. . . . I met with one person
who interested me,--Mr. Bailey, the author of Festus; and I was surprised
to find myself already acquainted with him. It is the same Mr. Bailey
whom I met a few months ago, when I first dined at Mr. -----'s,--a dark,
handsome, rather picturesque-looking man, with a gray beard, and dark
hair, a little dimmed with gray. He is of quiet and very agreeable
deportment, and I liked him and believed in him. . . . . There is sadness
glooming out of him, but no unkindness nor asperity. Mrs. Crosland's
conversazione was enriched with a supper, and terminated with a dance, in
which Mr. ------ joined with heart and soul, but Mrs. ------ went to
sleep in her chair, and I would gladly have followed her example if I
could have found a chair to sit upon. In the course of the evening I had
some talk with a pale, nervous young lady, who has been a noted spiritual
medium.
Yesterday I went into town by the steamboat from Greenwich to London
Bridge, with a nephew of Mr. ------'s, and, calling at his place of
business, he procured us an order from his wine-merchants, by means of
which we were admitted into
THE WINE-VAULTS OF THE LONDON DOCKS.
We there found parties, with an acquaintance, who was going, with two
French gentlemen, into the vaults. It is a good deal like going down
into a mine, each visitor being provided with a lamp at the end of a
stick; and following the guide along dismal passages, running beneath the
streets, and extending away interminably,--roughly arched overhead with
stone, from which depend festoons of a sort of black fungus, caused by
the exhalations of the wine.
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