own, and very perfect!  And such flowers enamel (it is a good simile in spite of Alphonse Karr!) the close fine grass!  The pale-yellow rock cistus in clumps, the blue “shepherd’s thyme” in tracts of colour, sweet little purple-capped orchids, spireas and burnets, and everywhere “the golden buttercup” in sheets of gleaming yellow, and the soft wind blows and blows, and the black-nosed sheep come up the leas, and I drink in the breeze!  Oh, those flocks of black-faced lambs and sheep are TOO-TOO! and I must tell you that the old Wiltshire “ship-dog” is nearly extinct.  I regret to say that he is not found equal to “the Scotch” in business habits, and one see Collies everywhere now....

London. June 29, 1882.

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I had a great treat last Sunday.  One you and I will share when you come home.  D., U., and I took Jack to church at the Chelsea Hospital, and we went round the Pensioners’ Rooms, kitchen, sick-wards, etc. afterwards, with old Sir Patrick Grant and Col.  Wadeson, V.C. (Govr. and Lieut.-Govr.), and a lot of other people.

It is an odd, perhaps a savage, mixture of emotions, to kneel at one’s prayers with some pride under fourteen French flags—­captured (including one of Napoleon’s while he was still Consul, with a red cap of Liberty as big as your hat!), and hard by the FIVE bare staves from which the FIVE standards taken at Blenheim have rotted to dust!—­and then to pass under the great Russian standard (twenty feet square, I should say!) that is festooned above the door of the big hall.  If Rule Britannia IS humbug—­and we are mere Philistine Braggarts—­why doesn’t Cook organize a tour to some German or other city, where we can sit under fourteen captured British Colours, and be disillusioned once for all!!!  Where is the Hospital whose walls are simply decorated like some Lord Mayor’s show with trophies taken from us and from every corner of the world? (You know Lady Grant was in the action at Chillianwallah and has the medal?) We saw two Waterloo men, and Jack was handed about from one old veteran to another like a toy.  “Grow up a brave man,” they said, over and over again.  But “The Officer,” as he called Colonel Wadeson, was his chief pride, he being in full uniform and cocked hat!!

And I must tell you—­in the sick ward I saw a young man, fair-curled, broad-chested, whose face seemed familiar.  He was with Captain Cleather at the Aldershot Gym., fell, and is “going home”—­slowly, and with every comfort and kindness about him, but of spinal paralysis.  It did seem hard lines!  He was at the Amesbury March Past, and we had a long chat about it.

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July 21, 1882.

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