38 From 1850 to 1862 



II 



sional jacket of a Sioux medicine man, Lotze's Micro- 

 cosmos, Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour, Fitzgerald's Omar 

 Khayyam, and Philemon Holland's Pli7iy, or some 

 similar assortment, it was by no means unlikely 

 that you would be privileged to meet with a fate 

 akin to that which the Reverend D. Heavystern of 

 Utrecht met with in the immortal study at Monk- 

 barnes, finding yourself seated, not upon " three craw 

 taes " from the field of Bannockburn, but upon the 

 sting of a great black Trygon from the Hauraki Gulf, 

 or a stone axe from that region, or an equally crisp 

 thing — a Red Indian iron ornament, or a set of 

 arrow-heads. And if in those times you could only 

 have summoned up the courage to climb the stairs 

 which led to the attic of that establishment, and peer 

 through the keyhole thereof, it is probable you would 

 have seen Henry Kingsley in that attic writing a 

 novel ; for he had sanctuary always in that house, 

 and fled often to that upper chamber to escape from 

 barrel organs and watercress women and divers dis- 

 agreeable things that abounded to his distraction in 

 Kentish Town ; but, if the day was sunny, it is more 

 probable still that Henry Kingsley would have been 

 found enveloped in a blue haze of tobacco smoke, 

 basking on the lawn, where he would have told you 

 such tales of corroborees, black snakes, and bush- 

 rangers as would have made sleep a curse to you 

 for a week to come. 



In this house the Doctor spent two or three 

 months of the year, — although there were years that 



