We took a walk with mamma across the cow-pasture, the first of the three fields leading to Everton. It is a very pretty little field, hilly, and partly covered with broom. It slopes down towards Foxhill Wood, the wood at the bottom of our garden. Here we saw a very handsome young bull. He seemed very quiet and innocent, and not disposed to hurt any one; but bulls are never to be trusted.

We had a long game of play in the garden. The flower garden, which is very large, is divided from the kitchen garden by a noble laurel hedge. Under this hedge runs a path, and there is another path between it and the kitchen garden, which is surrounded by a brick wall. The second path runs all round the kitchen garden, and is entered in two different places by openings in the laurel hedge, which runs round two sides of it. The laurel hedge is double, and the two rows meet together above, so we found that the interior made a very noble palace. This suggested the idea of playing at kings and queens. We began by making Louisa queen, and Arabella and I were [31] her guards; but Richard and Mackworth were very rebellious. At length we all got tired of her, deposed her, and made Mackworth king. We chose him because, being the youngest, he would probably not control us much; and, in fact, I did get all the acting power myself, being made his principal guard. After dinner we continued the play for some time longer.

At dinner Mackworth, having forgotten on one occasion to say “Thank you,” put papa in mind of the following story:—A gentleman was driving in his gig to a town in Devonshire; on the way he overtook a little boy, with whom he had some chat, and he ended by inviting the boy to get up into the gig. The lad accepted the offer, and on coming to the town jumped down and ran away. The gentleman called out, “Well, but don’t you say ‘Thank you’?” But he got only the gruff reply, “It was you axed me, not I axed you.” From this we began to talk of dialects and provincialisms. Mrs. Keal remarked that the Pottoners made great use of the odd word “mort”—“there has been a mort of sickness,” “a mort of fine weather;” and she told a little anecdote she had from a gentleman, who, going out one morning before breakfast, met a working man, and asked him how he employed his time. The man said, “Why, I gets up early in the morning, and the first thing I does I has no breakfast.”

Our daily employments vary but little. As for myself, I rise as soon as I can wake, which is usually as late as half-past seven, and employ myself in doing my Greek and Latin, and learning whatever I have to get by heart. After breakfast I feed the birds with bread-crumbs, and from about that time till twelve o’clock I am usually [32] employed in teaching the children, and in some of my own lessons. At twelve we go out till dinner; after dinner I amuse myself for half an hour; then I read to mamma, and do my needlework; then we go out again for about an hour and a half; then I and Richard finish our Greek or Latin for papa, and I read Fuseli’s Lectures to mamma. This employs me till tea, after which I and R. do our lesson with papa, and then we amuse ourselves till bedtime. This is generally the way in which I, at least, spend my time; of course the coming of visitors sometimes makes a little difference.

At tea, papa and mamma always sit at the fire by themselves, and we listen to their conversation; this evening it was peculiarly interesting. Papa began by condemning the idea that the Duke of Wellington’s military prowess ought to exempt him from dislike on account of his political opinions or anything else. He instanced Mr. T. Quintin, who would call it quite a shame that, after all he had done for England, he should be so unpopular; but if a man who had been eminent in science, and had made useful discoveries, should fall under general odium for his after conduct or opinions, he would (think) nothing of abusing him. And yet this man would be much more deserving of public esteem, for he would really have been a benefactor to his country; he would not have been employed in cutting throats, in war and massacre, in which men nevertheless glory, instead of considering the business of a soldier a painful necessity. Soon after, mamma remarking that the Conservatives had still a strong party in England, papa assented, and then said that the late election cost Mr. Stuart, the Tory member, £20,000. This was chiefly spent in indirect bribery, by entertaining people in public-houses, “a beastly way of spending money.”

Poor mamma has had a night of intense suffering, which kept her entirely awake, and very early this [33] morning, before two o’clock, Mr. Keal was sent for. Her pain was in some degree allayed by laudanum, but was succeeded by great sickness and debility. After breakfast, papa called us together, and spoke to us at some length. He began by mentioning the dreadful pain mamma suffered all night, and then said that, though we had never been told so in such plain terms before, he now deemed it proper to inform us that mamma’s life was very uncertain, and would probably not last long. It is hardly necessary to add that papa’s words made a deep impression on us, and that he left us in tears. Indeed, I cannot think what we could do without mamma; it seems to be that if she died I should never be happy again. At ten o’clock Mr. Magrath and Mr. MacLear [the doctors] came; and at about twelve I went upstairs to see mamma. She was more free from pain, but extremely weak, and scarcely able even to whisper; she looked very pale and ill. I kissed her and then left the room, and finished hearing the children’s lessons, about which I was before employed.

Mamma is rather better to-day; I sat with her in the evening, while papa was making his usual weekly examination of the children’s progress in Greek, which I teach them.

We went out of doors as usual, and walked about the garden, the children listening to a story I told them. This has been my practice ever since I was six or seven years old, and is a great amusement both to them and myself. I think I must by this time have told them many thousands of stories. They are of every kind. At one time I used to relate histories of imaginary kings of England or France; sometimes I tell stories about children, generally of noble birth; sometimes of adventures of people cast on desert islands; sometimes the adventures of some hero who encounters dragons, genii, and all sorts of enchantments; sometimes discoveries of unknown lands; sometimes the [34] adventures of Lilliputians in England; and frequently tales in which birds or quadrupeds are the actors; in short, of every kind which can possibly be devised. I always tell these stories extempore.

In the afternoon there was a fall of snow, and we began to speculate what we should do if every flake was a piece of gold money. To be sure, this shower of money would break all the windows, destroy the plants, and patter furiously down the chimneys; but then we should get ten thousand times more money than would be sufficient to pay for the repairing of the damage a hundred times over. We then began to settle what we should do with all this money. We should in the first place purchase the whole estate of Woodbury, and rebuild the house on a magnificent scale. Then we should have a splendid garden, filled with all the choicest flowers in the world. And we would have a noble library, and printing-presses for us children, to print all the productions of our pens. In short, there would be no end to the magnificence of our possessions and mode of living. I should like also to have a tame elephant.

We did not go beyond the garden, and as usual I told the children a story; but I shall never thoroughly enjoy going out till there are wild flowers for me to find and botanize.

I continue my usual employments of writing, both prose and poetry. I am chiefly employed about “Witikind the Saxon,” an epic poem in several books, of which I have completed three. I am also writing “Don Roderick,” a poem something in the manner of Sir Walter Scott’s. Of this I have finished three cantos, and begun the fourth. In addition to these, several prose works of various sorts.

Cook is a great coward; she is afraid even of slugs, snails, and mice. She complained to me once that the mice used to run over her bed and pillow at night. “And what do you do to them?” I asked. “Why, I buffet them [35] off as well as I can, miss,” she replied. To think of battling with mice!

Mr. Maclear* called, and as usual entertained us with a great deal of astronomy. He first inquired whether I had studied a little book on that subject which he had given me, and afterwards told us what he was doing in that way. He said that Jupiter and Venus are both now visible in the west. Jupiter is very magnificent, and Venus (though not to the naked eye) is in the shape of a half moon; but she is difficult to manage with a telescope, on account of the flood of light about her, which makes her outline indistinct. The same thing is rather apt to happen with Jupiter; but not so with Saturn, because of his distance from the sun. I asked him, “How near is Saturn’s ring to the body of the planet, in its nearest part?” This I said, conceiving it to be an ellipsis; but Mr. Maclear, perceiving my mistake, set me right, and told me that it was perfectly round, and that it seemed oval, because it was not flat before us, like the moon, but we saw it sideways, as it is represented in prints. This ring, he said, is now disappearing, and will soon become so straight before us that we shall see nothing but two little wings on each side. Saturn is the most extraordinary of all the planets. Mr. Maclear kindly promised to send me a telescope through which I can even see Jupiter’s four satellites; this telescope he has had seventeen years.

At about eight o’clock we were all sitting quietly in the drawing-room, except papa, mamma lying on the sofa, when a tall muffled figure entered. William, who showed him in, said something which sounded like “Mr. Howard,” but I was not certain till he said again, “Mr. [36] Howard.” Then we all shouted out, “Mr. Howard!” full of joy and astonishment, and I was so surprised at his totally unexpected arrival that I trembled all over. Mr. Howard laughed, and then went up into Mr. Taylor’s room to make himself tidy. Richard was despatched to tell papa, and we did nothing but talk about him, and say how glad we were that he was come. When he came down he told us that he had been at least a fortnight at the Cambridge University, and had set off in horse and gig at three o’clock, but that near Hatley St. George the horse was knocked up, and would go no further, so that he had walked all the rest of the way to Woodbury. Mamma had soup and mutton-chops warmed up for him, as he had eaten nothing for hours, and must necessarily be very hungry. We could scarcely have a more agreeable visitor, or one whom we should be more glad to see. He looks quite as pleasant and good-tempered as he used to do, and talks quite as agreeably.

Mr. Howard set us to run races. I won in two of them, and Richard in another. Papa and mamma had dinner at one o’clock, and we all dined with them in the library—a great treat. Mr. Howard went away at about half-past three, not being allowed to stay two nights from college, but he hopes to come and see us several times in the summer.

I tried the telescope—it is the new moon, and at length I succeeded in viewing her. I easily saw the whole globe, and perceived where the dark and light parts joined; the edges were quite rough. This was while mamma and papa were at dinner; when mamma entered the drawing-room, we saluted her with exclamations of joy, telling what we had seen. She then looked herself, and next Mr. Taylor. Afterwards we viewed Jupiter; he was extremely bright, but we could not see his satellites.

We came in at a quarter past four; I went [37] up to put on my frock, when the sky grew suddenly black, as if a thunderstorm was coming on. My room looks to the north; there are several fir-trees near it in the garden, and the dark blue-gray sky seen amongst their branches, and which was of a beautifully clear hue, had a most striking appearance. At length a very heavy shower came on; at the same time the setting sun darted from the west, and a splendid rainbow appeared, making a complete arch from north to south, but most brilliant in the north. Above it was seen a very faint reflection of its beauty, but which soon vanished, though the real one remained some time.

As for Jupiter, we must make haste in looking at him, for he is getting near the sun. His belts are visible, and though the trees hide him from the drawing-room, I think we can see him from upstairs. Venus is much higher and nearer the moon. Mars and Saturn are to be seen, one in the south-west, the other in the east. Mr. Maclear gave us a great deal of interesting information, of which I will put down what I remember. Saturn’s ring gives him light, though it is opaque; his shadow is often seen upon it. Jupiter, though he is so enormous, turns round on himself in nine hours. His belts are atmospheric vapours; they vary continually, and sometimes spots are seen on them. The Georgium Sidus is at an immense distance from us, and not bigger than one of Jupiter’s satellites. The sun is supposed (though it is all surmise) to consist of a luminous substance devoid of heat in itself, but whose rays in entering our hemisphere, being dispersed and broken, produce heat by a chemical process. As for the spots, it is imagined that his light is a vapour round him, and that his dark body appears sometimes through the vapour. The Milky Way is a nebula; if we look through the telescope we shall see that it is composed of myriads of stars clustered together, but which are probably very far apart. There is another very beautiful nebula in the sword of Orion.

[38] We received to-day new numbers of the Penny Magazine,14 Penny Cyclopædia, Gallery of Portraits, Society Maps, History of the Church, Commerce, and Saturday Magazine. The Penny contains many interesting things. Of the engravings, there is the statue of Niobe and her daughter, the very picture of grief, and in a beautiful attitude; there is a woodcut of Mary Queen of Scots, and another of Lady Jane Grey; a portrait of Galileo, and a representation of Notre Dame at Paris; with a spirited wood engraving of Raphael’s painting of the death of Ananias. But, above all, it contained a highly interesting and valuable article on the horrible (for it is no less) effect of tight-lacing and want of exercise. The whole body is diseased, every function depraved by this fatal practice. Boarding-schools are nurseries of illness; few girls come from them in health; and in one in particular, all who had been there two years were more or less crooked.

I forgot to mention an odd thing Arabella and I did this morning. A. got out of bed early, and woke me. I felt wonderfully tired and sleepy, but got up not very long after. Just as I had done dressing, I heard it strike four o’clock. I hastened downstairs, and found A. in the dark, so I unfastened the shutters of our sitting-room. The sun, of course, had not risen; the moon was shining beautifully in the north-west, and several stars were visible; a very thick fog hung about the trees. It was not light enough to read or write, and nobody was up besides ourselves, so we sat a whole hour in the cold, talking together. Just as it struck six, Richard came down, and at the same time Frederick got up and struck a light, so that we obtained a candle and went to our employments.

Mrs. Keal mentioned a curious fact in natural history; a jack (a fish) had been sent to her, and when it was opened a large rat was found inside him, quite whole and unmasticated, and apparently just swallowed. It [39] is not uncommon, papa said, to find frogs and small fish withinside the jack, which is very voracious.

I worked at my garden, which mamma has lately given me; it consists of two beds, but I shall only plant it with wild flowers. One bed is to contain flowers which like damp; in it I am making a little mound of earth and stones for the beautiful potentilla to climb over. I shall also have the money-wort, the willow-herb, the mouse-eared scorpion-grass, and, if I can get them, the flowering-rush and the water-violet.

The paths of our gardens have all been nicely sanded; and in lieu of a mound, which I cannot make nicely, I cut away the earth pretty deeply in one part, so as to leave a space standing in the middle, down which the potentilla may climb. I then went with a spade and wheelbarrow to the bottom of the garden. Here we dug up two or three wild plants, two sorts of ranunculus, hyacinths, and strawberry. We then went into the lower part of the cow-pasture, a damp meadow separated from the garden by a paling and low hedge, over which we easily climbed. From thence I got other plants—some Geranium Robertianum, primroses, a cowslip, strawberries, and others which I do not know. All these I put in my garden, with the proper soil in which I found them; when blooming they will look very pretty.

To make a little shade, I have dug up a few young trees, and planted them among my flowers, and also stuck two long straight and supple sticks, crossing each other in the shape of half-hoops, at whose feet I planted slips of ivy and wild honeysuckle, which I got from Whitewood, to climb up them. The soil I chiefly use is a light kind of black earth, formed from rotten leaves, and very loose.

The sunset was most glorious this evening. The sky and clouds were deeply tinged with purple, yellow, [40] and crimson; the sun himself was like a complete ball of fire, with a clear and distinct outline.

In order to provide for such plants in my garden as want water, I have ordered a small tub, or more properly a pail without handles, which I shall sink into the ground up to the brim, and then, putting a little mould at the bottom, fill it with water. I shall first have it painted thoroughly inside and out with a slate-coloured paint, to prevent it from rotting, and to make it hold water better. I shall plant flowers both in it and on the edge; the money-wort will be admitted. The pail arrived yesterday.

I sat in the drawing-room while papa and mamma were at breakfast. The conversation was very interesting; it turned on the education of poor children, for mamma happened to be reading an article on the subject in some periodical work. Papa also took up the book, and read some of it aloud. It mentioned that poor children of about the ages of seven and eight had more vacancy and stupidity of mind than those of the higher ranks. Here Mr. Taylor remarked that it was shyness more than anything else. Papa did not think so exactly. “I do not think,” said he, “that it is a natural want of intelligence, but because they are not drawn out by questions; they are not in the habit of being taught to apply what they know. Now, see how much more handy they are in some things than other children; a boy takes care of his younger brother, and does it very well, or takes charge of a horse, and many other things. But as to intellects, if a child asks any question, he is told to do something or other, and if he does not understand, then comes a great thump on the head, and the child is knocked down. I have myself seen more than once a woman calling to her children, who were running about the streets; she stood at the door armed with a horsewhip, and lashed each child as it ran screaming into the house.”

Mr. Taylor,* who is always very good-tempered to us, walked in the garden capping verses with me, and, after a hard-fought game of perhaps half an hour, he conquered me with a line ending in X, which rarely begins a word in English. I had, it is true, found one, but soon after he gave me another, which was the rhyme of his first one, and I was vanquished. The couplet was—

“Taking especial care to fix

The hour of parting, half-past six” (in the morning).

However, when I came indoors, I was sure that there was in “Paradise Lost” some line beginning with Xerxes, and Arabella found one, which I shall have in store the next time I cap verses with this terrific Mr. Taylor.

A very agreeable visitor arrived—a Mr. Charles Shore (the entertaining gentleman I mentioned on March 29, 1832). He said a great deal about Sweden and Norway after dinner, some of which I will put down. He said that there was no such thing as a dissenter from the Church throughout those countries; that the higher classes were all staunch churchmen, but only in word, for many of them were never near a church in their life. “The apathy and indifference,” he said, “that prevails everywhere appears quite astonishing to the active mind of an Englishman; it is like being in an exhausted receiver.” The Jews are very intolerantly treated by the Government, for they are totally expelled from Norway, and confined to three towns in Sweden. Mr. Shore said when he heard this of Norway (the government of which is a republic, and Mr. Shore is a Tory), he thought it was a fine specimen of the tyranny which is always an accompaniment of a republic; but when he came to Norway he found that it was a regulation of the absolute Danish monarchy, when the Danes [42] possessed Norway, not of the present Government. At Copenhagen Jews abound, to the displeasure of the inhabitants. A gentleman of that town said to him, “Why, this one thing I do know of the Jews, that whenever the town do go back, the Jews they do go forward.” The prime minister of Sweden, he said, is a thoroughly excellent and pious man; his name is Rosenblad, and his brother is a general officer. Tanning is not understood in Sweden. A gentleman of Mr. Shore’s acquaintance went over to Sweden to set up that trade; he expects it to prove a very profitable business. His sister married a Swedish gentleman. Mr. Shore has travelled also in Denmark, Italy, Germany, Ireland, and Scotland, by having been in which last place he has given us a little piece of information. We had always thought that the three islands of Graveloch, introduced by Miss Martineau in her stories of Political Economy,15 were fictitious; but Mr. Shore says they do exist, and that he has seen them. They are not habitable; the largest is half a mile long and a quarter broad, they are surrounded by a very rough sea, and near them is a magnificent whirlpool, as large as the Maelstroom at Norway.

Mamma began last Saturday to read to us the “Lord of the Isles,” by Sir Walter Scott, which Mrs. Keal was so kind as to lend us. She reads it to us in the evening, after we have done our Greek and Latin with papa, and commonly finishes one canto at a time. Now, in describing the toilet of Edith, the heroine of the poem, Scott says—

“Young Eva with meet reverence drew

On the light foot the silken shoe.”

This I somewhat disputed, because I did not think silk was used in Great Britain before the reign of Elizabeth. But papa said that silk was certainly known over Europe very much earlier than that;* however, as papa did not remember [43] the date of introduction into England, he gave me leave to look for the article “Silk” in Chambers’s Dictionary, a huge folio of two volumes. There I found, amidst a great quantity of information, that silk was invented (when I do not know) in the island of Cos; that as early as 555 A.D., two monks coming from India brought the trade to Constantinople, but that the incredulity of the people in believing that it could be the production of a worm materially hindered its advancement; that in 1130 Roger, King of Sicily, set up silk manufactories at Palermo and some other places, and that in the time of Louis XIII. they were set up in France. But, unluckily, all this, as papa said, was nothing to the purpose, because we wanted to know when silk was first introduced (not manufactured, for that it never was) in England. However, we concluded that in the time of Bruce and the Lorns, silk might be in use, at least among the rich.

What we now take most notice of is the number of birds which frequent the garden. There are blackbirds and magpies, but very few sparrows; the robins are plentiful and very tame, and we to-day took great notice of a beautiful chaffinch very near us, which chirped continually. The chaffinch, of which there are a great many in the garden, has a red or orange breast, and wings barred with black and white. We are making friends with a water wagtail, which seems to have built its nest at the top of the house, or in the weeping ash before papa’s library, for it sits there very much, and sometimes even pops itself just outside the window and looks into the room at papa, who, being fond of all animals, takes a great fancy to it. The wagtail flies very oddly, jerking up and down. It is very tame. I scattered some crumbs about when it was there; as soon as I had gone to a very short distance it came down to eat them.

Mamma finished the “Lord of the Isles” [44] this evening, to our great delight. I like it very much, but it is extremely inferior to the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” the “Lady of the Lake,” and “Rokeby;” I do not say “Marmion,” because I have not read it. The name is not a good one; it ought to be called the “Maid of Lorn,” for she is much more important in the story than Lord Ronald is. The characters are not in general well drawn, and the poem is full of careless and unpoetic passages. The story itself is awkward, and ought not to be extended to so long a space as three whole years. Neither is it very clever that both Ronald and Edith have other lovers, one apiece. All unhappy ladies are wont, by the common consent of poets, to let their hair stream towards the four corners of the compass, and I am sorry to say that Scott has also fallen into this fault. The having two ladies in a story is likely to make neither very interesting, and in this respect Isabel and Edith steal from each other. Ronald is by no means well drawn; Bruce is one of the most interesting persons in the whole poem, but his brother is not much so; Cormac Doil keeps up his character. The best part in the poem is the scene in the cabin (canto iv.). The dream and thoughts of poor Allan are very well described, and his death is pathetically told. Edith, in her disguise of a page, is very melancholy and much to be pitied; but it is rather unaccountable that Ronald should never have discovered her. It is very natural her springing suddenly on Isabel’s neck when she heard her readiness to give up marrying Ronald. A little more, I think, should have been made of Edith’s being discovered; Scott should not have let it pass off in the dark. The battle has some beautiful passages, and the immense appearance of the English army is excellently described. And Edith’s forgetting herself and speaking in her agony of fear for Ronald, and the crowd mistaking it for a miracle, is extremely natural.

Mamma took us across the cow-pasture to [45] Everton church. On the way, in a beautiful broken field, which was very wet and marshy at the bottom, grow vast quantities of the marsh marigold, a splendid gold-coloured flower, which is not really a marigold, but quite as large as that flower, and with a succulent stalk. It often grows in clumps at least a foot high, which are quite covered with the golden blossoms. With some difficulty I gathered a few, and brought them home to put in water.

A very amusing conversation ensued after tea about the royal family, in the course of which some anecdotes were told. A story was told about Princess Charlotte, the daughter of George IV., who was extremely passionate when a child. She took a fancy to make a will, in which she bequeathed all her property to her sub-preceptor, to whom she gave it. He was foolish enough to keep the will; it was discovered, and he was dismissed. The upper preceptor, conceiving that the former had been unfairly sent off, refused to appoint any new sub-preceptor till the first had been provided for, and in the mean time himself performed the office of instructor. One day he entered the room and found her reviling and abusing one of her attendant ladies, in high wrath. He gave her a lecture, and moreover presented her with a book on the subject, which he charged her to read. A few days after, he caught her in a still greater fury, and using still worse language. So he said, “I am very sorry to find your Royal Highness thus. Your Royal Highness has not read the book I gave you.” “You lie, my lord; I both read it and attended to it, otherwise I should have scratched her eyes out.”

There are a few very small gooseberries out; but this is still very late, for last year we had a gooseberry pudding on April 16.

In the morning Henrietta brought me a little cottony spider’s nest, which had probably been in the shape of a ball, but was now torn open. It was full of eggs, about [46] half as big as those of the silkworm, and quite white; a few of them were broken, and very minute spiders came out; they were of a clear white colour, and soon died. I have seen such a nest as this, containing young spiders who ran about very briskly.

The Penny Magazine contains an ill-executed print of beavers, though the account of them is full and interesting; an engraving of the west front of Lincoln Cathedral; a description of Sicily, and of the gigantic chestnut tree of Mount Etna; the ruins of Netley Abbey; wars with wild beasts; the camphor-tree; Edinburgh Castle; the history of the small-pox; Richmond Castle; an excellent engraving of an ourang-outang; an account of railroads; the translation of a Chinese poem; and, above all, “two very spirited poems,” author unknown, on the battles of Moncontour and Ivry, imagined to be songs of the Huguenots. The first was fought in the year 1569, in the reign of Charles IX., between the Huguenots and Catholics, the Duke of Anjou and Tavannes on one side, and Coligni on the other; the Huguenots were totally defeated. The second was fought in 1590, and was gained by Henry IV. over the Duke of Mayenne at the head of the league which opposed his accession. Of the two poems, I like that on Ivry the best; the other is the simplest, however. But, as papa says, the battle is made too chivalrous, just as it might be, at the very latest, in the time of Francis I. Besides this, I cannot help noticing that the Duke of Mayenne is called “the fiery duke,” while really he was very slothful, sluggish, and gluttonous, and ruinously cautious.

Another pupil arrived last night—the Earl of Desart, a boy fourteen years old, who lives in Ireland; his family name is Cuffe. He is thin and slightly made, with brown hair curling a little, blue eyes, and fair complexion, generally very rosy, but that is all I know about him.

Richard contemplates buying a linnet and cage, much to my dissatisfaction; for it is miserable even to think of a bird, to which in a state of nature we must assign the range of at least a mile square, confined to less than the space of two feet; but to have it constantly before one’s eyes is sadder still.

[On May 6 a journey was taken to Casterton, in Rutlandshire, of course by coach, and an account of so old-fashioned a proceeding may amuse.]

A post-chaise was hired to take us to Tempsford, which is three miles off, there to meet with the Regent coach, to go to Stamford. We had just come to that place [Tempsford], and were passing a cross-road leading into the high-road, when a coach drove past before us. Not doubting but that this was the Regent, we urged on the post-boy, and he drove on at a furious rate to overtake it. But when we had reached it we found that it went to York, and drove deliberately back to Tempsford, which we had left behind. Here we discovered that we had made more haste than good speed, and were three quarters of an hour too early. The post-boy was obliged to wait, lest there should be no places in the coach; and as the Wheat-sheaf Inn was a horrid little place, tainted with a vile smell of tobacco, we resolved to walk about the churchyard. The church is in general in the Perpendicular style, but there are four small Decorated windows in the porches.

The churchyard is grown all over with long grass and nettles. There were five pretty little calves in it. With one I made friendship, and gave him some mouthfuls of grass; the others were very timid, except a brown and white one, who ran after us bellowing.

The coach at length arrived, and we deemed ourselves very lucky in having the whole inside to ourselves. Extremely clean it was. We were accompanied part of the way by a hat, a dirty great-coat, two umbrellas, and a [48] verbena, whose leaves we rubbed between our fingers, and found it very pleasant to smell. I think it was at Hilton that some one tossed into the coach, through the window, a nasty dirty coarse cloth, which rolled down my knee and fell on the floor. At the same place we saw a great fat fellow standing all the time we stopped at the inn, first with his mouth idiotically open, and afterwards with his thumb thrust into it, looking all the time a perfect image of stupidity.

We came to Casterton about eight o’clock, having travelled from Stamford in grandpapa’s carriage, which was sent on purpose to fetch us. I did not sleep last night till after eleven o’clock; however, I got up to-day at half-past four, and walked about the garden. The river is full of water, the dew was very thick on the grass, and there is a little frost. I took a short walk on the Great Casterton road, and had the pleasure not only of hearing the nightingale a long time, but also of seeing him all the while, only a few yards from me. He is a small bird, of a slight shape and a soft brown plumage, with a whitish ash-coloured breast and throat. He flitted about from bush to bush, and sometimes hid himself in the hedge; after a long pause he began again with a long, slow, loud note, something like “tweet, tweet.” I never saw a nightingale before. This was about five o’clock in the morning. His song is extremely rich and varied, but the blackbird’s is, in my opinion, sweeter.

There are two beautiful swans; one is sitting on six eggs in an open nest, which she has made on the other side of the river. Her husband takes care that nobody shall disturb her; he sails majestically up and down the water, watching, and will dart along as quick as lightning if he sees any one approaching, and he will make a great splashing too. The way to keep him off is to push him gently away with a broom or garden brush. Aunt Jane went into the [49] boat to fill her watering-pot, and he immediately attacked her; he bit the brush, and tore up the grass in a rage. When he flies at any one he will bruise them black and blue; the strokes of his wings are like those of sticks.

After luncheon, Aunt Mary took me across the river in the boat to look for some flowers on the other side. She pushed the boat across while I held the broom. The swan was attending on his wife, but he immediately saw or heard us, for he splashed down upon us, spreading his wings terrifically. He was a moment too late, for we had landed when he reached the boat. . . .

Grandmamma showed me five miniatures; the two last were by far the most beautiful. One was of Aunt Charlotte when she was about two and twenty; it is sweetly pretty, and very like what she is now. The other was of Aunt Sarah, who died before mamma was married, and possessed the most extraordinary beauty, so that, as I have heard papa say, she created a sensation wherever she went. I must say I think her portrait exquisite. The hair is very dark, the complexion the finest conceivable, both for fairness and bright colour; the eyes are grey, the mouth a little too large, the shape of the face beautiful, and the whole countenance lovely. She stoops slightly, and wears a black silk dress. She died at the age of twenty-nine, and was as good as she was handsome.*