To-morrow being Twelfth Day, seven of Robert’s[523] children drink tea here, and Mrs. Ward’s[524] nineteen youngest come to meet them; so I scoured London yesterday morning to secure a conjuror for their diversion, but there is an awful run on conjurors this month. Spratt of Brook Street is engaged every day till the 19th; Smith of St. James, ditto; but I worked my way steadily up from conjuror to conjuror through all that tract of land lying between No. 1 Brook Street and 32 Fleet Street; and there I finally grabbed Farley, who _says_ he can pound watches into bits, and put rings in eggs and so on, though I rather doubt it. Then from Fleet Street I drove straight and madly to Kent House, determined to insist on the loan of Déjazet, and of Villiers and Thérèse[525] too; if they were not above it; and “I tumbled from my high” when I heard you were in the country till Thursday. What can be the matter? Where is the country, and why are you there? However, if any sudden change in your plans occurs, recollect that our innocent little pleasures commence at 7 to-morrow evening. Bowood was very agreeable. We stayed there eight days. The Greys and Lady Harriet were in their best moods, and very pleasant. Bingham kills me, dead; he is so tiresome, that it almost amounts to an excitement. Macaulay quite wonderful, and I rather like him more for the way in which he snubs the honourable member for V. Even the last morning, when we four were breakfasting together by candle-light to come up by an early express train, he made a last good poke at him. I asked Mr. Dundas for some coffee, and he said he was shocked and he had just drunk it, upon which Macaulay said: “What with your excess and your apologies, Dundas, you put me in mind of Friday, who, when his father asked for a drop of water, began thumping his breast and saying, ‘Friday, ugly dog, drank it all up.’” Mr. Dundas clearly did not like the epithet--indeed so little, that he was obliged to laugh outrageously and to say: “One of the happiest quotations, Macaulay, I have heard you make.” As a general rule, I should not recommend travelling habitually by the railroad with Mr. Macaulay. The more that machine screeches and squeals, the louder he talks; and when my whole soul is wrapped up in wonder as to whether the stoker and the guard are doing their duty, and whether several tenders and trucks are not meeting in between my shoulders, the minor details of the Thirty Years’ War and of the retreat of the 10,000 Greeks lose that thrilling interest they would have in a quiet drawing-room. There is a sort of aggravation in knowing that 10,000 Greeks died ignorant of railway accidents; and there is no use in bothering any more about them, poor old souls!