A life spent largely among books, and in the exercise of a literary profession, has very obvious drawbacks, as a subject-matter, when one comes to write about it.

For after my marriage I had made various attempts to write fiction. They were clearly failures.

Do we all become garrulous and confidential as we approach the gates of old age? Is it that we instinctively feel, and cannot help asserting, our one advantage over the younger generation, which has so many over us? - the one advantage of time!

A modern girls' school, equipped as scores are now equipped throughout the country, was of course not to be found in 1858, when I first became a school boarder, or in 1867, when I ceased to be one.

We all grow on somebody's grave.

It is the rank and file - the average woman - for whom the world has opened up so astonishingly.

But the mind travels far - and mysteriously - in sleep.