very early in the morning I shall be at your house. I must find you alone—you understand me, alone in the world! Do you not well know the means? Oh, Philip, I love thee (I love thee). Knowest thou what a jealous woman is?
11.—Extracts from the “Zoïst Magazine,” No. XLVII., for October, 1854.
“Mesmeric Cure of a Lady who had been Twelve Years in the Horizontal Position, with Extreme Suffering. By the Rev. R. A. F. Barrett, B.D., Senior Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.
*****
“In January, 1852, I was calling upon , when she happened to tell me that she had been in considerable pain for a fortnight past; that the only thing that relieved her was mesmerism; but the friend who used to mesmerise her was gone. . . . I continued to mermerise her occasionally for some months. . . .
“April 2lst.—I kept her asleep an hour and a quarter in the morning and the same in the evening. She said[1] her throat looked parched and feverish; at her request I ate some black currant paste, which she said moistened it. . . . She said, ‘Before you ate, my stomach was contracted and had a queer-looking sort of moisture in it; now the stomach is its full size and does not look shrunk, and part of the moisture is gone.’
“I. ‘But you could not get nourishment so?’
“A. ‘Yes: I could get all my system wants.’
*****
“April 26th.—In the evening I kept her asleep one hour, and took tea for her.
“April 27th.— . . . I ate dinner and she felt much stronger.
*****
“I kept her asleep two hours and a quarter in the morning and one hour in the evening, eating for her as usual.”
NOTES TAKEN AT HAMPDEN CONCERNING
THE GREATEST SQUIRE OF THAT ILK.
On a beautiful spring morning, about twenty years ago, we started, from some deep rich meadows in the Vale of Aylesbury, to visit the hereditary home of John Hampden. We did not hope to gather any information which had not been laid long since before the reading world, or to be able to point out an uncanvassed probability connected with this great man; but we were anxious to ascertain if his family mansion yet contained a chamber which might have known his presence. We went to visit his grave, and the graves of his household; to tread the paths, and to look on the scenes over which his feet and eyes had wandered, some two centuries before; and we were determined to learn the history of that portrait of this popular leader which is preserved in his ancient home, and has been accepted as an original by his descendants, though Lord Nugent and Mr. Forster, in their excellent lives of the patriot, have adopted as frontispiece an engraving from the Port Eliot picture; and fortunate in his generation is the great man who resembles it, who wears a countenance which illustrates so magnificently both moral and intellectual power and beauty. The parish register also had attractions for us; we would inspect the disputed entry of the patriot’s burial, and learn who were the clergy that officiated at Hampden during the time of its greatest squire. The wall of their churchyard adjoins his garden,—they were certainly his nearest neighbours; if they possessed congenial minds, his friends and companions also. We knew already busy William Spurstow, the chaplain to the Green-Coats; but there must have been another rector during the forty-six years John Hampden owned these estates. The larks sang cheerily to us, rising from their dewy resting-places among the young corn, as we rode over the fine turf growing beside the rough cross-country roads of Buckinghamshire, or wound along narrow ways, where the clerical driver of a pony-chaise we met had much ado to keep clear of a wagon.
As we approached our destination, the green shade of the indigenous beeches fell upon us, and every leaf on their flexile shoots seemed semi-transparent, so delicate was the verdure which clothed the surrounding woodlands that sunny spring day. The ground beneath was carpeted in many places with the pure white flowers of the fragrant wood-ruff, and the nodding bells of the wild blue hyacinth. On the sloping sides of the neighbouring hills, juniper and box abounded, and the minute blossom of the latter shrub filled the air with a most “delectable smell,” as the old botanists say. While the jays chattered above us, we speculated on the probable site of the excellent truffles which may be collected under these beeches, by the assistance of an intelligent pig, or a little dog trained for that purpose. It is possible that this interesting fungus was not so greatly appreciated when Queen Elizabeth visited, among the Buckinghamshire highlands, Francis, Earl of Bedford, at his house at Chenies, and Griffith Hampden, at Hampden. Many miles of green shade have faded since their days from the sides of the Chilterns; and as lovers of the picturesque, we looked sadly on the groves that remained, for we knew how rapidly they were vanishing before the plough.
The landscape around and beneath us, was peopled with historic associations belonging to the civil wars of the seventeenth century.
“Noll Cromwell” had ridden there,[2] “in the might of his spirit, with his swords and bibles, and all his train of disciples.” Rupert and his cavaliers had plunged into the intricate woodlands; and Hampden and his green coats knew the passes well. The London red coats of Hollis, and the blue and purple uniforms of Lords Brook and Say, had appeared among these plains and groves; for the country was sorely rough-ridden then by foe and friend, the cattle were driven by turns for King and Parliament, and the smoke of burning homesteads and villages rose from the