Airy and me a drive to see a very
fine picturesque castle a few miles off.... I have got loads of
things for experiments on light from Sir John with a variety of
papers, and you may believe that I have profited not a little by his
conversation, and have a thousand projects for study and writing, so
I think painting will be at a standstill, only that I have promised
to paint something for Lady Herschel. Sir John computes four or five
hours every day, and yet his Cape observations will not be finished
for two years. I have seen everything he is or has been doing.

Your affectionate mother,
MARY SOMERVILLE.

* * * * *

[My mother continues her recollections of this journey.]

My next visit was to Lord and Lady Charles Percy at Guy's Cliff, in
Warwickshire, a pretty picturesque place of historical and romantic
memory. The society was pleasant, and I was taken to Kenilworth and
Warwick Castle, on the banks of the Avon, a noble place, still bearing
marks of the Wars of the Roses. I never saw such magnificent oak-trees
as those on the Leigh estate, near Guy's Cliff.

I then visited my maiden namesake, Mrs. Fairfax, of Gilling Castle,
Yorkshire. She was a highly cultivated person, had been much abroad, and
was a warm-hearted friend. I was much interested in the principal room,
for a deep frieze surrounds the wall, on which are painted the coats of
arms of all the families with whom the Fairfaxes have intermarried,
ascending to very great antiquity; besides, every pane of glass in a
very large bay window in the same room is stained with one of these
coats of arms. Every morning after breakfast a prodigious flock of
pea-fowl came from the woods around to be fed.

I now went to the vicinity of Kelso to visit my brother and
sister-in-law, General and Mrs. Elliot, who lived on the banks of the
Tweed. We went to Jedburgh, the place of my birth. After many years I
still thought the valley of the Jed very beautiful; I fear the pretty
stream has been invaded by manufactories: there is a perpetual war
between civilization and the beauty of nature. I went to see the spot
from whence I once took a sketch of Jedburgh Abbey and the manse in
which I was born, which does not exist, I believe, now. When I was a
very young girl I made a painting from this sketch. Our next excursion
was to a