gh roof by nothing, this morning, in the most wonderfully
cheerful manner.)

My son Charley has come for the dinner, and Chappell (my Proprietor,
as--isn't it Wemmick?--says) is coming to-day, and Lord Dufferin (Mrs.
Norton's nephew) is to come and make _the_ speech. I don't envy the
feelings of my noble friend when he sees the hall. Seriously, it is less
adapted to speaking than Westminster Abbey, and is as large. . . .

I hope you will see Fechter in a really clever piece by Wilkie.[103] Also
you will see the Academy Exhibition, which will be a very good one; and
also we will, please God, see everything and more, and everything else
after that. I begin to doubt and fear on the subject of your having a
horror of me after seeing the murder. I don't think a hand moved while I
was doing it last night, or an eye looked away. And there was a fixed
expression of horror of me, all over the theatre, which could not have
been surpassed if I had been going to be hanged to that red velvet
table. It is quite a new sensation to be execrated with that unanimity;
and I hope it will remain so!

[Is it lawful--would that woman in the black gaiters, green veil, and
spectacles, hold it so--to send my love to the pretty M----?]

Pack up, my dear Fields, and be quick.

Ever your most affectionate.

[Sidenote: Mr. Rusden.]

PRESTON, _Thursday, 22nd April, 1869._

MY DEAR SIR,

I am finishing my Farewell Readings--to-night is the seventy-fourth out
of one hundred--and have barely time to send you a line to thank you
most heartily for yours of the 30th January, and for your great kindness
to Alfred and Edward. The latter wrote by the same mail, on behalf of
both, expressing the warmest gratitude to you, and reporting himself in
the stoutest heart and hope. I never can thank you sufficiently.

You will see that the new Ministry has made a decided hit with its
Budget, and that in the matter of the Irish Church it has the country at
its back. You will also see that the "Reform League" has dissolved
itself, indisputably because it became aware that the people did not
want it.

I think the general feeling in England is a desire to get the Irish
Church out of the way of many social reforms, and to have it done _with_
as already done _for_. I do not in the least believe myself that
agrarian Ireland is to be pacified by any such means, or can have it got
out of i