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“It is an inexpressible pleasure to know a little of the world, and to be of no character or significancy in it.”—Steele.

“Arranging long-locked drawers and shelves

Of cabinets, shut up for years,

What a strange task we’ve set ourselves!

How still the lonely room appears!

How strange this mass of ancient treasures,

Mementos of past pains and pleasures.”

“Be wisely worldly, be not worldly wise.”—Quarles.

“No, when the fight begins within himself,

A man’s worth something.”—Browning.

MY three thick volumes of the “Cities of Northern and Central Italy” appeared in the autumn of 1875, a very large edition (3000 copies) being printed at once. They were immediately the object of a most violent attack from Mr. Murray, who saw in them rivals to his well-known red handbooks. A most virulent and abusive article appeared upon my work in the Athenæum, accusing me, amongst other things, of having copied from Murray’s Handbooks without acknowledgment, and quoting, as proof, passages relating to Verona in both books, which have the same singular mistake. It was certainly a curious accident which made me receive the proof-sheets of Verona when away from home on a visit at Tunbridge Wells, where the only book of reference accessible was Murray’s “Handbook of Northern Italy,” which I found in the house, so that the mistakes in my account of Verona were actually copied from Murray’s Handbook, to which I was indebted for nothing else whatever, as (though much delighted with them when they first appeared) I had for years found Murray’s Handbooks so inefficient, that I had never bought or made any use of them, preferring the accurate and intelligent Handbooks of the German Gsel-fels. Mr. Murray further took legal proceedings against me, because in one of my volumes I had mentioned that the Italian Lakes were included in his Swiss rather than his Italian Handbooks: this having been altered in recent years, but having been the case in the only volumes of his Handbooks I had ever possessed. On all occasions, any little literary success I met with excited bitter animosity from Mr. Murray.

Another curious attack was made upon me by the eccentric Mr. Freeman, the historian of the Norman Conquest. He had published in the Saturday Review a series of short articles on the Italian cities, which I always felt had never received the attention they deserved, their real interest having been overlooked owing to the unpopularity of the dogmatic and verbose style in which they were written. Therefore, really with the idea of doing Mr. Freeman a good turn, I had rather gone out of my way to introduce extracts from his articles where I could, that notice might thus be attracted to them—an attention for which I had already been thanked by other little-read authors, as, whatever may be the many faults of my books, they have always had a large circulation. But in the case of Mr. Freeman, knowing the singular character of the man, I begged a common friend to write to his daughter and amanuensis to mention my intention, and ask her, if her father had no objection to my quoting from his articles, to send me a list of them (as they were unsigned), in order that I might not confuse them with those of any other person. By return of post I received, without comment, from Miss Freeman, a list of her father’s articles, and I naturally considered this as equivalent to his full permission to quote from them. I was therefore greatly surprised, when Mr. Freeman’s articles appeared soon afterwards in a small volume, to find it introduced with a preface, the whole object of which was, in the most violent manner, to accuse me of theft. I immediately published a full statement of the circumstances under which I had quoted from Mr. Freeman in sixteen different newspapers. Mr. Freeman answered in the Times by repeating his accusation, and in the Guardian he added, “Though Mr. Hare’s conduct was barefaced and wholesale robbery, I shall take no further notice of him till he has stolen something else.”[187]

Mr. Freeman made himself many enemies, but he did not make me one; he was too odd. His neighbour, the Dean of Wells, Johnson, could not bear him. When there was an Archæological Meeting at Wells, it was thought that peace might be made if the Dean could be persuaded to propose the historian’s health at the dinner. The Dean was quite willing, but he began his speech unfortunately with—“I rise with great pleasure to propose the health of our eminent neighbour, Mr. Freeman the historian, a man who—in his own personal characteristics—has so often depicted for us the savage character of our first forefathers.”

But in spite of these little catastrophes attending its publication, I am certain that “Cities of Northern and Central Italy,” which cost me far more pains and labour, and which is more entirely original, than all my earlier books put together, was by far the best of my writings, up to that time.

Before the book was out, I was already devoted to a new work, suggested by the great delight I had long found in London, and by the desire of awakening others to an enjoyment of its little-known treasures. A set of lectures delivered at Sir John Shaw-Lefevre’s house in Seymour Street, and a series of articles in Good Words, laid the foundation for my “Walks in London.” When employed in this work, as in all my others, I felt all those portions of life to be the most interesting which were spent in following out any one single purpose.

Journal.

“Jan. 18, 1876.—I went to Cobham for three days last week. Deep snow was on the ground, but the visit was delightful. I was delighted to find Lady Pelham there, always so radiant and cordial, and so perfectly simple. Of the other guests, the most interesting were Lord and Lady Harris. There were also a great many Kentish men, hunting clergy, who dressed in top-boots, &c., during their visit, but departed in ecclesiastical attire.”

“Jan. 19.—Yesterday I went to Lady Taunton. She has a beautiful portrait of her daughter by young Richmond—a sort of play upon every possible tone of yellow—a yellow gown, a yellow background, a great cushion worked with yellow sunflowers, yellow hair looped up with pearls, only a great white living lily to throw it all back. It is a most poetical picture.

“In the evening I went to a supper at the house of young F. P. to meet a whole society of young actors, artists, &c. Eden was there, known in the stage world as Herbert, a name he took to save the feelings of his episcopal uncle, Lord Auckland. His is a fine and a charming face, but rather sad. … There were about fourteen men present, very good singing, and then supper, much kindness and cordiality, and not a word which all their mothers and sisters might not have heard. It would not have been so at college or in a mess-room: so much for maligned actors.”

“Jan. 21.—To see Frederick Walker’s pictures. It is an interesting collection, as being the written mind of one man. You see the same picture over and over again, from its first sketch of an idea—merely a floating idea—to its entire completion, and it is interesting to know how slow a growth of thought was required to lead up to something, which, after all, was not so very wonderful in the end. The pictures are not beautiful, but the man who did them must have been charming, such a simple lover of farmhouse life, apple-orchards, and old-fashioned gardens, with a glory of flowers—all the right kinds of flowers blooming together.

“It poured, so I sat some time with R. on one of the seats. He talked long and openly of all the temptations of his life, and endlessly about himself. I urged that the best way of ennobling his own nature must be through others, that self-introspection would never do, and could only lead to egotism and selfishness, but that in trying to help others he would unconsciously help himself. I find it most difficult to say anything of this kind without making illustrations out of my own life, which I have certainly no right to think exemplary.

“As we were going away, a lady who had stared long and hard at us, and whom I thought to be some waif turned up from my Roman lectures, came up to me. ‘I think, sir, that you were standing close to my sister just now, and she has lost her purse.’—‘I am very sorry your sister has lost her purse; it is very unfortunate.’—‘Yes, but my sister has lost her purse, and you, you were standing by her when she lost it.’—‘I think after what you have said I had better give you my card.’—‘Oh, no, no, no.’—’ Oh, yes, yes, yes: after what you have said I must insist upon giving you my card.’ What an odd experience, to be taken for a pickpocket! R. thought the lady had really picked my pocket, but she had not.”

“Jan. 22.—An anonymous letter of apology from the lady of the picked pocket; only she said that if I had been as flurried as she was, and had been placed in the same circumstances as she was, I should have acted exactly as she did; in which I do not quite agree with her.”

“Monk’s Orchard, Jan. 23.—This is a fine big house, be-pictured, be-statued, with a terraced garden, a lake, and a great flat park. A Mr. and Mrs. Rodd are here with their son Rennell, a pleasant-looking boy, wonderfully precocious and clever, though, as every one listens to him, he has—not unnaturally—a very good opinion of himself: still one feels at once that he is the sort of boy who will be heard of again some day.

“Our host, Mr. Lewis Loyd, is in some ways one of the most absent men in the world. One day, meeting a friend, he said, ‘Hallo! what a long time it is since I’ve seen you! How’s your father?’—‘Oh, my father’s dead.’—‘God bless me! I’m very sorry,’ &c. The next year he met the same man again, and had forgotten all about it, so began with, ‘Hallo! what a long time since I’ve seen you! How’s your father?’-‘Oh, my father’s dead still!’

“We have been to church at Shirley—one of Scott’s new country churches. In the churchyard is a cross to poor Sir John Anson, and beside it a granite altar-tomb with an inscription saying that it is to Ruskin’s father—‘a perfectly honest merchant,’ and that ‘his son, whom he loved to the uttermost, and taught to speak the truth, says this.’

“69 Onslow Square, Jan. 28.—A long visit to F. and S. It is quite a new phase of life to me. They are perfect gentlemen, at least in heart, and one cannot be with them long without seeing a kindly, chivalrous nature, which comes to the surface in a thousand little nothings. Yet they are what the world frowns upon—beginning to seek fortune on the stage, neglected or rejected by unsympathetic relations, living from hand to mouth, furnishing their rooms by pawning their rings and watches, &c. S. in terrible illness, totally penniless, ignored by every one, is taken in, nursed, doctored, and paid for by F., upon whom he has no claim whatever. F., abused, snubbed, and without any natural charm in himself, is henceforth loved, defended, regarded with the most loyal devotion, by his more popular companion.

“I dined on the 26th with Lady E. Adeane. Mr. Percy Doyle was very amusing. Talking of the anxiety of ministers in America to change their posts, he said, ‘If my father had bequeathed to me Hell and Texas, I should have lived in Hell and let Texas.’

“Yesterday I went to luncheon with the Vaughans at the Temple, and met there Miss Rye, who has a home for homeless children at Clapham, and takes them off by batches to America, to establish them there as servants, &c. She produced from her pocket about a hundred cartes-de-visite of the children, wild, unkempt, and wicked-looking, and of the same children after they had been under cultivation. Certainly the change was marvellous, but then she had employed a good photographer for the redeemed children and a very bad one for the little ruffians.”

FOUNTAIN COURT, TEMPLE. [188]

“Feb. 5.—Dined at Lady Sarah Lindsay’s. Sir Robert Phillimore was there, whom I had not seen since I was a child. He is most agreeable and has a noble nature. There was a young man there, a Bridgeman, just entering the law, and I thought the picture quite beautiful which Sir Robert drew without effort for his encouragement, of all that the profession of the law might become and be made by any one who really took to it—of all the great aims to be fulfilled, of all the ways of making it useful to others and ennobling to one’s own nature. I felt so much all that I should have felt that sort of encouragement, drawn from practical experience, would have been to myself.”

“Feb. 8.—The opening of Parliament. I went to Lord Overstone’s. At a quarter to two the procession passed beneath—the fine old carriages and gorgeous footmen, one stream of gold and red, pouring through the black crowd and leafless trees. We all counted the carriages differently—eight, twelve, fifteen; and there were only six! All one saw of royalty was the waving of a white cap-string, as the Queen, sitting well back in the carriage, bowed to the people.”

“Feb. 13.—Dined at the Dowager Lady Barrington’s—the great topic being dinner past, present, and prospective. George, Lord Barrington, said that he had dined at the Brazilian Minister’s, and he was sure the cookery was good and also the wine, for he had eaten of every dish and drunk fourteen kinds of wine, and had passed a perfectly good night and been quite well the next morning. He also dined with Mr. Brand the Speaker, and complimented Mrs. Brand upon the dinner. She told her cook. He said, ‘We are three, Lord Granville’s, Mr. Russell Sturgis’s, and myself; there are only three cooks in London.’ When Lord Harrington afterwards saw Mrs. Brand, she told him the cook had asked who had praised him, and ‘when he heard,’ continued Mrs. Brand, ‘he also gave you his little meed of praise.’ ‘Ah, M. Barrington,’ he said, ‘c’est une bonne fourchette.’ He had been at Kinmel, but said he had ‘dismissed Mr. Hughes.’ ”

“Feb. 14.—Dined at Lord Halifax’s to meet Lord and Lady Cardwell. They are most pleasant, interesting, interested company, and it was altogether one of the happiest dinners I remember. The conversation was chiefly about the changes in spelling and their connection with changes in English history and customs.

“Lord Cardwell was in the habit of using the Church prayers at family prayers. One day his valet came to him and said, ‘I must leave your lordship’s service at once.’—‘Why, what have you to complain of?’—‘Nothing personally, but your lordship will repeat every morning—“We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and have left undone those things which we ought to have done:”—now I freely admit that I have often done things I ought not, but that I have left undone things that I ought to have done, I utterly deny: and I will not stay here to hear it said.’ ”

“Feb. 19.—A charming walk with Charlie Wood to St. Paul’s, along the Embankment and then a labyrinth of quaint City streets. He called it his half-holiday, and I am sure it was so to me to mount into his pure unworldly atmosphere even for two hours. He is really the only young man I know who at once thinks no evil, believes no evil, and does no evil.”

“Sunday, Feb. 20.—Luncheon with Mrs. Harvey of Ickwellbury, meeting Colonel Taylor, the Whip of the House of Commons—a very amusing man. He talked a great deal about Ireland. He said that when he congratulated Whyte-Melville upon the engagement of his daughter to Lord Massereene, he said, ‘Yes, I have every reason to be satisfied: first, my future son-in-law is an Irishman, and then he speaks his native tongue in all its purity.’

IN FRONT OF ST. PAUL’S. [189]

“He spoke of landing in former days at Kingstown, how the car-drivers fought for you, and, having obtained you, possessed you, and made all out of you that they could. Passing a mile-post with G. P. O. upon it, the ‘fare’ asked its meaning. ‘Why, your honour,’ said the driver, ‘it’s aizy to see that your honour has never been in ould Ireland before—why, that’s just God preserve O’Connell, your honour, and it’s on ivery mile-post all through the country.’ It was of course ‘General Post Office.’

“Coming to a river, the ‘fare’ asked, ‘What do you call this river?’—‘It’s not a river at all, your honour; it’s only a strame.’—‘Well, but what do you call it?’—‘Oh, we don’t call it at all, your honour; it just comes of itself.’ ”

“Feb. 24.—Dined at Lord Strathmore’s, and went on with Hedworth and Lizzie Williamson to Lady Bloomfield’s, where sixty-eight cousins assembled to take leave of Lord and Lady Lytton on their departure for India.”

If any one has ever the patience to read this memoir through, they will have been struck by the way in which, for many years before the time I am writing of, the persons with whom I lived were quite different from those amongst whom my childhood was spent. Arthur Stanley had never got over the publication of the “Memorials of a Quiet Life,” though he was always at a loss to say what he objected to in it, and Mary Stanley I never saw at all. From Lady Augusta alone I continued to receive frequent and affectionate messages.

In 1874 Lady Augusta represented the Queen at the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh, and she never really recovered the effects of the cold which she then endured in Russia. In the summer of 1875 she was alarmingly ill in Paris, was brought home with difficulty, and from that time there was little hope of her recovery. She expired early in March 1876. I had not seen her for long, but had always a most affectionate recollection of her, and the last letter she was able to dictate was addressed to me.

Journal.

“Holmhurst, March 12.—I have been again up to London for dear Augusta Stanley’s funeral on the 9th. It was a beautiful day. All the approaches to Westminster were filled with people in mourning.

“It seemed most strange thus to go to the Deanery again—that the doors closed for six years were opened wide by death, by the death of one who had always remained my friend, and whom no efforts of others could alienate. Red cloth showed that royalty was coming, and I went at once to the library, where an immense crowd of cousins were assembled. As I went down the little staircase with Kate Vaughan, four ladies in deep mourning passed to the dining-room, carrying immense wreaths of lovely white flowers: they were the Queen and three of her daughters. The Queen seemed in a perfect anguish of grief. She remained for a short time alone with the coffin, I believe knelt by it, and was then taken to the gallery overhanging the Abbey.

“Soon the immense procession set out by the cloisters, and on entering the church, turned so as to pass beneath the Queen and then up the nave from the west end. The church was full of people: I felt as if I only saw the wind lifting the long garlands of white flowers as the coffin moved slowly on, and Arthur’s pathetic face of childlike bewilderment. The music was lovely, but in that vast choir one longed for a village service. It was not so in the second part, when we moved through one long sob from the poor of Westminster who lined the way, to the little chapel behind the tomb of Henry VII., where the service was indescribably simple and touching.

“The procession of mourners went round the Abbey from the choir by a longer way to the chapel on account of the people. As it passed the corner of the transept, the strange little figure of Mr. Carlyle slipped out. He had been very fond of Augusta, was full of feeling for Arthur, and seemed quite unconscious of who and where he was. He ran along, before the chief mourners, by the side of the coffin, and in the chapel itself he stood at the head of the grave, making the strangest ejaculations at intervals through the service.”

Arthur stood at the head of the grave with his hands on the heads of Thomas Bruce’s two children. When the last flowers fell into the grave, a single voice sang gloriously, “Write, saith the Spirit.” Then we moved back again to the nave, and, standing at the end, in a voice of most majestic pathos, quivering, yet audible through all that vast space, Arthur himself gave the blessing. “The Queen was waiting for him upon the threshold as he went into the house, and led him herself into his desolate home.”

I insert some poor lines which I wrote “In Memoriam.”

“Lately together in a common grief

Our Royal mistress with her people wept,

And reverently were fairest garlands laid

Where our beloved one from her sufferings slept.

Seeing the sunshine through a mist of tears

Fall on the bier of her we loved so well,

Each, in the memory sweet of happy years,

Some kindly word or kindlier thought could tell.

And tenderly, with sorrow-trembling voice,

All sought their comfort in a meed of love,

Unworthy echoes from each saddened heart

Seeking their share in the great loss to prove.

For she so lately gathered into rest

Was one who smoothed this stony path of ours,

And beating down the thorns along the way,

Aye left it strewn and sweet with summer flowers.

In the true candour of a noble heart,

She never sought another’s fault to show,

But rather thought there must be in herself

Some secret failure which she did not know.

While if all praised and honoured, she herself

Meekly received it with a sweet surprise,

Seeking henceforth to be what now she deemed

Was but a phantasy in loving eyes.

When the fair sunshine of her happy home

Tuned her whole heart and all her life to praise,

She ever tried to cheer some gloomier lot,

From the abounding brightness of its ways.

And many a weary sufferer blest the hand

Which knew so well a healing balm to pour;

While hungry voices never were denied

By her, who kept, as steward, a poor man’s store.

Thus when, from all the labour of her love,

She passed so sadly to a bed of pain,

And when from tongue to tongue the story went,

That none would see the honoured face again:

It was a personal grief to thousand hearts

Outside the sphere in which her lot was cast,

And tens of thousands sought to have a share

In loving honour paid her at the last.

E’en death is powerless o’er a life like hers,

Its radiance lingers, though its sun has set;

Rich and unstinted was the seed she sowed,

The golden harvest is not gathered yet.”

Journal.

“March 25.—A ‘Spelling Bee’ at Mrs. Dundas’s. I was plucked as I entered the room over the word Camelopard.

“Dined at the Tower of London with Everard Primrose; only young Lord Mayo there. At 11 P.M. the old ceremony of relieving guard took place. I stood with Everard and a file of soldiers on a little raised terrace. A figure with a lanthorn emerged from a dark hole.

“ ‘Who goes there?’ shouted the soldiers.

“ ‘The Queen.’

“ ‘What Queen?’

“ ‘Queen Victoria.’

“ ‘And whose keys are those?’

“ ‘Queen Victoria’s keys.’

“Upon which the figure, advancing into the broad moonlight, said ‘God bless Queen Victoria!’ and all the soldiers shouted ‘Amen’ and dispersed.”

“March 28.—My lecture on ‘The Strand and the Inns of Court’ took place in 41 Seymour Street. I felt at Tyburn till I began, and then got on pretty well. There was a very large attendance. I was very much alarmed at the whole party, but had an individual dread of Lord Houghton, though I was soon relieved by seeing that he was fast asleep, and remained so all the time.”

“April 4.—My lecture on Aldersgate, &c. Dinner at the Miss Duff Gordons, meeting the Tom Taylors.[190] He talks incessantly.”

“April 6.—Dined with Lady Sarah Lindsay, where I was delighted at last to meet Mrs. Greville.[191] She recited in the evening, sitting down very quietly on the sofa with her feet on a stool. Her voice is absorbing, and in her ‘Queen of the May’ each line seems to catch up a fresh echo of pathos from the last.”

“April 7.—Dined at Sir Stafford Northcote’s.[192] Mrs. Dudley Ryder was there, who told me she had paralysis of the throat, yet sang splendidly. Sir Stafford told a capital story in French in the evening, something like that which I tell in Italian about the Duke of Torlonia.”

“April 14.—Dined at the Shaw-Lefevres’. Dear Sir John talked much, when we were alone, of the great mercies and blessings of his life—how entirely he could now say with Horne Tooke, ‘I am both content and thankful.’ He described his life—his frequent qualms at having sacrificed a certain position at the bar to an uncertain post under Government: then how the Governorship of Ceylon was offered to him, and how he longed to take it, but did not, though it was of all things what he would have liked, because an instant answer was demanded, and he could not at once find any means of providing for the children he could not take with him: how through all the year afterwards he was very miserable and could apply to nothing, it was such a very severe disappointment; and then how he was persuaded to stand for Cambridge, and how, though he did not get in, the effort served its purpose in diverting his thoughts. Eventually the place in the House of Lords was offered, in which he worked for so many years.

CHAPEL AND GATEWAY, LINCOLN’S INN. [193]

“Sir John spoke most touchingly of his boy’s death. ‘We had another little boy once, you did not know perhaps. It died. It was the dearest, most engaging child. When it died it took the shine out of life.’ Then he dwelt on the law of compensations, how the anxiety for his eldest girl Rachel, so very ill, ‘brought in on a cushion, and suffering so much, poor thing,’ diverted his thoughts from the great loss. In his old age he said, ‘And now at eighty all is blessing—all … but it is difficult to remember how old one is. The chief sign of age I feel is the inability to apply regularly to work, the having no desire to begin anything new.’ One could not but feel as if it was Sir Thomas More who was speaking, so beautiful his spirit of blessed contentment, so perfect the trust and repose of his gentle waiting for what the future might bring.”

STAPLE INN, HOLBORN. [194]

“Holmhurst, April 30.—Lea has been in saying, ‘It’s May Day to-morrow, the day to turn the cows out to grass. The poor things must have a bit of a treat then, you know; they always have done. But there’s not the good clover now-a-days there used to be. Eh! what a fuss there used to be, to be sure, putting the cows out in the clover; and we used to watch that they did not eat too much, and to see that they did not swell; if they did, they had to be pricked, or they’d have burst. And then next day there was the making of the first May cheese. … Old John Pearce at Lime used to take wonderful care of Mr. Taylor’s oxen, and proud enough he used to be of them. “Well, you give them plenty to eat, John,” I used to say. “Yes, that’s just about it, Miss Lea,” he said; “I do put it into them right down spitefully, that I do.” ’

“Here are some more of her sayings:—

“ ‘Here’s a pretty how-d’ye-do! It’s the master finding fault!—it’s one day one thing and one another. Old bachelors and old maids are all alike. They don’t know what they want, they don’t; but I know: the old maids want husbands, and the old bachelors want wives, that’s what they want.’

“ ‘It’s the mischief of the farming now-a-days that the farmers always say ‘Go.’ … My father used to say a farmer never ought to say ‘Go;’ if he did, the work was sure to be neglected: a farmer should always say ‘Come, lads,’ and then the work would be done.’

“ ‘It’s hailing is it? then there’ll be frost, for