cripture History,' and a few
costly works bound in the style of the Albert Memorial. The
drawing-room, just a trifle damp, must have contained Mr. Hunt's 'Light
of the World,' which Mrs. Farrer never quite learned to love, though it
was a present from a missionary, and rendered fire and artificial light
unnecessary during the winter months. Would that Mrs. Farrer's home-life
had come under the magic lens of Mr. Edmund Gosse, for it would now be
classic, like the household of Sir Thomas More.

Whatever its attractions, Mrs. Farrer was at times induced to go abroad,
visiting, I imagine, only the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. She
stayed, however, in Paris, which she apostrophises with Sibyllic
candour:--

O city of pleasure, what did I see
When passing through or staying in thee.
Bright shone the sun above, blue was the sky,
Everywhere music heard, none seemed to sigh.
Beautiful carriages in Champs Elysee
Filled with fair maidens on cushions easy.
Such was the outer side; what was within?
Most I was often told revelled in sin.
Sad its fate since I left, sadder 'twill be
If they go on in sin as seen by me.
Let us hope, ere too late, warned by the past,
They may seek pleasures more likely to last,
Or, like to Babylon, it must decline,
And o'er its ruins its lovers repine.

But London hardly fares much better, in spite of Mrs. Farrer's own
residence, at Campden Hill, if I may hazard the locality:--

To the tomb they must go,
Rich and poor all in woe,
Strange motley throng.
Wealth in its splendour weeps,
Poverty silence keeps;
None last here long. . . .
So much for thee, London.

Except in a spiritual sense, her existence was not an eventful one. It
was, I think, the loss of some neighbour's child which suggested:--

Nellarina, forced exotic,
Born to bloom in region fair,
Thou wert to me a narcotic,
Hope I did thy lot to share.

Any near personal sorrow she does not seem to have experienced, I am glad
to say, else she might have regarded it as a grievance the consequences
of which one dares not contemplate; you feel that _Some One_ would have
heard of it in no measured terms. Certainty and content are, indeed, the
dominating notes of her poetry rather than mere commonplace hope:--

I am bound for the land of Beulah,
There all the guests sing Hallelujah.
No longer time here let us squander,
But on the good things