ling.
I had been struck by his persistently ignoring the possibility of his
holding any other position in Australasia than his present position, and
had inferred from it a homeward tendency. What is most curious to me is
that he is very sensible, and yet does not seem to understand that he
has qualified himself for no public examinations in the old country, and
could not possibly hold his own against any competition for anything to
which I could get him nominated.

But I must not trouble you about my boys as if they were yours. It is
enough that I can never thank you for your goodness to them in a
generous consideration of me.

I believe the truth as to France to be that a citizen Frenchman never
forgives, and that Napoleon will never live down the _coup d'etat_. This
makes it enormously difficult for any well-advised English newspaper to
support him, and pretend not to know on what a volcano his throne is
set. Informed as to his designs on the one hand, and the perpetual
uneasiness of his police on the other (to say nothing of a doubtful
army), _The Times_ has a difficult game to play. My own impression is
that if it were played too boldly for him, the old deplorable national
antagonism would revive in his going down. That the wind will pass over
his Imperiality on the sands of France I have not the slightest doubt.
In no country on the earth, but least of all there, can you seize people
in their houses on political warrants, and kill in the streets, on no
warrant at all, without raising a gigantic Nemesis--not very reasonable
in detail, perhaps, but none the less terrible for that.

The commonest dog or man driven mad is a much more alarming creature
than the same individuality in a sober and commonplace condition.

Your friend ---- ---- is setting the world right generally all round
(including the flattened ends, the two poles), and, as a Minister said
to me the other day, "has the one little fault of omniscience."

You will probably have read before now that I am going to be everything
the Queen can make me.[111] If my authority be worth anything believe on
it that I am going to be nothing but what I am, and that that includes
my being as long as I live,

Your faithful and heartily obliged.

[Sidenote: Mr. Alfred Tennyson Dickens.]

ATHENAEUM CLUB, _Friday Night, 20th May, 1870._

MY DEAR ALFRED,[112]

I have just time to tell you under my own h