dialogue I will ask you by-and-by to
let me see. I have, for the present, abandoned the idea of sinking a
shaft in Cornwall.

I have sent your Shakesperian extracts to Collier. It is a great
comfort, to my thinking, that so little is known concerning the poet. It
is a fine mystery; and I tremble every day lest something should come
out. If he had had a Boswell, society wouldn't have respected his
grave, but would calmly have had his skull in the phrenological
shop-windows.

Believe me,
Faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. H. P. Smith.]

CHESTER PLACE, _June 14th, 1847._

MY DEAR SMITH,

Haldimand stayed at No. 7, Connaught Place, Hyde Park, when I saw him
yesterday. But he was going to cross to Boulogne to-day.

The young Pariah seems pretty comfortable. He is of a cosmopolitan
spirit I hope, and stares with a kind of leaden satisfaction at his
spoons, without afflicting himself much about the established church.

Affectionately yours.

P.S.--I think of bringing an action against you for a new sort of breach
of promise, and calling all the bishops to estimate the damage of having
our christening postponed for a fortnight. It appears to me that I shall
get a good deal of money in this way. If you have any compromise to
offer, my solicitors are Dodson and Fogg.

[Sidenote: Miss Power.]

BROADSTAIRS, KENT, _July 2nd, 1847._

MY DEAR MISS POWER,

Let me thank you, very sincerely, for your kind note and for the little
book. I read the latter on my way down here with the greatest pleasure.
It is a charming story gracefully told, and very gracefully and worthily
translated. I have not been better pleased with a book for a long time.

I cannot say I take very kindly to the illustrations. They are a long
way behind the tale to my thinking. The artist understands it very well,
I dare say, but does not express his understanding of it, in the least
degree, to any sense of mine.

Ah Rosherville! That fated Rosherville, when shall we see it! Perhaps in
one of those intervals when I am up to town from here, and suddenly
appear at Gore House, somebody will propose an excursion there, next
day. If anybody does, somebody else will be ready to go. So this
deponent maketh oath and saith.

I am looking out