LONDON, _British Museum_, _July 25, 1861_.
... I pass my time here monotonously enough, although I dine out every
day at a different house, and see people and things I have not seen
before. I dined yesterday at Greenwich with some great personages, who
tried to make themselves lively, not, like the Germans, by throwing
themselves out of the window, but by making a vast amount of noise. The
dinner was abominably long, but the whitebait was excellent.
We have unpacked here twenty-two cases of antiquities from Cyrenaica.
There are two statues and several busts which are truly remarkable,
belonging to a good period and thoroughly Greek; one Bacchus especially,
although a little delicate, is fascinating. The head is in an
extraordinary state of preservation.
M. de Vidil is properly and duly committed, and will be tried at the
next assizes. He will not be allowed to give bail. It seems, however,
that the worst that may happen to him is to be sentenced to two years’
imprisonment, for the English law recognises murder only in the event of
the victim’s death; and, as Lord Lyndhurst said to me, a man must be a
great bungler in England to allow himself to be hanged.
I went, the other evening, to the House of Commons and heard the debate
on Sardinia. It is impossible to be more verbose, more flat, and more
insignificant that most of the orators, notably lord John Russell, now
simply lord Russell. Mr. Gladstone pleased me. I hope to return to Paris
the 8th or 10th of August, and to find you quietly resting in some sort
of solitude. I think my health is better than in Paris; nevertheless,
the weather is atrocious.
I was interrupted in my letter to visit the Bank of England. I held in
my hand four small packages which contained four million pounds
sterling, but I was not permitted to carry them away. That would have
occasioned the writing of two volumes. I was shown a pretty machine,
which counts and weighs daily three million sovereigns. The machine
hesitates an instant, and after a brief deliberation throws the genuine
sovereigns to the right and the counterfeit to the left. There is one
that looks like a little ape. A bank-bill is presented to him, he bends
his head and kisses it twice, leaving on the bill certain marks which
the counterfeiters have not yet succeeded in imitating.
Finally, I was taken into the vaults, where I fancied myself in one of
those grottoes described in the _Thousand and One Nights_. They were
lined with bags of gold and bullion, which sparkled in the gas-light.
Good-bye, dear friend....