My son Charley has come for the dinner, and Chappell (my Proprietor, as--isn't it Wemmick?--says) is coming to-day, and Lord Dufferin (Mrs. Norton's nephew) is to come and make _the_ speech. I don't envy the feelings of my noble friend when he sees the hall. Seriously, it is less adapted to speaking than Westminster Abbey, and is as large. . . . I hope you will see Fechter in a really clever piece by Wilkie.[103] Also you will see the Academy Exhibition, which will be a very good one; and also we will, please God, see everything and more, and everything else after that. I begin to doubt and fear on the subject of your having a horror of me after seeing the murder. I don't think a hand moved while I was doing it last night, or an eye looked away. And there was a fixed expression of horror of me, all over the theatre, which could not have been surpassed if I had been going to be hanged to that red velvet table. It is quite a new sensation to be execrated with that unanimity; and I hope it will remain so! [Is it lawful--would that woman in the black gaiters, green veil, and spectacles, hold it so--to send my love to the pretty M----?] Pack up, my dear Fields, and be quick. Ever your most affectionate. [Sidenote: Mr. Rusden.] PRESTON, _Thursday, 22nd April, 1869._ MY DEAR SIR, I am finishing my Farewell Readings--to-night is the seventy-fourth out of one hundred--and have barely time to send you a line to thank you most heartily for yours of the 30th January, and for your great kindness to Alfred and Edward. The latter wrote by the same mail, on behalf of both, expressing the warmest gratitude to you, and reporting himself in the stoutest heart and hope. I never can thank you sufficiently. You will see that the new Ministry has made a decided hit with its Budget, and that in the matter of the Irish Church it has the country at its back. You will also see that the "Reform League" has dissolved itself, indisputably because it became aware that the people did not want it. I think the general feeling in England is a desire to get the Irish Church out of the way of many social reforms, and to have it done _with_ as already done _for_. I do not in the least believe myself that agrarian Ireland is to be pacified by any such means, or can have it got out of its mistaken head that the land is of right the peasantry's, and that every man who owns land has stolen it and is therefore to be shot. But that is not the question. The clock strikes post-time as I write, and I fear to write more, lest, at this distance from London, I should imperil the next mail. Cordially yours. [Sidenote: Mr. Thomas Chappell.] OFFICE OF "ALL THE YEAR ROUND," _Monday, 3rd May, 1869._ MY DEAR MR. CHAPPELL,