“There was a young lady of Ryde, so awfully puffed up by pride,
She felt grander by far than the Son of the Czar,
And when he said, ’Dear, come and walk on the pier,
Oh please come and walk by my side;’
The answer he got, was ‘Much better not,’ from that awful young
lady of Ryde.”

Oftenest, the letters are serious in their admiring compliments; they speak of her superb organization of health and life and strength and joyousness, the delightful sunshine of her presence, her decision and strength of will, her great qualities and great opportunities:  “away from you the world seems a blank.”  He is glad that his Great Eltchi has been made known to her; the old statesman will be impressed, he feels sure, by her “intense life, graciousness and grace, intellect carefully masked, musical faculty in talk, with that heavenly power of coming to an end.”  He sends playfully affectionate messages from other members of the Gerontaion, as he calls it, the group of aged admirers who formed her inner court; echoing their laments over the universality of her patronage.  “Hayward can pardon your having an ambassador or two at your feet, but to find the way to your heart obstructed by a crowd of astronomers, Russ-expansionists, metaphysicians, theologians, translators, historians, poets;—­this is more than he can endure.  The crowd reduces him, as Ampere said to Mme. Recamier, to the qualified blessing of being only chez vous, from the delight of being avec vous.  He hails and notifies additions to the list of her admirers; quotes enthusiastic praise of her from Stansfeld and Charles Villiers, warm appreciation from Morier, Sir Robert Peel, Violet Fane.  He rallies her on her victims, jests at Froude’s lover-like galanterie—­“Poor St. Anthony! how he hovered round the flame";—­at the devotion of that gay Lothario, Tyndall, whose approaching marriage will, he thinks, clip his wings for flirtation.  “It seems that at the Royal Institution, or whatever the place is called, young women look up to the Lecturers as priests of Science, and go to them after the lecture in what churchmen would call the vestry, and express charming little doubts about electricity, and pretty gentle disquietudes about the solar system:  and then the Professors have to give explanations;—­and then, somehow, at the end of a few weeks, they find they have provided themselves with chaperons for life.”  So he pursues the list of devotees; her son will tell her that Caesar summarized his conquests in this country by saying Veni, Vidi, Vici; but to her it is given to say, Veni, Videbar, Vici.