I arranged for a week in Paris with my young friends, Rosa and Symonds Clark, of Hazelwood, and we travelled as far as Paris with the Hare family, who went on to the Tyrol.  We enjoyed the week.  Louis Napoleon appeared then to be quite secure on his throne, and we saw the fetes and illuminations for his birthday.  What a day and night of rain it was!  But the thousands of people, joyful and good-humoured under umbrellas or without them—­gave us a favourable impression of Parisian crowds.  In London I had been with Mr. Cowan in the crush to the theatre.  It was contrary to his principles to book seats, and I never was so frightened in my life.  I thought a London crowd rough and merciless.  I was the only one of the party who could speak any French, and I spoke it badly, and had great difficulty in following French conversations; but we got into a hotel where no English was spoken, and managed to pull through.  But we did not know a soul, and I think we did not learn so much from our week’s sightseeing as we should have done if Miss Katie Hare had stayed the week with us.

I then paid a visit to Birmingham, and spent a week at the sittings of the British Association.  By subscribing a guinea I was made an Associate, and some of the sessions were very interesting, but much too deep for me.  I sat out a lecture on the Higher Mathematics, by Professor Henry Smith, to whom Professor Pearson gave me an introduction, in hopes that I might visit Oxford; but he was going abroad, and I could not go to Oxford if I knew nobody—­especially alone.  I went, however, to Carr’s Lane Chapel, where a humble friend had begged me to go, because there she had been converted, and there the Rev. R. W. Dale happened to preach on “Where prayer was wont to be made.”  He said that consecration was not due to a Bishop or to any ecclesiastical ceremony, but to the devout prayers and praise of the faithful souls within it—­that thousands over Scotland and England, and others in America, Australia, and New Zealand, look back to words which they had heard and praises and prayers in which they had joined as the holiest times in their lives.  I thought of my good Mrs. Ludlow, and thanked God for her.  When Mr. Cowan took me to the church in Essex place where he and his friend Wren used to hear Mr. W. J. Fox, M.P. for Oldham, preach, a stranger, a young American, was there.  I found out afterwards be was Moncure Conway, and he gave us a most striking discourse.  There was going on in Birmingham at this time a controversy between the old Unitarians and the new.  In the Church of the Messiah the old ministers gave a series of sermons on the absolute truth of the New Testament miracles.  The Old Testament he was quite willing to give up, but he pinned his faith on those wrought by Christ and His apostles.  Some of the congregation told me they had never thought of doubting them before, but the more Mr. B. defended them as the bulwarks of Christianity, the more they felt that our religion rested on other