imitate—­beautiful Scriptural scenes that sent me to the Bible with a critical interest to see if the designs were in harmony with its spirit.  Then too I used to spend happy hours exploring garden, field and forest, for Oaklands embraced a wide area, making acquaintance with the gentle Alderneys, and Jerseys, who brought us so generously their daily offering, as well as the many other meek, dumb creatures whom I was getting to care for with a quite human interest.  The seashore too had its constantly renewed fascinations which drew me there, to watch its tireless ebb and flow, or the busy craft disappearing out of sight towards their many havens around the earth.  Stories I had for the seashore, and others for the woodland and gardens which I carried on in long chapters, day after day, until sorrowfully I came to the end, as we must always do to everything in this world.

My heroes and heroines were all singularly busy people, carrying on their loves and intrigues amid restless activities, and living in the main to help others in the way of life rather than, like myself, living to themselves alone.  Altogether I did not find a moment of my sixteen hours of working life each day any too long, and opened my eyes on each morning’s light as if it were a fresh creation.

Then, in addition to all these, there were solemn, stately tea drinkings among the upper ten of Cavendish society, but usually I found them a task—­the music was poor, the conversation almost wholly confined to local affairs, and the only refection of a first-class nature was the food provided.  Cavendish ladies were notable housewives, and could converse eloquently on pickling, preserving, baking and the many details of domestic economy, while as regarded the fashions, I verily believe they could have enlightened Worth himself on some important particulars.  I used to feel sadly out of place, and sat very often silent and constrained, thinking of my dearer, and more satisfying companionships of books, and sea, and flowers, and the fair face of nature generally, and wondering if I could ever get, like them, absorbed in such humble things, getting for instance my pickles nicely greened, and of a proper degree of crispness, and my preserves, and jellies prepared with equal perfection for diseased and fastidious palates.  “Why can’t they talk of their minds, and the food these must relish, and assimilate, instead of all the time being devoted to the body; how it must be fed and clothed?” I asked, with perhaps too evident contempt, of Mrs. Flaxman, one evening as we drove home under the midnight stars, after one of these entertainments.

“My child, it is natural that people should talk on subjects that most interest them.  Not every one has vision clear enough to penetrate beyond the tangible and visible.”

“Then, in what are the Cavendish aristocracy better than Mrs. Blake, and that class?  Even she talks sometimes to me about God and the soul.  She says she and Daniel think a great deal about these of late.”