entered Mr. Tupper, and, without seeing me, exchanged warm greetings with
the white-haired gentleman. "I suppose," began Mr. Tupper, "you have
come to meet--" Now, conscious that my name was going to be spoken, and
not knowing but the excellent Mr. Tupper might say something which he
would not, quite like me to overhear, I advanced at once, with
outstretched hand, and saluted him. He expressed great joy at the
recognition, and immediately introduced me to Mr. Hall.

The dining-room was pretty large and lofty, and there were sixteen guests
at table, most of them authors, or people connected with the press; so
that the party represented a great deal of the working intellect of
London at this present day and moment,--the men whose plays, whose songs,
whose articles, are just now in vogue. Mr. Tom Taylor was one of the
very few whose writings I had known anything about. He is a tall,
slender, dark young man, not English-looking, and wearing colored
spectacles, so that I should readily have taken him for an American
literary man. I did not have much opportunity of talking with him, nor
with anybody else, except Dr. ------, who seemed a shrewd, sensible man,
with a certain slight acerbity of thought. Mr. Herbert Ingram, recently
elected member of Parliament, was likewise present, and sat on Bennoch's
left.

It was a very good dinner, with an abundance of wine, which Bennoch sent
round faster than was for the next day's comfort of his guests. It is
singular that I should thus far have quite forgotten W------ H--------,
whose books I know better than those of any other person there. He is a
white-headed, stout, firm-looking, and rather wrinkled-faced old
gentleman, whose temper, I should imagine, was not the very sweetest in
the world. There is all abruptness, a kind of sub-acidity, if not
bitterness, in his address; he seemed not to be, in short, so genial as I