70
more.
  29.  Tuesday.  William Bolton off to-day.     I don�t like
him; his shrewdness is vilely alloyed with selfishness.    He thinks
not at all of Mary Bennett, as a wife, and for her sake I�m glad
of it, (as she is so kindly, and simple, she�d accept him.)  Com-
ments are made of her visits to Neithrop, and William told, how
in a Chacombe tavern he�d heard himself alluded to as �the man
whom Mary Bennett courts.�    Mentioning the thing was of course
brutal taste, but he hasn�t a grain of a gentleman in his compo-
sition.             Sarah Ann, Davids, his wife, and other-Banburi-
ans, were in town yesterday, by rail-excursion, but we saw
none of them.        /         Caroline Hogarth at our house, to day. /
I, writing, to Hannah, midst other matters.     This same cor-
respondence is one of the truest and purest pleasures I now profess.
Not that it is very brilliant, or affords great scope for intellectual
display, but that is assures me I have the sympathy of a kind,
frank woman�s heart.   Love, like religion, is more a matter
of the affections than the intellect, and sage and simpleton can
alike meet on the common ground of needing sympathy and kindness.
How coldly would our Lord�s most divine teaching have appeared 
in the form of dry aphorisms, dogmas and moralities, divorced
from the unworldly life, and touching parables of
                    ��� The first true Gentleman that ever wore
            Earth about him!�
  30.  Wednesday. Calling at King�s Arms Yard, learnt
that Harry Price is in the country.  To George Clarke�s, finding
him and another at work on big Cemetery Plans for competition.