f, the life around him, and to be treated like a gentleman
though pampered in nothing. By punctuality in all things, great or
small, I set great store.'"

[173] From one of his letters while there I take a passage of
observation full of character. "Great excitement here about a wretched
woman who has murdered her child. Apropos of which I observed a curious
thing last night. The newspaper offices (local journals) had placards
like this outside:

CHILD MURDER IN BRIGHTON.
INQUEST.
COMMITTAL OF THE MURDERESS.

I saw so many common people stand profoundly staring at these lines for
half-an-hour together--and even go back to stare again--that I feel
quite certain they had not the power of thinking about the thing at all
connectedly or continuously, without having something about it before
their sense of sight. Having got that, they were considering the case,
wondering how the devil they had come into that power. I saw one man in
a smock frock lose the said power the moment he turned away, and bring
his hob-nails back again."

[174] The reading occupied nearly three hours: double the time devoted
to it in the later years.

[175] "After correspondence with all parts of England, and every kind of
refusal and evasion on my part, I am now obliged to decide this
question--whether I shall read two nights at Bradford for a hundred
pounds. If I do, I may take as many hundred pounds as I choose." 27th of
Jan. 1854.

[176] On the 28th of Dec. 1854 he wrote from Bradford: "The hall is
enormous, and they expect to seat 3700 people to-night! Notwithstanding
which, it seems to me a tolerably easy place--except that the width of
the platform is so very great to the eye at first." From Folkestone, on
his way to Paris, he wrote in the autumn of 1855: "16th of Sept. I am
going to read for them here, on the 5th of next month, and have answered
in the last fortnight thirty applications to do the like all over
England, Ireland, and Scotland. Fancy my having to come from Paris in
December, to do this, at Peterborough, Birmingham, and Sheffield--old
promises." Again: 23rd of Sept. "I am going to read here, next Friday
week. There are (as there are everywhere) a Literary Institution and a
Working Men's Institution, which have not the slightest sympathy or
connexion. The stalls are five shillings, but I have made them fix the
working men's admission at threepence, a