Parson Wilbur, when he is considering the question whether the ability to express ourselves in articulate language has been productive of more good than evil, esteems his own ignorance of all tongues except Yankee and the dead languages as “a kind of martello tower, in which I am safe from the furious bombardments of foreign garrulity.” There is something comforting and fascinating in this doctrine, but still on the whole it is decidedly disagreeable to be reduced to signs for purposes of intercourse, as is generally the case here. Not one soul in a hundred can speak French. Their talk sounds like a sewing machine, with an occasional word of English interspersed in the clicking. I am told that if you will only talk broad Durham or Yorkshire they will understand you, but I do not believe it, as the sounds are quite unlike. The names of these people are wonderful. For instance, those on the bathing machines just opposite my hotel are, Yan Yooren, Yan Yulpen, Siska Deneve, Sandelays, and Colette Claes, abbreviated into Clotty by two English schoolboys who have lately appeared, and are the worst dressed and the best bathers of all the young folk here. They are fast friends, I see, with a young Russian, whose father, an old officer, sits near me at the _table d’hôte_. Poor old boy! I never saw a man so bored, in fact he has disclosed to me that he can stand it no longer. Blankenberghe has been quite too much for him. Lest it should also prove so to your readers, I will end with his last words (though I by no means endorse his judgment of the little Flemish watering-place), “_Maintenant je n’y puis plus!_” AMERICA _My father in 1870 went to America for the first time. His time was so much occupied there that he could write only home letters. My mother has allowed me to make extracts from these, thinking that they serve to introduce his later letters from America, which were addressed to the _Spectator_._ _It was owing to the fact of my father’s having publicly taken the side of the North in the Civil War that his reception in the United States in 1870 was so particularly warm and hearty._ Peruvian, 6.45 p.m. Here I am, in my officer’s cabin, a small separate hole in our little world on the water, all to myself. At this moment I look out of my porthole and see the Welsh mountains coming out against a bed of daffodil sky, for though it has been misty all day it is now a lovely clear evening. The sea is quite calm, and there is scarcely any motion in the ship. The tea-bell is ringing, so I must stop for a little, but I shall have plenty of time to tell you all that has happened as yet, as we shall be lying off Londonderry nearly all day to-morrow. The mail does not come off to us till about 5 P.M., and we shall be there about nine in the morning or thereabouts. I may perhaps run up to Derry to see the old town and the gate and walls, etc., sacred to the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good king William. 8.45 p.m.