ing in _Household Words_; and of the others it only
needs to say that the family affair which might have excused his absence
at the Lansdowne dinner did not come off until four days later. On the
13th of March his last child was born; and the boy, his seventh son,
bears his godfather's distinguished name, Edward Bulwer Lytton.

The inability to "grind sparks out of his dull blade," as he
characterized his present labour at _Bleak House_, still fretting him,
he struck out a scheme for Paris. "I could not get to Switzerland very
well at this time of year. The Jura would be covered with snow. And if I
went to Geneva I don't know where I might _not_ go to." It ended at last
in a flight to Dover; but he found time before he left, amid many
occupations and some anxieties, for a good-natured journey to Walworth
to see a youth rehearse who was supposed to have talents for the stage,
and he was able to gladden Mr. Toole's friends by thinking favourably of
his chances of success. "I remember what I once myself wanted in that
way," he said, "and I should like to serve him."

At one of the last dinners in Tavistock House before his departure, Mr.
Watson of Rockingham was present; and he was hardly settled in
Camden-crescent, Dover, when he had news of the death of that excellent
friend. "Poor dear Watson! It was this day two weeks when you rode with
us and he dined with us. We all remarked after he had gone how happy he
seemed to have got over his election troubles, and how cheerful he was.
He was full of Christmas plans for Rockingham, and was very anxious that
we should get up a little French piece I had been telling him the plot
of. He went abroad next day to join Mrs. Watson and the children at
Homburg, and then go to Lausanne, where they had taken a house for a
month. He was seized at Homburg with violent internal inflammation, and
died--without much pain--in four days. . . . I was so fond of him that I am
sorry you didn't know him better. I believe he was as thoroughly good
and true a man as ever lived; and I am sure I can have felt no greater
affection for him than he felt for me. When I think of that bright
house, and his fine simple honest heart, both so open to me, the blank
and loss are like a dream." Other deaths followed. "Poor d'Orsay!" he
wrote after only seven days (8th of August). "It is a tremendous
consideration that friends should fall around us in such awful numbers
as we attain middle life. What a field of bat