ther harness, all the
women and girls with bonnets and long petticoats and shawls and
flounces and comfortable poky straw bonnets, and boys so nicely
dressed, and urns and small panes (no glasses and no clocks),
trays, good bread, and everybody with clean and fresh and pretty
faces. We have been walking this evening by the sea, and all the
English look very odd; they all look hangy and loose, so different
from the Paris ladies, laced so tight they can hardly walk, and the
men and boys look ten times better.

ROCHESTER, _June_ 17, 1831

We did not leave Dover till near twelve--the country has really
been beautiful to-day; all the beautiful gentlemen's places with
large trees, and the pretty hedges all along the road full of
honeysuckle and roses; clean cows and white fat sheep feeding in
most beautiful rich green grass; the nicest little cottages with
lattice windows and thatched roofs and neat gardens, and roses,
ivy, and honeysuckle creeping to the tops of the chimneys;
everybody and everything clean and tidy.... The cart-horses are
beautiful, and even the beggars look as if they washed their faces.

_October_ 9, 1831, BOGNOR

We heard this morning of the loss of the Reform Bill, and we were
at first all very sorry, but in a little while rather glad because
it gives us a chance of Minto. When the people of Bognor heard it
was lost, they took the flowers and ribands off that they had
dressed up the coaches with, thinking it had passed, and put them
in mourning.

Lord John Russell had introduced the first Reform Bill on March 1, 1831;
this was carried by a majority of one; but in a later division the
Government was defeated by a majority of eight, and Parliament was
dissolved. The elections resulted in an emphatic verdict in favour of
Reform, and on June 24th Lord John introduced the second Reform Bill, which
was carried by a large majority in the House of Commons. He had proposed to
disfranchise partially or completely 110 boroughs; a proposition which had
seemed so revolutionary that it was at first received with laughter by the
Opposition, who were confident no such measure could ever pass. Lord Minto
had returned from France to support this Bill in the Lords, which on his
arrival he found had been rejected by them in a division on the 8th of
October. The rejection of the Bill was followed by disturbances throu