Your note (5th inst) enclosing one from Mr. McNamee was received on our arrival here last night. We have been having continued cold weather with gusts of snow every day but have enjoyed our tour greatly. Here we found Henry Perkins and Hannah, who had come from London to meet & welcome us. All of the party but myself have driven out this morning intending to visit Stonehenge & some villages. I am shut up with a bad cold supposed to be due to damp sheets at Shrewsbury, but it was time I had a cold anyway. If I am well enough we are all to go to London tonight, and to Chiselhurst. Thence tomorrow, if I am well eno’ to Paris—a day behind our Time Table.

Of course, to get on, we skim a great deal and deny ourselves visits to many places that we might desirably see and it is hard to make the selection. As far as Rick is concerned I am inclined to regard our present journey as a reconnaissance and to expect him to travel {over} the same common roads and restudy the same districts more deliberately & contemplatively after the foliage is out. I find as the result of forty years rumination of landscape that—much as I enjoyed in my first visit I did not nearly understand the beauty & interest of the country. If I could afford it, I would now again go right back over the same ground. Phil is in a somewhat corresponding state of mind, for he had been with his father over much of the ground—moving by rail as we do, and tho’ he often says “I remember this,” he says that he sees much more now than he did then. We have had no rain of consequence—all the showers coming in the form of snow or hail—but the chilliness and dampness of the air and the draftiness of the inns & stations is much against our comfort & my health. We have here a private sitting room & all the fire in the grate that it will hold but I write wrapped in my fur coat. The season is advancing, however, vegetation considerably more expanded than in Cheshire. We shall find Devonshire in the full flush of Spring when we come North a fortnight hence.

It is a great pleasure to meet Henry & Hannah here. Marion will write you all about them. And Rick will I presume journalize our journey. I think that it has been very instructive to him & to Phil—more than they are aware. [507]Instructive a good deal as to what to avoid. Most of the elaborate gardening is very bad from our point of view, but the little places, the skill in arrangement, where there is no purpose of show, and the extreme neatness & snugness admirable & instructive.

We have seen within two days,—large grove-like bodies of naturally growing yews, in which considerable sport of character;—a good deal of English forestry, two systems being obvious, large timber yards & forest products in various forms, all instructive as to Biltmore; large bodies of coppice, with its products in hoop poles, (going to France), hop poles, pea sticks, hurdles, (made up & shipping by rail) fire place wood in bundles & faggots of bushwood. We have seen also water-meadows such as I want at Biltmore. I am surprised at the extent & variety & completeness of the pleasure boating arrangements at evy little river-town we stop at. They are better than the best we have.