We are very comfortably quartered. I fancy that the "business" will be on the whole better here than in Glasgow, where trade is said to be very bad. But I think I shall be pretty correct in both places as to the run being on the final readings. We are going up Arthur's Seat presently, which will be a pull for our fat friend. Scott, in a new Mephistopheles hat, baffles imagination and description. [Sidenote: Mr. W. Wilkie Collins.] KENNEDY'S HOTEL, EDINBURGH, _Tuesday, Dec. 8th, 1868._ MY DEAR WILKIE, I am hard at it here as usual, though with an audience so finely perceptive that the labour is much diminished. I have got together in a very short space the conclusion of "Oliver Twist" that you suggested, and am trying it daily with the object of rising from that blank state of horror into a fierce and passionate rush for the end. As yet I cannot make a certain effect of it; but when I shall have gone over it as many score of times as over the rest of that reading, perhaps I may strike one out. I shall be very glad to hear when you have done your play, and I _am_ glad to hear that you like the steamer. I agree with you about the reading perfectly. In No. 3 you will see an exact account of some places I visited at Ratcliffe. There are two little instances in it of something comic rising up in the midst of the direst misery, that struck me very humorously at the time. As I have determined not to do the "Oliver Murder" until after the 5th of January, when I shall ascertain its effect on a great audience, it is curious to notice how the shadow of its coming affects the Scotch mind. There was such a disposition to hold back for it here (until I return to finish in February) that we had next to no "let" when we arrived. It all came with a rush yesterday. They gave me a most magnificent welcome back from America last night. I am perpetually counting the weeks before me to be "read" through, and am perpetually longing for the end of them; and yet I sometimes wonder whether I shall miss something when they are over. It is a very, very bad day here, very dark and very wet. Dolby is over at Glasgow, and I am sitting at a side window looking up the length of Prince's Street, watching the mist change over the Castle and murdering Nancy by turns. Ever affectionately. P.S.--I have read the whole of Fitzgerald's "Zero," and the idea is exceedingly well wrought out. [Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.] KENNEDY'S HOTEL, EDINBURGH, _Saturday, Dec. 12th, 1868._ I send another _Scotsman_ by this post, because it is really a good newspaper, well written, and well managed. We had an immense house here last night, and a very large turn-away.