we left the mountain at
midnight. What became of the cloaks (mine was among them) I know as
little. My ladies' clothes were so torn off their backs that they would
not have been decent, if there could have been any thought of such
things at such a time. And when we got down to the guides' house, we
found a French surgeon (one of another party who had been up before us)
lying on a bed in a stable, with God knows what horrible breakage about
him, but suffering acutely and looking like death. A pretty unusual trip
for a pleasure expedition, I think!

I am rather stiff to-day but am quite unhurt, except a slight scrape on
my right hand. My clothes are burnt to pieces. My ladies are the wonder
of Naples, and everybody is open-mouthed.

Address me as usual. All letters are forwarded. The children well and
happy. Best regards.

Ever faithfully.

[Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.]

ALBION HOTEL, BROADSTAIRS, _Sunday, Aug. 17th, 1845._

MY DEAR MACREADY,

I have been obliged to communicate with the _Punch_ men in reference to
Saturday, the 20th, as that day of the week is usually their business
dinner day, and I was not quite sure that it could be conveniently
altered.

Jerrold now assures me that it can for such a purpose, and that it
shall, and therefore consider the play as being arranged to come off on
Saturday, the 20th of next month.

I don't know whether I told you that we have changed the farce; and now
we are to act "Two o'clock in the Morning," as performed by the
inimitable B. at Montreal.

In reference to Bruce Castle school, I think the question set at rest
most probably by the fact of there being no vacancy (it is always full)
until Christmas, when Howitt's two boys and Jerrold's one go in and fill
it up again. But after going carefully through the school, a question
would arise in my mind whether the system--a perfectly admirable one;
the only recognition of education as a broad system of moral and
intellectual philosophy, that I have ever seen in practice--do not
require so much preparation and progress in the mind of the boy, as that
he shall have come there younger and less advanced than Willy; or at all
events without that very different sort of school experience which he
must have acquired at Brighton. I have no warrant for this doubt, beyond
a vague uneasiness suggesting a suspicion of its great probability. On
such slight gro