my debts, and it will take me long to lay up three thousand dollars. When I can do it, I shall, and make America a farewell visit for years.” Willis followed up his advantages assiduously. He went constantly to Lady Blessington’s, exchanged calls with Moore, breakfasted with Procter and also with that entertaining diarist, Henry Crabb Robinson, to whom he brought a letter from Landor, and in whose rooms in the Temple he met Charles and Mary Lamb. His Parisian acquaintance, Dr. Bowring, was back in London and introduced him to a number of people. At an evening party at the Bulwers’ he met Sir Leicester Stanhope, who had been with Byron in Greece, and with whose beautiful wife Willis became quite a favorite, composing his verses “Upon the Portrait of the Hon. Mrs. Stanhope” to accompany an engraving of her in Lady Blessington’s “Book of Beauty.” At the Stanhopes’ he met that famous pair of beauties, “the Sheridan girls,” Mrs. Norton and her sister, Lady Dufferin, to the former of whom he had addressed a poem written at Paris in 1832 and printed in the “Mirror” of July 7, 1834. It was the height of the London season, and the opera was in full blast, with Grisi singing and Fanny Elssler in the ballet. Willis was admitted to the Alfred Club, and invitations to dinners and parties began to pour in upon him. All these gayeties he described in his letters to Morris, which, losing somewhat, it may be, in picturesqueness, gained greatly in personal interest during his stay in England. It was in the course of this first summer in London that he got acquainted with Mary Russell Mitford, who invited him to spend a week at Reading, and with whom he maintained for some time a friendly correspondence. A letter to Miss Jephson, July 23, 1834, gives her first impression of him:-- “I also liked very much Mr. Willis, an American author, whose ‘Unwritten Poetry’ and ‘Unwritten Philosophy’ you may remember in my American book,[2] and who is now understood to be here to publish his account of England. He is a very elegant young man, and more like one of the best of our peers’ sons than a rough republican.” The generally agreeable impression which Willis made in English society was not without its exceptions. During this same summer in London he had been taken by a friend to see Miss Harriet Martineau. She was then on the point of embarking for that trip in America, her very outspoken narrative of which afterwards caused so many heart-burnings in this country. Her vinegary reminiscences of Willis, as recorded in her autobiography, though rather long, are perhaps worth reproducing here, not only for their liveliness, but because any contemporary impression, however unjust and mistaken, helps to fill out a complete picture of the man, and there were plenty of people who disliked Willis cordially.