"I presume judging by the Duke's next letter that I had made some remark concerning his silence, as he writes therein dating it Jan. 14th--'I have scarcely time for rest or meals. You must excuse me! I cannot do it! Surely patience is a Christian virtue enjoined to us by the precepts as well as by the example of our Saviour.'" Biographers of the Duke mention his power of going for hours without food, and then atoning for his abstinence by a hearty meal. His usual daily routine was to rise at seven, and go out of doors at once, returning to breakfast at nine. He ate no lunch, and dined at seven. When much pressed with work, he was accustomed to have his dinner served on a small round oaken table in the library, where he ate alone, surrounded by his papers. His correspondence was enormous, owing to his practice of answering all his letters himself. He occasionally availed himself of a lithographed form in reply to some correspondents, and also sometimes adopted a sharpness of tone in answering irrelevant communications, in the hope that he might thus hinder their authors from writing again. As a rule, however, a courteous letter was apt to receive a courteous reply. The narrowness of Miss J.'s mental horizon is nowhere more strikingly shown than by her inability to comprehend the whirl of business that must have made life, to a man of the Duke of Wellington's conscientiousness, a ceaseless round of fatiguing labor. "In the Duke's next letter, dated Feb. 4th, he writes--'I have received many letters from you and I am really ashamed of being under the necessity of repeating over again what I have stated so repeatedly, that I have not leisure time to acknowledge the receipt of and thank you for each of your letters when it reaches me.' "In the Duke's next letter, dated March 13th, he writes--'I don't know whether you ever read the letters which I write to you. I doubt it, because I cannot make out how it happens that you do not notice or believe what I tell you in every one that I write, namely, that my time is so much occupied that I have scarcely time for the rest which is necessary.' "In the Duke's next letter, dated March 20th, he writes--'I have received all your letters, the last this day, dated Wednesday, March 18th. I should have answered the two earlier ones at the time I received them if I had had one moment's leisure.'" STRATHFIELDSAYE, April 17, 1846. MY DEAR MISS J.--I have just now received your Note of the 15^th and I am very sorry to observe that I have again offended you by quitting London without going to pay you a visit; and because I have not acknowledged the receipt of some late letters received from you. I wish I could induce you to believe that the disposal of my time does not depend upon myself; whether to pay visits or to write.