I bear her) that it will never
diminish. I fear I can do nothing. Do you think I can? They would move
her on Wednesday, if I resolved to have it done. I cannot bear the
thought of being excluded from her dust; and yet I feel that her
brothers and sisters, and her mother, have a better right than I to be
placed beside her. It is but an idea. I neither think nor hope (God
forbid) that our spirits would ever mingle _there_. I ought to get the
better of it, but it is very hard. I never contemplated this--and coming
so suddenly, and after being ill, it disturbs me more than it ought. It
seems like losing her a second time. . . ." "No," he wrote the morning
after, "I tried that. No, there is no ground on either side to be had. I
must give it up. I shall drive over there, please God, on Thursday
morning, before they get there; and look at her coffin."

He suffered more than he let any one perceive, and was obliged again to
keep his room for some days. On the 2d of November he reported himself
as progressing and ordered to Richmond, which, after a week or so, he
changed to the White Hart at Windsor, where I passed some days with him,
Mrs. Dickens, and her younger sister Georgina; but it was not till near
the close of that month he could describe himself as thoroughly on his
legs again, in the ordinary state on which he was wont to pride himself,
bolt upright, staunch at the knees, a deep sleeper, a hearty eater, a
good laugher, and nowhere a bit the worse, "bating a little weakness now
and then, and a slight nervousness at times."

We had some days of much enjoyment at the end of the year, when Landor
came up from Bath for the christening of his godson; and the
"Britannia," which was to take the travelers from us in January, brought
over to them in December all sorts of cordialities, anticipations, and
stretchings-forth of palms, in token of the welcome awaiting them. On
New Year's Eve they dined with me, and I with them on New Year's Day;
when (his house having been taken for the period of his absence by
General Sir John Wilson) we sealed up his wine-cellar, after opening
therein some sparkling Moselle in honor of the ceremony, and drinking it
then and there to his happy return. Next morning (it was a Sunday) I
accompanied them to Liverpool, Maclise having been suddenly stayed by
his mother's death; the intervening day and its occupations have been
humorously sketched in his American book; and on the 4th they sailed. I
never