One day I went into the Abbey at 3.5 p.m. while a beautiful anthem was beautifully sung, and then the prayers and collects, not less beautiful, well intoned on one single note by the Minister. And when I looked up and about me, I thought that Abbey a wonderful structure for Monkeys to have raised. The last night, Mesdames Kemble and Edwards had each of them company, so I went into my old Opera House in the Haymarket, where I remembered the very place where Pasta stood as Medea on the Stage, and Rubini singing his return to his Betrothed in the Puritani, and Taglioni floating everywhere about: and the several Boxes in which sat the several Ranks and Beauties of forty and fifty years ago: my Mother's Box on the third Tier, in which I often figured as a Specimen of both. The Audience all changed much for the worse, I thought: and Opera and Singers also; only one of them who could sing at all, and she sang very well indeed; Trebelli, her name. The opera by a Frenchman on the Wagner plan: excellent instrumentation, but not one new or melodious idea through the whole. _To W. H. Thompson_. LITTLEGRANGE: WOODBRIDGE. _Decr._ 15 [1880]. MY DEAR MASTER, I have not written to you this very long while, simply because I did not wish to trouble you: Aldis Wright will tell you that I have not neglected to enquire about you. I drew him out of Jerusalem Chamber for five minutes three weeks ago: this I did to ask primarily about Mr. Furness on behalf of Mrs. Kemble: but also I asked about you, and was told you were still improving, and prepared to abide the winter here. I saw nobody in London except my two Widows, my dear old Donne, and some coeval Suffolk Friends. I was half tempted to jump into a Bus and just leave my name at Carlyle's Door! But I did not. I should of course have asked and heard how he was: which I can find no one now to tell me. For his Niece has a Child, if only one, to attend to, and I do not like to trouble. I heard from vague Information in London that he is almost confined to his house. I have myself been somewhat bothered at times for the last three months with pains and heaviness about the Heart: which I knew from a Doctor was unsettled five years ago. I shall not at all complain if it takes the usual course, only wishing to avoid _Angina_, or some such form of the Disease. My Family get on gaily enough till seventy, and then generally founder after turning the corner. I hope you know Charles Tennyson's Sonnets; three times too many, and some rather puerile: but scarce one but with something good in Thought or Expression: all original: and some delightful: I think, to live with Alfred's, and no one else's. Old Fred might have made one of Three Brothers, I think, could he have compressed himself into something of Sonnet Compass: but he couldn't. He says, Charles makes one regard and love little things more than any other Poet.