nored and happy in being one of the humbler media through
which the good-will of a great and generous country reached the heart of
a far-off people not always in friendly relations with her.

I have named many of the friends who did everything to make our stay in
England and Scotland agreeable. The unforeseen shortening of my visit
must account for many disappointments to myself, and some, it may be, to
others.

First in the list of lost opportunities was that of making my bow to the
Queen. I had the honor of receiving a card with the invitation to meet
Her Majesty at a garden-party, but we were travelling when it was sent,
and it arrived too late.

I was very sorry not to meet Mr. Ruskin, to whom Mr. Norton had given me
a note of introduction. At the time when we were hoping to see him it
was thought that he was too ill to receive visitors, but he has since
written me that he regretted we did not carry out our intention. I
lamented my being too late to see once more two gentlemen from whom I
should have been sure of a kind welcome,--Lord Houghton and Dean
Stanley, both of whom I had met in Boston. Even if I had stayed out the
whole time I had intended to remain abroad, I should undoubtedly have
failed to see many persons and many places that I must always feel sorry
for having missed. But as it is, I will not try to count all that I
lost; let me rather be thankful that I met so many friends whom it was a
pleasure to know personally, and saw so much that it is a pleasure to
remember.

I find that many of the places I most wish to see are those associated
with the memory of some individual, generally one of the generations
more or less in advance of my own. One of the first places I should go
to, in a leisurely tour, would be Selborne. Gilbert White was not a
poet, neither was he a great systematic naturalist. But he used his eyes
on the world about him; he found occupation and happiness in his daily
walks, and won as large a measure of immortality within the confines of
his little village as he could have gained in exploring the sources of
the Nile. I should make a solemn pilgrimage to the little town of Eyam,
in Derbyshire, where the Reverend Mr. Mompesson, the hero of the plague
of 1665, and his wife, its heroine and its victim, lie buried. I should
like to follow the traces of Cowper at Olney and of Bunyan at Elstow. I
found an intense interest in the Reverend Mr. Alger's account of his
visit to the Vale of Llang