- it Perhaps even bold tone which the man of science now takes on topics where science and the Old Testament are thought to be at variance. I know that this will not distress you ought not to distress any intelligent man. you will not be in the least surprised by it. Only one who knows England-who knows the stolid, unenthusiastic, but dogged prejudice of our well-dressed churchınen and churchwomen, would be aware that there is any courage requisite to say what Hooker has said. Read some of the reports of our Convocation, especially those of the Lower House read them in their eternal battle with Colenso - and you will understand where English churchmen are in their course of development. say it. I have nothing to say of myself, or I would willingly I am not idle, in one sense I do the best I can by reading and thinking to get some idea of things in general-physiology and other 'ologies I strive to get some hold of — but in the way of writing I do nothing, nor feel that I am capable of doing anything. The brain works, but to no apparent result. You do as well as think, and therefore lead a far more perfect life. May it last long, in its cheerful and wise activity. To Miss Mary Wrench. Oct. 19, 1868. [Anxious about her husband's health.] My fragile only one! Oh, it is a very fearful thing to have an only one! Happy are wives who are mothers! Oct. 1868. Oh, the solemn, the sad, the suffering days that must come! I was saying to MA—that I sometimes feared that these, which are all praise or pleasure, might unfit me for them; and she said in her gentle, wise way: It is the tree that has stood in richest soil and brightest sunshine that best bears the frost." God give me now the gift of thankfulness! 66 CHAPTER XXV. BESIDE THE SEA. THE little book made up in later years by Mrs. Willett, "Lines by L. C. S.," contains these verses, dated "Feb. 24, 1869, Brighton." In the noble band of workers Seems no place for such as I; They have faith where I have yearning, Lofty purpose, high endeavour, And I, too, in God's creation, Just to fling a ray of comfort O'er life's downcast, dreary ways! Just to fan a better impulse By a full and ready praise; (From the Memoir.) We had debated with ourselves whether to spend the following summer in Derbyshire or Cornwall; but I had a longing to see the Atlantic break on the Bude shore, having read of the waves rising there to an unusual height; and my husband, to whose more occupied mind. place was less important, allowed my preference to prevail. It was a long journey to take to a spot quite unknown to us, where, of course, we should not have a single acquaintance. I think I never set out in a greater ferment of delight than on that bright April day! But Bude is a place that has its wrong side, "a bare, sandy common, and an ugly canal;" and my husband's first impression of it, given in a letter to a dear niece, was "that a more dreary region could not be discovered in all England," and that, "had he fallen upon it alone, he should have been off like a shot the next morning." However, a little accident that befell me immediately on my arrival (the falling of a sashless window on my hands) so distressed him as to "make it impossible to growl at the place," and its own peculiar charm soon asserted itself. Later on he writes to the same niece: "These ground-swells of the Atlantic will spoil me for any other seas. On the coast of Sussex and Kent I have seen grand seas, but I was blinded or blown away in the attempt to look at them, and the waves were generally dark and turbid. On this coast I have seen waves as lustrous and clear as the waters of the Lake of Geneva rising in all the grand forms of a storm." Our small abode at Bude was not so quiet as we could have wished, but William at once set about writing on a subject that had long been occupying his mind: "Knowing and Feeling." The illusion that, as I take up one pocket-book after another, makes the year therein recorded seem of all our years the best, comes over me strongly as I dwell on our Bude life. The bold cliffs, where always there was a renovating breeze, short flowerfilled turf for our feet, and a glorious semicircle of sea below us, where, as we stood or sat near the edge, great gulls would come soaring up from the shore, not seeing us till close by, then calmly slant off their wide wings foam-white in the sunshine; or whence we watched the ravens that had their nests in the rocks below tumble fantastically in the air, how these things delighted him! The peaceful days were all made up of thinking, writing, and of four short rambles on common or shore. He took no long walks, felt no inclination for them; but we heard that the air of the place often disposed to lassitude, and our landlady struck at first, as indeed strangers usually were, with his look of fragility. told me that she and her neighbors noticed a marked improvement as the weeks went on. The summer brought us a dear young niece; and General and Mrs. Cotton, whose presence in Borrowdale had been a delight the previous summer, now spent three weeks at Bude. William, very busily engaged with his own thoughts and pen, only joined in one excursion that to Tintagel. In a letter to his niece Clara he says:— "I was very glad that I went. It was a kind of scenery somewhat novel to me. At Tintagel you stand on a rock - 500 feet above the level of the sea-which juts out, and enables you to command a magnificent view of both sides of this beautiful coast. What makes the chief charm of the view are the grand, isolated rocks that rise at some little distance from the shore out of the blue sea. These assume various shapes, and all beautiful. But perhaps the greatest novelty at Tintagel was the caves. one of these the greenest of ferns had grown over the roof in the most delectable way, and the color of the rocks was to me quite surprising - all the colors of the richest marbles dark red, green, yellow, but a sort of dull, deep purple being the prevailing tint. In another cave it was 66 In not the colors one admired, but the admirable proportions, the lofty roof, the form of the whole. In this second cave we saw a spectacle I shall never forget. The cave led through to the ocean. It was the calmest and brightest of days, but there was a ground swell, and the magnificence of the waves as they filled for a moment the whole entrance to the cave, then dashed up the spray to the roof, was something to remember forever." From the 10th of September to the 5th of January we were quite alone, and the little desk was soon permanently installed in the joint sitting-room. As usual, I have no outward events to record. A wonderfully high tide had been predicted for the 6th of October, such as would lay half Bude partially under water; but there was no wind that night, and we watched the calm sea flow in the village lights reflected in its perfect stillness-flow in and turn, having spread no further than at the September spring-tides. I confess I was disappointed; but William, who never had any craving for the abnormal, was heartily glad that the low-lying houses should escape the anticipated discomfort. One day we saw the rocket apparatus used, but only in the way of practice. This was a novel sight to both, and a great interest. The sunsets grew finer as autumn advanced, and we invariably went out to watch them. Even in December we could sit in the shel ter of the rocks without any fear of chill. The morning and evening hours were occupied by the projected treatise on Psychology; I used sometimes to doubt whether the critic would ever let the author finish it! But however intent my husband might be on this or other abstruse subjects, he was never rendered absent-minded, never so much as let the fire go out while he was writing, and the moment the pen was laid down the brow was all smoothness, the eye all light, and he as ready to listen to any trifle his companion might have to impart as to share his own trains of thought with her. He had indeed a rare |