1847-1848] A School at Caldy Island 107 



the amende honorable. What you have done at Caldy 

 prospers and bears fruit more abundantly than I could 

 have believed possible. Yesterday Emma persuaded 

 me to lay my oldness aside, and make one of a boat 

 party to Caldy with John Allen 1 (School Commissioner) 

 to visit your school, so that you will see it figure in the 

 school report. We found 12 or 13 children. After sum- 

 moning all in that were at hand there were 17 examined. 

 The school at full amounts to twenty-two. It is, as you 

 know, amply furnished with all the implements of learning ; 

 and John Allen was particularly pleased with the little 

 Scriptural prints, in which he examined them with a sort 

 of parental tenderness. They sang several hymns and 

 sang them true. There was a devotional earnestness in 

 one little boy that might have repaid you for all you 

 have done, if you had looked at him. 



I enjoyed the sail there and back exceedingly beside all 

 the pleasure I found on the Island itself. We were obliged 

 to climb up an almost perpendicular rock that frightened 

 me to look at, but with the adroit aid of Tom Allen I got 

 up like a goat, and enjoyed it all the more for the 

 difficulty. . . . 



Elizabeth's house at Hartfield was now being laid out, 

 and the following letter shows that my mother was pro- 

 posing to dig up shrubs from the garden at Down for the 

 new place. 



Charles Darwin to Emma Darwin. 



Sunday [SHREWSBURY, 31st Oct., 1847]. 



I had two wretched days on Friday and Saturday. I 

 lay all day upstairs on the sofa groaning and grumbling 

 and reading " The Last Days of Pompeii." I have almost 

 made up my mind to stay here till Wednesday, and I shall 

 not go roulid by Kew, as Hooker will come to us. I have had 



1 Afterwards Archdeacon Allen, the well-known friend of Fitz- 

 gerald and Tennyson. 



