Mr. Leland, the poet of jargons."
(He indeed introduced me to all his guests once by this term.) "Jargon
is a confusion of language, and I have a maid who lives in a jargon of
ideas--as to values. The other day she broke to utter ruin an antique
vase"--(I do not accurately recall what the object was)--"which cost four
hundred pounds, and when I said that it was such a grief to me to lose
it, she replied, while weeping, 'Oh, do not mind it, my lady; _I'll_ buy
you just such another,' as if it were worth tenpence."

Mrs. Norton had marvellously beautiful and expressive eyes, such as one
seldom meets thrice in a life. As a harp well played inspires tears or
the impulse to dance, so her glances conveyed, almost in the same
instant, deep emotion and exquisite merriment. I remember that she was
much amused with some of my American jests and reminiscences, and was
always prompt to respond, _eodem genere_. So nightingale the wodewale
answereth.

During this season in London I met Thomas Carlyle. Our mutual friend,
Moncure Conway, had arranged that I should call on the great writer at
the house of the latter in Chelsea. I went there at about eleven in the
morning, and when Mr. Carlyle entered the room I was amazed--I may say
almost awed--by something which was altogether unexpected, and this was
his _extraordinary_ likeness to my late father. A slight resemblance to
Carlyle may be seen in my own profile, but had he been with my father,
the pair might have passed for twins; and in iron-grey grimness and the
never-to-be-convinced expression of the eyes they were identity itself.

I can only remember that for the first twenty or thirty minutes Mr.
Carlyle talked such a lot of skimble-skamble stuff and rubbish, which
sounded like the very _debris_ and lees of his "Latter-Day Pamphlets,"
that I began to suspect that he was quizzing me, or that this was the
manner in which he ladled out Carlyleism to visitors who came to be
Carlyled and acted unto. It struck me as if Mr. Tennyson, bored with
lion-hunting guests, had begun to repeat his poetry to them out of sheer
sarcasm, or as if he felt, "Well, you've come to _see_ and _hear_ me--a
poet--so take your poetry, and be d---d to you!" However, it may be I
felt a coming wrath, and the Socratic demon or gypsy _dook_, which often
rises in me on such occasions, and never deceives me, gave me a strong
premonition that there was to be, if not an exemplary row, at least a
lively in