Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD
 
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 LADY DE 
 ROTHSCHILD 
 
 Extracts from her Notebooks 
 
 WITH 
 
 A Preface by her Daughter 
 
 CONSTANCE BATTER SEA 
 
 London 
 
 ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS 
 
 187 Piccadilly, W. 
 
 1912
 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 I have tried to collect and to put into some consecutive 
 form a number of extracts, taken from various authors, 
 often with her own comments, which were amongst my 
 dear mother's papers. 
 
 These extracts form a valuable index to forty years 
 of reading ! They are occasionally to be found 
 scattered through her diaries, but more generally 
 entered in small unpretentious note-books, which she 
 always kept by her side, where she could transcribe in 
 pen or pencil the passage that struck her fancy. Often 
 the marks of the pencil were faint, or the pen was 
 remiss in its duty, but if the instrument so employed 
 was at times faulty, her own exquisite literary taste 
 was never so. 
 
 Although, as far as possible, a continuity of dates 
 has been faithfully observed — from I860 to 1907 — for 
 a selection of extracts, still there occurs many a gap in 
 the notes on books during those years, for which it 
 would be difficult to find an explanation other than the 
 fact that some note-books were probably destroyed or 
 lost in the lapse of time. 
 
 I have every reason to conclude that the passages 
 in prose or verse, that were entered unsigned, and not 
 
 1 B 
 
 r-o «-* v? ■ - -
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 between inverted commas, were by my dear mother's 
 own pen, in addition to those which bear her usual 
 signature : ' L. de R. 1 
 
 The little note-books reveal a wide range of reading 
 and a great variety of authors. My mother was not 
 merely a comprehensive, but also a very discriminating 
 reader. Books were indeed her beloved companions, 
 from her earliest youth to within a few months of her 
 death, at the age of eighty-nine, and with them she 
 spent some of her happiest hours. 
 
 To a great extent they helped to keep her mind 
 fresh and young. She was never alarmed at critical 
 investigations either in Theology or in Science, and 
 eagerly accepted (if she thought them wise) new 
 methods of dealing with philanthropic work and with 
 social questions. Nor was she ever afraid of the 
 principles of a true liberalism. 
 
 Thus she read with warm interest the newest 
 books, making herself acquainted with the very last 
 results of research in many fields. But this love of 
 critical study did not prevent her from returning again 
 and again, with renewed pleasure and interest, to some 
 of her old and well-read favourites. 
 
 When quite young she became deeply engrossed 
 in the study of metaphysics, and was laughingly 
 taken to task by an older relative for wasting her 
 time and that of one of her cousins over such useless 
 and ungrateful literature. Many years afterwards 
 (1874) Mr. Matthew Arnold in writing to my mother 
 said : — 
 
 ' You must read my metaphysics in this last " Con- 
 
 2
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 temporary Vl — my first and last appearance in that field 
 where you, I know, are no stranger. 1 
 
 At the age of nineteen, on the eve of her marriage, 
 in March 1840, she drew up the following some- 
 what austere plan for the days of the week, and when, 
 after a time, it had to be discarded, she embarked upon 
 further studies, preparing herself for the superin- 
 tendence of her children's education, and for the many 
 philanthropic schemes that occupied her mind and her 
 heart : — 
 
 ' Sunday — Without any attempt at order : read as much 
 of new publications, newspapers, magazines 
 as possible. 
 
 Monday — Household and newspapers ... till £ past 10. 
 A chapter of Locke on the 
 
 Human understanding .. . „ 11. 
 
 Drawing ... ... ... „ 1. 
 
 New publications ... ... „ h past 1. 
 
 Geography ... „ 3. 
 
 Italian or German ... . . . „ 4. 
 
 Tuesday — Household accounts and news- 
 papers ... ... ... „ 12. 
 
 Drawing ... ... ... „ \ past 1. 
 
 Letters ... ... „ 4. 
 
 Wednesday — Household and newspapers „ \ past 10. 
 
 Locke ... ... ... „ 11. 
 
 Drawing ... ... ... „ \ past 1 
 
 History ... ... . .. „ 3. 
 
 Ancient Literature . . . „ 4. 
 
 3
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 
 
 Thursday — Household and newspapers 
 
 till 
 
 | past 10. 
 
 1 A )CK • • • • . • • . fl 
 
 ?? 
 
 11. 
 
 Drawing 
 
 n 
 
 \ past 1. 
 
 Ancient Literature 
 
 n 
 
 3. 
 
 History 
 
 n 
 
 4. 
 
 Friday — Household and newspapers ... 
 
 m 
 
 J past 10. 
 
 Locke 
 
 11 
 
 11. 
 
 Commentaries 
 
 11 
 
 1. 
 
 Italian or German ... 
 
 11 
 
 4. 
 
 Leisure hours, occasional intervals between various 
 occupations, to be devoted to reading new publications. - ' 
 
 I cannot omit to make some mention of my mother's 
 methodical and business-like habits. She never employed 
 a secretary, but, during the long years of her married 
 and widowed life, she carefully kept her accounts in the 
 most perfect and beautiful order, and fulfilled all the 
 duties devolving upon the mistress of a large household 
 in a quiet but very remarkable manner. 
 
 No mention being made of Saturday on this plan, it 
 would be as well for me to state that my mother loved 
 to keep her Sabbath strictly. Although she could not 
 bear the physical fatigue of a long walk, followed by a 
 lengthy and somewhat tiring service in synagogue, she 
 insisted upon treating the day differently from the 
 other days of the week. All business and ordinary 
 duties were put aside, the carriage was not taken out, 
 and books other than those in daily use were read : 
 my mother, besides her usual Jewish works of devotion, 
 being very fond of Robertson's sermons, of Theodore 
 Parker's and of James Martineau's writings.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 All through her life she began the day by reading a 
 few verses from the Bible, and the many well-marked 
 passages that I have found are a proof of the care she 
 gave to this study, and of her predilection for the 
 Psalms and for the writings of some of the Prophets. 
 
 The following words were written after she had 
 made her plan of life : — 
 
 4 In order to regulate my conduct rightly, I must 
 diligently study the Word of God, and pray earnestly 
 for the knowledge of my duties and the strength to fulfil 
 them, and be vigilant in constant self-examination. 
 My present duties are to give an example of virtue and 
 piety ; to influence, if possible, the conduct of those 
 around me ; to make my husband as happy as lies in 
 my power, fulfilling his desires and in all things giving 
 way to his wishes ; to employ industry, attention, and 
 judgment in directing those persons and affairs which 
 are under my control. My first object now must no 
 longer be simply to know, but to make use, and the 
 best use, of that which I know ; to advance the happi- 
 ness and comfort of all those around us.'' 
 
 Severe towards herself as she was indulgent to others, 
 my mother never allowed herself to read a work of 
 fiction until the studies and business of the day were 
 well over, and even then she regarded fiction as a 
 delightful amusement, a sort of dissipation of the mind, 
 of which to taste sparingly. 
 
 In her early days she read both Italian and German, 
 but as years crept on, the only language, other than 
 English, that attracted her was French. A governess to 
 whom she had been devoted — a native of Geneva, and 
 
 5
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 a most cultivated and charming personality — had early 
 embued her with a taste for the French language, whilst 
 two years spent in Paris at the beginning of her married 
 life, before the upheaval of 1848, when social inter- 
 course was at its pleasantest and brightest, brought her 
 into contact with many distinguished men and women 
 of that period. It was then that she thoroughly enjoyed, 
 amongst other things, the unrivalled performances at 
 the Theatre Francais, the great actress Rachel being at 
 the very height of her fame. 
 
 To the last she was a constant reader of the Revue 
 des Deux Mondes, delighting in the crisp and lucid style 
 of French prose. 
 
 Although purely comic literature never could have 
 appealed to her, yet her keen sense of humour made her 
 appreciate much that was delicately humorous in litera- 
 ture, and some works of Dickens stood high in her 
 favour ; she did not care for his sentiment, but enjoyed 
 his fun and his humour. 
 
 She often spoke with happy pride of her earlv 
 friendship with Mr. Thackeray, and she would read and 
 re-read The Nezvcomes, Pendennis, and Vanity Fair, 
 always rinding fresh interest in their pages. In Pen- 
 dennis there occurs the following beautiful and touching 
 passage, which the great author wrote as a picture of my 
 mother : — 
 
 ' What one sees symbolised in the Roman churches 
 in the image of the Virgin Mother, with a bosom bleed- 
 ing with love, I think one may witness (and admire the 
 Almighty bounty for) every day. I saw a Jewish lady 
 only yesterday with a child at her knee, and from whose 
 
 6
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 face towards the child there shone a sweetness so angelical 
 that it seemed to form a sort of glory round both. I 
 protest I could have knelt before her too, and adored in 
 her the Divine beneficence in endowing us with the 
 maternal " storge " which began with our race and 
 sanctifies the history of mankind/ 
 
 The daughter of Mr. Thackeray, a writer herself of 
 much charm and tenderness — Lady Ritchie — was from 
 her very earliest days beloved by my mother, who in 
 another instance transmitted the warm feelings ot 
 friendship she had entertained for a writer of one 
 generation, to his children of the next.* 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold's acquaintance with my mother 
 sprang from their first meeting at the Jews 1 Free School 
 in the East End of London, which Mr. Arnold used to 
 visit in his official capacity of School Inspector. The 
 acquaintance rapidly ripened into friendship, and the 
 happy days of Inspectorship remained unbroken, even 
 when the scene had changed from London to Bucking- 
 hamshire, where Mr. Arnold came regularly during 
 the ' sixties ' to inspect, amongst others, the schools my 
 parents had established in the village of Aston Clinton. 
 
 In 1863 Mr. Arnold wrote to his mother : ' Lady 
 de Rothschild I am very fond of. 1 And her name 
 constantly appears in the collection of his letters, edited 
 by Mr. G. W. E. Russell. Alluding to a relation 
 of my mother's, he wrote : ' A very remarkable person, 
 
 * Lucy and Eleanor Arnold, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Matthew 
 Arnold, married— Lucy, to Mr. Frederick Whitridge of New York, 
 Eleanor, to the late Honble. Armine Wodehouse. and now, the 
 wife of the present Lord Chamberlain, Lord Sandhurst.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 with a man's power of mind and with great enthusiasm, 
 but, 1 he adds, ' my unapproached favourite is, and will 
 always be, Lady de Rothschild."' 
 
 As an author, Lord Beaconsfield was nearer to her 
 than as a politician. She had known him in the early 
 days as Mr. Disraeli, when he was a brilliant and most 
 amusing talker ; he often appeared at her mother's 
 hospitable table, and was greatly attracted by the charm 
 of his hostess's young daughter. It was on one of those 
 occasions that the lady he was about to make his 
 wife — Mrs. Wyndham Lewis — was present. The 
 engagement had not been announced, and my mother 
 and her sister, to their infinite amusement, surprised 
 many a nod, wink, and toast given and taken between 
 that happy pair. When the news was made public 
 within the next few days, the two sisters expressed 
 their astonishment that their young and brilliant friend 
 should marry a lady who, in their eyes, seemed to be 
 already quite elderly ; but until the end of their lives 
 both Lord and Lady Beaconsfield (Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli) 
 were, and remained, my dear mother's devoted friends. 
 
 The very first time that my mother consented to 
 accompany me on a motor drive, was to visit the 
 beautifully situated churchyard at Hughenden — within 
 fourteen miles of Aston Clinton — where she stood beside 
 the grave of her old friend, Lord Beaconsfield. She 
 talked of him and her acquaintance with him in early 
 days to the astonished sexton, who shook his head 
 unbelievingly at the fact that my mother's acquaintance 
 with the great statesman dated back to the years before 
 his marriage. 
 
 8
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone she knew less intimately ; but she 
 keenly enjoyed the two visits that he paid her at Aston 
 Clinton, during the Easter weeks of 1888 and 1 890, when 
 the great statesman was singularly alive to the clearness 
 of her understanding and the quickness of her grasp. 
 
 She had known Samuel Rogers; she had been intro- 
 duced to Guizot, and had dined by the side of Balzac ; 
 she had sat and listened to Macaulay*, and had enter- 
 tained Bulwer, Tennyson, Browning, Bernal Osborne, 
 Charles Villiers, John Delane, Lord Lyndhurst, Dean 
 Stanley — who mentioned her once in a letter as ' that 
 distinguished daughter of Israel," 1 — Bishop Wilberforce, 
 and his son the present Archdeacon of Westminster, 
 whose name is affectionately mentioned in the diaries, 
 and many others : authors, prelates, statesmen, &c, 
 of the great Victorian era. Indeed, although she was 
 deeply interested in men of letters she often maintained 
 that they gave of their best to their writings. 
 
 George Eliot's early novels appealed greatly to my 
 mother, Adam Bede and Silas Marner being her special 
 favourites, but unfortunately, the pleasure of a personal 
 acquaintance with that great author had been denied 
 her. On the other hand, she not only claimed acquaint- 
 ance with, but also the friendship of, Mrs. Humphry 
 Ward, whose name, most affectionately mentioned, occurs 
 again and again in the diaries. 
 
 Frances Power Cobbe attracted her by her strong 
 intellect, her brilliant penmanship, as well as by her 
 breezy humour, whilst my mother was greatly struck by 
 
 * Sir George Trevelyan, Lord Macaulay's nephew and bio- 
 grapher, was a favourite and frequent visitor at ray mother's house. 
 
 9
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 the courage and steadfastness with which Miss Cobbe 
 fought a desperate and seemingly losing battle against 
 scientific research in the animal world. 
 
 Through all the years of her life, my mother found 
 constant companionship in her faithful dogs. She had 
 one of these affectionate creatures always with her, and 
 their devotion proved a great solace as the years crept on : 
 to her loving and tender heart vivisection was therefore 
 doubly abhorrent, and she could not bear to dwell 
 upon the painful facts that had been brought to her 
 notice. 
 
 Responsive as my mother was to the charm of 
 literature, she had a beautiful and refined style of her 
 own, with much originality of thought and grace of 
 diction. She had been repeatedly urged to allow some 
 of her writings to appear in print, but with very 
 few exceptions had always refused to publish them. 
 She wrote two of the chapters that appeared in a 
 book of Essays, called, ' A few words to the Jews by 
 one of themselves, 1 which emanated from the brilliant 
 pen of her elder and only sister* ; also a story that 
 came out in one of the volumes of the Cheap Jewish 
 Library — a publication long extinct — and some other 
 contributions to a little collection of Sabbath Class 
 Addresses — all published without her name. 
 
 It was her custom to make a list of books in 
 advance that she intended reading, and she generally 
 kept to her purpose, and it was wonderful what she 
 accomplished. I hardly ever saw her without a book 
 
 * Mrs. Horatio Montefiore. 
 10
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 in her hand. But she had not a good verbal memory, 
 so that she never could quote correctly, which caused 
 her much annoyance. How often she wished that she 
 could have beguiled sleepless hours by repeating 
 favourite passages from favourite authors. She used 
 greatly to enjoy reading aloud to us as children, and 
 was also a very good listener: when in after-years her 
 eyesight began to trouble her in the matter of reading 
 small print, I constantly read the Parliamentary 
 speeches in the Times aloud to her, and enjoved her 
 wonderfully discriminating and pertinent remarks. Her 
 judgment was never obscured by prejudice, nor was sh< 
 ever carried away by sentiment or personal interest 
 in the speakers. 
 
 In the year 1892 my mother spent three weeks with 
 us at the Pleasaunce, Overstrand, our Norfolk home ; 
 there she met daily and in the pleasantest intimacy 
 Lord Morley, or as he then was, Mr. John Morlev. 
 They soon became friends, and it was in answer to one 
 of her questions that Mr. Morley wrote for her his 
 definition of ' Holiness 1 — which appeared later in an 
 article that he published in the Nineteenth Century. 
 At the end of that brief summer holiday, when my 
 mother left us to return to her own home, Mr. Morley, 
 gazing sadly at her accustomed but then empty chair, 
 exclaimed : ' Your house has lost one of its chief charms 
 and attractions."' 
 
 I venture to quote a few lines from a letter written 
 to me by Lord Morley within a week after my dear 
 mother's death : — 
 
 'When we were all at Overstrand nineteen years ago 
 
 11
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 I had a chance that I shall never forget of learning 
 something of her rare gifts and most admirable 
 qualities, her real love of truth and passion for justice, 
 her interest in the things that are worth being in- 
 terested in, her good taste and right judgment in books 
 and the spirit of literature ; her kindly yet firm views 
 of men and women and human life/ 
 
 My mother was always very cosmopolitan in her 
 tastes ; she loved foreign travel and foreign languages 
 — perhaps the result of having spent six years of her 
 early life, from the age of ten to sixteen (1831-1837) 
 travelling in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, in the 
 company of her widowed mother, and for the benefit of 
 the health of her sister, to whom she was passion- 
 ately attached and whose death, at a comparatively 
 early age, brought her for the first time face to face 
 with a poignant grief. The only daughter* of this, her 
 only sister, claimed and always held a warm place in my 
 dear mother's affections. 
 
 Living abroad under very pleasant conditions, at a 
 
 most impressionable age, she enjoyed many advantages 
 
 denied to those who lead an entirely insular existence. 
 
 She made acquaintance with the celebrated pictures of 
 
 the Continent, and as she had great artistic taste — 
 
 indeed, she became a very good artist, devoting much 
 
 time first to portrait and later to flower painting — she 
 
 took special delight in visiting the foreign churches and 
 
 galleries. 
 
 * Helen Montefiore. 
 
 12
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 My mother gave her heart to Italy at a very youthful 
 age, and loved it for the magic of its skies, its language, 
 and its people. Long afterwards, when we were entering 
 the Plains of Lombardy over the Simplon Pass, my 
 mother said she felt as if she were returning home. 
 When a child she took part in some winter festivities at 
 Naples, where one of her relatives had a palace on the 
 Chiaja, and she recalled a theatrical performance given 
 by amateurs, in which Pauline de la Feronnaye — so well 
 known in later life as Mrs. Augustus Craven, the author 
 of Le Recit d\me Sceur — acted most brilliantly, with 
 others of that gifted family. 
 
 My mother loved beautiful scenery from the days of 
 her childhood onwards, and she remembered, in an 
 astonishing way, places and scenes that had appealed to 
 her in her youth, and that she revisited later. She was 
 particularly fond of the Lake of Geneva, and the Villa 
 Diodati, sacred to the memory of Byron, where she had 
 passed some happy months of her girlhood. She used 
 to linger over the memories of the gay Christmas-times 
 she had spent in Berlin, of the crowded streets, the 
 Christmas-trees standing in every window, and the 
 general spirit of friendliness and good - comradeship 
 amongst the Germans of that date. 
 
 Yet she longed to put an end to the exile of six 
 years 1 standing and return to her English home. There, 
 in 1837, an intensely happy life awaited her, spent 
 between London and the country, with her mother, a 
 very witty and clever woman, her gifted sister, and two 
 devoted and much-loved brothers, who shared many of 
 her occupations and pleasures. 
 
 13
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Worth Park, my grandmother's (Mrs. Montefiore's) 
 country home, once an old farmhouse, transformed 
 into a comfortable country residence, was the happy 
 scene of her girlhood life.* 
 
 It was there that she first showed her vivid interest 
 in the welfare of the labouring classes, in their educa- 
 tional and other needs. In those days schools in the 
 country districts were few and far between ; in fact, in 
 many places they did not exist. 
 
 The ignorance amongst the rural population being 
 appalling, the two young sisters set themselves a con- 
 genial task in starting and superintending a village 
 school, which they did with the help of a clergyman's 
 widow and her daughters, and which, owing to the 
 fostering care and energy of my mother and my aunt, 
 became a great success. My mother enjoyed herself 
 immensely in teaching the children, and this love of 
 teaching never left her. Thus, many years later, when, 
 as a young married woman, she began to interest her- 
 self in the rapidly-growing Jewish charities of the 
 metropolis, she took a very prominent and active part 
 in the management of the Jews' 1 Free School, of which 
 my father was the very active President. From that 
 time for a period of more than forty years she would 
 most regularly attend the Committee meetings and 
 acquaint herself with all the working of that gigantic 
 institution. Even when she lived during so many 
 months of the year at Aston Clinton, she, who was 
 
 * My grandfather, the younger brother of Sir Moses Montefiore 
 (Abraham Montefiore by name), died when my mother was a child 
 of three years old. 
 
 14
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 never physically strong, would travel up to and down 
 from London in the dark winter days, taking her ac- 
 customed place at the Committee table, hearing the 
 children repeat their lessons, and encouraging the army 
 of teachers. 
 
 Meanwhile it had not escaped her attention that 
 the Jewish working girls in the East End of London 
 were often in need of instruction, even of the most 
 elementary order, and it was in their interest that she 
 succeeded in starting evening classes for reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic, in the house of a capable and 
 warm-hearted woman who, with her daughters, gave 
 much of her time to the welfare of her co-religionists.* 
 
 Mrs. Harris not only supervised the educational 
 classes of the young working girls, but also, with my 
 mother's warm approval, inaugurated for their benefit 
 Sabbath Classes for religious instruction. It was for 
 these audiences that my mother wrote a number of 
 short addresses, which were faithfully read by Mrs. 
 Harris to her weekly congregation. The many excel- 
 lent Clubs for Jewish working girls of to-day, with their 
 long lists of subjects that are dealt with evening after 
 evening, with their singing and dancing classes, their 
 social evenings, and holiday homes, in a great measure 
 owe their existence to these her first attempts at bring- 
 ing a gleam of the spiritual and intellectual joy that 
 illumined her own life into the lives of her less-favoured 
 sisters. 
 
 * One of Mrs. Harris's daughters, Emily by name, was specially 
 interested in the work initiated by my mother, and to her untiring 
 efforts their lasting success was greatly due. 
 
 15
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Acquaintance with the Jewish school-children and 
 the Jewish working girls did not end there : my mother, 
 with my father's warm approval, sought them out 
 in their own small tenements, and joined a band 
 of ladies who were beginning to learn the value of 
 personal acquaintance with the poor, and also the 
 difficult lesson of how to bring order and method 
 into charitable work. 
 
 But her human and religious sympathies were wider 
 than any one form of creed, thus it was not only in 
 London, but also in the country in her Buckingham- 
 shire home that my mother never rested until edu- 
 cational advantages were placed within reach of the 
 village children, and it was entirely owing to the efforts 
 of my parents that excellent schools sprang into existence 
 in the villages of Aston Clinton and of Halton, fully 
 ten years or more before the great educational movement 
 of 1870. The autumn and winter months were in- 
 variably spent at Aston Clinton from 1853 onwards, 
 and there my mother threw herself heart and soul into 
 all that concerned the welfare of the people. Fortu- 
 nately my father also took a very lively and practical 
 interest in village and villagers. 
 
 Both my parents lived in friendly relationship with 
 many of the neighbouring clergy, and my mother 
 reckoned amongst her most esteemed friends, the rector* 
 who spent twenty-three years of his life at Aston 
 Clinton, and his successor, the present incumbent, j* 
 
 My sister and I began at an early age to visit the 
 schools of our village, which soon became the object of 
 
 * The Rev. Thomas Williams. t The Rev. J. R. Cohu. 
 
 16
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 many a morning walk, where two very young teachers 
 might often have been seen solemnly holding their 
 classes, learning probably more than they taught. 
 
 May I be allowed to say here that from our earliest 
 age my dear mother made us realise that we should 
 learn to take our greatest pleasure in trying to help 
 others to a fuller and happier life ; indeed, we were 
 taught by her example, as well as by her words, that 
 the duties we had set ourselves should not be put on 
 one side for any pleasurable excitement that might 
 come in our way. She spared no pains to make us see 
 life as she saw it, and she never neglected the greatest of 
 all her duties — the education of her children — for any 
 other pursuit, however engrossing it might have been. 
 
 For nearly forty years my mother was assisted in 
 the furtherance of many philanthropic schemes for the 
 benefit of the village people by a very devoted and 
 most energetic German lady — Miss Molique* by name — 
 well known in the musical world, but who unselfishly 
 gave up a musical career for village work, undertaking 
 the initiation of a Village Library, a Domestic Training 
 Institution, a most successful Evening School for boys, 
 and many other organizations. 
 
 During all these busy years, my mother possessed the 
 rare quality of being able to combine with her absorbing 
 human interests, her love of literature, in which she found 
 unfailing delight ; her mind was thus attuned to great 
 things, and her standard both in art and authorship was 
 a very high one — only the best satisfied her, and when 
 
 * Daughter of the celebrated composer and violinist, Bernhard 
 Molique. 
 
 17 C
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 she took the pen herself, it was held by a capable and 
 well -practised hand. 
 
 She was an excellent letter- writer — interesting, 
 humorous, original — but her correspondents were few. 
 To her daughters, when absent from her, she wrote 
 almost daily, and with her two brothers* — both ad- 
 mirable in their power of letter-writing — she freely 
 corresponded in the most charming and intimate 
 manner : also with a beloved cousin and sister-in-law — 
 her namesake and lifelong friend, a woman of rare 
 personal charm and ability — the mother of her niece, 
 Lady Rothschild, whose married and widowed life was 
 spent at Frankfort, f 
 
 My mother was of a reserved and shy disposition ; 
 it was with difficulty that she could express her deepest 
 feelings, and it is only from her note-books and diaries 
 that some idea may be gained of her spiritual nature. 
 
 She had no sympathy with any very pronounced 
 doctrine ; she hated the fanaticism of extreme dog- 
 matic belief, and she welcomed liberal thought in 
 religion as in politics. But she could not bear 
 irreverence, and clung with beautiful fidelity to many 
 old customs that belonged to the days of her youth. 
 
 Her Quaker friends, of whom she had several, paid 
 her, as she always said, the great compliment in telling 
 her that she might really have belonged to the Society 
 of Friends, so constantly was she seen dressed in the 
 
 * Joseph (the father of Sir Francis Montefiore) and Nathaniel 
 Montefiore, who lived respectively until 1880 and 1883. 
 
 t Baroness Chai-les de Rothschild, the youngest sister of my 
 father. 
 
 18
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 soft neutral tints in which they delighted, and so un- 
 congenial to her were the excitements and noisy amuse- 
 ments of the world. In fact, as one of her devoted 
 friends, Dr. Kalisch* (to whose daughter she stood in 
 very friendly relationship),! once said : ' She was in the 
 world, but not of it. 1 
 
 She was extraordinarily just and fair: generous by 
 nature and equally generous in all her judgments, she 
 had a strong sense of right and wrong. Gentle in 
 manner and in speech, she had, notwithstanding, a 
 very decided personality, that deeply impressed those 
 amongst whom she lived, and who sought and valued 
 her opinion. 
 
 Young in mind, she was very fond of young people, 
 entered readily into their feelings, loved them for their 
 gaiety, good spirits and enthusiasm. She had a keen 
 sense of humour, and enjoyed bright and witty con- 
 versation. Her sons-in-law, J both gifted with a happy 
 sense of fun and a flow of high spirits, were often struck 
 by her vivacity and ready response. In fact, one of the 
 two, who from his undergraduate days had loved and 
 deeply reverenced her, used laughingly to tease his wife 
 by declaring that she was not as young as her mother, 
 and that those of his friends, who had had the privilege 
 
 * A distinguished Hebrew scholar and critic of Biblical and 
 Talmudic literature. Died 1885. 
 
 t Mrs. Hoster. 
 
 X Lord Battersea (as Cyril Flower) — M.P. for the borough of 
 Brecon from 1880 to 1885 ; M.P. for South Beds, from 1885 to 1892 ; 
 also served in Mr. Gladstone's Government ; died 1907. The 
 Honble. Eliot Yorke, son of the 4th Earl of Hardwicke, equerry to 
 H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh; M.P for Cambridgeshire ; died 
 1878. 
 
 19
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 of being admitted to the home life at Aston Clinton, 
 especially enjoyed the society of one older it might be 
 than they were in years, but full of sympathetic interest 
 in their aims and pursuits. Her presence evoked and 
 never repressed any happy nonsense that brought life 
 and merriment into the party. 
 
 Amongst the younger generation my mother greatly 
 valued the frequent and ever-welcome visits of many 
 beloved nephews and nieces on both sides of her family. 
 Thus she was warmly attached to Lord Rothschild and 
 his two brothers,* whilst some of her nieces regarded her 
 as a second mother, notably Lady Rothschild and her 
 sisters. 
 
 In her diary there is a mention of Lady Lindsayf 
 in terms of endearment, whose literary and artistic 
 gifts she held in warm appreciation. For her 
 nephew, Claude Montefiore,^ she entertained feelings 
 of deep affection and high admiration. She also cor- 
 dially welcomed the relations connected by marriage 
 with her daughters ; but it would be invidious, even if 
 it were possible, to enumerate by name all those who 
 claimed her friendship and who responded to her affec- 
 
 * Alfred and Leopold de Rothschild. 
 
 t Lady Lindsay, daughter of the Rt. Honble. Henry FitzRoy, 
 and the Honble. Mrs. FitzRoy, a sister of ray father. Mr. FitzRoy, 
 brother of Lord Southampton, served in Lord Palraerston's 
 Government, as Under-Secretary to the Home Office, Chairman 
 of Ways and Means, likewise to the Board of Trade. 
 
 X The son of Nathaniel Montefiore (my mother's youngest 
 brother), and of his wife Emma Goldsmid. Their eldest son, 
 Leonard, a man of rare promise and much charm, died in 1879 at 
 the early age of 26, deeply regretted by my mother. 
 
 20
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 tionate hospitality. From old days her family had 
 been on the friendliest terms with many members of 
 the great house of Bedford. Lord Charles Russell 
 (1807-1894) was a frequent visitor at Aston Clinton, 
 and in his son, Mr. George Russell, she found a link 
 with those traditions of the past. He Mas her constant 
 visitor in London, and carried on a most charming and 
 original correspondence in prose and in verse with her 
 when she was in the country. 
 
 As she grew older the circle of her friends increased, 
 and her advent to London brought year after year 
 tried friends and pleasant acquaintances to her door. 
 Indeed, she was the centre of her family ; to both 
 young and old she extended a bright welcome, and 
 no one ever felt that her interests were limited to the 
 past, or that the present had no audible voice for 
 her ear. 
 
 She had no infirmities of age ; she never lost faith in 
 humanity, nor her hope and belief in a future life and in 
 the goodness of God. She was never bitter or despairing, 
 but, believing in the best, drew forth that which was 
 best in every human being with whom she came in 
 contact. 
 
 I feel compelled to admit that this short notice, or 
 preface to the ' Extracts,' is in no sense of the word a 
 complete biographical Memoir of my dear mother. It 
 is very difficult for a daughter to write her mother's 
 biography as it should be written, and I fear that, for 
 me, it would be an impossible task. But I have tried, 
 however inadequately, to give some slight picture of her 
 
 21
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 personality, in youth as well as in age, and thus to 
 make the ' Extracts,' with the comments by her own 
 fascinating pen, more living and interesting. 
 
 I should like to conjure up her portrait as I recall 
 her best in late years, sitting, book in hand, pencil and 
 note-book by her side, in her favourite little blue 
 drawing-room at Aston Clinton. ' It seemed to me a 
 sort of shrine, 1 wrote Lord Rosebery, ' and a centre from 
 which radiated goodness and sympathy.'' From her 
 chair she could see across the lawn, where the venerable 
 yew-tree spreads its heavy branches, and she could 
 watch the many birds, large and small, from the lordly 
 pheasant to the tiny tom-tit, that came hopping up to 
 her windows for their daily food. Then her gaze would 
 travel to an open space, purposely cleared for her in a 
 group of trees, dividing the lawn from the park, where 
 cows and sheep were placidly grazing, and still further 
 on she would get a glimpse of the ' grey, square 
 church tower ' and of ' the red roof of her own village 
 school. 1 
 
 A homely scene, indeed, a quiet picture of English 
 country life — a scene, to quote my mother's own words, 
 that ' she had looked on for many a year, that she knew 
 as it were by heart, and yet that always presented itself 
 in some new aspect. 1 Such a landscape as is not un- 
 common, but to her its quiet beauty meant a great deal. 
 It meant home life, in its fullest, deepest, most precious 
 sense ; it also meant village life — that is to say, outside, 
 wider interests. It meant pre-eminently work for others, 
 unselfish, constant work, that only ended when life on 
 earth ended. 
 
 22
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 It will be seen that this book mainly consists of 
 extracts from my mother's favourite authors (some- 
 times merely titles of books), together with comments of 
 her own, to which are added a few short passages from 
 her diaries. 
 
 (1) A mention of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1897 ; 
 and of a visit from King Edward VII., when he was 
 Prince of Wales, in the same year. 
 
 (2) Of personages connected with statesmanship, 
 literature, and art. 
 
 (3) Of politics, as showing that my mother retained 
 her liberal sympathies until the very end of her life. 
 
 (4) Of the Franco-Prussian War, 1870, and the 
 Boer War, 1899-1902, which called forth her expres- 
 sions of grave anxiety and distress. 
 
 I have also inserted a paragraph about a favourite 
 little dog of my mother's, showing her intense affection 
 for her constant companions. There are many other 
 such passages throughout her diaries, all very touching 
 to those who knew her. 
 
 Constance Battersea. 
 
 1912. 
 
 23
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 I860. 
 
 Michelet's 'Louis XIV.' 
 
 A curious, but often most unpleasing volume. What 
 a picture of depravity, of bigotry and cruelty is the 
 great and generally considered most glorious reign in 
 the French history ! Neither indecent details of court 
 intrigues, nor horrible accounts of the relentless and 
 savage persecutions of the Protestants, are spared the 
 reader, who arises indignant and sickened by the 
 perusal of the horrible deeds committed under the rule 
 and often by the command of this great monarch. 
 Miehelefs style is eloquent, terse, but sometimes so 
 condensed as to be somewhat confused and difficult to 
 understand. June %8th. 
 
 Wolff's 'Travels and Adventures.' 
 
 Dr. Wolff is an honest enthusiast, excessively vain and 
 extraordinarily credulous. His adventures related by 
 himself, in the third person, are extremely amusing. 
 
 Aston Clinton, September QSrd. 
 
 25
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Sainte Marie Madelaine. Par Lacordaire. 
 
 Very eloquent nonsense. Strange that such a book 
 should be written by such a man in the nineteenth 
 century. Aston Clinton, October. 
 
 The Arrest of the Five Members by Charles I. in 
 1641-42. By John Forster. 
 
 The work of a very prejudiced partisan. A good 
 article upon it in the Quarterly Review. 
 
 October Z8th. 
 
 The Professor at the Breakfast Table. By Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes. 
 
 Bold, quaint, but full of thought. 
 Letters, &c. of Lord Auckland. 
 
 Personal History of Lord Bacon. By Dixon. 
 
 The style of the author does not inspire one with much 
 confidence. Too flowery and dramatic and superficial 
 for a calm, historical investigation, but still from his 
 pages it appears to me that Bacon has been hardly 
 judged. Had he not been so great a man, intellectu- 
 ally so far beyond his age, his faults and shortcomings 
 would have been looked upon as merely examples of the 
 difference between our epoch and that in which he 
 lived. A man who not only left such a legacy of 
 wisdom to posterity, but was constantly employed in 
 doing good service to his country, cannot, because he 
 failed in some instances to rise above his contemporaries 
 be called the Meanest of Mankind. 
 
 January \§th, 1860. 
 26
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Motley's History of the United Netherlands. 
 Perhaps rather too long and detailed, but very in- 
 teresting. Elisabeth's fame is darkened and Leicester's 
 made rather brighter in these pages. 
 
 The Eastern Church. Lectures by Arthur Stanley. 
 
 Great Expectations. By Dickens. 
 The first and last volume written in his best style. 
 
 Buckle's second volume. 
 
 Nineteenth volume of ' L'Histoire du Consulat et 
 de PEmpire.' By Thiers. 
 
 The Early and Middle Ages of England. By 
 Pearson. 
 
 My Life, and what shall I do with it? 
 Addressed to very independent young and old maids, 
 consequently completely adapted to only a small circle 
 of readers ; but containing many good and useful things. 
 The last words of the book might often be pondered 
 over with advantage : ' Women of wealth, women of 
 talent, women of leisure, what are you doing in God's 
 world for God ? ' 
 
 Elsie Venner. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 Very clever, though very American. 
 
 Stanley's Canterbury Sermons. 
 The following extract, taken from the vi. sermon, is a 
 good example of the spirit of liberality which breathes 
 through all the volume : ' Ceremonies, customs, usages 
 change from country to country and from age to age. 
 They cannot be imitated, they cannot be adapted. But 
 
 27
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 good and gracious acts of love and of justice and of 
 truth, energy surmounting all difficulties, patience en- 
 during all hardships ; these and the like qualities of the 
 good neighbour of the Parable are always near us, can 
 always be repeated, can always be honoured. " Go " 
 on thy journey, "go" on thy business, "go" home 
 and " do " with all thy might whatsoever of good or 
 true, in times past or times present, at home or abroad, 
 thou hast seen or heard, " go and do likewise." ' 
 
 Year by year changes gather round us. We shall 
 not be this year as we were last year. If we remain 
 the same the things around us change ; if things around 
 us remain the same, yet we see those around us change, 
 and our relative positions, thoughts, duties, feelings 
 change with them. But one thing changes not, and 
 that is the duty and privilege of keeping the Command- 
 ments of God. If we have kept them before, we can 
 keep them no less now. If the keeping of them, if the 
 striving to keep the Commandments of God has been 
 'a lantern to our feet and a light to our path,"' in 
 former times, rejoicing the heart and enlightening the 
 eyes, so we may humbly trust that it will be still, 
 whatever changes have befallen us, whatever changes 
 may befall us. — Sermon xiv. 
 
 Life of Pitt. By Lord Stanhope. 
 
 CEuvres et Correspondance in^dites d' Alexis de 
 Tocqueville. 
 
 Deeply interesting are the letters contained in these 
 volumes — displaying constant mental activity and pro- 
 found reflection, with warm, affectionate feeling. 
 
 28
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 The one blemish in De TocquevihVs character 
 appears to me to be the contempt with which he looked 
 down upon mankind in general. The reception his 
 books vnet with should have proved to him how many 
 are capable of appreciating true excellence. Though an 
 enemy to all intellectual repute, he often enjoyed the 
 calm tranquillity of Tocqueville. In one of his letters 
 he mentions the happiness he finds in his country 
 retreat, and then says, * Cest encore avoir Fame agitee 
 que de jouir passionnement de la paix. Tel est en ce 
 moment mon cas." 1 
 
 1862. 
 
 Chateaubriand et son Groupe Litteraire. Par 
 Sainte Beuve. Astm aint0Jh ^1^^, 
 
 Felix Mendelssohn's ' Reisebriefe.' 
 
 How simple, fresh, childlike, poetical and affectionate 
 must have been the spirit that dictated these letters ! 
 
 London, May 31. 
 
 Gravenhurst ; or, Thoughts on Good and Evil. 
 By Smith. 
 
 A difficult, possibly an insurmountably difficult subject 
 eloquently treated, though perhaps in rather a superficial, 
 or, at least, in two brief a manner. The conclusion at 
 which the author arrives is the satisfactory one, that 
 good and evil are necessary ingredients in the progress 
 and happiness of the world, and that the latter, though 
 constantly changing and diminishing, must always co- 
 exist with what we can understand at present of freedom 
 
 29
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 of will, and will ever continue to be the greatest incen- 
 tive to the highest virtues, the noblest deeds and the 
 active energies of mankind. ' I think it well to see 
 that it is by overcoming evil, as well moral evil as natural 
 evil, that we rise in the scale of creation. This very fact 
 convinces us that evil was not brought here otherwise 
 than beneficently — is in fact part of the scheme of a 
 benevolent Creator. This may aid us, too, in supporting 
 manfully the unavoidable, and in combating manfully all 
 remediable evils. He who seeks truth and loves goodness 
 has God upon his side. 1 London, July 27th. 
 
 Literary Remains of Mrs. Trench. 
 
 Another example of a good and clever woman being 
 the mother of a distinguished man. 
 
 The qualities and talents only half developed in the 
 woman, partially concealed perhaps in domestic life or 
 really shorn or clouded by delicate health and the daily 
 round of petty household cares — those qualities and 
 talents reappear in man, and, flourishing in a genial 
 soil, bring forth lasting fruit. 
 
 Aston Clinton, September \Sth. 
 
 Fifth volume of Guizot's ' Memoirs.' 
 
 Interesting as it relates to living characters and to 
 well-known incidents ; but how small do many events 
 now appear, that caused such agitation and labour only 
 twenty years ago. What an immense deal of writing, 
 talking and intriguing about the Syrian question ! 
 
 England triumphed, but Turkey remained equally 
 weak and tottering. Aston Clinton, September 18th. 
 
 30
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Correspondence of Leigh Hunt. 
 
 A vein of tender and even religious, as well as of poetical 
 feeling, runs through all Hunt's letters. How tender 
 and kind a husband and father they show him to be, 
 how faithful and good a friend ! 
 
 September 28th. 
 
 One of the great uses of Art is to teach us how to 
 look into Nature. 
 
 Here is the same idea much better expressed from 
 the Cornhill Magazine, June 1862 : — 
 
 'Moreover the mere physical aspect of things be- 
 comes clearer to many of us in a picture than in the 
 reality. A man who has walked about his fields for 
 twenty years sees them painted by Gainsborough and 
 then begins to understand them. . . . The original, 
 whether in Nature or in Human Nature, is so vaguely 
 great : we want a neat precise translation without too 
 much of that restless, palpitating life, which distracts 
 our senses and makes our thoughts a dream.'' 
 
 June \st. 
 
 A song, a song! 
 The dull to rouse, the sad to cheer, 
 To waken smiles, to chase the tear 
 
 A song, a song ! 
 
 A song, a song ! 
 Now full of glee, elf-like and wild, 
 Strange measure of some mountain child, 
 
 A song, a song ! 
 31
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 A song, a song ! 
 A simple, sweet, old-fashioned ditty 
 That gently pleads for love and pity ; 
 
 A song, a song ! 
 
 No song, no song ! 
 That tender voice, that artless lay 
 Are stealing fast my heart away : 
 
 No song, no song ! 
 
 L. DE R. 
 
 Life of Washington Irving. First and second vol- 
 umes, composed principally of his letters. 
 
 They are the productions of a kind, generous and genial 
 
 man, and contain indications of the humour and pathos 
 
 found in his writings, more of the former than of the 
 
 latter. One must esteem and like the author of those 
 
 simple yet gracefully penned letters which abound in 
 
 good and affectionate feelings, but I do not think they 
 
 give evidence of much power or originality of mind. 
 
 October 12th. 
 Owen, a Waif. 
 
 One of the most interesting novels I have read for a 
 long time. The story is very, indeed most, improbable, 
 but the writing is simple and vigorous, the characters 
 are Avell drawn and the lessons conveyed, without any 
 preaching, by the tale itself, are great and pure. 
 
 October 28th. 
 On The Origin of Species. By Darwin. 
 A theory strange and ingenious with apparently, how- 
 ever, many cogent reasons on its side which fascinate, 
 at least, the unlearned reader. 
 
 32
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 We follow the author with interest and pleased 
 surprise whilst he attempts to show how species grow, 
 as it were, out of varieties, the latter becoming more 
 and more distinct by the process of Natural Selection, 
 until, after the lapse of ages, they bear but a faint 
 resemblance to the ancestors from whom they sprang. 
 By inheritance or community of descent is explained 
 the similarity of pattern in members of the same class, 
 the natural system of classification being a genealogical 
 arrangement, and likewise the existence so often met 
 with of rudimentary or useless organs and the resem- 
 blance of the embryos of distinct animals. 
 
 We are, however, rudely startled when we find that 
 man can form no exception in Darwin's theory, that 
 he can boast no higher parentage than any other 
 Mammalia, and that his mind and reason have merely 
 been developed by the all-powerful effects of Natural 
 Selection. Aston Clinton, October %9tk. 
 
 Religio Chemici. 
 
 These Essays by George Wilson are extremely inter- 
 esting, written with much true religious feeling and 
 practical thought. They convey also considerable in- 
 struction in a clear, pleasant manner. 
 
 1863. 
 
 * Let no cry be heard. Crush the escaping groan on 
 the yet quivering lips of the desires thou hast strangled. 
 Uncover not the pale faces of thy departed. Utter not 
 their names aloud. Know thyself and bear to be 
 
 33 D
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 unknown. Strike down this beggar heart that prowls 
 for alms and stops men's pity in the public place. 
 Justify the whole endeavour in the perfect deed. Slay 
 thyself and hide the knife. Even so, and as, in large 
 compassion of fond eyes, young graves set grieving, 
 kind nature makes much haste to cast over the hillocks 
 of the recent dead her grassy carpet of the tender 
 green ; so silently and for others' sakes with such a 
 noble haste do thou, too, hide beneath the serenity of 
 a smiling face the sorrow of thine immortal soul ! , 
 — The Ring of Amasis, by Owen Meredith. 
 
 Aston Clinton. 
 Life of Father Mathew. 
 
 Life of Burke. 
 
 Life of William Blake. 
 
 Seventh and eighth volumes of Froude's ' History.' 
 
 Less paradoxical and one-sided than his former volumes 
 — beautifully written and full of interest, but some- 
 what too long. His materials, foreign letters, des- 
 patches, &c. not sufficiently digested and made part of 
 the narrative. 
 
 Hard Cash. By Charles Reade. 
 
 Full of talent and of absurdity, of beauty and of hideous 
 exaggerations. Enough material for half-a-dozen 
 
 no\ 
 
 els. 
 
 Life of Theodore Parker. 
 Rather too much spun out — the style of the author a 
 bad imitation of that of Parker himself. 
 
 34
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 1864. 
 
 Perishes, Maximes et Correspondance de Joubert. 
 
 Still very interesting from the genius, the worth, 
 the nobility, the originality of the subject of the 
 Memoir. He was a great thinker and also great 
 in deeds of beneficence, kindness and mercy. Though 
 his words were often burning, and his indignation 
 and wrath against injustice, fanaticism and intolerance 
 full of bitter sarcasm, there was an immense deal of 
 tenderness in his nature displayed in a variety of ways 
 — in his love for children and his almost passionate 
 fondness for flowers — a nosegay always bloomed upon 
 the table from which he preached. 
 
 Aston Clinton, September. 
 
 Histoire Elementaire et Critique de J6sus. Par 
 A. Peyrat. 
 
 The very opposite of Renan, a sort of French Colenso. 
 Mr. Peyrat displays the same cold, pitiless good sense 
 as the Bishop of Natal, and proves how improbable, 
 nay, how impossible are the various narrations contained 
 in the Gospels. I naturally agree with his view of the 
 New Testament, but is it not strange that the world 
 should owe the greatest strides it has made in civiliza- 
 tion, morality, and, to use one of Parker's words, the 
 humanities of life, to a falsehood and an illusion ? what 
 great truth must not have been wrapped up in those 
 fables. Aston Clinton, September 3Qth. 
 
 35
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Broken Light. By Frances Power Cobbe. 
 
 A disciple of Theodore Parker, Miss Cobbe follows 
 in his track with great power, eloquence and clearness. 
 The following is a sort of resume of her faith : Re- 
 ligious Faith, in its high, true sense, faith in the 
 presence of a Heavenly Father, is a thing which God 
 gives, not in answer to studies and researches, but to 
 prayers and deeds. It is a thing which the clearest 
 mind may lack, and the humblest heart possess in 
 fullest measure. It is a thing which we can only gain 
 by prayer, only keep by obedience. There is no 
 winning it by argument, no preserving it by force of 
 logic in a life of sin. ... Is it not fitting that the 
 highest and divinest of all gifts should be attainable to 
 all God's children, whether learned or ignorant, wise or 
 dull, if only they be upright, good and true of heart ? 
 
 September 30th. 
 
 Tractatus Theologico Politicus. By Spinoza. 
 
 A critical Inquiry into the History, Purpose and 
 Authenticity of the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 
 This appears to me the fountain-head of all the 
 criticisms on the Bible, the arsenal from which present 
 free-thinkers have taken many of their weapons. Here 
 are some of the conclusions at which Spinoza arrives : — 
 ' We have shown that Scripture does not teach philo- 
 sophy, but piety ; and that the whole contents of the 
 Bible are accommodated to the capacity and precon- 
 ceived opinions of the vulgar As in the nature 
 
 of things that dogma, which, to one is pious and profit- 
 able, is to another impious and profitless ; therefore are 
 
 36
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 all dogmas to be judged by their effects, by the works 
 they produce, by the lives and conversations to which 
 
 they lead Nor shall I now shrink from specifying 
 
 the heads of an universal faith, which are also the 
 fundamental dogmas of Scripture. They are these : — 
 There is a Supreme Being, who delights in justice and 
 mercy, whom, all who would be saved, are bound to 
 obey, and whose worship consists in the practice of 
 justice and charity towards our neighbour. 1 
 
 Fireside Travels. By Russell Lowell. 
 
 A quaint, prettily written book, addressed to ' Story ' 
 and somewhat in his style, but more thoughtful and 
 vigorous. November 21th. 
 
 Lectures on the Science of Language. Second 
 Series. By Max Muller. 
 
 'The names given by the early framers of language 
 repose chiefly on wit and fancy — thus " wheat " was 
 called " the white plant " (Sanskrit " sveta, 11 white). 
 In Sanskrit "silver" is counted white and called 
 " Sveta. 11 " Sarit, 11 meaning " goer 11 from " sar 11 = to 
 go, became the name of "river. 11 "Sara" was used 
 for " sap. 11 The Latin " aevum, 11 meaning " going," 
 became the name of "time, age," and its derivative, 
 " aetemus," was made to express " eternity." That on 
 which a thing stands is called its " base," and " basis " 
 in Greek meant no more than going, the ground on 
 which it is safe to walk. The moon was called " luna " 
 from hmus = " the shining ; " the stars " stellse " from 
 Sanskrit " the strewers of light." ' 
 
 37
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 1866. 
 On the Origin of Language. By E. B. Tylor. (F. R.) 
 
 ' Every one recognizes the fact that certain expressions 
 of face, as well as certain inter jectional sounds, corre- 
 spond to certain feelings, but it is not thus generally 
 recognized that there is a real connection between the 
 expression of the face and the sound which comes from 
 it. The human body is, among other things, an instru- 
 ment for producing vocal sounds, and the different 
 attitudes of mouth, cheeks, &c, which belong to 
 different feelings of the mind, modify the position of 
 the vocal organs, and thereby the sounds uttered. 1 
 
 The above might explain many interjectional cries 
 from which various words owe their origin. 
 
 The old and weary wish for the ' wings of a Dove ' 
 to fly away and be at rest ; the young who are sad and 
 distressed, would rather be carried away by the wings of 
 the swallow to new scenes and sunny climes. 
 
 To the young there is Hope, to the old only Repose. 
 
 June 20th. 
 
 Les Apotres. By Erxest Renan. 
 
 Ecce Homo. 
 
 The Philosophical Works of Henry St. John, 
 Viscount Bolingbroke. 
 
 La Revolution. Par Edgar Qtjinet. 
 
 Ninth and tenth volumes of Froude's ' History of 
 England.' 
 
 38
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 The Gay Science. By Dallas. 
 Always suggestive, and brilliant at times. The ' Gay 
 Science 1 leaves no very clear impression on the mind. 
 
 According to Mr. Dallas, the aim of Art is pleasure, 
 and the criticism of Art consequently, if it be a Science, 
 the Science of pleasure, but it is just in that Science 
 that he appears to me to be least explicit. 
 
 1867. 
 
 Memoirs of George III. By Jesse. 
 
 ' Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, 
 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And cometh from afar ; 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home.'' 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 Adam and the Adamite or the Harmony of Scrip- 
 ture and Ethnology. By Dominick McCausland. 
 
 Mr. McCausland has made for himself a theory, and, as 
 usual, finds what he looks for in the Bible. In the 
 Scripture account of the Creation and Deluge he sees 
 nothing that conflicts with Science. The Deluge was 
 but a partial flood, and Adam was not the first man, 
 but the first of a new race of men quite distinct from 
 that of the Negro or Mongol already in existence. 
 
 The Reign of Law. By the Duke of Argyll. 
 
 39
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 1867. 
 
 The old year was rapidly approaching its end and 
 the bells rang merrily, but the wind mocked their joyous 
 notes and sighed and wailed. At one moment the glad 
 sound reached my ear — the next, it was lost in a dismal 
 chant — the angry shrieking and plaintive sobbing of 
 the wind — prophesying, as it were, wickedness and sor- 
 row, misfortune and disaster. But in the midst of the 
 wild mournful turmoil came again the merry chime ; did 
 it foretell the happy days that awaited us intermingled 
 with many dark and sad ones ? The golden threads that 
 fate was weaving upon a sable ground ? I tried not to 
 hear the wind and only listened to the bells, with a half- 
 superstitious dread of the former — but alas ! the wind 
 was near and around me, making the trees groan and 
 shake by its rough handling — and the bells seemed so 
 far away ! Still the hopeful peal rose ever and anon 
 above the blast, like the voice of human sympathy, or 
 the mercy of our God ! And the raging wind could not 
 completely drown it. For an hour I listened with an 
 aching heart to the war of the wind and the bells, then 
 the storm subsided, and the bells ceased likewise. The 
 overture had been played out, and the New Year began. 
 
 Aston Clinton, Jammry. 
 
 There is a light well known to us, for it is the 
 light which visits us at morning and evening, making 
 the day begin and end in beauty, which has the magic 
 power of imparting its own loveliness to all it shines 
 upon. It idealises the commonest things, and the 
 fairest look doubly fair under its soft yet glowing 
 
 40
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 radiance ; it turns the dull, grey clouds into gold, stone 
 into marble, it gives a brighter gleam to the jewel and 
 lends a glory to the little wayside flower. 
 
 How much death resembles this beauty-giving light ! 
 Those it touches with its ice-cold hand lose in an 
 instant their earthly stains and imperfections, and 
 appear to us altogether good and beautiful, and every 
 incident, however trifling, connected with them, is taken 
 from the category of passing events and becomes full of 
 meaning and interest. A halo is thrown around them, 
 they are canonised by death. Whilst here they were 
 poor mortals like ourselves, but death has unfolded their 
 wings, and as, alas ! they soar away from us they be- 
 come transformed not only in the present but in the 
 past. They were angels then and now. 
 
 Time is like the policeman whose rude office it is to 
 make poor loiterers move on. The houseless wanderer 
 has found a sheltered nook, or a patch of warm sun- 
 light, or only a stone step where he would so willingly 
 sit down and rest were it only for a few moments, but 
 the inexorable policeman cries, ' Move on ; move on. 1 
 
 And the stern necessity of ever moving on, of 
 constant change, is likewise the inexorable law of all 
 human beings, of all living things. 
 
 1870. 
 
 Lectures and Philosophical Remains of Professor 
 Ferrier. 
 
 Institutes of Metaphysic. By Ferrier. 
 
 Powerfully written and reasoned with great clearness. 
 
 41
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' Society we must have, but let it be Society and 
 not exchanging news or eating from the same dish. 1 — 
 Society and Solitude, by Emerson. February. 
 
 We emerge from the Inane, haste stormfully across 
 the astonished earth ; then plunge again into the Inane. 
 . . . But whence, O Heaven, whither? Sense knows 
 not ; Faith knows not ; only that it is through Mystery 
 to Mystery." — Sartor Resartus, by Carlyle. 
 
 Reading 'The Cloister and the Hearth' and 
 Kingsley's ' Christmas in the West Indies.' 
 
 Full of beautiful and interesting descriptions of Nature. 
 
 September 15th. 
 
 'The benefits of affection are immense and the one 
 event which never loses its romance is the encounter 
 with superior persons on terms allowing the happiest 
 intercourse. 1 — Society and. Solitude, by Emerson. 
 
 The country seems strangely quiet considering what 
 is going on abroad ; war more horrible in this en- 
 lightened, civilized age, than it has almost ever shown 
 itself. 
 
 The Emperor a prisoner ; the Empire a thing of the 
 past, and France a Republic. 
 
 Much alarmed for our relatives at Paris. 
 
 September. 
 
 1871. 
 
 Peace seems now about to be concluded ; but, alas ! 
 how long will misery and mourning outlast the war that 
 has occasioned them ! 
 
 42
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' La saintete de cette vie est dans le travail et dans 
 la peine. 1 — Penseeft, par Boirdaloue. 
 
 Reading Hawthorne's Note Books. 
 Full of thoughtful and suggestive passages. He had 
 not much knowledge of art; but here and there his 
 deep poetic temperament seemed kindled by some 
 picture or statue, and he would describe them with 
 enthusiasm. The Venus de Medici and Michael Angelo's 
 statue of Lorenzo de Medici appear to have produced 
 more effect upon him than any other work of art. 
 
 ' What greater thing is there for two human souls 
 than to feel that they are joined for life to strengthen 
 each other in all labours, to rest on each other in all 
 sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one 
 with each other in silent, unspeakable memories at the 
 moment of the last parting. 1 
 
 Adam Bede, by George Eliot. 
 
 1872. 
 
 If you are descending a river with a strong current, 
 a little breeze blowing in a contrary direction will hardly 
 retard the progress of the boat, or be felt by the 
 passengers ; and so in life, if we are much engrossed 
 with one great thought or grief, with an ardent hope 
 or fear, a thousand little ills and pleasures, disappoint- 
 ments and vexations, will pass without affecting us in 
 more than a very slight degree ; the current is speeding 
 us on, and we hardly feel the wind that is playing 
 around us. To the really good man, that current is 
 Faith and trust in all that is good and holy, the love 
 
 43
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 of God leading him on to blessed deeds ; but often it is 
 some absorbing sorrow or regret, or maybe a ray of 
 hope, which, though far away, shines still on some 
 distant spot of our earthly horizon. Jidy 91st. 
 
 Made the acquaintance of Berthold Auerbach ; he 
 was extremely amiable and is very easy to get on with, 
 evidently a vain but kind and generous man ; common- 
 looking, with a stout, short figure, but a fine brow and 
 bright eye. He talked of himself, his works, his friends 
 from monarchs downwards, he repeated his bon-mots and 
 repartees ; but still he seemed interested in others and 
 anxious to give pleasure. Cadenabbia, September. 
 
 Finished • Deutsche Liebe.' 
 A truly charming little tale, prettily written with some 
 pretty thoughts, but rather thin and shadowy. 
 
 Bead a pretty story of Auerbaeh's, 'Die Stief- 
 mutter.' 
 
 1 Ueber alien Gipfeln 
 
 1st Ruh\ 
 
 In alien Wipfeln 
 
 Spurest du 
 
 Kaum einen Hauch ; 
 
 Die Voglein schweigen im Walde, 
 
 Warte nur, balde 
 
 Ruhest du auch ! 1 — Goethe. 
 
 ' What a blessing it is to mortals, what a kindness 
 of Providence, that life is made so uncertain, that death 
 is thrown in among the possibilities of our being ; that 
 these awful mysteries are thrown around us into which 
 
 44
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 we may vanish ! For without it how would it be 
 possible to be heroic ; how should we plod along in 
 common places for ever, never dreaming high things, 
 never risking anything ? 1 
 
 By Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 
 1873. 
 
 Beading ' Memoirs of Baron Bunsen.' 
 
 A real German, hard-working, yet somewhat mystical ; 
 he was an excellent man, following through his busy, 
 well-filled life the highest and noblest aspirations. In 
 religious matters he tried to combine modern criticism 
 and ancient faith, perfect freedom with the Christian 
 dogma. Many-sided in his views and feelings, he 
 seemed to make friends among the good and great in 
 every camp. March Si-d. 
 
 Enigmas of Life. By W. R. Greg. 
 Very well written ; result of much thought, but the 
 Enigmas remain Enigmas still. The great riddles, the 
 mysterious perplexities of life are not — apparently cannot 
 be — solved or made clear. Fortunately, there is no diffi- 
 culty in seeing what we are required to do. Though 
 we cannot see God, the path He has marked out for us 
 is visible to us all. Though we cannot know Him, we 
 can read His will and His laws in conscience, history 
 and nature. 
 
 Literature and Dogma. By Matthew Arnold. 
 A remarkable book, showing, as the author says, the 
 powerful influence of the ' Zeit Geist ' which allows 
 
 45
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 him to write so boldly, and to attack without the least 
 reserve the long-received dogmas of religion. Experi- 
 ence and reason are his only guides to faith, and these 
 lead him to recognise an eternal Power that makes for 
 Righteousness — or more fully perhaps — 'the Eternal 
 Power, not ourselves, by which all things fulfil the law 
 of their being."' 
 
 There is, it appears to me, a want of clearness about 
 the 'Power not ourselves, which makes for righteous- 
 ness 1 — a t times it is spoken of as all we can positively 
 know of the Deity — at times it seems to melt away into 
 a mere tendency, or a system of laws without any 
 lawyer. As such it is not what the Bible appears to 
 teach, to proclaim, the One Holy Spirit to be obeyed, 
 loved and worshipped. 
 
 Is it not, as presented by the author, too impal- 
 pable and shadowy to be our ' Refuge, our present 
 help in trouble, 1 our Father, our Judge and our 
 Redeemer ? 
 
 Animals and their Masters. By the Author of 
 ' Friends in Council.' 
 
 Very pleasant reading, like all the books of Helps. Per- 
 haps somewhat too discursive to leave any very definite 
 impression on the mind — or rather many definite ideas. 
 The author is quite right in what he says about cruelty 
 to animals being generally caused by want of knowledge 
 about them and defective power of imagination— two 
 defects, which should be specially considered, in the 
 education of the people. 
 
 46
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Much interested in 'Die Kinder der Welt,' by 
 Auerbach. 
 
 It is beautifully written, and though a novel with a pur- 
 pose, not in the least dull. There are parts of it rather 
 too much spun out, and it has the fault which all novels 
 have — written to prove either a theory, or to destroy 
 one — that the story is moulded by the author to sub- 
 stantiate his views. Consequently one is always inclined 
 to take up the other side of the question, and instead 
 of enjoying the novel, dispute its truth. 
 
 In ' Die Kinder der Welt ' it is religious belief of 
 every kind which is attacked — not harshly or angrilv — 
 but calmly and coolly treated as being legendary and 
 imaginative, more or less hurtful to the human race, 
 which has now outgrown the age of fables ! The charac- 
 ters described in ' Die Kinder der Welt ' are with one 
 exception all not only excellent, but generally happy, 
 tho'' there is no Holy One that leads them to righteous- 
 ness — no hope of immortality to gild their hereafter ; 
 their religion is made to appear, if harmless, at least 
 perfectly useless to Mankind. May. 
 
 Just finished Mrs. Grote's ' Life ' of her Husband. 
 There is a want of tenderness and delicate affection in the 
 writer, but she has given us an interesting Memoir of the 
 Historian, who was as simple and courteous in his man- 
 ner as he was learned and profound. Devoted to his- 
 torical and philosophical studies, he had but little love 
 for the beauties of nature, and was eminently happy 
 when leading the life of a laborious student among his 
 books and a few congenial friends, such as J. S. Mill 
 and Sir G. C. Lewis. July 3rd. 
 
 47
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Visitors : — Mr. Story,* Mr. Motley : f both very 
 pleasant as well as very clever — also Mr. Frederick 
 Locker. 1 July 6th, Sunday. 
 
 Head Lord Houghton's Essay on Walter Savage 
 Landor. 
 
 Very interesting and well written. Must read again 
 some of his (Landor's) magnificent prose and thought- 
 laden poetry. His love for flowers, which would not allow 
 him to pick them, appears in the following lines : — 
 
 ' And 'tis and ever was my wish and way, 
 To let all flowers live freely, and all die — 
 Whene'er their genius bids their soul depart — 
 Among their kindred, in their native place. 
 I never pluck the rose, the violet's head 
 Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank, 
 And not reproached me. The tiny sacred cup 
 Of the pure lily hath between my hands 
 Felt safe, unsoiled, nor lost one grain of gold. 1 
 
 Finished the first volume of • R6cit d'une Scaur.' § 
 
 These, indeed, are the darkest of earthly shadows, but 
 they cannot dim the light of hope and love and religious 
 fervency which illumine its pages — a light borrowed 
 possibly from humanly-lighted fires, but God must have 
 
 * W. W. Story, the well-known American sculptor, also author 
 of Roba di Roma. 
 
 f John Lothrop Motley, the distinguished author of The Dutch 
 Republic, and the Life and Death of John Barneveldt, &c. 
 
 % Charming writer of verse, and very pleasant talker, author of 
 London Lyrics. 
 
 § By Mrs. Augustus Craven. 
 
 48
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 given the fuel and have made the flame possible though 
 the igniting spark may not have descended from heaven. 
 In self-forgetting love, in devotion, fervour and aspira- 
 tions towards the Eternal, the Perfect, the Ideal, there 
 must be something Divine, whether they spring from 
 Catholicism, Protestantism, or Judaism. July 19th. 
 
 Continued 'Le Rdcit d'une Soeur.' 
 One long description of death-beds — not the least 
 wearisome, however, because true, and after all what is 
 there in life that comes home to us so much and 
 interests us all so deeply as death ? August 1st. 
 
 Reading ' Bath Archives ' and Moscheles' ' Leben.' 
 Both gossipy and amusing books. Moscheles appear.^ 
 in his wife's interesting Memoirs as a thoroughly kind, 
 amiable man, an excellent husband, father and friend. 
 The most interesting parts of the two volumes are those 
 which relate to Mendelssohn — the beaming, tender, 
 graceful genius — Moscheles 1 early pupil and lasting 
 friend. August 6th. 
 
 Reading ' Life of Sterling,' by Carlyle, 
 which Henry Fitz Roy gave me more than twenty years 
 ago at Brighton. Strange that I should be reading it 
 here for the second time, as a guest of my dear niece 
 Blanche.* . . . Balcarres is certainly very romantic, the 
 old grey buildings, the grand trees, extended view and 
 Italian gardens give it a sort of poetical picturesqueness, 
 which the English places I know do not possess. 
 
 September, Balcarres. 
 * Lady Lindsay. 
 
 49 E
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Bead • Lucian ' in the ' Ancient Classics for English 
 Readers.' 
 
 A very entertaining little volume. It is curious that 
 writing more than a century after Christ — he was born 
 about a.d. 120 — he should hardly ever allude to 
 Christianity, particularly as in his Dialogues of the Gods 
 and other of his works, he satirises the various systems 
 of philosophy taught at that time. Once he mentions 
 Christians by name, and classes them with Atheists 
 and Epicureans. ... In another place, speaking of 
 Christians, he says : ' You know they still reverence 
 that great man, him that was crucified in Palestine for 
 introducing these new doctrines into the world. 1 
 
 October. 
 
 Read the ' Autobiography of John Stuart Mill.' 
 
 Extremely interesting. There was much poetry and 
 feeling in the logician and Political Economist ; but I 
 was struck with one strange omission, in his Auto- 
 biography — the man who declared he owed not only 
 his happiness but so much of his mental culture to his 
 wife, and on her account respected and looked up to 
 woman in general, never even mentions the name of his 
 own mother ! 
 
 Began Adam Smith's ' Wealth of Nations,' 
 
 which I find very interesting, though occasionally, to my 
 shame, I do not understand him. October 21st. 
 
 50
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Read the first part of ' Sara Coleridge.' 
 Her letters are charming, full of thought, of clever 
 criticisms, and of sound sense, with occasional poetical 
 descriptions. 
 
 Finished the second and, I regret to say, last 
 volume of Sara Coleridge's Letters. 
 
 In the latter part of her life how much broader she 
 becomes in her religious, or rather theological views ! 
 Here is one very liberal confession : — ' My own belief 
 is that the whole logical truth is not in the possession 
 of any one party , (I would substitute or add the 
 word faith), ' that it exists in fragments amongst the 
 several parties and that much of it is yet to be 
 developed. 1 December 4<th. 
 
 Reading James Martineau's ' Endeavours after a 
 Christian Life.' 
 
 Much pleased with its fervent eloquence. This is true 
 and well said : ' How welcome would it often be to 
 many a child of anxiety and toil, to be suddenly trans- 
 ferred from the heat and din of the city, the restless- 
 ness and worry of the mart, to the midnight garden or 
 the mountain top ! And like refreshment does a high 
 faith, with its infinite prospects ever open to the heart, 
 afford to the worn and weary. No laborious travels 
 are needed for the devout mind, for it carries within it 
 Alpine heights and starlit skies, which it may reach 
 with a moment's thought, and feel at once the loneliness 
 of Nature and the magnificence of God ! 1 — From ' Great 
 Principles and Small Duties.'' 
 
 December 9.0th. 
 51
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Reading with astonished admiration the ' Memoirs 
 of Mary Somerville.' 
 
 What an extraordinarily gifted and modest woman she 
 was — soaring in her scientific works far, far away from 
 the comprehension of us ignoramuses, and yet retaining 
 all her feminine graces, and not neglecting any of her 
 household occupations or motherly duties. 
 
 December 25th. 
 1874. 
 
 Read in James Martineau's ' Discourses ' : 
 
 * Sorrow no sin. 1 How true is this ! ' You cannot 
 sever them : grief and love must stay or go together. 1 
 — Endeavours after a Christian Life. January 3rd 
 
 Much interested in Lady Minto's ' Life of the 
 First Lord Minto.' 
 
 He was hard-working, kind, genial, patriotic, cheery, 
 without any great brilliancy, an adoring husband, a 
 very tender father. Besides his own letters, chiefly to 
 Lady Elliot, there are many interesting ones from 
 Burke and Wyndham, and many amusing ones from his 
 sister-in-law, Lady Malmesbury, and a few from Lady 
 Palmerston, whose good and social qualities reappeared 
 in her distinguished son, the * bright little Harry ' 
 mentioned by Lord Minto. 
 
 St. Leonards, February. 
 
 Motley's 'Life and Death of John Barneveldt,' 
 the great Dutch Statesman. 
 
 The first volume rather long and heavy ; but the second, 
 containing the trial and execution of Barneveldt, and 
 
 52
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 the trial and imprisonment of Hugo Grotius, with the 
 dramatic story of his escape, very interesting. Barne- 
 veldt suffered through the religious intolerance of that 
 age — an intolerance quite as great on the side of the 
 Protestants as on that of the Catholics. 
 
 Certainly, the world has made some real progress 
 in the last two hundred years ! April. 
 
 Lord Roseeery* very pleasant, quite above the 
 young men of the day. J n l'J 29M. 
 
 1880. 
 
 ' L'homme est infiniment superieur a la nature, mais 
 la nature est toujours inepuisable dans sa monotonie. 
 On sait qu'elle reste, quelle doitrester cequ'elle est; on 
 n"eprouve en sa personne ce besoin d'aller en avant qui, 
 fait qu'on se lasse d'une societe, d'une conversation qui 
 ne satisfait pas. Qui a jamais trouve que les arbres 
 devraient devenir rouge, bleus, que le soleil d'aujour- 
 d'hui avait tort de ressembler au soleil d'hier. On 
 nMnvoque point la le progres de la nouveaute et voila 
 pourquoi la nature nous tire de Fenniii du monde en 
 meme temps qu'elle nous repose de son agitation. II 
 lui a ete donne d'etre toujours la meme, sans etre jamais 
 insipide. -1 — Guizot. 
 
 ' Exalt the Lord my God, and worship at his holy 
 Hill ; for the Lord thy God is holy 1 (Psalm xcix.) l The 
 
 * The Earl of Rosebery, connected with my mother through his 
 marriage with her niece, Hannah de Rothschild. 
 
 53
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Lord our God is holy, 1 that is the great blessed truth 
 which science cannot establish, but which is revealed to 
 us by conscience and which the prophet feels and sees, 
 tho 1 it escapes the gaze and searching examination of 
 the acutist scientist. But though not among the truths 
 which illumine his field of vision, it fills the heart of 
 man and sanctifies his life, and it is his beacon and his 
 consolation. 
 
 ' Le temps vous apprendra comme a moi, a ne pas 
 dedaigner les joies du second rang et a enjouir sans les 
 compter pour plus qu'elles ne valent. 1 — Guizot. 
 
 London, June 6th. 
 
 ' Prendre son parti, qu'est ce ? Chasser les pensees, 
 de regret, en substiteur d'autres organiser a nouveau ce 
 qui vous reste. 1 — Pensees de Doudax. Jidy 9th. 
 
 ' Nur ein enges Hertz wiichst nicht, aber ein weites 
 wird grosser ; jenes verengen die Jahre, dieses dehnen 
 sich aus. 1 — Jean Paul. August 11th. 
 
 ' The wise man says of the virtuous woman : " Her 
 hands hold the distaff. 1 ' I could say much about these 
 words. Your spindle is a mass of good desires. Spin 
 every day a little ; carry out the thread of your wishes 
 into execution and you will do much. 1 — Letters of Fran- 
 cois de Sales. Cromer, August %6th. 
 
 1884. 
 
 Read a well-written article in the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes by Caro, on the second volume of AmieTs 
 Journal. A sad account of a beautiful, but too sensible 
 
 54
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 and morbid mind. These, however, were consolatory 
 words after speaking of the deceptions and miseries of 
 this life, he says : — 
 
 ' Le mystic et partout, lVimporte pourvu que le 
 monde sait Poeuvre du bien et que la conscience du 
 devoir ne nous ait pas trompes, donner du bonheur et 
 faire du bien voila notre aurore de salut, notre phare, 
 notre raison d'etre." 1 
 
 This again, written when he was suffering from an 
 illness he knew was fatal : — 
 
 ' La mort elle-meme peut devenir un consentement, 
 done un acte moral. 
 
 Caro finishes his article with these words to those 
 who, like Amiel, live too much merely a life of self- 
 examination and analysis : — 
 
 ' Et maintenant, occupez-vous un peu des autres, sous 
 peine de trouver le chatiment de cette inclusive attention 
 a vous-meme dans une sorte d'incapacite, de vivre et 
 d'enervement. Quel est le moraliste qui a dit que, pour 
 retrouver son moi actif vivant, il faut savoir le perdre 
 ou tout au moins roublier.'' October 1st. 
 
 Reading the last two volumes of Carlyle's 'Life.' 
 
 What a strange compound of noble generous sentiments 
 and extraordinary insight and powers of description with 
 irritability, frequent incapacity of seeing talents and 
 worth, and coarse exaggeration ; but he was a genius 
 and had really a tender, loving heart, in spite of his 
 selfishness and sometimes really brutal conduct to the 
 wife who was so dear to him. October. 
 
 55
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Reading Croker's • Letters and Papers.' 
 
 Find them interesting and amusing, while I expected 
 they would be rather heavy and dull. November 15th 
 
 A quaint description of age :— 
 
 * His limbs failing him, and his trunk getting packed 
 with the infirmities which mean that one is bound on a 
 long journey. 1 — The Poet at the Breakfast Table. 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 1885. 
 
 Reading with great interest ' Letters of George 
 Eliot.' 
 
 Hamble Cliff, February lUh. 
 
 Read with much interest 'Autobiography of Henry 
 Taylor ' and Mahaffy's ' Greece.' 
 
 Aston Clinton, March. 
 
 I do not know who wrote this, but it is very true : — 
 ' L'homme ne peut rien faire de mieux ; pour s'elever 
 dans Fordre des sentiments que de se rapprocher du 
 chien * October Mh. 
 
 Reading Greville's • Memoirs.' 
 
 Parts of which are very interesting, parts dull, but all 
 well written. 
 
 ' Charles Darwin.' By Grant Allen. 
 
 Somewhat too wordy. I should have liked more of 
 Charles Darwin himself and his letters, and less of Grant 
 Allen. November. 
 
 56
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Reading 'Vie intime de Voltaire' and 'Mrs. Keith's 
 Crime.' 
 
 The latter a well- written, clever, but horribly painful 
 story. Why write anything so distressing from the first 
 to the last line ? It certainly has the merit of complete 
 originality. Aston Clinton, November %3rd. 
 
 Rise of Silas Lapham. 
 Very original and clever. The following seems to me a 
 new and true way of looking at the possible effect of our 
 failings : — 
 
 ' Nothing can be thrown quite away, and it can't be 
 that our sins only weaken us. 1 December. 
 
 1886. 
 
 ' Des pas infiniment petits et des periodes infiniment 
 longues, dit Strauss, tels sont les deux passe partout qui 
 ouvrent des portes accessibles naguere au seul miracle.'' 
 
 January. 
 
 Reading the last chapters of Scherer's article on 
 Melchior Grimm. 
 
 What a soA finale to a prosperous career ! And a short 
 article on a sudden termination to a successful life — 
 that of poor General Grant. Aston Clinton, January. 
 
 Reading ' La Morte.' By Bourget. 
 According to the author, founded on fact, though 
 apparently written to prove the necessity of religion 
 to direct our conduct, and make our lives both good 
 and happy. 
 
 57
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Reading with much pleasure ' Oceana.' 
 
 Though I do not always agree with Mr. Froude's political 
 or religious views, the following I thought very 
 good : — 
 
 'Do we really know in what a Nation's greatness 
 consists ? Whether it be great or little depends 
 entirely on the sort of men or women that it is pro- 
 ducing. A sound nation is a nation that is composed 
 of sound human beings ; healthy in body, strong of 
 limb, true in word and deed, brave, sober, temperate, 
 chaste, to whom morals are of more importance than 
 wealth or knowledge, where duty is first, and the rights 
 of men are second, where in short, men grow up and 
 live and work having in them what our ancesters called 
 " the fear of God." ' 
 
 The realm of imagination is the realm of might-be, 
 our haven of refuge from the shortcomings and dis- 
 illusions of life ; it is, to quote Spenser : 
 
 'The world's sweet Inn from care and wearisome 
 turmoil.' — Lowell, On the Choice of Boohs. 
 
 February. 
 
 Reading Harrison's Essays. 
 
 Remarkably well written, but he has evidently ' Comte ' 
 upon the brain. March. 
 
 ' Only we'll live awhile as children play, 
 Without to-morrow, without yesterday.' — 
 
 Mary Robinson, Aston Clinton, March. 
 
 58
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 * The Melancholy of Melancholies,'' Keats would say to 
 us, is that of the joy which must pass away and of 
 beauty which must fade and die ; 
 
 < She dwells with beauty, beauty that must die : 
 And joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 
 
 Bidding adieu. 1 May. 
 
 Reading Legouve's ' Memoirs of Sixty Years.' 
 
 Much pleased with the following sentences — taken from 
 a letter of Beranger : 
 
 * Et bien, pauvre enfant, courez done apres lagloire, 
 e'est un mirage qui vient vous chercher du fond des 
 deserts ; prenez bien garde qifil ne vous y entraine ; un 
 seul moyen vous est offert pour eviter ce malheur ; 
 occupez vous d'etre utile — e'est la loi que Dieu impose a 
 tout homme. Ne faites pas comme tous ceuxqui se con- 
 tentent de Tart pour Tart. ... La nature a marque un 
 emploi a toutes les facultes qu'elle distribue, il ne faut 
 que chercher. . . . mais surtout occupez vous plus des 
 autres que de vous meme. May. 
 
 ' It is great vanity to think any one will attend to a 
 thing because it is your quarrel.'' — Steele. July. 
 
 1 Methusaleh might be half an hour telling what 
 o'clock it was ; but as for us post-diluvians, we ought 
 to do everything in haste, and in our speeches as well 
 as our actions, remember that our time is short. -1 — 
 Steele. 
 
 Reading with much painful interest ' Children of 
 G-ibeon,' by Besant. 
 
 November. 
 59
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 1887. 
 Reading Shelley's 'Life.' 
 Hayward's Letters very commonplace. 
 
 Reading the last two volumes of Greville's 
 ' Memoirs ' — chiefly political, and • Lectures on 
 History,' by Stubbs. 
 
 Suggestive and thoughtful, but rather one-sided. 
 
 February. 
 ' How we got our Bible.' 
 
 A most interesting little book. The most faithful 
 copyists were the Jews. 
 
 Reading ' Emerson in Concord.' 
 
 Talking of Slavery, he says : ' They who help, and they 
 who hinder are all equally diligent in hastening its 
 downfall. " Blessed be the unbelievers. 11 1 
 
 ' Do the Duty of the Hour. 1 
 
 'The Sabbath is my best debt to the past, and 
 binds me to some gratitude still. It brings me that 
 frankincense out of a sacred antiquity. 1 
 
 ' One should dignify, entertain, and signalise each 
 journey or adventure by carrying to it a literary 
 masterpiece and making acquaintance with it on the 
 way. 1 
 
 ' It is dainty to be sick, if you have leisure and 
 convenience for it. 1 
 
 'The delight in another's superiority is my best 
 gift from God — for here the moral nature is involved, 
 which is higher than the intellectual.' 
 
 60
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' To me the difference of churches looks so frivolous 
 that I cannot easily give the preference that civility 
 should to one or another. To old eyes how supremely 
 unimportant the form under which we celebrate the 
 justice, love and truth, the attributes of the Deity and 
 the soul.'' 
 
 His own last days were serene and happy. In 
 1864 his journal says : ' Within I do not find wrinkles 
 and used heart, but unspent youth. 1 — Emerson. 
 
 1889. 
 
 * L'Ombre passe et repasse 
 Et sans repasser Thomme passe. 
 
 ' Time flies, we say ; ah no ! 
 Alas ! time stays, we go.' 
 
 Austin Dobson : Sundial Inscriptions. 
 
 ' Idleness is the greatest prodigality in the world. 
 It throws away that which is invaluable in respect of its 
 present use, and irreparable when it is past, being to be 
 recovered by no power of art or hand. -1 
 
 Jeremy Taylor : Holy Living and Dying. 
 
 1890. 
 
 Reading Justin McCarthy's ' George II.' 
 
 Amusing and useful in recalling what one has read to 
 one's (my) waning memory. 
 
 61
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' This is the way physicians end or mend us — 
 Secundum Artem ; but though we sneer 
 In health, when ill, we call them to attend us 
 Without the least propensity to jeer.'' 
 Very true. Don Juan. 
 
 * Into the Justice sempiternates 
 The power of vision that your world receives, 
 As eye into the ocean penetrates, 
 Which, though it sees the bottom near the shore, 
 Upon the deep perceives it not, and yet 
 It is there, but it is holden by the depth. 1 
 
 Par. xxxi. 37, Divine Comedy, Dante. 
 
 ' The time shall come when free as seas or wind 
 Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind ; 
 Whole nations enter with each swelling tide, 
 And seas but join the regions they divide." 1 
 
 Alexander Pope. 
 
 Reading the ' Correspondence of Princess Lieven 
 and Earl Grey.' 
 
 Interesting, but there is a want of humour, and a same- 
 ness of subject in Princess Li even's letters, which make 
 them sometimes rather heavy and wearisome reading. 
 She must have been a remarkably clever woman, with a 
 great deal of head, but not much heart. There is more 
 feeling in Lord Grey's letters, as well as great dignity 
 and sincerity. 
 
 62
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Re-reading ' Obiter Dicta,'* 
 
 which I had quite forgotten ; only remembering that 
 I liked it very much. The article on Carlyle extremely 
 interesting. 
 
 Much pleased with this quotation from Goethe's 
 Faust. It is the Earth Spirit that speaks : — 
 
 ' It is thus at the roaring loom of time I ply, 
 And weave for God the garment thou seest Him by.' 
 
 1890. 
 
 Reading ' The Jews under the Roman Rule,' by 
 Mobison, and ' Kingsley's Life and Letters.' 
 
 The former a somewhat drv account of bare facts, the 
 latter full of interesting and poetical details about a 
 most interesting and poetical individual. 
 
 Reading "Walter Scott's • Journal.' 
 
 How bravely he bore his financial reverses ! 
 
 September. 
 
 Just finished two long, but still very interesting, 
 volumes of Kingsley's Life and Letters. Though too 
 violent and positive he was a delightful man, with a 
 loving heart and a true poetic feeling. 
 
 Much pleased with 'A Window in Thrums,' by 
 J. M. Babbie. 
 
 Full of humour and pathos. I like this : — 
 
 1 Let us no longer cheat our consciences by talking 
 of filthy lucre : money may always be a beautiful thing ; 
 it is we who make it grimy.' 
 
 * By the Rt. Honble. Augustine Birrell. 
 63
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Reading 'Coningsby.' 
 
 Much pleased with a good deal I had forgotten. 
 
 August %9th. 
 
 Reading the Memoirs of the ' Due de Nivernois.' 
 Most entertaining. 
 
 Looked over Lord Houghton's ' Life, 1 and now plunged 
 into Darkest England — written powerfully and con- 
 vincingly. December. 
 
 1891. 
 
 Reading, with great interest, 'Physical Religion,' 
 by Max Muxler. 
 
 He tries, and I think succeeds in proving that : 
 
 ' The human mind such as it is and unassisted by 
 any miracles, excepting the eternal miracles of Nature, 
 did arrive at the concept of God in its highest and 
 purest form, did arrive at some of the fundamental 
 Doctrines of Religion." 1 
 
 ' There is a God above all the gods, whatever their 
 names, whatever their concepts may have been in the 
 progress of the ages, and in the growth of the Human 
 Mind.' 
 
 (' He who above the gods was the one God."' — Rig 
 Veda.) 
 
 ' The Commandment to overcome hatred by love is 
 an old rule in the eyes of Buddha, as it was in the eyes 
 of Confucius. , — Max Muller. March. 
 
 64
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 4 Bar thy door not to the stranger, 
 Be he friend or be he foe ; 
 For the tree will shade the woodman, 
 While his axe doth lay it low. 1 
 
 I read with much interest the late Dean Church's 
 well-written book on the ' Oxford Movement ' and ' The 
 Publisher and his Friends ' — the amusing collection of 
 the correspondence and reminiscences of Murray's father 
 and grandfather, the Founder of the Firm. 
 
 ' The flowers my guests, the birds my pensioners, 
 Books my companions and but few besides.'' 
 
 W. S. Landor. 
 
 ' I strove with none, for none were worth the strife ; 
 Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art. 
 I warmed both hands before the fire of Life ; 
 It sinks, and I am ready to depart." 1 
 
 W. S. Landor. 
 
 Finished the ' Life ' of Laurence Oliphant. 
 
 Beading ' Coriolanus.' 
 
 ' In a drear-nighted December, 
 Too happy, happy tree, 
 Thy branches ne'er remember 
 Their green felicity. 
 To know the change and feel it, 
 Where there is none to heal it, 
 Nor numbed sense to steal it, 
 Was never said in rhyme."' 
 
 Keats : Happy Insensibility. 
 
 65 p
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Reading the Life of Tait, 
 
 in two rather ponderous volumes. He was an excellent, 
 hard-working, though not brilliant man, and because he 
 was calm, moderate, and many-sided in his views and 
 judgments on Church matters, was always getting into 
 hot water with both parties of High and Low Church- 
 men. 
 
 Reading 'Felix Holt,' which I had almost for- 
 gotten. 
 
 Finished reading • Japanese Girls and Women,' by 
 Miss Bacon. 
 
 Very interesting and amusing. 
 
 Commenced ' Mungo Park.' 
 It is interesting now to turn from the present to the 
 past wonders and discoveries in Darkest Africa. 
 
 Reading : Tess of the D'Urbervilles. 
 
 Little Minister. By Barrie. 
 
 David Grieve. By Mrs. Humphry Ward. 
 
 Lord Rosebery's 'Pitt.' 
 
 Esther Vanhomrigh. By Mrs. Woods. 
 
 The Lives of Palmerston and Lord Salisbury. 
 Edited by Traill. 
 
 Reading ' Boileau,' by Gustav Lauson. 
 
 Green's ' History of the English People.' 
 
 March 1st. 
 
 Just commenced ' The Prophets of Israel,' by 
 Robertson Smith. 
 
 66
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 'The revelation recorded in the Bible is a jewel which 
 God has given us in a setting of Human History.'' 
 
 April 16th. 
 
 * Every act we sow may come up a habit. 1 
 
 Theodore Parker. 
 
 Monday, July 3rd. 
 
 An Armenian Monk's Legend : 
 
 * Craignant que fhomme ne fut semblable aux Dieux. 
 ainsi que le serpent Tavait promis, TEternal crea le vigne 
 afin qu 1 il devint semblable aux betes.' 
 
 This would be a good text for a Temperance 
 Lecture. July 19th. 
 
 Reading Morley's ' Voltaire ' and Caird's Essays. 
 
 September 29th. 
 
 Occupied myself by reading four volumes of 
 Morley's "Works. 
 
 October 20th. 
 
 1892. 
 Began Marbot's 'Memoirs.' 
 
 Reading Jenny Lind's Biography. 
 Much too long ; full of needless matter, tiresome repe- 
 titions, but still interesting, as the picture of such an 
 interesting, original being, and unlike any other cele- 
 brated singer or actress. 
 
 Finished ' Jenny Lind.' 
 How wonderfully she carried out all charitable, benevo- 
 lent wishes, fulfilling her earliest and dearest aspira- 
 tions ! 
 
 67
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' Sorrows are hard to bear 
 And doubts are slow to clear. 
 Each sufferer has his say, 
 His tale of weal or woe ; 
 But God has a few of us 
 Whom He whispers in the ear. 
 The rest may reason and welcome, 
 Tis we musicians know. 1 
 
 Browning : Abt Vogler. 
 
 February. 
 
 1893. 
 
 Finished Claude's* (Mr. C. G. Montefiore) most 
 interesting Lectures. 
 
 I admire immensely his learning, modesty, his calm, 
 cultured, judicial tones, and the religious spirit with 
 which he treats his difficult subject. January. 
 
 Reading ' The Beauties of Nature.' By Sir John 
 Lubbock. 
 
 Full of interesting information, but given in rather too 
 detailed a manner. 
 
 ' The great Ash Tree " Yggdrasil " bound together 
 Heaven, Earth, and Hell. The three Fates or Normas 
 sitting under it spinning the thread of Life." 1 
 
 ' The rich buttercup 
 Its tiny polished urn holds up, 
 Filled with ripe summer to the edge. 1 
 
 Lowell. 
 * The Hibbert Lectures. 
 68
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' To the happy mixture of sunshine and rain we owe 
 the greenness of our fields/ — Hamerton. 
 
 February 16th. 
 
 ' When I remember all 
 The friends so linked together 
 I have seen around me fall 
 Like leaves in wintry weather, 
 I feel like one 
 Who treads alone 
 Some banquet hall deserted, 
 Whose lights are fled, 
 Whose garlands dead, 
 And all but he departed. 1 — Moore. 
 
 February 9\at. 
 
 I have been reading ' Venetian Studies,' by Brown. 
 Very interesting. 
 
 The Life of Wycliflfe. 
 
 An interesting subject — not, however, very well treated ; 
 still, it gives one many instructive glimpses into the 
 fourteenth century. April Wth. 
 
 I have been reading with much interest the two 
 somewhat over-bulky vols, of the ' Life and Letters 
 of Lord Sherbrooke '—our old friend, Robert Lowe. 
 
 He was very fond of animals — a trait in his character 
 which was new to me. The following lines, written 
 
 69
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 for a horse's epitaph, would suit our little Canine 
 Cemetery : — 
 
 ' Soft lies the turf on those who find their rest 
 Beneath our common Mother's ample breast ; 
 Unstained by meanness, avarice, or pride, 
 They never cheated and they never lied. 
 They ne'er intrigued a rival to misplace ; 
 Thev ran, but never betted on the race. 
 Content with harmless sports and simple food, 
 Boundless in faith and love and gratitude. 
 Happy the man — if there be any such — 
 Of whom his Epitaph can say as much.'' 
 
 May %Znd. 
 
 Heine's ' Family Letters and Writings.' 
 
 Witty, and still more, pathetic. May %4dh. 
 
 Reading Grant Duff's 'Renan.' 
 Very eulogistic and interesting. 
 
 Life of Keble. 
 
 Pearson's ' Fate of Nations.' 
 Full of knowledge of the past, but trust not of the 
 future. Cruelly pessimistic. 
 
 ' Sleep, thou art named Eternal ! Is there, then, 
 No chance of waking in the noiseless realm ? ' 
 
 Symonds. June 11th. 
 
 Reading Chalmers' 'Life,' by Mrs. Oliphant. 
 Very interesting and well written. Explaining what I 
 did not understand before, the rift in the Scotch 
 Church, which took place in 1834. June 19th. 
 
 70
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Read ' Napoleon Intime.' 
 
 Essays. Horace "Walpole. By Dobson. 
 
 August 8th. 
 
 Reading 'Life's Greatest Possibility,' by Martin 
 Morris*. 
 
 A great subject for so young a man ; clever, thoughtful, 
 and somewhat original, though in style and mannerism 
 it often reminds me of Carlyle. August. 
 
 Reading the ' Life ' of Abraham Lincoln. 
 What a strange, interesting, original personality ! Full 
 of fun and humour, but also of sadness and pity ! 
 The following lines by Charles Mackay he thought 
 much of: — 
 
 ' Tell me, ye winged winds, 
 That round my path may roar, 
 Do ye not know some spot 
 Where mortals weep no more ? 
 Some low and pleasant vale, 
 Some valley in the West, 
 Where free from toil and pain 
 The weary soul may rest ? 
 The loud wind dwindled to a whisper low, 
 And sighed for pity, as it answered " No." 
 
 ' Tell me, thou mighty deep. 
 Whose billows round me play, 
 Know'st thou some favoured spot 
 Some island far away, 
 
 * The present Lord Killanin. 
 71
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Where weary man may find 
 
 The place for which he sighs, 
 
 Where sorrow never lives, 
 
 And friendship never dies? 
 The loud waves rolling in perpetual flow 
 Stopped for a while, and sighed, but answered, 
 "No." 
 
 ' And thou, serenest Moon, 
 
 That with such holy face 
 
 Dost look upon the earth, 
 
 Asleep in Night's embrace, 
 
 Tell me, in all thy round, 
 
 Hast thou not seen some spot 
 
 Where mortal man might find a happier lot? 
 Behind a cloud the moon withdrew in woe, 
 And a voice sweet, but sad, responded, " No. 11 
 
 ' Tell me, my secret Soul, 
 
 Oh ! tell me, Hope and Faith, 
 
 Is there no resting-place 
 
 From sorrow, sin and death ? 
 
 Is there no happy spot 
 
 Where mortals may be blessed, 
 
 Where grief may find a balm 
 
 And weariness a rest ? 
 
 Faith, Hope, Love, the best to mortals given, 
 
 Waved their bright wings and whispered, " Yes, 
 
 in Heaven. 111 
 
 September 92nd. 
 
 72
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Have been reading with great pleasure Stanley's 
 1 Lectures on the Scottish Church.' 
 
 What a beautiful mind he had, and how beautifully he 
 expressed his appreciation for what is good, true, and 
 noble. October 4>th. 
 
 Begun second part of William George (known as 
 1 Ideal ') Ward's Life. 
 
 Interesting, as he was such an original and strong 
 personality. It seems extraordinary that he should 
 have gone over to the Faith which requires such com- 
 plete submission of intellect and will. What an ex- 
 traordinary and logical intellect he had ! How much 
 humour and fun in his daily life. 
 
 Aston Clinton, Sunday, °Z%nd. 
 
 Have finished ' Ward ' and am reading with great 
 pleasure Lowell's Letters. 
 
 They are full of poetry and the love of nature, delight- 
 fully expressed ; he has much fun too, but I do not 
 think his humour equal to his serious moods and poetic 
 instinct ; he had also a kind and loving heart. 
 
 November 1st. 
 
 I have been reading some of Bacon's Essays and 
 his 'Life.' 
 
 I delight in his grand Elizabethan style, which pre- 
 sents so well his stately poetic thoughts. Alas ! why 
 were his acts not always as fine and noble as his 
 writings ! December 1st. 
 
 73
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 'To My Old Yew Tree*. (By L. de R.) 
 
 t 
 
 4 Welcome, far-branching, sturdy old Yew Tree, 
 Through many years an unchanged friend to me 
 In summer days from blinding glare and heat, 
 Beneath your shade I find a sheltered seat. 
 In winter's gloom, when others"' stems are bare, 
 Your green boughs whispering, wave their banners fair, 
 On which can happ'ly feast dim eyes like mine, 
 Reading unwritten tales of " Auld Lang Syne." 
 
 December 4>th. 
 
 1894. 
 
 I am reading two volumes of hitherto unpublished 
 Letters of Walter Scott. 
 
 Full of interest — making one still more intimately 
 acquainted with the fine character and affectionate, lively 
 nature of the great author. 
 
 Aston Clinton, January 1th. 
 
 I have begun Stanley's 'Life.' 
 and am delighted with it. What a beautiful charac- 
 ter ! so truthful, tolerant, devoted, affectionate, simple 
 and modest ; he reminds me, in many respects, of my 
 nephew, Claude Montefiore. January 25th. 
 
 Just finished Lady Granville's Letters. 
 
 Very amusing, chatty writing and pleasant reading. 
 
 March %$.nd. 
 
 * The old yew tree standing in the grounds at Aston Clinton, 
 facing the windows of the drawing-room where my mother always 
 sat. 
 
 74
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Reading the Duke of Marlborough's 'Life.' By 
 Lord Wolseley. 
 
 Lord Clive. By Sir Charles Wilson. 
 
 I do not know about personal morality, but certainly 
 political morality and conduct in general are very 
 different in the nineteenth to what they were in the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
 
 4 Un petit malheur, c'est presque un bonheur ; les 
 petits malheurs vainquent les grands."' — Victor Hugo. 
 
 Yesterday I went with Constance to pay Mr. Glad- 
 stone a visit on Dollis Hill. It was a strange, fine, some- 
 what sad picture to see the old venerable statesman 
 lying on a seat shaded by trees on the picturesque lawn, 
 looking well and cheerful, with the hope of soon being 
 able to see to write again. In the meantime talking 
 with his extraordinary enthusiasm and vigour of Homer's 
 genius, of Japanese talents, and of the hundred thousand 
 uses which can be made of paper. Was there ever such 
 a versatile mind ? July %nd. 
 
 Reading ' The Message of Israel.' 
 
 Extremely interesting and clever, but also rather dis- 
 turbing and upsetting. In these pages the Bible 
 assumes a new position and explanations which strike 
 out quite a novel view of its various authors. Compari- 
 son between Spartans and Israelites — Lycurgus and 
 Moses. September. 
 
 75
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Rhoda Broughton* left us this morning after spend- 
 ing two days here : I find her no less bright and amusing 
 than when last I saw her. 
 
 The Pleasaunce, Overstrand, September 14th. 
 
 Reading with much pleasure a little book : Rus- 
 kin's 'Letters to a College Friend.' 
 
 ' The object of all art is not to inform, but to suggest, 
 not to add to the knowledge, but to kindle the imagina- 
 tion. To put plain text into rhyme and make it easy ; 
 not so to write a passage which every time it is remem- 
 bered shall suggest a new train of thought, a new subject 
 of delighted dream. It is the mystic secrecy of beauty 
 which is the seal of the highest art, which only opens 
 itself to close observation and long study. -1 October. 
 
 Wrinkles are the frontlets that Time puts between our 
 e} 7 es to remind us of fleeting years and coming death. 
 
 L. de R. — October. 
 
 Reading Froude's ' Erasmus.' 
 
 October With. 
 
 The poor Tsarf died yesterday. How well I remem- 
 ber his stalwart form and good-natured face, when he 
 was shooting here more than twenty years ago. 
 
 Finished James Payn's amusing pages of auto- 
 biography or rather ' Memories ' as he calls thorn. 
 
 November 2nd. 
 
 * Author of 'Cometh up as a Flower,' 'Nancy,' and other 
 novels. 
 
 t The Tsar, Alexander III., when Czarevitch, accompanied by 
 the Duke of Edinburgh, visited my parents at Aston Clinton n 
 1874. 
 
 76
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Beading Mrs. Augustus Craven's 'Life.' 
 A brilliant, clever, excellent, truly religious, though per- 
 haps rather a narrow-minded woman in matters of Faith. 
 Her thoughts, letters, and friends, extremely interesting. 
 
 ' Cest par Pesprit que Ton s'amuse, c'est par le coeur 
 iju'on ne s'ennuie pas.' — Madame Swetchine. 
 
 December. 
 
 ' That sweetest music — the praises of a friend. 1 
 
 Maria Edgeworth. 
 
 ' She did not keep me in the ante-chamber of her 
 mind, but let me go into the boudoir at once. 1 
 
 Maria Edgeworth. 
 
 'Tring, Wing, and Ivinghoe, 
 Old Hampden did forego, 
 For striking the Black Prince a blow. 1 
 
 4 Called on Mrs. Humphry Ward to-day. Found 
 her, as ever, very pleasant and sympathetic. Talked 
 over Mrs. Augustus Craven and Miss Edgeworth, &c, 
 &c/ December Tiih. 
 
 'The one or two immortal lights 
 Rise slowly up into the sky 
 To shine there everlastingly. 1 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 1895. 
 
 ' Les bons intentions ne sont pour rien dans les 
 ouvrages de TEsprit. 1 — Madame de Stael. January. 
 
 ' On ne se detache jamais sans douleur. 1 — Pascal. 
 
 77
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Beading ' Life and Letters ' of Dean Church. 
 Very interesting. 
 
 * All passes with the passing of the days, 
 All but great Death. 
 Death, the one thing that is 
 Which passes not with passings of the day. 1 
 
 Finished ' Dean Church.' 
 
 Reading ' History of the English Novel,' by 
 Walter Raleigh. 
 
 Reading ' Grote.' 
 Vol. 4. Chapter 31. 
 Vol. 5. Chapter 45. 
 Vol. 8. Chapters 67, 68. January 20th. 
 
 ' For manners are not idle, but the fruit 
 Of loyal nature and of noble mind.'' 
 
 Guinevere. April lOtk. 
 
 ' His honour rooted in dishonour stood, 
 And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true/ 
 
 Elaine. 
 
 Reading Tennyson's ' Idylls of the King,' 
 which I had half forgotten. How beautiful they are in 
 their purity, passion, and pathos ! 
 
 Much interested in Jusserand's 'Literary History 
 of the English People.' . .. 
 
 Reading Coleridge's Letters. M fi , 
 
 78
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Reading Dean Church's Letters. 
 Sensible, affectionate, tolerant ! Warmed by his intense 
 love of Nature ; but after Coleridge's extraordinary 
 effusions, they seem rather cold and commonplace. 
 
 Reading ' Degeneration.' 
 A great deal of truth in the author's severe and some- 
 times amusing criticisms ; but is he not occasionally 
 wanting so much in sympathy with views, ideas and 
 aspirations foreign to his own disposition and character, 
 that he becomes unfair and unjust ? 
 
 ' So for the Mother's sake the child was dear, 
 And dearer for the mother was the child.' 
 (Much admired by Lamb.) Coleridge. 
 
 Reading 'The Life of E. A. Freeman,' by Stephens. 
 
 The Rise of Wellington. By Lord Roberts. 
 
 May. 
 Continuing 'Freeman.' 
 
 He is too one-sided and intolerant. June. 
 
 Read Queen Victoria's 'Life,' by Mrs. Fawcett. 
 A difficult task, extremely well executed. July. 
 
 ' The scythe of Time has a blunt as well as a keen 
 edge, and has as much power to heal as to wound.' 
 
 September 16th. 
 
 ' Alas ! what a city of the dead is the human heart ; 
 why go to the cemeteries ? let us open our reminiscences, 
 how many tombs ! ' — Flaubert. 
 
 ' On se tire del'avenir comme des mauvais chemins— 
 on ne voit personne demeurer au milieu.' 
 
 Madame de Sevigne. 
 79
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' Tous les details sont admirables quand l'amitie est 
 a un certain point. 1 
 
 4 Dare a great thing : the thing thou triest 
 Lifts thy straining mind ; 
 Though thou mayst not reach the highest, 
 Something high thoult find. 1 
 
 From the German by John Stuart Blackie. 
 
 * Angels holy, high or lowly, 
 
 Sing the praises of the Lord. 
 Earth and sky, all living nature, 
 Man, the stamp of thy Creator, 
 
 Praise ye, praise ye God the Lord. 1 
 
 J. S. Blackie. 
 
 * On the deep sea's brim, 
 
 In beauty quite excelling, 
 White and tight and trim, 
 
 Stands my lady's dwelling. 
 Stainless is the door 
 
 With shiny polish glowing: 
 A little plot before 
 
 With pinks and sweet peas growing. 
 When a widow weeps, 
 
 She with her is weeping; 
 When a sorrow sleeps 
 
 She doth watch its sleeping ; 
 When the sky is bright 
 
 With one sole taint of sadness, 
 Let her heave in sight, 
 
 And all is turned to gladness.' 
 
 Miss Henrietta Bird. 
 80
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' The sun gives light and heat ; light for knowledge, 
 heat for love. 1 
 
 ' There is truth as well as beauty in that old con- 
 ception which finds the Divine rather in gentleness than 
 in violence. 1 — Walker. 
 
 'In all primitive languages and cosmogonies the 
 moon takes its name from a root which signifies the 
 "measurer, 11 while the sun is the "bright or shining one. 11 
 
 Lang. 
 
 In primitive languages the moon appears as male 
 and the sun as female in the older mythologies, which 
 is still maintained in modern German. 
 
 ' God's in His Heaven, 
 All's right with the world. 1 
 
 Pippa Passes : Browning. 
 
 ' Love thou thy land with love far brought, 
 From out the storied past and used, 
 Within the present, but transferred 
 Thro 1 future time by power of thought. 1 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 ' Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole, 
 Yet we her memory, as she prayed will keep, 
 Keep by this life in God and union there. 1 * 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 * The two last lines are on my dear mother's last resting-place. 
 
 81 G
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Aubrey de Vere asked Tennyson whether he were a 
 Conservative. ' I believe in progress,' said Tennyson, 
 ' and I would conserve the hopes of man. 1 
 
 ' Falling with the weight of cares 
 Upon the great worlds altar stairs, 
 That slope through darkness up to God/ 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 ' Le bruit est pour le fat, la plainte pour le sot. 
 L'honnete hounne trompe, s'eloigne et ne dit mot." 
 
 'To have known him, to have loved him, to have 
 had a place in his regard is a part of our life's unalter- 
 able good." 1 — G. R.* on Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Reading ' Life of Blackie.' 
 
 What a clever, original, energetic individual, always 
 hard at work on serious subjects, yet full of fun, song, 
 and humanity ! 
 
 Just commenced ' Human Origins,' by Laing. 
 
 Not only interesting, but till now it seems to me that it 
 emphasises one's ignorance upon the origin of man. 
 
 Aston Clinton, October 20th. 
 
 Reading dear Matthew Arnold's Letters. 
 
 Thev are delightful to me, and must give great pleasure 
 to all who knew him well, recalling so vividly the 
 affectionate, modest, simple nature of the man ; but the 
 poet and the charming prose-writer is not so vividly 
 portrayed in these pages. Sunday, October 2,4th. 
 
 The Right Honourable George Russell. 
 
 82
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Reading passages from Tennyson and Browning, 
 I am also getting slowly through the somewhat painful 
 pages of Haydon's Life. December 18th. 
 
 Reading Macaulay's 'Life.' 
 
 What an extraordinary memory and what a wonderful 
 untiring industry ! How terribly idle these delightful 
 passages make one feel ! December \§th. 
 
 Finished this morning Macaulay's 'Life.' 
 
 What a happy life and death ! What a contrast to 
 that of poor Haydon's ! December 9.2nd. 
 
 Reading three volumes of Haydon's ' Life.' 
 Becoming more interested in it. Christmas Day. 
 
 1896. 
 
 Reading with great pleasure and admiration my 
 nephew Claude's* ' Bible for Home Reading.' 
 
 Full of beautiful thoughts ; a real picture of his truth- 
 ful, kind, and religious spirit, but doubtless he will 
 shock the very orthodox. May 30th. 
 
 ' Dieu a donne le Pretre au monde, la charge du 
 pretre est de donner le monde a Dieu. 1 — Bourget. 
 
 Read with pleasure and interest ' The Life and 
 Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes ' ; and also with 
 interest and amusement 'Travel and Talk,' by the 
 Rev. H. R. Haweis. 
 
 London, January 96th. 
 
 * Mr. C. G. Montefiore. 
 83
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' Truth in closest words will fail, 
 While truth embodied in a tale 
 Will enter in at open doors. 1 
 
 Tennyson. 
 ' Truth for ever on the scaffold, wrong for ever on the 
 throne, 
 Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the 
 
 door unknown 
 Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch 
 above His own. 1 Lowell. 
 
 ' For acuteness and valour the Greek, 
 For excessive pride the Roman, 
 For dulness the creeping Saxon, 
 For beauty and amorousness the Gaidhill. 1 
 
 Old Irish Poem. 
 ' L'illusion et la sagesse reunies sont le charme de la 
 vie et de Tart. 1 — Joubert. 
 
 ' Yes, I am proud, I must be proud to see 
 Men not afraid of God, afraid of me ; 
 Safe from the bar, the pulpit and the throne, 
 But touched and scared by ridicule alone. 1 
 
 PorE. 
 ' When the wine goes in the man, 
 Then the wit goes in the can. 1 
 
 4 Whosoever is not actively kind is cruel. 1 — Ruskin. 
 
 ' A righteous man studies his beast. 1 
 
 Saying of a Rabbi. 
 
 ' Shake an ass and go — 
 Chacun a son gout. 1 
 
 84
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Youth cannot return : there are no birds, says the 
 Spanish proverb, in last year's nest. 
 
 ' Love or friendship is only Fegoisme a deux.' 
 
 ' II n'y a dans la vie que deux ou trois realites, et 
 Pamitie en est une. 1 — Victor Hugo. 
 
 Charles Lamb used to call himself 'a matter of 
 fiction man.' 
 
 ' Oh, the little more, and how much it is, 
 And the little less, and what worlds away. 1 
 
 * Home : word so full of tenderness, a sound that is 
 so often sad because it hath been sweet. 1 — John Nichol. 
 
 ' But my soul from out that shadow which lies floating 
 on the floor 
 Shall be lifted nevermore. 1 
 
 i Memory, the only fountain of perpetual youth. 1 
 
 Lord Bowen. 
 'The Hebrews were right in having no present tense 
 in their grammar ; the present is so fugitive, only the 
 past and the future seem permanent. 1 
 
 Longfellow, in a letter to Nichol. 
 
 4 We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our 
 little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep. 1 — The Tempest. 
 
 i That time of life thou mayst in me behold 
 When yellow leaves or few or none do hang 
 Upon those boughs that shake against the cold 
 Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang. 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 85
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 'The word advice changed from the French avis. 
 The French avis was the Latin advisum — from ad, to, 
 and visum, seen. Mon avis, my at sight or my view. 
 L'avenir, the future, that which is to come, ce qui est 
 a venir. 1 — Max Muller. 
 
 ' Painting and sculpture being forbidden for Israel, 
 those who vividly realised the unseen harmonies of 
 things, and felt within themselves a power coercing 
 them to give their thoughts vivid expression, were 
 forced to throw all their passion into psalms or pro- 
 phecies. The literature of the Psalms and the 
 Prophets represents the arts as well as the religion 
 of Israel. 1 — Abbott, The Spirit on the Waters. 
 
 1897. 
 
 Almond-tree, called the wakeful tree in Hebrew, 
 because it is the first to wake from the sleep of winter. 
 
 4 Never let a day pass without making some one 
 happy." 1 — Sydney Smith. 
 
 4 True poetry is the remembrance of youth, of love, 
 the embodiment in words of the happiest and holiest 
 moments of life, of the noblest thoughts of man, of 
 the greatest deeds of the past. Neither is the element 
 of pleasure to be excluded. For when we substitute 
 a higher pleasure for a lower one, we raise men in the 
 scale of existence. 1 — Jowett. 
 
 ' Utilitarianism is condemned by Jowett mainly 
 because it destroys the ideal meaning of such words 
 as truth, justice, honesty, &c. — words which have a
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 simple meaning and have become sacred to us, the 
 words of God written in the human heart. ' In the 
 future all things like the stars in heaven will shed 
 their light on one another.'' — Jowett. 
 
 ' Le malheur est fait d'envie, quiconque admire de 
 tout son cceur n'envie pas. Le malheur est fait de 
 regrets, en admirant on oublie ; de rancunes, en admi- 
 rant on pardonne ; de doutes, en admirant on croft. 1 
 
 Article on Ruskin by Robert de la Sizeranne. 
 
 Philosophy has been denned as the home-coming of 
 the soul. 
 
 ' Our sensibilities are so acute, 
 The fear of being silent makes us mute.' 
 
 Poets Laureate. 
 
 Davenant, Dryden, under Charles II. and James II. 
 Shadwell under William III. Tate under Queen Anne. 
 Colley Cibber under George II., called by Pope the 
 King of Dunces. Johnson wrote of him : 
 
 ' Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing, 
 For nature formed the poet for the King. 1 
 
 Whitehead, Warton, George II. Pye, Southey, Words- 
 worth, George III. Queen Victoria : Tennyson, Alfred 
 Austen ! ! Both Wordsworth and Tennyson borrowed 
 their court dress from Rogers. 
 
 ' Religion does not consist in the knowledge and 
 belief even of fundamental truths ; no, education and 
 religion consist mainly in our being brought by them to 
 a certain temper and behaviour. 1 — Butler. 
 
 87
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 'Now if we are to be brought to a temper and 
 behaviour, our affections must be engaged and a force 
 of beauty or of sentiment is requisite for engaging them. 1 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 ' Les sauvages sont Fantiquite moderne, 
 La vie est un devoir. 1 — Joubert. 
 
 ' Things are what they are, and the consequences of 
 them will be what they will be ; why then should we 
 desire to be deceived ? 1 — Butler. 
 
 ' The maker of bows was termed a bowyer, of arrows a 
 fietcher (fleche) frequently met as surnames. Yew in 
 ancient British signifies existent and enduring, having 
 the same root as Jehovah. 1 
 
 ' The whole scene of man's visible life, no longer the 
 mere vestibule of an invisible futurity, has a worth and 
 dignity of its own which philosophy delights to honour 
 and only fanaticism can despise.' — J. Martineau. 
 
 ' By fits the Lady Ash 
 With twinkling fingers swept her yellow keys. 1 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 ' In 1716, two women were hanged for witchcraft : in 
 1736, penal statutes against witchcraft were repealed.' 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 ' In this vale of Time, the hills of Time often shut 
 out the mountains of Eternity.' 
 
 ' Till each man find his own in all men's good 
 And all men work in noble brotherhood.' 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 88
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' Le coeur a ses saisons que la raison ne connait pas.' 
 
 Ren an. 
 
 ' Memories of books, memories of places, they should 
 be our jewels, our garden of delight.' — Miss Clough. 
 
 ' Take the little pleasures of life, watch the sunsets 
 and the clouds, the shadows in the streets, and the 
 misty light over our great cities, these bring jov by the 
 way and thankfulness to our heavenly Father.' 
 
 Miss Clough. 
 
 1897. 
 
 Reading Jowett's 'Life.' 
 Very interesting ; full of interesting thoughts. 
 
 April 16th. 
 Reading Countess Potocki's • Memoirs.' 
 
 Gossipy, but amusing notes. Napoleon figures among 
 them with many well-known characters. 
 
 Aston Clinton, June 16th. 
 
 Sixty years ago, about this time of day, I was 
 waiting with my dear sister, Charlotte, at a window in 
 St. James's Street to see the young Queen drive in her 
 State Glass Coach down to Westminster Abbey to be 
 crowned, and to-day here I am alone, with Elfie,* look- 
 ing out of my window at Grosvenor Place, to see the 
 crowds coming down to see the aged Queen. The guns 
 are firing, and soon the thrilling scene will commence. 
 I wish I could have witnessed it, but I do not feel 
 
 * Elfie, a tiny Yorkshire terrier, my mother's constant com- 
 panion. 
 
 89
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 equal to the fatigue of the ceremony Every- 
 thing passed off brilliantly, and not a hitch or a 
 contretemps ; of course the elements were propitious 
 
 till the Queen had left London So ends the 
 
 great London Jubilee, and to-morrow I hope the sun 
 will shine on Portsmouth for the great Naval Review. 
 
 June 22nd. 
 
 Yesterday, the Prince of Wales* drove here from 
 Tring, with Emmy (Lady Rothschild), Lady Randolph 
 Churchill, and Lord Peel, f It was a sort of Rip Van 
 Winkle visit. I felt very stupid and half inclined to 
 cry. H.R.H. was extremely amiable, simple, and good- 
 natured, often alluding to his pleasing visit here 24* 
 years ago. Of course I find him much changed, grown 
 from a young man to a middle-aged one, but in expres- 
 sion rather improved than otherwise. 
 
 Aston Clinton, October 9,5th. 
 
 Reading Tennyson's ' Life,' with great interest 
 and pleasure. 
 
 October 21th. 
 
 Much regret having come to the end of Tennyson's 
 Life ; have read few books that interested and en- 
 grossed me so much ; and now I am reading In 
 Memoriam. November 8th. 
 
 Reading Renan's 'Life' and 'The House of 
 Blackwood.' 
 
 * King Edward VII. 
 
 t Viscount Peel, well known for many years as Speaker in the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 90
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 1898. 
 
 4 La douleur lui echappe comme son plaisir. 1 
 
 Joubert. 
 
 * II est impossible que Voltaire contente, et im- 
 possible qu'il ne plaise pas. 1 — Joubert. 
 
 'Il faut faire du bien lorsqu'on le peut et faire 
 plaisir a toute heure, car a toute heure on le peut. 1 
 
 Joubert. 
 
 ' Il serait difficile de vivre meprise et vertueux, nous 
 avons besoin de support. 1 — Joubert. 
 
 ' Qui n'a pas Tesprit de son age 
 De son age a tout le malheur. 1 
 
 Voltaire. 
 
 ' Toujours occupe des devoirs des autres, jamais des 
 siens, helas ! — Joubert. 1 
 
 * I sometimes do believe and sometimes do not, 
 As those that fear they hope, and hope they fear." 
 
 As You Like It. 
 
 Timocracy — first stage in the downward progress 
 when reason sinks to a lower level. 
 
 Oligarchy — when appetite becomes dominant love 
 of wealth. 
 
 Democracy — a war of appetites. 
 
 Tyranny — despotism of the lowest appetites, the 
 least compatible with the common life of society. The 
 tyrant is the exact counterpart of the philosopher 
 The philosophic king is at one with everybody and 
 everything around him. The tyrant, his personality 
 
 91
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 concentrated in one single dominant passion, is abso- 
 lutely alone — he is the enemy of his own better self, 
 of the human kind, of God. 
 
 Lectures on Plato's ' Republic ' by Nettleship. 
 
 ' Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's 
 mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn 
 upon the poles of truth. 1 — Bacon. 
 
 Giordano Bruno died at the stake in Rome in 1600. 
 
 ' O give no waye to griefe 
 But let beliefe 
 Of mutual love 
 
 This wonder to the vulgar prove 
 That bodies not we move. 1 
 
 Pembroke. 
 
 ' Qu'est ce qifune grande vie ? Une pensee de la 
 jeunesse executee par Page mur. 1 — Alfred de Vigny. 
 
 The Universal Register became The Times in 1788. 
 Walter remained editor and proprietor till 1810, when 
 Stoddart became editor, succeeded bv Barnes, 1817, 
 succeeded by Delane in 1841. 
 
 The Annals of Agriculture set up in 1788 by Arthur 
 Young, received contributions from Ralph Robinson, 
 Farmer of Windsor, and who was George III. 
 
 ' Der Augenblick ist Ewigkeit 1 (Goethe), so let us 
 make the best use of der Augenblick, and not be always 
 thinking of the past or the future. 
 
 Wanhope — old English for despair. 
 
 92
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' Passing through a valley of weeping they make it 
 a place of springs ' (eighty-ninth Psalm) ; that is what 
 kind hearts do. 
 
 ' He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things both great and small. ' 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 ' Never to blend our pleasures to our pride 
 With sorrow to the meanest thing that lives." 1 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 The Prussian royal family were the Burgraves of 
 Nuremberg, and the Emperor gave them Brandenburg, 
 the province where Berlin now stands, in the year of 
 the battle of Agincourt. 
 
 'Tis a great point in a gallery how you hang 
 pictures, and no less in society how you seat your 
 party. -1 — Emerson. 
 
 ' Quand mes amis sont borgnes je les regarde le 
 
 profil.* 1 JOUBERT. 
 
 ' I am afraid of trusting myself far from home at 
 this season of the year, as one can be sick and cross 
 nowhere so comfortably as at home.' — Dr. Burney, 1791. 
 
 I quite agree. — 1898, L. R 
 
 ' For there was never yet fair woman but she made 
 mouths in a glass. 1 — The Fool in ' King Lear.' 
 
 Yesterday morning at five o'clock, the great states- 
 man passed away. All England is grieving for our 
 Gladstone.* Aston Clinton, May 20th. 
 
 * The Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone, four times Premier, 
 born 1809, died 1898. 
 
 93
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Gladstone's Funeral. — I came up on the 26th, 
 and found London dark and sad, as befitted the City 
 mourning her great Statesman. May %8th. 
 
 Paid Watts a visit. Delighted with the great 
 artist, his noble works, and his gentle wife. 
 
 Claude's* portrait a marvellous likeness and magni- 
 ficent painting! How delightful for Watts and for 
 England that age should have no chilling, hurtful 
 effect upon the brain, hand, or eye of the aged artist. 
 
 Jtme 9&th. 
 
 ' So obsequious is the vain woman to fashion, that she 
 would be ready to be reconciled even to virtue with all 
 its faults if she had her dancing-master's word that it 
 was practised at Court. 1 — Letters of Lord Halifax to his 
 daughter. 
 
 Lord Halifax born 1633. 
 
 ' A light wind blew from the gates of the sun, 
 And waves of shadow went over the wheat.' 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 ' The river is green and runneth slow ; 
 We cannot tell what it saith, 
 It keepeth its secrets down below, 
 And so doth death.' — Faber. 
 
 * O Lord ! where shall I find Thee ? 
 All hidden and exalted in Thy place ; 
 And where shall I not find Thee ? 
 Full of Thy glory is the infinite space. 1 
 
 Halevy. 
 * Mr. C. G. Montefiore. 
 94
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' Glory, 1 says Robertson, ' to intellect and genius, 
 but glory to gentleness and patience. 1 
 
 4 Truth is perilous in proportion as it is not spoken 
 in love. 1 — Manning. 
 
 ' Arguments are the pillars of sermons, illustrations 
 are the stained-glass windows. 1 — Fuller. 
 
 ' Flowers laugh before Thee on their beds, 
 And fragrance in Thy footing treads; 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong 
 And the most ancient heavens through Thee are fresh 
 and strong. 1 — Wordsworth. 
 
 ' What good is like to this ? To do worthy the 
 writing, and to write worthy the reading and the 
 world's delight. 1 
 
 Daniels' dedication to Sidney's ' Angel Spirit.'' 
 
 1899. 
 
 * Our foster-nurse of nature is repose. 1 — King Lear. 
 
 ' Her voice was very soft, 
 Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman. 1 
 
 k Age cannot wither her nor custom stale 
 Her infinite variety.' — Antony and Cleopatra. 
 
 ' For his bounty 
 There was no winter in it, and autumn 'twas 
 That grew the more by reaping.' 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra. 
 
 4 One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. 1 
 
 Troilus and Cressida. 
 95
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' We have made peace 
 With no less honour to me.' 
 
 Coriolanus. 
 ' The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind, 
 And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground.' 
 
 Titus Andronicus. 
 There was a Roman inland road from Clausentum, 
 a small shipping-place on Southampton Waters, now 
 called Bitterne, to Winchester. 
 
 ' What a mania you have for improving everything 
 about you ; could you not spare a little of this reform- 
 ing energy upon yourself ? ' 
 
 Companions of my Solitude, Arthur Helps. 
 
 ' La force des choses 1 is only another word for ' La 
 faiblesse des homines."' — Quoted btj Mallet. 
 
 Ameer — the origin of admiral. 
 
 ' Labour, so far as it is true and sanctionable by 
 the Supreme Worker and World-founder, may claim 
 brotherhood with labour ; the great work and the 
 little are alike definable as an extricating of the true 
 from its imprisonment amid the false. 1 
 
 Carlyle, Letter to Sir Robert Peel, 1846. 
 
 ' Horace says, "Where words abound sense is thinly 
 spread, as trees over-charged with leaves bear little 
 fruit." * — Letter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 
 
 ' The past is always secure. 1 — Horace Greeley. 
 
 ' So use present pleasures that thou spoilest not future 
 ones. 1 — Sexeca. 
 
 96
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' As when a painter poring on a face 
 Divinely, through all hindrancies finds the man 
 Behind it, and so paints him that his face, 
 The shape and colour of a mind and life, 
 Lives for his children, even at its Best.' 
 
 Watts' 1 ideal put into verse by Tennyson. 
 
 ' A little grave is mine beneath the Yew, 
 And in the Heavens a soul that God doth save ; 
 To me is given sweet rosemary and rue, 
 A little grave. 
 
 Yet, not to sorrow is my heart a slave, 
 For Love and Death keep a soft wee face in view, 
 
 And one hope makes my broken spirit brave, 
 For it is not here the life that is most true, 
 
 The life that breaks not like an ocean wave ; 
 And yet I love, as God's earth loves the dew, 
 A little grave.' 
 
 Reading Stevenson's Letters, with great interest. 
 
 Aston Clinton, February 25th. 
 
 Boer War. — Spent a pleasant couple of hours collect- 
 ing money for the wives and children of our fighting 
 soldiers and sailors ; I was received most amiably by all 
 the inmates of the cottages in Halton village,* who 
 seemed pleased to see me and to respond to my request. 
 
 Finished Stevenson's delightful Letters, and read- 
 ing 'The Newcomes,' by Thackeray. 
 
 * A very picturesque village in Buckinghamshire, belonging to 
 my cousin Alfred de Rothschild. 
 
 97 H
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Also finished reading Sir A. West's* ' Recollec- 
 tions.' 
 
 Pleasantly written — some parts very interesting. 
 
 December 11th. 
 
 A pleasant little visit last week from the two Miss 
 
 Cholmondeleys,+ Mr. Asquith,J and Mr. Haldane. § 
 
 Christmas Day. 
 
 1900. 
 
 Thk first piece of really good news from the war — 
 Kimberley relieved by French. February. 
 
 Cronje capitulated with all his force on the 25th. 
 
 This morning came the welcome, happy news of the 
 relief of Ladysmith. London, March 1st. 
 
 ' It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say, he 
 is one who never inflicts pain."' — Cardinal Newman. 
 
 'Leave out the adjectives and let the nouns do the 
 fighting.' 1 — Emerson. 
 
 Reading Rosebery's 'Napoleon: The Last Phase.' 
 How sad and dull must those last years have been after 
 such an eventful, dashing, brilliant life, to the prisoner 
 watching the fall of the Empire he had raised ! The two 
 last chapters particularly well written and interesting. 
 
 * The Right Honourable Sir Algernon West, G.C.B., late 
 Chairman of Board of Inland Revenue, and formerly Secretary to 
 Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 f Mary and Victoria Cholmondeley. Mary Cholmondeley. 
 author of Red Pottage, and other novels. 
 
 X The Prime Minister. 
 
 § Viscount Haldane, Secretary of State for War, President of 
 the Army Council. 
 
 98
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Commenced John Morley's* ' Oliver Cromwell.' 
 Enjoying the pleasant, inspiriting company of John 
 Morley's Oliver CromweU. I admire his [John Morley's] 
 large-minded toleration towards all sides of party and 
 of politics and all shades of religion and theology. 
 
 Just read a most interesting article in the Nineteenth 
 Century, by Max Miiller, on 4 Religion in China. 1 
 
 How sad to think that we shall hear no more words 
 from that distinguished author ! November \Qth. 
 
 1901. 
 
 A pleasant little party stayed here during the last 
 days of the year and century : dear Annie Ritchie, t 
 reminding us of old days ; Mary and Victoria 
 Cholmondeley, Dr. \ and Mrs. Woods, Augustus Hare, § 
 Colonel Collins, || Sir Algernon West, and Mr. Benson. !i 
 
 Aston Clinton, January 1st. 
 
 What a terrible change has taken place sinee I last 
 wrote, after our pleasant little party had just broken 
 up. The dear Queen departed, the reign of Victoria 
 ended, that of Edward VII. commenced. 
 
 * Viscount Morley of Blackburn, Lord President of the 
 Council. 
 
 t Lady Ritchie, daughter of Mr. Thackeray. 
 
 t The present Master of the Temple. 
 
 § Author of many books : Walks in Rome, Walks in London and 
 Two Noble Lives. 
 
 || The late Lieut.-Col. Collins, for many years equerry to- 
 H.R.H. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll. 
 
 IT E. F. Benson, author of many amusing novels. 
 
 99
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Several notabilities have also departed : Brooke 
 Lambert,* Mr. Haweis,f our friend Frederick MyersJ 
 — a melancholy commencement of the year and century. 
 
 February 3rd. 
 
 Reading nothing very interesting, though some 
 good articles in the magazines, and rather amused with 
 Gray's ' Letters."' March 6th. 
 
 Just finished an amusing volume containing the 
 Correspondence of: Madame, The Princess Palatine, 
 Madame Adelaide de Savoie, Duchesse de Bourgogne, 
 Madame de Maintenon. They give one a curious idea 
 of the customs that prevailed at the French Court 
 during the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV. 
 
 March 18th. 
 
 Commenced ' Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks.' 
 
 Too long, but very interesting. He died at the early 
 age of 57. Religious, broad-minded and gifted, with a 
 kindly nature and happy sparkling humour. 
 
 March 20th. 
 
 Heading • The Letters and Life of the Countess 
 Granville.' 
 
 Composed of extracts from books, letters and Bible 
 texts, chiefly from the Old Testament. May 8th. 
 
 * The Rev. Brooke Lambert, well known for his philanthropic 
 work, a Broad Churchman, Rector of South Lambeth. 
 
 t The Rev. H. R. Haweis, a most original preacher, also author. 
 
 J Frederick W. H. Myers, a distinguished writer in prose and 
 poetry ; deeply interested in Psychical Research. 
 
 100
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Beading with much pleasure Herbert Paul's* ' Men 
 and Letters.' 
 
 Much instruction given in a vigorous, racy and amusing 
 style. May Mth. 
 
 1902. 
 Peace declared 1st June.f June 3rd. 
 
 1903. 
 
 ' The hour of need 
 Shows the friend indeed.'' — Ennius. 
 
 Finished reading 'Isabella D'Este.' 
 Very interesting, though in parts rather exhaustive. 
 
 ' Dickens taught us the duty of gaiety, and the 
 religion of mirth. 1 — Lord Dufferix. June. 
 
 Finished reading John Morley's 'Life of Glad- 
 stone.' 
 
 A great biography, and how great a man ! 
 
 ' . . . . Nature hath assigned 
 Two sovereign remedies for human grief : 
 Religion, surest, firmest, first and best, 
 Strength to the weak and to the wounded balm ; 
 And strenuous action next. 1 
 
 November 26th. 
 
 * Now one of the Civil Service Commissioners, author of 
 A History of Modern England, Life of J. A. Fronde, Stray 
 Leaves, §;c. 
 
 t End of the Boer War. 
 
 101
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 1904. 
 
 The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
 
 Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.' 1 
 
 ' O ! never Star 
 Was lost here but 
 It rose afar." 
 
 But beauty in Nature is not ultimate ; it is a herald 
 of inward and eternal beauty : it must stand as a part 
 and not as yet the last or highest expression of the final 
 course of Nature/ — Emerson. 
 
 'Great talents are the finest peacemakers.' — Goethe. 
 
 July 12th. 
 4 Wanted, or forgot, 
 The last and greatest art, 
 The art to blot.' — Pope on Dry den. 
 
 ( )x preaching : — 
 
 ' As never sure of preaching again, 
 And as a dying man to dying men. 1 
 
 Baxter. 
 ' Learn to write slow, and other graces will follow 
 in their proper places/ October. 
 
 1905. 
 
 ' Not Heaven itself upon the past has power ; 
 That which has been, has been, and I have had 
 my hour.'' Dryden. 
 
 Reading Lord Granville's 'Life,' and Lucas's 
 ' Life of Charles Lamb.' November. 
 
 ' Dessiner, c'est parler aux yeux, et parler c'est 
 peindre a foreiHe. 1 — Joubert 
 
 102
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 1906. 
 
 Yesterday, Thursday, 11th, I had a terrible shock. 
 My darling Elfie,* loved for her own sake as well as for 
 dear Ferdie's, met her tragic fate — cruelly, though of 
 course accidentally. I shall miss my dear little pet 
 constantly, for she was generally my constant, sweet 
 companion ; never a bore, but always ready to 
 respond to a word or caress. O ! my darling ! how 
 lonely many of my days and evenings will be with- 
 out you ! January 12th. 
 
 Monday. — My darling Elfie is to be put in her last 
 resting-place under the big yew-tree to-day. How I 
 do and shall miss her — that constant little friend. 
 Alas ! alas ! to know that I shall never see her again ! 
 
 January 15th. 
 
 This morning polling for Mid-Bucks — great excite- 
 ment. I shall be very sorry if Walterf is not re-elected, 
 but my feelings are quite personal on this occasion, my 
 political views being just the contrary. January 25th. 
 
 This morning Walter was elected M.P. for Mid- 
 Bucks, by a majority of 1212 votes. January 26th. 
 
 * The little Yorkshire terrier, given to my mother by a very 
 favourite nephew— B'erdinand de Rothschild, M.P. for Mid-Bucks., 
 a man of great intellectual distinction. Died December, 1 898. His 
 sister Alice was devotedly attached to my mother, who warmly 
 reciprocated her affection. 
 
 t The Hon. Walter Rothschild, eldest son of my mother's 
 nephew, Lord Rothschild, well known for his great knowledge of 
 Natural History and for the beautiful museum that he built in the 
 town of Tring, Herts., on his father's property. 
 
 103
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' He who studies the Law without spreading it, 1 says 
 the Talmud, ' is like unto the myrtle in the desert. 1 
 
 Nearly nineteen centuries ago Joseph us wrote : 
 ' Our principal care of all is this, to educate our 
 children well.' 
 
 ' By the breath from the mouth of school-children 
 the world is sustained.' — Rabbi Eleazer Ben Shamna. 
 
 ' The quest of knowledge in old age is like drawing 
 on sand ; in youth, like engraving on stone. 1 
 
 ' Je comprends le rire, j'ai horreur de la grimace. 1 
 
 Doudan. 
 Reading with great pleasure the interesting ' Life 
 and Letters of Canon Ainger.' 
 
 ' A life of mere laughter is like music without a bass, or 
 a picture conceived of vague unmitigated light, whereas 
 the occasional melancholy, like those grand rich colour- 
 ings of old Rembrandt, produce an incomparable effect 
 and a very great relief. 1 
 
 Reading now 'Essays and Lectures.' By Canon 
 Ainger. 
 
 ' To Him my spirit I consign, 
 
 Asleep, awake, I will not fear ; 
 
 My body, too, I will resign, 
 
 And dread no evil — God is near." 
 
 Adox Olam. — An old Hebrew Hymn. 
 
 1907. 
 
 'The true wealth of a nation is finally and ulti- 
 mately the number of happy human beings which com- 
 pose it. 1 — Oliver Lodge. January. 
 
 104
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 ' But Babylonia had almost nothing to teach Israel 
 ethically, and it was from ethical sources within herself 
 that her Monotheism immediately arose. 1 — Old Testa- 
 ment Criticism, from the ' Jewish Quarterly Review? 
 
 February. 
 
 Burns's Lines about resisting Temptation. 
 ' Then gently scan your brother, Man, 
 Still gentlier sister, Woman ; 
 Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang, 
 To step aside is human : 
 
 One point must still be greatly dark : 
 
 The moving, why they do it, 
 And just as lamely can you mark 
 
 How far perhaps they rue it. 
 
 * * *- * 
 
 Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 
 
 Decidedly can try us : 
 He knows each chord, its various tone, 
 
 Each spring, its various bias : 
 
 Then at the balance let's be mute, 
 
 We never can adjust it ; 
 What's done we partly may compute, 
 
 But know not what's resisted. 
 
 December. 
 
 105
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 A DREAM.* 
 
 1884. 
 
 I had been reading old letters from old friends ; some 
 of those whose words were written in half-obliterated 
 characters on time-soiled paper, were still alive ; others, 
 alas ! had passed away. One letter, full of kindness 
 masked in funny jokes, made my heart more heavy than 
 the others, for that laughter-loving friend had gone but 
 a few short years ago to the distant unseen shore, and 
 had left the world a darker, sadder, duller place to me. 
 And though I knew the contents of that letter so well 
 I read it over and over again till my eyes ached, perhaps 
 from poring over the crabbed writing, perhaps from 
 other causes ; however, I put the letters carefully back 
 into the box in which I kept them, a sort of holy of 
 holies to me, and looked out upon the quiet landscape, 
 at that moment tenderly lighted by the last rays of 
 the setting sun. Before me stretched cornfields and 
 pasture-lands, whilst here and there a group of trees 
 told darkly against the pale rose and orange tints of 
 the summer sky. 
 
 At a little distance, from the midst of a cluster of 
 red-roof cottages, rose the grey square tower of the 
 
 * This beautiful little Phantasy was written by ray mother to 
 commemorate the opening of a village Hall built by her in Aston 
 Clinton to the memory of my dear father, Sir Anthony de Roths- 
 child, who died, January 1876, and called The Anthony Hall. 
 
 106
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 village church. It was a scene I had looked on for 
 many a year, that I knew as it were by heart, and yet 
 it always presented itself in some new aspect. On that 
 evening the picture was gentle, soft, and sad, and, as I 
 gazed upon it, I mused upon that dear friend's words 
 whose letter I had last been reading. 
 
 By degrees, almost imperceptibly, the scene changed ; 
 figures appeared, I heard familiar voices, and — I had 
 fallen asleep and was dreaming. What a strange dream 
 it was ! though, like most dreams, it seemed to me quite 
 natural. I was sitting in my own room, with many of 
 my village neighbours around me. They all looked 
 grave, and spoke in hushed tones of the death of 
 the very friend I had been mourning. Rather to my 
 disgust, they began discussing his will. 
 
 ' Listen, 1 said one of the company and he then read 
 aloud, ' To my dear friends and neighbours I bequeath a 
 legacy, which I trust will be a boon to you all — men 
 and women, boys and girls, and little children of this 
 village — a boon, however, only so far as you make it 
 one for yourselves. You must decide whether it will 
 prove a useful, or a vain — nay, even a hurtful gift. 
 Look, and you will find it in the Fir-grove Dell. 1 
 
 ' What can it be ? 1 exclaimed the whole party. 
 
 ' Maybe a round sum of money, 1 said old Martin, 
 ' which will bring a blessing or a curse, according as we 
 spend it. 
 
 ' Na, na ; I fancy it's an organ for the church, 1 cried 
 Barnes, our village musician: ( he was mighty fond of 
 music, and often said 'twas wanted. 1 
 
 ' Perhaps it's a swimming-bath, 1 ejaculated young 
 
 107
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Jack Forster ; ' that would answer the description, too, 
 for it might do us a world of good, or take us out of the 
 world altogether." 1 
 
 ' And / think it is a library, 1 said our intellectual 
 shoemaker, ' which it will depend upon ourselves to use 
 or to neglect. 1 
 
 ' I should not be surprised if it were a clock for the 
 tower yonder, 1 ci'ied John Evans, our silversmith and 
 watchmaker. 
 
 ' I trust it may be a drinking-fountain, 1 exclaimed a 
 staunch teetotaler ; ' of course we might even spoil that 
 gift, as the gentleman says, if we mixed the pure water 
 with spirits. 
 
 ' I hope it is a sugar-loaf! ' piped out a little treble 
 voice, ' which would make us sick, you know, if we eat 
 too much of it. 1 
 
 ' Why not go at once to the Fir-grove Dell, instead 
 of staying here making stupid guesses? 1 said the 
 matter-of-fact grocer, who had made no guesses at all ; 
 and then I saw them all move on, and I followed to the 
 dell. Ah, me ! it was his favourite haunt, and I 
 foolishly wondered in my foolish dream what I should 
 find there. Well, among the branches of the tall fir- 
 trees appeared a bit of red here and a dark beam there, 
 and when we got into the grove, instead of the empty 
 grass sward, we found a rustic building with a high- 
 pitched roof and gabled windows. The door, sheltered 
 by a porch, stood open, and slowly and silently we 
 entered a large, bright, airy room, with a platform at 
 one end and some plain but not uncomfortable-looking 
 benches, otherwise nothing. 
 
 108
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 Carefully we peered around, and then turned with 
 faces blank as the walls to each other. 
 
 ' What are we to do here ? 1 ' What is this for ? ' 
 was exclaimed with a sigh of disappointment by the 
 lover of music, the projector of the swimming-bath, the 
 teetotaler, the bookworm, and the fond anticipator of 
 gigantic sweets. 
 
 * I don't see what use this empty room will be to us 
 unless we turn it into a barn, 1 said Farmer Jones. ' Or 
 a storehouse for goods, 1 said the grocer : ' it seems well 
 built, and would keep the tea and sugar dry. 1 
 
 Murmurs of discontent followed those observations, 
 and even in my dream I thought of the kind heart of 
 the donor of the building and felt hurt and distressed. 
 
 But suddenly my attention was diverted from the 
 complaints of my companions to the change which had 
 taken place on the pale grey walls. These were no 
 longer of one monotonous tint, but adorned with large 
 life-sized pictures : one picture represented long tables 
 covered with fruit, flowers, and vegetables, evidently a 
 village show of the good and beautiful things which care 
 and industry may help to produce. In another, groups 
 of children were playing at games, while through the 
 windows one saw the snowflakes falling on the wintry 
 ground. Another picture was composed of a crowd 
 of people listening to some musical performers playing 
 on various instruments, whilst in an adjoining painting 
 men and women were singing themselves, and I was 
 strangely thrilled by the harmonious voices, now loud and 
 stirring, now gentle and pathetic, that rang through the 
 hall. 
 
 109
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 In one of the painted scenes a man was earnestly 
 discoursing to eager groups of listeners, and in another 
 a party of women were busily plying their needles, whilst 
 a lady, sitting at the head of their table, seemed to be 
 presiding over their work, and raising happy smiles on 
 many a careworn face. 
 
 There were other pictures in this strange gallery, 
 but I turned from them attracted by a scroll which was 
 now slowly unfolding itself under one of the large win- 
 dows, and from it I read aloud the following words : — 
 
 ' Dear friends I have built this hall for you, but you 
 must complete the work I have only begun. The 
 stones and bricks have been skilfully placed together, 
 but you must give it the vivifying breath of life. Into 
 these walls you must bring kind, loving hearts, bright 
 intellects, active and attentive brains. Then only, and 
 thanks to you, will this hall be able to fulfil its aim, 
 that of giving recreation to the weary toiler, instruction 
 and amusement to the young, of offering music, poetry, 
 and good words to all, to inspire you with good thoughts, 
 and help you to lead good and useful lives. 
 
 'The followers of all creeds and parties will be 
 equally free to enter here, but their bitterness and 
 intolerance must be left at the door. Here the Non- 
 conformist will occasionally lecture to the Churchman, 
 who, in his turn, will be listened to with respectful 
 attention by the Dissenter. The teetotaler will be 
 allowed— nay, requested — to preach temperance here, but 
 those who differ from him will not be refused a hearing, 
 and friendly discussions will be invited. Freedom of 
 speech, tempered by sympathy for the feelings of others 
 
 110
 
 LADY DE ROTHSCHILD. 
 
 and a spirit of devout reverence, must find their home 
 and preside over all your gatherings in the hall of the 
 Fir-grove DeW 
 
 As I finished reading these words on the scroll, I 
 turned to see what effect they had produced on my 
 companions, but one and all had vanished. The pic- 
 tures grew indistinct, the walls became transparent, 
 showing the dark fir-trees behind them ; in another 
 instant their branches encircled again the empty space 
 where the strange building had stood, and I awoke. 
 
 My dream had only lasted a few minutes, but it left 
 a vivid impression on my mind. ' Yes, dear, departed 
 spirit,' I murmured to myself, as I gazed wistfully 
 towards the now dimly-lighted Fir-gi'ove Dell, ' the 
 love and kindness that had such deep root in your warm 
 heart and made you find your own pleasure in brighten- 
 ing the lives of young and old shall, if God will, go on 
 bearing fruit in this village you loved so well. 1 And I 
 resolved on that very evening that my dream should 
 one day become a reality, thus reversing the usual order 
 of things, for how often do realities become dreams ? 
 
 L. DE R. 
 
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