d by Night as well as by Day: even sitting out, as only last night I
did. The S.W. wind that is so mild, yet sweeps down my garden in a way
that makes havoc of Crocus and Snowdrop; Messrs. Daffodil and Hyacinth
stand up better against it.

I hear that Lord Houghton has been partly paralysed; but is up again.
Thompson, Master of Trinity, had a very slight attack of it some months
ago; I was told Venables had been ill, but I know not of what, nor how
much; and all these my contemporaries; and I, at any rate, still yours as
ever

E. F.G.

CII.

LITTLEGRANGE: WOODBRIDGE,
_March_ 31, [1882.]

DEAR MRS. KEMBLE:--

It is not yet full Moon: {237a}--but it is my 74th Birthday: and you are
the only one whom I write to on that great occasion. A good Lady near
here told me she meant to pay me a visit of congratulation: and I begged
her to stay at home, and neither say, nor write, anything about it. I do
not know that [I] have much to say to you now that I am inspired; but it
occurred to me that you might be going away somewhere for Easter, and so
I would try to get a word from you concerning yourself before you left
London.

_The Book_? 'Ready immediately' advertised Bentley near a fortnight ago:
to-morrow's Academy or Athenaeum will perhaps be talking of it to-morrow:
of all which you will not read a word, I 'guess.' I think you will get
out of London for Easter, if but to get out of the way. Or are you too
indifferent even for that?

Satiated as you may have been with notices and records of Carlyle, do,
nevertheless, look at Wylie's Book {237b} about him: if only for a Scotch
Schoolboy's account of a Visit to him not long before he died, and also
the words of his Bequest of Craigenputtock to some Collegiate Foundation.
Wylie (of whom I did not read all, or half) is a Worshipper, but not a
blind one. He says that Scotland is to be known as the 'Land of Carlyle'
from henceforward. One used to hear of the 'Land of Burns'--then, I
think, 'of Scott.'

There is already a flush of Green, not only on the hedges, but on some of
the trees; all things forwarder, I think, by six weeks than last year.
Here is a Day for entering on seventy-four! But I do think,
notwithstanding, that I am not much the better for it. The Cold I had
before Christmas, returns, or lurks about me: and I cannot resolve on my
usual out-of-door liberty. Enough of that. I suppose that I shall have
some Company at Easter; my poor London C