. I was wretched, looking on; and
yet the boiler-maker and the poor man with the legs filled me with a
sense of drollery not to be kept down by any pressure.

The atmosphere of this place, compounded of mists from the highlands and
smoke from the town factories, is crushing my eyebrows as I write, and
it rains as it never does rain anywhere else, and always does rain here.
It is a dreadful place, though much improved and possessing a deal of
public spirit. Improvement is beginning to knock the old town of
Edinburgh about, here and there; but the Canongate and the most
picturesque of the horrible courts and wynds are not to be easily
spoiled, or made fit for the poor wretches who people them to live in.
Edinburgh is so changed as to its notabilities, that I had the only
three men left of the Wilson and Jeffrey time to dine with me there,
last Saturday.

I think you will find "Fatal Zero" (by Percy Fitzgerald) a very curious
analysis of a mind, as the story advances. A new beginner in "A. Y. R."
(Hon. Mrs. Clifford, Kinglake's sister), who wrote a story in the series
just finished, called "The Abbot's Pool," has just sent me another
story. I have a strong impression that, with care, she will step into
Mrs. Gaskell's vacant place. Wills is no better, and I have work enough
even in that direction.

God bless the woman with the black mittens for making me laugh so this
morning! I take her to be a kind of public-spirited Mrs. Sparsit, and as
such take her to my bosom. God bless you both, my dear friends, in this
Christmas and New Year time, and in all times, seasons, and places, and
send you to Gad's Hill with the next flowers!

Ever your most affectionate.

[Sidenote: Mr. Russell Sturgis.]

KENNEDY'S HOTEL, EDINBURGH,
_Friday, 18th December, 1868._

MY DEAR MR. RUSSELL STURGIS,

I return you the forged letter, and devoutly wish that I had to flog the
writer in virtue of a legal sentence. I most cordially reciprocate your
kind expressions in reference to our future intercourse, and shall hope
to remind you of them five or six months hence, when my present labours
shall have gone the way of all other earthly things. It was particularly
interesting to me when I was last at Boston to recognise poor dear
Felton's unaffected and genial ways in his eldest daughter, and to
notice how, in tender remembrance of him, she