We lunched that day at Lady Camperdown’s, where we were happy to meet Miss Frances Power Cobbe.  In the afternoon we went by invitation to a “tea and talk” at the Reverend Mr. Haweis’s, at Chelsea.  We found the house close packed, but managed to get through the rooms, shaking innumerable hands of the reverend gentleman’s parishioners and other visitors.  It was very well arranged, so as not to be too fatiguing, and we left the cordial gathering in good condition.  We drove home with Bishop and Mrs. Ellicott.

After this Sir James Paget called, and took me to a small and early dinner-party; and A——­ went with my secretary, the young lady of whom I have spoken, to see “Human Nature,” at Drury Lane Theatre.

On the following day, after dining with Lady Holland (wife of Sir Henry, niece of Macaulay), we went across the street to our neighbor’s, Lady Stanley’s.  There was to be a great meeting of schoolmistresses, in whose work her son, the Honorable Lyulph Stanley, is deeply interested.  Alas!  The schoolma’ams were just leaving as we entered the door, and all we saw of them was the trail of their descending robes.  I was very sorry for this, for I have a good many friends among our own schoolmistresses, —­friends whom I never saw, but know through the kind words they have addressed to me.

No place in London looks more reserved and exclusive than Devonshire House, standing back behind its high wall, extending along Piccadilly.  There is certainly nothing in its exterior which invites intrusion.  We had the pleasure of taking tea in the great house, accompanying our American friend, Lady Harcourt, and were graciously received and entertained by Lady Edward Cavendish.  Like the other great houses, it is a museum of paintings, statues, objects of interest of all sorts.  It must be confessed that it is pleasanter to go through the rooms with one of the ladies of the household than under the lead of a liveried servant.  Lord Hartington came in while we were there.  All the men who are distinguished in political life become so familiar to the readers of “Punch” in their caricatures, that we know them at sight.  Even those who can claim no such public distinction are occasionally the subjects of the caricaturist, as some of us have found out for ourselves.  A good caricature, which seizes the prominent features and gives them the character Nature hinted, but did not fully carry out, is a work of genius.  Nature herself is a remorseless caricaturist, as our daily intercourse with our fellow men and women makes evident to us, and as is curiously illustrated in the figures of Charles Lebrun, showing the relations between certain human faces and those of various animals.  Hardly an English statesman in bodily presence could be mistaken by any of “Punch’s” readers.