uent
years he always occupied; but he was fain to be content, as yet, with
Lawn House, a smaller villa between the hill and the corn-field, from
which he now wrote of his attentions to Mr. Sampson Brass's sister: "I
have been at work of course" (2d September), "and have just finished a
number. I have effected a reform by virtue of which we breakfast at a
quarter-before eight, so that I get to work at half-past, and am
commonly free by one o'clock or so, which is a great happiness. Dick is
now Sampson's clerk, and I have touched Miss Brass in Number 25,
lightly, but effectively I hope."

At this point it became necessary to close the first volume of the
_Clock_, which was issued accordingly with a dedication to Rogers, and a
preface to which allusion will be made hereafter. "I have opened the
second volume," he wrote to me on the 9th of September, "with Kit; and
I saw this morning looking out at the sea, as if a veil had been lifted
up, an affecting thing that I can do with him by-and-by. Nous verrons."
"I am glad you like that Kit number," he wrote twelve days later; "I
thought you would. I have altered that about the opera-going. Of course
I had no intention to delude the many-headed into a false belief
concerning opera-nights, but merely to specify a class of senators. I
needn't have done it, however, for God knows they're pretty well all
alike." This referred to an objection made by me to something he had
written of "opera-going senators on Wednesday nights;" and, of another
change made in compliance with some other objection of mine, he wrote on
the 4th of October, "You will receive the proof herewith. I have altered
it. You must let it stand now. I really think the dead mankind a million
fathoms deep, the best thing in the sentence. I have a notion of the
dreadful silence down there, and of the stars shining down upon their
drowned eyes,--the fruit, let me tell you, of a solitary walk by
starlight on the cliffs. As to the child-image, I have made a note of it
for alteration. In number thirty there will be some cutting needed, I
think. I have, however, something in my eye near the beginning which I
can easily take out. You will recognize a description of the road we
traveled between Birmingham and Wolverhampton; but I had conceived it so
well in my mind that the execution doesn't please me quite as well as I
expected. I shall be curious to know whether you think there's anything
in the notion of the man and his furn