Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Professor Bryce is staying here for three days, and last night we had about thirty people to meet him. . . . To-night I dine with Bryce at the Charles Perkins's before his lecture; he is very easy and agreeable.

I have not seen what Mr. Venable has written about Carlyle; but he is doubtless the agreeable old gentleman with whom I dined at Sir Frederick Pollock's and who seemed so much like a living Horace Walpole. He has written the “Annual Obituary” in the “Times” for many years and knows everybody. I should think him candid and fair-minded.

Mrs. Carlyle I have not read yet, but it must be a tragic book. Charles Norton said of the “Reminiscences” that he did not think Froude loved Carlyle, or he could not have done anything so cruel. I think you will be surprised at the self-restraint and good taste of Norton's notes to the “Emerson-Carlyle Correspondence.” For a man so set in his opinions, I think this quite remarkable.

C. F. Adams, Jr., spent the morning here. He thinks the country not yet recovered from the tremendous