I fear it would make this narrative too long if I went into detail about the interesting people I met.  Florence and Rossamund Davenport Hill introduced me to Miss Frances Power Cobbe, whose “Intuitive Morals” I admired so much.  At Sir Rowland Hill’s I met Sir Walter Crofter, a prison reformer; Mr. Wells, Editor of “All the Year Round;” Charles Knight, who had done so much for good and cheap literature; Madame Bodichon (formerly Barbara Smith), the great friend and correspondent of George Eliot, who was interesting to me because by introducing the Australian eucalyptus to Algeria she had made an unhealthy marshy country quite salubrious.  She had a salon, where I met very clever men and women—­English and French—­and which made me wish for such things in Adelaide.  The kindness and hospitality that were shown to me—­an absolute stranger—­by all sorts of people were surprising.  Mr. and Mrs. Westlake took me on Sunday to see Bishop Colenso.  He showed me the photo of the enquiring Zulu who made him doubt the literal truth of the early books of the Bible, and presented me with the people’s edition of his work on the Pentateuch.

In all my travels and visits I saw little of the theatre or concert room, and some of the candid confessions of Mrs. Oliphant might stand for my own.  I had read so many plays before I saw one that the unreality of much of the acted drama impressed me unfavourably.  The asides in particular seemed impossible, and I think the more carefully the pieces are put on the stage the more critical I become concerning their probability; and when I hear the praise of the beautiful and expensive theatrical wardrobes which, in the case of actresses seem to set the fashion for the wealthy and well-born, I feel that it is a costly means of making the story more unlikely.  I seem to lose the identity of the heroine who in two hours wears three or four different toilettes complete.  As Mrs. Oliphant did not identify the “nobody in white tights” who rendered from “Twelfth Night” the lovely lines beginning “That strain again; it had a dying fall” with the Orsino she had imagined when reading the play, so I, who knew “She Stoops to Conquer” almost by heart, was disappointed when I saw it on the stage.  I was taken to the opera once by Mr. and Mrs. Bakewell, and heard Patti in “Don Giovanni,” at Covent Garden, but opera of all kinds is wasted on me.  I liked some of the familiar airs and choruses, but all opera needs far more make-believe than I am capable of.  It is a pity that I am so insensible to the youngest and the most progressive of the fine arts.  I am, however, in the good company of Mrs. Oliphant, who, speaking of the musical parties in Eton, where she lived so long, for the education of tier boys, writes in words that suit me perfectly:  “In one of these friends’ houses a family quartet played what were rather new and terrible to me—­long sonatas and concerted pieces which filled my soul with dismay.  It is a dreadful