part with my distinguished air, my charming ease, in fact almost anything, if I could have in exchange a few grains of common sense, just enough to guide me in the practical affairs of life.

I wonder what he is? He might be an artist, but he doesn’t seem quite like an artist; or a dilettante, but he doesn’t seem in the least like a dilettante. Or he might be an architect; I think that is the most probable guess of all. Perhaps he is only “going to be” one of these things, for he can’t be more than twenty-five or twenty-six. Still he looks as if he were something already; that is, he has a kind of self-reliance in his mien,—not self-assertion, nor self-esteem, but belief in self, as if he were able, and knew that he was able, to conquer circumstances.

HE

Gloucester, June 10 The Bell.

Gloucester

Nothing accomplished yet. Her aunt is a Van Tyck, and a stiff one, too. I am a Copley, and that delays matters. Much depends upon the manner of approach. A false move would be fatal. We have six more towns (as per itinerary), and if their thirst for cathedrals isn’t slaked when these are finished we have the entire continent to do. If I could only succeed in making an impression on the retina of aunt Celia’s eye! Though I have been under her feet for ten days, she never yet has observed me. This absent-mindedness of hers serves me ill now, but it may prove a blessing later on.

SHE

Oxford, June 12 The Mitre.

Oxford

It was here in Oxford that a grain of common sense entered the brain of the flower of chivalry. You might call it the dawn of reason. We had spent part of the morning in High Street, “the noblest old street in England,” as our dear Hawthorne calls it. As Wordsworth had written a sonnet about it, aunt Celia was armed for the fray,—a volume of Wordsworth in one hand, and one of Hawthorne in the other. (I wish Baedeker didn’t give such full information about what one ought to read before one can approach these places in a proper spirit.) When we had done High Street, we went to Magdalen College, and sat down on a bench in Addison’s Walk, where aunt Celia proceeded to store my mind with the principal facts of Addison’s career, and his influence on the literature of the something or other century. The cramming process over, we wandered along, and came upon “him” sketching a shady corner of the walk.

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