I begin a sheet just to say that we are leaving the house in which you saw us, near the Regent’s Park, and have taken one on Campden Hill, Kensington, far to the west. It is just under Macaulay’s.
October 13.
Plutarch is too dear for the English; however, a favourable article, and really I think a good article, in the ‘Athenæum,’ has put a little wind in its sails. Plutarch is not sought for here as a library book; indeed, he is quite put out of fashion by Thirlwall, Grote, and Co., and some effort is needed to recall attention to him.
The French Emperor’s ‘allocution’ to the Cardinal at Bordeaux is a slight improvement on his doings lately; perhaps a feeler to the country, for if he were not afraid of the popular adherence to the Pope and clergy in France, I suppose he would certainly take the holy father by the temporal beard in Bologna.
Council Office: December 5.
We are here in a state of rifle fever, which I do not think will be allayed by the imperial smooth words. Palmerston is not to go to the Congress, and France, I fear, will do as she pleases.
I was glad to have your account of Brown. His behaviour before his death struck me quite in the way in which you regard it: nothing could be plainer, and more composed and upright.
To the same.
Hastings: December 29, 1859.
I have been sent here for ventilation, after an attack of scarlatina, which made me an inconvenient neighbour to a little boy just born to us, who arrived on the 16th of this month. This is dull enough, the old town with the old churches in the hollow between the East Hill and the West Hill, the latter crowned by remnants of the castle, the new town stretching along the shore for nearly a couple of miles, one row deep, with a handsome sea terrace all along.