TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _May 13th, 1857._

MY DEAR FORSTER,

I have gone over Dilke's memoranda, and I think it quite right and
necessary that those points should be stated. Nor do I see the least
difficulty in the way of their introduction into the pamphlet. But I do
not deem it possible to get the pamphlet written and published before
the dinner. I have so many matters pressing on my attention, that I
cannot turn to it immediately on my release from my book just finished.
It shall be done and distributed early next month.

As to anything being lost by its not being in the hands of the people
who dine (as you seem to think), I have not the least misgiving on that
score. They would say, if it were issued, just what they will say
without it.

Lord Granville is committed to taking the chair, and will make the best
speech he can in it. The pious ---- will cram him with as many
distortions of the truth as his stomach may be strong enough to receive.
----, with Bardolphian eloquence, will cool his nose in the modest
merits of the institution. ---- will make a neat and appropriate speech
on both sides, round the corner and over the way. And all this would be
done exactly to the same purpose and in just the same strain, if twenty
thousand copies of the pamphlet had been circulated.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Rev. James White.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Friday, May 22nd, 1857._

MY DEAR WHITE,

My emancipation having been effected on Saturday, the ninth of this
month, I take some shame to myself for not having sooner answered your
note. But the host of things to be done as soon as I was free, and the
tremendous number of ingenuities to be wrought out at Gad's Hill, have
kept me in a whirl of their own ever since.

We purpose going to Gad's Hill for the summer on the 1st of June; as,
apart from the master's eye being a necessary ornament to the spot, I
clearly see that the workmen yet lingering in the yard must be squeezed
out by bodily pressure, or they will never go. How will this suit you
and yours? If you will come down, we can take you all in, on your way
north; that is to say, we shall have that ample verge and room enough,
until about the eighth; when Hans Christian Andersen (who has been
"coming" for about three years) will come for a fortnight's stay in
England. I shall like you to see the little old-fashioned place. It
st