At about the age of eleven, she passed a winter in London with her father and mother; and a similar sojourn was repeated in the following year, after which she never visited the metropolis. The contrast between the confinement of a town life, and the happy freedom of her own mountain home, was even then so distasteful to her, that the indulgences of plays and sights soon ceased to be cared for, and she longed to rejoin her younger brother and sister in their favourite rural haunts and amusements—the nuttery wood, the beloved apple-tree, the old arbour, with its swing, the post-office tree, in whose trunk a daily interchange of family letters was established, the pool where fairy ships were launched (generally painted and decorated by herself,) and, dearer still, the fresh free ramble on the seashore, or the mountain expedition to the Signal Station, or the Roman Encampment. In one of her letters, the pleasure with which she looked forward to her return home was thus expressed in rhyme.

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