t character and talk he was full of interest and
matter, but that he always is. Socially, he seemed to me almost a new
man. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and so did Georgina and Mary.

The fire I did not see until the Monday morning, but it was blazing
fiercely then, and was blazing hardly less furiously when I came down
here again last Friday. I was here on the night of its breaking out. If
I had been in London I should have been on the scene, pretty surely.

You will be perhaps surprised to hear that it is Morgan's conviction
(his son was here yesterday), that the North will put down the South,
and that speedily. In his management of his large business, he is
proceeding steadily on that conviction. He says that the South has no
money and no credit, and that it is impossible for it to make a
successful stand. He may be all wrong, but he is certainly a very shrewd
man, and he has never been, as to the United States, an enthusiast of
any class.

Poor Lord Campbell's seems to me as easy and good a death as one could
desire. There must be a sweep of these men very soon, and one feels as
if it must fall out like the breaking of an arch--one stone goes from a
prominent place, and then the rest begin to drop. So one looks towards
Brougham, and Lyndhurst, and Pollock.

I will add no more to this, or I know I shall not send it; for I am in
the first desperate laziness of having done my book, and think of
offering myself to the village school as a live example of that vice for
the edification of youth.

Ever, my dear Forster, affectionately.

[Sidenote: The Hon. Mrs. Watson.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Monday, July 8th, 1861._

MY DEAR MRS. WATSON,

I have owed you a letter for so long a time that I fear you may
sometimes have misconstrued my silence. But I hope that the sight of the
handwriting of your old friend will undeceive you, if you have, and will
put that right.

During the progress of my last story, I have been working so hard that
very, very little correspondence--except enforced correspondence on
business--has passed this pen. And now that I am free again, I devote a
few of my first leisure moments to this note.

You seemed in your last to think that I had forgotten you in respect of
the Christmas number. Not so at all. I discussed with them here where
you were, how you were to be address