h is the parent
stock of all our canaries, and whose acquaintance I first made in
Madeira. A very sweet warbler it is, and the clear, flute-like notes
sounded prettily among the roses. From blossom to blossom lovely
butterflies flitted, perching quite fearlessly on the red clay walk
just before me, folding and unfolding their big painted wings. Every
day I see a new kind of butterfly, and the moths which one comes upon
hidden away under the leaves of the creepers during the bright noisy
day are lovely beyond the power of words. One little fellow is a great
pet of mine. He wears pure white wings, with vermilion stripes drawn
in regular horizontal lines across his back, and between the lines are
shorter, broken streaks of black, which is at once neat and uncommon;
but he is always in the last stage of sleepiness when I see him.

I am so glad little G---- is not old enough to want to catch them all
and impale them upon corks in a glass case; so the pretty creatures
live out their brief and happy life in the sunshine, without let or
hinderance from him.

The subject of which my mind is most full just now is the purchase of
a horse. F---- has a fairly good chestnut cob of his own; G----
has become possessed, to his intense delight, of an aged and
long-suffering Basuto pony, whom he fidgets to death during the day
by driving him all over the place, declaring he is "only showing
him where the nicest grass grows;" and I want a steed to draw my
pony-carriage and to carry me. F---- and I are at dagger's drawn on
this question. He wants to buy me a young, handsome, showy horse of
whom his admirers predict that "he will steady down presently," whilst
my affections are firmly fixed on an aged screw who would not turn
his head if an Armstrong gun were fired behind him. His owner says
Scotsman is "rising eleven:" F---- declares Scotsman will never see
his twentieth birthday again. F---- points out to me that Scotsman has
had rough times of it, apparently, in his distant youth, and that he
is strangely battered about the head, and has a large notch out of one
ear. I retaliate by reminding him how sagely the old horse picked his
way, with a precision of judgment which only years can give, through
the morass which lies at the foot of the hill, and which must be
crossed every time I go into town (and there is nowhere else to go).
That morass is a bog in summer and a honey-comb of deep ruts and
holes in winter, which, you must bear in mi