s
bright and beautiful, and we were charmed with the drive and all we
saw, M---- never ceasing to exclaim with fervent satisfaction at the
comfortable, cheerful, healthy, well-to-do appearance of the people and
their habitations--a most striking and suggestive contrast to all we had
seen in poor Ireland, certainly....

We have just done dinner, and M---- is fast asleep on the sofa, with
"Pilgrim's Progress" in her arms. My head aches, and my nerves twitch
with fatigue and pain, but I am better than I was yesterday.

The trains from this place are very inconvenient. The one we have to go
by starts from here at nine, and does not reach London till half-past
seven in the evening, so we shall have a wearisome day of it....

Give my kindest love to dear Mrs. Taylor and "the girls." I shall think
of them with infinite anxiety, and pray, "whenever I remember to be
holy," that this dreadful war may now soon come to a close, and they be
spared further anguish. [Colonel Richard Taylor, Miss S----'s nephew,
was with the army in the Crimea.]

I am ever most affectionately yours,
FANNY.

BATH, Monday, December 9th.
MY DEAREST HAL,

... You cannot think how forlorn I feel, walking in and out of our room
here without farewell or greeting from you; and yet the place where you
have been with me has a remembered presence of your affectionate
companionship that makes it pleasant, compared to those where I go for
the first time and have no such friendly association to cheer me. My
disposition, as you know, is averse to all strangeness, and takes little
delight in novelty; and the wandering life I lead compels me to both,
forbidding all custom and the comfortable feeling of habit and use,
which make me loath to leave a place where I have stayed only three
days, for another where I have never stayed at all.

I was not very happy at Oxford. The beautiful place impressed me sadly;
but that was because I was very unwell and sad while I was there. The
weather was horrible; a dark greasy fog pervaded the sky the whole time.
The roads were so muddy as to render riding odious, and the streets so
slimy that walking was really dangerous as well as disagreeable. Still,
I saw some things with which I was much charmed, and have no doubt that,
if I could but have had an hour's daylight, I should have been d