that suit, and certainly I often see children now whose costumes are at
least equally absurd.




CHAPTER IV.


1842.

A tour in Wales in 1842.--Extracts from my journal of this tour.--My
inborn love for beautiful materials.--Stay at Rhyl.--Anglesea and
Caernarvon.--Reasons for specially remembering this tour.

The pleasantest recollections I have of my father are connected with a
tour in Wales that he undertook with me and his eldest sister in the
summer of 1842. My aunt made me keep a journal of that tour, which I
still possess, and by its help those days come hack to me with a
vividness that is very astonishing to myself. Being accustomed to live
with grown-up people, and having no companions of my own age in the same
house (though I had cousins at Hollins and friends at school), I had
acquired a way of talking about things as older people talk, so that the
journal in question contains many observations that do not seem natural
for a child. The fact, no doubt, is that I listened to my father and
aunt, and then put down many of their remarks in my little history of
our tour; but I was very observant on my own account, and received very
strong impressions, especially from buildings, such as old castles and
cathedrals, and great houses, and I had a topographic habit of mind even
in childhood, which made every fresh locality interesting to me and