faithfully and gratefully yours.

[Sidenote: M. de Cerjat.]

GAD'S HILL, _Wednesday, July 7th, 1858._

MY DEAR CERJAT,

I should vainly try to tell you--so I _won't_ try--how affected I have
been by your warm-hearted letter, or how thoroughly well convinced I
always am of the truth and earnestness of your friendship. I thank you,
my dear, dear fellow, with my whole soul. I fervently return that
friendship and I highly cherish it.

You want to know all about me? I am still reading in London every
Thursday, and the audiences are very great, and the success immense. On
the 2nd of August I am going away on a tour of some four months in
England, Ireland, and Scotland. I shall read, during that time, not
fewer than four or five times a week. It will be sharp work; but
probably a certain musical clinking will come of it, which will mitigate
the hardship.

At this present moment I am on my little Kentish freehold (_not_ in
top-boots, and not particularly prejudiced that I know of), looking on
as pretty a view out of my study window as you will find in a long day's
English ride. My little place is a grave red brick house (time of George
the First, I suppose), which I have added to and stuck bits upon in all
manner of ways, so that it is as pleasantly irregular, and as violently
opposed to all architectural ideas, as the most hopeful man could
possibly desire. It is on the summit of Gad's Hill. The robbery was
committed before the door, on the man with the treasure, and Falstaff
ran away from the identical spot of ground now covered by the room in
which I write. A little rustic alehouse, called The Sir John Falstaff,
is over the way--has been over the way, ever since, in honour of the
event. Cobham Woods and Park are behind the house; the distant Thames in
front; the Medway, with Rochester, and its old castle and cathedral, on
one side. The whole stupendous property is on the old Dover Road, so
when you come, come by the North Kent Railway (not the South-Eastern) to
Strood or Higham, and I'll drive over to fetch you.

The blessed woods and fields have done me a world of good, and I am
quite myself again. The children are all as happy as children can be. My
eldest daughter, Mary, keeps house, with a state and gravity becoming
that high position; wherein she is assisted by her sister Katie, and by
her aunt Georgina, who is, and always has been, like another sister. Two
big dogs, a bloodhound