just as well have addressed the scraper. However, she gathered from my face that I was making an apology for my untimely visit. 'Don't say a word about it,' she said; of course you didn't know that I was engaged in the mornings. How should you? A poet, Miss Mitford tells me.'

And she held my hand and shook it with genuine interest, but also with some amusement, much as a visitor at the Zoological might feel on being introduced to a new arrival born in the gardens' of a rare and unusual type. I am sure the notion of a young gentleman, not over rich, being about to pursue the Art of Poetry as a profession tickled her.

'You are in Lakeland all alone it seems; that is a claim upon my hospitality-even in the morning-which cannot be resisted; not to mention Miss Mitford's pressing recommendation of you to my care. She seems very fond of you.'

Then I told her how very kind my friend at Swallowfield had been to me.

me.

'I am glad to hear it,' she said, 'but it does not at all astonish She must have a tender nature. What strikes one about her as a writer is that one likes her books so much more than one's judgment approves of them.'

I could hardly help smiling when I called to mind the mitigated admiration which the other literary lady had, though in another way, expressed of this one. I was not so foolish as to contend about what was after all a matter of taste, but confined myself to speaking of Miss Mitford's personal qualities, mode of life, &c., which interested my hostess very much. We were by this time in her library (though indeed there were bookshelves everywhere at The Knoll), the view from which naturally extorted my admiration. 'Yes,' she said, 'the look-out is charming; it is sometimes indeed so beautiful that I scarcely dare withdraw my eyes from it for fear it should melt.'

6

She said this with great enthusiasm and with her face lit up with pleasure. My little home,' she went on, is full of pleasant associations. It was the dream of my life to build such a house in such a place; Wordsworth greatly admired my choice of situation -he suggested the motto "Light, come, visit me" for my sun-dial yonder.' 'Then you knew him?' I said. It was a foolish question to drop into an ear-trumpet, but it was the first instrument of the kind I had ever met with, and it disconcerted me extremely; her offering it to me was like a churchwarden stopping with his col

lecting plate in front of one at church, where one would like to be generous in the face of the congregation, but cannot find one's purse. Moreover the idea of knowing Wordsworth, for whom I had an immense reverence, rather overpowered me; it seemed like having a personal acquaintance with Milton.

'Why, yes, of course. He lived only a mile away at Rydal, you know. He was good enough to take an interest in me when I first came to live here, and gave me' (here she smiled) much excellent advice. He said that I must make up my mind to be lionized. "People will come to see you, though of course not so many as come to see me, whether you will or no; strangers, tourists, and all sorts; if they are such as you must entertain, give them tea; but if they want meat, let them go to the inn." It was very wise and prudent advice, but you shall take an early dinner with me to-day for all that.'

I was delighted, of course; I was not the least afraid of my hostess by this time, but felt that I was encroaching on her hours of work, and said so.

6

'It is true you have made me idle,' she said, "but it is such a lovely morning that I forgive you. Let us come into the garden.' We went out accordingly. My friend Mr. Greg' says that when it is fine in the Lake country one should never work, but though there are so many wet days, I cannot afford to be idle.'

I praised the freshness of her little lawn.

'Yes,' she said, but you have no idea of the trouble it took me to get the turf. You would think, perhaps, with these green mountains so near that it was a common commodity, but the fact is where once it is taken away it never grows again; the place is left bare. I could get no turf, in fact, for love or money, and was at my wit's end for it, when a very curious circumstance happened. One morning I found a cartload of turf lying on the gravel yonder where it had been pitchforked over the wall. A bit of paper was pinned to a slab of it, with these words written on it in a vile scrawl: "To Harriet Martineau, from a lover of her Forest and Game Law tales--A poacher."2 I dare say it was

The author of the Creed of Christendom, then living at Bowness, on Lake Windermere.

? I afterwards heard that on the morning after the event in question, Mrs. Martineau went over to Fox Howe (the house Dr. Arnold had built under Lough. rigg) to narrate the event. Archbishop Whately, who hated her, was a guest there at the time; he did not join in the general admiration of the poacher's conduct; he only shook his head. Some one privately enquired of him whether he doubted the genuineness of the letter. Doubt it? of course I doubt it; the woman wrote it herself.'

stolen, but that dishonest tribute to my merits always gave me great pleasure.'

We continued our tour of her little territory, and inspected the stall-fed cows, which were themselves not unknown to fame, as having been subjected to the influences of mesmerism.

For my own part I have never believed in these marvels. I entertain a Philistine scepticism upon the subject of most 'isms,' and at that time was very much inclined to laugh at them in a disrespectful manner; but I never laughed at Harriet Martineau, though often with her. There was a tender as well as earnest gravity about her when expressing her views that nipped ridicule in the bud. Her belief in spiritualism was indeed a severe trial to me, but as she took the epidemic in a very favourable form'I believe in spiritualism,' she used to say, 'but not in the Spirits,' just as my other friend took her Political Economical tales without the political economy-so much of consent as arises from silence was possible for me to give. Unlike Miss Mitford, who, without altering her opinions one jot, was ready at once to agree to differ, Miss Martineau revelled in argument, and from an early period of life I have had the prudence to abstain from argument with ladies of whatever rank, or age, or genius. Only once or twice in my long intimacy with the lady of the Knoll did I ever get into hot water with her. One occasion was very nearly fatal to me, when I made an unfortunate mistake, which, painful and embarrassing as it was to me at the time, I can never think of without half-choking with laughter. In her study was the portrait of a scientific gentleman she greatly honoured, but who in my humble judgment influenced her mind for evil and injured her reputation as a writer and thinker exceedingly. She asked me one day of whom the picture (to me unknown) reminded me. It was a striking countenance enough, full of restrained enthusiasm: but as it happened I remembered no one like it. Look again,' she said, 'you surely must see the resemblance.'

It was most unfortunate, for as it turned out she saw a most striking likeness in the portrait to the founder of the Christian religion.

'That,' as Anthony Trollope says so often in his autobiography, 'was a bad moment for me.'

A ludicrous incident fortunately happened, the same day, which restored her good humour. I had by that time got so well

accustomed to her ear-trumpet that I began to look upon it as a part of herself. It was lying on the table a good distance away from her, and having some remark to make to her, I inadvertently addressed it to the instrument instead of her ear. Heavens, how we laughed! She had a very keen sense of fun, of which however she was quite unconscious. I remember her pointing out to me a passage in some leading article in the Times which amused her excessively. It was upon the subject of protection, and the country gentlemen were depicted as foreseeing the nation dependent for its corn upon 'the Romans, the Colossians, and the Thessalonians.' 'How I wish I could write like that,' she said, 'but unhappily I have no humour.' She could not create it indeed, but she could appreciate it very fully.

No one who reads these recollections can be more conscious than myself that they are very rambling. I have already wandered a long way from the day of my first introduction to The Knoll. As it is difficult to get on' with some people, to make any way into their minds and hearts, so that we remain as much outside them after a twelvemonth's acquaintance as after twelve hours, so there are others with whom intimacy comes on so soon that it is difficult to replace oneself in the first position' of acquaintance. This is one of the reasons why a diary is so indispensable to an autobiography. Among the many foolish things that the cuckoos of the human race repeat with the idea that it has the wisdom of a proverb, is the remark that before a traveller can describe a place to others he must have lived there and known it thoroughly, whereas the fact is just the reverse; after a day or two, or even less, the first impressions (which are the very thing he wishes to convey) vanish from his mind. So it is with a new acquaintance when he becomes our friend; his salient points are lost through our becoming familiar with them. I feel this very much in describing Harriet Martineau, whose friendship I had the privilege to enjoy for twenty years. My general impression of her is very different, I find, from the particular impression which she left on others who only saw her once or twice. For example, with respect to that ear-trumpet (which had a great public reputation in its time) I have heard stories from persons as eminent as its possessor herself, which, though humorous and interesting enough, seem to me without foundation. Her enemies looked upon it as a weapon of defence.'

It was literally used in this fashion on one occasion. A right of way was in dispute at one time through certain fields (a portion, I think, of Rydal Park) in

A great philosopher (but who did not share her tenets) used to insist upon it that she could always hear when she liked, and only used her trumpet when she wanted to hear; at other times she laid it down as a protection against argument. Nothing could be more untrue, though I admit that she had degrees of deafness; it varied with her general health.

Again, the author of the 'Vestiges of Creation' used to contend that Miss Martineau never wanted her ear-trumpet at all, not because she could hear without it, but because she did not care to hear what anybody had to tell her. He said to me once, in his dry humorous way, 'Your friend Miss Martineau has been giving me the address in town where she gets all her ear-trumpets. Why, good Heavens! what does she want of them? Does she mean to say that she ever wore one ear-trumpet out in all her life in listening to what anybody had to say?' She was no doubt somewhat masterful in argument (which is probably all that he meant to imply), but I always found her very ready to listen, and especially to any tale of woe or hardship which it lay in her power to remedy. Her conversation indeed was by no means monologue, and rarely have I known a social companion more bright and cheery; but her talk, when not engaged in argument, was, which is unusual in a woman, very anecdotal. She had known more interesting and eminent persons than most men, and certainly than any woman, of her time; the immense range of her writings, political,

the neighbourhood of Ambleside, and the owner closed them to the public. Miss Martineau, though a philanthropist on a large scale, could also (which is not so common with that class) pick up a pin for freedom's sake, and play the part of a village Hampden. When the rest of her neighbours shrank from this contest with the lord of the manor, she took up the cudgels for them, and the little tyrant of those fields withstood.' She alone, not indeed with 'bended bow and quiver full of arrows,' but with her ear-trnet and umbrella, took her walk through the forbidden land as usual. Whereupon the wicked lord (so runs the story, though I never heard it from her own lips) put a young bull into the field. He attacked the trespasser, or at all events prepared to attack her, but the indomitable lady faced him and stood her ground. She was quite capable of it, for she had the courage of her opinions (which was saying a good deal), and at all events, whether from astonishment at her presumption, or terror of the eartrumpet (to which of course he had nothing to say), the bull in the end withdrew his opposition (drew in his horns) and suffered her to pursue her way in peace. I wish I could add that she had the good fortune of another patriotic lady to 'take the tax away,' but I am afraid the wicked lord succeeded in his designs. More than once, however, I have had pointed out to me over the wall-for the bull was still there the little eminence wherefrom, with no weapon but her ear-trumpet, (for she had her umbrella over her head all the time to keep the sun off), this danntless lady withstood the horrid foe.