_October 12th_.--The ravages of the disease increase. We were to have gone to pay two visits in Essex this week, but our hosts are so distracted by the loss of their kine and the absence of dairy produce that they broke up their party and put us off. _October 18th_.--The opinion of the Cattle Commission is that nothing can be done to stay the plague without putting a stop to all transport or movement of live cattle; and I expect this will be done. But how are we to be fed? _November 23rd_.--The Lords of the Council have at last resolved to give all local authorities in Britain the power of stopping the entry of cattle into their own district, and all beasts brought to the Metropolitan Market are to be killed there. And thus this plague, the illness and death of Lord Palmerston, and--more personal--the alarming illness and slow, lingering convalescence of Miss Charlotte Dempster--'my fair contributor,' as Reeve used to call her--fill the correspondence of the year. One note only, an account of Reeve's visit to Woodnorton, has a more particular interest. _To Mr. Dempster_ _C. O., November 23rd_.--My last campaign has been in Worcestershire, where I went to see a barnful of princes and princesses in a house much more like a very wild Highland shooting quarter than an Englishman's hunting-box. However, this only made the whole party more jolly; and as the stables are very superior to the house, I shall entreat them, the next time I go, to give me a loose box instead of a bedroom. Cutbush is supposed to have slept on a dresser in the servants' hall; and a stray Frenchman who arrived one evening was laid up in the smoking-room, on a sofa. And, according to the Journal, the year closed with-- Visits to Farnborough, Denbigh (Haslemere), and Timsbury [Ralph Dutton's, near Romsey]. Between Reeve and the Duttons there was a friendship of many years' standing, and they were there, wrote Mrs. Reeve, 'a pleasant little party of ten, only Henry has had a very bad fit of gout and could not join the shooters, or even the dinner-table some days: too provoking!' They remained at Timsbury for a week, and then:-- _January 10th_.--A pleasant party at Torry Hill, with Sir E. Head and Kit. Pemberton. Shooting in the snow, which was heavy. _18th_.--Sir C. Eastlake was buried. One day at a dinner party of Royal Academicians at Eastlake's, they were discussing the merits of Solomon the painter and praising him. 'Yes,' said Valentine Prinsep, 'but Solomon in all his glory is not R.A.ed like one of these.'