two kind and
accomplished Russian ladies, who took to him warmly, and of their
children. The following record of the time is drawn from his
correspondence partly with his parents and partly with myself, but
chiefly from the journal-letters, containing a full and intimate record
of his daily moods and doings, which he was accustomed to send off
weekly or oftener to Mrs. Sitwell.

TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

This is from his cousin's house in Suffolk. Some of the impressions
then received of the contrasts between Scotland and England were
later worked out in the essay _The Foreigner at Home_, printed at the
head of _Memories and Portraits_:--

_Cockfield Rectory, Sudbury, Suffolk, Tuesday, July 28, 1873._

MY DEAR MOTHER,--I am too happy to be much of a correspondent. Yesterday
we were away to Melford and Lavenham, both exceptionally placid,
beautiful old English towns. Melford scattered all round a big green,
with an Elizabethan Hall and Park, great screens of trees that seem
twice as high as trees should seem, and everything else like what ought
to be in a novel, and what one never expects to see in reality, made me
cry out how good we were to live in Scotland, for the many hundredth
time. I cannot get over my astonishment--indeed, it increases every
day--at the hopeless gulf that there is between England and Scotland,
and English and Scotch. Nothing is the same; and I feel as strange and
outlandish here as I do in France or Germany. Everything by the
wayside, in the houses, or about the people, strikes me with an
unexpected unfamiliarity: I walk among surprises, for just where you
think you have them, something wrong turns up.

I got a little Law read yesterday, and some German this morning, but on
the whole there are too many amusements going for much work; as for
correspondence, I have neither heart nor time for it to-day.

R. L. S.

TO MRS. SITWELL

After leaving Cockfield Stevenson spent a few days in London and a
few with me in a cottage I then had at Norwood. This and the
following letters were written in the next days after his return
home. "Bob" in the last paragraph is Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson,
an elder cousin to whom Louis had been from boyhood devotedly
attached: afterwards known as the brilliant painter-critic and author
of _Velasquez_, etc.

_17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh, Monday, September 1st, 1873._

I have arrived, as you see, w