"Holmhurst, Oct. 13, 1869.—After the storms of last year, this summer has been peaceful and quiet. My sweet Mother, though often ailing, has been very gently and quietly happy. She seems older, but age has with her only its softening effects—casting a brighter halo around her sweet life, and rendering more lovable still every precious word and action.... We are more than ever to each other now in everything."
We left home in 1869 on the 14th of October, intending to cross the Channel at once, but on arriving at Folkestone, found such a raging sea, that we retreated to Canterbury to wait for better weather. This enabled us to pay a charming visit to Archdeacon and Mrs. Harrison, who had been very familiar to us many years before, when the Stanleys lived at Canterbury. It was the last visit my Mother ever paid, and she greatly enjoyed it, as it seemed almost like a going back into her Hurstmonceaux life, a revival of the ecclesiastical interests which had filled her former existence. Whenever any subject was alluded to, Archdeacon Harrison, like Uncle Julius, went to his bookcase, and brought down some volume to illustrate it. Thus I remember his reading to us in the powerful sermons of Bishop Horsley. One of the most remarkable was upon the Syro-Phœnician woman. Another is on the French Nuns, in defence of their institution in England, saying, with little foresight, how unlikely they were to increase in number, and how very superior they were to those women "who strip themselves naked to go out into the world, who daub their cheeks with paint, and plaster their necks with litharge."
Apropos of the proverb about Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands, Archdeacon Harrison described how it was in allusion to two things totally disconnected. Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands are very far apart, and of course have no connection whatever: yet perverse persons used to say that Tenterden Steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands, as money which ought to have been used to prevent the accumulation of Goodwin Sands was diverted to the building of Tenterden Steeple. The place where you may hear most about it is "Latimer's Sermons." Latimer is inveighing against the persons who denounced the study of the Bible as the cause of the misfortunes of the time, and says that they had as much connection as Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands, and so forth.
To MISS WRIGHT.
"Munich, Nov. 1, 1869.—We made it four days' journey from Paris to Strasbourg. First we went to Bar-le-duc. I had longed to see it, from a novel I read once, and it is well worth while—the old town rising above the new like the old town of Edinburgh—tall grey houses pierced with eight or ten rows of windows, a river with a most picturesque bridge, and in the church 'Le Squelette de Bar,' a wonderful work of Richier, the famous sculptor of S. Mihiel, commemorating the Princes of Bar (Henri I., II., III., &c.), sovereigns of whom I wonder if you ever heard before: I never did.
"We slept next at Toul, where there is a fine huge dull cathedral, a beautiful creche by Ignace Robert, and a lovely convent cloister of flamboyant arches. Living at Toul is wonderfully cheap; our rooms for three were only four francs, and dinner for three four francs.[396] We wonder people do not emigrate to Lorraine instead of to Australia; it would be far cheaper, and infinitely more amusing. If it had been warmer, we should have gone to Domremy and S. Mihiel, but we feared the cold. We were a day at Nancy: how stately it is! At Strasbourg we found that the storks had left, and we thought it the least interesting place on the road, yet most people stay only there.
"We had three days at Carlsruhe, and found dear Madame de Bunsen most bright and well and charming, with much to tell that was worth hearing, and the fullest sympathy and interest in others. Generally one feels that conversation weakens the mind; with the Bunsens it never fails to strengthen it. Madame de Bunsen talked much of the difficulties which had crowded round her when she herself was to begin the Memoir of her husband. Bunsen had said to her, 'You must tell the story of our common life; you are able to do it, only do not be afraid.' Thus to her the work was a sacred legacy. First, as material, her son George brought her Bunsen's letters to his sister Christiana, which she had given to him, and which he had fortunately never given to his father for fear he should destroy them. Then she had written to Reck, the early Göttingen friend and confidant of all Bunsen's early life, and had been refused all help without any explanation! Then Stockmar, Brandeis, &c., sent all their letters; thus the work grew. But there were no journals, she had made no notes, there was only her recollection to fall back upon. Madame de Bunsen regretted bitterly the destruction of Uncle Julius's letters by his widow, especially those written in his early life to his brother Augustus, which would have been 'the history of the awakening of a new phase of opinions.' I made quantities of notes from the intensely interesting reminiscences Madame de Bunsen poured forth of her own life.[399]
"We were one day at Stuttgart, which I had never seen, and was delighted with—so handsome, really a beautiful little capital, and we reached Munich in time to have one day for the International Exhibition of Paintings, which was well worth seeing—finer, I thought, than ours. The German artists have surely far more originality than the artists of other nations. Three pictures especially remain in my mind—'The Chase after Luck,' a wild horseman with Death riding behind him in pursuit of Luck, a beautiful figure scattering gold and pearls whilst floating on a bladder, full speed across a bridge which ends in a rotten plank over a fathomless abyss: 'The Cholera in Rome,' the Angel of Death leading the Cholera—a hideous old woman—down the street under the Capitol by moonlight, and showing her the door she is to knock at: 'L'Enfant qui dort à l'ombre du lit maternel, et les Anges qui savent d'avance le sort des humains, et baissent avec larmes ses petites mains.' It is interesting to see how familiar the German common people are with their artists: the great names of Kaulbach, Henneberg, &c., are in every mouth; how few of our common people would know anything of Landseer or Millais!"