within a morning’s drive, was (which she cared less for) lovely in every direction.  Mrs. Whitelock betook herself to a really rural life in a cottage in the beautiful neighborhood of Addlestone, in Surrey, where she lived in much simple content, bequeathing her small mansion and estate, at her death, to my mother, who passed there the last two years of her life and died there.  I never returned to Heath Farm again; sometimes, as I steam by Watford, the image of the time I spent there rises again before me, but I pass from it at forty miles an hour, and it passed from me upwards of forty years ago.

We were now occupying the last of the various houses which for a series of years we inhabited at Bayswater; it belonged to a French Jew diamond seller, and was arranged and fitted up with the peculiar tastefulness which seems innate across the Channel, and inimitable even on the English side of it.  There was one peculiarity in the drawing-room of this house which I have always particularly liked:  a low chimney with a window over it, the shutter to which was a sliding panel of looking-glass, so that both by day and candle light the effect was equally pretty.

At this time I was promoted to the dignity of a bedroom “to myself,” which I was able to make into a small study, the privacy of which I enjoyed immensely, as well as the window opening above our suburban bit of garden, and the sloping meadows beyond it.  The following letters, written at this time to my friend Miss S——­, describe the interests and occupations of my life.  It was in the May of 1827.  I was between sixteen and seventeen, which will naturally account for the characteristics of these epistles.

         &nb
sp;                                       BAYSWATER, May, 1827. 
     DEAR H——­: 

I fear you will think me forgetful and unkind in not having answered your last letter; but if you do, you are mistaken—­nor ungrateful, which my silence, after the kind interest you have taken in me and mine, seems to be.  But when I tell you that besides the many things that have occupied my mind connected with the present situation of our affairs, my hands have been full of work nearly as dismal as my thoughts—­mourning—­you will easily understand and excuse the delay.

Do not be alarmed; the person for whom we are in black has been so little known to me since my childhood, was so old and infirm, and so entirely cheerful, resigned, and even desirous of leaving this world, that few, even of those who knew and loved him better than I did, could, without selfishness, lament his release.  Mr. Twiss, the father of my cousin Horace, is dead lately; and it is of him that I speak.  He has unfortunately left three daughters, who, though doing well for themselves in the world, will now feel a sad void in the circle of their home affections and interests.

     And now, dear H——­, for myself, or ourselves, rather; for, as you
     may well suppose, my whole thoughts are taken up with our
     circumstances.