It is settled now that we go to Exeter by coach, and now that we have given up our pretty sea trip to Ilfracombe, the weather has become lovely—­perverse creature!—­but I am glad we are going away in every way.

Saturday, Bristol, July 23d. ...  We started at eight, and taking the whole coach to ourselves as we do, I think traveling by a public conveyance the best mode of getting over the road.  They run so rapidly; there is so little time lost, and so much trouble with one’s luggage saved.  The morning was gray and soft and promised a fine day, but broke its promise at the end of our second stage, and began to pelt with rain, which it continued to do the live-long blessed day.  We could see, however, that the country we were passing through was charming.  One or two of the cottages by the roadside, half-smothered in vine and honeysuckle, reminded me of Lady Juliana,[B] who, when she said she could live in a desert with her lover, thought that it was a “sort of place full of roses.” ...  These laborers’ cottages were certainly the poor dwellings of very poor people, but there was nothing unsightly, repulsive, or squalid about them—­on the contrary, a look of order, of tidy neatness about the little houses, that added the peculiarly English element of comfort and cleanliness to the picturesqueness of their fragrant festoons of flowery drapery, hung over them by the sweet season.  The little plots of flower-garden one mass of rich color; the tiny strip of kitchen-garden, well stocked and trimly kept, beside it; the thriving fruitful orchard stretching round the whole; and beyond, the rich cultivated land rolling its waving corn-fields, already tawny and sunburnt, in mellow contrast with the smooth green pasturages, with their deep-shadowed trees and bordering lines of ivied hawthorn hedgerows, marking boundary-lines of division without marring the general prospect—­a lovely landscape that sang aloud of plenty, industry, and thrift.  I wonder if any country is more blessed of God than this precious little England?  I think it is like one of its own fair, nobly blooming, vigorous women; her temper—­that’s the climate—­not perfection, to be sure (but, after all, the old praise of it is true; it admits of more constant and regular out-of-door exercise than any other); the religion it professes, pure; the morality it practises, pure, probably by comparison with that of other powerful and wealthy nations.  Oh, I trust that neither reform nor its extreme, revolution, will have power to injure this healthily, heartily constituted land....

[B] In Miss Ferrie’s novel, “Marriage.”

                                              EXETER, July 24th, 1831. 
     DEAREST H——­,

We arrived here last night, or rather evening, at half-past six
o’clock, and I found your letter, which, having waited for me,
shall not wait for my answer....