Dear Madam I return the Stories on the Calendar, which you so bravely speak of rewriting. After all, I feel myself that that is a much more comfortable plan than patching, one spoils the new to make it suit the old, and then the old looks ill by the side of the new. Thank you for so kindly receiving my criticisms, and I hope you will not hurry yourself, as one chapter on the first of ... continue reading

My dear Madam I cannot deprive myself of the pleasure of telling you if you have not seen it yet, to look at the Notice of the Garland for the year in the Christian Remembrancer, I received it yesterday, and was very much pleased with it.

I have, like you had a fortnight’s illness & idleness, ending in a holiday to visit some merry cousins here. This morning I have had the great pleasure of a good ... continue reading

Dear Madam, It was Edward I who made the law for planting yew trees in Church yards, at least so I was told by a gentleman who never makes mistakes, and is deeply read in history. I have looked in vain in Evelyn’s silva and Loudon’s arboretum, but I think his information to be trusted. He says it had been done long before, but it was only in Edwd I’s reign that it became the subject ... continue reading

My dear Madam The same post that brought your pleasant note, brought this enclosure from Mr Mozley, of a note from Mr Neale of Sackville College. I am quite glad you have not seen the Xtian Remembrancer as it gives me the pleasure of copying out for you the passage he alludes to

‘The Church names of flowers are most ably given in the series of papers which stands at the head of this article. We know ... continue reading

My dear Madam, I must send you a few lines of thanks for Margaret whom I think extremely ‘grown and improved,’ and like very much so far, I have only one criticism to make, surely Arius was an Egyptian born at Lybia, and so presbyter of Alexandria as all the Church histories call him. St Blaise is very interesting. I have been used to see him made very frightful as the sign of a public house ... continue reading

My dear Madam, The wreaths for these autumn months have been so much smaller that I am sorry to say that there is only 7/6 to send you for this quarter, and here are P.O. stamps to that amount. I have not yet heard what we shall be able to do next year. I think that 'the Lesser Holydays’ is the name that best approves itself to me, what do you think of it. I know ... continue reading

My dear Madam, My father, who procured the Post Office Order, has been at Winchester today and spoke to the post master who undertook to write to Bishop Auckland. I suppose he is an inattentive man, for he made a like mistake a year ago, in sending a wrong name. I had written yours on a piece of paper, so I thought he could not have managed to make another blunder. However I hope it will ... continue reading

My dear Madam I have no time for more than to enclose the June Holidays and thank you for the last received, I don’t think we Hampshire folks are good at traditions we have none of St Swithin but such as are common to all the world. There is a curious little old Church dedicated to him, over a gate way. I believe, in spite of this rain, he is buried at the back of the ... continue reading

My dear Madam, I enclose the Lesser Holidays, in which I have made one alteration namely the omission of the Augustinian order as having been founded by St Augustine. He seems to have framed a rule of some kind, but it was not till the 9th century (according to Mrs Jameson) that the monastic persons not belonging to the rule of St Benedict were classed under this name, and his rule merely seems to have been ... continue reading

My dear Madam, I enclose your P O order for 11/6 for the last quarter of the Lesser holidays. Mr Mozley promises this next year 1854 to raise his pay to 1/6 per page, so that I hope the Cathedrals will be a little less unworthily paid when you have time and inclination to make them out. Your present of the Garland must be indeed a most precious one, I wish we were not so entirely ... continue reading