during the last three weeks, and mean
to continue to do so while I am in London, partly because, as I am about
to go away, I wish to see as much as I can of its pleasant and
remarkable society, and partly, too, from a motive of _policy_, though I
hate it almost as much as Sir Andrew Aguecheek did. I mean to read in
London before I leave it, and a great many of my fine lady and gentlemen
acquaintances will come and hear me, provided I don't give them time to
forget my existence, but keep them well in mind of it by duly presenting
myself amongst them. "Out of sight, out of mind," is necessarily the
motto of all societies, and considerations of interest more than
pleasure often induce our artists and literary men to produce themselves
in the world lest they should be forgotten by it. Nor, indeed, is this
merely the calculation of those who expect any profit from society; the
very pleasure-hunters themselves find that they must not get thrown
out, or withdraw for a moment, or disappear below the surface for an
instant, for if they do the mad tide goes over them, and they are
neither asked for, nor looked for, called for, nor thought of, "Qui
quitte sa place la perd," and there is nothing so easy as to be
forgotten....

Besides all this, now that my departure from England approaches, I feel
as if I had enjoyed and profited too little by the intercourse of all
the clever people I live among, and whose conversation you know I take
considerable pleasure in. I begin now, in listening, as I did last
night, to D'Israeli and Milnes and Carlyle, and E----'s artist friend,
Mr. Swinton, to remember that these are bright lights in one of the
brightest intellectual centres in Europe, and that I am within their
sphere but for a time....

I called at the Milmans' yesterday, and found Mrs. Austin there, whom I
listened to, almost without drawing breath, for an hour. She has just
returned from Paris, where she lived with all the leading political
people of the day, and she says she feels as if she had been looking at
a battle-field strewn with her acquaintances. Her account of all that is
going on is most interesting, knowing as she does all the principal
actors and sufferers in these events, personally and intimately.

To-day the report is that the Bank of France has suspended payment. The
ruin of the Rothschilds is not true, though they are great losers by
these catastrophes. The Provisional Government has very wisely and
wittily devi