hip, will have henceforward to
tread their weary way. I see in that sunset light the days when we
were much together--when she used to call herself my wife. In those
days her nervous system was stronger than it was when you became
acquainted with her. Her soul spoke through more obedient organs.
Nothing could exceed the eloquence and beauty of her letters in those
days, when written under the influence of strong feeling. She is gone.
I do not expect ever to see her like again.

_November 1st._--Poor Balgonie, too. It is another loss; very sad,
though different in its character. When I saw him at Malta, I had not
a conception that he would last so long.... On _November 1st_ I am
reading your thoughts of _September 1st._ How far apart this proves us
to be!... I sympathise deeply in all those feelings.... To whatever
side one looks there is the sad blank effected by her removal; even in
my public interests, I cannot say how much, since I returned home, I
owed to her thoughtfulness and affection.... Cut off as we are here at
present from all immediate contact with home interests, it is
difficult to realise her removal and its consequences to the full. It
is a stunning blow from which one recovers gradually to a
consciousness of a great and undefined loss. God bless you!... and
grant that you may share her inexpressible comfort.

[Sidenote: Visit to Macao.]

_November 8th._--I have been absent for four days on a tour.... I
liked Macao, because there is some appearance about it of a history,
--convents and churches, the garden of Camoens, &c. The Portuguese have
been in China about three hundred years. Hong-kong was a barren rock
fifteen years ago. Macao is Catholic, Hong-kong Protestant. So these
causes combined give the former a wonderful superiority in all that is
antique and monumental.

_November 14th._--I have received your letters to September 24th....
The Government approve entirely of my move to Calcutta, and Lord
Clarendon writes very cordially on the subject.

_November 15th._--I have seen the Russian Plenipotentiary.... He has
been at Kiachta and the mouth of the Peiho, asking for admission to
Pekin, and got considerably snubbed at both places, as I should have
been if I had gone there. It will devolve on me, I apprehend, to
administer the return, which is not, I think, a