In the evening the house was opened in a general way for callers, who were coming and going all the evening.  I think there must have been over two hundred people—­among them Martin Farquhar Tupper, a little man, with fresh, rosy complexion, and cheery, joyous manners; and Mary Howitt, just such a cheerful, sensible, fireside companion as we find her in her books,—­winning love and trust the very first few moments of the interview.  The general topic of remark on meeting me seems to be, that I am not so bad looking as they were afraid I was; and I do assure you that, when I have seen the things that are put up in the shop windows here with my name under them, I have been in wondering admiration at the boundless loving-kindness of my English and Scottish friends, in keeping up such a warm heart for such a Gorgon.  I should think that the Sphinx in the London Museum might have sat for most of them.  I am going to make a collection of these portraits to bring home to you.  There is a great variety of them, and they will be useful, like the Irishman’s guideboard, which showed where the road did not go.

Before the evening was through I was talked out and worn out—­there was hardly a chip of me left.  To-morrow at eleven o’clock comes the meeting at Stafford House.  What it will amount to I do not know; but I take no thought for the morrow.

LETTER XVI.

MAY 8.

MY DEAR C.:—­

In fulfilment of my agreement, I will tell you, as nearly as I can remember, all the details of the meeting at Stafford House.

At about eleven o’clock we drove under the arched carriage way of a mansion, externally, not very showy in appearance.  It stands on the borders of St. James’s Park, opposite to Buckingham Palace, with a street on the north side, and beautiful gardens on the south, while the park is extended on the west.

We were received at the door by two stately Highlanders in full costume; and what seemed to me an innumerable multitude of servants in livery, with powdered hair, repeated our names through the long corridors, from one to another.

I have only a confused idea of passing from passage to passage, and from hall to hall, till finally we were introduced into a large drawing room.  No person was present, and I was at full leisure to survey an apartment whose arrangements more perfectly suited my eye and taste than any I had ever seen before.  There was not any particular splendor of furniture, or dazzling display of upholstery, but an artistic, poetic air, resulting from the arrangement of colors, and the disposition of the works of virtu with which the room abounded.  The great fault in many splendid rooms, is, that they are arranged without any eye to unity of impression.  The things in them may be all fine in their way, but there is no harmony of result.

People do not often consider that there may be a general sentiment to be expressed in the arrangement of a room, as well as in the composition of a picture.  It is this leading idea which corresponds to what painters call the ground tone, or harmonizing tint, of a picture.  The presence of this often renders a very simple room extremely fascinating, and the absence of it makes the most splendid combinations of furniture powerless to please.