except a devoted love of Ireland. He was a great reader of books, and, I fear, a great dreamer of dreams.
Susan's old friend, Miss O'Meara, says my diary, told me that Beranger had resided for several years in the rather shabby pension on the Rue Chateaubrand (No. 3) with Madame Thérèse. Their meals were served in their apartment, and he never came to the table, d'hôte, or drawing-room. She sometimes did, and was received by the most strait-laced English as a personage. The habitual life of this epicurean poet was as simple and regular as that of an English artisan of the better sort. He went to a café in the evening, and seldom received any person. His dress was the Sunday clothes of an ouvrier, coarse, loose, and ill-made, but clean and orderly.
In London I went on a visit to Lord O'Hagan for a time, but I was unwilling to bring to the house of a judge the miscellaneous political clientèle who sought me from time to time. Two or three scraps from my diary will suffice:—
I met Dr. Manning, the new Archbishop of Westminister, at dinner, and had a long talk with him and O'Hagan on Irish affairs, in which he takes a genuine interest.
Went to hear Dr. Manning preach. The style is correct and solid, but to my Celtic taste it is so tame as to be ineffectual; it runs on like a gently rippling brook, which never breaks into cascades. Dined with him afterwards, in his strange, naked mansion in the purlieus of Westminister. He talks well and frankly, and with generous freedom from reserve. I spoke to him of Australia; he recommended the new religious orders for that country in preference to the older ones, which, with the exception of the Jesuits, have done their work. In all new countries there is a tendency, hard to control, to grasp land or gold; it had marred the Protestant missions, and must be sedulously guarded against in the Catholic ones. As regards politics, he said that the comfort and happiness of the working people was the first duty of Government as well as philanthropy; he said he was cordially with Ireland in the effort to undo altogether the work of injustice and mis-government. As for English parties, he knew Gladstone from early manhood, and sympathised much with him, but if he desired, as it was alleged, to disestablish the English Church, there they must part. He regarded the Established Church as a bulwark against Agnosticism which it would be a grievous error to remove.
I found poor John Forster seriously ill and very hopeless about himself. He has not left the house for months, and fears that he will never leave it. I am deeply touched by the condition of a man whom I have known for more than twenty years, and who was inexhaustible in his kindness and services. He has been the intimate friend of Carlyle, Dickens, Bulwer Lytton, Savage, Landor, Browning, and many more, and seems to have been loved by them all.
Before I left London Isaac Butt wrote to me:—
Wheatsheaf, Virginia Water, June 27, 1874.My dear Duffy,—I was greatly disappointed at leaving London without calling on you to welcome you back.
You know, no doubt, the task I have before me on Tuesday. I have
