r the fishermen--so
here--the church is even more picturesque--and certain old Norman
ornaments, capitals of pillars and the like, which we left erect in the
doorway, are at this moment in a heap of rubbish by the road-side. The
people here are good, stupid and dirty, without a touch of the sense of
picturesqueness in their clodpolls. . . .'

The little record continues through 1866.

Feb. 19, '66.

'. . . I go out a great deal; but have enjoyed nothing so much as a
dinner last week with Tennyson, who, with his wife and one son, is
staying in town for a few weeks,--and she is just what she was and
always will be--very sweet and dear: he seems to me better than ever. I
met him at a large party on Saturday--also Carlyle, whom I never met at
a "drum" before. . . . Pen is drawing our owl--a bird that is the light
of our house, for his tameness and engaging ways. . . .'

May 19, '66.

'. . . My father has been unwell,--he is better and will go into
the country the moment the east winds allow,--for in Paris,--as
here,--there is a razor wrapped up in the flannel of sunshine. I hope to
hear presently from my sister, and will tell you if a letter comes: he
is eighty-five, almost,--you see! otherwise his wonderful constitution
would keep me from inordinate apprehension. His mind is absolutely as
I always remember it,--and the other day when I wanted some information
about a point of mediaeval history, he wrote a regular bookful of notes
and extracts thereabout. . . .'

June 20, '66.

'My dearest Isa, I was telegraphed for to Paris last week, and arrived
time enough to pass twenty-four hours more with my father: he died on
the 14th--quite exhausted by internal haemorrhage, which would have
overcome a man of thirty. He retained all his faculties to the last--was
utterly indifferent to death,--asking with surprise what it was we were
affected about since he was perfectly happy?--and kept his own strange
sweetness of soul to the end--nearly his last words to me, as I was
fanning him, were "I am so afraid that I fatigue you, dear!" this, while
his sufferings were great; for the strength of his constitution seemed
impossible to be subdued. He wanted three weeks exactly to complete his
eighty-fifth year. So passed away this good, unworldly, kind-hearted,
religious man, whose powers natural and acquired would so easily have
made him a notable man, had he known what vanity or ambition or the
love of money or social in