ing; but most likely you will be gone out So it would be best to make an appointment to meet here at dinner, pay at six o'clock, when a man's days work is or ought to be one! Name any day you like, only let it be soon, if yoo case, for I am impatient to see you.—Affectionately yours,
Jane W. Carlyle.
In all England, and in all Ireland afterwards, there was but one woman each to welcome me with the frank and cordial salute, and I rejoice always to remember that Mrs. Carlyle was one of the two who so honoured me. Men of many moods and many opinions found their way to me daily.
A few fragments picked from my diary of that day will illustrate the life in which I found myself immersed in London, better than a formal narrative:—
"Dined at the Stafford dub with Cashel Hoey, and met Blake, the new member for Waterford, a Young Irelander a little out of date. Blake complained of the dreadful monotony of fife in Parliament for men who take little or no share in debate. 'Yon want a little society,' I said. 'Woe is me; I did want it,' he replied, 'and I got it; but the remedy is worse than the disease. I was introduced lately to a family of a mother and two daughters, of distinction, who had seen better days. On my second visit the mother inquired if my horses were in town: "the poor girls who used to ride dairy when we lived in Devonshire, are pining for a little exercise." My horses not being in town (nor in the country) I had three from a livery stable twice a week for a month, at a cost of thirty pounds. We naturally grew more familiar, and the old lady asked me one evening whether I had fruit or flowers sent over from my Irish estate. No, I hadn't; but there was a garden lying between the Strand and Oxford Street where, for five guineas a week, the deficiency was made up. The young ladies were musicians, and enabled me occasionally to enjoy Mozart and Beethoven. "The dear girls play for you," observed the old lady; "but not the latest music—they have never heard the new opera which London is crazed about" They did hear it, of course, and a box, bouquets, and ices seriously swelled my weekly commissariat account By and by a dinner at Richmond;
