“My ‘North-Western France’ is now ready to appear. It has been an immense labour, one compared with which ‘The Gurneys of Earlham’ is as a drop to a river; but I have no doubt the latter will be more read, and certainly more reviewed, for scarcely any Englishmen know enough of France to be critical about descriptions of it. I have another little book ready too—‘Biographical Essays’—which is sure to meet with plenty of abuse, but does not deserve much, all the same. In it I have tried to give such a picture of Arthur Stanley as may make people love him as a friend, whilst they shrink from following him as a guide.”
XXX
IN MANY PLACES
“The whole value and meaning of life lies in the single sense of conscience—duty.”—Frances Anne Kemble.
“Do weel and dread nought though thou be espyit;
He is little gude worth that is not envyit:
Take thou nae heed what tales man tells;
If thou would’st live undeemed, gang where nae man dwells.”
—Sir Walter Scott in Orloff Davydoff’s Album.
“True happiness is only to be obtained by devotedness to the will of God. Seeking the universal good—the highest good of all. Life can only be truly happy, not when we are in ecstasy, but when we are doing right.”—Thomas Cooper, Thoughts at Fourscore.
“Let nothing disturb thee,
Let nothing affright thee—
All passeth:
God only remaineth.
Patience wins all things;
Who hath God lacketh nothing:
Alone God supplieth.”
—St. Theresa’s Bookmark.
GREATLY as I always enjoy my little home of Holmhurst, dear as every corner of it is to me, I never feel as if it was well to stay there too long in winter alone. In summer, Nature itself can give sufficient companionship; but when earth is dead and frost-bound, the silence in the long hours after sunset becomes almost terrible, and I increasingly feel that late autumn and winter are the best time for visits.
To Viscount Halifax.
“Holmhurst, Nov. 25.—I have much enjoyed a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Cummings, the Americans who were so kind to us on our terrible return journey from Italy in 1860, and of whom the wife, at least, is so clever, that she is suffering—as Mrs. Kemble said once of some one—from a constipation of her talents. They came here fresh from a visit to Haworth, much impressed with its severe desolation,—‘that any one should be able to have any hope, or look forward to a future life, on the top of Haworth hill is nothing short of a miracle.’ They have made a Brontë museum there now, chiefly full of Branwell’s drawings, of great interest, chiefly military. Did you know that Mr. Nichols hoped to have been rector when Mr. Brontë died? But it was given by election, and he was unpopular, and it went against him. He is still living in Ireland, whither he took all the Brontë memorials he cared for. The rest were sold by auction, and the butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker of Haworth bought them. The sexton showed Mrs. Cummings some of Charlotte’s underclothing, delicately marked by herself with her C. B., and her wedding shoes, of some grey material to match her dress. He had often seen her and her sister come out of the house, and go through the little gate at the back to the moors, which at Haworth are grass, not heather. After Charlotte married, Mr. Nichols would not let her write. His mind was of the very narrowest, and he disapproved of novels, and when she was pent up in that solitude, and all her secret thoughts were pent up too, and never allowed to come out in writing, she—died.
