"Old Hall House, near Ware,
"May 20, 1870.
"Your lecture reached me the day after I last wrote to you. You will receive by this mail a batch of pamphlets, and will see what use I made of it. The effect of my article on English opinion had already been extraordinary—Times, Spectator, Saturday Review, Telegraph (the latter mainly on your lecture about 5th of May) all came out on the same key. I have had letters or messages from Gladstone, the Lord- Lieutenant, Lord Dufferin, and last, not least among ministers, my Lady Waldegrave—and on the other hand the pamphlet is selling and telling in Ireland. Mr. Sullivan devoted six columns of garbage to it. The Belfast and Cork papers are very enthusiastic and in fact the effect on one side of the Channel is not less than on the other.
"I breakfasted with Monsell yesterday, and I read him your letter written on the eve of the Dissolution. We now know that McCulloch is in, but that is all. I need not say how anxious I am for the arrival of the mail just telegraphed. Monsell asked me to suggest to you to write to me for publication a letter on the Land Law. It would, I think, be a real public service."
At the same time he announced the death of an old friend.
"I have to tell you sad and shocking news. George Henry Moore died at his place in Mayo three days ago quite suddenly of apoplexy. It is a great grief to all who knew him—a peculiar one to me. We differed and tended to differ more and more every day as to public business, for he intensely disliked and distrusted Gladstone."
Marcus Clarke spoke to me more than once of a story entitled "His Natural Life" which he was publishing in a Melbourne periodical. He invited me to look at it, which I promised to do whenever I had leisure, and finally, as it was drawing to a close, he sent me the portion published:—
"My Dear Sir,—I take the liberty of sending some numbers of the Australian Journal containing all that is yet published of my new novel, 'His Natural Life.' 'His Natural Life' is an attempt to expose the infamies that
