LITMIR.BIZ

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to Dyrham Park near Barnet, to pay a visit to the Trotters. It is a handsome place. … I wrote upon my card, 'Will you see an unknown cousin?' and sending it in, was admitted at once. I found Mrs. Trotter[64] in the garden. She welcomed me very kindly, and seven of her nine children came trooping up to see 'the unknown cousin.' Captain Trotter is peculiar and peculiarly religious. I had not been there a minute before he gathered some leaves to dilate to me upon 'the beauty of the creation and the wonderful glory of the Creator,' with his magnifying-glass. He builds churches, gives the fourth of his income to the poor, and spends all his time in good works. I stayed to tea with all the children. The gardens are lovely, and the children have three houses in the shrubberies—one with a fireplace, cooking apparatus, and oven, where they can bake; another, a pretty thatched cottage with Robinson Crusoe's tree near it, with steps cut in it to the top."

      "June 11.—The first day of our great examination is over, and I have written seventy-three answers, some of them occupying a whole sheet."

      "June 12.—To-day has been ten hours and a half of hard writing. I was not plucked yesterday!"

      "June 15.—I reached Harrow by one, through the hot lanes peopled with haymakers. I was delayed in returning, yet by tearing along the lanes arrived at ten exactly by my watch, but by the hall-clock it was half-past ten. Bradley was frigidly cold in consequence, and has been ever since. To-day at breakfast he said, 'Forbes may always be depended upon, but that is not the case with every one.'"

      "June 20.—I have had an interesting day!—examinations all morning—the finale of Virgil, and then, as a reward, and because neither of my preceptors could attend to me, Bradley said I might go where I liked; so I fixed on Hertford, and, having walked to Ponder's End, took the train thither. … From Hertford, I walked to Panshanger, Lord Cowper's, which is shown, and in the most delightful way, as you are taken to the picture-gallery, supplied with a catalogue, and left to your own devices. The pictures are glorious and the gardens are quaint, in the old style. At Ware I saw the great bed, but the owners would not let me draw it on any account, because they were sure I was going to do it for the Pantomime. The bed is twelve feet square and is said to have belonged to Queen Elizabeth.

      "In the Bible examination I am second, in spite of having said that Ishmael married an Egyptian, and having left out 'They drank of that rock which followed them' in answer to the question 'What were the miracles ordained to supply the temporal wants of the Israelites in the wilderness?'"

      "June 25.—I am enchanted—quite enchanted that we are really going to Normandy. … I feel satisfied, now the end of the quarter is come, that I never was happier anywhere in my life than I have been here, and that I have done more, learned more, and thought more in the few months at Southgate than in all the rest of my life put together."

      While I was away, my mother's life at Hurstmonceaux had flowed on in a quiet routine between Lime and the Rectory. She had, however, been much affected by the sudden death of Ralph Leycester, the young head of her family,[65] and cheerful, genial owner of Toft, her old family home. Chiefly, however, did she feel this from her share in the terrible sorrow of Ralph's eldest sister, her sister-like cousin Charlotte Leycester; and the hope of persuading her to have the change and of benefiting her by it, proved an incentive to make a short tour in Normandy—a plan with which I was intensely delighted. To go abroad was positively enchanting. But anything would have been better than staying at Hurstmonceaux, so overrun was it with Maurices. I suppose they sometimes meant well, but what appalling bores they were! "La bonne intention n'est de rien en fait d'esprit."[66]

      We crossed to Boulogne on a sea which was perfectly calm at starting, but on the way there came on one of the most frightful thunderstorms I ever remember, and the sea rose immediately as under a hurricane. A lady who sate by us was dreadfully terrified, and I have no doubt remembers now the way in which (as the waves swept the deck) my mother repeated to her the hymn—"Oh, Jesus once rocked on the breast of the billow." I have often seen in dreams since, our first entrance into a French harbour, brilliant sunshine after the storm, perfectly still water after the raging waves, and the fishwomen, in high white caps like towers (universal then) and huge glittering golden earrings, lining the railing of the pier.

      We saw Amiens and had a rapid glimpse of Paris, where we were all chiefly impressed by the Chapelle St. Ferdinand and the tomb of the Duke of Orleans, about whom there was still much enthusiasm. During this visit I also saw three phases of old Paris which I am especially glad to remember, and which I should have had no other opportunity of seeing. I saw houses still standing in the Place du Carrousel between the Tuileries and the then unfinished Louvre: I saw the Fontaine des Innocents in the middle of the market, uncovered as it then was: and I saw the Tour de S. Jacques rising in the midst of a crowd of old houses, which pressed close against it, and made it look much more picturesque than it has done since it has been freed from its surroundings. On leaving Paris, we spent delightful days at Rouen, and visited, at Darnetal, the parents of M. Waddington, who became well known as Minister of Foreign Affairs at Paris, and ambassador in England. From Havre we went by sea to Caen, arriving full of the study of Norman history and determined to find out, in her native place, all we could about Gunnora, Duchess of Normandy (grandmother of William the Conqueror), from whose second marriage both my mother and Charlotte Leycester were directly descended.

      Very delightful were the excursions we made from Caen—to Bayeux with its grand cathedral and the strange strip of royal needlework known as "the Bayeux Tapestry:" and to the quaint little church of Thaon and Château Fontaine Henri, a wonderfully preserved great house of other days. Ever since I have had a strong sense of the charm of the wide upland Normandy plains of golden corn, alive with ever-changing cloud shadows, and of the sudden dips into wooded valleys, fresh with streams, where some little village of thatched cottages has a noble church with a great spire, and an area wide enough to contain all the people in the village and all their houses too. The most beautiful of all the breaks in the cornland occurs at Falaise, where the great castle of Robert the Devil rises on a precipice above a wooded rift with river and watermills and tanners' huts, in one of which Arlette, the mother of the Conqueror, and daughter of the tanner Verpray, was born.

      From Falaise we went to Lisieux, which was then one of the most beautiful old towns in France, almost entirely of black and white timber houses. It was only a few miles thence to Val Richer, where we spent the afternoon with M. Guizot—"grave and austere, but brilliantly intellectual," as Princess Lieven has described him. His château was full of relics of Louis Philippe and his court, and the garden set with stately orange-trees in large tubs like those at the Tuileries. My mother and cousin returned to England from hence, but I was left for some weeks at Caen to study French at the house of M. Melun, a Protestant pasteur, in a quiet side-street close to the great Abbaye aux Dames, where Matilda of Flanders is buried.

      To MY MOTHER.

      "Caen, July 26, 1851.—It was very desolate, my own mother, being left alone in that square of Lisieux, and the old houses seemed to lose their beauty, the trees and cathedral to grow colourless, after you were all gone, so that I was glad when the diligence came to take me away. It was a long drive, passing through 'Coupe Gorge,' a ravine where Napoleon, hearing diligences were often robbed there, made one man settle, saying that others would soon follow, and now there is quite a village.

      "I have a pleasant room here, with a clean wooden floor, and a view of S. Pierre from the window. Its only drawback is opening into the sitting-room where Mr. T., my fellow-pensionnaire, smokes his pipes. He is a heavy young man, very anxious to impress me with the honour and glory of his proficiency as a shot and cricketer, and of the Frenchmen he has knocked down and 'rather surprised.' We had prayers in Madame Melun's bedroom, she being dressed, but 'le petit' snoring in bed. The whole family, including les petits, have a great meat breakfast with wine, followed by bowls of sour milk. … Such a touching funeral procession has just passed up the Rue des Chanoines, a young girl carried on a bier by six of her companions in white dresses and wreaths."

      "Sunday, July 27.—Yesterday I went a walk with M. Melun to the Prairie, where the races are going on. This morning he preached about them and the evils of the world with the most violent action I ever saw—stamping, kicking, spreading out his arms like the wings of a bird,

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