I have made some endeavours, but without success, to fix the date of this visit. It was after 1826, and must have been before 1829, in which year Isabella Howard, one of the four sisters, married Lord Suffolk. Lord Henry Howard had died in 1824, so his widow was living in the house of her son Henry, on whom Greystoke had been entailed by Charles, tenth Duke of Norfolk. Mr Crackenthorpe was born in either 1788 or 1789, for he told my sister-in-law, Lady Rachel Howard, that his first recollection of a political event was the French Revolution, when he was four years old. He lived to nominate Mr Stafford Howard twice for Parliament, and died in 1886. Mr Howard of Corby was descended from a second son of Lord Carlisle. Adela, or Adeliza, was his youngest daughter, and, as are all her family, a Roman Catholic. The visit must have been after 1826, for in February of that year Charles, third Lord Southampton, married Harriet, daughter of the Hon. Fitzroy Stanhope, and my aunt, in describing her visit to his house, makes no reference to a recent marriage. The brother-in-law must have been Captain Robert Stanhope, who married, in 1830, Miss Ward. There were few happier beings than myself, the morning I started with my mother, my brother and sister, for Greystoke Castle in Cumberland—Cumberland, which appeared in those days a journey of delightful adventure, not unattended by that vague sense of peril which enhanced the charm of so long and wild an expedition. If our destination had been the Rocky Mountains, or even the Steppes of Tartary, I do not think my anticipations could have been of a wilder and more romantic nature. Was I not going to the far away and scarcely civilised district of the Borderland, so near to Walter Scott’s own country, along the great North road, with its recollections of Meg Merrilies and Jeannie Deans, and the names of the different towns at which we were to sleep, suggesting well-known events in history and fiction? I am speaking of a journey which is now accomplished between breakfast and dinner. [Sidenote: GREYSTOKE CASTLE] Our destination, as I said before, was the picturesque domain of Greystoke, where Lady Henry Howard,[28] my mother’s fast friend, lived with her son Henry, and her four daughters.[29] Happy family, genial companions! Every day spent in that enchanting spot seemed to me like a page torn out of some favourite romance; and when I look back upon those past years, I feel my beloved friend Lady Suffolk will agree with me, in the new-fashioned language of the day, that that time was one of the very best of good times. We were a happy band, with the same pleasures, the same tastes, the same pursuits. As for me, my spirit was armed and ready for adventures of all kinds, though occasionally I was disappointed in my Quixotic anticipations. Footnote 28: Elizabeth Long married Mr, afterwards Lord, Henry Howard, brother of Bernard, twelfth Duke of Norfolk. Footnote 29: