I missed the last mail through stress of work, chiefly on my lecture, which I mentioned in my last. The applications for lectures were so numerous and urgent that I really felt that I ought not to leave the country without giving one at any rate, and all my friends said that the Music Hall at Boston was the place if I only spoke once. It is the largest room in New England, holds nearly three thousand people, is easy to speak in, though it has great deep galleries running round three sides, and in it all the big folk talk and lecture, Wendell Phillips and Sumner follow me, so you see the class of thing at once. Well, as I was in for it much against my will, I was determined to talk out with the whole Yankee nation the controversy which. I had been carrying on already with many of them in private. I was anxious not to leave them with any false impressions, and to let them see clearly that in our national differences I think that we have a very good case, and that even if I didn’t think so, I am too good a John Bull not to stand by my own country. Lowell agreed as to the title and object, but I think had serious misgivings as to how the affair might turn out. Mundella thought it very risky and so did most other folk. However, as you know, I don’t care a straw for applause, and do care about speaking my own mind, so whether it made me unpopular or not I determined to have my say. In order that I might say nothing on the spur of the moment, I wrote out the whole address carefully, and I am very glad I did, as the reporters all copied from my MS., and consequently I was thoroughly well reported. The Tribune and Boston Advertiser printed it in full, and I will bring you home copies. I was a little nervous myself when I got to the hall. Two ex-Governors and the present Governor of the State were on the platform, the two Senators (Sumner and Wilson), Longfellow, Judge Hoare, Dana, Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips, Lowell, and, in short, pretty nearly all the Boston big wigs. The great organ played “God save the Queen” as I came in, and the audience, generally, I am told, a very undemonstrative one, cheered heartily. My nervousness, however, wore off at once, when I got on my legs. I found that my voice filled the hall easily, and so was at my ease and got through just within the hour, without once losing the attention of the audience for a minute. They were indeed wonderfully sympathetic and hearty, and gave me three rounds of cheers at the end, far more warmly than at the beginning. Every one came and said that it was a great success; that they had never heard our side fairly stated before; that this and that fact were quite new to them, etc. In fact, if I didn’t know how soon the reaction comes in such cases, I should think I had done some good work towards a better understanding between the nations, and, as it is, I am sure I have done no harm, and have at any rate made my own position perfectly clear, and shown them that in the event of a quarrel, they can’t reckon upon me for any kind of sympathy or aid. After the lecture whom should I meet as I went out but Craft, the negro who had been the cause of one of the most exciting meetings ever held in that hall some twenty years before, when the attempt was made to seize him and his wife in Boston. I was delighted to see him and to hear a capital account of his experiment at association in Georgia. Then I went to Field’s, the publisher, to supper, where were Longfellow, Holmes, Dana, and others, and so home by the last car, thankful that it was all well over. Next morning I got a cheque for 250 dollars (£50). I had, of course, never said a word about any payment, so it was an agreeable surprise. The post brought me I know not how many letters, begging me to lecture in a dozen states on my own terms, so when all trades fail, I can come over here and earn a good living easily enough, which is a consolation. Wednesday, our last whole day with the dear Lowells, I spent peaceably. Went to his lecture in the University on Arthurian legends; Miss Mabel photographed the house and us in groups, and we talked and loafed. In the evening a supper at the house of one of the professors, to meet the whole staff, and a pleasanter or abler set of men I have never come across. Thursday, lunch with Longfellow after packing, then a run down on the car to Boston, to change my cheque, to take a berth on a packet, so as to be armed against any appeals for another day or two in New York, and to get a last look at the favourite points in the old Puritan capital, the place where I should certainly settle if I ever had to leave England. We drove a rather sad party to Mrs. Lowell’s sister, and the mother of the beautiful boy whose photograph we have, and who was killed early in the war, to tea, and from her house went to the station and took sleeping-car for Syracuse. I cannot tell you how I like Lowell and all his belongings. It is a dangerous thing to make acquaintance in the flesh with one with whose writings one is so familiar, but he has quite come up to my idea of him, and his wife and Miss Mabel are both very charming in their own ways. I slept well, woke at Albany, breakfasted, and then on to Syracuse, where Mr. Wansey, Mrs. Hamilton’s uncle, lives. We got there at two, and I was immediately seized at the station by Wilkinson, the local banker, whom I had just met at Ned’s this summer. He drove us all through and round the most characteristic town in America. Great broad streets lined with lovely maple trees, all turned now to clouds of scarlet and gold; down the principal one the railway runs without any fence. Old Mr. Wansey and others came to dine, he a dear old man of eighty, but hale and handsome, rather like my dear old grandfather’s picture, the rest pleasant country folk. We played billiards, and told stories after dinner, and had a decidedly good time till nearly midnight. The next morning we breakfasted with Mr. White, the President of this new University, and came on here with him. He is a young man of about thirty-five, and one of the finest scholars America has to boast of at present. By the way, he was a classmate of Smalley at Yale. He is a rich man, and he has nothing whatever to gain by undertaking this work. In short, he is quite worthy of having Goldwin Smith as a fellow-worker, and between them, with the excellent staff of professors and teachers they have got round them, I expect they will make this place in a wondrous short time a great working-men’s college. Everything is of course rough at present, as the buildings are still in progress, but two blocks are completed, and there are about seven hundred pupils living in them and in the town at the bottom of the hill on which Cornell stands. It is a most magnificent situation, looking over a large lake, forty miles long, and two splendid valleys, which are now ablaze with the crimson and purple colours of the maples, shumachs, American walnuts, and other trees, which make the hillsides here glow all the later autumn through. We found Goldwin Smith waiting for us at the wharf and looking much stronger than he used to do in England, and quite warm in his welcome. All the professors, with their wives and families, if married, live for the present in a huge square block of buildings originally intended for a hydropathic establishment, in which they have a private sitting-room and bedrooms and dine and take all meals in the hall. You may fancy how much I am interested in this great practical step towards association.