"_Lime, March 30, 1856._--My mother and I have had a very happy
Easter together--more than blessed when I look back at the anxiety
of last Easter. Once when her bell rang in the night, I started up
and rushed out into the passage in an agony of alarm, for every
unusual sound at home has terrified me since her illness; but it
was nothing. I have been full of my work, chiefly Aristotle's
Politics, for 'Greats'--too full, I fear, to enter as I ought into
all her little thoughts and plans as usual: but she is ever loving
and gentle, and had interest and sympathy even when I was
preoccupied. She thinks that knowledge may teach humility even in a
spiritual sense. She says, 'In knowledge the feeling is the same
which one has in ascending mountains--that, the higher one gets,
the _farther_ one is from heaven.' To-day, as we were walking
amongst the flowers, she said, 'I suppose every one's impressions
of heaven are according to the feeling they have for earthly
things: I always feel that a garden is my impression--the _garden_
of Paradise.' 'People generally love themselves first, their
friends next, and God last,' she said one day. 'Well, I do not
think that is the case with me,' I replied; 'I really believe I do
put you first and self next.' 'Yes, I really think you do,' she
said."
When I returned to Oxford after Easter, 1856, my pleasant time in
college rooms was over, and I moved to lodgings over Wheeler's bookshop
and facing Dr. Cradock's house, so that I was able to see more than ever
of Mrs. Eliot Warburton. I was almost immediately in the "Schools," for
the classical and divinity part of my final examination, which I got
through very comfortably. While in the Schools at this time, I remember
a man being asked what John the Baptist was beheaded for--and the
answer, "Dancing with Herodias's daughter!" Once through these Schools,
I was free for some time, and charades were our chief amusement, Mrs.
Warburton, the Misses Elliot,[111] Sheffield, and I being the principal
actors. The proclamation of peace after the Crimean War was
celebrated--Oxford fashion--by tremendous riots in the town, and
smashing of windows in all directions.
At Whitsuntide, I had a little tour in Warwickshire with Albert Rutson
as my companion. We enjoyed a stay at Edgehill, at the charming little
inn called "The Sun Rising," which overlooks the battlefield, having the
great sycamore by its side under which Charles I. breakfasted before the
battle, and a number of Cavalier arms inside, with the hangings of the
bed in which Lord Lindsey died. From Edgehill I saw the wonderful old
house of the Comptons at Compton-Whinyates, with its endless secret
staircases and trap-doors, and its rooms of unplaned oak, evidently
arranged with no other purpose than defence or escape. We went on to
Stratford-on-Avon, with Shakspeare's tomb, his house in Henley Street,
and the pretty old thatched cottage where he wooed his wife--Anne
Hathaway. Also we went to visit Mrs. Lucy (sister of Mrs. William
Stanley) at Charlecote, a most entertaining person, with the family
characteristic of fun and goodhumour; and to Combe Abbey, full of relics
of Elizabeth of Bohemia and her daughters, who lived there with Lord
Craven. Many of the portraits were painted by her daughter Louisa. A few
weeks later I went up to the Stanleys in London for the Peace
illuminations--"very neat, but all alike," as I heard a voice in the
crowd say. I saw them from the house of Lady Mildred Hope, who had a
party for them like the one in Scripture, not the rich and great, but
the "poor, maimed, halt, and blind;" as, except Aldersons and Stanleys,
she arranged that there should not be a single person "in society"
there.