because of the uncertainties of the mail-carriage by sailing packet. To the “New Monthly” Willis also contributed a number of short poems, “Thoughts in a Balcony at Daybreak,” “The Absent,” “Chamber Scene,” and “To ----” (“Were I a star,” etc.). He wrote for it after his return to America and after it was united with “The Humorist” in 1837, under the editorship of Theodore Hook. His last contribution to it was “The Picker and Piler,” in the April number for 1839. Lady Blessington’s kindness continued after his return to London, and he was taken up by other fashionable bluestockings, dined and wined, fêted and caressed to a degree that may well have made him giddy. The two rival _salons_ to Lady Blessington’s were Holland House and the residence of the Dowager Lady Charleville in Cavendish Square. It does not appear that Willis was invited to the former, but he went to the reunions at Charleville House, though not so constantly as to Seamore Place. Through Lady Blessington’s influence he was admitted to the Travellers’ Club, which was the resort of the ultra fashionable; and, on Sir George Staunton’s nomination, to the Athenæum, which had more of a literary tinge than the Alfred or the Travellers’. Sir George Staunton also presented him at court, a favor which Mr. Vail, the American minister, who disliked Willis for some reason, had declined to render. Another friend gave him a perpetual ticket to the opera. Among his patronesses were the Countess of Arundel and Lady Stepney, who wrote bad novels but gave good dinners. Lady Blessington’s biographer, Madden, who saw a great deal of him in those days, has recorded his recollections of him as follows:-- “I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Willis on many occasions at Gore House, to which reference is made in the rather too celebrated ‘Pencillings by the Way,’ and also at the _soirées_ of the late Lady Charleville in Cavendish Square. Mr. Willis was an extremely agreeable young man in society, somewhat overdressed and a little too _demonstratif_, but abounding in good spirits, pleasing reminiscences of Eastern and Continental travel and of his residence there for some time as _attaché_ to a foreign legation. He was observant and communicative, lively and clever in conversation, having the peculiar art of making himself agreeable to ladies, old as well as young, _dégagé_ in his manner, and on exceedingly good terms with himself and with the _élite_ of the best society, wherever he went.”