he interview. The general topic of remark on meeting me seems to be,
that I am not so bad looking as they were afraid I was; and I do assure
you that, when I have seen the things that are put up in the shop
windows here with my name under them, I have been in wondering
admiration at the boundless loving-kindness of my English and Scottish
friends, in keeping up such a warm heart for such a Gorgon. I should
think that the Sphinx in the London Museum might have sat for most of
them. I am going to make a collection of these portraits to bring home
to you. There is a great variety of them, and they will be useful, like
the Irishman's guideboard, which showed where the road did not go.

Before the evening was through I was talked out and worn out--there was
hardly a chip of me left. To-morrow at eleven o'clock comes the meeting
at Stafford House. What it will amount to I do not know; but I take no
thought for the morrow.

LETTER XVI.

MAY 8.

MY DEAR C.:--

In fulfilment of my agreement, I will tell you, as nearly as I can
remember, all the details of the meeting at Stafford House.

At about eleven o'clock we drove under the arched carriage way of a
mansion, externally, not very showy in appearance. It stands on the
borders of St. James's Park, opposite to Buckingham Palace, with a
street on the north side, and beautiful gardens on the south, while the
park is extended on the west.

We were received at the door by two stately Highlanders in full costume;
and what seemed to me an innumerable multitude of servants in livery,
with powdered hair, repeated our names through the long corridors, from
one to another.

I have only a confused idea of passing from passage to passage, and from
hall to hall, till finally we were introduced into a large drawing room.
No person was present, and I was at full leisure to survey an apartment
whose arrangements more perfectly suited my eye and taste than any I had
ever seen before. There was not any particular splendor of furniture, or
dazzling display of upholstery, but an artistic, poetic air, resulting
from the arrangement of colors, and the disposition of the works of
_virtu_ with which the room abounded. The great fault in many splendid
rooms, is, that they are arranged without any eye to unity of
impression. The things in them may be all fine in their way, but there
is no harmony of result.

People do not often consider that there may be a general sentiment to be
expr