f course between ourselves; but don't you
think them rather remarkable? The Chappell bargain began with L50 a
night and everything paid; then became L60; and now rises to L80."

The last readings were appointed to begin with October; and at the
request of an old friend, Chauncy Hare Townshend, who died during his
absence in the States, he had accepted the trust, which occupied him
some part of the summer, of examining and selecting for publication a
bequest of some papers on matters of religious belief, which were issued
in a small volume the following year. There came also in June a visit
from Longfellow and his daughters, with later summer visits from the
Eliot Nortons; and at the arrival of friends whom he loved and honoured
as he did these, from the great country to which he owed so much,
infinite were the rejoicings of Gadshill. Nothing could quench his old
spirit in this way. But in the intervals of my official work I saw him
frequently that summer, and never without the impression that America
had told heavily upon him. There was manifest abatement of his natural
force, the elasticity of bearing was impaired, and the wonderful
brightness of eye was dimmed at times. One day, too, as he walked from
his office with Miss Hogarth to dine at our house, he could read only
the halves of the letters over the shop doors that were on his right as
he looked. He attributed it to medicine. It was an additional
unfavourable symptom that his right foot had become affected as well as
the left, though not to anything like the same extent, during the
journey from the Canada frontier to Boston. But all this disappeared,
upon any special cause for exertion; and he was never unprepared to
lavish freely for others the reserved strength that should have been
kept for himself. This indeed was the great danger, for it dulled the
apprehension of us all to the fact that absolute and pressing danger did
positively exist.

He had scarcely begun these last readings than he was beset by a
misgiving, that, for a success large enough to repay Messrs. Chappell's
liberality, the enterprise would require a new excitement to carry him
over the old ground; and it was while engaged in Manchester and
Liverpool at the outset of October that this announcement came. "I have
made a short reading of the murder in _Oliver Twist_. I cannot make up
my mind, however, whether to do it or not. I have no doubt that I could
perfectly petrify an audience by carrying