ord Falkland is the
governor), and then Heaven knows where; concluding with both houses of
parliament, which happen to meet for the session that very day, and are
opened by a mock speech from the throne delivered by the governor, with
one of Lord Grey's sons for his aide-de-camp, and a great host of
officers about him. I wish you could have seen the crowds cheering the
inimitable[45] in the streets. I wish you could have seen judges,
law-officers, bishops, and law-makers welcoming the inimitable. I wish
you could have seen the inimitable shown to a great elbow-chair by the
Speaker's throne, and sitting alone in the middle of the floor of the
House of Commons, the observed of all observers, listening with
exemplary gravity to the queerest speaking possible, and breaking in
spite of himself into a smile as he thought of this commencement to the
Thousand and One stories in reserve for home and Lincoln's Inn Fields
and Jack Straw's Castle.--Ah, Forster! when I _do_ come back again!----"

He resumed his letter at Tremont House on Saturday, the 28th of January,
having reached Boston that day week at five in the afternoon; and, as
his first American experience is very lightly glanced at in the _Notes_,
a fuller picture will perhaps be welcome. "As the Cunard boats have a
wharf of their own at the custom-house, and that a narrow one, we were a
long time (an hour at least) working in. I was standing in full fig on
the paddle-box beside the captain, staring about me, when suddenly, long
before we were moored to the wharf, a dozen men came leaping on board at
the peril of their lives, with great bundles of newspapers under their
arms; worsted comforters (very much the worse for wear) round their
necks; and so forth. 'Aha!' says I, 'this is like our London Bridge;'
believing of course that these visitors were news-boys. But what do you
think of their being EDITORS? And what do you think of their tearing
violently up to me and beginning to shake hands like madmen? Oh! if you
could have seen how I wrung their wrists! And if you could but know how
I hated one man in very dirty gaiters, and with very protruding upper
teeth, who said to all comers after him, 'So you've been introduced to
our friend Dickens--eh?' There was one among them, though, who really
was of use; a Doctor S., editor of the ----. He ran off here (two miles
at least), and ordered rooms and dinner. And in course of time Kate, and
I, and Lord Mulgrave (who was going bac