Toward the end of July he escaped to the country and “passed a month at Shirley Park and the Manor, Lee, alternately reading and lying on the grass in delightful idleness, with the kindest friends and the greatest contentment.” At Shirley Park there were archery _fêtes_, the Archbishopess of Canterbury, “lords and ladies in abundance, and poets and travelers _ad libitum_. It is midsummer,” continues the letter from which I quote (August 5th), “in cool and breezy England, five o’clock in the afternoon, and a beautiful day. The house is in the middle of a park (nothing but grass and trees) as large as the Common in Boston, the soft velvet greensward closely shaven all around the house, and a lovely archery ground on the edge of the lake just beneath my window, with red and gold targets, and a dozen young girls and beaux with beautiful bows and quivers shooting with all the merriment conceivable. There is a beautiful daughter of Sir Henry Brydges beating everybody, and my friend Mrs. Shaw, and Lady Encombe, and quantities of nice people.” At Shirley Park he had a letter from Jane Porter, inclosing an invitation to him from Sir Charles Throckmorton, a Catholic gentleman in Warwickshire, at whose country seat she was staying. Willis joined her there on September 10th, but meanwhile something else of great importance to him had happened. While visiting at the Skinners’ he had met his fate in the person of Miss Mary Stace, a daughter of General William Stace of Woolwich. He saw her first at a picnic on the grounds of Lord Londonderry, at North Cray, and “thought her the loveliest girl he had ever seen.” At Shirley Park--whither she came as a guest--he was thrown much in her company, and after a week’s acquaintance made her a proposal of marriage, and was accepted. On the 1st of September he went to Woolwich on a visit to the Staces, and in the course of a day or two asked the general for his daughter’s hand. It was agreed that the engagement should be short, like the courtship, and that the wedding should come off on the 1st of October. Mary Stace, who became Mrs. Willis on the day fixed, was a girl of uncommon beauty and sweetness. In appearance she was of the purest Saxon type, a blonde, with bright color, blue eyes, light brown hair, and delicate, regular features. She had a gentle, clinging, affectionate disposition, adored her husband, had been religiously and carefully educated, and possessed the true Englishwoman’s sense of the importance of the male sex and the due subordination of woman. Her family were most worthy and substantial people, and strictly evangelical. General Stace was the Royal Ordnance Storekeeper at Woolwich Arsenal. He had been commissary to the British navy in Egypt, and commissary of ordnance at the battle of Waterloo, and had been rewarded for gallant service in that famous action. He gave Willis, as a souvenir, a military cloak and an eagle clasp taken from the body of a French officer after the battle, which are still