He doubted if they hanged the right man after all, but felt it did not really matter, as the man should have been hanged for other things, if not for that. I fancy his attention may have wandered from the trial, for after “sentenced to be hung” his diary goes on:--“Bought the models of the Elgin Marbles of Field.” This was W. V. Field, afterwards a Judge and finally a Law Lord; and it was a set of Henning’s models of the frieze of the Parthenon. I have them here. * * * * * Duelling did not quite cease in England until just before my time; and I used to hear the older men lamenting its cessation. They complained of being deprived of their redress for an affront. And that is practically what happened, for these affronts were mostly of the sort for which a jury gives a farthing damages. My mother used to tell me what a shock it was to her, at the age of ten, when she was told one afternoon that an old friend of the family had been killed that morning in a duel--shot dead at twelve paces. It was a quarrel of two retired officers over facts which they could easily have verified. They had both got the facts wrong, and each was right in disbelieving what the other said; but neither of them would allow his veracity to be impugned, and they settled the matter in this fashion at five o’clock next morning. Among my papers here I have a memorandum of a better way of settling such disputes:--“London, 4 January 1854. Mr Torr bets Mr Jackson (& Mr J. Mr T. vice versa) that Buttern Down summit is at least 700 feet above Forder, Moreton, a dinner at the White Hart, Moreton, to all the friends the winner chooses to invite.”--It is only 500 feet above. * * * * * My grandfather writes to my brother, 16 January 1862:--“I enclose a piece of poetry, which was sent to me, on the old Cross Tree at Moreton. The stone cross erected there with a bason on the top to contain holy water, you are aware, is a relic of Popery. There was one at Chagford like it until some three years ago the lord of the manor, old Mr Southmead, destroyed it cross and all, for he had such dislike of Popery. I have known others in town-places, but this at Moreton is the last that I know of remaining; and the old tree is going to decay. I should tell you that some fifty years or more ago Mr Harvey’s house was an inn, and the innkeeper had the interstices of the tree floored over like a room, and people used to go up and drink and smoke, and all holyday times dancing was kept up for many nights together. I have danced there and drank there with good jovial parties: times were different then.” And he goes on to mention other people who used to dance there--people whom I remember in their old age, sedate and solemn, and looking as though they had never danced anything less stately than a minuet.