But I am at this moment going to talk in my own proper person to my own particular public, which, as I find by my correspondence, is a very considerable one, and with which I consider myself in exceptionally pleasant relations.

I have read recently that Mr. Gladstone receives six hundred letters a day.  Perhaps he does not receive six hundred letters every day, but if he gets anything like half that number daily, what can he do with them?  There was a time when he was said to answer all his correspondents.  It is understood, I think, that he has given up doing so in these later days.

I do not pretend that I receive six hundred or even sixty letters a day, but I do receive a good many, and have told the public of the fact from time to time, under the pressure of their constantly increasing exertions.  As it is extremely onerous, and is soon going to be impossible, for me to keep up the wide range of correspondence which has become a large part of my occupation, and tends to absorb all the vital force which is left me, I wish to enter into a final explanation with the well-meaning but merciless taskmasters who have now for many years been levying their daily tax upon me.  I have preserved thousands of their letters, and destroyed a very large number, after answering most of them.  A few interesting chapters might be made out of the letters I have kept,—­not only such as are signed by the names of well-known personages, but many from unknown friends, of whom I had never heard before and have never heard since.  A great deal of the best writing the languages of the world have ever known has been committed to leaves that withered out of sight before a second sunlight had fallen upon them.  I have had many letters I should have liked to give the public, had their nature admitted of their being offered to the world.  What straggles of young ambition, finding no place for its energies, or feeling its incapacity to reach the ideal towards which it was striving!  What longings of disappointed, defeated fellow-mortals, trying to find a new home for themselves in the heart of one whom they have amiably idealized!  And oh, what hopeless efforts of mediocrities and inferiorities, believing in themselves as superiorities, and stumbling on through limping disappointments to prostrate failure!  Poverty comes pleading, not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable wares.  The unreadable author particularly requests us to make a critical examination of his book, and report to him whatever may be our verdict,—­as if he wanted anything but our praise, and that very often to be used in his publisher’s advertisements.