r.

I beg to send my kind regard to Mrs. Wills, and to enquire how she likes
wearing a hat, which of course she does. I also want to know from her
in confidence whether _Crwllm festidiniog llymthll y wodd_?

Yesterday I burnt, in the field at Gad's Hill, the accumulated letters
and papers of twenty years. They sent up a smoke like the genie when he
got out of the casket on the seashore; and as it was an exquisite day
when I began, and rained very heavily when I finished, I suspect my
correspondence of having overcast the face of the heavens.

Ever faithfully.

P.S.--Kind regard to Mr. and Mrs. Novelli.[6]

I have just sent out for _The Globe_. No news.

Hullah's daughter (an artist) tells me that certain female students have
addressed the Royal Academy, entreating them to find a place for their
education. I think it a capital move, for which I can do something
popular and telling in _The Register_. Adelaide Procter is active in the
business, and has a copy of their letter. Will you write to her for
that, and anything else she may have about it, telling her that I
strongly approve, and want to help them myself?

[Sidenote: The Hon. Mrs. Watson.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Friday Night, Sept. 14th, 1860._

MY DEAR MRS. WATSON,

I lose no time in answering your letter; and first as to business, the
school in the High Town at Boulogne was excellent. The boys all English,
the two proprietors an old Eton master and one of the Protestant
clergymen of the town. The teaching unusually sound and good. The manner
and conduct developed in the boys quite admirable. But I have never
seen a gentleman so perfectly acquainted with boy-nature as the Eton
master. There was a perfect understanding between him and his charges;
nothing pedantic on his part, nothing slavish on their parts. The result
was, that either with him or away from him, the boys combined an ease
and frankness with a modesty and sense of responsibility that was really
above all praise. Alfred went from there to a great school at Wimbledon,
where they train for India and the artillery and engineers. Sydney went
from there to Mr. Barrow, at Southsea. In both instances the new masters
wrote to me of their own accord, bearing quite unsolicited testimony to
the merits of the old, and expressing their high recognition of what
they had