ore like myself this
morning, we are going to get some fresh air aboard a steamer on the
Clyde." The last letter during his country travel was from Portsmouth on
the 24th of May, and contained these words: "You need have no fear about
America." The readings closed in June.

The readings of the new year began with even increased enthusiasm, but
not otherwise with happier omen. Here was his first outline of plan: "I
start on Wednesday afternoon (the 15th of January) for Liverpool, and
then go on to Chester, Derby, Leicester, and Wolverhampton. On Tuesday
the 29th I read in London again, and in February I read at Manchester
and then go on into Scotland." From Liverpool he wrote on the 21st:
"The enthusiasm has been unbounded. On Friday night I quite astonished
myself; but I was taken so faint afterwards that they laid me on a sofa,
at the hall for half an hour. I attribute it to my distressing inability
to sleep at night, and to nothing worse. Everything is made as easy to
me as it possibly can be. Dolby would do anything to lighten the work,
and _does_ everything." The weather was sorely against him. "At
Chester," he wrote on the 24th from Birmingham, "we read in a snow-storm
and a fall of ice. I think it was the worst weather I ever saw. . . . At
Wolverhampton last night the thaw had thoroughly set in, and it rained
furiously, and I was again heavily beaten. We came on here after the
reading (it is only a ride of forty miles), and it was as much as I
could do to hold out the journey. But I was not faint, as at Liverpool.
I was only exhausted." Five days later he had returned for his Reading
in London, and thus replied to a summons to dine with Macready at my
house: "I am very tired; cannot sleep; have been severely shaken on an
atrocious railway; read to-night, and have to read at Leeds on Thursday.
But I have settled with Dolby to put off our going to Leeds on
Wednesday, in the hope of coming to dine with you, and seeing our dear
old friend. I say 'in the hope,' because if I should be a little more
used-up to-morrow than I am to-day, I should be constrained, in spite of
myself, to take to the sofa and stick there."

On the 15th of February he wrote to his sister-in-law from Liverpool
that they had had "an enormous turnaway" the previous night. "The day
has been very fine, and I have turned it to the wholesomest account by
walking on the sands at New Brighton all the morning. I am not quite
right within, but believe it