at Cardington, in Bedfordshire, that my brother Leicester
married his first wife, Miss Whitbread, in 1843. That was
the last time I saw him.

Perhaps the following is not out of place here, although it
is connected with more serious thoughts:

Though neither my father nor my mother were more pious than
their neighbours, we children were brought up religiously.
From infancy we were taught to repeat night and morning the
Lord's Prayer, and invoke blessings on our parents. It was
instilled into us by constant repetition that God did not
love naughty children - our naughtiness being for the most
part the original sin of disobedience, rooted in the love of
forbidden fruit in all its forms of allurement. Moses
himself could not have believed more faithfully in the direct
and immediate intervention of an avenging God. The pain in
one's stomach incident to unripe gooseberries, no less than
the consequent black dose, or the personal chastisement of a
responsible and apprehensive nurse, were but the just
visitations of an offended Deity.

Whether my religious proclivities were more pronounced than
those of other children I cannot say, but certainly, as a
child, I was in the habit of appealing to Omnipotence to
gratify every ardent desire.

There were peacocks in the pleasure grounds at Holkham, and I
had an aesthetic love for their gorgeous plumes. As I hunted
under and amongst the shrubs, I secretly prayed that my