and other great houses, and to galleries galore, until we had not a foot to stand upon from fatigue. Then we journeyed up to York Minster, and to Edinburgh, and to Blair Athole, and to the "Queen's View," and down by the English lakes; then back to London for some late balls and dinners, and some invitations to country-houses within a few hours of London.
In this my first visit to London I was struck with the intellectual tone of certain houses. Men of distinction, artists, and authors were invited everywhere and made much of. Literary and intellectual questions came into the gayest salons. Those agreeable men, the English clergy, seemed omnipresent, and London was a metropolis of science, letters, and the fine arts. Having been introduced by Mr. Motley, it was possible that we saw more that was polished and intellectual than we should have done otherwise; but we were struck, among the older men, not only with that polish of an hereditary aristocracy, but with the respect with which they treated men of genius — those eminent old men — like the Duke of Abercorn, whom some one called "the last of the grand seigniors," being conspicuously elegant and courteous. They were pre-eminently well-mannered. Lord Houghton was so very individual a man that it was impossible to call him a typical Englishman. He liked to gather oddities and geniuses around his table, and he was always particularly friendly to Americans. We came in at the end of war. The North had been victorious; we Northerners were the fashion; but one lady confided to me that she thought it strange that our President, Mr, Reverdy Johnson, should come over as minister! She could not separate Reverdy from Andrew Johnson. They really knew very little about us.
Mr. Motley, aristocrat by birth, association, education,
