miss Edgeworth’s Rosamond. It was a little snuff box with a small lid opening in the middle of the top, this lid has an enamelled painting, the subject of which I do not remember, or rather did not observe; according to Miss Edgeworth it is Mont Blanc. The man touching a spring, the enamelled lid flew open, and out sprung a beautiful little humming-bird, glittering with all the hues of the rainbow; which immediately commenced a clear sweet song that lasted about half a minute. While singing, it danced round as if in an ecstacy, opened its beak, heaved its breast, and shivered its wings, so naturally, that it was difficult to imagine that it had not life, yet it was not above an inch in length. When its song was ended, it sunk down into the box, and the lid closed upon it. I was quite delighted with this exquisite piece of mechanism, especially as I have long wished to see it, and indeed have been rather sceptical about its existence.

Mrs. George Trevelyan, a great friend of Aunt Bell and also of Julia Dennis, called this evening. As Julia is exceedingly fond of her, and has often talked to me about her, I was very glad of this opportunity of seeing her. I found her a tall, slim, erect person, of light complexion and hair, with no pretensions to beauty; her deportment extremely quiet and deliberate, her manner of speaking very slow and calm. I understand that she is a very superior person, which I can well conceive.

Mr. Dornford dined here. Amongst other things, he conversed on the subject of gambling, especially as carried on abroad. He said that a friend of his resolved to witness these horrible scenes with his own eyes, so he went to one of the gambling-houses at Paris. As soon as he entered, they took away his stick or umbrella, or whatever he had in hand; this is always done, as if they could not trust them with any thing [19] that could be used as an instrument of violence. Mr. Dornford then described the frightful appearance of the gambling-room; the lurid glare from the lamps above, the various expressions of avarice, envy, rage, despair, on the countenances of the gamblers. He (i.e. Mr. D.’s friend) particularly observed one young man, the expression of whose face was almost frantic. He was evidently one who could not afford to lose, yet he did lose incessantly. He put down a Napoleon on the table, and watched its fate with an eye that glared like that of a maniac. He lost! With trembling hand he put down another. He lost again! Another-he lost for the third time. There was then a convulsive movement of his hand; he thrust it shaking into his pocket, and drew out what was evidently the last piece of money he possessed. He laid it on the table and lost for the last time. He pressed his hands on his forehead in silent despair, and withdrew. The next day, the gentleman saw his body exposed to view according to the custom at Paris; it had been taken out of the Seine.

†I took another walk with my Uncle. We went up Castle Street and into the castle yard. Very little is left of the ancient castle of Exeter except a bit of the wall, and a very picturesque ruin, of Norman date, covered with aged ivy, which looks as old as itself. The castle yard is a neatly kept area, bordered by tall elms; at one end is an ugly modern building, the Sessions house, where my Uncle told me that formerly when the assize balls were held here, they used to dance over the heads of the prisoners, and in their very hearing. This barbarous custom is now disused. We ascended the rampart of the castle, and walked along the top of the wall. As soon as we had mounted, a most splendid view burst upon my sight through the lofty elms rising in front. The whole of Exeter lay outspread before us, and a wide extent of hilly and woody country on every side; we saw the river Ex winding along, and could trace its course down to the sea. I could even see Exmouth and its church situated at the mouth. I saw also the noble Cathedral, the whole length of which was before me. It is certainly a glorious view, though unfortunately obscured to day by a kind of hazy sunshine. I looked at it a long time with great delight; we then descended the rampart, and returned home by the beautiful walk of Northernhay. In Paris Street we [20] †stopped at the house of a man named Frost, a self-taught mechanic of wonderful genius, to see a very remarkable clock, constructed by an Exeter man two hundred years ago. It is a most singular piece of mechanism, having four dial plates; the principal one shows the hour of the day or night; a small one above shows the month, another the day of the month, another the day of the week, another leap-year. The clock has also a band of music, and various figures which act and move at the same time; also a moving panorama representing the course of the sun. The whole forms a very splendid and extraordinary work. It had long been out of repair, and Frost was the only man in Exeter who was able to reput it into order again. It is in the possession of an attorney, who it is said will not sell it for less than 700 pounds.

I was rather alarmed this morning by a good deal of pain in my chest and left shoulder when I breathed, accompanying a heavy cold and a slight cough. The pain went off in the afternoon, but the cold remained. I did not go to church; indeed I find that Dr. Clark forbids my going there any more, till summer I suppose, except, when it is very fine, for the communion only.

In the evening Uncle William read to us the second of Chalmer’s Tron Church sermons. My Uncle remarked that Chalmer was unlike any writer he knew, particularly in the circumstance of the great length of his paragraphs, and yet their being always well concluded, without the least confusion.

I began this evening the task of teaching Euclid to Anna. I had for some time recommended her to learn it, and now she resolves to do so. Maria and William are beginning too. I am very glad of this opportunity of going over Euclid again, as it is long since my health has allowed me to study it. I had in the spring reached the fourth book.

A letter from Mamma, the second we have had since she left us, says that Richard is coming here on Thursday. This is a thing which has been contemplated ever since my arrival here, and now I am very glad to find that it will take place. I think a visit to Devonshire will improve Richard’s health, and it will be a very great pleasure to him, as well as to William, who is sadly without companions. Mamma also says that the wedding of Miss Caroline Astell and Mr. Rooper has just taken place.

[21]

At tea my Uncle read to us out of the newspaper a detailed account of the late awful shipwreck off the Isle of Wight. The Clarendon, West Indiaman, perished at Black Cang Chine on Monday Oct. 10, and out of twenty-eight on board three only were saved. The circumstances of the wreck are most horrible, I never heard a more shocking narrative of the kind. The ship was not more than twice her own length from shore, yet no assistance could be rendered her, she was thrown on land and went instantly to pieces. Amongst the happy victims were a family of our own name, a Lieutenant and Mrs. Shore, with four children, just come home from the West Indies, and delighted at the thought of returning to England; all perished! What renders this sad event more particularly distressing, is the Mr. Smith, the brother of Mrs. Shore, having just lost his wife, was looking forward with great pleasure to the comfort he should derive from the arrival of his sister; he was at Newport expecting her return; on Tuesday morning he heard that an Indiaman had been lost at the Chine, he hastened thither, and the body of his sister was washed up before his eyes; those of his unfortunate nieces followed.

Many other wrecks are mentioned in the paper as having occurred in that dreadful storm, but none are so melancholy in their circumstances.

Julia finished my portrait this morning. The first which she began she was dissatisfied with, and set aside, and she has now finished another, which is very nicely done, and considered very like, but in my opinion she has considerably flattered me. I liked sitting to her, which I did for two or three hours every morning, because we then had a nice long chat together on all kinds of subjects, and compared our opinions and ideas.

I find that now the winter comes on, my old symptoms are reappearing, my cough returns a little, with occasional shortness of breath, and, when I draw a full breath, a slight pain in that part of my chest which is affected. This I suppose I must expect, especially as I have now a heavy cold. I of course do not go out of doors.

We expected Richard to day, but he did not come, and on re-examining Mamma’s letter we see that Friday must be the day meant for his arrival.

I began to day another letter to Eliz, who, Mamma tells me Arthur has heard is again a mother.

Julia left us at nine o’clock in the morning, not to go home, but to pay a visit of some weeks perhaps, to her friend Mrs. George Trevelyan, who lives at Hamslaide, near Bampton, twenty-five miles north of Exeter. It is unlucky that she went just on the very day of Richard’s arrival, only a few hours before he came.

Not knowing what time Richard would come, I was on the lookout all the morning as I sat in the breakfast room. About half-past eleven I heard a bustle at the door, and Aunt Bell came in saying that she saw a carpet-bag in the passage. So we supposed it was master Dickon, and I ran out to see him, when lo and behold, who should be standing there but Phoebe Dennis, to the utter astonishment not only of me, but of all the family, for, though she had been asked back now that Julia was going, she had refused, and had only changed her mind at six o’clock this morning. I was very glad to see her, though disappointed at the mistake. But in half an hour afterwards, Richard presented himself in his own proper person, to my very great pleasure. He brought me a packet of no less than five letters, from Papa, Mamma, Arabella, Louisa, and Mackworth, the longest of all being Mackie’s. They contain no news of great importance. Most of them speak of the poor Custs, Papa says, that they

“have left Hatley for a short time, and are now staying at Captain Cust’s. Lucy is looking far from well. Lady A.M. though apparently calm and resigned evidently feels her wound very deeply indeed.”

“Lady Anna Maria Cust” (says Arabella) “Mr. Cust, and Lucy, now Miss Cust, have called; they all seem so very unhappy that it is quite touching to see them, especially when they force a laugh or try to talk cheerfully; and you have no idea how ill and melancholy poor Lucy looks; she was as white as a sheet, her lips especially, and spoke in so low and sorrowful a voice as to be hardly audible; she was several times near bursting into tears, and altogether is the picture of distress and ill health.”

Louisa says

“I have seen the Custs; the two younger ones did not seem particularly sad, but it was quite pitiable to see the others. Lady Anna Maria’s manner was quite altered, and as mild as possible; she was crying nearly all the time. Lucy Cust was as pale as death, and spoke so low it was scarcely possible to distinguish what she said.”

I feel for them greatly, poor things. Poor unhappy Lucy what a sad loss must a sister, such a sister, be to her.

The weather has for some days been bitterly cold and windy, I have been confined to the house for a whole week, and, in common with my cousins, suffer very much from coldness in the feet and hands, which it is impossible to keep warm. Even when I have roasted them at the fire, they are chilled the moment I remove them. I wear flannel soles in my shoes all day, and worsted stockings all night but still in vain.

My present room is a small one called the red room. It is very warm and comfortable, the aspect is east, the window has a sand bag, and the fire-place a chimney-board.

We commonly sit all the morning in the dining-room, where we also breakfast. After our early dinner, the grate, which is of the portable kind, is carried to the drawing-room, where we spend the rest of the day. This evening I began to teach [...] also the Elements of Euclid, William is going on with it with Richard.

Yesterday, Maria and I were left at home together. In the morning, an American had brought to the door a live racoon, tied by a string, which amused us greatly. So in the afternoon Maria requested me to read to her the account of this animal in Bewick, I did so, and finding she was able to bear reading aloud, I read to her something else. I chose the singular narrative of the Czar Iwan III. from Mavors collection of travels, which interested her very much. To day, she asked me to read to her again, which I gladly did. She added, “Now that I am able to bear reading, I should like to hear something that will instruct me.” Accordingly, I read to her the account of the Icelanders in the Penny Magazine. We conversed as we went along, and I found her very anxious to understand everything thoroughly, and to acquire as much knowledge as possible. In my opinion she has good natural abilities, but from the great disadvantages under which she has always laboured, she has an unformed an uncultivated mind. Yet still she is not so much behind her sisters as might be expected.

†I now always must spend my Sundays at home by myself. I think it is no disadvantage to have so much quiet time at my own disposal, which I cannot on other days, as it is too cold to sit in my own room, and there is but one fire at a time in the house. My favourite book, both on Sundays and on other days, is Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying, which Mamma gave me when we were in London as a present beforehand for my next birthday. I began the Holy Dy- [24] †ing first, and this evening finished it, and began the Holy living. I cannot express the admiration I feel for Taylor as an author. His wonderful imagination, his flow of language, his depth of thought, his constant originality of idea and expression, render him, in my opinion, the first of all English writers with which I am acquainted, and I cannot imagine that there are many which excel him. These merits alone render his Holy Dying a splendid work, but he has still the greater ones of the truest piety, of perfect sincerity and earnestness in all that he says, and of the power of searching into every corner and recess of the human heart. I know of no writer who strikes and persuades as Taylor does; I should perhaps not say persuades, but overpowers and convicts. To read his works without applying his words practically to one’s self, I think must be impossible.

I always read Taylor with a pencil in my hand, to mark the most striking and useful passages. This practice has two advantages, one, that it impresses more strongly on my mind these passages; the other, that in looking over the book again, I know what parts particularly to study and remember.

My Uncle read to us this evening a letter of Venn’s on the means of acquiring a Christian life. It is a very excellent and beautiful letter, and contains much subject of thought.

A well-spent Sunday evening I always enjoy more than any other, and like most to prolong. I dislike to end any evening by laughing and joking up to the last moment; the mind should be always in a serious and thoughtful frame at the close of day, otherwise one’s evening devotions must be very unprofitable.

Another of my daily books of this kind is Bishop Wilson’s Sacra Privata, which I like exceedingly, and read with a pencil as I do Taylor.

I sketched the Cathedral and a part of Exeter from the dining-room window. It is a beautiful view, but there is generally a slight haziness over it which prevents me from representing it quite clearly.

This was a still more intensely cold day. A thick white frost covered almost every thing, and there was even ice on the windows. I did not go out, of course; indeed this is the ninth day that I have been confined to the house. By way of exercise, I generally walk up and down the room for half-an-hour, and cold work it is. I had this morning a regular batch of coughing, not very bad, but still; enough to remind me of my old cough. I am however certainly stronger than when I came, I rarely lie down in the daytime, and take [25] seldom more than seven and a half hours of sleep, for I go to bed very late, much too late indeed, am asleep at near twelve, wake now and then in the night, and am up at seven or a little after in the morning. To be able to do this shows a great increase in strength.

The sunset was truly magnificent; for more than half an hour the western sky glowed with purple, gold, and fiery crimson, which increased in splendour every minute. Nothing could equal the beauty of the expiring orb as he sunk, a globe of fire, behind the light blue hills; then a grey mist gradually dimmed the city, and the towers of the cathedral rising indistinctly from the midst looked as if peeping up from a distant sea.

My Uncle and William in coming here in the evening saw a shooting star. This is another beautiful phenomenon of nature.

So ends October, a very unpleasant October. There have been eighteen days more or less rainy, and only eight fine without any rain, and of these some were fine only part of the day, and others were extremely cold. How different from the October of 1834! I have seen occasional swallows up to a very late period, I am pretty sure I saw one on Saturday last, and I think I saw one on Sunday.

This sounds like the approach of winter, and looks like it too, for it was a foggy morning and continued so more or less all day. But it was much warmer, and a pleasant day out of doors, I am told, for I did not go out.

Maria left us at half-past seven this morning. Richard accompanied her to Teignmouth, where he is to sleep, and the next to day he will go to Torquay by the same coach, the Butterfly. There he will stay a few hours with my Aunt and Uncle Paul, and then return to Exeter by the Butterfly in the evening. He is extremely happy at the thoughts of this little excursion.

I read to Aunt Bell Cowper’s poem of “Expostulation.” I believe this is not generally one of his most admired, but it is a great favourite of mine, and I like it almost the best. It is poetic throughout, seldom flags, and has many very noble passages.

Richard has not returned, so I think it very probable that Aunt Paul has kept him to spend the night at Torquay, or perhaps he could not take a place from Teignmouth in the Butterfly.

In the evening Aunt Bell began reading to us Cooper’s novel called “The Water Witch.” As far as we came this time, it seemed dull enough, but we have as yet [26] only read the two introductory chapters, so that the rest of it may be interesting enough.

Richard returned in the evening from Torquay. Having missed the coach he slept two nights at Teignmouth. He enjoyed his little trip very much, and saw as much as he could in that short time, but he actually had no one at Torquay to tell him what to do, what to see, where to walk, or even that there was anything at all to see. Neither my Aunt nor Uncle Paul, strange to say, seemed to know or care anything about the matter, or to be aware that Torquay was at all a pretty place. So Richard had to find out walks for himself, and see what he could without directions.

Aunt Bell had a letter from Julia, who says that they have had extremely cold weather at Hamslaide, that on Friday it hailed and the snow laid on the hills, that on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, they had very hard frosts, and that on Monday as she walked in the woods before breakfast she saw icicles a quarter of a yard long. Here, at the Institution, the thermometer on Monday was at 24, lower than it has ever been known in October since 1817, the year when they began to register the thermometer. To day it is in this house at 52°.

I began this morning to hear Anna and Phoebe read Malkin’s Greece aloud to me. This is no bad thing for me too, though so often have I read it or heard it, that I know the early part of the book almost by heart.

I love Anna dearly, above every other being in the world, next to my own family and Eliz. She is a most sweet girl, as amiable, gentle, and unaffected, as it is possible to be, very humble, and perfectly conscientious and well principled. The only thing I regret about her is her excess of humility, for she has such a low opinion of her mental powers that it quite pains one to see it, and depresses her exceedingly. I do all I can to encourage her and raise her in her own esteem, a thing which very few people require. She is most anxious to improve herself, and inform and cultivate her mind.

Every night, after Richard an my cousins are gone off to bed, Aunt Bell and I always have a nice long talk over the drawing-room fire, which I enjoy very much. We converse on all kinds of subjects, often of literature and literary persons. Aunt Bell says she has when a child seen Hayley the poet or rather poetaster, for her aunts Lady Mayo and Mrs. Smith used to call on him when he lived at Felpham. She says that she much disliked his appearance, there was nothing striking about him, but he was very affected and vain. He was a man of furious and ungoverned temper, notwithstanding the title of his principle production. When Aunt Bell saw him he was growing old; he was erect, and [27] rather below the middle stature, of fair complexion. THe had inscribed over the fire-place in his room some lines from the Triumphs of Temper, and he showed them some of poetry. He wrote some little complementary verses on Susan Praed, now Lady Young. His house was not particularly pretty, but the garden was laid out in good taste. There were walking about in it two poor unhappy gulls, who having been pinioned, had only the bleeding stumps of their wings left them, which shocked Aunt Bell exceedingly.

Aunt Bell remembers the first appearance of Hannah More’s Coelebs. She says, what is very true, though I never thought of it before, that there is this great defect in that work; although Lucilla is set up as such as a model to all young ladies, yet she is never made to suffer a single trial, nor to exhibit a single virtue which requires any sacrifice, self-denial, or fortitude. All is sunshine around her, she has every thing she could wish, youth, health, beauty, friends, riches, lovers in plenty, one titled one, and one who is just what she likes. So that there is nothing at all in her example, she is an amiable, charitable girl, but no more.

Aunt Bell has begun to read aloud in the morning after breakfast when we are all assembled in the dining-room, Chalmer’s Evidences, which I think a very admirable and interesting work, written, like his sermons, in his own peculiar style.

A letter from mamma, who promises to send us a whole packet of letters under a frank next week. She has had a letter from Eliz. Who gives a very interesting little account of Gertrude. Louisa writes a few lines too, and tells me that the snow has been on the ground for two or three days. She says also that “Mackie has discovered a pair of large owls that take their pleasure in sitting alone in the laurel and holly hedge.”

I greatly like the time for thought and self-examination given me by the solitary Sundays I now pass. I am by myself from half-past ten to a quarter past one in the morning, and from half-past two to about five in the afternoon. Then during the evening my Uncle reads to us, and converses excellently on sacred subjects. This evening he read to us again that letter of Venn’s, and also another by the same person on the subject of translations of Scripture. The remarks which my Uncle made afterwards were very admirable, I wish I could put them all down, but I am obliged to limit myself in writing, on account of my chest.

I had the now unexpected pleasure of receiving a letter from Miss Kenyon. It was very long, being crossed all over, and was a very nice letter indeed, containing much that is thoughtful and serious. One of her seven sisters is just married to a Mr. Henry Knapp, curate of the parish. She sends a translation of the French verses [28] “Sur la vanité du monde,” but in an imperfect state, and with very bad rhymes; she acknowledges herself no versifier. She says that she has been studying Lyell’s geology with a great deal of interest.

I went out of doors for half-an-hour, confining myself to the back-garden; the first time for more than a fortnight. I came in with a little rheumatism.

†I was walking up and down the drawing-room which I usually do for exercise when the others are gone out, repeating my favourite poem, Sir Eustace Grey, when I heard, to my great surprise, the little squeak of the golden-crested wren. I instantly walked to the window, and looked out into the little front-garden, where I beheld a pair of these beautiful little birds flitting about in the arbutus. While I was looking on, a black cat came stealing up slily, and put the golden wrens to flight.

Mr. Edward Foley called. He is the brother of Mr. Foley of Tetworth, who intrusted with a parcel and a letter to take to him to Exeter, where he lives. When we came, he was in Wiltshire, whence he did not return till Mamma was gone. He staid and took an early dinner. He is a very grave and melancholy-looking young man, as he was last year when we saw him at Tetworth, where he visited the Clutterbucks.

I played at battledore and shuttlecock with Anna, and found it an excellent game for warming me. I shall play it every day when I cannot go out. Long confinement to the house has given me chilblains.

I received from mamma the promised letter in a frank. It contained one from Arabella also, and one from Miss Catherine Renouard to Mamma. They contain nothing very important. They have had a good deal of snow at Woodbury; and pinching cold weather, which we have not here. Arabella’s letter is very amusing, and gives me a very nice account of her studies and occupations. I am glad to find that Lord Ipswich seems to be as pleasant a pupil as any, indeed more so, at least in his manners, which are very gentlemanly and unassuming.

†One of my amusements in the evening is to draw in pencil caricatures of all the party here, that is, little sketches of any event that has amused us, or of any standing joke against one of them, with little bits of dialogue written underneath. Of these I have now quite a collection, sixteen or seventeen in number, I have always been fond of drawing figures, but I have seldom before done anything of this kind.

I went out of doors again, and completely fatigued myself. I walked out for half an hour in the morning in the back-garden; after dinner I walked with Anna and Phoebe as far as a little way up the New Road below Northernhay. Here it was rather foggy, and as my cousins had some calls to make thereabouts, I thought [29] it best to turn back by myself. At Upper Summerland Place I met Grandmamma and Aunt Bell coming into Exeter, and as it was not foggy in the town, I turned back with them again, and we went to two or three shops. We first stepped into Coswell’s, carver and gilder, where we saw a very splendid engraving from a picture of Lady Rolle. I forgot the artist’s name. It is one of the finest engravings I have seen. It represents her ladyship in her court dress entering Westminster Abbey, the folds of her drapery are admirably executed. We then went into the Cathedral-yard, and stopped a few minutes before Gendall’s print-shop, looking at the engravings in the windows, some of which were very good. I never can pass a print-shop, it is the most attractive of all shops. At Thom’s in High Street I bought a pair of thick warm soles to put in my shoes, they are great preservatives against cold.

In consequence of my walk I was so tired as to be obliged to lie down half the evening, which I have been accustomed to do for two or three weeks. I never pass a day without a few short fits of short breathing, but without pain, and my cough is less than it was, indeed almost gone.

After tea I happened to take up Oliphant’s collection of Sacred Poetry, which I am very fond of; I was sitting by my Uncle, and we fell into a conversation about the hymns it contains. I repeated one or two, and my Uncle read some of them aloud. He likes Cowper as much as I do, and praised him highly. He told me that Bishop Ken always made a point of having but one sleep, at whatever time he woke he always rose, even if it was only two o’clock, by which means he quite wore himself out. I forgot what led to the subject, but my Uncle after this talked about Hooker and Walton’s lives, and finding I was unacquainted with them, he read me the conclusion of Walton’s Life of Hooker, which is very beautiful, and written in a very easy, elegant, old-English style. I looked at the book afterwards, and shall certainly read it. Hooker was born in Heavitree, in 1553, and died in 1600. Izaak Walton, his biographer, the author of the Angler, was born in 1593, and died in 1683. He married a sister of Bishop Ken.

I received a letter from Julia at Hamslaide; I had written to her the week before last on a page of Anna’s letter. She seems to think of nothing less than returning to either Exeter or Teignmouth, and appears to be very happy where she is. She cannot walk much, for it has rained incessantly, and every lane is a stream, but she has taken several rides, through the most beautiful scenery, and has begun a sketch from her bed-room window. Hamslaide is beautifully situated, on the slope of one of the hills enclosing a narrow valley, along the bottom of which runs the Ex. The hills are clothed thickly with wood, and the whole country is very wild and desolate. Opposite Hamslaide is another place, by name Stuckeridge.

[30]

In the evening my Uncle took up Shakespeare, and read to us some humorous passages in which Falstaff was concerned, which made us laugh much. He then resolved to read Lear to us, and read several scenes, till it was time to break up. In these there is a good deal of wit, and a good deal of pathos. I was before quite unacquainted with the play, and had always purposely avoided any extracts or quotations from it, for fear of spoiling it for myself hereafter.

I am still very much confined to the house, the fogs are so frequent. I fancy Devonshire is a much more foggy county than Bedfordshire, though we have sometimes very much heavier fogs at Woodbury than I have yet seen at Exeter.

I am of course exceedingly limited in my opportunities of observing the natural history of birds. The robin sings most days; on Saturday and Friday I heard the thrush. I sometimes see the ox-eye and coal-tit, and blue-tit.

The more I see of Anna and Phoebe the more I love them. They are most amiable, affectionate girls, extremely attached to one another, and very seriously disposed. Yet they are in many respected unfortunately circumstanced and on many important subjects have been taught so many different opinions, and have heard such different language, from their very nearest relations, that they hardly know what to think on these matters, or what is the real truth. They have been very ill-instructed and have never been taught to exercise their own judgement, to think for themselves, or to strengthen and improve their minds in any way whatever; they are incapable of reasoning, and all their opinions and sentiments shift and vacillate in an extraordinary degree. This is peculiarly the case with Anna; she is very easily led, and having a most contemptible opinion of her own mental powers; she depends entirely on the judgement of others, especially her mother and Julia, who being also quite incapable of thinking sensibly or of reasoning, are the worst persons in the world to govern a gentle diffident, tractable girl like Anna. All this has a most unhappy effect on the poor girl; she confesses that she has been made miserable by not knowing what to think or what to do amongst all these jarring opinions and opposite reasonings, and by being worried by one party whenever she gives in to the advice of the other. We argued one of the subjects this evening till Anna burst into tears and cried bitterly, which pained and distressed me all the rest of the day and haunted me even in my sleep. I do think I have never seen a girl so much to be loved and so much to be pitied; there is something so inoffensive, modest and gentle in her countenance, manners, and disposition, that I think every body who sees must like her. She is a very pretty girl, has long, dark, glossy ringlets, a well-shaped forehead and nose, and beautiful expressive eyes, the pupils of which are so dilated that they look like a raven-black. She is now nearly eighteen years old.

[31]

My Uncle this evening finished Lear, with which I am mightily pleased. It is the seventh of Shakespeare’s plays which I have heard, I cannot say I prefer it to any of the six others except the “As you like it.” The finest scenes, I think, are where Goneril and Regan each turn off their father, and where Lear recognizes Cordelia, which are deeply interesting.

Under Anna’s tuition, I began this morning to learn Italian, from the grammar of Biagoli. I expect to find it is not very difficult after Latin; I suppose the pronunciation will be the hardest part.

Anna is a most diligent and industrious girl; she is working hard at Euclid and the Grecian history, and takes the greatest pains to understand them thoroughly. Phoebe is the quickest, and soonest catches the meaning of a proposition, but Anna studies it more, and gets it more perfect. In the same way Anna remembers more correctly than Phoe the last lesson in reading. I read to them this evening part of the paper Papa wrote for us last winter to explain the National Debt.

†We talked today about Mrs. Siddons. Aunt Bell has met her at Birsted House, the place of Lord Arran, where she has dined when staying at Birsted Lodge with her aunts Lady Mayo and Mrs. Smith. Lord Arran, an effiminate, profligate, ugly old man, with a withered leg, aspired to be a patron of the arts and sciences, and his houses was always thronged by professors and amateurs of all. One of these, whom my Aunt recollects, was a Mr. Lodge, a musical performer; another was a Miss Wilkinson, a girl of sixteen or seventeen, who sung. Mrs. Siddons too was here; now she was an exceedingly proud woman, and was of course to be considered the queen of the party; but as there was not a woman in the house who did not by right rank above her, much manoevring was employed to raise her above them. When Aunt Bell dined there, she was curious to see how this object would be effected. A little before the company was summoned to dinner, Mrs. Siddons vanished; and while they entered the dining-room at one door, behold, she was seen entering like a queen by herself at the other. She sometimes read Shakespeare to the party, on which occasions Lord Arran always took care to have a scene ready, and was himself invariably prepared with tears and pocket-handkerchief. Lord Arran was extremely unkind to his wife, who when she died, declared that she was happy to depart from life, for she had always been miserable in it; yet she had no hope of a better world. She was a proud woman, but very gentle; she had a peculiarly dry way of saying witty and pointed things, which set all the company laughing, without moving a muscle of her own countenance. Lord Arran had no children of his own; he had a nephew, of whom he took no notice, and he thought fit [32] †to bring up the children of his butler Pierson, to introduce them into the drawing-room, and admit them among his company. One of these was a girl named Mary Anne; of the others, one, who was lame, and not presentable, he caused to be brought up as a chemist; and the two others, Arthur and John, he educated for the church, and made his chaplains. Aunt Bell has seen them at his house, they were ordinary looking youths, with not much of the look of gentlemen. John was impudent, liked his situation well enough, and, having something of a voice, would entertain the company with singing. But Arthur, who turned out a very excellent young man, felt his situation to be exceedingly painful, and lived a miserable life, by turns in the drawing-room and in the house-keeper’s room, and well aware that he was treated with contempt by the company in the former; and turned into ridicule behind his back. He happened to be seated by Aunt Bell, who had previously made up her mind to take no notice of him, but seeing how unhappy he looked, she turned and spoke to him, upon which he gave a start of surprise, and afterwards burst into tears. At first, their father, the butler, used to wait on his own sons, but this being thought rather preposterous, his office was changed to avoid it. Lord Arran once gave mortal offence to the Duchess of Gloucester, by introducing these young Piersons when she dined at his house, and endeavouring to place on of them by her, which she took good care to avoid. A living, which had been promised to Papa or my Uncle, was bestowed on one of them.

I took a walk on the Heavitree road with Anna and Phoebe, which I enjoyed much, as I always do a walk with them, especially as we generally converse, not on frivolous, but on grave and sensible subjects. I must say, this has been seldom the case when I have talked with Julia, who commonly inundated me with a flood of gossip, mingled with disquisitions on painting, poetry, and fine scenery, but never with serious topics. For all this, there is much to like and love in Julia, much more in Phoebe, and most of all in Anna. I cannot express how I love Anna, I never loved any one as I love her, and I never shall again. I think, besides her, I have never had but two intimate friends, from whom I have been separated, the one, seven years, the other four years, viz. Louisa Hall, and dear Eliz. Louisa is about five years older than I am, a most sweet and interesting girl, whom I should love to have always close to me. Eliz, alas! who has all the attractions, all the excellencies, with which I could choose to invest a friend, I shall, in all probability, not behold again for eight long years, perhaps no more in this life. After these, I have felt the most affection for Miss Kenyon and Caroline Astell. Miss Kenyon I feel sure I should highly value as a friend, if I knew her more, but in fact I have only seen her four times, and though we struck up an immediate acquaintance, and now correspond, yet our personal acquaintance has been but of

[33]

I begin the practice of writing from memory an abstract of the portion of Chalmer’s evidences which my Aunt has read to us the preceding morning. We have gone through the book once, and have begun a second time. I find the practice easy enough.

I received a packet of letters from Woodbury, under a frank of Lord Euston’s. There was a long one from Mamma’s, with a lock of her hair and papa’s, which I had requested, to put in a ring given me by Aunt Bell. About the poor Custs Mamma says,

“I have seen poor Lady A.M. and Lucy Cust to day for the first time. She feels poor A.M.’s death deeply, though she is generally calm in her manner. I have told Lucy about your [dried] flowers, which I will give her the first opportunity. She is better, but still delicate.”

[34]

It seems to me, that in one place he takes for granted the point in debate, for he proves the resurrection of Christ from the New Testament itself, and brings forward the honesty and holy lives of the apostles, which we know from their own writings. This is a sort of mistake which even Chalmer falls into, when he adduces the excellence of our Saviour’s character as an argument for the truth of his religion.

A dense frost and frost-fog, concealing all Exeter from view. When I rose at a quarter before seven, my windows were covered with ice, and the water in a cistern was frozen over. At eight o’clock the thermometer in the hall was at 45. I was that sort of morning which always puts me in mind of Scott’s lines.

“It was the dawn of an autumn day,

The sun was struggling with frost-fog grey,

That like a silvery crape was spread

Round Skiddaw’s dim and distant head.”

In the evening the lawn in the ring, covered with hoar-frost, looked like a sheet of water.

[35]

This evening my Uncle finished reading to us Shakespeare’s play of King Henry V. It is not one of his finer plays, and has no great interest in the plot, or beauty in the characters, but there are some very fine passages. My Uncle says there is a great deal of nonsense in Shakespeare, and the more he reads of him the less he thinks of him. He then read to us some of the best scenes of Julius Caesar, which I know already, and think a most noble play.

†I find myself decidedly stooping too much, both in writing and in drawing; it gives me a pain in that part of my chest which is affected. I am unluckily awfully overpowered with letters which I must write. I have in hand one to Eliz; to day I began two to Mamma and to Julia, and I must very soon write to Miss Kenyon and Mrs. William Rooper.

am infinitely stronger than I used to be.

I walked to Exeter with Anna and Phoebe by the Lower Heavitree road and Magdalen hill. In South Street I saw a shop window full of stuffed birds, amongst which I noticed a Cornish Chough, a jay, a green woodpecker, a moor-hen, a magpie, and an owl on whose eyes were placed a little pair of spectacles. There was also an ornithoryncus.

Aunt Bell related to us a good deal of gossip about the present King, whom she knew very well as Duke of Clarence, he being a constant visitor at her aunts Mrs. Smith and Lady Mayo, who were exceedingly kind to his daughters the Lady Fitzclarences. The Duke of Clarence was a good-natured affable, but apparently a foolish talker. He was one Sunday evening talking very deistically; upon which Aunt Bell quoted to him, as proof of the divinity of Christ, the first verse of St. John’s gospel.

“Ah! show it me! Show it me!”

cried the Prince. Aunt Bell showed him the passage.

“Well! but how do we know,”

he asked,

“that the Word means Jesus Christ?”

Aunt Bell professed herself not capable of arguing the question, and referred him to the works written on the subject. He was very fond of music; Aunt Bell used often to slip away from the pianoforte while he was talking gossip with Mrs. Smith, and while she was playing he would suddenly call out

“That’s very pretty, play that again, Miss Shore,”

and then go on talking as before. He was constantly weeping and talking about the ill-success of his love-suit to Miss Wickham; then there would come a letter from Adelaide, and then nothing would be heard but praises of Adelaide, and her charming letters. Some of these he read to my Aunts; the Princess (whom he had not yet seen), described herself to him, and bid him prepare to see a very plain woman. The Duke of Clarence showed Aunt Bell his place, Bushy, it was a very pretty place. He one day accompanied her in Mrs. Smith’s carriage to Cumberland Street. The Lady Fitzclarences were very impudent, noisy, and overbearing. Aunt Bell did not like them at all. They pretended great friendship for her, and used to come flying to receive her, [36] throwing their arms round her neck. Some of them were handsome, but they were large and fat women. They were extremely violent and passionate, and used to come in a most excited state to Mrs. Smith, complaining when they had not been treated with the respect they conceived due to themselves. After a while, they quarrelled with their bread and butter, for they were so insolent to Mrs. Smith, that she in great indignation broke with them, and they have never been friends since. George IV, their uncle, could not bear them, and said he always knew when there was a Fitzclarence in the party, by the noise they made. Queen Adelaide, though she kept them at a proper distance, was very kind to them, but they did not behave at all well to her.

I finished my second letter to Julia, and drew in it copies of three of my caricatures for her amusement.

This evening we finished the Waterwitch. It is on the whole a trumpery performance, full of absurdities, affectations, and American inelegance of manners; the story is bad, and the characters mostly uninteresting. The Skimmer of the seas is the only one who is cleverly drawn, he is a noble fellow, but there should have been more about him. Ludlow is stupid enough, Alida a flirt. Seadrift is pretty well, but one guesses the truth from the first. The Alderman, by the way, is very well drawn, but he is tiresome and disgusting. The Patroon is a mere lifeless mummy. The latter part of the novel, which relates the chase, the sea-fight, the ship on fire, and the danger of the survivors, is exceedingly spirited and interesting, better almost than anything I have read of Cooper’s. If the rest of the tale had been worthy of it, it would have been a splendid piece of fiction.

Having ended the Waterwitch, we began Ivanhoe; how infinitely is it superior to the other! We read the first four chapters only, so that we have not yet got into the great interest of the story.

Not being able to go out much, I play a good deal at Battledore and shuttlecock with Anna and Phoebe. It is an excellent exercise and warms us as much with the fun and laughter as with the game itself. We are such bad hands at it that Phoebe and I have only as yet kept it up together 13 times. This is greatly owing to the smallness of the rooms and the lowness of the cielings, which knock down our shuttlecocks in the middle of a good flight.

My Uncle this evening finished reading Macbeth to us. I have a higher opinion of this play now than ever. Macbeth and his lady are the only characters at all drawn and they are drawn with exquisite skill. It is observable that whereas the progress in the mind of Macbeth is from uprightness to ambition, murder, the terrors of a guilty conscience, and finally to complete obduracy; that in the mind [37] of his wife is from fiend-like hardness of heart and indifference to murder, to the pangs of a deep-rooted remorse; and while Macbeth dies utterly hardened, she dies with something of a troubled conscience. The sullen and desperate courage of Macbeth at the last is admirably expressed. One of the most beautiful scenes in the play, certainly the most pathetic, is that where Macduff learns the massacre of his family.

After reading, my Uncle conversed a good deal on the subject of novels, especially Sir Walter Scott’s, and expressed his opinion very strongly on their being a most undesirable and pernicious kind of reading. He considers Scott as one of the most noxious writers of this class, because his novels are so irresistibly captivating that the mischief they do is greater; the same with his poems. He thinks one of the worst parts of them is the frequent recurrence of the name of God, and the

too long to write down.

†My Uncle does not know that we are reading “Ivanhoe,” for we have said nothing about it to him; and after he had gone away this evening, Anna, Phoe, and I, fell into conversation about it, and debated the propriety of giving it up. We were all very well inclined to do it, especially Anna, but we did not quite decide to do so. I confess, I shall find it mortifying, and I cannot agree entirely with my Uncle’s opinions, because he apparently would entirely abolish all works of imagination; now why has our Maker given us imaginations, if they are never to be indulged. Besides, I am sure Papa would not object, for he has occasionally read to us a novel himself, and I respect his opinion much more than my Uncle’s, or any one else.

This morning took place the consecration of St. James’, a new church erected in St. Sidwell’s parish. The Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Phillpott’s, preached. None of our party were present but Aunt Bell and Richard; the weather being so rainy that Anna and Phoe were afraid to go, and I of course could not. I understand that the ceremony was very impressive. After it took place the presenting to Mr. Tripp by his parishioners some plate collected by subscription, as a testimony of their regard.

Poor Anna having one of her bad headaches, could not go to church in the afternoon, and we were left at home together. We had a very serious conversation and Anna showed herself deeply impressed with a sense of religion, but evidently distrustful and suspicious of herself, and fearful of doing wrong, to a most painful [38] degree. After a short pause, she said to me with tears in her eyes,

“Emily, you have done me a great deal of good in the conversations we have had together, by leading me to think very differently from what I used to do; for which I am very thankful to you.”

Now at the moment she said this, I was in a melancholy mood, wishing I was more like her, and therefore heard this speech with great surprise. It gave me much pleasure, mixed with more pain. The words of St. Paul,

“lest, when I have preached to others, I should myself become a castaway.”

I Cor. IX. 27, came into my mind, and I could not refrain from tears. Anna said a good deal more that was most affectionate, and told me how much pleasure she had enjoyed the past year from her acquaintance with me.[...]this concerning my ac-

†After some more debate, we agreed to conclude Ivanhoe, but not to begin any new novel after that, and to read some book at once instructive and entertaining, perhaps Lord Teignmouth’s Scotland. So we read Ivanhoe again this evening, and finished Chap. X. which ends the tournament at Ashby. I think the description of this tournament is quite splendid, Scott seems in his element, and revels in the gorgeousness of the narrative. I of course foresaw from the first every thing about the Disinherited Knight, and the crowning of Rowena. The Knight of course is the Pilgrim, who of course is Ivanhoe. Prince John is very well drawn, so is Cedric, whom I like very much. There is unfortunately much profane conversation which it is impossible to read. I cannot bear Isaac, I rather think I shall like Rebecca.

A most awful hurricane, such as I do not remember ever to have known; it was more furious, though of much shorter duration, than that of Sept. 1, 1833. The morning was cloudy and windy; during the night the barometer had sunk nearly half an inch, and was at eight o’clock this morning as low as 28.3. At about half-past nine the storm suddenly came on; there was very little rain, but the wind was quite astounding. I was sitting in the breakfast room with Anna or Phoebe, I forget which, and I was scarcely able to attend to anything for the wind; one of the panes of the window had previously been slightly cracked, and I was thinking to myself, “the window will be blown in,” when just at that moment a part of the pane was dashed into the room, and the wind came in raging like a fury. Soon after, in came Aunt Bell, and saw and deplored the damage. Then came Richard from the drawing-room, where the wind threatened equal mischief; and it was a- [39] greed to close the shutters both inside and out, in order to secure the windows. This was done with some difficulty, and soon after Anna and I were left alone in the darkened breakfastroom, by the fire, listening not without awe and apprehension to the roaring and whistling of the tempest, and I was every instant expecting the whole sash to fall in. In a few minutes, a startling and tremendous crash was heard at the window. Anna screamed and caught hold of me with both her arms, we remained for a moment trembling from head to foot, and then, excessively terrified, we made our escape from the room as quickly as possible. Where to go, we could not tell, the whole house seemed going to rack and ruin. Through every part of it the wind howled, groaned, and whistled, with a horrible noise; every window on the west side of the house appeared as if it would be beaten in; the trapdoor of the roof burst open, the cielings of two rooms were split across. I was at first afraid to go into any room at all, then I crouched into a corner of Aunt Bell’s, where the storm sounded quite horrific. The room rocked backwards and forwards, the bed shook about, all the furniture was trembling. I cannot think how the windows escaped being shattered into pieces. Here Anna and Phoebe found me, and we went downstairs to their room, which being away from the storm was much quieter and safer. Here I remained, feeling very ill and much distressed by short breath. Meantime, in the drawing-room and breakfastroom, the violence of the wind was so great that, besides inner and outer shutters, Richard and two of the servants were obliged to stand for an hour and a quarter leaning with all their weight against the windows to prevent their being dashed in, and it was with the utmost difficulty that they succeeded. As it was, all the wood-work was loosened and very nearly split. The crash we heard in the breakfastroom was the shattering of the rest of the broken pane. At about eleven o’clock the barometer began to rise rapidly, and presently the storm was over.

In the afternoon Richard and William took a walk about the city to ascertain the extent of the mischief done, for we had heard reports of the total extermination of Northernhay, and of frightful damage in the streets. They came back reporting that in Northernhay nine trees had been uprooted, and five or six snapped in two. In other places trees have been destroyed, and much mischief has been done by unroofing, breaking down of chimnies, and falling off of tiles, in consequence of which the market was quite deserted. Mr. Scorseby’s house in the Lower Heavitree road was very nearly unroofed, the damage being worth 30 £. and a window of Miss Wyatt’s in east Southernhay was blown quite in. Soon after, Aunt Bell and Phoebe came in from their walk, saying that two children had been killed in Heavitree by the falling of a chimney, a third danger- [40] ously hurt, and the mother slightly so; and that in Exeter a child had been burnt to death from a similar accident. Aunt Bell heard a mason, rubbing his hands, say that ten thousand pounds would not cover the damage. There are reports that the cathedral is greatly injured, and that much mischief is done to the vessels at the wharfs. But these may not be true.

Thus ends November, one of the most unpleasant Novembers I recollect. Out of its thirty days, 22 have been more or less rainy, most of them exceedingly so. And I do not think one single day has passed without a fog, either all day or during some part of it. There have been scarce any frosts, the barometer has ranged between 28.3 and 29.59; the thermometer between 45 and 55°, in the house. I do not include Nov. 1, which I omitted to register at all. Seventeen days have been windy.

A very fine pleasant day, I was able to get out of the house, the first time since Wednesday week. I walked to Exeter with Anna and Phoebe by the Lower Heavitree road, then into Southernhay and the Cathedral yard, and home by High Street and Paris Street. We looked at the Cathedral as we went by, to observe what injuries it had received. We were sorry to see that three or four pinnacles conspicuously placed in the West front were either blown off or snapped in two. I did not see any other injury.

At Ellis’ in High Street, I called for my ring, which is finished. The hair is very nicely disposed, and within are engraved Papa’s and Mamma’s initials, T.S. and M.A.S. I shall value the ring exceedingly.

In the evening my Uncle gave Richard a ticket to go to this evening’s lecture at the Athenaeum, which was to night on Pneumatics, delivered by Mr. Janson. He went, and was much delighted with it, and highly interested by the experiments.

While he was gone, instead of continuing Ivanhoe, we had the “Taming of the Shrew.” Aunt Bell read the greater part, and I and Anna read each a little. We did not finish it, I suppose we shall have the rest the next Thursday’s lecture. It is a very amusing play, but there is not a character which does not disgust me, except perhaps Bianca, who is nothing at all. Petruchio I can’t bear, and I can’t think he took the best way to sweeten a sour temper. However, we have not yet finished the play.

After prayers, we three girls were assembled round the drawing-room fire, and fell into conversation about the rapid progress of time. It seemed incredible that I had been here just two months to-morrow, and Anna seven weeks, and Phoebe five. We then compared ages, [41] Anna is eighteen on March 10, I seventeen on December 25, and Phoebe sixteen on February 12. I am the shortest of all, and Anna, who is a very good height, is the tallest. We then talked about Papa’s coming, which is to be just before Christmas day, that is, in a little more than three weeks. How quickly those three weeks will seem to have flown, when the time is come! We resolved to keep in remembrance this evening of the first of December, 1836, that we might amuse ourselves by looking back on its anticipations when Papa shall have arrived. I shall therefore describe it. The hour was about half-past nine, the room was lighted by a lamp, the fire was burning brightly; Phoebe sat at the head of the sofa next the fire, with her feet on the fender, looking deadly pale and very ill, for, poor thing, she was stupefied with a headache; close to her, in front of the fire, on a crimson half-high stool or ottoman, sat Anna, combing her long dark hair over her face; and close to her, on her left hand, was I, seated on my favourite low footstool, brushing my hair in front; we were in our dressing-gowns of course, and a comical little group we must have been. Aunt Bell was up in her own room. So here we sat, talking and laughing, anticipating and looking back, and wondering at the rapidity with which weeks and months pass by.

I went to bed late to night much tired, but instead of getting soon to sleep, I lay awake till about half-past one o’clock. This was my own fault, partly so at least. For on going to bed I had got upon an amusing subject of thought, and remained speculating about it during the first hour. I then, finding that I had quite banished sleep, and was likely to remain awake some time longer, thought I might well continue the same subject of speculation; and so I occupied myself during the second-hour. During the third, finding myself rather tired of it, and still restless and wakeful, I amused myself with humming tunes and repeating poetry aloud. And during the remaining time, I was going to sleep. Thus I secured to myself five hours and a quarter of sleep. I often lie awake for some time, when I get on an interesting train of thought, and indeed I have commonly the power of lying awake or going to sleep or not as I like.

The night was very boisterous, and though my room is away from the storm, it and my bed shook and rocked continually, and the wind howled with a dismal sound.

We had been speculating at dinner during the beginning of the week whence we should first receive a letter, from Woodbury, Teignmouth, or Hamslaide. Anna and Richard said from Teignmouth, the rest of us voted Woodbury, but afterwards changed our minds, and said Teignmouth, though I had a sort of idea that it might possibly be Hamslaide. Well, it hap- [42] pened, oddly enough, that letters came from all three places on exactly the same day, viz. this Saturday. First of all, the Teignmouth’s post brought a parcel full of letters for the two girls and Aunt Bell. Then, about an hour after, the Tiverton post brings me an amusing letter from Julia. Lastly, the London post at half-past two brings a letter from Woodbury divided among Richard, me, and Aunt Bell. Mamma tells us some of the news of the neighborhood; Mr. Legrice is going to be married, she does not know to whom; Miss Courtney is at Everton, so is Mrs. William Rooper; Mrs. Foley has her youngest sister with her, a very pleasing girl, Sir George Baker is coming to stay a day or two at Woodbury; Mr. Howard has not been at Cambridge this term; Mr. Simeon of Cambridge is dead. Papa intends to set out for Exeter on Monday fortnight, and we shall see him on Thursday following. Mamma thinks of going to Casterton with the three young ones during his absence. The weather has been warm at Woodbury, therm. in the hall up to 50 (we have it up to 55°); the wind on the 29th blew down one of the tall firs near to stone pine.

Julia’s letter is very amusing, and made me laugh much. She relates to me her riding adventures, and tells me a story for me to turn into a caricature. She also sends one of her own making, the subject being Mrs. George Trevelyan buying and Exmoor pony.

For several days I have been exceedingly fatigued and unfit to do anything. Every body tells me I exert my mind too much, and ought to allow myself a great deal more rest. I have it dinned into my ears from morning to night from my Aunt, brother, and cousins, that I am not giving myself a fair chance of recovery. To all which I cannot consent to agree, I do not work half so hard as I have been accustomed to do in health, and besides, it is very mortifying and vexatious to give up study, which I have been obliged to neglect so much during this year. I believe however that I do write too much, as stooping gives me a pain in my chest, and I think I am injured too by not being able to take sufficient exercise. And to day I dare say, being Sunday, I was too much occupied in thinking on one subject, so that in the evening I was thoroughly knocked up and seized with faintness. I believe I must a little alter my mode of spending my time.

I therefore cannot write down in my journal what I regret omitting, namely, my Uncle’s observations this evening when he read to us and explained, according to his present custom, one of the Lessons of the day. They were very well worth hearing, and I shall remember them, though I cannot write them down.

I took a walk with Anna to Exeter, the first time I have walked alone with her for fifteen months. I enjoyed the walk very much. We went to two shops, the Civet-cat and Hannaford’s. At the Civet Cat (Kendall’s) I bought a card of Peruvian Three-slit pens, a dozen and a stick for six-pence, they seem very good ones. It is a large and handsome shop, we walked down it, and I was rather tempted by an ever-pointed pencil-case and a bronze thermometer. At Hannaford’s we called for a little edition of Rokeby, bound in blue silk, which Phoebe had ordered, and sat down for a few minutes looking over two volumes of beautiful steel engravings, “Gems of Loveliness,” and “Flowers of Loveliness.” They represent different female figures. The execution is exquisite, but very few of the faces are either handsome or interesting, some are quite disagreeable, and the positions are many of them affected and unnatural. I seldom see countenances I much like in these publications.

†Notwithstanding that I am aware I write to much already, I have not been able to resist the temptation of beginning a comedy, denominated “Breaking of Wild Colts”, of which the scene and actors are in this house. The composing it is a great amusement to me.

I walked again to Exeter with Anna and Phoebe. We went to see the Cosmoramic views at Howes’ Bazaar, High Street, to which persons are admitted on making purchases below stairs, which Aunt Bell having done last week, procured for us a ticket of admission. We went up two or three flights of steps into a little gallery bending at right angles, and having the walls badly painted to represent those of a castle. Around, in the walls, are several peep-holes, through which we looked at the views, which are twelve in number, namely, Greenwich Hospital, St. Mark’s Place Venice, Castle among the Alps, Hall of Justice Alhambra, Sandy Bay Vale St. Helena, Pagoda of Rammiseeam, Fort of Junapore on the river Goompti, Rock of Scarborough, Grand Cairo, Obelisk of Axum, Mosque of Lucknow, and London. The merits of the paintings differ very much, many of them are out of perspective, and the figures are generally bad and too large in proportion. I think perhaps the one I prefer is St. Helena, which is a magnificent wild-mountain scene, very well done. The Obelisk of Axum is in the midst of beautiful country, near it stands a gigantic tree, and at al little distance is a small lake. The Pagoda is very good, elephants are represented before it. The Alhambra is excellent. The scene among the Alps is very beautiful, but very ill-done, the mountains are a glaring blue, and the water [44] looks as if it rose over our heads. The figures in St. Mark’s Place are very bad. The fort of Junapore is a beautiful scene. In the Rock of Scarborough, there is in the fore-ground a fishing-boat with a red sail, not amiss, but the two men within it are gigantic and clumsy. On the right is a steam-boat. Grand Cairo is excellent. The Mosque is a very splendid building, but out of perspective, the two great pinnacles are crooked. London I like exceedingly, I think it is more distinct and intelligible than that at the Colosseum. The river and bridges are very well done. The only building however which I recognize is the Tower. All the West End is in the distance, and cannot be distinguished.

I forgot to mention that among the letters of last Saturday, one was sent from Teignmouth which my Aunt Dennis had received from Julia, containing a clever acrostic on Julia’s name, written by Mrs. C. Trevelyan. It is as follows (Julia’s name at full length is Susanna Juliana).

“S usanna Juliana! My eyes! what a name!”

U s never can learn to pronounce it plain!

S ee like a peacock she waddles and struts,

A ll Oakford makes way as she walks thro’ the ruts.

N o one, she thinks, can compete with her air,

N o one in carriage with her can compare,

A h, how the little boys follow and stare!

 

J ust as she gets to the parsonage gate,

U p jumps Mrs. Gypsey,-ah, pity her state!

L arge dirt-paws her collar and handkerchief stain

I n rags and in tatters her petticoats train;

A las! Mr. Parkin will see me, oh dear,

N obody cares if I parish with fear,

A h my dear mother, I wish you were here!

 

D ear Miss Dennis, said Gypsey, I mean you no hurt

E very day have I wished you a roll in the dirt,

N ot to harm you, but just to rub off your proud air

N o offence, I presume, so I beg you won’t stare.

I n practice though rough, I’m a staunch friend at heart

S o I hope you will take my rough jokes in good part.

I received to day a letter from Mamma, with a few lines from Papa, and a postscript to Richard from Arabella. Mamma says they have not had at Woodbury the great storm of the 29th, the firtree, I suppose was blown down by the ordinary wind. Papa is coming on Friday fortnight. Arabella says that Miss Courtney tells them she saw us at St. Leonards. All seem to be going on quite well at Woodbury.

[45]

Aunt Bell showed me to day some lines written by Thomas Moore the poet, on George IV’s treatment of Sheridan. She does not remember how they came into her possession, they are in manuscript, and, she believes, have not been published; she has been told that they are so unjust that she ought to burn them. They were shown to George IV. who was much hurt at them. They were as follows:

“Yes, grief will have way, but the fast-falling tear

Shall be mingled with deep execrations of those

Who could bask in that spirit’s meridian career,

And leave it thus lonely and dark at its close;

 

Whose vanity flew round him only while fed

By the odour his fame in its summer-time gave,

Whose vanity now, with quick scent of the dead,

Re-appears, like a vampire, to feed at its grave.

 

Oh it sickens the heart to see honours so hollow,

And spirits so mean in the great and high-born,

To think what a long line of titles may follow

The relics of him who died friendless and lorn.

 

How proud they can press to the funeral array

Of him who the shunned in his sickness and sorrow

How bailiffs may seize his last blankets to day,

Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow!

 

And thou too, whose life, a sick epicure’s dream,

Incoherent and gross, even grosser had passed,

Were it not for the cordial and soul-giving beam

Which his friendship and wit on thy nothingness cast,

 

No, not for the wealth of the land which supplies thee

With millions to heap upon Foppery’s shrine,

No, not for the riches of all who despise thee,

(Though this would make Europe’s whole opulence, mine,)

 

Would I suffer what, e’en in the heart that thou hast,

All mean as it is, must have consciously burned,

When the pittance which shame had wrung from thee at last,

And which found all his wants at an end, was returned

 

Was this then his fate, future ages shall say,

(When some name shall live but in History’s curse,

When truth shall be heard, and those gods of a day,

Be forgotten as fools, or remembered as worse),

 

Was this then the fate of that high-gifted man,

The pride of the palace, the bower, and the hall,

[46]

The orator, dramatist, minstrel, who ran

Through each mode of the lyre, and was master of all,

 

Whose mind was an essence, compounded with art

From the finest and best of all other men’s powers,

Who ruled, like a wizard, the world of the heart,

And could call up its sunshine, or bring down its showers,

 

Whose eloquence, brightening whatever it tried,

Whether serious or mirthful, the gay or the grave,

Was as rapid, as deep, and as brilliant a tide,

As ever bore freedom aloft on its wave,

 

Whose humour, as gay as the fire-fly’s light,

Played round every object, and shone as it played,

Whose wit, in the combat as gentle and bright,

Ne’er carried a heart-stain away on its blade!

 

Yes, such was the Man, and so wretched his fate

And thus, sooner or later, shall all have to grieve,

Who waste their morn’s dew in the beams of the great,

And expect ’t will return to refresh them at eve!

 

In the woods of the north, there are insects that prey

On the brains of the elk, till his very last sigh,

Ah, Genius! thy Patrons, more cruel than they,

Just feed on they brains, and then leave thee to die!

Such are the lines, very clever and striking, exceedingly keen and stinging, and very malignant and ill-natured. The faults and vices of Sheridan are not even alluded to, and the fact in the seventh stanza is false. It is plain, says Aunt Bell, that Moore wrote them in the bitterness of his spirit, in the resentment of a disappointed man, of a baffled candidate for court favour.

Moore is decidedly a poet of high order. I have read nothing of Lalla Rookh except the Peri, and a passage from the Fire-Worshippers, but I have read many detached portions and lesser pieces, which are very beautiful. In Oliphant’s Sacred Poetry, are two little pieces which strike me greatly, beginning

“Thou art, O God, the life and light,”

and

“O thou who dry’st the mourner’s tear.”

The latter has one or two beautiful similes, and I like that of night and a

“dark beauteous bird”

in the former.

One would hardly imagine that the same man wrote these, and the ludicrous little poem entitled “Dr. Whig and Dr. Tory.” I can much more easily imagine him the author of the above lines on Sheridan.

Richard went again to the Athenaeum with my Uncle and William, and while he was away Aunt Bell finished reading to us the “Taming of the Shrew.” The latter part, I think, is much the best, it is very clever and amusing. The scene between the true and false Vincentio is capital. I think it is an improbable plot, and there is hardly a character distinctly drawn, and it is rather puzzling to keep the different disguises and personations clearly in one’s head. It is altogether very far from being a first-rate play, but it is a witty and entertaining one.

My Uncle now makes it his usual practice to read to us after tea a play of Shakespeare. He began this evening the First Part of Henry IV.

My Uncle finished the First Part of Henry IV, and began the Second. I don’t see any first-rate merit in either of them. The plot of the First Part is stupid enough, and few of the characters are drawn with any discrimination, except Falstaff, Hotspur, and the Prince of Wales. Falstaff is capitally drawn, but his vulgarity, impudence, and dishonesty, render him very disgusting. The scenes between him and the Prince of Wales are witty and clever, indeed I think they are the best parts of the play, for there are but few of the more serious parts which are very fine. Hotspur, as far as we see of him, is well enough. The other characters are in general mere automatons. I should say, from all I know of † Shakespeare, that is great merit lay, not in sketching individual characters, but in painting human nature in general, in displaying the other passions of the mind, and tracing its progress from one state to another. This I conceive to be the merit shown in the drawing of Macbeth. I do not know that there is much individuality of character in that tyrant, or that he acts differently from what most men in his circumstances would do; but nothing can excel the talent displayed in exhibiting the effect of those circumstances on the mind of man, and the natural transition from one kind of wickedness to another. And yet there is a certain sort of individuality in this play, after all, at least so far as to show the different effects of ambition and murder on two different species of minds, on the weak and sensitive (comparatively so, I mean) of Macbeth, and on the strong, hard, and vigorous one, of his wife. But as I have spoken on this subject before, I shall not engage upon it here.

A circumstance took place to day, which gave us all a great deal of pain. Richard, who now is fifteen years and a half old, has never been confirmed, but is extremely anxious to receive the Communion, for which he is as well prepared as any boy need be. Aunt Bell mentioned this two months ago to my Uncle, who she concluded would speak of it to Mr. Tripp: but up to to day Richard had not spoken of it again, and Aunt Bell thought he had given up the idea for the present. To day however he asked her whether he might not partake of the Lord’s Supper at St. Sidwell’s. She did not like to refuse him, and gave her consent, supposing that Mr. Tripp had been informed of his intention. But this had not been done, and consequently when Richard approached the communion-table, Mr. Tripp, surprised to see such a mere boy present himself informed him that he could not administer the communion to him. Richard retired, much hurt and quite overcome. We were much grieved for it, but we have no doubt that Mr. Tripp has done right, not knowing how far Richard was prepared.

Richard received a very kind and gentlemanly letter from Mr. Tripp, explaining to him in the most friendly manner his reasons for the course he pursued yesterday, and showing him that he could not, according to the Rubrick, administer to him the Communion, unless in very peculiar circumstances, notified by the words

“ready and desirous to be confirmed,”

I do not feel convinced by his reasoning, but I think he was quite right according to his own principles. Aunt Bell met Mr. Tripp afterwards in Exeter, and spoke to him on the subject.

A note came from Aunt Paul. Aunt Bell had written to ask her to come to her house when she arrived in Exeter; it now seems that she has changed her intention of coming here at all. But Mr. Paul, she said, would be in Exeter to day, and, if we dined at five, would join us. We accordingly put off dinner till that hour, and Mr. Paul arrived. I had not seen him for eleven years, and did not in the least remember him. He is rather tall, has very light hair and complexion, and red whiskers; his countenance is amiable, his manners pleasing and unaffected. He is a man of ability and information, he has travelled a great deal, and we found him a very agreeable addition to our evening party. He has lately been making a tour with a pupil through the north of Europe, visiting Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. The tour occupied two months, in which they travelled 4460 miles: one month was spent in [49] Russia. Mr. Paul says that Russia is a very ugly country, perfectly flat, and thinly wooded, principally with fir. About Moscow it is rather pretty. Moscow is a wonderful city, quite, he says, like an Asiatic town. It is about 40 versts, or 30 English miles, in circumference, which is about the size of London, but it is a very straggling place, and if condensed, would not cover, perhaps, more than Westminster alone. The Kremlin he admired exceedingly, the view from it is magnificent. He measured the King of Bells, but had great difficulty in doing so, on account of the jealousy of the guide. The same with the great cannon twenty feet long; he was obliged to measure it only when the guide’s back was turned. He and his pupil were the first Englishmen who had seen the King of Bells since it was raised from the ground. He says that at Petersburg the sun sets at eleven, and rises at one, so that there are but two hours of night, and that it has a most singular appearance to see the streets deserted and shops shut up in what seems broad daylight; one cannot realize to oneself that it is in fact night. He was at Petersburg in July and August. He was at a fete at the palace, where he saw the Emperor Nicholas, whom he describes as one of the handsomest men he ever saw. The Russians in general have very flat Calmuck features. He says they are very anxious for our good opinion, and to know exactly in what estimation they are held in England; he often had to answer their questions on this subject. The English are very highly thought of throughout the North of Europe, especially in Sweden, as I have heard before from Lord Teignmouth. Sweden Mr. Paul likes exceedingly, he was only there a week, but he found the country and climate very pleasant. The Fins too he was much interested in.

My Aunt and Uncle Paul are just going to change their abode, and going to Mary Church, a village two miles from Torquay. Whether this is a place which would suit my state of health as well as Torquay is a question, and my going there is certainly doubtful. Aunt Paul said in her note that she should be glad to see us next Monday, but I shall not think of going before Papa comes to Exeter, an event to which I am looking forward most anxiously.

Aunt Bell had asked Mr. Tripp to join us in the evening, but he was not able to do so. Our party, though entirely a family party, consisted of nine, viz. Grandmamma, Aunt Bell, Uncle William, Uncle Paul, my cousin William, my cousins Anna and Phoebe, Richard, and myself.

My Uncle finished the second part of Henry IV. It is beyond doubt the finest play of the two, some of the scenes are very beautiful, particularly those in which Prince Henry carries away the King’s crown. Altogether I like the play very much, though there are of course great absurdities and nonsense when Falstaff enters on the stage. It is highly improbable that Sir John Colville, an old soldier, should yield without a struggle to such a cowardly bully as Falstaff. I detest Falstaff and I am very glad that he is summarily dismissed at last.

Mr. Edward Foley called again, and took an early dinner with us. He was apparently in better spirits than when he was here last, and joined more in conversation. We talked a good deal about the stopping of teeth, a painful operation which Anna and Phoebe have been undergoing. Mr. Foley said that a newly discovered method of stopping them is by softening a bit of pitch in the mouth, and then putting it into the tooth; it not only cures the toothache by magic, but effectually and lastingly stops it, as well as gold or silver. If this really is the case, it is worth knowing, and I shall certainly try it if I am ever so unfortunate as to have a decayed tooth.

In the evening, while Richard went to the evening lecture at St. Sidwell’s, Aunt Bell read to us part of “Twelfth Night,” which she will finish, I suppose, the next disengaged evening. It seems to be a very amusing play, much better than the “Taming of the Shrew.” The scenes in which the clown, Malvolio, Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew, act, are capital, especially that where Malvolio finds the letter. But it is always Shakespeare’s way to make his heroines exceedingly impudent and shameless, even the Countess has this fault; her falling in love with the supposed Caesario, and sending him a ring, is too bad. As to Viola, she is quite intolerable, the bare idea of her disguising herself like a man is disgusting, and all she does and says in her assumed character puts one out of patience with her. The Duke is a silly fellow to prate so to her about his love for the countess; and Viola’s enigmatical way of informing her of her love to him is unheard-of audacity. Indeed she had no business to fall in love with him at all. I can’t bear ladies who disguise themselves like men, a thing which Viola, Rosalind, and Portia, all have the impudence to do.

I never before knew that those two celebrated passages.

“O! it came o’er my ear like the sweet south”

and

“She never told her love”

were from “Twelfth night.”

†I feel now quite convinced that I must not exert my mind at all, compared at least with what I should like to do. I cannot read or write without a headache, and writing also gives me a pain in my chest, which I have not indeed been free from for some days. It is very painful for me deliberately to lay aside all my studies, and it seems to me that I shall sometime hence look back with great regret on the year 1836, the seventeenth year of my life, thus apparently wasted, as far as study is concerned. Yet I ought not to entertain this feeling, for it is God’s will that this year should be passed in illness; and if I have learnt submission to his will and have turned my sufferings to good account in the improvement of my soul, it is not time thrown away.

†I always find it difficult to give way to fatigue or incapability of study, and if it was not for the reiterated lectures of all a round me, I should not allow myself to be ill at all. I am told that I am not giving myself fair play; I am sorry that idleness is necessary to my doing so. Anna and Phoebe do not allow me to teach them as I used to do, which I exceedingly regret, as I cannot think it hurts me.

I continue to write my little comedy, an occupation which I find extremely amusing, without at all exerting my mind, for when once I have sat down to it, I go on with the greatest ease and rapidity, my pen being not half quick enough for my thoughts. It is every day read by my cousins, by Richard, and my Uncle, whom it greatly entertains, especially as they all figure in it.

William has been reading my unfinished tale “Devereux,” and Anna is now reading it. I have only written as yet 148 pages, which is not a quarter of what I intend it to be. And all I have at present done is merely the dull uninteresting part, which brings the hero up to his sixteenth year of age. If I can find time to write a few more pages, I shall close this volume, and have it bound up in canvass like “The Emigrants.” Anna declares I must some day publish it.

†I wish I had leisure to commit to paper a hundredth part of the tales, poems, and dramas, with which my brain is crammed. I have such splendid visions in my head that the idea of never realising them with the pen is quite mortifying.

After luncheon going into my room the first thing which caught my eye was a very pretty little bronze thermometer standing on the dressing-table. Before [52] it lay a little slip of paper, with these words written on it in pencil,

“With Anna’s love to dear Emily.”

I then remembered that nearly a fortnight ago, when at the Civet Cat with Anna, I had stopped before this little thermometer, and had said I should like such an one; which I had till now quite forgotten. I was so much pleased at this little gift from my dear Anna, that I stood looking at it a long time with great delight, and then took it up and kissed it. Which ceremony, on going down the stairs, I repeated on the person of Anna, without speaking, to the amusement of Aunt Bell, who chose to imagine that we had quarreled and were making it up.

I have been, by fits and starts, reading Miss Edgeworth’s tale “Ormond,” and to day I finished it. Like all her tales, it has a good deal of talent in it, and is very interesting. Like all her tales, also, it is for moral purposes very bad. To make the hero a useful model and example for young men, he ought not to have been gifted with so many advantages, beauty, wealth, talents, and a most noble disposition. In his unreformed state, he is just the wild, brilliant character which is apt to fascinate, and he is much more likely to be taken as a model for imitation then than when sobered down by education and experience. He is, like all Miss Edgeworth’s heroes, entirely without religious principle, and acts throughout with a complete dependence on his own strength, never looking for assistance from above. As he does not seem either to consider himself, or to be considered by others, a being responsible for his actions in another life, ’tis difficult to say what motive he can have strong enough to bring about his reformation, except indeed his love for Florence Annaly. There are vices in his character which are not spoken of with nearly sufficient reprobation, and the duel in which he engages is made a virtue instead of a sin. Lady Millicent, by the way, is little more than a reproduction of Lady Isabel in the “Absentee.”

We stood at the drawing-room window for a long time this evening admiring the sunset. It was not a sunset of that gorgeous character which I have often seen at Woodbury, and indeed was not to be named in the same century with that of Sept. 23, 1836, but it was nevertheless exceedingly lovely. The western sky was variegated and embossed with clouds of grey, white, and [53] rich purple, some dense and heavy, some lucid and transparent, tinged with the sun’s parting rays. They had exactly the appearance of lofty mountains, and seemed to rise height above height, summit above summit, beyond the range of purple hills which rise at the back of Exeter; some appeared to have their sides clothed with clouds, others to be tipped with snow, leaving narrow vallies between, which gleamed with a pale unearthly light. Above, the clouds seemed to open, leaving long streaks of gold that glowed with dazzling brilliance, and continually varied in their aspect, now seeming like streams of lava from a volcano, now like the glow of a burning city among the mountains, now like the waters rushing over the rocks of Niagara, divided by long narrow slips of deep purple cloud, which looked like islands crowned with tufts of trees. These golden streaks strongly reminded me of Moore’s beautiful lines

“When day with farewell beam delays

Among the opening clouds of even,

And we can almost think we gaze

Through golden vistas into heaven.”

But I cannot possibly describe all the beautiful changes of the western sky. As Byron says,

“parting day

“Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang embues

With a new colour as he gasps away,

The last the loveliest, till-’tis gone, and all is grey.”

I went out of doors for an hour this afternoon, but only walked up and down the balcony, where it was warm and sunny. It was a beautiful day, and there was another lovely sunset. †I heard a wren singing, and it struck me for the first time that his song was very like Lieber Augustin.

This day week I shall be seventeen years old. And this day week our party will be increased by the addition of dear Papa. How happy shall I then be! As we sat this evening round the fire just before tea, Phoebe and I began thinking where each of us would be seated at the same hour next Sunday. Papa would be on one of the bee-hive armchairs between Aunt Bell and Grandmamma, on the left hand side of the fire, my Uncle would be on the sofa opposite. Where the rest of us would be, I hardly know, I think I [54] should be near Papa, perhaps sitting by him on a little footstool, and my cousins might be on the sofa, looking at Papa no doubt, for they are very fond of him. Richard and William would be probably standing before the fire.

† My Uncle read to us a part of Scott’s Essay on the Ten Commandments. Scott considers the commandments as a summary of the Christian practice, containing, when properly understood, the whole of the Christian’s duty. My Uncle thinks the same. I cannot help differing. I do not think the Commandments have any interpretation but the literal one. Moses could not have meant them to imply more than the actual words, when he delivered them to the children of Israel. A spiritual interpretation was not according to the Mosaic plan, and they were meant not for us, but for the Israelites. We may use them, if we like, as texts from which to draw lessons of morality, but we ought not to think that they were intended to teach us all that a Christian should do. It does not seem to me that Christ in his sermon on the mount as explaining the commandments so much as showing the difference between the Mosaic or moral and the Christian or spiritual code, and adding his own precepts to those already in force. Every body acknowledges that Christ introduced a far purer and stricter system of morality, but how was the case if he taught nothing that ought to have been new to the Jews, nothing but what they should have known and understood before? For, if the commandments were intended to be spiritually understood, and if, as my Uncle thinks, Christ blames the Jews for not so understanding them, it is plain that they ought and could have so understood them. It is manifest too, that no turning, twisting, and straining of the commandments can possibly extract from them even the heads or outlines of all a Christian’s duty. There is no commandment to forbid lying, except with respect to our neighbour; there is no precept to inculcate humility, or forbid pride, or to teach the spirit of Christian charity, especially in the forgiveness of our enemies. And many things were allowed to the best men under the Jewish Code which are not allowed to Christians.

Anna, Phoebe, and Richard, drank tea at Miss Swete’s, and returned full of excessive disgust and anger at the scenes they had witnessed, there being among the young people they met, a boy of fifteen, and a girl of seventeen, whose impudence, dishonesty, rudeness, and impropriety of manners, were quite abominable. The levity, profaneness, and romping, which filled the room, kept them on tenterhooks all the evening and called forth from them some sharp rebukes. Phoebe described with both satisfaction and amusement the wrath and indignation shown by Richard in his raised colour, severe looks, and stern language; indeed she was now and then obliged to step over to him and quiet him by a whisper, lest he should get into a squabble. I never heard any thing like the scenes which they related.

While they were gone, I had a long conversation with my Uncle, principally on the subject of the Communion and the confirmation, and some parts of the liturgy. After this my Uncle read to us some passages from Crabbe’s Parish Register, and his preface to his poems.

We finished Ivanhoe yesterday. I think it is a splendid specimen of genius, and infinitely the best of the few novels I have read. It excels in every thing which constitutes merit in a novel, in drawing of character, in interest of incident, in vividly depicting the manners of the times. The only characters in which the author fails, are those in which he always fails, the hero and the heroine, Ivanhoe and Rowena, who are but shadows, tho’ considerably better than Ernscliff and Isabella Vere. Ivanhoe is little but a sick wounded knight throughout; it is only in the tournament and at the single combat in Templestowe that we feel any interest in him. The best character of all is Rebecca, she is exquisitely drawn, and involved in the most intense interest. She no where declines in beauty of mind and soul, she no where ceases to excite our deepest sympathy. Her character is at once beautiful and grand, I might say sublime. Next to her, I think I like Locksley best, the identifying of him with Robin Hood is excellent. Richard I like exceedingly, likewise, Cedric; Brian-de-bois Guilbert and Front-de-boeuf are most hateful. The burning of the latter in his castle is a scene horribly magnificent. Except [56] for the sake of that pathetic dialogue between Rowena and Rebecca, I would willingly part with the last chapter, and at all events the book should have finished when Rebecca leaves the room. Scott spoils his novels by finishing them so carefully with the future happiness of the hero and heroine.

The death of the Templar is admirably conceived. To be sure it was, as Aunt Bell says, it was wrong of Ivanhoe to risk Rebecca’s life on such a chance as his feeble and decaying strength, but then there is a moral grandeur in his confidence that Heaven would grant victory to the just cause.

The minor and subordinate characters are admirably delineated, especially Gurth and Wamba. Athelstane is very well done, and excites neither our approbation nor dislike, and not altogether our contempt. I rather like De Bracy, but it is only by comparison with the other brutal Norman nobles.

†This evening my Uncle finished King Henry VIII. I must say I was mightily disappointed in it. Whether it is that I am not capable of understanding Shakespeare, and cannot distinguish his beauties, I do not know, but certainly, most of his plays which I have heard, except a few masterpieces, show scarce a particle of the mighty genius which I had always conceived to belong to this great dramatist. There are indeed none which have not brilliant passages and fine displays of human nature, but in general it seems to me that the plots are stupid and rambling, and the characters feebly drawn, or not conceived at all. There is no effort in †Shakespeare’s works, he takes so little pains that what is interesting, or noble, or sublime, or finely exhibiting the features of the mind, seems to drop from his pen by chance; one cannot help thinking that every play is executed with slovenly neglect, that he has done himself injustice, and that if he pleased he might have given to the world works which would throw into the shade all that he has actually written. To be sure, this gives one a very exalted idea of his intellect, for if even the mere unavoidable overflowings of his genius excel the depths of other men’s minds, how magnificent must have been the fountain of that genius whose very bubbles sparkle so beautifully!

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†But to speak of Henry VIII. in particular, Henry himself, Catharine, and Wolsey, though they display a degree of Character, are not half so vigourously drawn as I had expected, or as I could, methinks, have done myself. The others are in general nonentities. The character of Cranmer exists more in Henry’s language about him than in his own actions. Gardiner, as far as one sees of him, is accurately represented. But in general the characters do not figure sufficiently often to be made much of.

We this week began to read in the morning Sumner’s Evidences, having finished Chalmer’s on Sunday, for the second time. Anna and Phoebe usually made an abstract the next morning of what had been read the day before, and excellent practice, which they continue with Sumner.

The style of the two books is very different, no less so are the matter and the train of thought in each. Sumner is not nearly so profound, enlarges less, and writes in an easy, flowing style.

Yesterday I had a letter from Mamma, who says that Papa comes to morrow, and that she and the three children go to day to Casterton, where they stay a fortnight. Arabella also wrote me a very affectionate letter, promising me a long one by Papa. She wrote one to Anna also.

Mrs. G. Trevelyan’s acrostic, and one in reply to it written by Aunt Dennis, inspired me with the same fancy, and I wrote one on “Anna and Phoebe Dennis.” Aunt Dennis’ is as follows, on “Fanny Trevelyan.”

“F anny, I say! Is it you dare to sneer

A t my daughter, so far removed from all here?

N ay, draw up your neck, look wise if you can

N or think I am thus to be frightened by Fan.

Y ou talk of your peacock, your dogs, & your cat,

T ake a lesson from them, and learn to grow fat.

R efrain from such envy, admire her fine form,

E very limb so well covered, how fat, O how warm!

V ermillion may well stain your cheeks with a blush,

E ’en know yourself better than insult my child thus,

L et fear of my vengeance retard your sly ways,

Y ou may else rue your airs all the rest of your days,

A nd now with due deference her pardon implore,

N ow promise you’ll never insult her no more.”

How I have been looking forward to this day, and counting the days and hours till Papa’s arrival! He came at one o’clock, just in time to sit down to eat one o’clock dinner with us. I cannot express my delight at seeing him again, and talking with him about Woodbury. I am afraid he is not in very good health, indeed he never is at the end of the half year. He brought me a host of letters; there was a short one from Mamma; a capital long one, and most affectionate, from dear Arabella, of two sheets covered; and very longs ones also from Louisa and Mackworth. The children sent me also what I had particularly requested, some locks of their hair, of which I gave Anna a bit of Arabella’s and Louisa’s, and Phoebe of bit of Arabella’s, with whom she is exceedingly longing to be acquainted. A quantity of other things were brought, which I had sent for, some books among the rest. Papa has been staying at Arthur Malkin’s in Wimpole Street, where there was a great rout, at which Papa met Mr. Harry Hall, Charles and Frederick Romilly, and many other persons whom he liked to see. Papa came by the Quicksilver Devonport mail.

Poor Maria is just now so far recovering her health as to be able to study again, and even, notwithstanding her eyes, to write to Anna, by whom she has requested me to write her a letter on education. I did so, I began it yesterday, and finished this evening. It consists of six closely written pages, yet I have not said half I should like to say. Whether Maria will find it of any use, I can’t tell. She is a very clever girl, but perfectly uninstructed, and with a most undisciplined disjointed mind, which, I am half afraid, it is almost too late now to put in order.

This is the day on which my Uncle and William regularly dine with us; our dinner hour, which is usually one, is on these occasions four o’clock. When the cloth is removed, and dessert comes in, we regularly break up the party at table, and sit in disjointed little groups round the fire and about the room. Anna sits rather away from the rest near the window; and I always post myself by her on a low [59] footstool

what we are saying, and crack jokes against us. Oh what fun we have in these evenings! By and bye we girls take ourselves off before the rest, and form a most happy little group in the drawing-room, without any light, but that of the fire, round which we kneel or sit on footstools, or, if Anna is tired, she lies down on the sofa, and I sit by her. Then we talk; often to tell each other what happiness has been added to each by the friendship we have formed, or to talk over past days at Woodbury, or to moralise on various subjects, and compare our thoughts and opinions. Frequently also our jokes raise peals of laughter, to the astonishment of our elders, and the amusement of the boys, who omit no opportunity of laughing at us too. Often also I repeat poetry to my two cousins, often they read compositions of my own, and give me subjects on which to write in verse. And very frequently we talk about my sisters. Phoebe longs ardently to see Arabella, she is always asking about her, talking of her, picturing her to herself, and wishing to kiss her. The other evening I told her that Arabella had said to me in a letter that she had a strong presentiment that she should be in Devonshire in six months. Though this idea is totally unfounded, Phoebe was put into an ecstasy of joy, she jumped up, danced out of the room, and in great glee told it to Anna. And when she found that Arabella was not come with Papa, her disappointment was great, though she knew it had never been expected.

I had a nice long talk with Papa alone this evening, which I enjoyed greatly, on various subjects. It was partly about my cousins, partly about the party at Woodbury, or, I should say, now at Casterton, partly about Ivanhoe, and Keightley’s Crusaders, and the other books.

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Anna has one of the sweetest countenances I know, and certainly the most expressive. It changes with every emotion of her mind, and varies from moment to moment most beautifully. She continually puts me in mind, for a single minute, of different persons of my acquaintance, to whom her face does not in fact bear the slightest resemblance, particularly Miss Courtney, Mrs. Foley, and Mrs. Clutterbuck, who all differ exceedingly.

At the moment I write, what a happy party we are! Papa, in a flowered dressing-gown, is sitting by the fire in a bee-hive arm-chair (it is half-past eight P. M.) talking to my Uncle who is on the sofa holding a newspaper; Aunt Bell and Grandmamma occupy two other arm-chairs; Richard and William are each copying music, cracking jokes with Anna and Phoebe, who are laughing at them; Anna and Phoebe are sitting side by side, one working, the other copying an acrostic, she (Phoe) has just been cutting off locks from each of the two boys’ heads, for Anna and me; for we are each taking a fancy of having our relations’ hair, and Phoebe has been saying

“I do so sadly long for some of Uncle Tom’s,”

and I have promised to get her some. How brightly burns the fire, how cheerful glows the lamp! We hear from without the groaning sound of the violin mixed with the unmusical voices of those who parade the streets on Christmas eve. The full moon shines radiantly in a clear blue frosty sky, and all is beautiful and calm.

We are nearly at the end of the year 1836, and I am about to close the seventeenth year of my life. To morrow I shall enter on another period of my existence. Oh how quickly does each birthday seem to return! But when the day has actually come I shall note down my thoughts on this subject.

Thus conclude the last written reflections I have made at the age of sixteen. Night comes on apace, I have written too long for my chest, and I lay down my pen.

I enter on my eighteenth year. How many reflections crowd into my mind on every successive birthday! And how strange it seems that one single day should appear to make such a difference in one’s age, that in the course of a few hours such a step appears to us to be made from one year to another! †Yesterday I was sixteen years old, to day I am seventeen; the sound of the words seems to effect a greater change than the actual space of time. I lay awake last night for a long time, kept awake by a little manner which had disturbed my equanimity, and put me into a painful state of mind; I heard the midnight clock strike twelve, I counted every stroke, and when the last had sounded, I had completed my seventeenth year, and entered on another.

†I look back on the year I have just finished, with many mingled feelings, mostly of a painful nature. What changes do a few short months, nay, a few weeks, a few days, make in the life of a human being! I will try and recal the progress of mine during the preceding twelvemonth. During the winter holidays, I was employed in constant and intense study, which I do not think I could have continued longer without injuring my mind. What I did, however, much improved it, and I greatly added to my knowledge. As the half-year came on, I relaxed my studies, and spent, I fear, too much time, in works of the imagination. Yet still I was very considerably improving and cultivating my mind, in history and chronology especially, and in learning portions of the New Testament thoroughly by heart. In February my health, never strong, began to decline, heavy colds, coughs, and acute rheumatism, constantly harassed me. I was kept a great deal within doors, and almost deprived of my favourite pleasure, the study of Natural History. The same through March; at the beginning of May I lost my appetite, I was taken ill of a fever, my strength, mental and bodily, at once left me, exertion of every kind became next to impossible, and all but perfect quiet distressed me with a painful nervousness. Thus were all my studies suddenly stopped; I though it would be only for a month or two, but, as it pleased heaven, my illness was prolonged through Spring, Summer, and autumn, and seemed at one time threatening to end only in the grave. From this state the mercy of God, blessing the means em- [62] ployed, has raised me up; I am restored to comparative health, though still in a very delicate state, and, as I cannot help fearing, with the seeds of disease still within me. All this time my studies have been quite neglected, my mind has lain dormant, my faculties have all been allowed to remain unimproved, and, as it now seems to me, rusting, so that I look back on a year, intellectually, lost. This is painful, but unavoidable, so that my regret is not mingled with self-reproach.

But there are other subjects of deeper and more unmitigated regret in the retrospect. I might have been happy, as far at least as myself was concerned, but I have not. I look back on a cheerless, barren waste of time, not improved as much as it might have been to my best interests. Thus, alas! it has been throughout my life. I look back on happiness and unhappiness. When I have been happy, is has been of an intellectual kind of happiness, or derived from the better feelings of the soul in their natural state only; this has been mixed with a few brighter spots, which I can review with something of a real pleasure. But all along, there has been a pervading vein of sorrow just enough to take off the edge of every joy, and often sufficient to plunge me into mental anguish. Complete peace of mind I have never known. I have always had a secret anxiety, I have always had a feeling of inward restlessness and discontent with myself. I have never †felt satisfied. When I have felt happy, I have also felt that something more was wanting to complete that happiness, and for that something I have ardently wished and longed. This feeling has always rankled within, with various degrees of intensity, sometimes so little acknowledged to myself (never to any one else), that it has seemed no longer to exist, and for a time my life has glided on in calm and uninterrupted enjoyment. I remember that last year I had no outward impediment to happiness. All was prosperous around me, I could pursue unchecked all my favourite studies and amusements, and I grew more and more attached to the world and estranged from heaven. In this state I felt my danger, I felt as if no ordinary call could awaken me from my dream of happiness, I almost wished and prayed for affliction, if there were no other means of correction-And has not God answered this half-indulged wish? Has He not chastised me by withdrawing me from those things which chiefly formed the delight of my life? It is a striking, and impressive circumstance, in which I cannot fail to see His fatherly hand.

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†There is completely a world within me, unknown, unexplored, by any but myself. I see well that my feelings, my qualities, my character, are understood by none else. I am not what I am supposed to be. I am liked and loved far more than I deserve. I hate, yes, I truly hate myself, for I see the depths of sin within me, which are hidden from all other eyes. No one ought ever to feel satisfied with himself, with his progress in holiness, but they may feel peace of mind; and how much must I be changed, before I can reach this state! Yet I have now many advantages, which I hope to improve. I have more leisure for serious thought; I have a dangerous illness hovering over my head to warn me: I am, by my removal to Devonshire, removed also from the temptations to some of my chief faults; and I do not reckon it the least advantage to be in the constant society and intimate friendship of such a simple-minded, well-disposed girl as dear Anna.

So much for these melancholy reflections. How strongly do I feel the force of Moore’s beautiful lines!

“When first our scanty years are told,

It seems like pastime to grow old,

And, as youth counts the shining links,

Which Time around him binds so fast,

Pleased with the task, he little thinks

How hard that chain will press at last!

During last week we had in general warm pleasant weather. Aunt Bell has for a fortnight foretold that frost would begin on Christmas eve. She was strictly right; last night was a clear frost, to day was a beautiful bright dry day, with a cold dry frost, and a most biting wind. The sun went down in a snowy-looking sky, and we fear for to morrow’s weather.

It was a most sharp and piercing morning; the thermometer indoors was 41, out of doors 32? at about nine o’clock. In the evening, about 8 o’clock, the thermometer out of doors was 31. I woke with a pretty sharp attack of rheumatism in my right shoulder, and I had chilblains in the evening. Papa was very unwell all day with a severe cold and a little cough, yet he went twice to church, and aided in administering the Communion at St. Sidwell’s.

When I rose this morning and looked out of my window, behold, every thing was white with snow. The cold was most bitter, the thermometer out of the house was at 26. At breakfast, it began to snow again, and continued, with scarcely any intermission, all day. It was very small snow, which seems to threaten a continuance of it. I saw a poor blackbird squatting down in it, covered up to his thighs, and I heard a golden-crested wren squeak. We feed the sparrows and robins every day.

When my Uncle and William dine with us, our family part amounts to nine; Grandmamma, Aunt Bell, Papa, my Uncle, Anna, Phoebe, William, Richard, and myself. We sit at dinner in the following order; Aunt Bell at top, my Uncle at bottom; on the window side of the table, which is to the right of my Uncle, sit Grandmamma, William, Anna, and Richard; opposite sit I, Papa, Phoebe, in the order in which I have written them.

†I frequently read and repeat poetry to Anna and Phoebe. I cannot express how passionately I love poetry, it is in all my thoughts, sleeping and waking. All day long I have some line or passage running in my head; whenever I am by myself, or lying awake at night, it is my delight to repeat a poem; and when I open my eyes in the morning, the first thing which occurs to me is commonly a passage of poetry. Besides which, I frequently compose it myself, and have constantly visions of new poems floating in my brain. I could not exist without poetry.

It is still bitter cold, and the snow still lies on the ground. It is beautiful to see how it covers the hills with a white mantle, and sprinkles all the roofs in Exeter.

I began Racine’s Phèdre, and finished the first Act. I can hardly yet form any opinion of it.

I wrote an acrostic on Edward Otto Trevelyan, the name of one of Mr. George Trevelyan’s brothers, a great favourite of my cousins. It is a very impudent acrostic, and provoked them very much. I purpose writing acrostics on all my brothers and sisters, whose names would I think make very good ones.

Aunt Bell gave me yesterday a very pretty little watch-chain, which she meant as a birthday present.

A letter from Mamma to Papa, written from Casterton. Mamma says that they have had snow two feet deep, and that as much as six inches fell in one night. Aunt Cayley has just had a sixth little boy. Her children have been as follows, Edward, Arthur, George, Richard, Henry, and this little one; but Arthur died an infant. Mamma talks of coming home on Tuesday. All are quite well at Casterton; Mr. Paul is there.

A second letter, from Mr. Paroissien, contains a piece of unwelcome news, the death of Monkey, Papa’s bay horse, of an inflammation. This is a great loss, but I regret it the less, as Monkey was unsure of foot, has often fallen with Papa, and once threw him.

In the evening Papa began reading to us Talfourd’s Tragedy “Ion,” and finished the first Act. It is a drama on the Greek model, of which it is a great improvement. It was originally printed only for private circulation, but is now published. It is certainly a specimen of very high poetic talent, and I admire it exceedingly. Papa says it rises in interest as it goes on. It is full of passages of exquisite sweetness and pathos; the opening scene is very beautiful and touching, and so is that between Ion and Clemanthe. Of the characters I can as yet say little, except that that of Ion is very beautifully conceived, and, as far as we have come, well-sustained.

As we were sitting together over the fire after dinner in the evening, laughing very heartily about Julia and her dear friends the Trevelyans, with whom she has been staying nine weeks, a fly was heard driving up to the door, the bell was rung, and it was suggested that possibly it might be Queen Julia (as we call her) herself, for she has long given us notice that she my pop on us at any time, and we know she wishes to come and see Papa, of whom all my cousins are exceedingly fond. Out ran the two boys to see, and returned crying out

“It is Julia!”

She presently came in, to our great delight. She looks pale and out of spirits, for which various causes can be assigned. She will stay for a few days at Exeter. I took my seat by her all the evening, and we talked very happily, principally about the Treveylans, of whom she is excessively fond, and who seem to be indeed a very admirable, and in many instances superior family, with whom I should like much to be acquainted.

I was left alone with Julia while the rest of the party were out, and had a nice long chat with her. She talks to me quite confidentially telling me things which she would not tell even her sisters. We conversed a good deal about the Trevelyans, and their manner of going on at Overton and Hamslade. The Trevelyans are a large family, nine in number; the daughters are Harriet, Fanny, and Caroline; the sons George, John, Otto, Henry, Charles, William. I believe I have not put them in right order. The three first are clergymen. Mr. George Trevelyan lives at Hamslade, which is a lone house near the village of Okeford. Mr. Jo is the clergyman of Milverton, his mother, sister, and brothers Otto and William live with him, up to very lately, Otto having just now become clergyman of Pen in Staffordshire. William is a young man in the army: Henry and Charles are in India. Harriet, the eldest of the family, is a very remarkable woman, she is called the Perpetual Dictator and posses great energy and a highly cultivated mind. They are all a very nice amiable family, some of them very superior; and prodigious favourites with Julia, especially Mr. Otto who is about six-and-twenty years of age. Mrs. George Trevelyan is rather younger, she was a Miss Lumsdon. She is a first-rate musician; one pretty piece of music, which Julia played this evening, she composed in a dream, and wrote down next morning.

Julia says she was never before so thoroughly convinced of her utter ignorance, she says she knows nothing she ought to know. She complains that her mind is becoming a weed-garden, that she lacks memory, and is peculiarly deficient in the power of concentrating her thoughts. It is a great step to become aware of one’s deficiencies. She is now urging Phoebe to make the most of her time in cultivating her mind, and intends to do the same herself.

Papa has made me a present of George Herbert’s Life by Walton, and his poems, each in a little volume. I like these volumes exceedingly. I have not begun the Life, but I have dipped into the poems. I see that they are full of the quaint conceits in which the poetry of that age consisted, through the false taste of what Dr. Johnson calls the Metaphysical poets. But I find some beauties and elegancies scattered here and there.

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This evening Papa finished Ion, of which I have the very highest opinion. It is almost perfect; it is not only beautifully conceived, but so highly finished that it does not need another touch. It is elegant throughout, it abounds in the deepest pathos (not of incident but of language), and in the noblest flights of poetry. Every thing is natural, there is no effort, no dragging on of occasions to display poetry or passion. The plot is simple, yet interesting; the characters are mostly light but well executed sketches; the principal ones of Ion, Adrastus, and Clemanthe. Ion is above all praise; he could not indeed have existed in the state of society then existing, but he is exquisitely conceived and most naturally drawn. Adrastus is a powerful creation of the mind; he is wicked man, yet interesting, not however so as to lessen our detestation of his crimes; our interest is that which we feel in an unhappy son, brother, parent, a man under the curse of heaven. Clemanthe is beautifully touched, though there is not much individuality of character in her. The other characters are but slightly delineated. Cresiphon, as Papa says, is of use chiefly as a contrast to Ion, the revengeful feelings of the one opposed to the pure disinterested motives of the other.

It is difficult out of a play so abounding in beauties to select all that are peculiarly excellent. One of the little touches of nature which struck me most is in the scene of the Council at which Adrastus is present. Adrastus, boiling with fury, commands his soldiers to arrest and slay Phocion, and is instantly softened and subdued when Ion in his appeal to him alludes to his departed wife. The first scene between Ion and Adrastus is most noble; so indeed are all the rest. The occasional little descriptions of natural scenery are exceedingly lovely. I hardly know what grander idea can be presented to the mind than that in the first Act, I forget which scene, when the folding-doors of the temple being thrown open, the sea and rising sun are discovered far below. I have the scene distinctly pictured in my mind. And how lovely must have been the appearance of earth and heaven when Ion was walking by moon-light in the palace-garden!-One of the most beautiful speeches in the play is Ion’s answer to Clemanthe’s question

“shall we meet again?”

Indeed the whole of that scene is exquisite.

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Altogether, I have not for a long time heard or read anything which has so interested me and seized upon my fancy as this tragedy, I do not know that I have not listened to it with more pleasure than to Ivanhoe. This is to be sure owing in a great measure to the fact of Papa’s having read it, for Papa reads beautifully, and I am sure that if I had only read it to myself, I should not have enjoyed or entered into it half so much.

During the end of this month, the snow has been prodigious throughout the greater part of England. Mails and coaches have been stopped without number, and sometimes not heard of for days after the proper time of their arrival. Last Saturday twenty-nine mails were due in London. The Brighton mail had vanished some days ago, I do not know what has now become of it. On Salisbury plain the snow is some places, with drifting, was fifteen feet deep. Between Stamford and Casterton, says Mamma, it was nine feet deep and cousin Nowell walked to Stamford along the tops of the hedges. Two children were lost in the snow, and the mail-cart between Stamford and Oakham, only twelve miles distant, was not heard of for two or three days. I shall not like either Papa or Mamma to travel if the snow is still in this condition, I should think them in danger of being snowed up.

†This is the last day of the week, the last day of the month, and the last day of the year. It seems wonderful to think that the year 1836 should already have passed away, and it is awful too. Time flies each year on more rapid wings. I lay awake in bed this night as well as on that preceding Christmas-day, and heard the clock strike twelve, the hour that parted two years of this world’s existence. Stroke after stroke I counted with deep interest, each stroke seemed a bell tolling the dirge of the old year its funeral knell. At last I went to sleep, and had a brilliant dream. I dreamed of a glorious moonlight night, the sky was a deep dense blue, almost black, and there was a lunar rainbow, a phenomenon which I have never in reality beheld, and which in my dream I gazed at with wonder and delight. While gazing at the splendid vision, I woke to the cold reality of a frosty morning in January.

And so adieu forever to the year 1836, to me a year of sickness, of stagnated intellect, and, in many respects, of unhappiness, but yet a year of many mercies, for which I trust I feel thankful to that Providence which watches over the least events as well as the greatest, in the life of every human being.