as
possible, for only two weeks remain. The children are now pretty well.
The baby is at that dangerous age when they are forever getting upon
their feet and tumbling over backward on their heads. M. is the oddest
little soul. Belle says she would rather go to a funeral than see all
the shops in Paris, and, when they are out, she can hardly keep her from
following every such procession they meet. I asked her the last time
they went out if she had had a nice walk. She said not very nice, as she
had only seen _one_ pretty thing, and that was a police-officer taking a
man to jail. The idea of going to England is very pleasant, and, if we
only keep tolerably well, I think it will do us all good. What is dear
mother doing about these times? I always think of her as sitting by the
little work-table in her room, knitting and watching the children. Give
lots of love and kisses to her, and tell her we long to see her face to
face. Kiss all the children for us--I suppose they'll let _you_! boys
and all--and you may do as much for Mr. S. if you want to. Good-bye.

On the 7th of June the family left Paris for London. A first visit to
England--

That precious stone set in the silver sea--

is always an event full of interest to children of the New England
Puritans. The "sceptered isle" is still in a sense their mother-country,
and a thousand ancestral ties attract them to its shores. There is no
other spot on earth where so many lines of their history, domestic
and public, meet. And in London, what familiar memories are for them
associated with almost every old street and lane and building!

The winter and spring of 1860 had been cold, wet and cheerless well-nigh
beyond endurance; and the summer proved hardly less dreary. It rained
nearly every day, sometimes all day and all night; the sun came out only
at long intervals, and then often but for a moment; the atmosphere, much
of the time, was like lead; the moon and stars seemed to have left the
sky; even the English landscape, in spite of its matchless verdure and
beauty, put on a forbidding aspect. All nature, indeed, was under a
cloud. This, added to her frail health, made the summer a very trying
one to Mrs. Prentiss, and yet it afforded her not a little real delight.
Some of her pleasantest days in Europe were spent in England. The
following extracts are from a little journal kept by her in London:

_June 10th._--We went this morning to hear Dr. Hamilton, and were
grea