i854 AN EVENTFUL YEAR 12/ 



would be very small, and I think there is every probability of 

 their dividing the chair, in which case I certainly would not go. 

 However, I hate thinking about the thing. 



And also to his sister: — 



Nov. 26, 1854. 

 My dearest Lizzie — I feel I have been silent very long — a 

 great deal too long — but you would understand if you knew how 

 much I have to do ; why, with every disposition to do otherwise, 

 I now write hardly any but business letters. Even Nettie comes 

 off badly I am afraid. When a man embarks as I have done, 

 with nothing but his brains to back him, on the great sea of life 

 in London, with the determination to make the influence and the 

 position and the money which he hasn't got, you may depend 

 upon it that the fierce wants and interests of his present and 

 immediate circle leave him little time to think of anything else, 

 whatever old loves and old memories may be smouldering as 

 warmly as ever below the surface. So, sister mine, you must 

 not imagine because I do not write that therefore I do not think 

 of you or care to know about you, but only that I am eaten up 

 with the zeal of my own house, and doing with all my heart the 

 thing that the moment calls for. 



The last year has been eventful for me. There is always 

 a Cape Horn in one's life that one either weathers or wrecks 

 one's self on. Thank God I think I may say I have weathered 

 mine — not without a good deal of damage to spars and rigging 

 though, for it blew deuced hard on the other side. 



At the commencement of this year my affairs came to a 

 crisis. The Government, notwithstanding all the representa- 

 tions which were made to them, would neither give nor refuse 

 the grant for the publication of my work, and by way of cutting 

 short all further discussion the Admiralty called upon me to 

 serve. A correspondence ensued, in which, as commonly hap- 

 pens in these cases, they got the worst of it in logic and words, 

 and I in reality and " tin." They answered my syllogism by 

 the irrelevant and absurd threat of stopping my pay if I did not 

 serve at once. Here was a pretty business! However, it was 

 no use turning back when so much had been sacrificed for one's 

 end, so I put their Lordships' letter up on my mantelpiece and 

 betook myself to scribbling for my bread. They, on the other 

 hand, removed my name from the List. So there was an inter- 

 regnum when I was no longer in Her Majesty's service. I had 

 already joined the Westminster Review, and had inured myself 



