st-chaise to London in a day or two. He reported having just got Lord
Byron's two last poems,--'The Corsair' and 'The Bride of Abydos';
wished he could send them home, but that was not so easy.

'He had better send them home, or send them anywhere,' said the
colonel; 'and give his attention to Sophocles and Euclid. Light poetry
does not amount to anything; it is worse than waste of time.'

'I don't want a man to be made of Greek and Latin,' said Mrs. Dallas.
'Do you think, only the Ancients wrote what is worthy to be read,
colonel?'

'They didn't write nonsense, my dear madam; and Byron does.'

'Nonsense!'

'Worse than nonsense.'

'Won't do to enquire too strictly into what the old Greeks and Romans
wrote, if folks say true,' remarked Mr. Dallas slyly.

'In the dead languages it won't do a young man so much harm,' said the
colonel. 'I hope William will give himself now to his Greek, since you
have afforded him such opportunity.'

Mrs. Dallas's air, as she rose to take leave, was inimitably expressive
of proud confidence and rejection of the question. Mr. Dallas laughed
carelessly and said, as he shook the colonel's hand, 'No fear!'

The next news they had came direct. Another letter from Pitt to the
colonel; and, as before, it enclosed one for Esther. Esther ran away
again to have the first reading and indulge herself in the first
impressions of it alone and free from question or observation. She even
locked her door. This letter was written from London, and dated May
1814.

'MY DEAR QUEEN ESTHER,--I wish you were here, for we certainly would
have some famous walks together. Do you know, I am in London? and that
means, in one of the most wonderful places in the world. You can have
no idea what sort of a place it is, and no words I can write will tell
you. I have not got over my own sense of astonishment and admiration
yet; indeed it is growing, not lessening; and every time I go out I
come home more bewildered with what I have seen. Do you ask me why? In
the first place, because it is so big. Next, because of the
unimaginable throng of human beings of every grade and variety. Such a
multitude of human lives crossing each other in an intraceable and
interminable network; intraceable to the human eye, but what a sight it
must be to the eye that sees all! All these people, so many hundreds of
thousands, acting and reacting upon one another's happiness,
prosperity, goodness, and badness. Now at such a place as