“July 16.—Dined at Lord Chetwynd’s, taking down a Mrs. Severn. She talked of the difficulties of faith; of the comfort she had received from Farrar’s ‘Justice and Mercy;’ of the simple impossibility of eternal punishment; of the verse ‘The Lord shall save all men, especially such as are of the household of faith,’ as especially indicating gradations of happiness in a future state.”
“July 18.—With troops of the London ‘world’ to a garden-party at Hatfield to meet the Shah of Persia (Nasr-ed-Din), who looks most savage and unimpressionable. He is, however, preferred to his servants, who give themselves endless airs, refusing the rooms prepared for them, &c., and their hosts are afraid to complain of them to the Shah, for fear he should cut off their heads! He is a true Eastern potentate in his consideration for himself and himself only: is most unconcernedly late whenever he chooses: utterly ignores every one he does not want to speak to: amuses himself with monkeyish and often dirty tricks: sacrifices a cock to the rising sun, and wipes his wet hands on the coat-tails of the gentleman next him without compunction. He expressed his wonder that Lord Salisbury did not take a new wife, though he gave Lady Salisbury a magnificent jewelled order. He knows no English and very few words of French, but when the Baroness Coutts, as the great benefactress of her country, was presented to him by the Prince of Wales, he looked in her face and exclaimed, ‘Quelle horreur!’”
“July 22.—A wonderful speech (at the Aberdeens’) on Christian work from the Bishop of Ripon (Boyd Carpenter)—eloquent, elevating, touching beyond description. He pictured the system of work going on through all creation—some one resting under a tree as under an object in repose, and then, if the senses could be quickened, hearing the pulse, the ever-labouring pulse which sends the sap through its every fibre: of how fallacious is the ordinary view of God as a sovereign in contemplative repose—how inconsistent with the description given us, ‘My Father worketh and I work:’ of the way in which every practical worker might be a particle of the Spirit of God: of the way in which the Christian life of every individual might radiate on others and permeate their existence, like the halos—unseen by the wearers—on the brows of saints: of the way in which the impression of a visit carried away from each country-house might influence a life, and the duty of leaving the right impression—never by ‘religious talking,’ but by loving action: that the usual saying was ‘Omnia vincit labor,’ but a truer one would be ‘Laborem vincit amor.’”
To Miss Leycester.
“Holmhurst, August 15, 1889.—I wish you were here this morning. A delicate haze softens the view of the distant sea, sprinkled over with vessels, and the castle-rock rises up pink-grey against it. Far overhead, the softest of white clouds float in the blue ether. In the meadows, where the cows are ringing their Swiss bells, the old oak-trees are throwing long deep shadows across lawns of the most emerald green, and the flower-beds and the terrace borders are brimming with the most brilliant flowers, over which whole battalions of butterflies and bees are floating and buzzing; the little pathlet at the side winds with enticing shadows under the beech-trees, whilst the white marble Venetian well, covered with delicate sculpture of vines and pomegranates, standing on the little grassy platform, makes a point of refinement which accentuates the whole. Selma steals lazily round the corner to see if she can catch a bird, but finds it quite too hot for the exertion; and Rollo raises himself now and then carelessly to snap at a fly. The doves are cooing on the ledge of the roof, and the pigeons are collecting on the smokeless chimneys. Upstairs Mrs. Whitford and Anne are dusting and laughing over their work, with the windows wide open above the ivied verandah, and Rogers is planting out a box of sweet-scented tobacco-plants which has come by the post.