more than the middle. I have ripened and am ripening so slowly that I
should be glad of as much time as possible. Yet I can feel, I rejoice
to say, an inward spring which seems more and more to gain strength
and to promise to resist outward shocks, if they must come, however
rough. But of this inward spring one must not talk [it is only to his
mother that he writes this] for it does not like being talked about,
and threatens to depart if one will not leave it in mystery."

An interview with Mr Disraeli at Aston Clinton, not, as one may
suppose, without pleasant words, opens 1864. "It is only from
politicians who have themselves felt the spell of literature that one
gets these charming speeches," he says, and they, not unnaturally,
charmed him so much that he left his dressing-case and his umbrella
behind him. But the anti-crusade is more and more declared. He "means
to deliver the middle-class out of the hand of their Dissenting
ministers," and in the interval wants to know how "that beast of a
word 'waggonette' is spelt?" The early summer was spent at Woodford,
on the borders of Epping Forest, and the early autumn at Llandudno,
where Welsh scenery and the poetry of the Celtic race "quite
overpower" him. Alas! some other poetry did not, and when we find him
in September thinking _Enoch Arden_ "perhaps the best thing
Tennyson has done," we are not surprised to find this remarkable
special appreciation followed by a general depreciation, which is
quite in keeping. He is even tempted (and of course asked) to write a
criticism of the Laureate, but justly replies, "How is that possible?"

From 1865 we get numerous notices of the notices of the _Essays_,
and a pleasant and full account of a second official tour on the
Continent, with special dwellings at most of the Western and Central
European capitals. The tour lasted from April to November, and I have