Holland House has four-and-twenty youthful pages in it now--twelve for my lord, and twelve for my lady; and no clergyman coils his leg up under his chair all dinner-time, and begins to uncurve it when the hostess goes. No wheeled chair runs smoothly in with that beaming face in it; and ----'s little cotton pocket-handkerchief helped to make (I believe) this very sheet of paper. A half-sad, half-ludicrous story of Rogers is all I will sully it with. You know, I daresay, that for a year or so before his death he wandered, and lost himself like one of the Children in the Wood, grown up there and grown down again. He had Mrs. Procter and Mrs. Carlyle to breakfast with him one morning--only those two. Both excessively talkative, very quick and clever, and bent on entertaining him. When Mrs. Carlyle had flashed and shone before him for about three-quarters of an hour on one subject, he turned his poor old eyes on Mrs. Procter, and pointing to the brilliant discourser with his poor old finger, said (indignantly), "Who is _she_?" Upon this, Mrs. Procter, cutting in, delivered (it is her own story) a neat oration on the life and writings of Carlyle, and enlightened him in her happiest and airiest manner; all of which he heard, staring in the dreariest silence, and then said (indignantly, as before), "And who are _you_?" Ever, my dear Irving, Most affectionately and truly yours. [Sidenote: Mr. Frank Stone, A.R.A] VILLE DES MOULINEAUX, BOULOGNE, _Wednesday, 9th July, 1856._ MY DEAR STONE, I have got a capital part for you in the farce,[66] not a difficult one to learn, as you never say anything but "Yes" and "No." You are called in the _dramatis personae_ an able-bodied British seaman, and you are never seen by mortal eye to do anything (except inopportunely producing a mop) but stand about the deck of the boat in everybody's way, with your hair immensely touzled, one brace on, your hands in your pockets, and the bottoms of your trousers tucked up. Yet you are inextricably connected with the plot, and are the man whom everybody is inquiring after. I think it is a very whimsical idea and extremely droll. It made me laugh heartily when I jotted it all down yesterday. Loves from all my house to all yours. Ever affectionately. FOOTNOTE: [66] The farce alluded to, however, was never written. It had been projected to be played at the Amateur Theatricals at Tavistock House. 1857. [Sidenote: Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.] TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Wednesday, 28th January, 1857._ MY DEAR BULWER,