matters, invited all the great and gay and distinguished world
of London to meet the famous Italian composer; and, seated in her
drawing-room with the Duke of Wellington and Rossini on either side of
her, exclaimed, "Now I am between the two greatest men in Europe." The
Iron Duke not unnaturally rose and left his chair vacant; the great
genius retained his, but most assuredly not without humorous
appreciation of the absurdity of the whole scene, for he was almost
"plus fin que tous les autres," and certainly "bien plus fin que tous
_ces_ autres."

About this time I returned again to visit Mrs. Kemble at Heath Farm, and
renew my days of delightful companionship with H---- S----. Endless were
our walks and talks, and those were very happy hours in which, loitering
about Cashiobury Park, I made its echoes ring with the music of
"Oberon," singing it from beginning to end--overture, accompaniment,
choruses, and all; during which performances my friend, who was no
musician, used to keep me company in sympathetic silence, reconciled by
her affectionate indulgence for my enthusiasm to this utter postponement
of sense to sound. What with her peculiar costume and my bonnetless head
(I always carried my bonnet in my hand when it was possible to do so)
and frenzied singing, any one who met us might have been justified in
supposing we had escaped from the nearest lunatic asylum.

Occasionally we varied our rambles, and one day we extended them so far
that the regular luncheon hour found us at such a distance from home,
that I--hungry as one is at sixteen after a long tramp--peremptorily
insisted upon having food; whereupon my companion took me to a small
roadside ale-house, where we devoured bread and cheese and drank beer,
and while thus vulgarly employed beheld my aunt's carriage drive past
the window. If that worthy lady could have seen us, that bread and
cheese which was giving us life would inevitably have been her death;
she certainly would have had a stroke of apoplexy (what the French call
_foudroyante_), for gentility and propriety were the breath of life to
her, and of the highest law of both, which can defy conventions, she
never dreamed.

Another favorite indecorum of mine (the bread and cheese was mere mortal
infirmity, not moral turpitude) was wading in the pretty river that ran
through Lord Clarendon's place, the Grove; the brown, clear, shallow,
rapid water was as tempting as a highland brook, and I remember its