A SCOTTISH PABALLEL 261 
of five children who really behave very well. What puts 
me most in mind of Helensbm-gh is the open doors and 
windows, the universality of fine weather on Sundays, the 
insects humming through the room, the stray bird, the 
leaves waving across the window?, and the irresistible 
attraction I feel to look out on the open valleys with huge 
mountains all round, the clouds chasing one another across 
the forest, and sunbeams dancing on the heavy masses of 
mist that keep floating along some thousand feet below 
us. The wind sighs the same sigh through the leaves that 
it used through the Limes at Eow and these rustle in the 
same note. I see ripe blackberries too and small children 
gathering them, but don't see the Gare Loch and its boats, 
or smell the sea-weeds, no nor the tansy and peppermint, 
nor peat smoke of the new washed mutches and red cloaks^ 
and above all, the Eev. Mr. Winchester, though a sober man 
enough, is far from a powerful preacher, indeed he may be 
called a powerless one, for you can't hear him three benches 
off, and his sermons, though better than Mr. Byam's, cannot 
keep my mind off the new trees and new weeds that grow 
up to the very doorstep. 
In the same vein he wishes that Miss Henslow had ever 
been in Scotland so as to realise at a word that this rainy season 
was just like the climate of Dreep daily, ' except that all the 
features are infinitely grander, the rains last longer, the mists 
are thicker, the fogs are more choking and the damp is more 
provocative of colds.' He gets up at six, but hates it, and 
equally hates going to bed at nights. 
I have resumed my kitchen plan at Kew, of warming my 
back at the fire when writing and my feet when reading, 
during ' the sma' hours, ilka night.' Mr. Hodgson, who is 
in poor health, often sits up and reads with me, wrapped 
in a fur Koquelaure ; now he is perusing Darwin's Journal, 
which I procured for him, and ever and anon he leaves off 
and battles with me upon some of the dogmas in LyelVs 
Geology, anent which we 'pooli-pooh one another's opinions 
very freely. Then we get to disputing on the course of a 
river, may be in High Thibet, and fight it out with old 
Chinese Charts and notes from various bad authorities. As 
