“As I travelled here, on Tuesday, by way of Kendal and Carlisle, my mind was full of you. You remember our journey together to Edinburgh? I left Salisbury, on Monday, in a dreadful storm of rain. It is much colder here. Along the road, it was quite sorrowful to see the sheaves of corn standing in water! Whole fields, too, are lying under water. “During my railway journey here, and one last Saturday to Cheltenham, I read ‘Kingsley’s Life.’ It is intensely interesting, and is to me like a strong tonic. It braces one up and leaves strength behind. How he suffered in middle life, and how bravely he bore up, under undeserved blame, is all told, and how loving, tender, and faithful he was as a husband. “His married life is a beautiful poem. Mrs. Kingsley was everything to him. For her sake, he revered all womanhood. One of his children speaks of the happy evenings at Eversley Rectory when ‘father sat with his hand in mother’s,’ and poured out his brave, strong words for wife and children only. “I esteem it one of the proud moments in my life, when Canon Kingsley thought it worth while to stand and talk with Miss Chessar and me about our school, and expressed his wish to visit us—a wish never fulfilled. His life is so much more after my heart than Harriet Martineau’s, which I have also been looking at. Her strictures on men and women are so harsh—there was little love and tenderness in her nature, and she seems always to say hard things—things which leave a sting behind. I shudder at her absence of all belief, and wonder how she could bear life after ceasing to believe in a personal God and immortality. Kingsley’s life is an antidote to hers.” In early days Mr. and Mrs. Laing held equal rank in her regard. Then her brothers—her _friends_ as well as kin—gave her dear friends as well as loved sisters in their wives. Here is a pretty little note which was written on their wedding-day to Mr. and Mrs. Septimus Buss, addressed to “Dear old boy—Dear little ‘coz.’” After describing the later events of the wedding-day, she says of the wife of the vicar— “Mrs. N. is a dear! She said she was much interested in your wedding, as she had a hand in it, and liked old Sep, and she spoke so nicely about him in particular, and things in general, that I fell in love with her; and then, to complete her victory, she admired Léonie, my dear ‘old’ sister. Now, did she not go the right way to win me for ever?” She had not lost this sprightly style in writing, in 1873, of the change which took the Rev. Septimus Buss from the chaplaincy of St. Pancras Workhouse to the Rectory of Wapping— “‘Many a time and oft’ have I thought of you and wished to be a bird, that I might fly to you. But even you cannot guess what the last fortnight has been!