“Mr. Knowles, the ex-editor of the Contemporary Review, who was at luncheon, said that he had taken Alfred Tennyson to see a ballet with just the same effect. When the ballet-girls trooped in wearing ‘une robe qui ne commence qu’à peine, et qui finit tout de suite,’ Tennyson had rushed at once out of the box, walked up and down in an agony over the degradation of the nineteenth century, and nothing would induce him to go in again. Mr. Knowles said, however, that a general improvement in the stage had dated from a climax of impropriety in ‘Babil and Bijou:’ it had since been much leavened by Irving. Lord Houghton described how much of Irving’s success had been due to the entirely original view he had taken of his characters; that in Hamlet he had taken ‘the domestic view, not declaiming, but pondering, saying things meditatively with his legs over a chair-back.’”
“Feb. 24.—I have been seeing a great deal of Willie Milligan lately, and cannot help thinking of the characteristics so distinctive of him whom for twenty-six years I have never ceased to feel honoured in being allowed to call my intimate friend.
“He is a thorough-bred gentleman in all the highest senses of the term. Always without riches, he has never complained of having less than was sufficient for his wants, which are most modest. Without being cultivated, he is very clever. He never talks religion, but his life is thoroughly christian. He is the soul of honour, pure, truthful, blameless, and without reproach; yet in conversation no one is more witty, original, and amusing. He is celebrated as a peace-maker, and never fails to show that chivalry is the truest wisdom. He has never done a selfish act, and never omitted to do a kind one.”
“Feb. 25.—A visit to Mrs. Lowe. She talked of the contemptible state of politics now; that it was all only playing at the old game of brag; that the object with every one seems to be who can tell most lies, and who can get any one to believe his lies most easily. If she ‘was minister it would be different; she would nail men down to a point—what will you do and what will you not do? and have a direct answer; then one would know how to act.’
“Mr. Lowe described his life in Australia. Money then scarcely existed there: payments were made either in kind or in bills of exchange. He said, ‘When we played whist, we played sheep, with bullocks on the rubber; and when a man won much, he had to hire a field next morning to put his winnings in.’”
“Feb. 28.—A charming visit to old Lord John Thynne, who told me many of his delightful reminiscences of Sydney Smith, Milman, and others.
“Then to Mrs. Duncan Stewart, who was sitting almost on the ground, covered with an eider-down. She talked of our ‘Memorials’ and of Mrs. Grote, who said, when she read of the dear mother’s marvellous trances, ‘My dear, she was thinking more than was good for her; so God in His great mercy gave her chloroform.’ She spoke of the difficulties of a like faith, of the effort of keeping it up when prayer was not answered, believing in the power of prayer just the same. She told how, when her child was dying—she knew it must die—the clergyman came (it was at Wimbledon) and used to kneel by the table and pray that resignation might be given to the mother to bear the parting, and resignation to the child to die; and how she listened and prayed too; and yet, at the end, she could not feel it. She did not, and—though she knew it was impossible—she could not but break in with, ‘Yet, O Lord, yet restore her.’
“‘Do you know,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘that till I was thirty, I had never seen death—never seen it even in a poor person; then I saw it in my own child, and I may truly say that then Death entered into the world for me as truly as it did for Eve, and it never left me afterwards—never. If one of my children had an ache afterwards, I thought it was going to die; if I awoke in the night and looked at my husband in his sleep, I thought—“He will look like that when he is dead.”
“‘Do not think I murmur, but life is very trying when one knows so little of the beyond. The clergyman’s wife has just been, and she said, “But you must believe; you must believe Scripture literally; you must believe all it says to the letter.” But I cannot believe literally: one can only use the faith one has, I have not the faith which moves mountains. I have prayed that the mountains might move, with all the faith that was in me—all; but the mountains did not move. No, I cannot pray with the faith which is not granted me.
“‘I think that I believe all the promises of Scripture; yet when I think of Death, I hesitate to wish to leave the certainty here for what is—yes, must be—the uncertainty beyond. Yet lately, when I was so ill, when I continued to go down and down into the very depths, I felt I had got so far—so very far, it would be difficult to travel all that way again—“Oh, let me go through the gates now.” And then the comforting thought came that perhaps after all it might not be the will of God that I should travel the same way again, and that when He leads me up to the gates for the last time, it might be His will to lead me by some other, by some quite different way.’”