There was a new picture by Millais, the distinguished Pre-Raphaelite artist, representing a melancholy parting between two lovers. The lady's face had a great deal of sad and ominous expression; but an old brick wall, overrun with foliage, was so exquisitely and elaborately wrought that it was hardly possible to look at the personages of the picture. Every separate leaf of the climbing and clustering shrubbery was painfully made out; and the wall was reality itself, with the weather-stains, and the moss, and the crumbling lime between the bricks. It is not well to be so perfect in the inanimate, unless the artist can likewise make man and woman as lifelike, and to as great a depth, too, as the Creator does.
Bennoch left town for some place in Yorkshire, and I for Liverpool. I asked him to come and dine with me at the Adelphi, meaning to ask two or three people to meet him; but he had other engagements, and could not spare a day at present, though he promises to come before long.
Dining at Mr. Rathbone's one evening last week (May 21st), it was mentioned that
BORROW,
author of the Bible in Spain, is supposed to be of gypsy descent by the mother's side. Hereupon Mr. Martineau mentioned that he had been a schoolfellow of Borrow, and though he had never heard of his gypsy blood, he thought it probable, from Borrow's traits of character. He said that, Borrow had once run away from school, and carried with him a party of other boys, meaning to lead a wandering life.
If an Englishman were individually acquainted with all our twenty-five millions of Americans, and liked every one of them, and believed that each man of those millions was a Christian, honest, upright, and kind, he would doubt, despise, and hate them in the aggregate, however he might love and honor the individuals.
Captain ——— and his wife Oakum; they spent all evening at Mrs. B———'s. The Captain is a Marblehead man by birth, not far from sixty years old; very talkative and anecdotic in regard to his adventures; funny, good-humored, and full of various nautical experience. Oakum (it is a nickname which he gives his wife) is an inconceivably tall woman,— taller than he,—six feet, at least, and with a well-proportioned largeness in all respects, but looks kind and good, gentle, smiling,—and almost any other woman might sit like a baby on her lap. She does not look at all awful and belligerent, like the massive English women one often sees. You at once feel her to be a benevolent giantess, and apprehend no harm from her. She is a lady, and perfectly well mannered, but with a sort of naturalness and simplicity that becomes her; for any the slightest affectation would be so magnified in her vast personality that it would be absolutely the height of the ridiculous. This wedded pair have no children, and Oakum has so long accompanied her husband on his voyages that I suppose by this time she could command a ship as well as he. They sat till pretty late, diffusing cheerfulness all about them, and then, "Come, Oakum," cried the Captain, "we must hoist sail!" and up rose Oakum to the ceiling, and moved tower-like to the door, looking down with a benignant smile on the poor little pygmy women about her. "Six feet," did I say? Why, she must he seven, eight, nine; and, whatever be her size, she is as good as she is big.
June 11th.—Monday night (9th), just as I was retiring, I received a telegraphic message announcing my wife's arrival at
SOUTHAMPTON.
So, the next day, I arranged the consular business for an absence of ten days, and set forth with J——-, and reached Birmingham, between eight and nine, evening. We put up at the Queen's Hotel, a very large establishment, contiguous to the railway. Next morning we left Birmingham, and made our first stage to Leamington, where we had to wait nearly an hour, which we spent in wandering through some of the streets that had been familiar to us last year. Leamington is certainly a beautiful town, new, bright, clean, and as unlike as possible to the business towns of England. However, the sun was burning hot, and I could almost have fancied myself in America. From Leamington we took tickets for Oxford, where we were obliged to make another stop of two hours; and these we employed to what advantage we could, driving up into town, and straying hither and thither, till J——-'s weariness weighed upon me, and I adjourned with him to a hotel. Oxford is an ugly old town, of crooked and irregular streets, gabled houses, mostly plastered of a buff or yellow hue; some new fronts; and as for the buildings of the University, they seem to be scattered at random, without any reference to one another. I passed through an old gateway of Christ Church, and looked at its enclosed square, and that is, in truth, pretty much all I then saw of the University of Oxford. From Christ Church we rambled along a street that led us to a bridge across the Isis; and we saw many row-boats lying in the river,—the lightest craft imaginable, unless it were an Indian canoe. The Isis is but a narrow stream, and with a sluggish current. I believe the students of Oxford are famous for their skill in rowing.