X. CROSSMOUNT 431

my own now gathering strength,-for such serpent of Eternity as might reveal its awe to me amidst the sands even of Forest Hill or Addington Heath, I was yet wholly unprepared.

202. All that I had been taught had to be questioned; all that I had trusted, proved. I cannot enter yet into any account of this trial;¹ but the following fragment of 1847 diary will inform the reader enough of the courses of thought which I was being led into beside the lilies of Avon, and under the mounds, that were once the walls, of Kenilworth:-

“It was cold and dark and gusty and raining by fits, at two o’clock to-day, and until four; but I went out, determined to have my walk, get wet or no.

“I took the road to the village where I had been the first day with Macdonald, and about a mile and a half out, I was driven by the rain into a little cottage, remarkable outside for two of the most noble groups of hollyhocks I ever saw-one rose-colour passing into purple, and the other rich purple and opposed by a beautiful sulphur yellow one. It was about a quarter to five, and they (the woman and her mother) were taking their tea (pretty strong, and without milk) and white bread. Round the room were hung several prints of the Crucifixion, and some Old Testament subjects, and two bits of tolerable miniature; one in what I thought at first was an uniform, but it was the footman’s dress of the woman’s second son, who is with a master in Leamington; the other a portrait of a more distingué-looking personage, who, I found on inquiry, was the eldest son, cook in the Bush inn at Carlisle. Inquiring about the clergyman of the village, the woman-whose name, I found, was Sabina-said they had lost their best earthly friend, the late clergyman, a Mr. Waller, I think, who had been with them

¹ [The subject is dealt with in iii. ch. i. (pp. 486 seq.).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]