For Berwick read Bewick, p. [179], last line.

For Goldsmiths read Goldschmidts, p. [237], 8 lines from bottom.

For Goodwin read Godwin, p. [257], line 12.

For Macpelah read Machpelah, p. [237], line 12.

CHAPTER
I.
FAMILY AND HOME.

I have enjoyed through life the advantage of being, in the true sense of the words, “well-born.” My parents were good and wise; honourable and honoured; sound in body and in mind. From them I have inherited a physical frame which, however defective even to the verge of grotesqueness from the æsthetic point of view, has been, as regards health and energy, a source of endless enjoyment to me. From childhood till now in my old age—except during a few years interval of lameness from an accident,—mere natural existence has always been to me a positive pleasure. Exercise and rest, food and warmth, work, play and sleep, each in its turn has been delightful; and my spirits, though of course now no longer as gay as in youth, have kept a level of cheerfulness subject to no alternatives of depression save under the stress of actual sorrow. How much of the optimism which I am aware has coloured my philosophy ought to be laid to the account of this bodily bien être, it would be superfluous to enquire too nicely. At least I may fairly maintain that, as Health is the normal condition of existence, the views which a particularly healthy person takes of things are presumably more sound than those adopted by one habitually in the abnormal condition of an invalid.

As regards the inheritance of mental faculties, of which so much has been talked of late years, I cannot trace it in my own experience in any way. My father was a very able, energetic man; but his abilities all lay in the direction of administration, while those of my dear mother were of the order which made the charming hostess and cultivated member of society with the now forgotten grace of the eighteenth century. Neither paternal nor maternal gifts or graces have descended to me; and such faculties as have fallen to my lot have been of a different kind; a kind which, I fear, my good father and his forbears would have regarded as incongruous and unseemly for a daughter of their house to exhibit. Sometimes I have pictured to myself the shock which “The old Master” would have felt could he have seen me—for example—trudging three times a week for seven years to an office in the purlieus of the Strand to write articles for a half-penny newspaper. Not one of my ancestors, so far as I have heard, ever dabbled in printer’s ink.

My brothers were all older than I; the eldest eleven, the youngest five years older; and my mother, when I was born, was in her forty-seventh year; a circumstance which perhaps makes it remarkable that the physical energy and high animal spirits of which I have just made mention came to me in so large a share. My old friend Harriet St. Leger, Fanny Kemble’s “dear H. S.,” who knew us all well, said to me one day laughing: “You know you are your Father’s Son!” Had I been a man, and had possessed my brother’s facilities for entering Parliament or any profession,[[2]] I have sometimes dreamed I could have made my mark and done some masculine service to my fellow-creatures. But the woman’s destiny which God allotted to me has been, I do not question, the best and happiest for me; nor have I ever seriously wished it had been otherwise, albeit I have gone through life without that interest which has been styled “woman’s whole existence.” Perhaps if this book be found to have any value it will partly consist in the evidence it must afford of how pleasant and interesting, and withal, I hope, not altogether useless a life is open to a woman, though no man has ever desired to share it, nor has she seen the man she would have wished to ask her to do so. The days which many maidens my contemporaries and acquaintances,—

“Lost in wooing

In watching and pursuing,”—