“’Tis the voice of the Bull-doge, I hear him complain,
    ‘You have fed me but lately:  I must grub again.’ 
    As a pauper for pudding—­so he for his meat—­
    Gapes his jaws, and there’s nothing a Bull-doge can’t eat.”

We sing these little songs together—­and then I let him look in the glass, when he gowly powls and barks dreadfully at the rival doge....

TO H.K.F.G.

May 18, 1868.

...  I am awfully busy with my garden, and people are very kind in giving me things.  To-morrow we go to the Rowans, and I am to ransack his garden!  I do think the exchange of herbaceous perennials is one of the joys of life.  You can hardly think how delicious it feels to garden after six months of frost and snow.  Imagine my feelings when Mrs. Medley found a bed of seedling bee larkspurs in her garden, and gave me at least two dozen!!!  I have got a whole row of them along a border, next to which I think I shall have mignonette and scarlet geraniums alternately.  It is rather odd after writing Reka Dom, that I should fall heir to a garden in which almost the only “fixture” is a south border of lilies of the valley!...

TO MISS E. LLOYD.

Fredericton, N.B. June 2, 1868.

MY DEAREST ELEANOR—­

* * * * *

I can hardly tell you what a pleasure it is to me to have a garden.  The place has never felt so like a home before!  I went into my little flower garden (a separate plat from the other—­fenced round, and simply composed of two round beds, and four wooden-edged borders and one elm tree) [sketch] early this morning, and it seemed so jolly after the long winter.  My jonquils are just coming out, and one or two other things.  In the elm tree two bright yellow birds were cheeping.  I mean to plant scarlet-runners to attract the humming birds.  It is something to see fireflies and humming birds in the flesh, one must admit!

* * * * *

I cannot echo your severe remarks on the Queen, though I am quite willing to second your praise of the Prince Consort.  Her Most Gracious Majesty is—­excuse me—­a subject I feel rather strongly about.  We are not—­as an age—­guilty of much weakness in the way of over loyalty to anything or any person, and I cannot help at times thinking that it must be a painful enough reflection to a woman like Queen Victoria, who at any rate is as well read in the history and constitution of England as most of us, to know what harvests of love and loyalty have been reaped by Princes who lived for themselves and not for their people, who were fortunate in the accidents of more power and less conscience, and of living in times when you couldn’t get your sovereign’s portrait for a penny, or suggest