that great Birmingham hall. We
had enormous houses.

So far as I understand the dinner arrangements here, they are much too
long. As to the acoustics of that hall, and the position of the tables
(both as bad as bad can be), my only consolation is that, if anybody can
be heard, _I_ probably can be. The honorary secretary tells me that six
hundred people are to dine. The mayor, being no speaker and out of
health besides, hands over the toast of the evening to Lord Dufferin.
The town is full of the festival. The Theatre Royal, touched up for the
occasion, will look remarkably bright and well for the readings, and our
lets are large. It is remarkable that our largest let as yet is for
Thursday, not Friday. I infer that the dinner damages Friday, but Dolby
does not think so. There appears to be great curiosity to hear the
"Murder." (On Friday night last I read to two thousand people, and odd
hundreds.)

I hear that Anthony Trollope, Dixon, Lord Houghton, Lemon, Esquiros (of
the _Revue des Deux Mondes_), and Sala are to be called upon to speak;
the last, for the newspaper press. All the Liverpool notabilities are to
muster. And Manchester is to be represented by its mayor with due
formality.

I had been this morning to look at St. George's Hall, and suggest what
can be done to improve its acoustics. As usually happens in such cases,
their most important arrangements are already made and unchangeable. I
should not have placed the tables in the committee's way at all, and
could certainly have placed the dais to much greater advantage. So all
the good I could do was to show where banners could be hung with some
hope of stopping echoes. Such is my small news, soon exhausted. We
arrived here at three yesterday afternoon; it is now mid-day; Chorley
has not yet appeared, but he had called at the local agent's while I was
at Birmingham.

It is a curious little instance of the way in which things fit together
that there is a ship-of-war in the Mersey, whose flags and so forth are
to be brought up to St. George's Hall for the dinner. She is the
_Donegal_, of which Paynter told me he had just been captain, when he
told me all about Sydney at Bath.

One of the pleasantest things I have experienced here this time, is the
manner in which I am stopped in the streets by working men, who want to
shake hands with me, and tell me they know my books. I never go out but
this happens. Down at the docks just now, a cooper with a fearful
stut