“Lincoln, Oct. 18.—Between York and this, I turned aside to visit Howden, a most grand church. In the vicarage garden I saw an old lady feeding chickens, and I could not help going up to her and saying, ‘Were you not once a Miss Dixon?’ She was so exactly like her sister, who was with Miss Dixon, the miniature-painter, at the little Holmhurst hospice last year. Her husband, Mr. Hutchinson, showed me all the relics, the remains of the shrine of S. John of Howden, bearing a statue of the Virgin with the dove whispering into her ear, as S. Gregory is so often represented at Rome: the Saltmarshe Chapel, with its old tombs and its stone altar with five crosses: and the lovely ruined choir, with exquisite chantry chapels opening from it. Then, in the vicarage garden, are remains of an old palace of the Bishops of Durham, with a beautiful old gateway.
“I also saw Selby, a very fine church with a Norman nave, but less interesting than Howden.
“Lincoln is altogether delightful, with its crown of yellow-grey towers rising high above the red roofs of the town. And it is most pleasant in staying with the beloved Precentor Venables to go back into the old Hurstmonceaux days, which he, and almost no one else, remembers, even though I could not join in his loyal reverence for Uncle Julius, when it was extended to Aunt Esther also. Time seems to have stood still with him and Mrs. Venables more than with any one I know, and it is difficult to believe that it is more than half a century since they came to Hurstmonceaux as bride and bridegroom—half a century of such entirely happy married life, that one cannot contemplate one surviving the other.[528]
“We visited the delightful and beautiful old Bishop King, who now has fitted up the ruins of the old palace, and lives appropriately in the heart of the cathedral society—‘very rightly placed,’ he says, ‘below the church, and far above the world.’ He has an expression of gentle benignity which I never saw equalled except by Pius IX., and a manner in which the greatest dignity of office and the most perfect personal humility are marvellously blended. He was sitting in what I thought was a purple dressing-gown, but was told it was a cassock: a jewelled cross was on his breast. I hoped to have seen him mitred in the cathedral, but he only appears thus on great festivals. He talked of the Church in France, and I urged him to visit Ars and enjoy its atmosphere of spiritual love and blessing: he said he should go there. We also visited Dean Wickham and his delightful wife, who is Gladstone’s daughter, thinking her father’s principles always right, but so full of goodness, gentleness, and beneficence herself, that it is impossible to connect her with his practice.”
“Nov. 16.—At Letton, the pleasant house of the Gurdons in Suffolk, I have met a large party, including the Hamonds of Westacre, into whose courtyard an invisible horse and rider clatter whenever any death is about to occur in their family. I have been taken to see Hingham, where the church contains the very fine tomb of Thomas, Lord Morley, of 1435. Another day we went to Dereham. S. Werburga was the great saint of the place, and was stolen by the Abbot of Ely, that her body might be venerated there with her two sainted sisters. By her empty grave a miraculous spring gushed forth to console the people of Dereham. So many children died from being bathed in it, that it is now shut off by a railing. In the church is the feeble monument of Cowper and Mrs. Unwin.
“Several curious stories were told:—
“Some young men once determined to frighten the famous naturalist Cuvier. One of them got horns, hoofs, and a tail, and appeared by Cuvier’s bedside. ‘I am the devil,’ he said, ‘and I am come to eat you.’ Cuvier looked at him. ‘Carnivorous! horns—hoofs—impossible! Good-night;’ and he turned over and went to sleep.
“Mrs. Hall Dare had told of a young girl friend of hers. She was with a number of other girls, foolish and frivolous, who went to consult an old woman who had the reputation of being a witch, and who was supposed to have the power of making them see their future husbands. She said they must say their prayers backwards, perform certain incantations with water, lock their doors when they went to bed, and then they would see whom they were to marry, but they would find their doors locked in the morning.
“The girl followed all the witch’s directions. Then she locked her door, went to bed, and waited. Gradually, by the firelight, a young man seemed to come in—to come straight through the locked door—a young man in uniform; she saw him distinctly.
“He went to the end of the room and returned. As he passed the bed his sword caught in the curtain and fell upon the floor. Then he seemed to pass out. The girl fainted.