1857* VISITS MANCHESTER AND DUBLIN. 311 



"August 20, 1857. 

 " MANCHESTER EXHIBITION. 



" MY DEAR MOTHER, I have just halted for a rest in a 

 quiet corner near the orchestra, which is about to be filled 

 with musicians and play us a tune. 



" This is dreamland ; fairyland ; a bit of heaven upon 

 earth. Angels who once were ministering spirits have here 

 entered into a typical rest, and with their great white wings 

 crystallized into bright marble, look on with sweet and 

 serene faces, and tell us not to despair of rest. 



" The spirits of some of the wisest, and gentlest, and best 

 of their kind, are here embodied in iron and bronze, and 

 metal and ivory, and all sorts of workable materials ; dead 

 painters, poets, sculptors, artists dead in one sense, alive 

 in another and better sense here speak to us in terms the 

 most winning and persuasive. Again and again do I wish 

 they were living, that I might thank them and bless them. 

 Perhaps if they were living I would rather dispute with 

 them than believe them, but here they have it all their own 

 way. And their way is the best here, for they cannot 

 reply if you refuse their lesson, and you lose the good of it 

 if you carp as to its meaning. And so I gaze, and gaze, 

 and gaze, and often find the tears in my eyes, and often 

 smile with delight, and altogether forget the clogging weight 

 of this evil-good body, through whose dim but not dark 

 windows we are compelled to look. 



"Jessie will send you our news, which are simply none. 

 Your loving son, GEORGE." 



The visit to Dublin was made more enjoyable by the 

 presence of his friends, Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Gladstone, and 

 Professor Voelcker of London, " a happy family " being 



