REMINISCENCES. 385 



set ; the trees in front of us, where relieved against the 

 sky of flame, seemed as if drawn in black, while the 

 trees behind seemed as if dipped in blood. It was early 

 in our acquaintance, friendship had passed into love, 

 though we had not yet become aware of the fact ; but 

 rarely, I suppose, do mere friends manifest the same un- 

 willingness to part that we did that evening. We 

 lingered on till all that was fine in the sunset had disap- 

 peared, and found the grey of sea and sky, and the 

 blackness of field and wood, quite as agreeable as the 

 many-tinted landscape we had so admired a little before. 

 My own dear Lydia, it is an advantage to have recol- 

 lections such as these to summon up/ 



' Wednesday morning. 



' I had an invitation last evening for tea with Mrs 

 Allardyce, but having previously accepted Mrs Smith's, 

 I had to make a compromise by leaving Mrs S. early 

 and calling on Mrs A. I spent two hours with her 

 very agreeably in conversation of an exclusively literary 

 cast. She showed me a very elegant translation 

 of a German poem with which she amused her leisure 

 last winter. The work itself is a great curiosity. The 

 Princess Elizabeth of England, one of the daughters of 

 George III., afterwards Landgravine of Hesse Hom- 

 burg, seems, like her sister Amelia, to have had a con- 

 siderable dash of genius. She amused herself long 

 before her marriage, in making a series of allegorical 

 drawings, descriptive of the progress of Genius, with 

 Imagination and Fancy for his companions. Take one 

 of the set as a specimen. The scene is a cavern crusted 

 with stalactites, some of which, as is not uncommon, 

 present the appearance of animals, some of men, mere 

 approximation, of course, but yet traceable. Genius 



VOL. ii. 25 



