BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



writes ; and truly there is no spot in all England that can 

 vie with it in pastoral beauty. 



The highroad between Norwich and London passes behind 

 the site of the old house, separated' and hidden from it by the 

 high, close-cropped hedge and noble, wide-spreading oaks. 

 The house (pulled down only within the last few years) stood 

 on the slope of the hill, and below, at the foot of the old 

 world gardens and meadows, the lovely river winds its silvery 

 way to the sea. The green hills, the projecting headlands, 

 ( the tiny hamlets clustered about the ivy-covered church 

 towers of fifteenth and sixteenth century architecture ; the 

 beauty of the velvety meadows and the hawthorn hedges; 

 the red-tiled cottages with their rose-clad porches, and beyond, 

 against the sky, the old grey towers and massive walls of that 

 grand old stronghold, the Castle of Bungay, where the fierce 

 Earl Marshal of England had defied the might and menace 

 of the "King of all Cockaynie and all his braverie," altogether 

 form a scene it would be difficult to equal in any quarter of 

 the globe. 



Among other rooms in "Stowe House," there was a small 

 brick-paved parlor, which was given up entirely to the chil- 

 dren. Here they learned their lessons, waited in their white 

 dresses for the footman to summon them to the dining-room 

 for dessert, or played when debarred by unpropitiqus weather 

 from the " little lane," so prettily described by Mrs. Traill in 

 "Pleasant Days of my Childhood." 



Many anecdotes and stories have been told me by the elder 

 sisters of the hours spent within the oak-panelled walls and 

 by the great fire-place of the brick parlor, of the pranks and 

 mischief > hatched there against the arbitrary rule of a trusted 

 servant who hated the " Lunnon children " in proportion as 

 she loved the Suffolk-born daughters of the house Here 

 they learned and acted scenes from Shakespeare, pored over 

 great leather-bound tomes, of history, such as a folio edition of 

 Rapin's " History of England," with Tyndall's notes, and 



