Monday morning June 27th
London.
The last day in London and the busiest. I
must write hurriedly. Th Lord Napier
talked of his past, present and future
with me, confidingly and affectingly. We
shall separate accidentally and without
leave taking. His friendship has been earnest
and untiring. At church in Westminster Abbey
in the morning, a half hours stroll after
it among the monuments of poets and of kings.
The very pavement of the Abbey is of
monumental marble. The walls chapels windows

7
crypts are
so filled with
monumental statues and
slabs and these generally
so cheerful in form or spirit
that the Abbey seems to be filled
with the spiritualized heroes sages philosophers
and poets of former ages – You almost seem to
converse with them.
After Church a most kind and gracious
parting interview with the Duchess of Sutherland, a true
and noble woman, who has indicated by her devotion to
truth humanity and justice her hereditary position. Her
good wishes are a trophy worth carrying away from this
confused and hurried metropolis —
In the evening a dinner party at Sir
Frederick Pollocks at his seat ten miles from London on
what was Hounslow Heath. A dreary spot wrought with magi-
cal art into an almost tropical home. and there
were genial spirits there whose converse I
profited by and who did not disdain
to say that they sympathized with
me. Principal among them all
his maiden daughter
too good and too
intelligent to
be

appreciated by the fast young men of London
Society. Then I feasted pleasantly on the
very spot where stood in bye gone hours the
hostelry in which Dick Turpin divided
the spoils of robbery with his band.
At eleven o,clock returned to the
city I fell into the Metropolitan Club
and what a gathering was there – all
on equality – Authors Poets Painters, Historians
Princes, and diplomats. There was Elgin
and Phillips the portrait painter, Higgins
of the Times, and Lord Wodehouse , the cari-
caturist of Punch and the Prince of Schleswig
Holstein , Reeves editor of the Edinburgh
Review, and Monckton Mills, and I was
not only among them, and
I wondered that it was so late when
I found my place there–
And now for a dinner at
Greenwich and then to quit London –

h No 8
from June 24th to 27
Last days in London