even superficial contact with the living we may gain much; but the dead, if
they are to be known at all, must be known more intimately.

* * * * *

Minto House, where Lady Fanny was born, is beautifully situated above a
steep and wooded glen, and is only a short distance from the river Teviot.
The hills around are not like the wild rugged mountains of the Highlands,
but have a soft and tender beauty of their own. Her childhood was far more
secluded than the life that would have fallen to her lot had she been born
in the next generation, for her home in Roxburghshire, in coach and
turnpike days, was more remote from the central stir and business of life
than any spot in the United Kingdom at the present time. Lady Fanny used to
relate what a great event it was for the household at Minto when on very
rare occasions her father brought from London a parcel of new books, which
were eagerly opened by the family and read with delight. Those were not the
days of circulating libraries, and both the old standard books on the Minto
library shelves and the few new ones occasionally added were read and
re-read with a thoroughness rare among modern readers, surrounded by a
multiplicity of books old and new.

They were a large, young family, five boys and five girls, ranging from the
ages of three years old to eighteen in 1830, when her diaries begin, all
eager, high-spirited children, and exceptionally strong and healthy. In her
early diaries, describing day-long journeys in coaches, early starts and
late arrivals, she hardly ever mentions feeling tired, and she enjoyed the
old methods of travelling infinitely more than the railway journeys of
later days, about which she felt like the Frenchman who said: "On ne voyage
plus; on arrive." Long wild country walks in Scotland and mountain-climbing
in Switzerland were particularly delightful to her.