ath, etc.'

* Not, as E. F.G. had thought, the Bearings themselves.

CXII.

[_May_, 1883.]

MY DEAR LADY,

I conclude (from what you wrote me in your last letter) that you are at
Leamington by this time; and I will venture to ask a word of you before
you go off to Switzerland, and I shall have to rely on Coutts & Co. for
further Correspondence between us. I am not sure of your present
Address, even should you be at Leamington--not sure--but yet I think my
letter will find you--and, if it do not--why, then you will be saved the
necessity of answering it.

I had written to Mowbray Donne to ask about himself and his Wife: and
herewith I enclose his Answer--very sad, and very manly. You shall
return it if you please; for I set some store by it.

Now I am reading--have almost finished--Jane Carlyle's Letters. I dare
say you have already heard them more than enough discussed in London; and
therefore I will only say that it is at any rate fine of old Carlyle to
have laid himself so easily open to public Rebuke, though whether such
Revelations are fit for Publicity is another question. At any rate, it
seems to me that _half_ her letters, and _all_ his ejaculations of
Remorse summed up in a Preface, would have done better. There is an
Article by brave Mrs. Oliphant in this month's Contemporary Review {259}
(or Magazine) well worth reading on the subject; with such a Challenge to
Froude as might almost be actionable in Law. We must 'hear both sides,'
and wait for the Volume which [is] to crown all his Labours in this
Cause.

I think your Leamington Country is more in Leaf than ours 'down-East:'
which only just begins to 'stand in a mist of green.' {260} By the by, I
lately heard from Hallam Tennyson that all his Party were well enough;
not having been to London this Spring because Alfred's Doctor had warned
him against London Fogs, which suppress Perspiration, and bring up Gout.
Which is the best piece of news in my Letter; and I am

Yours always and a Day
E. F.G.

P.S. I do not enclose Mowbray's letter, as I had intended to do, for
fear of my own not finding you.

CXIII.

[_May_, 1883.]

MY DEAR LADY;

Stupid me! And now, after a little hunt, I find poor Mowbray's Letter,
which I had made sure of having sent you. But I should not now send it
if I did not implore you not to write in case you thought fit to return
it; which indeed I did ask you to do; but now I would rather it remaine