CONCLUSION. 333 



<; Since I last wrote to you I have been 

 very seriously ill. The starvation went on 

 and on, and no one could relieve it, till I had 

 to stay in the bedroom, and finally went to 

 bed, fainting nearly all day and night, and yet 

 craving for food, half delirious, and in the most 

 dreadful state. How I endured I cannot tell. 

 At last I had Dr. Kidd down from London, 

 and in forty-eight hours his treatment checked 

 the disease, I got downstairs, next, out of 

 doors in a Bath-chair, and now I can walk 

 two hundred yards. But I am still the veriest 

 shadow of a man my nerves are gone to 

 pieces and he warns me that it will take 

 months to effect a cure. Of that, however, 

 he is certain. Under his advice I have left 

 Eltham, and am staying here (Rotherfield, 

 Sussex) till a cottage can be found for me 

 near Tunbridge Wells. . . . My last piece of 

 MS. appears in Longman this month, and I 

 havo now no more left, having exhausted all I 

 wrote when able. At least, there remains but 

 one piece ' Nature in the Louvre.' It is 

 about a beautiful statue that interested me 

 greatly, and which seems to have escaped 



