thought Charley Yeldham to himself, when the honeymoon was over, that would have been a disastrous business and a wretched _ménage_. He had had several letters from Gordon, then private secretary to Lord ----, acting minister at Rudolfstadt; letters full of complaints, which were ludicrous to the reader, though evidently insufferable to the writer. "It's a dull, wearying, dreary place, dear old boy," said Gordon; "a beastly hole, with no one but besotted Germans to talk to, who all are either professors, when they bore you to death with their metaphysical cant, or half-fed dragoon officers, who make you long to kick them for their infernal impertinence. Old Wigsby, who has nothing to do, and who never opens a book or gives what ought to be his brains, but what I firmly believe is either tow or wool, the smallest exercise, passes his days in calling on the Frau Ober Consistorial Directorin or the Hochgeborner Herr, and his nights in sitting in their wretched twopenny theatres listening to their squealing singers. He expects me to attend him on both occasions, and airs himself to this German-silver nobility, this veneered _haute noblesse_, in his patronage of me, d--n him (that's by way of parenthesis). On Wednesday nights we go to the Jäger Hof, where the Duke von Friedenstein lives when he is visible; and the entertainments there are something which would be too much even for you, Charley, old fellow--and you know you can stand a lot in the way of dulness! The old duke stands at the end of a big room, and bows away like mad to every one who comes in, until I wonder how his old spine holds out; and then the company wander through the rooms, and look at the curios and the pictures in the Kunst Kammer, which they've all of them seen a thousand times before; and then the squealing singers from the theatre tune up and shriek away for dear life in the music gallery. And then there's not a bad supper of a queer kind: big hams and potato-salad and herring salad, and hot salmon and cold jelly, and cold rice and jam, and some very decent light wines; and it's all over by ten o'clock, and we're off to bed. Old Wigsby goes to these lets-off _en grande tenue_, and is, I am sure, seriously grieved that etiquette does not permit him to wear his court suit. He is the most stupendous ass you can conceive, and is always haranguing me about 'the position of a diplomatist,' and the 'representative of her Britannic Majesty;' he makes a _précis_ of his washing-bills, and tells me that Lord Palmerston would not 'suffer my handwriting, which is frivolous and unformed.' What the deuce do I care? I only wish I was back in England--not for the reasons which you probably assign for the wish. All that is past and gone, and I sometimes grow hot all over when I think of the melodramatic farewell which I took of you, my dear old Charley, at the London Bridge station. I was an idiot then; but now that fire has burnt out, and left very cold ashes. I hope Mrs.