Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/386

 for the future. With your excellent constitution and buoyancy of disposition you might have twenty years which would be the happiest of your life, in a country where the rigours of winter are practically unknown. And as Lord Brougham did, you would draw a few friends to follow your example. You have a new reason for desiring a long and healthy life; and a Tusculum on the Mediterranean, where you could read and think and loiter in the sun counts for something in the means of attaining it. There; I have said my say, and my good advice will be wasted. But I shall probably give practical evidence of my confidence in it by taking my own prescription. The main reason why I hoped to see you here, was that you might realise, by coming directly from England to this garden of Paradise, what a gain it would be to spend your winters here. But if there be causes, or duties, that would make it improper for you to distribute your time in that way for the future, I beg of you do not come here merely to say "farewell." I will see you, I trust, in London in 1877, and I saw you three months ago at Townley. If an Alpine villa be an open question, however, I would greatly like to have a few days to show you this coast from Nice to Mentone.

With sincerest good wishes to Lady O'Hagan.—Believe me, always yours, .

This was his reply:—

I had the happiness of spending a few days with my friend in the genial south, and exchanging confidences and predictions for the future.

On the way to Australia I wrote him my adieux:—

, January 27, 1876. ,—I hope you arrived home safely, and not too much fatigued. For me, I have had misadventures by sea and land, but at length I have reached my port of departure, and to-morrow I embark on the Red Sea, where metal and human marrow are said to melt. You " gentlemen of England who live at home at ease," or travel with a dragoman and courier, know nothing I fancy of the adventures of tourist life. Last night, for example, I arrived at Suez in the dark, at an ill-lighted station, where there was not a single European or person speaking a European tongue. I had a ticket for my baggage written in an alphabet which I had only seen previously in the British Museum. The number of my packages, the place they were registered, and the place of their destination were expressed in an unknown tongue, and I had a lively apprehension that they had gone off at Ismalia, where the majority of the passengers left for Syria. I flourished this illegible document and cried "baggage" in an authoritative tone, and an Egyptian official touched his breast and said "Me," admitting his responsibility, but not exhibiting the smallest visible intention of discharg-