DY,

I have received your letter here to-day, and deeply feel with you and
for you the affliction of poor dear Katie's loss. I was not unprepared
for the sad news, but it comes in such a rush of old remembrances and
withered joys that strikes to the heart.

God bless you! Love and youth are still beside you, and in that thought
I take comfort for my dear old friend.

I am happy to report myself perfectly well and flourishing. We are just
now announcing the resumption and conclusion of the broken series of
farewell readings in a London course of twelve, beginning early in the
new year.

Scarcely a day has gone by this summer in which we have not talked of
you and yours. Georgina, Mary, and I continually speak of you. In the
spirit we certainly are even more together than we used to be in the
body in the old times. I don't know whether you have heard that Harry
has taken the second scholarship (fifty pounds a year) at Trinity Hall,
Cambridge. The bigwigs expect him to do a good deal there.

Wills having given up in consequence of broken health (he has been my
sub-editor for twenty years), I have taken Charley into "All the Year
Round." He is a very good man of business, and evinces considerable
aptitude in sub-editing work.

This place is immensely improved since you were here, and really is now
very pretty indeed. We are sorry that there is no present prospect of
your coming to see it; but I like to know of your being at the sea, and
having to do--_from the beach_, as Mrs. Keeley used to say in "The
Prisoner of War"--with the winds and the waves and all their freshening
influences.

I dined at Greenwich a few days ago with Delane. He asked me about you
with much interest. He looks as if he had never seen a printing-office,
and had never been out of bed after midnight.

Great excitement caused here by your capital news of Butty. I suppose
Willy has at least a dozen children by this time.

Our loves to the noble boy and to dear Mrs. Macready.

Ever, my dearest Macready,
Your attached and affectionate.

[Sidenote: Mr. Edmund Ollier.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Tuesday, Aug. 3rd, 1869._

MY DEAR MR. OLLIER,

I am very sensible of the feeling of the Committee towards me; and I
receive their invitation (conveyed through you) as a most acceptable
mark of their