June 11th.--Monday night (9th), just as I was retiring, I received a
telegraphic message announcing my wife's arrival at



SOUTHAMPTON.


So, the next day, I arranged the consular business for an absence of ten
days, and set forth with J-----, and reached Birmingham, between eight
and nine, evening. We put up at the Queen's Hotel, a very large
establishment, contiguous to the railway. Next morning we left
Birmingham, and made our first stage to Leamington, where we had to wait
nearly an hour, which we spent in wandering through some of the streets
that had been familiar to us last year. Leamington is certainly a
beautiful town, new, bright, clean, and as unlike as possible to the
business towns of England. However, the sun was burning hot, and I could
almost have fancied myself in America. From Leamington we took tickets
for Oxford, where we were obliged to make another stop of two hours; and
these we employed to what advantage we could, driving up into town, and
straying hither and thither, till J-----'s weariness weighed upon me, and
I adjourned with him to a hotel. Oxford is an ugly old town, of crooked
and irregular streets, gabled houses, mostly plastered of a buff or
yellow hue; some new fronts; and as for the buildings of the University,
they seem to be scattered at random, without any reference to one
another. I passed through an old gateway of Christ Church, and looked at
its enclosed square, and that is, in truth, pretty much all I then saw of
the University of Oxford. From Christ Church we rambled along a street
that led us to a bridge across the Isis; and we saw many row-boats lying
in the river,--the lightest craft imaginable, unless it were an Indian