CHILDHOOD. 19 



she might go to Titton, it was necessary first of all to 

 find a place where she could leave her children. They 

 were accordingly boarded at the house of a farmer in the 

 village of Canford Parva, a mile from Wimborne. This 

 was the first experience of the country, or of anything but 

 the tarry quays of Poole, which the children had enjoyed. 

 My father's memory of it was very vivid, but it was divided 

 between the meadows and the orchards, on one hand, and 

 a store of the highly coloured romances, by Miss Porter and 

 Lady Morgan, which had just come into fashion, and had 

 found their way down into a cupboard of the Dorset farm- 

 house. It was here, moreover, that he read Father Clement, 

 and formed, at the tender age of nine, the basis of that 

 violent prejudice against the Roman Catholic faith and 

 practice which he retained all through life. At Canford 

 Magna there was a nunnery, and the precocious little 

 Protestant shuddered in passing it, with a vague notion of 

 the terrible practices which, no doubt, were the occupation 

 of its inmates. 



It is pleasanter, and more agreeably characteristic, to 

 note that the event which, above all others, illuminated 

 the visit to Canford Parva was the discovery of a king- 

 fisher's nest. Just beyond the farm, a short and narrow 

 lane ran down to a bend of the river Stour. In this lane 

 there was a low gravelly cliff over a horse-pond. From 

 a hole in this cliff the child used to watch the brilliant 

 little gem fly out many times a day, and as often return ; 

 while, by going a few rods further, the bird could be seen 

 coursing to and fro over the breadth of the river, sitting 

 on the low horizontal branches, or swooping down for fish. 

 The child was already naturalist enough fully to appreciate 

 the interest of this incident. The visit to Canford Parva 

 was the only stay in a rural English district which my father 

 enjoyed until, in middle life, he came to reside in Devonshire. 



