"She is a complete Mrs. Malaprop. 'I was educated, my dear,' she said, 'at a cemetery for young ladies;' but this is only a specimen. She is also used to very strong language, and till she became blind, she used to hunt all over the country in top-boots and leathern breeches, like a man. When her husband died, she went up from Mrs. Villiers' house at Grove Mill to prove his will. Adolphus Liddell met her at the station, and helped her to do it, and then took her to the 'Ship and Turtle' and gave her real turtle—in fact, a most excellent luncheon. He afterwards saw her off at Euston. She is blind, you know, and took no notice of there being other passengers in the carriage, and greatly astonished they must have been, as he was taking leave of her, to hear the old lady say in her deliberate tones, 'Capital turtle! de-e-licious punch! Why, lor bless ye! I'd prove my husband's will once a week to get such a blow-out as that.'

"I thought this place hideous at first, but it improves on acquaintance, and has its availabilities, like everything else: there is a fine sea with beautiful sands, and the flower-garden is radiant."

"Charlie Williamson arrived yesterday, and, with the most jovial entertaining manner, has all his mother's delicacy of feeling and excessive kindness of heart. When he heard of the B. catastrophe, he went up at once from Aldershot to see Italima in London. 'Your mother was quite crushed,' he says, 'but as for your dear sister, there isn't a girl in England has the pluck she shows. She never was down for a moment, not she: no, she was as cheery as possible, and said, "Mama, it is done, and it is not our fault, so we must learn to make the best of it." People may say what they like, but she is real downright good, and no mistake about it.'

"I have been with Victor to Seaton Delaval—the 'lordly Seaton Delaval' of 'Marmion,' scene of many of the iniquities of the last Lord Delaval. It is a magnificent house, but the centre is now a ruin, having been burnt about eighty years ago, by the connivance, it is said, of its then owner, Sir Jacob Astley. There is a Norman chapel, full of black effigies of knights, which look as if they were carved out of coal, and in one of the wings is a number of pictures, including Lord Delaval's four beautiful daughters, one of whom married the village baker, while another was that Lady Tyrconnel who died at Gibside.

"Sept. 17.—At 8½, as we were sitting at tea, Lady Williamson put her head in at the drawing-room door and said, 'Come down with me; they are arriving.' So we went to the hall-door just as the carriage drove up, and Italima got out and flung herself into Lady Williamson's arms.... Both she and Esmeralda looked utterly worn-out, and their account was truly awful.... Lady Normanby came at once to their assistance—but what touched them most was the kindness of dear good Charlie Williamson, who came up directly from Aldershot, bringing them all he had—£50."

"Sept. 19.—Italima's state is the most hopeless I ever saw, because she absolutely refuses to find hope or comfort or pleasure in anything, and as absolutely refuses to take any interest or bestir herself in any measures for the recovery of her lost fortune.... When any one tries to elicit what she recollects about the mortgages, she will begin the story, and then bury herself in the sofa-cushions, and say we are killing her by asking her questions, and that if we do not want her to die, she must be quiet. She is furious with me because I will not see that the case is quite hopeless, and quite acts up to her promise of never regarding me with the slightest affection.... The state of Italima is appalling, but my sister is perfectly calm. Lady Williamson is kindness itself; and as for Charlie, I never knew his equal for goodness, consideration, and generosity.

"I wish you could hear Lady Williamson sing; even when she was a little girl, Catalani said that her voice was better than her own, and that if it were necessary for her to sing publicly, she would be the first singer in Europe."

"Sandhutton Hall, Sept. 24.—I left Whitburn yesterday, very sorry to part with the dear kind cousins, with whom I had a tender leave-taking—not so with Italima, who took no more notice of my departure than she had done of my visit."

"Mr. Richmond the artist is here. I quite long to be Arthur, going to sit to him: he is so perfectly delightful: no wonder his portraits are always smiling."

JOURNAL.

"Sir George said that the Wesleyan Methodists lived a holier, more spiritual life in the Colonies, but then it was because religion was there so easy to them; in London it would not be so; that London, the place in the world most unsuited to Christianity, lived on a great world of gambling-houses, brothels, &c., as if there were no God; no one seemed to care. He said what a grand thing it would be if, in one of the great public services in St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, the preacher were to shout out as his awful text—'Where art thou, Adam?'—and show how the Lord would look in vain for His in most parts of London—where, where had they hidden themselves?

To MY MOTHER (after I had returned to my Handbook explorations).

"Aldermaston Hall, Berks, Jan. 14, 1860.—I came here from Newbury. The weather was so horrible, and the prospect of a damp lonely Sunday in an inn so uninviting, that I thought over all possible and impossible houses in the neighbourhood, and finally decided upon Aldermaston as the best, and have taken it by storm.

"Christ Church, Feb. 4.—I have had a terribly cold tour to Drayton-Beauchamp, Ashridge, Aylesbury, &c. The pleasantest feature was a warm welcome from Mrs. Barnard, wife of the great yeoman-farmer at Creslow Pastures, the royal feeding-grounds from the time of Elizabeth to Charles II., with a lovely and interesting old house overlooking Christ Low (the Christ's Meadow) and Heaven's Low (Heaven's Meadow). Thence I went to North Marston, where was the shrine of Sir John Shorne, a sainted rector, who preserved his congregation from sin by 'conjuring the devil into his boot.' Buckinghamshire is full of these quaint stories.

JOURNAL.

"After dinner, in raging snow and biting east wind, we sallied out to survey the numerous religious institutions, which have been almost entirely founded by the energy and perseverance of this Vicar in the thirteen years he has been at Wantage. The church is magnificent. There is an old grammar-school in honour of Alfred (who was born here), a National School painted with Scripture frescoes by Pollen, Burgon, &c., a training school under the charge of Mrs. Trevelyan, a cemetery with a beautiful chapel, and St. Mary's Home for penitents. At seven o'clock all the curates dispersed to various evening services, Mr. Butler went to St. Mary's Home, and Mrs. Butler and I to the church, where we sat in the dark, and heard a choir chant a service out of what looked like a gorgeous illumination.

"After tea Mrs. Gaskell and her cousins went out to walk about the place with the younger Quaker, when the subject of the supernatural was renewed, and he said that their attention had lately been called to it in a very singular manner. That a woman who was a native of the place had many years ago gone as a lady's-maid to London, leaving her lover, who was a carter, behind her. While in London, she forgot her carter and married some one else, but after some years her husband died, leaving her a large competence, and she came back to spend the rest of her life in her native village. There she renewed her acquaintance with the carter, to whom, after a fortnight's renewal of courtship, she was married. After they had been married a few weeks, she said she must go up to London to sell all the property she had there, and come down to settle finally in the country. She wished her husband to go with her, and urgently entreated him to do so; but he, like many countrymen in that part, had a horror of London, fancied it was the seat of all wickedness, and that those who went there never could come back safe: so the woman went alone, but she did not return. Some time after her husband heard that she had been found in the streets of London—dead.

"Mrs. Gaskell naturally expressed a wish to see the man and to hear the story from his own lips. The Quaker said that nothing could be easier, as he lived in a cottage close by; to which she went, together with five other persons. It was like a Cheshire cottage, with a window on each side of the door, and a little enclosure, half-court, half-garden, in front. It was six o'clock in broad summer daylight when they arrived. The door was locked and the Quaker went round to try the back entrance, leaving Mrs. Gaskell and her friends in the enclosure in front. They all, while there, distinctly saw a woman, of hard features, dressed in a common lilac print gown, come up to the latticed window close by them on the inside and look out. They then saw her pass on and appear again at the window on the other side of the door, after which she went away altogether.

To MY MOTHER.

"We went on by roads, which were never meant for a carriage, to a point whence Lady Barrington and I walked across the down to 'Wayland Smith's Cave,' a very small cromlech, in which Wayland could hardly have stood upright when he used it for a forge."

"Hendred House, April 15.—It is a proof how necessary it is for the writer of a Handbook to see himself all that he writes about, that I found East Hendred, of which I had heard nothing, to be one of the most romantic villages I ever saw—groups of ancient gable-ended houses, black and white or black and red, with turreted chimneys—a ruined moss-grown chapel dedicated to 'Jesus of Bethlehem'—a fine old grey church in a glen—and a beautiful Catholic chapel attached to this quaint old house, which contains a great Holbein of Sir Thomas More and his family, his cup, a portrait of Cardinal Pole, and the staff upon which Bishop Fisher leant upon the scaffold!"

"Chief of all its attractions was the lovely Miss Foster. When, however, Madame de Salis saw that any one especially was paying her sister attentions, she took an opportunity of alienating them, or, if there seemed to be anything really serious, she expressed to the individual her regret that she was unable to receive him any more. But at last there was an occasion on which Madame de Salis felt that more stringent action was called for. When a young Count Mastai, in the Guardia Nobile, not only felt, but showed the most unbounded devotion to Miss Foster, Madame de Salis did more than express to him her regret that untoward family circumstances prevented her having the pleasure of seeing him again; she let her villa at Bellosguardo, she packed up her things, and she took her sister with her to Rome.

"But in that terrible time, as in all seasons of great national suffering, there were instances of extraordinary devotion and heroism. There was one young bishop of a Neapolitan diocese, who was absent in Switzerland at the time, who came back like San Carlo Borromeo over the Alps, who sold his library for the poor, who sold his carriages, who sold at last even his episcopal ring, who walked day and night in the hospitals, and by whose personal devotion many lives were saved, while thousands were cheered and encouraged by his example. The consequence was, that when the famine and the pestilence in the Basilicata passed away, at an early age—at a much earlier age than is usual—that young bishop was made a cardinal.