ngs, there was something "beyond,
beyond." No one who knew Mrs. Carlyle could replace her loss when she
had passed away.

The same letter which told of his uninterrupted success to the last,
told me also that he had a heavy cold upon him and was "very tired and
depressed." Some weeks before the first batch of readings closed,
Messrs. Chappell had already tempted him with an offer for fifty more
nights to begin at Christmas, for which he meant, as he then said, to
ask them seventy pounds a night. "It would be unreasonable to ask
anything now on the ground of the extent of the late success, but I am
bound to look to myself for the future. The Chappells are speculators,
though of the worthiest and most honourable kind. They make some bad
speculations, and have made a very good one in this case, and will set
this against those. I told them when we agreed: 'I offer these thirty
Readings to you at fifty pounds a night, because I know perfectly well
beforehand that no one in your business has the least idea of their real
worth, and I wish to prove it.' The sum taken is L4720." The result of
the fresh negotiation, though not completed until the beginning of
August, may be at once described. "Chappell instantly accepts my
proposal of forty nights at sixty pounds a night, and every conceivable
and inconceivable expense paid. To make an even sum, I have made it
forty-two nights for L2500. So I shall now try to discover a Christmas
number" (he means the subject for one), "and shall, please Heaven, be
quit of the whole series of readings so as to get to work on a new story
for the new series of _All the Year Round_ early in the spring. The
readings begin probably with the New Year." These were fair designs, but
the fairest are the sport of circumstance, and though the subject for
Christmas was found, the new series of _All the Year_ Round never had a
new story from its founder. With whatever consequence to himself, the
strong tide of the Readings was to sweep on to its full. The American
war had ceased, and the first renewed offers from the States had been
made and rejected. Hovering over all, too, were other sterner
dispositions. "I think," he wrote in September, "there is some strange
influence in the atmosphere. Twice last week I was seized in a most
distressing manner--apparently in the heart; but, I am persuaded, only
in the nervous system."

In the midst of his ovations such checks had not been wanting. "The
police reported