23rd.--We arose at twenty minutes past seven, and bullied the chambermaid for not waking us,--at least I did. Breakfasted, and off to the Abbey. Bill at the Peahen most gloriously small, by the way; we expected at least sixteen shillings; it was only nine: bed one and six, no wax lights. What meekness on the part of the woman of the Peahen!--a woman keeps it. We paid one shilling for two tickets to the Abbey; not to go up the tower, which would have been two bob. Emma’s tender state made it a matter of prudence, more than economy, not to go: and well we did not pay the other shilling, for mark the sequel. We two (nothing buckram about us as yet) went, and found ourselves opposed by one abbey-door which would not open; then one rector’s maidservant came towards us two, and said that it did not open till ten, and moreover that service began at half-past, and that, if we wished to see the place, she had better go for the verger. Well, we two, being there quite in the dark as to what all this meant, naturally concluded that the rector, his maid, the verger, and the whole conclave, were of a plot to rob us; so we declined the offer, saying it was scandalous conduct, and that _we_ would go to the verger’s. So, having got there, a stout woman told us plainly no verger should open the door before ten o’clock. So, seeing there was no remedy, we wandered forth to spend the time somehow: and at ten we got in, bullied the verger--who confessed they had been shown up but a short while before in the papers. I of course promised a most venomous letter to _The Times_: but somehow, looking over these workings-up and scrapings-down of so many centuries, our little tiff about half an hour was forgotten, and, before we saw half the wonders of the place, we were excellent friends. However venerable masonry many hundred years old may look--be it free-stone or rubble, plaster or Roman tile--somehow the stones of then are like the stones of now, only a little time-eaten; but there was a thigh-bone and skull belonging to the good Duke Humphrey that seemed to me more speaking in its age than all the rest. It might have been any one else for all we could tell, but we took it on trust: and there, good Heavens! is part of the man we read of in history, who was too good for this country 400 years ago, who was therefore got rid of, and the Duchess made to walk in her shift--a great-grandson of Edward III., brother to Henry V., Protector of England, and an honest man; and it is not a dream, for this is his thigh-bone. This is more interesting than stones and mortar after all. How I could have wished for a little more of the same! but no. Next in interest were puritanical mutilations, comical in their consistancy but lifelike.[83] I had been here with Mark Anthony some years ago, so it was not new.--Back to Hatfield; ruins still smouldering, but cold in interest already. Rail to Barnet, walk home. Lazy, sad, nervous again; hopes gone, unspeakably flown. Onions for supper.