th.]

MORRISON'S HOTEL, DUBLIN, _Sunday Night, Aug. 29th, 1858._

I am so delighted to find your letter here to-night (eleven o'clock),
and so afraid that, in the wear and tear of this strange life, I have
written to Gad's Hill in the wrong order, and have not written to you,
as I should, that I resolve to write this before going to bed. You will
find it a wretchedly stupid letter; but you may imagine, my dearest
girl, that I am tired.

The success at Belfast has been equal to the success here. Enormous! We
turned away half the town. I think them a better audience, on the whole,
than Dublin; and the personal affection there was something
overwhelming. I wish you and the dear girls could have seen the people
look at me in the street; or heard them ask me, as I hurried to the
hotel after reading last night, to "do me the honour to shake hands,
Misther Dickens, and God bless you, sir; not ounly for the light you've
been to me this night, but for the light you've been in mee house, sir
(and God love your face), this many a year." Every night, by-the-bye,
since I have been in Ireland, the ladies have beguiled John out of the
bouquet from my coat. And yesterday morning, as I had showered the
leaves from my geranium in reading "Little Dombey," they mounted the
platform, after I was gone, and picked them all up as keepsakes!

I have never seen _men_ go in to cry so undisguisedly as they did at
that reading yesterday afternoon. They made no attempt whatever to hide
it, and certainly cried more than the women. As to the "Boots" at night,
and "Mrs. Gamp" too, it was just one roar with me and them; for they
made me laugh so that sometimes I _could not_ compose my face to go on.

You must not let the new idea of poor dear Landor efface the former
image of the fine old man. I wouldn't blot him out, in his tender
gallantry, as he sat upon that bed at Forster's that night, for a
million of wild mistakes at eighty years of age.

I hope to be at Tavistock House before five o'clock next Saturday
morning, and to lie in bed half the day, and come home by the 10.50 on
Sunday.

Tell the girls that Arthur and I have each ordered at Belfast a trim,
sparkling, slap-up _Irish jaunting-car_!!! I flatter myself we shall
astonish the Kentish people. It is the oddest carriage in the world, and
you are always falling off. But it is gay and bright in the highest
degree. Wonderfully Neapolitan.

What with a sixteen mile ride before