RUTH PONTIFEX, HIS WIFE,

WHO WAS BORN OCTOBER 13, 1727, AND DIED JANUARY 10, 1811,

IN HER 84TH YEAR.

THEY WERE UNOSTENTATIOUS BUT EXEMPLARY

IN THE DISCHARGE OF THEIR

RELIGIOUS, MORAL, AND SOCIAL DUTIES.

THIS MONUMENT WAS PLACED

BY THEIR ONLY SON.




CHAPTER IV


In a year or two more came Waterloo and the European peace. Then Mr
George Pontifex went abroad more than once. I remember seeing at
Battersby in after years the diary which he kept on the first of these
occasions. It is a characteristic document. I felt as I read it that
the author before starting had made up his mind to admire only what he
thought it would be creditable in him to admire, to look at nature and
art only through the spectacles that had been handed down to him by
generation after generation of prigs and impostors. The first glimpse of