VI 



HOLIDAY TIME 81 



moor next the park to roam over, with its tors and bogs to 

 examine, and stones and plants to hear about. On the other 

 side was Plymouth. There the naval connection of our mother's 

 family came in to make things more delightful. They could 

 take us over their own ships, or round the dockyard and up the 

 Sound. 



One summer we rented a house at Hornchurch, Essex, owned 

 by Mr. Fry, the youngest surviving son of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry. 

 Most of the owners of the houses which we rented became lifelong 

 friends later. My father had the gift, not common to every one, 

 of quickly getting into a " holiday humour " ; he was soon in the 

 best of spirits, composing nonsense rhymes about our adventures 

 on our journey, and illustrating these by pictures of the kind we 

 appreciated. Three summers we spent in Holland, one in the 

 region of extinct volcanoes on the Rhine. Several were spent 

 in Switzerland, one divided between Normandy and Brittany, 

 another in the Engadine. When we had grown old enough we 

 explored with him the whole neighbourhood on foot, sometimes 

 prolonging these excursions for three or four days. During these 

 walks he told us and showed us all the interesting points which 

 occurred to him as to the natural history and geology of the 

 delightful places we walked through. He was very well up in 

 the political history too, which we picked up from him in this 

 pleasant and easy way. It is infinitely easier to remember what 

 you have heard among things which you see, than to retain what 

 has only been read in a book. It has always been a matter of 

 surprise to me how he managed to have most of the internal 

 history of some small German or Italian state at his finger ends, 

 as if political, not natural history, were the subject of his 

 profession. 



When the journeys were too far for the children, 

 they were welcome guests with both the grand- 

 parents in Warwickshire and Buckinghamshire, 

 whilst Flower and his wife travelled together 

 in Germany and Italy, delighting in all the 



interests of Venice, Florence, and Rome. But 



G 



