w.
God bless my dear lady and her husband. I hope you are asleep now, and I
must go too, for the candles are just winking out.

_Thursday_.--I am glad to see among the new inspectors, in the Gazette
in this morning's papers, my old acquaintance Longueville Jones, an
excellent, worthy, lively, accomplished fellow, whom I like the better
because he flung up his fellow and tutorship at Cambridge in order to
marry on nothing a year. He worked in Galignani's newspaper for ten
francs a day, very cheerfully, ten years ago, since when he has been a
schoolmaster, taken pupils, or bid for them, and battled manfully with
fortune. William will be sure to like him, I think, he is so honest and
cheerful. I have sent off my letters to Lady Ashburton this morning,
ending with some pretty phrases about poor old C.B., whose fate affects
me very much, so much that I feel as if I were making my will and
getting ready to march too. Well, ma'am, I have as good a right to
presentiments as you have, and to sickly fancies and despondencies; but
I should like to see before I die, and think of it daily more and more,
the commencement of Jesus Christ's Christianism in the world, where I am
sure people may be made a hundred times happier than by its present
forms, Judaism, asceticism, Bullarism. I wonder will He come again and
tell it us? We are taught to be ashamed of our best feelings all our
life. I don't want to blubber upon everybody's shoulders; but to have a
good will for all, and a strong, very strong regard for a few, which I
shall not be ashamed to own to them.... It is near upon three o'clock,
and I am getting rather anxious about the post from Southampton via
London. Why, if it doesn't come in, you won't get any letter to-morrow,
no, nothing--and I made so sure. Well, I will try and go to work, it is
only one more little drop. God bless you, dear lady.

_Friday_.--I have had a good morning's work, and at two o'clock comes
your letter; dear friend, thank you. What a coward I was! I will go and
walk and be happy for an hour, it is a grand frosty sunshine. To-morrow
morning early back to London.

* * * * *

Madam's letter made a very agreeable appearance upon the breakfast-table
this morning when I entered that apartment at eleven o'clock. I don't
know how I managed to sleep so much, but such was the fact--after a fine
broiling hot day's utter idleness, part of which was spent on a sofa, a
little in the T