ll. The new telegram and announcement that you
will come on Friday is very welcome. Indeed, I did not say
anything about the marriage, because, without knowing more, I did
not know what to say, except that I most sincerely wish them all
good and all happiness. The rest must keep till Friday. The
characters you describe are quite, I think, on the right ground.
It was the great glory of the Greeks that they had those full and
large views of man's nature, not the narrow and pinched ones which
are sometimes found even among Christians. Lord Palmerston's
abandoning his trip to Bristol is rather a serious affair. There
is more in it, I fear, than gout.

_Oct. 24._--If you were well enough, and I had wings, there is
nothing I should more covet at this moment than to appear at
Inveraray and compare and correct my impressions of Lord
Palmerston's character by yours. Death of itself produces a
certain tendency to view more warmly what was before admired, and
more slightly anything that was not. And by stirring the thought
of the nation through the press it commonly throws lights upon the
subject either new in themselves or new in their combination.
_Twelve_ cabinet ministers I have already reckoned in my mind, all
carried off by the rude hand of death in the last five years,
during which three only have been made. They are: Lord Dalhousie,
Lord Aberdeen, Lord Herbert, Sir J. Graham, Lord Canning, Lord
Elgin, Sir G. Lewis, Lord Campbell, Lord Macaulay, Mr. Ellice,
Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Palmerston. This, in the political world, and
to me especially, is an extraordinary desolation.

I hope you are at least creeping on. It was so kind of you to
think about my little neuralgic affairs; thank God, I have had no
more.

_1866_

_Hawarden, Jan. 4._--We have been pleased with some partial
accounts of improvement, and I can the better speak my wish to you
for a happy new year. Next Wednesday I hope to inquire for myself.
I have been much laden and a good deal disturbed. We have the
cattle plague in full force here, and it has even touched my small
group of tenants. To some of them it is a question of life and
death; and my brother-in-law, who is by nature one of the most
munificent persons I ever knew, is sorely straitened in mind at
not being able to do all he would like for his people.