profession, though, of
course, she was greatly aided by her mental and physical gifts. I
suppose there may be women now capable of being actresses as great as
she was, but the audience to call forth their latent powers and ambition
seems, just at present, to be lacking.

Our social diversions at Rock Park were interrupted, at about this
period, by the whooping-cough, which seized upon all of us together,
and I well remember my father almost climbing up the wall of the room in
some of his paroxysms; but he treated it all as a joke, and was always
ready to laugh as soon as he got through coughing. It left no ill
effects except upon my mother, who had bronchial trouble which, as I
have intimated, finally led to the breaking-up of our household. She was
not made for England.

IX

Two New England consciences--Inexhaustible faith and energy--
Deep and abiding love of England--"How the Water Comes Down
at Lodore"--"He took an' he let go"--Naked mountains--The
unsentimental little quadruped--The human element in things
sticks--The coasts of England--A string of sleepy donkeys--
Unutterable boy-thoughts--Grins and chuckles like an ogress--
Hideous maternal parody--The adorable inverted bell-glass--
Strange things happen in the world--An ominous clouding of
the water--Something the world has never known--Overweening
security--An admonition not to climb too high--How vice may
become virtue by repetition--Corporal Blair's chest--Black-
Bottle Cardigan--Called to Lisbon.

Emerson, as a matter of principle, was rather averse from travel, though
he made the trip to England twice; but he fortified his theory by his
practice of searching out great men rather than historic or picturesque
places. Ruskin's Modern Painters had not been written when Emerson first
left home, and I doubt if he read it at any time. He found his mountain
scenery in Carlyle and his lakes and vales elsewhere among agreeable
people. My father's conscience worked in a different way; he thought
himself under obligations to see whatever in the way of towns, ruins,
cathedrals, and scenery was accounted worthy a foreigner's attention;
but I think he would have enjoyed seeing them much more had that
feeling of obligation not been imposed upon him. Set sights, as he
often remarked, wearied him, just because they were set; things that he
happened upon unpremeditatedly, especially if they were not des