'That cordial drop Heaven in our cup had thrown,
To make the nauseous draught of life go down.'"

After a pleasant winter at Naples, my father and his family went to pass the summer of 1833 at Castellamare. "C'était à Castellamare" (says a note by Madame Victoire) "que Madame Hare apprit la mort de Lady Paul. Elle était sur le balcon, quand elle la lut dans le journal. J'étais dans une partie de la maison très éloignée, mais j'ai entendu un cri si fort, si aigu, que je suis arrivée de suite, et je trouvais Madame Hare toute étendue sur le parquet. J'appellais—'Au secours, au secours,' et Félix, qui était très fort, prenait Madame Hare dans ses bras, et l'apportait à mettre sur son lit, et nous l'avons donné tant des choses, mais elle n'est pas revenue, et elle restait pendant deux heures en cet état. Quand M. Hare est entré, il pensait que c'était à cause de sa grossesse. Il s'est agenouillé tout en pleurs à coté de son lit. Il demandait si je lui avais donné des lettres. 'Mais, non, monsieur; je ne l'ai pas donné qu'un journal.' On cherchait longtemps ce journal, parcequ'elle l'avait laissé tomber du balcon, mais quand il était trouvé, monsieur s'est aperçu tout de suite de ce qu'elle avait." The death of Lady Paul was very sudden; her sister Lady Ravensworth first heard of it when calling to inquire at the door in the Strand in her carriage. After expressing her sympathy in the loss of such a mother, Mrs. Louisa Shipley at this time wrote to Mrs. Hare:—

"I will now venture to call your attention to the blessings you possess in your husband and children, and more particularly to the occupation of your thoughts in the education of the latter. They are now at an age when it depends on a mother to lay the foundation of principles which they will carry with them through life. The responsibility is great, and if you feel it such, there cannot be a better means of withdrawing your mind from unavailing sorrow, than the hope of seeing them beloved and respected, and feeling that your own watchfulness of their early years, has, by the blessing of God, caused them to be so. Truth is the cornerstone of all virtues: never let a child think it can deceive you; they are cunning little creatures, and reason before they can speak; secure this, and the chief part of your work is done, and so ends my sermon."

It was in the summer of 1833, following upon her mother's death, that a plan was first arranged by which my aunt Eleanor Paul became an inmate of my father's household—the kind and excellent aunt whose devotion in all times of trouble was afterwards such a blessing to her sister and her children. Neither at first or ever afterwards was the residence of Eleanor Paul any expense in her sister's household: quite the contrary, as she had a handsome allowance from her father, and afterwards inherited a considerable fortune from an aunt.

In the autumn of 1833 my father rented the beautiful Villa Strozzi at Rome, then standing in large gardens of its own facing the grounds of the noble old Villa Negroni, which occupied the slope of the Viminal Hill looking towards the Esquiline. Here on the 13th of March 1834 I was born—the youngest child of the family, and a most unwelcome addition to the population of this troublesome world, as both my father and Mrs. Hare were greatly annoyed at the birth of another child, and beyond measure disgusted that it was another son.

II
CHILDHOOD
1834-1843

"Sweete home, where meane estate
In safe assurance, without strife or hate,
Findes all things needfull for contentment meeke."—SPENSER.

"Is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and best some of the child's heart left to respond to its earliest enchantments?"—C. LAMB.

"I cannot paint to Memory's eye
The scene, the glance, I dearest love;
Unchanged themselves, in me they die,
Or faint, or false, their shadows prove."—KEBLE.
"Ce sont là les séjours, les sites, les rivages,
Dont mon âme attendrie évoque les images,
Et dont, pendant les nuits, mes songes les plus beaux
Pour enchanter mes yeux composent leurs tableaux."—LAMARTINE.

MARIA LEYCESTER had been married to my uncle Augustus Hare in June 1829. In their every thought and feeling they were united, and all early associations had combined to fit them more entirely for each other's companionship. A descendant of one of the oldest families in Cheshire, Miss Leycester's childhood and youth had been spent almost entirely in country rectories, but in such rectories as are rarely to be found, and which prove that the utmost intellectual refinement and an interest in all that is remarkable and beautiful in this world are not incompatible with the highest aspirations after a Christian and a heavenly life. Her father, Oswald Leycester, Rector of Stoke-upon-Terne in Shropshire, was a finished scholar, had travelled much, and was the most agreeable of companions. Her only sister, seven years older than herself, was married when very young to Edward Stanley, Rector of Alderley, and afterwards Bishop of Norwich, well known for the picturesqueness of his imaginative powers, for his researches in Natural History, and for that sympathy with all things bright and pleasant which preserved in him the spirit of youth quite to the close of life. Her most intimate friend, and the voluntary preceptor of her girlhood, had been the gifted Reginald Heber, who, before his acceptance of the Bishopric of Calcutta, had lived as Rector of Hodnet—the poet-rector—within two miles of her home.