embered to
have been the dear friend of our dear friend the Lord Bishop of
Fredericton, when both prelates were curates in Exeter."

* * * * *

I am very much enjoying my visit to this dear old Castle. They are
superabundantly kind! After the evening yesterday everybody, visitors
and family, all trooped into the dimly-lighted chapel for Evening
Prayer. They sang "Jerusalem the Golden," and Gen. Lysons sang away
through his glass, in his K.C.B. star, and came up to compliment me
about it afterwards....

October 22, 1880.

Yesterday was Trafalgar Day. About half-a-dozen old Admirals of ninety
and upwards met and dined together! I don't know what I would not have
given to have been present at that most ghostly banquet! How like a
dream, a shadow, a bubble, a passing vapour, and all the rest of it,
must life not have seemed to these ex-midshipmen of the _Victory_ and
the _Temeraire_! muffling their poor old throats against this sudden
frost, and toddling to table, and hobnobbing their glass in
old-fashioned ways to immortal memories,

"here in London's central roar,
Where the sound of those, he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for Evermore!"

The cold is sudden and most severe. I fear it will hustle some of
those dear old Admirals to rejoin their ancient comrade--the "Saviour
of the silver-coasted isle."

* * * * *

May 1881.

"The Harbour Bay was clear as glass--
So smooth--ly was it strewn!
And on--the Bay--the moonlight lay
And--the--Shad--ow of--the Moon!"

--thus was it at 11 p.m. on the night of the 4th of May, when I looked
out of my bedroom window at Place Castle, Fowey, on the coast of
Cornwall!!!!--(and we must also remember that Isolde was married to
the King of Cornwall, and lived probably in much such a place as
Place!)

* * * * *

I caught a train on to Fowey, which I reached about 5. There I found a
brougham and two fiery chestnuts waiting for me, and after some
plunging at the train away went my steeds, and we turned almost at
once into the drive. There is no park to Place that I could see, but
the drive is _sui generis_! You keep going through _cuttings_ in the
rock, so that it has an odd feeling of a drive _on the stage_ in a
Fairy Pantomime. On your right hand the cliff is _tapestried_, almost
hidden, by wild-