A FATIGUING BUT PLEASANT DAY.
Aug. 4.—To-day all the royals went to Sherborne Castle. My day being perfectly at liberty, Mrs. Gwynn stayed and spent it with me. The weather was beautiful; the sea-breezes here keep off intense heat in the warmest season. We walked first to see the shrubbery and plantation of a lady, Mrs. B—, who has a very pretty house about a mile and a half out of the town. Here we rested, and regaled ourselves with sweet flowers, and then proceeded to the old castle,-its ruins rather, which we most completely examined, not leaving one stone’ untrod, except such as must have precipitated us into the sea. This castle is built almost in the sea, upon a perpendicular rock, and its situation, therefore, is nobly bold and striking. It is little more now than walls, and a few little winding staircases at its four corners.
I had not imagined my beautiful companion could have taken so much pleasure from an excursion so romantic and lonely; but she enjoyed it very much, clambered about as unaffectedly as if she had lived in rural scenes all her life, and left nothing unexamined.
We then prowled along the sands at the foot of the adjoining rocks, and picked up sea-weeds and shells but I do not think they were such as to drive Sir Ashton Lever,[312] or the Museum keepers, to despair! We had the queen’s two little dogs, Badine and Phillis, for our guards and associates. We returned home to a very late tea, thoroughly tired, but very much pleased. To me it was the only rural excursion I had taken for more than three years. The royal party came not home till past eleven o’clock. The queen was much delighted with Sherborne Castle, which abounds with regal curiosities, honourably acquired by the family.