may say, as the saint of our family; and
Aylstone Hill, Hereford, where he lived with his unmarried sister
Emelia, (a lady who in common sense and humour strongly resembled her
brother Henry), was a place of pilgrimage to which my father frequently
resorted, and where we all found a model of domestic happiness.

The youngest sister, Caroline, married the Rev. Ellis Batten, a master
at Harrow School. He died young in 1830, and she was left with two
daughters, the elder of whom, now Mrs. Russell Gurney, survives, and was
in early years one of the most familiar members of our inner home
circle.

I must now speak of my mother. 'In one's whole life,' says Gray, 'one
can never have any more than a single mother'--a trite observation, he
adds, which yet he never discovered till it was too late. Those who have
made the same discovery must feel also how impossible it is to
communicate to others their own experience, and indeed how painful it is
even to make the attempt. Almost every man's mother, one is happy to
observe, is the best of mothers. I will only assert what I could prove
by evidence other than my own impressions. My mother, then, must have
been a very handsome young woman. A portrait--not a very good
one--shows that she had regular features and a fine complexion, which
she preserved till old age. Her beauty was such as implies a thoroughly
good constitution and unbroken health. She was too a rather romantic
young lady. She knew by heart all such poetry as was not excluded from
the sacred common; she could repeat Cowper and Wordsworth and Campbell
and Scott, and her children learnt the 'Mariners of England' and the
'Death of Marmion' from her lips almost before they could read for
themselves. She accepted, of course, the religious opinions of her
family, but in what I may call a comparatively mild form. If she had not
the humour of her brother Henry and her sister Emelia, she possessed an
equal amount of common sense. Her most obvious characteristic as I knew
her was a singular serenity, which indicated a union of strong affection
and sound judgment with an entire absence of any morbid tendencies. Her
devotion to her husband and children may possibly have influenced her
estimate of their virtues and talents. But however strong her belief in
them, it never betrayed her to partiality of conduct. We were as sure of
her justice as of her affection. Her servants invariably became attached
to her. Our old nurse, Elizabeth