It was my fortune to be in London in the month of February, 1847, during her residence there, and to receive from her and Mr. Bancroft many acts of kindness. It was during the Irish famine, and a benefit was planned to be held at Drury Lane Theatre, to add to the Irish charitable fund. There was no public sale of tickets, but a committee took the house from parquette to ceiling, and sent tickets for whole boxes to such members of the nobility as were available, and to the diplomatic corps, with prices affixed, which of course were taken regardless of cost in the nature of subscriptions, and tickets for the parquette to such single persons as they thought expedient. Mr. Bancroft’s box containing four chairs, was occupied by himself and Mrs. Bancroft, Henry H. Milman, then distinguished as an historian, poet and dramatic writer, and Professor of poetry at Oxford, but later known as Dean of St. Paul’s, and myself. In the dramatic world Mr. Milman was known as the author of the tragedy of Fazio, which I have seen played at the old Tremont theatre by Forrest and the elder Booth. The royal box, directly opposite in the same row, was occupied by Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and the Duke of Cambridge. In the box next to the royal box were the Duke of Wellington and the Marchioness of Douro, while others whom I remember in other boxes were the Duke of Devonshire, the Earl of Westminster, the Duke of Norfolk, Hon. Mrs. Norton, Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Lord Lyndhurst, Macaulay, Hume, and Lord George Bentinck. I was undoubtedly the only American in the house, and probably the only one in the audience whom the society reporter of the _Times_ could not call by name. At a dinner at Mr. Bancroft’s, I had an opportunity of meeting Thomas Carlyle, and I was astonished at his bitter denunciation of men and events, and his almost brutal speech. While the Irish question was under discussion, Duncan C. Pell of New York, one of the guests, asked him what he would do with the Irish, and bringing his hand down roughly on the table he growled out, “I would shoot every mother’s son of them.” I could not help contrasting his coarseness with the sweet and gentle spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson, his friend on our side of the ocean.