y watch (a special
chronometer) has never gone quite correctly since, and to this day there
sometimes comes over me, on a railway--in a hansom cab--or any sort of
conveyance--for a few seconds, a vague sense of dread that I have no
power to check. It comes and passes, but I cannot prevent its coming.

Believe me, always faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. Rusden.]

_24th August, 1868._

MY DEAR SIR,

I should have written to you much sooner, but that I have been home from
the United States barely three months, and have since been a little
uncertain as to the precise time and way of sending my youngest son out
to join his brother Alfred.

It is now settled that he shall come out in the ship _Sussex_, 1000
tons, belonging to Messrs. Money, Wigram, and Co. She sails from
Gravesend, but he will join her at Plymouth on the 27th September, and
will proceed straight to Melbourne. Of this I apprise Alfred by this
mail. . . . I cannot sufficiently thank you for your kindness to Alfred.
I am certain that a becoming sense of it and desire to deserve it, has
done him great good.

Your report of him is an unspeakable comfort to me, and I most heartily
assure you of my gratitude and friendship.

In the midst of your colonial seethings and heavings, I suppose you have
some leisure to consult equally the hopeful prophets and the dismal
prophets who are all wiser than any of the rest of us as to things at
home here. My own strong impression is that whatsoever change the new
Reform Bill may effect will be very gradual indeed and quite wholesome.

Numbers of the middle class who seldom or never voted before will vote
now, and the greater part of the new voters will in the main be wiser as
to their electoral responsibilities and more seriously desirous to
discharge them for the common good than the bumptious singers of "Rule
Britannia," "Our dear old Church of England," and all the rest of it.

If I can ever do anything for any accredited friend of yours coming to
the old country, command me. I shall be truly glad of any opportunity of
testifying that I do not use a mere form of words in signing myself,

Cordially yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. Russell Sturgis.]

KENNEDY'S HOTEL, EDINBURGH,
_Monday, 14th December, 1868._[98]

MY DEAR MR