I have long been thinking I would answer a long and kind letter I had from you some weeks ago, in which you condoled with me about my finances, and offered me your house as a Refuge for the Destitute. I can never wonder at generosity in you: but I am sorry I should have seemed to complain so much as to provoke so much pity from you. I am not worse off than I have been these last three years; and so much better off than thousands who deserve more that I should deserve to be kicked if I whined over my decayed fortunes. If I go to Italy, it will be to see Florence and Fred. Tennyson: I do not despair of going one day: I believe my desire is gathering, and my indolence warming up with the exhilarating increase of Railroads. But for the present here I am, at 19 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, come up to have a fresh squabble with Lawyers, and to see to an old College friend who is gone mad, and threatens to drive his wife mad too, I think. Here are troubles, if you like: I mean, these poor people's. Well, I have not had much time except to post about in Omnibi between Lincoln's Inn and Bayswater: but I have seen Alfred once; Carlyle once; Thackeray twice; and Spedding many times. I did not see Mrs. A.: but am to go and dine there one day before I leave. Carlyle has been undergoing the Water System at Malvern, and says it has done him a very little good. He would be quite well, he says, if he threw his Books away, and walked about the mountains: but that would be 'propter vitam, etc.' Nature made him a Writer: so he must wear himself out writing Lives of Sterling, etc., for the Benefit of the World. Thackeray says he is getting tired of being witty, and of the great world: he is now gone to deliver his Lectures {272} at Edinburgh: having already given them at Oxford and Cambridge. Alfred, I thought looking pretty well. Spedding is immutably wise, good, and delightful: not so immutably well in Body, I think: though he does not complain. But I will deal in no more vaticinations of Evil. I can't think what was the oracle in my Letters you allude to, I mean about the three years' duration of our lives. I have long felt about England as you do, and even made up my mind to it, so as to sit comparatively, if ignobly, easy on that score. Sometimes I envy those who are so old that the curtain will probably fall on them before it does on their Country. If one could save the Race, what a Cause it would be! not for one's own glory as a member of it, nor even for its glory as a Nation: but because it is the only spot in Europe where Freedom keeps her place. Had I Alfred's voice, I would not have mumbled for years over In Memoriam and the Princess, but sung such strains as would have revived the [Greek text] to guard the territory they had won. What can 'In Memoriam' do but make us all sentimental? . . .