associations, and their unions, though still outside the law, had become
strong enough to fight their own battles. And so he laid aside his fighting
name and his fighting pen, and had leisure to look calmly on the great
struggle more as a spectator than an actor.

A few months later, in the summer of 1856, when he and I were talking
over and preparing for a week's fishing in the streams and lakes of his
favourite Snowdonia, he spoke long and earnestly in the same key. I well
remember how he wound it all up with, "the long and short of it is, I am
becoming an optimist. All men, worth anything, old men especially, have
strong fits of optimism--even Carlyle has--because they can't help hoping,
and sometimes feeling, that the world is going right, and will go right,
not your way, or my way, but its own way. Yes; we've all tried our
Holloway's Pills, Tom, to cure all the ills of all the world--and we've
all found out I hope by this time that the tough old world has more in
its inside than any Holloway's Pills will clear out." A few weeks later I
received the following invitation to Snowdon, and to Snowdon we went in the
autumn of 1856.

THE INVITATION.

Come away with me, Tom,
Term and talk is done;
My poor lads are reaping,
Busy every one.
Curates mind the parish,
Sweepers mind the Court,
We'll away to Snowdon
For our ten days' sport,
Fish the August evening