ere set to music
by Carlo Pinsutti, Virginia Gabriel, or others. There was in it a poem
entitled "On Mount Meru." In this the Creator is supposed to show the
world when it was first made to Satan. The adversary finds that all is
fit and well, save "the being called Man," who seems to him to be the
worst and most incongruous. To which the Demiurgus replies that Man will
in the end conquer all things, even the devil himself. And at the last
the demon lies dying at the feet of God, and confesses that "Man, thy
creature hath vanquished me for ever--_Vicisti Galilaee_!" Some years
after I read a work by a French writer in which this same idea of God and
the devil is curiously carried out and illustrated by the history of
architecture. And as in the case of the letter from Lord Lytton Bulwer,
warm praise from other persons of high rank in the literary world and
reviews, I had many proofs that these poems had made a favourable
impression. The only exception which I can recall was a very sarcastic
review in the _Athenaeum_, in which the writer declared his belief that
the poems or Legends of Perfumes in the book were originally written as
advertisements of some barber or tradesman, and being by him rejected as
worthless, had been thrown back on my hands! Other works by me it
treated kindly--so it goes in this world--like a recipe for a cement
which I have just copied into my great work on "Mending and Repairing"--in
which vinegar is combined with sugar.

While at Brighton we met Louis Blanc, whom we had previously seen several
times at the Trubners', in London. In Brighton he heard the news of the
overthrow of the Empire and departed for Paris. At Christmas we went to
London to visit the Trubners, and thence to the Langham Hotel, where we
remained till July. I recall very little of what I witnessed or did
beyond seeing the Queen prorogue Parliament and translating Scheffel's
_Gaudeamus_, a little volume of German humorous poems. Scheffel, as I
have before written, was an old _Mitkneipant_, or evening-beer companion
of mine in Heidelberg.

In July we made up a travelling party with Mrs. S. Laing and her
daughters Cecilia and Floy, and departed for a visit to the Rhine--that
is to say, these ladies preceded us, and we joined them at the Hotel des
Quatre Saisons in Homburg. It was a very brilliant season, for the
German Emperor, fresh with the glory of his great victory, was being
_feted_ everywhere, and Homburg the