-all her days. She
is as tough as an old macaw, or she would not have lasted so long. She
has seen and talked with all the celebrities of three generations, all
the beauties of at least half a dozen decades. Her wits have been kept
bright by constant use, and as she is free of speech it requires some
courage to face her. Yet nobody can be more agreeable, even to young
persons, than one of these precious old dowagers. A great beauty is
almost certainly thinking how she looks while one is talking with her;
an authoress is waiting to have one praise her book; but a grand old
lady, who loves London society, who lives in it, who understands young
people and all sorts of people, with her high-colored recollections of
the past and her grand-maternal interests in the new generation, is the
best of companions, especially over a cup of tea just strong enough to
stir up her talking ganglions.

A breakfast, a lunch, a tea, is a circumstance, an occurrence, in social
life, but a dinner is an event. It is the full-blown flower of that
cultivated growth of which those lesser products are the buds. I will
not try to enumerate, still less to describe, the various entertainments
to which we were invited, and many of which we attended. Among the
professional friends I found or made during this visit to London, none
were more kindly attentive than Dr. Priestley, who, with his charming
wife, the daughter of the late Robert Chambers, took more pains to carry
out our wishes than we could have asked or hoped for. At his house I
first met Sir James Paget and Sir William Gull, long well known to me,
as to the medical profession everywhere, as preeminent in their several
departments. If I were an interviewer or a newspaper reporter, I should
be tempted to give the impression which the men and women of distinction
I met made upon me; but where all were cordial, where all made me feel
as nearly as they could that I belonged where I found myself, whether
the ceiling were a low or a lofty one, I do not care to differentiate my
hosts and my other friends. _Fortemque Gyan fortemque Cloanthum_,
--I left my microscope and my test-papers at home.

Our friends, several of them, had a pleasant way of sending their
carriages to give us a drive in the Park, where, except in certain
permitted regions, the common numbered vehicles are not allowed to
enter. Lady Harcourt sent her carriage for us to go to her sister's,
Mrs. Mildmay's, where we had a pleasant lit