I returned the visit of Mr. and Mrs. Leslie, the painter, this week, and saw the picture he is now painting for the Vice-Chancellor. It is a sketch of children, a boy driving his two little sisters as horses. One of the little girls is very like Susie, {37} her size, hair, and complexion. How I longed to be rich enough to order a copy, but his pictures cost a fortune. I paid also a visit this week to the Duchess of Inverness, whom I found in the prettiest, cosiest morning boudoir looking onto the gardens of the Palace. In short, I do, or see, every hour, something that if I were a traveller only, I could make quite a story of. _To W. D. B. and A. B._ LONDON, January 1, 1847. MY DEAR SONS: . . . I wrote my last sheet on the 19th and your father went on that day to Cambridge to be present at the tri-centennial celebration of Trinity College . . . He went also the day after the anniversary, which was on our 22nd December, to Ely, with Peacock, the great mathematician, who is Dean of Ely, to see the great cathedral there . . . While he was at Cambridge I passed the evening of the 22nd at Lady Morgan’s, who happened to have a most agreeable set . . . Lady Morgan’s reunions are entertaining to me because they are collections of lions, but they are not strictly and exclusively fashionable. They remind me in their composition from various circles of Mrs. Otis’s parties in Boston. We have in this respect an advantage over the English themselves, as in our position we see a great variety of cliques.