defrayed by leasing land in perpetuity for settlement instead of selling it, the State retaining the fee-simple. He replied that he considered such a method quite legitimate; but the rent reserved would be difficult to collect, and liable to Parliamentary combinations to annul it. If such a system were established the rent ought to be an ad valorem one, and be liable to be increased to meet improvements springing from the growth of society without any effort of the occupier, and the title of the occupier ought to be forfeited by a certain amount of arrears. Speaking of responsible Government, he said that in colonies where it existed the Governor ought, he thought, to be as impassive as the Queen is in England, except where Imperial interests, of which he is the guardian, were concerned.
"I met Dr. Madden in Piccadilly, and we lunched together. I suggested that the big volumes of his 'Life of Lady Blessington' might be squeezed into a pleasant little book containing the correspondence, which was interesting, especially the anonymous letters. The time for a new edition, he said, had not come. The anonymous correspondence was the letters of important men, whose assent to publication with their names he had not obtained. The letter rating Pencilling Willis savagely for his breaches of taste and confidence was by Lytton Bulwer, who also wrote the letter on Catholicity, in which he says that if he had been born a Catholic he would have remained one. The letters signed F. B. were by Sir Francis Burdett, and those signed P. by Sir Robert Peel. I told him the story Dr. Gully told me at Malvern, that Bulwer ran a race with his brother Henry for their mother's estate, which was to be bequeathed to whichever of them first became a peer, but Madden cannot say whether or not it is authentic.
"Apropos of the 'Life of Lady Blessington,' I asked him how he had avoided the glaring D'Orsay scandal. He shook his head meaningly, and said there was no evidence in the papers submitted to him, and so he kept his peace. In the evening we went to hear J. B. Gough, the teetotal lecturer, at Drury Lane. If Demosthenes said that acting was the soul of oratory, Demosthenes said well. Gough moves tears and laughter as I have never seen any orator do. He walks up
