dy for him. The Prince and Princess of Wales go about (wisely) very
much, and have as fair a chance of popularity as ever prince and
princess had. The City ball in their honour is to be a tremendously
gorgeous business, and Mary is highly excited by her father's being
invited, and she with him. Meantime the unworthy parent is devising all
kinds of subterfuges for sending her and getting out of it himself. A
very intelligent German friend of mine, just home from America,
maintains that the conscription will succeed in the North, and that the
war will be indefinitely prolonged. _I_ say "No," and that however mad
and villainous the North is, the war will finish by reason of its not
supplying soldiers. We shall see. The more they brag the more I don't
believe in them.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mr. Percy Fitzgerald.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, _Saturday Night, July 4th_, 1863.

MY DEAR MR. FITZGERALD,

I have been most heartily gratified by the perusal of your article on my
dogs. It has given me an amount and a kind of pleasure very unusual, and
for which I thank you earnestly. The owner of the renowned dog Caesar
understands me so sympathetically, that I trust with perfect confidence
to his feeling what I really mean in these few words. You interest me
very much by your kind promise, the redemption of which I hereby claim,
to send me your life of Sterne when it comes out. If you should be in
England before this, I should be delighted to see you here on the top of
Falstaff's own Gad's Hill. It is a very pretty country, not thirty
miles from London; and if you could spare a day or two for its fine
walks, I and my two latest dogs, a St. Bernard and a bloodhound, would
be charmed with your company as one of ourselves.

Believe me, very faithfully yours.

_Friday, July 10th, 1863._[12]

DEAR MADAM,

I hope you will excuse this tardy reply to your letter. It is often
impossible for me, by any means, to keep pace with my correspondents. I
must take leave to say, that if there be any general feeling on the part
of the intelligent Jewish people, that I have done them what you
describe as "a great wrong," they are a far less sensible, a far less
just, and a far less good-tempered people than I have always supposed
them to be. Fagin, in "Oliver Twist," is a Jew, because it unfortunately
was true of the tim