life may act upon the great centre of corruption.
I had far rather see England covered with schools of cookery than with
schools of the ordinary kind; the issue would be infinitely more hopeful.
Little girls should be taught cooking and baking more assiduously than
they are taught to read. But with ever in view the great English
principle--that food is only cooked aright when it yields the utmost of
its native and characteristic savour. Let sauces be utterly
forbidden--save the natural sauce made of gravy. In the same way with
sweets; keep in view the insurpassable English ideals of baked tarts (or
pies, if so you call them), and boiled puddings; as they are the
wholesomest, so are they the most delicious of sweet cakes yet invented;
it is merely a question of having them well made and cooked. Bread,
again; we are getting used to bread of poor quality, and ill-made, but
the English loaf at its best--such as you were once sure of getting in
every village--is the faultless form of the staff of life. Think of the
glorious revolution that could be wrought in our troubled England if it
could be ordained that no maid, of whatever rank, might become a wife
unless she had proved her ability to make and bake a perfect loaf of
bread.

XII.

The good S--- writes me a kindly letter. He is troubled by the thought
of my loneliness. That I should choose to live in such a place as this
through the summer, he can understand; but surely I should do better to
come to town for the winter? How on earth do I spend the dark days and
the long evenings?

I chuckle over the good S---'s sympathy. Dark days are few in happy
Devon, and such as befall have never brought me a moment's tedium. The
long, wild winter of the north would try my spirits; but here, the season
that follows autumn is merely one of rest, Nature's annual slumber. And
I share in the restful influence. Often enough I pass an hour in mere
drowsing by the fireside; frequently I let my book drop, satisfied to
muse. But more often than not the winter day is blest with sunshine--the
soft beam which is Nature's smile in dreaming. I go forth, and wander
far. It pleases me to note changes of landscape when the leaves have
fallen; I see streams and ponds which during summer were hidden; my
favourite lanes have an unfamiliar aspect, and I become better acquainted
with them. Then, there is a rare beauty in the structure of trees
ungarmented; and if perchance snow or