'_March_ 19_th_, 1850.

'DEAR ELLEN,--I have got home again, and now that the visit is over,
I am, as usual, glad I have been; not that I could have endured to
prolong it: a few days at once, in an utterly strange place, amongst
utterly strange faces, is quite enough for me.

'When the train stopped at Burnley, I found Sir James waiting for me.
A drive of about three miles brought us to the gates of Gawthorpe,
and after passing up a somewhat desolate avenue, there towered the
hall--grey, antique, castellated, and stately--before me. It is 250
years old, and, within as without, is a model of old English
architecture. The arms and the strange crest of the Shuttleworths
are carved on the oak pannelling of each room. They are not a
parvenue family, but date from the days of Richard III. This part of
Lancashire seems rather remarkable for its houses of ancient race.
The Townleys, who live near, go back to the Conquest.

'The people, however, were of still more interest to me than the
house. Lady Shuttleworth is a little woman, thirty-two years old,
with a pretty, smooth, lively face. Of pretension to aristocratic
airs she may be entirely acquitted; of frankness, good-humour, and
activity she has enough; truth obliges me to add, that, as it seems
to me, grace, dignity, fine feeling were not in the inventory of her
qualities. These last are precisely what her husband possesses. In
manner he can be gracious and dignified; his tastes and feelings are
capable of elevation; frank he is not, but, on the contrary, politic;
he calls himself a man of the world and knows the world's ways;
courtly and affable in some points of view, he is strict and rigorous
in others. In him high mental cultivation is combined with an
extended range of observation, and thoroughly practical views and
habits. His nerves are naturally acutely sensitive, and the present
very critical state of his health has exaggerated sensitiveness into
irritability. His wife is of a temperament precisely suited to nurse
him and wait on him; if her sensations were more delicate and acute
she would not do half so well. They get on perfectly together. The
children--there are four of them--are all fine children in their way.
They have a young German lady as governess--a quiet, well-instr