love, I would curse, excommunicate, and anathematize you for cutting down all those splendid trees and laying bare those deep, dark, leafy nooks, the haunts of a thousand “Midsummer Night’s Dreams,” to the common air and the staring sun.  The sight of the dear old familiar paths brought the tears to my eyes, for, stripped and thinned of their trees and robbed of their beauty, my memory restored all their former loveliness.  On we went down to Byefleet to the mill, to Langton’s through the sweet, turfy meadows, by hawthorn hedges musical as sweet, over the picturesque little bridge and along that deep, dark, sleepy water flowing so silently in its sullen smoothness.  On we went a long way over a wide common, where the coarse-grained peaty earth and golden glory of the flowering gorse reminded me of Suffolk’s motto—­

“Cloth of gold, do not despise
That thou art mix’d with cloth of frieze;
Cloth of frieze, be not too bold
That thou art mix’d with cloth of gold.”

Back by St. George’s Hill, snatching many a leaf and blossom as I rode to carry back to A——­ mementoes of our dear Weybridge days, and so home by half-past seven, just time to dress for dinner.  As we rode along, Lord Francis and I discussed poets and poetry in general—­more particularly Byron, Keats, and Shelley; it was a very pretty and proper discourse for such a ride.

In the evening heard all manner of delicious ghost stories; afterward made music, Lady Francis and I trying all sorts of duets, my mother keeping up a “humming” third and Lord Francis listening and applauding with equal zeal and discretion....

     Saturday, May 21st.—­My brother John come home from Spain....

Sunday, 22d.—­What a very odd process dreaming is!  I dreamt in the night that John had come home, and flung myself out of bed in my sleep to run downstairs to him, which naturally woke me; and then I remembered that he was come home and that I had seen and welcomed him, which it seems to me I might as well have dreamed too while I was about it, and saved myself the jump out of bed.  I hate dreaming; it’s like being mad—­having one’s brain work without the control of one’s will.

Dear A——­ took the sacrament for the first time at the Swiss church.  On my return from church in the afternoon found Sir Ralph and Lady Hamilton and Don Telesforo de Trueba.  I like that young Spaniard; he’s a clever man.  It was such fun his telling me all the story of the Star of Seville, little imagining I had just perpetrated a five-act tragedy on that identical subject.

Tuesday, May 24th.—­Drove down to Clint’s studio to see Cecilia’s (Siddons’s) portrait.  It’s a pretty picture of a “fine piece of a woman,” as the Italians say, but it has none of the very decided character of her face....

Wednesday, May 25th.—­After