I love to think that now that the people have, or at least think they have, the power in their own hands, they will outgrow this form of madness, which is almost entitled to the name of a Parisian endemic.  Everything looked peaceable and stupid enough during the week I passed in Paris.  But among all the fossils which Cuvier found in the Parisian basin, nothing was more monstrous than the poissardes of the old Revolution, or the petroleuses of the recent Commune, and I fear that the breed is not extinct.  An American comes to like Paris as warmly as he comes to love England, after living in it long enough to become accustomed to its ways, and I, like the rest of my countrymen who remember that France was our friend in the hour of need, who remember all the privileges and enjoyments she has freely offered us, who feel that as a sister republic her destinies are of the deepest interest to us, can have no other wish than for her continued safety, order, and prosperity.

We returned to London on the 13th of August by the same route we had followed in going from London to Paris.  Our passage was rough, as compared to the former one, and some of the passengers were seasick.  We were both fortunate enough to escape that trial of comfort and self-respect.

I can hardly separate the story of the following week from that of the one before we went to Paris.  We did a little more shopping and saw a few more sights.  I hope that no reader of mine would suppose that I would leave London without seeing Madame Tussaud’s exhibition.  Our afternoon drives made us familiar with many objects which I always looked upon with pleasure.  There was the obelisk, brought from Egypt at the expense of a distinguished and successful medical practitioner, Sir Erasmus Wilson, the eminent dermatologist and author of a manual of anatomy which for many years was my favorite text-book.  There was “The Monument,” which characterizes itself by having no prefix to its generic name.  I enjoyed looking at and driving round it, and thinking over Pepys’s lively account of the Great Fire, and speculating as to where Pudding Lane and Pie Corner stood, and recalling Pope’s lines which I used to read at school, wondering what was the meaning of the second one:—­

  “Where London’s column, pointing to the skies
  Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies.”

The week passed away rapidly enough, and we made ready for our departure.  It was no easy matter to get a passage home, but we had at last settled it that we would return in the same vessel in which we had at first engaged our passage to Liverpool, the Catalonia.  But we were fortunate enough to have found an active and efficient friend in our townsman, Mr. Montgomery Sears, who procured staterooms for us in a much swifter vessel, to sail on the 21st for New York, the Aurania.

Our last visitor in London was the faithful friend who had been the first to welcome us, Lady Harcourt, in whose kind attentions I felt the warmth of my old friendship with her admired and honored father and her greatly beloved mother.  I had recently visited their place of rest in the Kensal Green Cemetery, recalling with tenderest emotions the many years in which I had enjoyed their companionship.