problems, on which I wish to say a word, though certainly to very little purpose. I read with interest the extract you sent me from one of your sermons, and liked the tone of it very much. It was extremely pleasant to hear that you were settled, for some time at least, in a parish, and to read the account of your housing and furnishing yourselves. We still dream from time to time of settling down in some cottage of our own, but I sometimes doubt whether the dream will ever be realized. We like our mountains too much to settle in the plains, and yet the region of our lakes and mountains is so visited by rains that it hardly seems wise to remain in it for the winter. From the first of May to the end of October is generally our time for the Lakes, and perhaps quite enough.

I read with unabated interest all accounts from your country. What a power has democracy put forth! I watch with as much anxiety for the issue of this tremendous conflict as when the war first broke out. It is in vain that Poland and Denmark cross my path and would carry off my attention. I never had any faith in Poland, and Denmark will do very well without the Duchies, or such part of them as are German and not Danish. But with you new nations are in the making, and perhaps forms of government are being decided on for centuries. I hope you do not personally suffer from the state of your currency. I suppose that where a nominal sum had been fixed for the support of a church at the time when payments were made in gold, there is always now an advance in the nominal sum to make up for the depreciation in the currency. Does it not seem at present that of the two objects of the war the abolition of slavery is the one most likely to be accomplished? . . . I was glad to hear that amongst the furniture of the new parsonage there was so good a piano. I envy you the privilege of sitting over your desk and hearing the sonatas of Beethoven. We, alas, often say that we have not a single accomplishment

between us. I think if we settled I would invest the price of a piano in a multitude of musical boxes, and by a temperate and judicious use of them, and changing them not too often, we might make them last a long time.

To Miss Mary Wrench.

NEWTON PLACE, October 6, 1864.

Ah, how harsh and common a nature that is— too common indeed - that chafes at any great love borne by any for any-husband, child, friend, dog. How seldom it is that an intense affection fails to raise up enmity against both lover and loved. But it is an ugly trait. We should be ready to lend ourselves to all genuine enthusiasm, to be glad any has the solace of unqualifiedly admiring where their hearts are fixed, and to believe in the good they see. But always it is an offence to uncultivated natures that any one should have an intense feeling, they for their part having none. Miss 's face took on a

quite wicked look in saying how much her lodgers made of the dog. Well, dear, I have run on long upon this, but I have been led in this direction of thought more particularly by the praises of a doting sister— for a moment there rose in my mind just that hideous antagonism which prompts the feeling that the one so praised is overrated. It is nothing but one's own vanity and self-love, which would fill creation if it might. Indeed, it did not last more than a moment before I saw what it was, but many encourage it under the idea that it is their sense of justice which is offended.

CHAPTER XXII.

ABROAD AND AT HOME.

(From the Memoir.)

THE winter of 1864-65 was outwardly more varied than was usual with us. It included a stay of two months at Llandudno, in North Wales, a short visit to Bath, where my husband had an old and intimate friend and correspondent, and several weeks at Brighton; and then, after a fortnight in London, we set out early in May for Switzerland, and saw Lucerne and enchanting Engelberg in their fresh beauty, and had pensions to ourselves. Our other happy resting-places were Grindelwald, Unterseen, Champéry, Bex, La Comballaz. One week too was given to Chamounix, for which William had an especial affection. His deepest impressions of sublimity had been received there twenty years before and renewed in 1862; his constant nature preferred revisiting it to exploring new scenes. Never shall I forget his lying on the ground on our return from the Chapeau one glorious August day, gazing long and silently, absorbed in wonder and worship, at what he had called "the sculpture of landscape," "the great hills built up, from their green base to their snowy summits, with rock, and glacier, and pine forests," -"leading beyond this earth." Then suddenly starting from his trance of rapture he said, "Now I don't want to see that again!" He had indeed seen it this last time in fullest perfection.

We spent five months in Switzerland. They were fraught with delight; and yet there were days - days of reaction after vivid enjoyment - when I could plainly see

that my husband missed the steady occupation, the studious routine, of our English summers. Had his life been prolonged, I do not think we should ever have become tourists again. During the ensuing years, remembering his own delight in Italy, and kindly anxious to give me every possible pleasure, he would often ask me whether I really wished very much to go there; because, if so, the effort would be made. But I had always a doubt as to such a journey being the best thing for him. I dared not wish it.

I will transcribe a few of the "Scraps of Verse from a Tourist's Note-book," which were written during our second Swiss summer, and published in the magazine :

The lightest, brightest cloud that floats

In the azure can but throw
Some kind of shadow, dark or faint,
On whatever lies below.

For me, thank God! although I lowly lie,
I lie where earth looks straightway to the sky;
On me, remote alike from king and clown,
No fellow-atom flings his shadow down.

No shadow? — none? — Think, look again !
An hour ago that huge and rocky hill
Stood bare, unsightly; all in vain
Did mid-day light each rent and chasm fill.
It waited for the cloud. The shadow came,
Rested or moved upon its brow

And, lo! it softens into beauty now —

Blooms like a flower. With us 't is much the same,

From man to man as the deep shadows roll,

Breaks forth the beauty of the human soul.

High rise the mountains, higher rise

The clouds; the mimic mountain still,
The cloud, the cloud, say what we will,
Keeps full possession of our skies.

Let cloud be cloud, my friend; we know the wind
Shapes and re-shapes, and floats the glory on;

Glory or gloom it floats, but leaves behind
The stable mountain, open to the sun.
Let cloud be cloud- unreal as the space
It traverses; earth can be earth, yet rise
Into the region of God's dwelling-place,

If light and love are what we call his skies.

The stream flows on, it wearies never,
Whilst I, who do but watch its flow,
I weary oft. 'Ah, not forever!

Soon other eyes'— I know, I know,
I too repeat my 'Not forever,'

And waking to that thought I start,
And find my weariness depart.

I pluck the flower, one moment to behold
Its treasury of purple and of gold;

The blossom, and a nest of buds around,
Ruthless I pluck, and fling them on the ground

Plucked because fair, then flung to death away !

I might have stooped and looked, and had a blameless joy.
Nature's great prodigality, you say

E'en for man's wantonness provides.

The stream to the tree - I shine, you shade,

And so the beauty of the world is made.

Our second Swiss tour, like our first, was succeeded by several months of exclusively tête-à-tête life at Westonsuper-Mare, and I was soon happily convinced that the spell of the desk had in no way been weakened by our wanderings. William wrote a long "Review of J. S. Mill's Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," confining himself chiefly to that "central position in which the great question is discussed of the nature and origin of our knowledge of the external world." To those who know his writings it is needless to indicate the side he took in the controversy. He "selected to be totally wrong" (according to Mr. Mill) "with Sir William