LITTLE PERCY CARLYLE. 37 keenest insight, with soft, tenderest, pitying gentleness. Never surely a man who had so the power of winning deep, reverent heart's love from his readers. Do you remember his interpretation, so to speak, of Giotto's portrait of Dante in Hero Worship?' It might stand word for word as a description of himself. "Herbert Spencer's 'Social Statics' has taken great hold of us, but I have not left myself a corner to gossip more." The following "Sunday, December 28, 1851," Alexander Gilchrist writes an important announcement to his wife's friend : "DEAR MISS NEWTON: You will hear with pleasure, yesterday, about two p.m. the long-expected little guest arrived in these parts, in good condition, and nowise belated. . . . Monday January 5. "Our first-born is strong and healthy, and decidedly pretty for his years-I mean days! Little Percy Carlyle (so we have already named him), protests vehemently against the operations of the toilette, and proclaims his hungry sensations on first waking, which latter little noise is soon quieted. He has been otherwise disturbed only twice, during his short span of life.. " ΤΗ CHAPTER V. THE FIRST HOME. 1852-1856. AGE, 24-28. 'HE year succeeding the departure of Anne and Alexander Gilchrist from Lyme Regis (April 30, 1852) was spent in travel; before they finally decided to settle in the "cheerful, picturesque town of Guildford." In the Memoir of her husband, Anne Gilchrist speaks of 'Stoke' near Guildford :-"Our roomy old, gabled, weather-tiled house, standing a little back from the high road, was a home after our own heart. It seemed to have particularly comfortable, sleepy way of basking in the sun, as a thing it had been used to do on summer afternoons for two or three centuries; but in rough weather it was like a ship at sea, so did the winds, from whatever quarter, buffet it, and surge along the hollows of its many gabled roof. In the hall, which was the largest room, stood a long oak table, lustrous with age and the polishings of many hands, which must have been made in the house to remain there till both should crumble, for at no door nor window could it have been got in or out; and with it were the high oaken stools on which less luxurious generations had sat at meat. There was a great open fireplace with niched seats in the chimney corner where to rest with a friend over the glowing, fragrant logs when stiff and chill, but in happiest mood, after a twenty-mile walk, was an enjoyment that made a man 'o'er all the ills of life victorious.' Often the friend was Walter White, than whom no man knows better how to enjoy, and to make his readers enjoy, such a tramp and such a rest." Now and again, Anne Gilchrist accompanied her husband in the shorter "country rambles which had for their goal some old church, every stone of which was scanned till it yielded up its quota of the history, as well as of the meaning and beauty of the whole." But oftener at this time, the young housewife would be hospitably occupied in their Manor-like house; immersed also in maternal responsibilities. On the eighteenth of September, 1854, Anne Gilchrist gave birth to a second child. In a letter to Isabella Ireland (November 7) the mother says:-" We have named our little girl Beatrice Carwardine. Beatrice we chose for its own sake; and Carwardine because it was my mother's maiden name." Alexander Gilchrist's first book was nearing completion; and in the beginning of 1855 the "Life of Etty " made its appearance. The book brought an appreciative letter from Carlyle, who wrote from "Chelsea, 30th January, 1855: "DEAR SIR: I have received your Life of Etty; and am surely much obliged by your kind Gift and by the kind sentiments you express towards me. I read, last night, in the Book, with unusual satisfaction: a |