tto, for the North of Italy, and the foreign "Bradshaw." These furnish
my lullaby now-a-nights.

I read yesterday, in the railroad carriage, a little story translated
from the French by Lady (Lucy) Duff Gordon, with which I was greatly
touched and delighted. It costs one shilling, and is called "The Village
Doctor," and is one of those pale green volumes headed, "Reading for
Travellers," to be found on all the railroad bookstands. I thought it
charming, and a most powerful appeal to the imagination in behalf of
Roman Catholicism.

I have already told you what route I intend to take, and I think we
shall be a week or ten days going from Paris to Turin, coasting all the
way from Marseilles, as I wish to do.

I do not read at Manchester to-day, but Halle, who conducts the music,
wishes me to attend a rehearsal, which, of course, I am anxious to do at
his request. On Monday I read the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and on
Tuesday "Macbeth," at Mr. Scott's desire. To-morrow I shall, I hope,
hear Mr. Scott read and comment again on the Bible, and I am looking
forward with great pleasure to being with him and Mrs. Scott again.

No doubt there are several more direct ways of getting to Nice than
coasting round, as I propose doing, but I wish to see that Mediterranean
shore, and have no desire to travel hard....

Adelaide Procter [the daughter of my friends was to be my companion in
this journey] has no enthusiasm whatever for me; she does not know me at
all, and I do not know her at all well; and I do not think, when we know
each other more, that she will like me any better. Her character and
intellectual gifts, and the delicate state of her health, all make her
an object of interest to me.... I love and respect Mr. Procter very
much; and her mother, who is one of the kindest-hearted persons
possible, has always been so good to me, that I am too glad to have the
opportunity of doing anything to oblige them. I am going to Turin
because, as they have entrusted their daughter to me, I will not leave
her until I see her safe in the house to which she is going; I owe that
small service to the child of her parent.... Dear Harriet, if you will
come to Switzerland this summer, nothing but some insuperable impediment
shall prevent my meeting you there. If you are "old and stiff," I am
_fat, stuffy, puffy, and old_; and you are not of such proportions as to
break a mule's back, whereas if I got on one I should expect it to cast
itself a