Story of My Life Part 20

and even A. gave one glance and faintly emitted the word 'pretty.'

The view from the bridge is glorious. A precipitous rock rises out of the flats, with the Lahn rus.h.i.+ng beneath, and all up one side the picturesque old black and white houses of the town, while growing out of the bare rock, its front almost on the precipice, like Durham, towers the magnificent cathedral, one of the oldest in Germany, abounding in all those depths and contrasts of colour which make the old German churches so picturesque--each window having its different moulding of blue, yellow, and red stone: and reflected in the clear water beneath. In the evening we walked to the neighbouring village of Dietz--a long rambling street of old houses, with the castle of Oranienstein overhanging them; and a wonderful ruined bridge, with the river das.h.i.+ng triumphantly through broken arches and over towers which have fallen into the stream."

"_Marbourg, July 6._--We came in the diligence from Limbourg with an emigrant family returning home from America, and words cannot describe their ecstasies as we drew near Weilbourg and they recognised every place as a scene of childhood. 'Oh, look! there is the school! there is the hedge under which we used to have our breakfast!' The n.o.ble old castle of Weilbourg, on a precipice above the grey bridge over the Lahn, is very striking. The German waiter at the inn asked with great gravity if we admired it more than 'the castled crag of Drachenfels.' The endless forest scenery afterwards was only varied by the huge castle of Braunfels, till a long avenue brought us into the town of Wetzlar, which has a great red sandstone and golden-lichened cathedral, with a grim and grand Norman door called the Heidenthurm. At Giessen we joined the railway for Marbourg, and the clock which is now striking nine A.M.

is that of St. Elizabeth![89]

"The Church of St. Elizabeth is almost out of the town; a rambling street of old timber houses reaches down to it, but its golden-grey spires have nothing between them and the dark forest. Inside, the grove of red sandstone pillars is quite unspoilt by images or altars: one beautiful figure of St. Elizabeth stands in a niche against a pillar of the nave, and that is all. In the transept is the 'heilige Mausoleum.' Its red steps are worn away by the pilgrims: the tomb is covered with faded gold and vermilion; on its canopy are remains of fresco-painting, and within is a beautiful sleeping figure of Elizabeth. All around are grey monuments of the Landgraves, her predecessors, standing upright against the walls.

The choir opens into the sacristy, where is the golden shrine of the saint. As we reached it, a pilgrim was just emerging, deeply solemnised by a _t?te-?-t?te_ with her bones. In her daughter's tomb the face is quite worn away by the hands of the pilgrims. The tomb of Conrad, her confessor, is there also. The sacristan unlocked a great chest to show us Bible tapestry worked by the hands of the saint. Some of the old pictures in the church portrayed the flight from the Wartburg, and St. Elizabeth was.h.i.+ng the feet of the lepers: all reminded me of the stories you used to read to me as a very little child out of the great book at the Rectory.

"We went from the grave of St. Elizabeth to her palace--the great castle of Marbourg, seen far and wide over the country and overhanging the town, with a vast view over the blue-green billows of Thuringian pine-forest. The castle is divided into two parts, and you may imagine its size on hearing that 276 soldiers are now quartered in one of them. A guide, who knew nothing of either Luther or St. Elizabeth, except that they were both 'ganz heilige,'

let us into the chapel where Luther preached, and the Ritter Saale, an old vaulted chamber where he met Zwingli and discussed Transubstantiation."

"_Erfurth, July 8._--It is a delightful walk to the Wartburg from Eisenach. A winding path through a fir-wood leads to an opening whence you look across a valley to a hill crowned with a worn gateway, something like one of the gates of Winchelsea. In the intervening hollow some stone steps lead to a dark gap in the wood, where is the fountain of St. Elizabeth under a grey archway with sculptured pillars and overgrown with ferns. The water here is excluded from the public as too holy for common use, but a little is let out for the people into a stone basin below. By the side is a stone seat, where it is said that Elizabeth used to wash herself.

"Again a narrow path edged with blue campanulas, and then the grey arch of the castle-gateway. You look down at the side, and half-way down the gorge you see a little plot of ground called 'Luther's Garden.'

"The Wartburg is much like an English farmhouse. If Priest's Hawse[90] was perched on the top of a mountain, it would resemble it. It has an irregular court, of which rugged rock is the pavement, surrounded with scattered buildings, some black and white, and some castellated. The latter, which have two rows of Norman arches and pillars and a kind of keep-tower at the end, were the palace of the Landgraves and Elizabeth. The whole was full of women and guides, geese, chickens, and dogs. We had some time to wait in a room, where we were refreshed with 'lemonade' made of raspberries, before we were shown over the castle--the most interesting points being the chapel with Luther's pulpit, and the room of his conflict with the devil, full of old pictures and furniture, but with nothing which can be relied upon as contemporary except his table and a stone which he used as a foot-stool. When he threw the inkstand at the devil, the ink made a tremendous splash upon the wall, but there is no trace of it now: the relic collectors have sc.r.a.ped the wall away down to the bare stones.

"At the last moment at Eisenach I could not resist rus.h.i.+ng out to sketch 'Conrad Cotta's House,' where you have so often described how Ursula Cotta first found the little Martin Luther singing hymns.

"The heat here at Erfurth is so great that I have been in a state of perpetual dissolution. It is a dull town with a great cathedral, and another church raised high above the market-place and approached by long flights of steps. The Waisenhaus is an orphan inst.i.tution occupying the Augustinian convent where Luther lived as a monk. All there is the same as in his time--the floors he used to sweep, the doors he had to open, and the courtyard filled with flowers and surrounded by wooden galleries. A pa.s.sage lined with pictures from the Dance of Death leads to the cells. Luther's cell is a tiny chamber with a window full of octagonal gla.s.s, and walls covered with texts: two sides were written by himself. The furniture is the same, and even the inkstand from which I had to write my name, while the woman who showed me the place mentioned that the pens were not the same, for Luther's pens were worn out long ago! There is a portrait by Cranach and writing of the three friends, Luther, Bugenhagen, and Melancthon.

"A. cannot speak a word of German, and never knows what to do on the simplest occasion, loses everything, is always late for the train, cannot pack his things up, will not learn the money, and has left every necessary of life at home and brought the most preposterous things with him."

"_Dresden, July 11._--We have seen a number of places on the way here. In the old cathedral of Naumbourg is a fine Cranach picture of St. Elizabeth, with the Wartbourg above her head and the Marbourg church at her feet. In the cathedral of Mersebourg is a most extraordinary picture of the Electoral family of Saxe-Mersebourg receiving the dead Christ and bearing him to the sepulchre. The family became extinct in 1738, and they all lie in the crypt under the church in the order in which they lived, in coffins covered with vermilion and gold, the little children in front and the grown people behind. Above, is the tomb of the Emperor Rudolph of Swabia, and in the sacristy they put into my hand a thing which I thought was a hand carved in oak, but found it was his own real hand, cut off in 1080!

"Dresden announces itself by four black-looking domes and towers above the flat horizon and then by the many arches of the long Elbe bridge. It is very like a little--a very little Paris; the same rows of tall white houses with green shutters: the same orange and lime trees filling the air with their sweetness: only the river is different, so gigantic and so bright. A broad flight of steps took us to the stately Bruhl terrace above the river--golden in the sunset. At the end an odd-looking building with a dome turned out to be a Jewish synagogue, and we went in. One old Jew _in_ his hat dropped in after another, till at last one of them put on a white muslin shawl, and going up to a desk where the altar should be, began bobbing his head up and down and quacking like a duck. Then another in a corner, standing with his face close to the wall, quacked also at intervals, and then all the rest chimed in, till it was exactly like a farmyard. But no words can say how ridiculous it eventually became, when they all burst out into choruses which sounded like 'Cack a lack-lack-lack. Oh Jeremiah! Jeremiah! Oh Noah's ark, Noah's ark! Cack a lack-lack-lack, lack, lack: loo, loo, loo.' All the little black Wellington boots stamping on the floor together, and all the long white beards bobbing up and down, and giving an audible thump on the table at every bob.... And not the least absurd part was that they seemed to think our presence a compliment, at least they all bowed when we went out."

"_Schona on Elbe, July 16._--We left Dresden by the steamer--the last view of the town very striking, with the broad flood of the Elbe sweeping through a line of palaces. At Pirna we left the boat, and a long walk through hot fields brought us to the entrance of the Ottowalder Gr?nd. A flight of steps leads into a chasm, with high rocks towering all round and the most brilliant and varied greens beneath. In one place the narrow path is crossed by a natural arch; then it winds up again through ma.s.ses of forest and deep rocky glens, till it emerges on the top of the Bastei.

"I was disappointed with the Bastei, which is like a scene on the Wye rather exaggerated. You look over a precipice of seven hundred feet, and see all around rocks equally high shooting straight up skywards in every conceivable and inconceivable form--pillars, pyramids, cones: and up all of them fir-trees cling and scramble, and bright tufts of bilberries hang where no human hand can ever gather their fruit. There are bridges between some of the rocks, and they support fragments of castles of the robbers who used to infest the Elbe, and, beyond the river, all the distant hills rise in columnar ma.s.ses of equal irregularity. After dining at the little inn, we walked on to K?nigstein, a fortress which has never been taken, large enough to hold the whole population of Dresden.

Here a tremendous thunderstorm rolled with grand effect around the mountain. There is a terrible parapet overhanging the precipice, where a page fell asleep, and was awakened by one of the Electors firing a pistol close to his ear to break him of the habit. A long path through bilberry thickets brought us to the station, and we took the train to Schandau, where we slept--very glad to go to bed at ten, having been on foot since 4 A.M.

"This morning we took a carriage for the first eight miles up the valley of the Raven's Crag, and walked on to the Kuhl-stuhl. In the very top of the hill the rock has made a huge natural arch, which leads to an otherwise inaccessible platform overhanging the valleys. The peasants drove their cattle here for protection in the Thirty Years' War, whence the name of Kuhl-stuhl, and hither the Bohemian Protestants fled for refuge. There is a natural slit in the rock, with a staircase to an upper platform, which was the refuge of the women, but only a _thin_ woman could reach this place of safety.

"Forest again, ever deeper and darker--and no human life but a few women gathering f.a.ggots with bare arms and legs, till we reached the Jagd-Haus on the promontory of the Lesser Winterberg, where Schiller's name is cut, with others, in the mossy stone. Forest and bilberries again to the hotel on the Greater Winterberg, where we dined on mountain _florellen_ and strawberries and cranberries.

Forest, ever the same, to the Prebischthor, a natural arch projecting over an abyss, splendid in light and shadow, and altogether the finest scene in the Saxon Switzerland ... then a descent to Schona. We found it easy to accomplish in a day and a half that for which Murray allots four days."

"_Prague, July 17._--All through the night we travelled in a railway carriage with twenty-two windows and eighty inmates. Dawn broke on a flat country near the Moldau. At last a line of white wall crowned a distant hill. Then, while an Austrian official was collecting pa.s.sports, railway and river alike made a turn, and a chain of towers, domes, and minarets appeared above the waving cornfields, one larger than the others--the citadel of Prague!

"What a poem the town is!--the old square of the Grosse Ring, where the beautiful delicately-sculptured Rathhaus and church look down upon a red marble fountain, ever surrounded by women with pitchers, in tall white caps: the streets of Bohemian palaces, with gigantic stone figures guarding the doors: the bridge, with statues of saints bending inwards from every pier, and the huge Hradschin palace on the hill beyond, with the cathedral in its midst: the gloomy precipice from which the Amazonian Queen Libessa hurled down her lovers one by one as she got tired of them: the glorious view from the terrace of the Hradschin, recalling pictures of the view from the Pincio at Rome: the wonderful tombs of the Bohemian kings, and the silver chandeliers and red lights before the shrine of St.

John Nepomuck in the cathedral."

"_July 18._--On Sunday afternoon we were at the Jewish synagogue, the oldest building here--older than Prague itself, and now only used on the Day of Atonement and other great occasions. It is quite in the midst of the Jews' quarter, which is entirely given up to them, and inside it is black with age, its gothic pillars looming out of a coating of soot and smoke, never allowed to be cleared away. The centre was spread with draperies of cloth of gold and silver. On the platform within them was the chief Rabbi, a venerable man with a white beard which swept over his brown robe as far as his waist. 'He is wonderfully learned,' whispered my neighbour to me. 'He understands every language in the whole world, and as for English he speaks it as well as an Englishman.' At last there was a bustle in the crowd, and a young woman made her way through, enveloped in a very curious ancient hood of worked gold, and several very smart ladies crowded up after her: we followed.

Then the priest shouted in Hebrew so that the little building rang again, and the Rabbi took a little silver cup of oil and--I think--anointed the lady, and a service followed in which all the people responded electrically as if a bell were struck; but it was not till we came out that I found the lady in the golden hood had been--married.

"We went afterwards to the Jewish burial-ground--a wide rambling expanse in the heart of the town, literally crammed with tombstones, falling one over the other, and, between them, old gnarled elder-trees growing fantastically. The cemetery has been twice emptied!--and filled again. On one of the graves a young Jewess was lying, evidently very ill. 'You see,' said the old woman who let us into the cemetery, 'that the Rabbi who is buried there was so good when he was alive, that when all the other people were rooted up, they left him and his wife alone; and his good works live on so much, that sick persons are often brought here to lie upon his grave, in the hope of their being cured.'

"One of a knot of palaces in the Kleinsite was Wallenstein's. Here, one room is hung with artificial stalact.i.tes: in another are portraits of Wallenstein and his second wife, and the charger which was shot under him at L?tzen, stuffed--but only the body remains of the original horse, the head and legs have been eaten up by moths and renewed! The garden is charming, with an aviary of peac.o.c.ks.

"A. has been twice threatened with arrest for persisting in wearing a wide-awake in the streets, for at present it is a revolutionary emblem! At first he insisted on putting it on again, but the second attack has been too much for his fort.i.tude. Just now I was roused by his shrieks, and reached his room just in time to see a large black sheep emerge from under his bed!--it had walked in from the market by the open galleries and had taken refuge there."

"_Bamberg, July 23._--We came here by Dresden and Saxe-Altenberg, with its charming old castle. Near Hof the engine burst, doing us no harm, but keeping us for hours sitting on the gra.s.sy railway bank till another engine arrived, so that we did not get here till 3 A.M. The cathedral is glorious. Only imagine my having found Baron and Baroness von Usedom in the hotel, and the next morning Lady Malcolm and her two daughters arrived--most kind, most amusing--and Madame von Usedom most extraordinary. She received me with 'You're wonderfully like your sister, and she is very beautiful,' so that's a compliment!"

"_July 28._--We have had another vision of loveliness at Nuremberg.

One became quite weary of saying, 'Oh! how beautiful! how beautiful!' But no letter can give an idea of what Nuremberg is--'The German Venice' Madame d'Usedom called it. And Albert D?rer is a part of the place: whenever I see his woodcuts again at the Rectory, they will bring back the town to me--where his house is, and his pictures, his statue, and most of all his grave, in a cemetery full of hollyhocks and lilies."

We came home by Augsburg, Ulm, and Heidelberg, and then through France _via_ Chalons and Rheims. In thinking of present expenses (1895), I often marvel at the cheapness of the long tour we had made. We had seen the greater part of Germany and much of France, had travelled for six weeks, and travelled in comfort, and, including journeys to and from the coast of England, we _could_ each have spent only ?25, for we had no more to spend. I joined my mother at Ashburton Vicarage, near Dartmoor, whence we saw "Wistman's Wood"--that wonderful stunted grove of immemorial oak-trees in the midst of the moors. On our way home we went to stay with Miss Boyle[91] at Portishead. It was my mother's first sight of her, and she was much struck by that extraordinary person, for whom at that time I had an almost pa.s.sionate devotion, and who had unfortunately just become notorious through her appearance--being subp?naed on the wrong side--at the trial of the false Sir Hugh Smith, the claimant of Ashton Court. This trial created a tremendous excitement at the time, and the decision was nearly given in favour of the claimant. His wife, a daughter of De Wint the artist, had already ordered the carriage in which she was to make a triumphal entry, when the cause suddenly collapsed through the evidence of a jeweller who had been employed to forge a brooch upon which much of importance depended.

The Bishop of St. David's, Thirlwall, was staying at the Rectory when I was at home. Excellent as he was, I was horribly afraid of him, for a more repellent, freezing manner than his I never saw. I hated the Rectory now more than ever, but was more than ever devoted to Lime. What a vision I have now of its quietude in those hot summer days, only the wind whispering in the old abele-trees and rippling the waves upon the pool, and of the fresh morning smell of the pinks and roses and syringa, bowed down by the heavy dew. Our intensely quiet life would have suited few young men, but when my dear mother was well, and the Rectory not too aggressive, I was always happy. Each day was a routine. Called by our fat John at seven, when Fausty's black nose was poked in my face, I woke to see the sun s.h.i.+ning on the little pictures on the wall and the old-fas.h.i.+oned china ornaments, and to hear Joe Cornford whetting his scythe on the lawn under the windows. I was downstairs before my mother appeared in her lilac dress to breakfast and prayers. Then we walked on the terrace. I read--first aloud to her, then to myself--then went with her round the field and to the girls' school. At one was dinner; at half-past two we drove out--Fausty with us. Then my mother lay on the sofa and I read: then came our tea-supper, and I read aloud again, and mother sang such old songs as "Hohenlinden," "Lord Ullin's Daughter,"

"Auld Robin Gray," or the Russian "Pojalite." Then, after prayers, I helped her upstairs, and, at her little round table, she would say a little short prayer with or for me out of her own heart, and I came down to write till the melancholy sound of the mice in the wainscot drove me to bed also. On my return to Oxford in October, I published in "The Penny Post" my first story--"The Good Landgravine," about Elizabeth of Thuringia--quite as important to me then as the publication of one of my large books is now--and I obtained ten s.h.i.+llings for it with great pride! I had much pleasure in a visit from Arthur Stanley this term, and Mr. Jowett--"the great Balliol tutor"--continued his kindness and his voluntary lessons to me, though I must often sorely have tried his patience. I was, no doubt, a terrible little prig, and I have just found, amongst old letters, a very kind one from him, written in the vacation, urging me to make an effort to conquer "my conceit, which was not vanity, but a constant restlessness about myself."[92] Jowett was--tiresome perhaps, in some ways, but--one of the most unselfish persons I have ever known. By his own life, as in his sermons, he constantly inculcated disinterestedness, sympathy, and the love of G.o.d.

The Christian doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, &c., he utterly ignored, out of the pulpit as in it, and I believe Arthur Stanley quite agreed with him in his heart, though he had not quite "the courage of his opinions."

"Reading men" used to congratulate me upon my intimacy with Jowett, little knowing of how admonitory a nature were all his conversations with me. Amongst the freshmen of the term were two with whom I became great friends afterwards. One was Frederick Forsyth Grant,[93] whom we always called "Kyrie," because when he went to spend the long vacation at Athens (of all places in the world), he was called from his generosity "Kyrie Dora"--the lord of gifts. The other was a peculiarly boyish-looking fellow, with a remarkably lithe, graceful figure, and a little Skye-terrier to which he was devoted. I remember the shy longing I had to make friends with him, and my first visit after dinner--finding him drinking coffee with his little dog by his side: it was George Sheffield, my constant friend afterwards for very many years.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_University College, Nov. 18, 1853._--This morning I was asked to breakfast with the Master, whose courteous placidity is such that he looks as if turmoil, contradiction, and reform could never approach him. He received us kindly but very solemnly, with an old Miss Plumptre in a rich satin gown by his side. There was an awful pause at first, while we stood in a row, and the Master and his sister addressed an observation in turn to each of us, never going out of the regular line. At breakfast I thought they talked pleasantly, though the others p.r.o.nounced it '_very_ flat.' When he considered we had stayed long enough, the Master[94] pulled out his watch and said, holding it in his hand, 'Good-bye, Mr. Gregson,'

when Mr. Gregson felt he must get up and walk out, and we all followed. The Masters of colleges are really almost nonent.i.ties, but have an absurd idea of their own dignity. The Provost of Oriel the other day wrote--'The Provost of Oriel[95] presents his compliments to the Dean of Christ Church,[96] and wishes to know what time the examination will be;' and in answer was snubbed by 'Alexander the Great presents his compliments to Alexander the Coppersmith, and informs him that he knows nothing about it.'

"I breakfasted the other day at Wadham with a most extraordinary man called R., whose arms and legs all straggle away from his body, and who holds up his hands like a kangaroo. His oddities are a great amus.e.m.e.nt to his friends, who nevertheless esteem him. One day a man said to him, 'How do you do, R.?' and he answered, 'Quite well, thank you.' Imagine the man's astonishment at receiving next day a note--'Dear Sir, I am sorry to tell you that I have been acting a deceptive part. When I told you yesterday that I was quite well, I had really a headache: this has been upon my conscience ever since.' The man was extremely amused, and showed the letter to a friend, who, knowing R.'s frailties, said to him, 'Oh R., how could you act so wrongly as to call Mr. Burton "Dear Sir"--thereby giving him the impression that you liked him, when you know that you dislike him extremely?' So poor R. was sadly distressed, and a few days later Mr. Burton received the following:--'Burton, I am sorry to trouble you again, but I have been shown that, under the mask of friends.h.i.+p, I have been for the second time deceiving you: by calling you dear sir, I may have led you to suppose I liked you, which I never did, and never can do. I am, Burton, yours &c.!'"

The winter of 1853 was a very sad one. I found my dearest mother very feeble and tottering, and it was a constant grief to me to see the patient, worn look of illness in her forehead as she leant back in her chair. She would occupy herself, however, as usual in cutting out clothes for the poor, saying that her own sufferings from the cold forbade her not trying to prevent theirs. I scarcely ever ventured to leave her for a moment as long as we stayed at home, always inventing an excuse to walk behind her whenever she went upstairs, for fear she should suddenly fall. On the 20th of December, the Stanleys being absent at Canterbury, we went up to their empty house in Grosvenor Crescent.

Here the winter was much preferable to that at Lime, and on the whole my mother suffered less; but my life was that of a constant sicknurse, scarcely ever away from her. When I was, I generally went in the dusk to the National Gallery--too late to see the pictures, but I liked to wander about in the almost empty rooms, and to feel that they were there, and knowing no one in London myself, to make imaginary histories about the one or two figures which still lingered, finding the same odd refuge as myself from the turmoil of the town. In reading my journal of this winter, I can recall the days of intense anguish I went through, seeing before me, as I thought, the realisation of Dr. Chapman's verdict that softening of the brain had definitely set in for my dearest mother.

As the year closed in gloom, I looked forward with terror to what the next would bring, to the probability of not having another year to _surround_ her with my love, to ward off every sorrow. Whilst conscious that my character had certainly expanded under the happier life I had been leading at Oxford, and that the interests of my friends there had become as near my heart as my own, I realised that all I could be and do for my own mother was no mere duty, it was the outpouring of my whole soul; for I did not entertain an angel _unawares_. At the New Year my mother's attacks increased; often she was unable to see and became almost unconscious. Yet by the 21st of January she had rallied so much that I was able to return in tolerable comfort to Oxford.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_University College, Jan. 22, 1854._--My dearest mother will often have thought of her child in his college home: and _how_ often have I thought of my own mother, and longed to be by her to watch and take care of her still. I feel the blank on the staircase, now my hand has nothing to do in helping you. It is a comfort that you have plenty of nurses to take care of you; but the great comfort of all is that you now no longer _want_ me.

"I have new rooms now in the 'New Buildings.' They are not very large, but the sitting-room has the charm of a beautiful oriel window overhanging the High Street, with a cus.h.i.+oned seat all round and a small writing-table in the middle: and the view is delightful."

I think it was during the Easter vacation of this year that a day of national humiliation was appointed on the outbreak of the Crimean War.

Severely indeed was the fast-day observed at Hurstmonceaux. At Lime we had nothing to eat but bread, and for dinner some boiled sea-kale, a vegetable which I have ever since a.s.sociated with that time; and I have a vivid remembrance of the serio-comic face of our butler, John Gidman, when we were ushered into the dining-room, with the table laid out as usual, and, when the covers were taken off, only that amount of food was displayed. In theory Aunt Esther was always urging the duty not only of a saintly, but of an ascetic life, and it was not her fault that the only cell where she could herself carry out in practice her austere views was an orange-scented library lined with rare folios or precious works of art.

This, the second year of my Oxford life, was very enjoyable. Not intending to read for honours, for which I had no ambition (as my mother, unlike many parents, would have had no pleasure whatever in my obtaining them, but, on the contrary, would have regarded them as a most undesirable "snare"), I had plenty of time for other things, and pursued those studies of French, Italian, History, and Arch?ology which have been far more really useful to me than any amount of Latin and Greek. My devotion to George Sheffield showed itself, amongst other ways, in writing a story every week, which was presented to him on Sunday. Many of these stories, though I forget them, must, I now believe, have been rather interesting. Lady Sheffield used to keep them, and, as they all referred to things and people long past, George and I used to make schemes of publis.h.i.+ng them some day in a black cover adorned with a white skull and cross-bones, under the t.i.tle of "Dead Dust,"--an idea which, I am thankful to say, was never carried out. With Troutbeck and Duckworth I used to attend and make copious notes of the lectures of Professor Philips on Geology, which sometimes a.s.sumed a peripatetic form.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Oxford, June 9, 1854._--At half-past ten yesterday, Troutbeck, Duckworth, Bowden, and I, met the Professor and twenty-eight fellow-geologists at the station. The Professor was dressed in a queer old brown suit, and we were all armed with hammers, and baskets to carry provisions and bring back fossils. We took the train to Handbro', on the outskirts of Blenheim Park, and no sooner arrived there than the Professor, followed by his whole lecture, rushed up the railway bank, where he delivered a thrilling discourse on _terrebratul?_, which are found in that place, and for which we all grubbed successfully immediately afterwards. And in that extraordinary manner we perambulated the country all day--getting on a few yards, and then stopping to hear a lecture on some stone the Professor had spied in the hedge, or which one of the party had picked up in the road. Greatly did we astonish the villages we pa.s.sed through. 'What _be's_ you all come professionising about, zur?' said one old man to me. We had luncheon in the remains of a Roman villa with mosaics."