We live here (Alderley Rectory) in such perfect retirement and tranquillity that it is more like Stoke than Alderley, and I enjoy excessively the exemption from all interruption to the happiness of my life here. I believe you will not have any difficulty in imagining how great that happiness is, in the society of two people that one loves excessively, with children that are as interesting to one as if they were one's own, and with all the luxury of delicious spring weather (this was written May 10, 1819) in beech woods and green fields. I would defy you to tantalise me with the greatest temptations London could offer; as far as happiness, real _true_ happiness is concerned, nothing in London could present to me half as much as one perfectly retired uninterrupted day at Alderley. In one of her letters to Miss Clinton, written from Stoke Rectory in the early summer of 1825, she says:-- That I have not written to you before you will easily understand to have arisen from my unwillingness to lose a single hour of my last days at Alderley. They were indeed very precious to me, and after staying there for four months uninterruptedly you may well imagine how painful it was to me to leave all those who were more than usually endeared to me by the comfort they had offered me during a time when nothing else could have pleased or interested. Certainly, too, altogether, with its inhabitants, its abundance of books, of drawing, liberty unrestrained, beautiful walks and rides and seats, luxuriance of flowers, and, in delicious weather, there cannot on earth be so perfect a paradise. During the hot weather we generally went on the mere--or rode in the evenings. Every morning, before breakfast, Lucy and I met in the wood at the old Moss House, where we spent an hour together, and Owen (Edward Stanley's eldest son) came to ferry me home. With so much around to interest and please me, I put away self as much as possible, and endeavoured as much as I could to enjoy the present. You know how dearly I love all those children, and it was such a pleasure to see them all so happy together. To be sure it would be singular if they were not different from other children, with the advantages they have, when education is made so interesting and amusing as it is to them.... While others of their age are plodding through the dull histories, of which they remember nothing, of unconnected countries and ages, K.'s (Katharine Stanley's) system is to take one particular era, perhaps, and upon the basis of the General History, pick out for them from different books all that bears upon that one subject, whether in memoirs or literature, making it at once an interesting study to herself and them.