In the following spring we moved out to Clapham Common, to be near the parents of my wife, and in the comparative quiet of that then delightful neighborhood we gave our experiment full scope.

The life as a literary life was ideal, but as a practical thing it failed.

Here I had the pleasure of extending hospitality to Emerson on his way to Egypt, and Lowell on the way to Madrid.

To make the acquaintance of Lowell we had Professor and Mrs.Max Mller to meet him at dinner, and Tom Taylor was of the company, he living as a near neighbor.
But Russie's condition was a shadow over my life, growing deeper every day.

Though he had been discharged from Boston as incurable, we put him under the care of one of the best of English surgeons, and one of the kindest-hearted men I have ever known, the late Mr.John Marshall, one of the warm and constant friends I had made through my relations with Rossetti, of whom Marshall was a strong admirer.