Records of Later Life (part 2 of 3)

Records of Later Life (part 2 of 3)

From the midst of this musical Maelstrom I send you a voice, which, if heard instead of read, would be lamentable enough. We are lifted off our feet by the perfect torrent of engagements, of visits, of going out and receiving; our house is full, from morning till night, of people coming to sing with or listen to my sister. How her strength is to resist the demands made upon it by the violent emotions she is perpetually expressing, or how any human throat is to continue pouring out such volumes of sound without rest or respite, passes my comprehension. Now, let me tell you how I am surrounded at this minute while I write to you. At my very table sit Trelawney and Charles Young, talking to me and to each other; farther on, towards my father, Mr. G---- C----; and an Italian singer on one side of my sister; and on the other, an Italian painter, who has brought letters of introduction to us; then Mary Anne Thackeray; ... furthermore, the door has just closed upon an English youth of the name of B----, who sings almost as well as an Italian, and with whom my sister has been singing her soul out for the last two hours.... We dined yesterday with the Francis Egertons; to-morrow evening we have a gathering here, with, I beg you to believe, nothing under the rank of a viscount, Beauforts, Normanbys, Wiltons, illustrissimi tutti quanti. Friday, my sister sings at the Palace, and we are all enveloped in a golden cloud of fashionable hard work, which rather delights my father; which my sister lends herself to, complaining a little of the trouble, fatigue, and late hours; but thinking it for the interest of her future public career, and always becoming rapt and excited beyond all other considerations in her own capital musical performances.... As for me, I am rather bewildered by the whirl in which we live, which I find rather a trying contrast to my late solitary existence in America.... The incessant music wears upon my nerves a great deal; but chiefly, I think, because half the time I am not able to listen to it quietly, and it distracts me while I am obliged to attend to other things. But indeed, often, when I can give my undivided attention to it, my sister's singing excites me to such a degree that I am obliged, after crying my bosom full of tears, to run out of the room.

My father continues in wonderful good looks and spirits.... Here, dear H----, a long interruption.... We are off to St. John's Wood, to dine with the Procters: ---- is not ready; my sister is lying on the sofa, reading aloud an Italian letter to me; the children are rioting about the room like a couple of little maniacs, and I feel inclined to endorse Macbeth's opinion of life, that it is all sound and fury and signifying nothing.... Thus far, and another interruption; and now it is to-morrow, and Lady Grey and Lady G---- have just gone out of the room, and Chauncy Hare Townsend has just come in, followed by his mesmeric German patient, who is going to perform his magnetic magic for us. I think I will let him try what sort of a subject I should be.

I enclose a little note and silk chain, brought for you from America by Miss Fanny Appleton [afterwards Mrs. Longfellow], who has just arrived in London, to the great joy of her sister. I suppose these tokens come to you from the Sedgwicks. I have a little box which poor C---- S---- brought from Catherine for you--a delicate carved wooden casket, that I have not sent to you because I was afraid it would be broken, by any post or coach conveyance. Tell me about this, how I shall send it to you. I have obtained too for you that German book which I delight in so very much, Richter's "Fruit, Flower, and Thorn Pieces," and which, in the midst of much that is probably too German, in thought, feeling, and expression, to meet with your entire sympathy, will, I think, furnish you with sweet and pleasant thoughts for a while; I scarce know anything that I like much better.

I was going to see Rachel this evening, but my brother and his wife having come up to town for the day, I do not think we ought all to go out and leave them; so that ---- is gone with Adelaide and Lady M----, and I shall seize this quiet chance for writing to Emily, to whom I have not yet contrived to send a word since she left town. God bless you.

Ever yours, FANNY.

[The young lad Alexis, to whom I have referred in this letter was, I think, one of the first of the long train of mesmerists, magnetizers, spiritualists, charlatans, cheats, and humbugs who subsequently appealed to the notice and practised on the credulity of London society. Mr. Chauncy Hare Townsend was an enthusiastic convert to the theory of animal magnetism, and took about with him, to various houses, this German boy, whose exhibition of mesmeric phenomena was the first I ever witnessed. Mr. Townsend had almost insisted upon our receiving this visit, and we accordingly assembled in the drawing-room, to witness the powers of Alexis. We were all of us sceptical, one of our party so incurably so that after each exhibition of clairvoyance given by Alexis, and each exclamation of Mr. Townsend's, "There now, you see that?" he merely replied, with the most imperturbable phlegm, "Yes, I see it, but I don't believe it." The clairvoyant power of the young man consisted principally in reading passages from books presented to him while under the influence of the mesmeric sleep, into which he had been thrown by Mr. Townsend, and with which he was previously unacquainted. The results were certainly sufficiently curious, though probably neither marvellous nor unaccountable. To make sure that his eyes were really effectually closed, cotton-wool was laid over them, and a broad, tight bandage placed upon them; during another trial the hands of our chief sceptic were placed upon his eyelids, so as effectually to keep them completely closed, in spite of which he undoubtedly read out of a book held up before him above his eyes, and rather on a level with his forehead; nor can I remember any instance in which he appeared to find any great difficulty in doing so, except when a book suddenly fetched from another room was opened before him, when he hesitated and expressed incapacity, and then said, "The book is French;" which it was.

Believing entirely in a sort of hitherto undefined, and possibly undefinable, physical influence, by which the nervous system of one person may be affected by that of another, by special exercise of will and effort, so as to produce an almost absolute temporary subserviency of the whole nature to the force by which it is acted upon, and therefore thinking it extremely possible, and not improbable, that many of the instances of mesmeric influence I have heard related had some foundation in truth, I have, nevertheless, kept entirely aloof from the whole subject, never voluntarily attended any exhibitions of such phenomena, and regarded the whole series of experiments and experiences and pretended marvels of the numerous adepts in mesmerism with contempt and disgust--contempt for the crass ignorance and glaring dishonesty involved in their practices; and disgust, because of the moral and physical mischief their absurd juggleries were likely to produce, and in many instances did produce, upon subjects as ignorant, but less dishonest, than the charlatans by whom they were duped.

The thing having, in my opinion, a very probable existence, possibly a physical force of considerable effect, and not thoroughly ascertained or understood nature, the experiments people practised and lent themselves to appeared to me exactly as wise and as becoming as if they had drunk so much brandy or eaten so much opium or hasheesh, by way of trying the effect of these drugs upon their constitution; with this important difference that the magnetic experiments severely tested the nervous system of both patient and operator, and had, besides, an indefinite element of moral importance, in the attempted control of one human will by another, through physical means, which appeared to me to place all such experiments at once among things forbidden to rational and responsible agents.

I am now speaking only of the early developments of physical phenomena exhibited by the first magnetizers and mesmerizers--the conjurers by passes and somnolence and other purely physical processes; the crazy and idiotic performances of their successors, the so-called spiritualists, with their grotesque and disgusting pretence of intercourse with the spirits of the dead through the legs of their tables and chairs, seemed to me the most melancholy testimony to an utter want of faith in things spiritual, of belief in God and Christ's teaching, and a pitiful craving for such a faith, as well as to the absence of all rational common sense, in the vast numbers of persons deluded by such processes. In this aspect (the total absence of right reason and real religion demonstrated by these ludicrous and blasphemous juggleries in our Christian communities), that which was farcical in the lowest degree became tragical in the highest. I only witnessed this one mesmeric exhibition, on the occasion of this visit paid to us by Mr. Townsend and Alexis, until several years afterwards, in the house of my excellent friend Mr. Combe, in Edinburgh, when I was one of a party called upon to witness some experiments of the same kind. I was staying with Mr. Combe and my cousin Cecilia, when one evening their friend Mrs. Crow, authoress of more than one book, I believe, and of a collection of supernatural horrors, of stories of ghosts, apparitions, etc., etc., called "The Night Side of Nature" (the lady had an evident sympathy for the absurd and awful), came, bringing with her a Dr. Lewis, a negro gentleman, who was creating great excitement in Edinburgh by his advocacy of the theories of mesmerism, and his own powers of magnetizing. Mrs. Crow had threatened Mr. and Mrs. Combe with a visit from this professor, and though neither of them had the slightest tendency to belief in any such powers as those Dr. Lewis laid claim to, they received him with kindly courtesy, and consented, with the amused indifference of scepticism, to be spectators of his experiments. Under these circumstances, great as was my antipathy to the whole thing, I did not like to raise any objection to it or to leave the room, which would have been a still more marked expression of my feeling; so I sat down with the rest of the company round the drawing-room table, Mr. and Mrs. Combe, Dr. Lewis, Mrs. Crow, our friend Professor William Gregory, and Dr. Becker--the latter gentleman a man of science, brother, I think, to Prince Albert's private librarian--who was to be the subject of Dr. Lewis's experiments, having already lent himself for the same purpose to that gentleman, and been pronounced highly sensitive to the magnetic influence.

I sat by Dr. Becker, and opposite to Dr. Lewis, with the width of the table between us. What ulterior processes were to be exhibited I do not know, but the first result to be obtained was to throw Dr. Becker into a mesmeric state of somnolence, under the influence of the operator. The latter presently began his experiment, and, drawing entirely from his coat and shirt sleeve a long, lithe, black hand, the finger-tips of which were of that pale livid tinge so common in the hands of negroes, he directed it across the table towards Dr. Becker, and began slowly making passes at him. We were all profoundly still and silent, and, in spite of my disgust, I watched the whole scene with considerable interest. By degrees the passes became more rapid, and the hand was stretched nearer and nearer towards its victim, waving and quivering like some black snake, while the face of the operator assumed an expression of the most concentrated powerful purpose, which, combined with his sable color and the vehement imperative gestures which he aimed at Dr. Becker, really produced a quasi-diabolical effect. The result, however, was not immediate. Dr. Becker was apparently less susceptible this evening than on previous occasions; but Dr. Lewis renewed and repeated his efforts, each time with a nearer approach and increased vehemence, and at length his patient's eyelids began to quiver, he gasped painfully for breath, and was evidently becoming overpowered by the influence to which he had subjected himself; when, after a few seconds of the most intense efforts on the part of Dr. Lewis, these symptoms passed off, and the mesmerizer, with much appearance of exhaustion, declared himself, for some reason or other, unable to produce the desired effect (necessary for the subsequent exhibition of his powers) of compelling Dr. Becker into a state of somnolency--a thing which he had not failed to accomplish on every previous occasion. The trial had to be given up, and much speculation and discussion followed as to the probable cause of the failure, for which neither the magnetizer nor his patient could account. Believing in this strange action of nervous power in one person over another, I am persuaded that I prevented Dr. Lewis's experiment from succeeding. The whole exhibition had from the very beginning aroused in me such a feeling of antagonism, such a mingled horror, disgust, and indignation, that, when my neighbor appeared about to succumb to the influence operating upon him, my whole nature was roused to such a state of active opposition to the process I was witnessing that I determined, if there was power in human will to make itself felt by mere silent concentrated effort of purpose, I would prevent Dr. Lewis from accomplishing his end; and it seemed to me, as I looked at him, as if my whole being had become absorbed in my determination to defeat his endeavor to set Dr. Becker to sleep. The nervous tension I experienced is hardly to be described, and I firmly believe that I accomplished my purpose. I was too much exhausted, after we left the table, to speak, and too disagreeably affected by the whole scene to wish to do so.

The next day I told Mr. Combe of my counter-magnetizing, or rather neutralizing, experiment, by which he was greatly amused; but I do not think he cared to enter upon any investigation of the subject, feeling little interested in it, and having been rather surprised into this exhibition of it by Mrs. Crow's bringing Dr. Lewis to his house. That lady being undoubtedly an admirable subject for all such experiments, having what my dear Mr. Combe qualified as "a most preposterous organ of wonder," for which, poor woman, I suppose she paid the penalty in a terrible nervous seizure, a fit of temporary insanity, during which she imagined that she received a visit from the Virgin Mary and our Saviour, both of whom commanded her to go without any clothes on into the streets of Edinburgh, and walk a certain distance in that condition, in reward for which the sins and sufferings of the whole world would be immediately alleviated. Upon her demurring to fulfil this mandate, she received the further assurance that if she took her card-case in her right hand and her pocket-handkerchief in her left, her condition of nudity would be entirely unobserved by any one she met. Under the influence of her diseased fancy, Mrs. Crow accordingly went forth, with nothing on but a pair of boots, and being immediately rescued from the terrible condition of mad exposure, in which she had already made a few paces in the street where she lived, and carried back into her house, she exclaimed, "Oh, I must have taken my card-case and my handkerchief in the wrong hands, otherwise nobody would have seen me!" She recovered entirely from this curious attack of hallucination, and I met her in society afterwards, perfectly restored to her senses.

On one occasion I allowed myself to be persuaded into testing my own powers of mesmerizing, by throwing a young friend into a magnetic sleep. I succeeded with considerable difficulty, and the next day experienced great nervous exhaustion, which, I think, was the consequence of her having, as she assured me she had, resisted with the utmost effort of her will my endeavor to put her to sleep. As I disapproved, however, of all such experiments, this is the only one I ever tried.

My belief in the reality of the influence was a good deal derived from my own experience, which was that of an invariable tendency to sleep in the proximity of certain persons of whom I was particularly fond. I used to sit at Mrs. Harry Siddons's feet, and she had hardly laid her hand upon my head before it fell upon her knees, and I was in a profound slumber. My friend Miss ----'s neighborhood had the same effect upon me, and when we were not engaged in furious discussion, I was very apt to be fast asleep whenever I was near her. E---- S---- relieved me of an intense toothache once by putting me to sleep with a few mesmeric passes, and I have, moreover, more than once, immediately after violent nervous excitement, been so overcome with drowsiness as to be unable to move. I remember a most ludicrous instance of this occurring to me in the church of Stratford-upon-Avon, when, standing before Shakespeare's tomb, and looking intensely at his monument, I became so overpowered with sleep that I could hardly rouse myself enough to leave the church, and I begged very hard to be allowed to sleep out my sleep, then and there, upon the stones under which he lay.

After extreme distress of mind, I have sometimes slept a whole day and night without waking; and once, when overcome with anguish, slept, with hardly an hour's interval at a time, the greater part of a week. The drowsiness inspired in me by some of my friends I attribute entirely to physical sympathy; others, of whom I was nearly as fond, never affected me in this manner in the slightest degree. I have often congratulated myself upon the fact that I had by no means an equal tendency to physical antipathy, though, in common with most other people, I have had some experience of that also. My very dear and excellent friend ---- always m'agaçait les nerfs, as French people say, though I was deeply attached to her and very fond of her society. Mrs. ----, of whose excellence I had the most profound conviction, and who was generally esteemed perfectly charming by her intimates, affected me with such a curious intuitive revulsion that the first time she came and sat down by me I was obliged to get up and leave the room--indeed, the house. Two men of our acquaintance, remarkable for their general attractiveness and powers of pleasing, ---- and ----, were never in the same room ten minutes with me without my becoming perfectly chilled through, as though I had suddenly had the door of an ice-house opened upon me. They were entirely dissimilar men in every respect....

Of the spiritualistic performances of Messrs. Hume, Foster, etc., etc., I never was a witness. An intimate acquaintance of mine, who knew Hume well, assured me that she knew him to be an impostor, adding at the same time, "But I also know him to be clairvoyant," which seemed to me mere tautology.

My sister and Charles Greville, having had their curiosity excited by some of the reports of Mr. Foster's performances, agreed to go together to visit him, and having received an appointment for a séance, went to his house. Certainly, if Mr. Foster had taken in either of those two customers of his, it would have gone near converting me. Charles Greville, who was deaf, and spoke rather loud in consequence of that infirmity, said, as he entered, to my sister, "I shall ask him about my mother." Adelaide, quite determined to test the magician's powers to the utmost, replied, with an air of concern, as if shocked at the idea, "Oh, no, don't do that; it is too dreadful." However, this suggestion of course not being thrown away upon Mr. Foster, Charles Greville desired to be put in communication with the spirit of his mother, which was accordingly duly done by the operator, and various messages were delivered, as purporting to come from the spirit of Lady Charlotte Greville to her son. After this farce had gone on for a little while, Charles Greville turned to my sister with perfect composure, and said, "Well, now perhaps you had better ask him to tell you something about your mother, because, you know, mine is not dead." The séance of course proceeded no further. At an earlier period of it, as they were sitting round a table, Mr. Foster desired that written names might be furnished him of the persons with whose spirits communication might be desired. Among the names written down for this purpose by my sister were several foreign, Italian and German, names, with which she felt very sure Mr. Foster could not possibly have any acquaintance; indeed, it was beyond all question that he never could have heard of them. Adelaide was sitting next to him, watching his operations with extreme attention, and presently observed him very dexterously convey several of these foreign names into his sleeve, and from thence to the ground under the table. After a little while, Mr. Foster observed that, singularly enough, several of the names he had received were now missing, and by some extraordinary means had disappeared entirely from among the rest. "Oh yes," said my sister very quietly, "but they are only under the table, just where you put them a little while ago." With such subjects of course Mr. Foster performed no miracles.

Some years ago a new form of these objectionable practices came into vogue, and one summer, going up into Massachusetts, I found the two little mountain villages of Lenox and Stockbridge possessed, in the proper sense of the term, by a devil of their own making, called "Planchette." A little heart-shaped piece of wood, running upon castors, and that could almost be moved with a breath, and carrying along a sheet of paper, over which it was placed, a pencil was supposed to write, on its own inspiration, communications in reply to the person's thoughts whose finger-tips were to rest above, without giving any impulse to the board. Of course a hand held in this constrained attitude is presently compelled to rest itself by some slight pressure; the effort to steady it, and the nervous effort not to press upon the machine, producing inevitably in the wrist aching weariness, and in the fingers every conceivable tendency to nervous twitching. Add to this the intense conviction of the foolish folk, half of them hysterical women, that their concentrated effort of will was, in combination with a mysterious supernatural agency, to move the board; and the board naturally not only moved but, carrying the pencil along with it, wrote the answers required and desired by the credulous consulters of the wooden oracle.

The thing would have been indescribably ludicrous but for the terrible effect it was having upon the poor people who were practising upon themselves with it. Excitable young girls of fifteen and sixteen, half hysterical with their wonderment; ignorant, afflicted women, who had lost dear relations and friends by death; superstitious lads, and men too incapable of consecutive reasoning to perceive the necessary connection between cause and effect; the whole community, in short, seemed to me catching the credulous infection one from another, and to be in a state bordering upon insanity or idiocy.

A young lady-friend of mine, a miserable invalid, was so possessed with faith in this wooden demon that, after resisting repeated entreaties on her part to witness some of its performances, I at length, at her earnest request, saw her operate upon it. The writing was almost unintelligible, and undoubtedly produced by the vibrating impulse given to the machine by her nervous, feeble, diaphanous hands. Finding my scepticism invincible by these means, my friend implored me to think in my own mind a question, and see if Planchette would not answer it. I yielded at last to her all but hysterical importunity, and thought of an heraldic question concerning the crest on a ring which I wore, which I felt was quite beyond Planchette's penetration; but while we sat in quiet expectation of the reply, which of course did not come, my friend's mother--a sober, middle-aged lady, habitually behaving herself with perfect reasonableness, and, moreover, without a spark of imagination (but that, indeed, was rather of course; belief in such supernatural agencies betokening, in my opinion, an absence of poetical imagination, as well as of spiritual faith), practical, sensible, commonplace, without a touch of nonsense of any kind about her, as I had always supposed--sat opposite the machine infernale, over which her daughter's fingers hung suspended, and as the answer did not come, broke out for all the world like one of Baal's prophets of old: "Now, Planchette, now, Planchette, behave; do your duty. Now, Planchette, write at once," etc.; and I felt as if I were in Bedlam. One thing is certain, that if Planchette's answer had approached in the remotest degree the answer to the question of my thought, I would then and there have broken Planchette in half, and left my friends in the possession of their remaining brains until they had procured another.

The strangest experience, however, that I met with in connection with this absurd delusion occurred during a visit that I received from Mrs. B---- S----. That lady was staying with her daughter in Stockbridge, and did me the honor to call on me at Lenox with that young lady. Among other things spoken of I asked my distinguished visitor some questions about this superstitious folly, Planchette, nothing doubting that I should hear from her an eloquent condemnation of all the absurd proceedings going on in the two villages. The lady's face assumed a decided expression of grave disapprobation, certainly, and she spoke to this effect: "Planchette! Oh dear, yes, we are perfectly familiar with Planchette, and, indeed, have been in the habit of consulting it quite often." "Oh, indeed," quoth I, and I felt my own face growing longer with amazement as I spoke. "Yes," continued my celebrated visitor, with much deliberation, "we have; but I think it will no longer be possible for us to do so. No, we must certainly give up having anything to do with it." "Dear me!" said I, almost breathless, and with a queer quaver in my voice, that I could hardly command, "may I ask why, pray?" "The language it uses----" "It!--the language it uses!" ejaculated I. "Yes," she pursued, with increasing solemnity, "the language it uses is so reprehensible that it will be quite impossible for us to consult or have anything further to do with it." "Really," said I, hardly able to utter for suppressed laughter; "and may I ask, may I inquire what language it does use?" "Why," returned Mrs. S----, with some decorous hesitation and reluctance to utter the words that followed, "the last time we consulted it, it told us we were all a pack of damned fools." "Oh!" exploded I, "I believe in Planchette, I believe in Planchette!" Mrs. S---- drew herself up with an air of such offended surprise at my burst of irrepressible merriment that I suddenly stopped, and letting what was boiling below my laughter come to the surface, I exclaimed, in language far more shocking to ears polite than Planchette's own: "And do you really think that Satan, the great devil of hell, in whom you believe, is amusing himself with telling you such truths as those, through a bit of board on wheels?" "Really," replied the woman of genius, in a tone of lofty dignity, "I cannot pretend to say whether or not it is the devil; of one thing I am very certain, the influence by which it speaks is undoubtedly devilish." I turned in boundless amazement to the younger lady, whose mischievous countenance, with a broad grin upon it, at once settled all my doubts as to the devilish influence under which Planchette had spoken such home truths to her family circle, and I let the subject drop, remaining much astonished, as I often am, at the degree to which les gens d'ésprit sont bêtes.

I once attended some young friends to a lecture, as it called itself, upon electro-biology. It was tedious, stupid, and ridiculous; the only thing that struck me was the curious condition of bewildered imbecility into which two or three young men, who presented themselves to be operated upon, fell, under the influence of the lecturer. I had reason to believe that there was no collusion in the case, and therefore was surprised at the evident state of stupor and mental confusion (even to the not being able to pronounce their own name) which they exhibited when, after looking intently and without moving at a coin placed in their hand for some time, their faculties appeared entirely bewildered, and though they were not asleep, they seemed hardly conscious, and opposed not the slightest resistance to the orders they received to sit down, stand up, to try to remember their names,--which they were assured they could not, and did not,--and their general submission, of course in very trifling matters, to the sort of bullying directions addressed to them in a loud peremptory tone; to which they replied with the sort of stupefied languor of persons half asleep or under the influence of opium. I did not quite understand how they were thrown into this curious condition by the mere assumption of an immovable attitude and fixed gazing at a piece of coin; an experience of my own, however, subsequently enlightened me as to the possible nervous effect of such immobility and strained attention.

My friend Sir Frederick Leighton, despairing of finding a model to assume a sufficiently dramatic expression of wickedness for a picture he was painting of Jezebel, was deploring his difficulty one day, when Henry Greville, who was standing by, said to him, "Why don't you ask her"--pointing to me--"to do it for you?" Leighton expressed some kindly reluctance to put my countenance to such a use; but I had not the slightest objection to stand for Jezebel, if by so doing I could help him out of his dilemma. So to his studio I went, ascended his platform, and having been duly placed in the attitude required, and instructed on what precise point of the wall opposite to me to fix my eyes, I fell to thinking of the scene the picture represented, of the meeting between Ahab and his wicked queen with Elijah on the threshold of Naboth's vineyard, endeavoring, after my old stage fashion, to assume as thoroughly as possible the character which I was representing. Before I had retained the constrained attitude and fixed immovable gaze for more than a short time, my eyes grew dim, the wall I was glaring at seemed to waver about before me, I turned sick, a cold perspiration broke out on my forehead, my ears buzzed, my knees trembled, my heart throbbed, and I suppose I was not far from a fainting fit. I sat abruptly down on the platform, and called my friendly artist to my assistance, describing to him my sensations, and asking if he could explain what had occasioned them. He expressed remorseful distress at having subjected me to such annoyance, saying, however, that my condition was not an uncommon one for painters' models to be thrown into by the nervous strain of the fixed look and attention, and rigid immobility of position, required of them; that he had known men succumb to it on a first experiment, but had thought me so strong, and so little liable to any purely nervous affection, that it had never occurred to him for a moment that there was any danger of my being thus overcome.

I recovered almost immediately, the nervous strain being taken off, and resumed my duty as a model, taking care to vary my expression and attitude whenever I felt at all weary, and resting myself by sitting down and lending another aspect of my face to my friend for his Elijah.

I found, after this experience, no difficulty in understanding the state of bewildered stupefaction into which the lecturer on electro-biology had thrown his patients by demanding of them a fixed attention of mind, look, and attitude to a given point of contemplation. I think, just before I quite broke down, I could neither have said where I was, nor who I was, nor contradicted Sir Frederick Leighton if he had assured me that my name was Polly and that I was putting the kettle on.]

CLARGES STREET, June, 1844. DEAREST HARRIET,

I have not a morsel of letter-paper in my writing-book; do not, therefore, let your first glance take offence at the poor narrow note-paper, on which our dear friend Emily is forever writing to me, and which throws me into a small fury every time I get an affectionate communication from her on it. Our drawing-room has only this instant emptied itself of a throng of morning visitors, among whom my brother John and his wife, Mary Anne Thackeray, Dick Pigott, Sydney Smith, and A---- C----....

My letter has suffered an interruption, dear Harriet; I had to go out and return all manner of visits, took a walk with Adelaide in Kensington Gardens, went and dined quietly with M---- M----, and came back at half-past ten, to find Mr. C---- very quietly established here with my father and sister....

This is to-morrow, my dear Harriet, and we are all engaged sitting to Lane, who is making medallion likenesses of us all. John and his wife together in one sphere, their two little children in another, ---- and I in one eternity, and our chicks in another, their two little profiles looking so funny and so pretty, one just behind the other; my father, my sister, and Henry have each their world to themselves in single blessedness. The likenesses are all good, and charmingly executed. I should like to be able to send you mine and my children's, but as he will accept no remuneration for them, and as time and trouble are the daily bread of an artist----

Here I was interrupted again, and obliged to put by my letter, which was begun last Thursday, and it is now Sunday afternoon. Our drawing-room has just emptied itself of A---- M---- and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Grote, Mr. H----, young Mr. K---- of Frankfort, and Chorley. Mrs. Grote brought with her Fanny Ellsler's little girl, a lovely child about seven years old....

I must tell you something of our event of yesterday. A concert was given for the benefit of the Poles, the Duchess of Sutherland condescending to lend Stafford House, provided the assemblage was quite select and limited to four hundred people; to accomplish which desirable point, and at the same time make the thing answer its charitable purpose, the tickets were sold at first at two guineas apiece, and on the morning itself of the concert at five guineas. Rachel was to recite, Liszt to play, and my sister was requested to sing, which she agreed to do, the occasion being semi-public and private, so to speak. A large assembly of our finest (and bluntest) people was not a bad audience, in a worldly sense, for her début. She sang beautifully, and looked beautiful, and was extremely admired and praised and petted.

The whole scene was one of the gayest and most splendid possible, the entertainment and assembly taking place in the great hall and staircase of Stafford House, with its scarlet floor-cloths, and marble stairs and balustrades, and pillars of scagliola, and fretted roof of gold and white, and skylight surrounded and supported by gigantic gilt caryatides.

The wide noble flights of steps and long broad galleries, filled with brilliantly dressed groups; with the sunlight raining down in streams on the panels and pillars of the magnificent hall, on the beautiful faces of the women, and the soft sheen and brilliant varied coloring of their clothes, and on perfect masses of flowers, piled in great pyramids of every form and hue in every niche and corner, or single plants covered with an exquisite profusion of perfect bloom, standing here and there in great precious china vases stolen from the Arabian Nights; it really was one of the grandest and gayest shows you can imagine, more beautiful than Paul Veronese's most splendid pictures, which it reminded one of.

My sister's singing overcame me dreadfully....

I must close this letter, my dear; my head is in such a state of confusion that I scarcely know what I write; and if I keep it longer, you will never get it.

Yours ever truly----

(I don't know what I am saying; I love you affectionately, but I am almost beside myself with--everything.)

Yours ever, FANNY.

CLARGES STREET, Sunday, June 20th, 1841.

You know, dearest Harriet, my aversion to writing short letters; I have something of the same feeling about that hateful little note-paper on which I have lately written to you. The sight of these fair large squares laid on my table, and of at least six unanswered letters of yours, prompts me to use this quiet half-hour--quiet by comparison only, for ----, Adelaide, and little F---- are shouting all round me, and a distracting brass band, that I dote upon, is playing tunes to which I am literally writing in time; nevertheless, in this house, this may be called a moment of profoundest quiet.

I do not believe that you will have quarrelled much with the note-paper, because I certainly filled it as well as I could; but I always feel insulted when anybody that I really care for writes to me on those frivolous, insufficient-looking sheets. I suppose, if you have missed Emily's Boswellian records of our sayings and doings here, you have received from her instead epistles redolent of the sweetness of the country, whole nosegays of words, that have made me gasp again for the grass and trees, and the natural enjoyments of life. Her affectionate remembrance reaches me every day by penny post, a little envelope full of delicious orange-blossoms, with which my clothes and everything about me are perfumed for the rest of the day.

You have not said much to me about the daguerreotype, nor did you ask me anything about the process; but that, I suppose, is because Emily furnished you with so many more details than I probably should, and with much more scientific knowledge to make her description clear. I found it better looking than I had expected, but altogether different, which surprised me, because I thought I knew my own face. It was less thick in the outlines than I had thought it would be, but also older looking than I fancied myself, and it gave me a heavy jaw, which I was not conscious of possessing. The process was wonderfully rapid; I think certainly not above two minutes. I have seen several of Charles Young, which are admirable, and do not appear to me exaggerated in any respect....

My father and Adelaide dined with the Macdonalds on Sunday; and Sir John, who, you know, is adjutant-general, made her a kind of half promise that he would give Henry leave to come over from Ireland and see her.

I believe the first time that S---- heard her aunt sing was one night after she was in bed (she sleeps in my room, where one does not lose a note of the music below). When I went up, I found her wide awake, and she started up in her bed, exclaiming, "Well, how many angels have you got down there, I should like to know?"

I wrote thus much this morning, dear Harriet; this evening I have another quiet season in which to resume my pen.... I have been obliged to give up my dinner engagement for to-day, and I sat down by the failing light of half-past seven o'clock to eat a cold dinner alone, with a book in my hand: which combination of circumstances reminded me so forcibly of my American home, that I could hardly make out whether I was here or there.

So far yesterday, Thursday evening; it is now Friday morning. Adelaide has gone out with Mary Anne Thackeray to buy cheap gowns at a bankrupt shop in Regent Street; the piano is silent, and I can hear myself think, and have some consciousness of what I am writing about....

Dearest Harriet, it is now Sunday morning; there is a most stupendous row at the pianoforte, and, luckily, there is no more space in this paper for my addled brains to testify to the effect of this musical tempest. God bless you.

Ever yours, FANNY.

CLARGES STREET, Wednesday, June 23rd, 1841. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

You asked me some time ago some questions about Rachel, which I never answered, in the first place because I had not seen her then, and since I have seen her I have had other things I wanted to say. Everybody here is now raving about her. I have only seen her once on the stage, and heard her declaim at Stafford House, the morning of the concert for the Poles. Her appearance is very striking: she is of a very good height; too thin for beauty, but not for dignity or grace; her want of chest and breadth indeed almost suggest a tendency to pulmonary disease, coupled with her pallor and her youth (she is only just twenty). Her voice is the most remarkable of her natural qualifications for her vocation, being the deepest and most sonorous voice I ever heard from a woman's lips: it wants brilliancy, variety, and tenderness; but it is like a fine, deep-toned bell, and expresses admirably the passions in the delineation of which she excels--scorn, hatred, revenge, vitriolic irony, concentrated rage, seething jealousy, and a fierce love which seems in its excess allied to all the evil which sometimes springs from that bittersweet root. [I shall never forget the first time I ever heard Mademoiselle Rachel speak. I was acting my old part of Julia, in "The Hunchback," at Lady Ellesmere's, where the play was got up for an audience of her friends, and for her especial gratification. The room was darkened, with the exception of our stage, and I had no means of discriminating anybody among my audience, which was, as became an assembly of such distinguished persons, decorously quiet and undemonstrative. But in one of the scenes, where the foolish heroine, in the midst of her vulgar triumph at the Earl of Rochdale's proposal, is suddenly overcome by the remorseful recollection of her love for Clifford, and almost lets the earl's letter fall from her trembling hands, I heard a voice out of the darkness, and it appeared to me almost close to my feet, exclaiming, in a tone the vibrating depth of which I shall never forget, "Ah, bien, bien, très bien!"] Mademoiselle Rachel's face is very expressive and dramatically fine, though not absolutely beautiful. It is a long oval, with a head of classical and very graceful contour; the forehead rather narrow and not very high; the eyes small, dark, deep-set, and terribly powerful; the brow straight, noble, and fine in form, though not very flexible.

I was immensely struck and carried away with her performance of "Hermione," though I am not sure that some of the parts did not seem to me finer than the whole, as a whole conception. That in which she is unrivalled by any actor or actress I ever saw is the expression of a certain combined and concentrated hatred and scorn. Her reply to Andromaque's appeal to her, in that play, was one of the most perfect things I have ever seen on the stage: the cold, cruel, acrid enjoyment of her rival's humiliation,--the quiet, bitter, unmerciful exercise of the power of torture, was certainly, in its keen incisiveness, quite incomparable. It is singular that so young a woman should so especially excel in delineations and expressions of this order of emotion, while in the utterance of tenderness, whether in love or sorrow, she appears comparatively less successful; I am not, however, perhaps competent to pronounce upon this point, for Hermione and Emilie, in Corneille's "Cinna," are not characters abounding in tenderness. Lady M---- saw her the other day in "Marie Stuart," and cried her eyes almost out, so she must have some pathetic power. ---- was so enchanted with her, both on and off the stage, that he took me to call upon her, on her arrival in London, and I was very much pleased with the quiet grace and dignity, the excellent bon ton of her manners and deportment. The other morning too, at Stafford House, I was extremely overcome at my sister's first public exhibition in England, and was endeavoring, while I screened myself behind a pillar, to hide my emotion and talk with some composure to Rachel; she saw, however, how it was with me, and with great kindness allowed me to go into a room that had been appropriated to her use between her declamations, and was very amiable and courteous to me.

She is completely the rage in London now; all the fine ladies and gentlemen crazy after her, the Queen throwing her roses on the stage out of her own bouquet, and viscountesses and marchionesses driving her about, à l'envie l'une de l'autre, to show her all the lions of the town. She is miserably supported on the stage, poor thing, the corps dramatique engaged to act with her being not only bad, but some of them (the principal hero, principally) irresistibly ludicrous.

By-the-by, I was assured, by a man who went to see the "Marie Stuart," that this worthy, who enacted the part of Leicester, carried his public familiarity with Queen Elizabeth to such lengths as to nudge her with his elbow on some particular occasion. Don't you think that was nice?

Mrs. Grote and I have had sundry small encounters, and I think I perceive that, had I leisure to cultivate her acquaintance more thoroughly, I should like her very much. The other evening, at her own house, she nearly killed me with laughing, by assuring me that she had always had a perfect passion for dancing, and that she had entirely missed her vocation, which ought to have been that of an opera-dancer; (now, Harriet, she looks like nothing but Trelawney in petticoats.) I suppose this is the secret of her great delight in Ellsler.

I find, in an old letter of yours that I was reading over this morning, this short question: "Does imagination make a fair balance, in heightening our pains and our pleasures?" That would depend, I suppose, upon whether we had as many pleasures as pains (real ones, I mean) to be colored by it; but as the mere possession of an imaginative temperament is in itself a more fertile source of unreal pains than pleasures, the answer may be short too; an imaginative mind has almost always a tendency to be a melancholy one. Shakespeare is the glorious exception to this, but then he is an exception to everything. I must bid you good-bye now....

God bless you, dear.

Ever your affectionate, FANNY.

[After seeing Mademoiselle Rachel, as I subsequently did, in all her great parts, and as often as I had an opportunity of doing so, the impression she has left upon my mind is that of the greatest dramatic genius, except Kean, who was not greater, and the most incomparable dramatic artist I ever saw. The qualities I have mentioned as predominating in her performances still appear to me to have been their most striking ones; but her expressions of tenderness, though rare, were perfect--one instance of which was the profound pathos of the short exclamation, "Oh, mon cher, Curiace!" that precedes her fainting fit of agony in "Camille," and the whole of the last scene of "Marie Stuart," in which she excelled Madame Ristori as much in pathetic tenderness as she surpassed her in power, in the famous scene of defiance to Elizabeth. As for any comparison between her and that beautiful woman and charming actress, or her successor on the French stage of the present day, Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, I do not admit any such for a moment.]

Bannisters, July 28th, 1841. DEAREST HARRIET,

You certainly have not thought that I was never going to write to you again, but I dare say you have wondered when I should ever write to you again. This seems a very fitting place whence to address you, who are so affectionately associated with the recollection of the last happy days I spent here.

How vain is the impatience of despondency! How wise, as well as how pleasant, it is to hope! Not that all can who would; but I verily believe that the hopeful are the wisest as well as the happiest of this mortal congregation; for, in spite of the credulous distrust of the desponding, the accomplishment of our wishes awaits us in the future quite as often as their defeat, and the cheerful faithful spirit of those who can hope has the promise of this life as well as of that which is to come.

At the end of four years, here I am again with my dear friend Emily, even in this lovely home of hers, from which a doom, ever at hand, has threatened to expel her every day of these four years.... In spite of separation, distance, time, and the event which stands night and day at her door, threatening to drive her forth from this beloved home, here we are again together, enjoying each other's fellowship in these familiar beautiful scenes: walking, driving, riding, and living together, as we have twice been permitted to do before, as we are now allowed to do again, to the confusion of all the depressing doubts which have prevented this fair prospect from ever rising before my eyes with the light of hope upon it--so little chance did there seem of its ever being realized.

Emily and I rode to Netley Abbey yesterday, and looked at the pillar on which your name and ours were engraved with so many tears before my last return to America. If I had had a knife, I would have rewritten the record, at least deepened it; but, indeed, it seems of little use to do so while the soft, damp breath of the air suffices to efface it from the stone, and while every stone of the beautiful ruin is a memento to each one of us of the other two, and the place will be to all time haunted by our images, and by thoughts as vivid as bodily presences to the eyes of whichever of us may be there without the others....

Our plans are assuming very definite shape, and you will probably be glad to hear that there is every prospect of our spending another year in England, inasmuch as we are at this moment in treaty for a house which we think of taking with my father for that time. My sister has concluded an extremely agreeable and advantageous engagement with Covent Garden, for a certain number of nights, at a very handsome salary. This is every way delightful to me; it keeps her in England, among her friends, and in the exercise of her profession; it places her where she will meet with respect and kindness, both from the public and the members of the profession with whom she will associate. Covent Garden is in some measure our vantage-ground, and I am glad that she should thence make her first appeal to an English audience.

Our new house (if we get it) is in Harley Street, close to Cavendish Square, and has a room for you, of course, dearest Harriet; and you will come and see my sister's first appearance, and stay with me next winter, as you did last. Our more immediate plans stand thus: we leave this sweet and dear place, to our great regret, to-morrow; to-morrow night and part of Thursday we spend at Addleston with my brother; then we remain in town till Monday, when we go to the Hoo (Lord Dacre's); then we return to town, and afterwards proceed to Mrs. Arkwright's at Sutton, and then to the Francis Egertons', at Worsley; and after that we set off for Germany, where we think of remaining till the end of September. Adelaide's engagement at Covent Garden begins in November, when you must come and assist in bringing her out properly. God bless you, dear. Give my love to Dorothy, and believe me

Ever affectionately yours, FANNY.

THE HOO, Wednesday, July 28th, 1841. DEAREST HARRIET,

I wrote you a long letter yesterday, which was no sooner finished than I tore it up.... We came down to this place yesterday. I obtained Lady Dacre's leave to bring my sister, and of course I have my children with me, so we are here in great force. Independently of my long regard for and gratitude to Lord and Lady Dacre, which made me glad to visit them, I like this old place, and find it pleasant, though it has no pretensions to be a fine one. Some part of the offices is Saxon, of an early date, old enough to be interesting. The house itself, however, is comparatively modern: it is a square building, and formerly enclosed a large courtyard, but in later days the open space has been filled up with a fine oak staircase (roofed in with a skylight), the carving of which is old and curious and picturesque. The park is not large, but has some noble trees, which you would delight in; the flower-garden, stolen from a charming old wood (some of the large trees of which are coaxed into its boundaries), is a lovely little strip of velvet lawn, dotted all over with flower-beds, like large nosegays dropped on the turf; and the rough, whitey-brown, weather-beaten stone of the house is covered nearly to the top windows with honeysuckle and jasmine. It is not at all like what is called a fine place; it is not even as pretty and cheerful as Bannisters: but it has an air of ancient stability and dignity, without pretension or ostentation, that is very agreeable....

We left my father tolerably well in health, but a good deal shaken in spirits.... I am expected downstairs, to read to them in the drawing-room something from Shakespeare; and our afternoon is promised to a cricket-match, for the edification of one of our party, who never saw one. I must therefore conclude.... Good-bye, dearest Harriet. As for me, to be once more in pure air, among flowers and under trees, is all-sufficient happiness. I do cordially hate all towns.

Give my dear love to Mrs. Harry Siddons, if she is near you, and tell her I shall surely not leave Europe without seeing her again, let her be where she will. Remember me affectionately to Dorothy, and believe me.

Ever yours, FANNY.

THE HOO, Thursday, July 29th, 1841. DEAREST HARRIET,

I wrote to you yesterday, but an unanswered letter of yours lies on the top of my budget of "letters to answer," and I take it up to reply to it. The life I am leading does not afford much to say; yet that is not quite true, for to loving hearts or thinking minds the common events of every day, in the commonest of lives, have a meaning.... After breakfast yesterday we took up Lady Dacre's translations from Petrarch--a very admirable performance, in which she has contrived to bend our northern utterance into a most harmonious and yet conscientious interpretation of those perfect Italian compositions. My sister read the Italian, which, with her pure pronunciation and clear ringing voice, sounded enchanting; after which I echoed it with the English translation; all which went on very prosperously, till I came to that touching invocation written on Good Friday, when the poet, no longer offering incense to his mortal idol, but penitential supplications to his God, implores pardon for the waste of life and power his passion had betrayed him into, and seeks for help to follow higher aims and holier purposes; a pathetic and solemn composition, which vibrated so deeply upon kindred chords in my heart that my voice became choked, and I could not read any more. After this, Adelaide read us some Wordsworth, for which she has a special admiration; after which, having recovered my voice, I took up "Romeo and Juliet," for which we all have a special admiration; and so the morning passed. After lunch, we went, B----, Lord Dacre, and I on horseback, Lady Dacre, Adelaide, and G---- S---- in the open carriage, to a pretty village seven miles off, where a cricket-match was being played, into the mysteries of which some of us particularly wished to be initiated.

The village of Hitchin is full of Quakers, and I rather think the game was being played by them, for such a silent meeting I never saw, out of a Friends' place of worship. But the ride was beautiful, and the day exquisite; and I learned for the first time that clematis is called, in this part of England, "traveller's joy," which name returned upon my lips, like a strain of music, at every moment, so full of poetry and sweet and touching association does it seem to me. Do you know it by that name in Ireland? I never heard it before in England, though I have been familiar with another pretty nickname for it, which you probably know--virgin's-bower. This is all very well for its flowering season; I wish somebody would find a pretty name for it when it is all covered with blown glass or soap-bubbles, and looks at a little distance like smoke.

Returning home, after entering the park, Lord Dacre had left us to go and look at a turnip-field, and B---- and I started for a gallop; when my horse, a powerful old hunter, not very well curbed, and extremely hard-mouthed, receiving some lively suggestion from the rhythmical sound of his own hoofs on the turf, put his head down between his legs and tore off with me at the top of his speed. I knew there was a tallish hedge in the direction in which we were going, and, as it is full seven years since I sat a leap, I also knew that there was a fair chance of my being chucked off, if he took it, which I thought I knew he would; so I lay back in my saddle and sawed at his mouth and pulled de corps et a'âne, but in vain. I lost my breath, I lost my hat, and shouted at the top of my voice to B---- to stop, which I thought if she did, my steed, whose spirit had been roused by emulation, would probably do too. She did not hear me, but fortunately stopped her horse before we reached the hedge, when my quadruped halted of his own sweet will, with a bound on all fours, or off all fours, that sent me half up to the sky; but I came back into my saddle without leap, without tumble, and with only my ignoble fright for my pains.

We dine at half-past seven, after which we generally have music and purse-making and discussions, poetical and political, and wine and water and biscuits, and go to bed betimes, like wise folk....

This morning a bloodhound was brought me from the dog-kennel, the largest dog of his kind, and the handsomest of any kind, that I ever saw; his face and ears were exquisite, his form and color magnificent, his voice appalling, and the expression of his countenance the tenderest, sweetest, and saddest you can conceive; I cannot imagine a more beautiful brute. After admiring him we went to the stables, to see a new horse Lord Dacre has just bought, and I left him being put through his paces, to come and indite this letter to you....

We leave this place on Monday for London, at the thought of which I feel half choked with smoke already. The Friday after, however, we go into the country again, to the Arkwrights' and the Francis Egertons', and then to Germany; so that our lungs and nostrils will be tolerably free passages for vital air for some little time.

God bless you, dearest Harriet. I have filled my letter with such matter as I had--too much with myself, perhaps, for any one but you; but unless I write you an epic poem about King Charlemagne, I know not well what else to write about here.

Ever affectionately yours, FANNY.

THE HOO, Sunday, August 1st, 1841. DEAREST HARRIET,

I wrote you the day before yesterday, and gave you a sort of journal of that day's proceedings. I have nothing of any different interest to tell you, inasmuch as our daily proceedings here are much of a muchness.

We return to town to-morrow afternoon, to my great regret; and I must, immediately upon our doing so, remove the family to our new abode. I am rather anxious to see how my father is; we left him in very low spirits, ... and I am anxious to see whether he has recovered them at all. I think our visit to Sutton, where we go on Friday, will be of use to him; for though he cordially dislikes the country and everything belonging to its unexciting existence, he has always had a very great attachment for Mrs. Arkwright, and perhaps, for so short a time as a week, he may be able to resist the ennui of l'innocence des champs....

I am well, and have been enjoying myself extremely. I love the country for itself; and the species of life which combines, as these people lead it, the pleasures of the highest civilization with the wholesome enjoyments which nature abounds in seems to me the perfection of existence, and is always beneficial as well as delightful to me. I rode yesterday a fine new horse Lord Dacre has just bought, and who is to be christened Forester, in honor of my beloved American steed, whom he somewhat resembles....

Considering our weather down here in Hertfordshire, I am afraid you must have most dismal skies at Ambleside, where you are generally so misty and damp; I am sure I recollect no English summer like this. As for poor Adelaide, she is all but frozen to death, and creeps about, lamenting for the sun, in a most piteous fashion imaginable.

I have had a letter from Cecilia Combe within the last two days, anticipating meeting us on the Rhine, either at Godesberg, where she now is, or at Bonn, where she expects to pass some time soon. She complains of dulness, but accuses the weather, which she says is horrible. By-the-by, of Cecy and Mr. Combe I have now got the report containing the account of Laura Bridgman (the deaf, dumb, and blind girl of whom he speaks), and when you come to me you shall see it; it is marvellous--a perfect miracle of Christian love.

Catherine Sedgwick's book (some notes of her visit to Europe) has just come out, and I am reading it again, having read the manuscript journal when first she returned home; a record, of course, of far more interest than the pruned and pared version of it which she gives to the public. I am also reading an excellent article in the last Edinburgh, on the society of Port Royal, which I find immensely interesting. I must now run out for a walk. It is Sunday, and the horses are not used, and I must acquire some exercise, through the agency of my own legs, before dinner. I have walked two miles this morning, to be sure; but that was to and from church, and should not count. God bless you, dearest Harriet.

Ever yours, FANNY.

LIÈGE, Thursday, August 26th, 1841. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

We have just returned from a lionizing drive about Liège, a city of which my liveliest impressions, before I saw it, were derived from Scott's novel of "Quentin Durward," and in which the part now remaining of what existed in his time is all that much interests me.

I do not know whether in your peregrinations you ever visited this place; if you did, I hope you duly admired the palace of the prince bishop (formerly), now the Palais de Justice, which is one of the most picturesque remnants of ancient architecture I have seen in this land of them.

Except this, and one fine old church, I have found nothing in the town to please or interest me much. I have seen one or two old dog-holes of houses, blackened and falling in with age, which seem as if they might be some of the cinders of Charles the Bold's burnings hereabouts. We left Brussels this morning, after spending a day and a half there. I was much pleased with the gay and cheerful appearance of that small imitation Paris, even to the degree of fancying that I should like to live there, in spite of the supercilious sentence of vulgarity, stupidity, and pretension which some of our friends, diplomatic residents there, passed upon the inhabitants.... We went to call upon the ----s, and, with something of a shock on my part, found one of the ornaments of his sitting-room a large crucifix with the Saviour in his death-agony--a horrible image, which I would banish, if I could, from every artist's imagination; for the physical suffering is a revolting spectacle which art should not portray, and the spiritual triumph is a thing which the kindred soul of man may indeed conceive, but which art cannot delineate, for it is God, and not to be translated into matter, save indeed where it once was made manifest in that Face and Person every imaginary representation of which is to me more or less intolerable.

The face of Christ is never painted or sculptured without being painfully offensive to me; yet I have seen looks--who has not?--that were His, momentarily, on mortal faces; but they were looks that could not have been copied, even there....

These steamship and railroad times will do away with that staple idea, both in real and literary romances, of "never meeting again," "parting forever," etc., etc.; and people will now meet over and over again, no matter by what circumstances parted, or to what distance thrown from each other; whence I draw the moral that our conduct in all the quarters of the globe had better be as decent as possible, for there is no such thing nowadays as losing sight of people or places--I mean, for any convenient length of time, for purposes of forgetfulness. I forget whether, when you left us in London, my father had come to the determination of not accompanying but following us, which he intends doing as soon as he feels well enough to travel.

Rubens's paintings have given us extreme delight.... I was much interested by the lace-works at Brussels and Mechlin, and very painfully so. It is beginning to be time, I think, in Christian countries, for manufactures of mere luxury to be done away with, when proficiency in the merest mechanical drudgery involved in them demands a lifetime, and the sight and health of women, who begin this twilight work at five and six years old, are often sacrificed long before their natural term to this costly and unhealthy industry.

I hope to see all such manufactures done away with, for they are bad things, and a whole moral and intelligent being, turned into ten fingers' ends for such purposes, is a sad spectacle. I (a lace-worshipper, if ever woman was) say this advisedly; I am sorry there is still Mechlin and Brussels lace made, and glad there is no more India muslin, and rejoice in the disuse of every minute manual labor which tends to make a mere machine of God's likeness. But oh, for all that, how incomparably inferior is the finest, faultless, machine-made lace and muslin to the exquisite irregularity of the human fabric!... Good-bye, my dearest Harriet. We start for Aix-la-Chapelle at eight to-morrow. I am not in very good strength; the fact is, I am now never in thoroughly good plight without exercise on horseback, and it is a long time since I have had any, and, of course, it is now quite out of the question. I beg, desire, entreat, and command that you will immediately get and read Balzac's "Eugénie Grandet," and tell me instantly what you think of it.

Your affectionate FANNY.

WIESBADEN, Friday, September, 1841. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Walking along the little brook-side on the garden path under the trees towards the Sonnenberg, you may well imagine how vividly your image and that of Catherine Sedgwick were present to me. You took this walk together, and it was from her lively description of it that I knew, the moment I set my feet in the path, both where I was and where I was going. That walk is very pretty. I did not follow it to the end, because my children were with me, and it was too far for them; but yesterday I went to the ruin on horseback, and came home along the rough cart-road, on the hill on the other side of the valley, whence the views reminded me somewhat of the country round Lenox, in Massachusetts, though not perhaps of the prettiest part of the latter.

I have not yet in my travels seen anything much more picturesque than the prettiest parts of the American Berkshire; and upon the whole (castles, of course, excepted) was rather disappointed in the Rhine, which is not, I think, as beautiful a river as the Hudson. Knowing the powerful charm of affectionate association, and the halo which happiness throws over any place where we attain to something approaching it, I have sometimes suspected that my admiration of and delight in that Lenox and Stockbridge scenery was derived in some measure from those sources, and that the country round them is not in reality as beautiful as it always appears in my eyes and to my memory. But, comparing it now with scenery admired by the travelling taste of all Europe, I am satisfied that the American scenery I am so fond of is intrinsically lovely, and compares very favorably with everything I have seen hitherto on the Continent.

As for your friend Anne (my children's American nurse), coming up the Rhine she sat looking at the shores, her brown eyes growing rounder and rounder, and her handsome face full of as much good-humored contempt as it could express, every now and then exclaiming, "Well, to be sure, it's a pretty river, and it's well enough; but my! they hadn't need to make such a fuss about it." The fact is, that the noble breadth of the river forms one of its most striking features to a European, and this, you know, is no marvel to "us of the new world." Moreover, I suspect Anne does not consider the baronial castles "of much 'count," either; and, to confess the truth, I am rather disturbed at the little emotion produced in me by the romantic ruins and picturesque accompaniments of the Rhine. But it seems to me that I am losing much of my excitability; my imagination has become disgracefully tame, and I find myself here, where I have most desired to be, with a mind chiefly intent upon where, when, how, and on what my children can dine, and feelings principally occupied with the fact that I have no one with me to sympathize in any other thought or emotion if I should attempt to indulge in such.

We arrived at Coblentz one melting summer afternoon, and I walked up to the top of the fortress alone, and the setting of the sun over beyond the lands and rivers at my feet, and the uprising of the moon above, the bristling battlements behind me, filled me with delight; but I had no one to express it to.

This evening at Ehrenbreitstein, and the cathedral at Cologne, are my two events hitherto; the only two things that have stirred or affected me much. That cathedral is a whole liturgy in stone--eloquent, devout stone,--uttering so solemnly its great unfinished God-service of silent prayer and praise through all these centuries. I have seen many beautiful churches, but was never impressed by any as by this huge fragment of one.

My father, as I have written you, stayed behind, saying that he would follow us. He has not done so yet, and I do not expect that he will, for reasons which I will not repeat, as I gave them to you in a long letter which I wrote to you from Liège, which I heartily hope you have received.

[On arriving at Coblentz on a brilliant afternoon, so much of lovely daylight yet remained that I was most desirous to cross the river and ascend the great fortress of the Broad Stone of Honor, to see the sunset from its walls. I could not inspire anybody else with the same zeal, however; and, under the combined influence of disappointment and eager curiosity, started alone, at a brisk walk, and, crossing the bridge, began the ascent, and, gradually quickening my pace as I neared the summit, arrived, on a full run, breathless before the sentinel who guarded the last gates and amiably shook his head at my attempt to enter. The gates were open, and I saw, across the wide parade-ground, or place d'armes, where groups of soldiers were standing and loitering about, the parapet wall of the fortress, whence I had hoped to see the day go down over the Rhine, the Moselle, and all the glorious region round their confluence. "Oh, do let me in," cried I in very emphatic English to the sentry, who gravely shook his head. "Where is your father?" quoth he in German, as I made imploring and impatient gestures, significant of my despair at the idea of having had that stupendous climb all for nothing. "I have none," cried I, in English and French all in a breath. Both were equally Greek to him. He gravely shook his head. "Where is your husband?" quoth he in German, to which I replied in German--oh, such German!--that "I had none, that I was a woman" (which he probably saw), "only a woman, an Englishwoman" (which he probably heard), "and that I could do no harm to his fortress; that I had come all alone, and run half the way up, and that I could not turn back, and he must let me in!" He still shook his head gravely. I had the tears in my eyes, and felt ready to cry with vexation. Just then an officer approaching the gates from within, I addressed my eager supplications in sputtering, stuttering fragments of German, French, and English to him; and he, laughing good-naturedly, gave the sentinel the order to admit me; when I made straight across the great parade-ground, surrounded with the masses of the huge fortification, to the low parapet wall, whence I beheld the glorious landscape I had hoped to see, bathed in the sunset--a vision of splendor, which surpassed even what I had expected, as I looked down from the dizzy height, over the magnificent river and its beautiful tributary, and all the near and distant landscape, melting far away into golden vapory indistinctness. I did not dare to stay long, having to return again alone; so, thanking my kind conductor, who had evidently enjoyed my ecstasy at the beauty of his Vaterland, I left the fortress, stopping again at the gate to ask the name of my friendly sentinel whose resistance to my impetuous storming of the fort had been as mild and gentle as was consistent with his resolute refusal to admit me. Having not a scrap of paper with me, I wrote his name with my pencil on my glove, determined, when I returned through Coblentz, to bring him some token of my gratitude for his patient forbearance; and so I ran all the way down and back to the hotel.

On our return, some weeks after, we visited Ehrenbreitstein with all the decorous solemnity of decent sight-seeing travellers; and, one of a party of four, I drove in state, in an open carriage, up the formidable approach that I had scaled so vehemently before. Duly armed with admits and permits, and all proper justifications of our approach, we drove under the huge archway, where stood another sentinel, and were received with courteous ceremony by some military gentlemen, under whose escort I leisurely went over the scene of my first visit, standing again, in more dignified enthusiasm, at the parapet where I had panted before in the breathless excitement of my run up the hill, my fight with the sentry, and my victory over him. Now, having been duly led and conducted and ushered and escorted all round, as we were about to depart, I begged, as a favor of the commanding officer, to be allowed to see again my friendly sentinel, for whom I had brought up a meerschaum of a pretty pattern that I had bought for him. "What was his name?" "Schneider." "Oh, there are several so called among the men. Should you know him again?" "Oh yes, indeed." And now ensued a general cry for Schneiders to present themselves. One after another was marched up, but without any resemblance to my friendly foe. Presently a word of command was given, followed by a brisk rolling of drums, when all the men came pouring out of the surrounding buildings, and formed in ranks on the ground. "You have seen them all--all the Schneiders," said the kindly commandant. "Ah, no! here is yet one;" and from the back ranks was pushed and pulled and thrust and shoved, perfectly crimson with shyness and suppressed laughter, one of the handsomest lads I ever saw. "Is this your man?" said the commanding officer, with a profound bow, and his face puckered up with laughing. "No," cried I (for it wasn't), quite overcome with confusion and the general laughter that followed the production of this last of the Schneiders. One of the officers then said that some of the troops had been sent elsewhere, not long after my first visit. "Ah, then," said the commandant, who had interested himself in my search with considerable amusement, "your Schneider, madame, has left Ehrenbreitstein." And so did we; I, not a little disappointed at not having seen again the worthy man who had not bayoneted me away from the gates, when I assailed them and him in such a frenzy.]

We overtook my sister at Mayence, or rather, I and the children remained there, while some of our party went on to Frankfort, where she was. They returned to Mayence in a body: ----, Adelaide, Henry, Miss Cottin, Mary Anne Thackeray, our London friend Chorley, and the illustrious Liszt. Travelling leisurely, as we were compelled to do on account of the children, I missed, to my great regret, my sister's first two public performances--a concert, and a representation of Norma, which she gave at Frankfort, and of which everybody spoke with the greatest enthusiasm. On the evening of the day when she joined us at Mayence, she sang at a concert, and this was the first time that I really have heard her sing in public; for I did not consider the concert at Stafford House a fair test of her powers--the audience was too limited, in number and quality, to deserve the name of a public. The sweetness and freshness of her voice struck me more than ever, but it appears to me rather wanting in power; and the same impression was produced upon me when I heard her sing in the Kursaal here. If there should be deficiency of power in the voice, it will, I fear, affect her success in so large a theatre as Covent Garden.... She sings Norma again to-night at Mayence, and I am going--of course without any anxiety, for her success is already established here; and with great anticipations of pleasure--more even, if possible, from her acting than her singing; for the latter I am already familiar with, but of the former I have no experience, and have always entertained the greatest expectations of it, and I think I shall not be disappointed.

We have obtained very pleasant apartments here, and I have established Anne and the children quite comfortably; they were beginning to suffer from the perpetual moving about, and I shall let them remain undisturbed here, during the rest of our stay in Germany, and shall either stay quietly with them, or accompany my sister, if it is determined that we are to do so, to the places of her various engagements.

Since writing the above, I have seen my sister act Norma, and her performance fully equalled my expectation; which is great praise, for I have always had the highest opinion of her dramatic powers, and was, as I believe you know, earnest with her at one time to leave the opera stage and become an actress in her own language, as I was very sure of her entire success, and thought it a better and higher order of thing than this mere uttering of sound, and perpetual representation of passion and emotion, comparatively unmixed with intellect. To be sure, that would be to sacrifice some of her fine natural endowments, and the art and science of music, in which she has, at so much cost of time and labor, so thoroughly perfected herself, and which is in itself so exquisite a thing.... Her carriage is good, easy, and unembarrassed; her gestures and use of her arms remarkably graceful and appropriate. There is very little too much action, and that which appears to me redundant may simply seem so because her conception of the character is, in some of its parts, impulsive, where it strikes me as concentrated, and would therefore be sterner and stiller in its effect than she occasionally makes it. But she has evidently thought over the whole most carefully, considered the effects she intends to produce, and the means of producing them; and it is a far more finished performance, without any of the special defects which I should have expected in so great a lyrical tragic part, given by so young an artist. I suspect, however, that the severely mechanical element in music renders certainty in the performer's intentions necessary beforehand, to a much greater degree than in a merely dramatic performance; and thus a singer can seldom do the things which an actor sometimes does, upon the sudden inspiration of the moment, occasionally producing thus extraordinary effects. Some of the things my sister did were perfect--I speak now of her acting: they were as fine as some of Pasta's great effects, and her whole performance reminded me forcibly of that finest artist. I cannot help thinking, however, that she is cramped by the music, and I confess I should like to see her act Bianca without singing it, as I am satisfied that she would represent most admirably all characters of power and passion, and find in the great dramatic compositions of our stage, and especially in Shakespeare's plays, scope for her capacity which Italian operas cannot afford.

Her voice is not as powerful as I expected, nor as I think it would have been if she had not striven to acquire artificial compass; that is, high notes which were not originally in her natural register,--the great aim of all singers being to sing the highest music, which is always that of the principal female character. The consequence of this is sometimes that the quality of the natural voice is in a measure sacrificed to the acquisition of notes not originally within its compass....

I have room for no more, dearest Harriet. Good-bye, and God bless you.

Ever affectionately yours, FANNY.

I wrote you an interminable letter from Liège. Did you ever get it?

[The time we spent on the Rhine during this summer afforded me an opportunity of almost intimate acquaintance with the celebrated musician who had persuaded my sister to associate herself with him in the concerts he gave at the principal places on the Rhine where we stopped.

Our whole expedition partook more of the character of a party of pleasure than a business speculation; and though Liszt's and my sister's musical performances were professional exhibitions of the highest order, the relations of our whole party were those of the friendliest and merriest tourists and compagnons de voyage. Nothing could exceed the charm of our delightful travelling through that lovely scenery, and sojourning in those pleasant picturesque antique towns, where the fine concerts of our two artists enchanted us even more, from personal sympathy, than the most enthusiastic audiences who thronged to hear them.

Liszt was at this time a young man, in the very perfection of his extraordinary talent, and at the height of his great celebrity. He was extremely handsome; his features were finely chiselled, and the expression of his face, especially when under the inspiration of playing, strikingly grand and commanding.

Of all the pianists that I have ever heard, and I have heard all the most celebrated of my time, he was undoubtedly the first for fire, power, and brilliancy of execution. His style, which was strictly original, and an innovation upon all that had preceded it, may be called the "Sturm und Drang," or seven-leagued-boot style of playing on the piano; and in listening to him, it was difficult to believe that he had no more than the average number of fingers, or that they were of the average length,--but that, indeed, they were not; he had stretched his hands like a pair of kid gloves, and accomplished the most incredible distances, while executing, in the interval between them, inconceivable musical feats with his three middle fingers. None of his musical contemporaries, Moscheles, Mendelssohn, Chopin, nor his more immediate rival, Thalberg, ever produced anything like the volcanic sort of musical effect which he did, perfect eruptions, earthquakes, tornadoes of sound, such as I never heard any piano utter but under his touch. But though he was undoubtedly a more amazing performer than any I ever listened to, his peculiar eccentricities were so inextricably interwoven with the whole mode and manner of his performances that, in spite of the many imitators they have inspired, he could by no means be regarded as the founder of anything deserving the name of a school of piano-playing. M. Rubinstein, I presume, in our own day, represents Liszt's peculiar genius better than any one else.

The close, concise, crowded, and somewhat crabbed style of the great learned musical school of the Bachs, which may almost be called the algebra or geometry of musical composition, at any rate its higher mathematics, had certainly challenged a spirit of the most daring contrast in the young Hungarian prodigy, who electrified Paris, and carried its severe body of classical critics by storm, with the triumphant audacity of his brilliant and powerful style. Liszt became, at the very opening of his career, so immediately a miracle, and then an oracle, in the artistic and the great world of Paris that he was allowed to impose his own terms upon its judgment; and suffering himself the worst consequences of that order of success, he achieved too early a fame for his permanent reputation. A want of sobriety, a fantastical seeking after strange effects--in short, the characteristics of artistic charlatanerie--mixed themselves up with all that he did, and, as is inevitably the case, deteriorated the fine original gifts of his genius. When I first heard him, he had already reached the furthest limit of his powers, because they were exerted in a mistaken direction; and the exaggeration and false taste which were covered by his marvellous facility and strength gradually became more and more predominant in his performances, and turned them almost into caricatures of the first wonderful specimens of ability with which he had amazed the musical world.

He could not go on being forever more astonishing than he had ever been before, and he paid the penalty of having made that his principal aim. His execution and composition alike became by degrees incoherent acrobatism, in which all that could call itself art was a mere combination of extraordinary and all but grotesque difficulties, devised for the sole purpose of overcoming them; musical convulsions and contortions, that forever recalled Dr. Johnson's epigram.

In the summer of 1842 Liszt was but on the edge of this descent; his genius, his youth, his personal beauty, and the vivid charm of his manner and conversation had made him the idol of society, as well as of the artistic world, and he was then radiant with the fire of his great natural gifts, and dazzling with the success that had crowned them; he was a brilliant creature....

After this I never saw Liszt again until the summer of 1870. I had gone to the theatre at Munich, where I was staying, to hear Wagner's opera of the "Rheingold," with my daughter and her husband. We had already taken our places, when S---- exclaimed to me, "There is Liszt." The increased age, the clerical dress, had effected but little change in the striking general appearance, which my daughter (who had never seen him since 1842, when she was quite a child) recognized immediately. I went round to his box, and, recalling myself to his memory, begged him to come to ours, and let me present my daughter to him; he very good-naturedly did so, and the next day called upon us at our hotel, and sat with us a long time....

His conversation on matters of art (Wagner's music, which he and we had listened to the evening before) and literature was curiously cautious and guarded, and every expression of opinion given with extreme reserve, instead of the uncompromising fearlessness of his earlier years; and the abbé was indeed quite another from the Liszt of our summer on the Rhine of 1842.

Liszt never composed any very good music; arrangement of the music of others was his specialty; and his versions of Schubert's, Weber's, and Mozart's finest melodies for the piano were the ne plus ultra of brilliant and powerful adaptation, but required his own rendering to produce their full effect; and by far the most extraordinary exhibition of skill I ever heard on the piano was his performance of the airs from the Don Giovanni, arranged by himself. His literary style had the same qualities and defects as his music: brilliancy and picturesqueness, and an absence of genuineness and simplicity. He wrote a great deal of musical criticism, and an interesting life of Chopin.

His conversation was sparkling and dazzling, and full of startling paradoxes; he had considerable power of sarcastic repartee, and once or twice is reported to have encountered the imperious queen of Austrian society, Madame de Metternich, with her own weapons, very successfully.

She patronized Thalberg, and affected to depreciate Liszt; but having invited them both to her house on one occasion, thought proper to address the latter with some impertinent questions about a professional visit he had just been paying to Paris, winding up with, "Enfin, avez-vous fait de bonnes affaires là-bas?" To which he replied, "Pardon, Madame la Princesse, j'ai fait un peu de musique; je laisse les affaires aux banquiers et aux diplomates." Later in the evening, the lady, probably not well pleased with this rebuff, accosted him again, as he stood talking to Thalberg, with a sneering compliment on his apparent freedom from all jealousy of his musical rival; to which Liszt, who was very sallow, replied, "Mais, Madame la Princesse, au contraire, je suis furieusement jaloux de Thalberg; regardez donc les jolies couleurs qu'il a!" After which Madame la Princesse le laissa en paix.

Between Thalberg and Liszt I do not think there could be any comparison. The exquisite perfection of delicate accuracy, combined with extraordinary lightness and velocity of execution, of Thalberg was his one unapproachable excellence, and as near the unerring precision of mere mechanism as possible: it was absolutely faultless; but it paid the penalty for being what things human may not be--it wanted the human element of passion and pathos. His performance was a miracle of art, and left his admiring auditors pleasingly amazed, but untouched in any of the deeper chords of sympathetic emotion. He had not a spark of the original genius or fire of Liszt. Moscheles, whom I have only named with the other two because he was a highly popular performer at the same time, was a more solid musician than either of them, and infinitely inferior as an executant to both. He was the most excellent of teachers, for which valuable office Thalberg would have wanted some and Liszt all the necessary qualifications. Of Chopin it is useless to speak: exceptional in his artistic nature and in his circumstances, he played his own most poetical music as no one else could; though his friend Dessauer, who was not a professional player at all, gave a most curious and satisfactory imitation of his mode of rendering his own compositions. But between Chopin and any other musical composer or performer there was never anything in common; he was original and unique in both characters.

As for Mendelssohn, the organ was his real instrument, though he played very finely on the piano. He was not, however, a pre-eminent performer, but a composer of music; and I should no more think of comparing the quality of his genius with that of Liszt, than I should compare the Roman girandola with its sky-scaring fusees and myriads of sudden scintillations and dazzling coruscations, with the element that lights our homes and warms our hearths, or to the steadfast shining of the everlasting stars themselves.

Of all the pianoforte players by whom I have heard Beethoven's music more or less successfully rendered, Charles Hallé has always appeared to me the one who most perfectly communicated the mind and soul of the pre-eminent composer.

Our temporary fellowship with Liszt procured for us a delightful participation in a tribute of admiration from the citizen workmen of Coblentz, that was what the French call saissant. We were sitting all in our hotel drawing-room together, the maestro as usual smoking his long pipe, when a sudden burst of music made us throw open the window and go out on the balcony, when Liszt was greeted by a magnificent chorus of nearly two hundred men's voices; they sang to perfection, each with his small sheet of music and his sheltered light in his hand, and the performance, which was the only one of the sort I ever heard, gave a wonderful impression of the musical capacity of the only really musical nation in the world.]

WIESBADEN, Sunday, September. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

I have already written to you from this place: one letter I wrote almost immediately after taking a walk which you had taken with Catherine Sedgwick, the year that you were here together, towards the Sonnenberg. You wrote me letters from here too, which I received up at Lenox, and read at a window looking out over a landscape very much resembling the neighborhood of this place. I remember your epistolary accounts of Wiesbaden were not very favorable: you did not like its watering-place aspect and fashions; and neither should I, if I was in any way mixed up with them. But we have hitherto none of us taken the waters; we have pretty and comfortable rooms, with the slight drawback of hearing our neighbors washing their hands and brushing their teeth, and drawing the natural conclusion as to the reciprocity of communications we make to them. We are at the Quatre Saisons, and with nothing but the Kursaal and its arcades between us and the gardens; so I am not oppressed with the feeling of a town, streets, houses, shops, etc., all which lie at my back and are never by any accident approached by me....

I have gone into the baths merely by way of what the French call propreté, being too lazy to go and fetch a wash under the arcade, in de l'eau naturelle. The water which supplies the baths in the Quatre Saisons is not by any means as strong as the Kochbrunnen, yet I fancied that it affected me unpleasantly, causing me a sensation of fullness in the head, and nausea, which was very disagreeable, as well as making me stupidly sleepy through the day....

Last Thursday I went to Frankfort to hear Adelaide sing; she was to perform, en costume, an act from three different operas, a sort of hotchpotch which, as she cares for her profession, I am surprised at her condescending to. We were not in time for the first, which was the last scene of the "Lucia di Lammermoor," but heard her in the last scene of "Beatrice di Tenda," and in the first scene of the "Norma." ... What she does is very perfect, but I think she occasionally falls short of the amount of power that I expected.... And all the time, I cannot help wishing that she would leave the singing part of the business, and take to acting not set to music. I think the singing cramps her acting, and I cannot help having some misgiving as to the effect she will produce in so large a theatre as Covent Garden; although, as she has sung successfully in the two largest theatres in Europe, the Scala at Milan and the San Carlo at Naples, I suppose my nervousness about Covent Garden is unnecessary.... Her movements and gesture are all remarkably graceful and easy; she is perfectly self-possessed, and impresses me even more as an artist than a genius, which I did not expect.

I believe she will not sing to-morrow night, and, in that case, they will all come over and spend the day here, when Henry, Mary Anne Thackeray, and I purpose ascending Wiesbaden horses and riding to the duke's hunting-seat, which perhaps you drove to when you were here....

I confess to you, I cannot help sometimes feeling a little anxious about my sister's success in England, especially when I remember how formidable a predecessor she is to succeed--that wonderful Malibran, who added to such original genius and great dramatic power a voice of such uncommon force and brilliancy.

Good-bye. This is the third long letter I have written to you since we came abroad.

Ever yours, FANNY.

AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, Monday, October 11th. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

I begin to sniff the well-beloved fogs and coal-smoke of that best beloved little island to which I have the honor and glory of belonging, and my spirits are much revived thereby; for, to tell you the truth, England, bad as it is, is good enough for me, and I am grown old and stupid and sleepy and don't-carish, and think more about bugs and greasy food in the way of woe than of vine-clad hills and ruined castles in the way of bliss. Not that I have been by any means dissatisfied with my tower, though rather disappointed in the one fact of the Rhine: but I am incurious and always was, and I do not think that fault mends with age; and knights, squires, and dames too, alas! are no longer to me the interesting folk that they once were.

"But it is past, the glory is congealing, The fervor of the heart grows dead and dim; I gaze all night upon a whitewashed ceiling, And catch no glimpses of the Seraphim."

I think the ruins of the German hills especially excellent in that they are ruins, and can by no possibility ever again be made strongholds of debauchery, ferocity, and filth; and finally and to conclude, my dear Harriet, lights and shadows, the colors of the earth and sky, the beauty of God's creation, in short, alone now moves me very deeply, and this, I am thankful to say, is as powerful to do so as ever.

I must tell you something pretty and poetical, and which I think has made more impression upon me than anything else in the course of my travels. The other evening at Cologne, by the sloping light of a watery autumnal sunset, the wind blowing loud and strong, the river rolling fast and free, and the great, violet-colored clouds drooping heavily down the sky, we suddenly heard the guns along each bank fire repeatedly, saluting the approach of some greatness or other down the stream. Whether it was king or kaiser, or only one of the merchant-princes to whom the navigation of this stream now belongs, and who receive these honors whenever they go up or down the river, nobody could tell; and still peal after peal was fired, and one echo rolled into another from shore to shore. At length a long low boat came in sight, sweeping down with the wide current towards the city walls. She was covered from stem to stern with bright flags and pennons, and was freighted with stone, which the Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt was sending down from his quarries, to help the people of Cologne to finish their beautiful cathedral; and as this cargo came along their shores they were saluting it with royal honors. The crane which was to lift the blocks from the boat had its great iron arm all wreathed with flowers, and flags and streamers floating from its top, which peaceful half-religious jubilee pleased me greatly, and affected me too.

At Cologne, six weeks before, we had seen the King of Hanover, Ernest Augustus, the wicked Duke of Cumberland, received just in the same way, except that the cannonading was closed on that occasion, in an exceedingly appropriate manner to my mind, by a sudden fierce peal of derisive thunder.

We went, while at Cologne, to the Museum, and there saw another beautiful thing of another sort, Bendermann's picture of the Jews weeping by the waters of Babylon--a very striking picture, sad and harmonious in its coloring, and full of feeling and expression; I was greatly impressed by it. And thus, you see, from only one of the places I have visited, I have brought away two living recollections, perpetual sources of pleasant mental contemplation. Two such treasures in one's storehouse of memory would have been worth the whole journey; but I have had many more such, and I incline to think that it is very often in retrospect that travel is most agreeable--the little annoyances and hindrances, which often qualify one's pleasure a good deal at the time one receives it, seldom mix themselves with the recollection of it in the same vivid manner; and so, as the American widow said she thought it was a charming thing "to have been married and be done with it," I think it is a charming thing to have been up the Rhine and be back again.

I forget whether I wrote you word of my father's joining us for a single day at Frankfort, and then returning immediately to England.... He was not at all well, and the hurried journey was, I fear, a most imprudent one. My sister is at present at Liège with Henry, Liszt, and our friend Chorley....

Good-bye, my dearest H----.

I am ever yours, FANNY.

[My friend Miss S---- came to us in London, and witnessed with me my sister's coming out at Covent Garden, which took place on Tuesday, the 2nd of November, 1842, in Bellini's opera of "Norma," which she sang in English, retaining the whole of the recitative. My sister's success was triumphant, and the fortunes of the unfortunate theatre, which again were at the lowest ebb, revived under the influence of her great and immediate popularity, and the overflowing houses that, night after night, crowded to hear her. Her performances, which I seldom missed, were among my most delightful pleasures, during a season in which I enjoyed the companionship of my dear friend, and a great deal of pleasant social intercourse with the most interesting and agreeable people of the great gay London world.]

BOWOOD, Sunday, December 19th. To Theodore Sedgwick, Esq. MY DEAR THEODORE,

I cannot conceive how it happens that a letter of yours, dated the 8th September, should have reached me only a fortnight ago in London. Either it must have been forgotten after written, and not sent for some time, or Messrs. Harnden and Co.'s Express is the slowest known conveyance in the world. However that may be, the letter and the Philadelphia Bank statement did arrive safe at last, and my father desires me to thank you particularly for your kindness in sending it to him. Not, indeed, that it is peculiarly consolatory in itself, inasmuch as it confirms our worst apprehensions about the fate of all moneys lodged in that disastrous institution. But perhaps it is better to have a term put to one's uncertainty, even by the positive conviction of misfortune not to be averted. My father's property in that bank--"The United States Bank"--was considerable for him, and had been hardly earned money. I understand from him that my share of our American earnings are in the New Orleans banks, which, though they pay no dividends, and have not done so for some time past, are still, I believe, supposed to be safe and solvent....

We are staying just now with Lord and Lady Lansdowne, in this pleasant home of theirs--a home of terrestrial delights. Inside the house, all is tasteful and intellectual magnificence--such pictures! such statues! And outside, a charming English landscape, educated with consummate taste into the very perfection of apparently natural beauty.... They are amiable, good, pleasant, and every way distinguished people, and I like them very much. He, as you know, is one of our leading Whig statesmen, a munificent patron of the arts and literature, a man of the finest taste and cultivation, at whose house eminences of all sorts are cordially received. Lady Lansdowne is a specimen Englishwoman of her class, refined, intelligent, well-bred, and most charming. I believe Lord Lansdowne was kindly civil to your aunt Catherine when she was in London; I wish she could have see this enchanting place of his.

Rogers, Moore, and a parcel of choice beaux esprits are staying here; but, to tell you a fact which probably accuses me of stupidity, they are so incessantly clever, witty, and brilliant that they every now and then give me a brain-ache.

I do not know the exact depth of your patience, but I have an idea that it has a bottom, therefore I think it expedient not to pursue crossing any further with you.

Give my kindest love to Sarah, and

Believe me ever, my dear Theodore, Yours very truly, FANNY BUTLER.

Please remember me very kindly to your mother. I sat by a man at dinner yesterday, a Dr. Fowler of Salisbury, who was talking to me of having known her friends Mrs. Jay and Mrs. Banian, when they were in England; and their names were pleasant to me on account of their association with her.

BOWOOD, Tuesday, December 21st, 1841.

Did you expect an immediate answer from me, dear Harriet, or did you think your letters would be put at the bottom of the budget, to wait their appointed time? You say your thought in parting from me was chiefly to preserve your tranquillity; and so was mine to preserve my own and yours.... There are many occasions on which I both feel much more than I show, and perceive in others much more feeling than I believe they think I am aware of. There are times when, for one's own sake, as well as for that of others, to be--or, if that is not possible, to seem--absorbed in outward things of the most indifferent description is highly desirable; and I am even conscious sometimes of a sort of hardness, which seems to come involuntarily to my aid, in seasons when I know myself or fear that others are about to be carried away by their feelings, or to break down under them....

I was glad enough to get your second letter, and to know you were safe in Dublin. It was calm the night you crossed, but it has blown once or twice fearfully since.

Our visit to the Francis Egertons, at Worsley, was prosperous and pleasant in the highest degree; and we are now paying our promised one at Bowood. I must tell you a trait of Anne [my children's American nurse], who, it is my belief, is nothing less than the Princess Pocahontas, who, having returned to earth, has condescended to take charge of my children.

You know that this place is celebrated; the house is not only fine in point of size, architecture, and costly furnishing, but is filled with precious works of art, painting and sculpture, modern and ancient, beautiful, rare, and costly. The first day that we arrived, ushered up the great staircase to our rooms, I followed the servant with wide-open eyes, gazing in delighted admiration at everything I saw. "Well," said I to Anne, "is not this a fine house, Anne?" "The staircase is well enough," was her imperturbable reply. Wouldn't one think she had had the Vatican for her second-best house, and St. Peter's for her private chapel, all the days of her life? She certainly must have, some Indian blood in her veins.

This morning I took a brisk walk along the sunny terrace, where, from under the shining shelter of holly, laurel, cedar, and all other evergreen shrubs and trees, one looks over a garden--that even now, with its graceful vases, its terraces, its ivy winter dressing, is gay and beautiful--to a lawn that slopes gently to a sheet of water, losing itself like a lake among irregular wooded banks, whose brown feathery outline borrows from the winter's sun a golden tinge of soft sad splendor. Upon this water swans and wild-fowl sail and sport about; and the whole scene this morning, tipped with sparkling frost, and shining under a brilliant sky, seemed very charming to me, and to S---- too, who, running by my side, exclaimed, "Well, this is my idea of heaven! I do think this might be called Paradise, or that garden--I forget its name--that Adam and Eve were put into!" (Eden had escaped her memory, as, let us hope, in time it did theirs.) I was pleased to find that my Biblical teachings had suggested positive images, and that she had caught none of her nurse's stolid insensibility to beauty....

We have a choice society here just now, and fortunately among them persons that we know and feel at our ease with: Rogers, Moore, Macaulay, Babbage, Westmacott, Charles Greville, and two or three charming, agreeable, unaffected women....

You ask if Lady Holland is at Bowood. No, she had returned home by land, as they say [at the beginning of railroad travelling, persons who still preferred the former method of posting on the high-road were said to go by land], not choosing to risk her precious body on the railway without Brunel's personal escort to keep it in order and prevent it from doing her any accident. He having had the happiness of travelling down to Bowood with her, which she insisted upon, naturally enough declined coming all the way down again from London to see her safe home; so not being able to accomplish his fetching her back to town, she contrived to extort from him a letter stating that, owing to the late heavy rains, her journey back to London upon the railroad would probably be both tedious and uncomfortable, and advising her by all means to go home "by land," which, considering that the Great Western is his own road--his iron child, so to speak,--by which he is bound to swear under all circumstances, is, I think, a pretty good specimen of her omnipotence.

She did post home accordingly, but not without dismal misgivings as to what might befall her while crossing a wood of Lord Salisbury's, where she was to be, for a short space of time, seven miles off from any village or town. I never knew such a terrified, terrible, foolish old woman in my life.

After all, she is right: life is worth more to very good and to very good-for-nothing people than to others. My father dined with her in town while we were away, and in her note of invitation she included us, if we had returned, saying all manner of civil fine things about me; but, as far as I am concerned, it won't do, and she cannot put salt upon my tail....

We returned to town on Friday. Charles Greville saw my father on Saturday, and says he is, and is looking, very well. Adelaide was gone down to Addlestone, to see John and his wife. My children--bless them!--are making such a riot here at my table that I scarcely know what I am writing.

Good-bye, dearest Harriet. I will write to you again to-morrow.

Ever yours, FANNY.

Bowood, Wednesday, December 22nd, 1841. Dearest Harriet,

I was a "happy woman" at Worsley [a "happy woman" was the term used by me from my childhood to describe a woman on horseback], and, as sometimes happens, had even too much of my happiness. My friend Lady Francis is made of whalebone and india-rubber in equal proportions, very neatly and elegantly fastened together with the finest steel springs, and is incapable of fatigue from exertion, or injury from exposure.

Having an exalted idea of my capabilities in the way of horse exercise (which, indeed, when I am in my usual condition, are pretty good), she started off with me to H----, a distance of about eight miles, and we did the whole way there and back (besides an episodical gallop, three times full tear round a field, to tame our horses, which were wild) either at a hard gallop or a harder trot. I, who have grown fat and soft, and have hardly ridden since I left America, came home bruised and beaten, and aching in every limb to that degree that I was glad to lie down--conceive the humiliation!--and was much put to it to get up again to dress for dinner; having, moreover, the consolation of being assured by Lady Francis that she had ridden thus hard out of pure consideration for me; supposing that the faster I went, the better I should be pleased. I was, besides, mounted upon a fiery little fiend of a pony, who pulled my arms out of their sockets and would not walk. However, by repeating the dose every day, I suffered less and less, and am now once more in excellent riding condition.

I remember a ludicrous circumstance of the same kind happening to me in America, on the occasion of the first ride I ever took with my brother-in-law, who was then comparatively a stranger to me. He was a cavalry officer, a capital horseman, and hard rider; which qualities he exhibited the first time I ever went out with him, by riding at such a pace and for such a length of time that, perceiving he did not kill himself, I asked if he was in the habit of killing his horse every time he rode out; when he burst out laughing, and assured me that he thought he was only conforming to my habitual pace.

Yesterday I varied my exercise, for I went out on horseback with Lord Lansdowne, and finding the roads dangerously slippery for our horses, which were not sharped, when we were at some distance from Bowood we dismounted, and gave them to the groom, and came home on foot, a distance of three miles, which, carrying one's habit [riding-skirts in those days were very long], I think was as good as four.

You cannot conceive anything more melancholy than the aspect of H----.... It was a miserable day, dark, dismal, and foggy; the Manchester smoke came down, together with a penetrating cold drizzle, like the defilement and weeping of irretrievable shame, and sin, and sorrow; and the whole aspect of the place struck me with dismay. The house was shut up, and looked absolutely deserted, not a soul stirring about it; the garden dismantled and out of order. Altogether, the contrast of the whole scene to that which I remembered so bright, cheerful, gay, and lovely, combined with the cause of its present condition, struck me as beyond measure mournful....

You ask after the welfare of my children's nurse, Anne; and I will tell you something comically characteristic both of the individual and her nation. Here at Bowood she eats alone with the children, as she has been in the habit of doing at home; but at Worsley the little ones dined with us at our luncheon-table, and she ate in the housekeeper's room. Not knowing myself exactly what would be the place assigned to an American nursery-maid in the society of the servants' hall at Worsley, I inquired of her whether she was comfortable and well-treated. She said, "Oh, yes, perfectly well;" but there seemed to me by her manner to be something or other amiss, and upon my inquiring further, she said, "Well, then, Mrs. Butler, I'll tell you what it is: I do wish they'd let me dine at the lower table. Everything is very good and very fine, to be sure, and the people are very kind and civil to me, but I cannot bear to have men in livery and maid-servants standing up behind my chair waiting on me, and that's the truth of it." She said this with an air of such sincere discomfort that it was quite evident to me that if, in common with her countrymen, she thought herself "as good as anybody," she certainly was not seduced by the glories of the upper table into forgetting that any one was as good as she.

I was spared the discomfort of having the children in another house; for either Lady Francis has fewer guests than she expected, or she had contrived to manage better than she had supposed she could, for they were lodged under the same roof with me, and quite near enough for comfort or convenience....

Thank you for your kindness in copying that account of Cavanagh for me; thank you, too, for Archbishop Whately's book, which I read immediately. There is nothing in it that I have not read before, nor certainly anything whatever to alter my opinion that the accumulation of enormous wealth in the hands of individuals who transmit it to their eldest sons, who inherit it without either mental or physical exertion of theirs, is an inevitable source of moral evil. There was nothing in that book to shake my opinion that hereditary idleness and luxury are not good for the country where they exist. An opinion was expressed in general conversation by almost everybody at Worsley which suggested a conclusion to my mind that did not appear to occur to any one else. In speaking of the education of young English boys at our great public schools, the whole system pursued in those institutions was condemned as bad; but on all sides, nevertheless, admitted to be better (at any rate, for the sons of noblemen) than the incessant, base, excessive complaisance and flattery of their servants and dependents, from which they all said that it was impossible to screen them in their own homes, and equally impossible that they should not suffer serious moral evil. Lord Francis said that for a lad like his nephew, the Marquis of Stafford, there was but one thing worse than being educated at Eton, and that was being educated at home; therefore, concluded they all in chorus, we send our boys to our public schools. So the children are sent away lest they should be corrupted by the obsequious servants and luxurious habits and general mode of life of their parents. And this, of course, is one of the inevitable results of distinctions of classes and hereditary wealth and influence; it is not one of the good ones, but there are better.

God bless you, dearest Harriet. I wrote to you yesterday, and shall probably do so again to-morrow.

Ever yours, FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, LONDON, Sunday, December 26th, 1841. DEAR HARRIET,

I must tell you a droll little incident that occurred the day of our leaving Bowood. As I was crossing the great hall, holding little F---- by the hand, Lord Lansdowne and Moore, who were talking at the other end, came towards me, and, while the former expressed kind regrets at our departure, Moore took up the child and kissed her, and set her down again; when she clutched hold of my gown, and trotted silently out of the hall by my side. As the great red door closed behind us, on our way to my rooms, she said, in a tone that I thought indicated some stifled sense of offended dignity, "Pray, mamma, who was dat little dentleman?" Now, Harriet, though Moore's fame is great, his stature is little, and my belief is that my three-year-old daughter was suffering under an impression that she had been taken a liberty with by some enterprising schoolboy. Oh, Harriet! think if one of his own Irish rosebuds of sixteen had received that poet's kiss, how long it would have been before she would have washed that side of her face! I believe if he had bestowed it upon me, I would have kept mine from water for its sake, till--bed-time. Indeed, when first "Lalla Rookh" came out, I think I might have made a little circle on that cheek, and dedicated it to Tom Moore and dirt forever; that is--till I forgot all about it, and my habit of plunging my face into water whenever I dress got the better of my finer feelings. But, you see, he didn't kiss my stupid little child's intelligent mother, and this is the way that fool Fortune misbestows her favors. She is spiteful, too, that whirligig woman with the wheel. I am not an autograph collector, of course; if I was, I shouldn't have got the prize I received yesterday, when Rogers, after mending a pen for me, and tenderly caressing the nib of it with a knife as sharp as his own tongue, wrote, in his beautiful, delicate, fine hand, by way of trying it--

"The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown."

Is that a quotation from himself or some one else? or was it an impromptu?--a seer's vision, and friend's warning? Chi sa?

I cannot help being a little surprised at the earnestness with which you implore me to read Archbishop Whately's treatise. My objection to reading of books never extends to any book either given or lent, or strongly recommended to me. I am so fond of reading that I care very little what I read, so well satisfied am I with the movement and activity which even the stupidest, shallowest book rouses in my mind. With regard to the little work in question, you probably thought the subject might not interest me, and therefore I should neglect it. The subject, i.e., political economy, interests me so little that, though I have read at various times and in sundry places publications of the same nature with much attention, they, in common with other books on other subjects for which I do not care, have left not the slightest trace upon my memory; at least, until I come to read the matter all over again, when my knowledge of it reappears, as it were, on the surface of my mind, though it had seemed to me to run through my brain like water through a sieve.

I have no doubt that from my mode of talking of different peoples, under various systems of government, you would not suspect me of having ever looked into the simplest treatise on political economy and similar subjects; but I have read most of the popular expositions of those grave matters that the press now daily puts forth; but as they, for the most part, deal with things as they are, and my cogitations are chiefly as to things as they should be, I do not find my studies avail me much. I believe I wrote you word after reading the book you sent me, and thinking it a very excellent abridged exposition of such subjects; I still could not understand what it had to do with the theory of laws for the division of property, or the expediency of the law of primogeniture, and the advantages of the distinctions of rank, to the societies where they exist. The question seems to me rather whether these remains of feudalism have or have not outlived their uses.

By-the-by, in taking off the cover in which you had wrapped the book, I did not perceive that you had written upon it until I had thrown it into the fire. I assure you that at the moment I was a great deal sorrier than if the worthy little volume itself had been grilling on the top of the coals.

We returned here on Friday, and found my father and Adelaide going on much as usual. Half a score of invitations, of one sort and another, waiting for us, and London, with its grim visage, looking less lovely than ever after the sweet, tender, wintry beauty of Bowood; where one walked, for a whole morning at a time, among hollies and laurels and glittering evergreens, which, by the help of the sunshine we enjoyed while we were there, gave the lie triumphant to the dead season.

I have been nurse almost all the day. Anne, who, poor girl! has had a long fast from her devotional privileges, went to church, and I walked with the children to the broad gravel walk in the Regent's Park, where I took that "exercise of agony" with you one afternoon; the day was much the same too, bright and sunny above, and exceedingly muddy and hateful under foot. The servants having their Christmas dinner to-day, I offered to take entire charge of the children, if Anne liked to join the party downstairs. She affably condescended, and they prolonged the social meal, or their after-dinner converse, for considerably more than two hours. Since that, I have been reading to S----, and it is now time for me to dress for dinner.

Adelaide and I dined tête-à-tête to-day; my father dined with Miss Cottin. I have refused, because it is Sunday; Adelaide, because she is lazy; but she means to make the effort to go in the evening, and I shall go to bed early, and very glad I shall be to shut up shop, for this has been a very heavy day. How well nurses ought to be paid!

God bless you, dear Harriet.

Ever yours, FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, Tuesday, December 28th, 1841. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

I wrote you two long letters from Bowood, and one crossed note since I came back to town; yet in a letter I get from you this morning you ask me when your letters are "coming to the top" [of my packet of "my letters to be answered," to which I always replied in the succession in which they reached me]; at which, I confess, I feel not a little dismayed. However, it is to be hoped that you will get them sooner or later, and that, in this world or the next, you will discover that I wrote to you two such letters, at such a time....

How can you ask me if I play fair with my letters? Are you not sure that I do? and, whatever may be the case with my better qualities, are not my follies substantial, reliable, consistent, constant follies, that are pretty sure to be found where you left them?

Good-bye, my dearest Harriet. I am terribly out of spirits, but it is near bed-time, and the day will soon be done....

God bless you, dear. Give my kindest love to Dorothy. I am thinking of your return with earnest longing.... As we passed the evening at the Hen and Chickens, in the same room where I began reading you "Les Maîtres Mosaistes," on our return through Birmingham from the lately formed association, your image was naturally very vivid in our memories.

I am ever yours, FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, December 28th, 1841. DEAREST GRANNY,

[This was an affectionate nickname that my friend Lady Dacre assumed towards me, and by which I frequently addressed her], I do not mean this time to tax your forgiveness of injuries quite so severely as before, though you really have such a pretty knack of generosity that it's a pity not to give you an opportunity of exercising it.

Here we are again in our Harley Street abode, which, by favor of the fogs, smokes, and various lovely December complexions of London, looks but grimly after the evergreen shrubberies and bowers of Bowood, which I saw the evening before I came away to peculiar advantage, under the light of an unclouded moon. I left there the goodliest company conceivable: Rogers, Moore, Macaulay, Charles Austen, Mr. Dundas, Charles Greville, and Westmacott: so much for the mankind. Then there was dear old Miss Fox [Lord Holland's sister], whom I love, and Lady Harriet Baring [afterwards Lady Ashburton], whom I do not love, which does not prevent her being a very clever woman; and that exceedingly pretty and intelligent Baroness Louis Rothschild, et cetera. It was a brilliant party, but they were all so preternaturally witty and wise that, to tell you the truth, dear Granny, they occasionally gave me the mind-ache.

As for Macaulay, he is like nothing in the world but Bayle's Dictionary, continued down to the present time, and purified from all objectionable matter. Such a Niagara of information did surely never pour from the lips of mortal man!

I think our pilgrimages are pretty well over for the present, unless the Duke of Rutland should remember a particularly courteous invitation he gave us to go to Belvoir some time about Christmas--a summons which we should very gladly obey, as I suppose there are not many finer places in England or out of it.

I am sorry you have parted with Forrester [a horse Lady Dacre had named after a favorite horse of mine]; I liked to fancy my dear old horse's namesake at the Hoo.

Give my love to Lord Dacre, and my well-beloved B---- and G---- [Lady Dacre's granddaughters]. I am glad the former is dancing, because I like it so much myself. I look forward to seeing you all in the spring, and in the mean time remain, dear Granny,

Yours most affectionately, FANNY.

[I became subsequently well acquainted with Lord Macaulay, but no familiarity ever diminished my admiration of his vast stores of knowledge, or my amazement at his abundant power of communicating them.

In my visits to the houses of my friends, alike those with whom I was most and least intimate, I always passed a great deal of my time in my own room, and never remained in the drawing-room until after dinner, having a decided inclination for solitude in the morning and society in the evening. I used, however, to look in during the course of the day, upon whatever circle might be gathered in the drawing or morning rooms, for a few minutes at a time, and remember, on this occasion of my meeting Macaulay at Bowood, my amazement at finding him always in the same position on the hearth-rug, always talking, always answering everybody's questions about everything, always pouring forth eloquent knowledge; and I used to listen to him till I was breathless with what I thought ought to have been his exhaustion.

As one approached the room, the loud, even, declamatory sound of his voice made itself heard like the uninterrupted flow of a fountain. He stood there from morning till evening, like a knight in the lists, challenging and accepting the challenge of all comers. There never was such a speech-"power," and as the volume of his voice was full and sonorous, he had immense advantages in sound as well as sense over his adversaries. Sydney Smith's humorous and good-humored rage at his prolific talk was very funny. Rogers's, of course, was not good-humored; and on this very occasion, one day at breakfast, having two or three times uplifted his thread of voice and fine incisive speech against the torrent of Macaulay's holding forth, Lord Lansdowne, the most courteous of hosts, endeavored to make way for him with a "You were saying, Mr. Rogers?" when Rogers hissed out, "Oh, what I was saying will keep!"

I have spoken of Macaulay's discourse as a torrent; it was rather like the smooth and copious stream of the Aqua Paola, a comparison which it constantly suggested to me; the resonant, ceaseless, noble volume of water, the great fountain perpetually poured forth, was like the sonorous sound and affluent flow of his abundant speech, and the wide, eventful Roman plain, with all its thronging memories of past centuries, seen from the Janiculum, was like the vast and varied horizon of his knowledge, forever swept by his prodigious memory.]

HARLEY STREET, Wednesday, December 29th, 1841. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Just imagine my ecstasy in answering your last letter, dated the 24th! I actually do up the whole of that everlasting bundle of letters, which is a sort of waking nightmare to me.

I have been within two or three of the last for the last week, and having seldom seen myself so very near the end, I had a perfect fever of desire to exist, if only for a day, without having a single letter to answer. And now that I have tossed into the fire a note of Charles Greville's, which I have just replied to, and have unfolded your last and do the same by it, i.e. answer and burn it, the yellow silk cord that bound that ominous bundle of obligations lies empty on the inkstand, and I feel like Charles Lamb escaping from his India House clerkship, a perfect lord, or rather lady, of unlimited leisure.

You ask me if I think letters will go on to be answered in eternity? That supposition, my dear, involves the ideas of absence and epistolary labor, both of which may be included in the torments of the damned, but, according to my notions of heaven, there will be no letter-writing there. As, however, the receiving of letters is, in my judgment, a pleasure extremely worthy to be numbered among the enjoyments of the blessed, I conclude that letters will occasionally come to heaven, and always be written in--the other place; so perhaps our correspondence may continue hereafter. Who the writer and who the receiver shall be remains to be proved (it's my belief that the use of pen and ink would have made any one of the circles of the Inferno tolerable to you); and in any case, those are epistles that it is not necessary to antedate. Klopstock wrote and published--did he not?--letters which he wrote to his wife Meta in heaven. The answers are not extant; perhaps they were in an inferior style, humanly speaking, and he considerately suppressed them.

But to speak seriously, you forget in your query one of the principal doubts that exercise my mind, i.e., whether there will be any continuation of communion at all hereafter between those who have been friends on earth; whether the relations of human beings to each other here are not merely a part of our spiritual experience, that portion of the education and progress of our souls that will terminate with this phase of our existence and be succeeded by other influences, new ones, fitted as these former have been to our (new) needs and conditions, by the Great Governor of our being. He alone knows; He will provide for them....

The Coutts and Lord Strangford business (a dirty piece of money-scandal) is nice enough, but I heard a still nicer sequel to it at Bowood the other day. The gentlemen of the party were discussing the matter, and seemed all agreed upon the subject of Lord Strangford's innocence; but while declaring unanimously that the accusation was unfounded and unwarrantable, they added it was not half as bad as an attack of the same sort made by one of the papers upon Lords Normanby and Canterbury, which, after much discussion, was supposed to have been dictated entirely by political animosity; the sole motive assigned for the selection of those two men as the objects of such an odious accusation being the fact of their personal want of popularity, and also that they were known to be needy men, whose fortunes were considerably crippled by their extravagance.

Of course, lie-makers must make plausibility one element of their craft; but this did seem a pleasant specimen of the manufacture. To be sure, I am bound to add that this account came from Whigs, and the attack was made by a Tory paper upon two members of the ex-Government; so you may believe it or not, according as you are Whig or Tory inclined to-day (that is to say, the motives assigned); the attack itself is not matter of doubt, having been visibly printed in one or more of the Tory papers. Both parties, however, have, I suppose, their staff of appointed technical and professional liars.

Good-bye, dear.

Ever yours, FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, Thursday, December 30th, 1841. DEAREST HARRIET,

... I am a little surprised at your writing to me about my rule of correspondence as you do, because in several instances when you have particularly desired me to answer you immediately, I have done so; and should always do so, not by you alone, but by any one who requested an immediate reply to a letter. If it were in my power to answer such a communication on the same day, I should certainly do it, and, under such circumstances, always have done so. As for my rule of letter-writing, absurd as some of its manifestations undoubtedly are, it is not, I think, absurd per se; and I adopted it as more likely to result in justice to all my correspondents than any other I could follow. I have a great dislike to letter-writing, and, were I to consult my own disinclination, instead of answering letter for letter with the most scrupulous conscientiousness as I do, even the persons I love best would be very apt to hear from me once or twice a year, and perhaps, indulgence increasing the incapacity and disinclination to write (as the example of every member of my own family shows it must), I should probably end by never writing at all.

I have always thought it most desirable to answer letters on the same day that I received them; but, of course, this is not always possible; and my rather numerous correspondence causing often a rapid accumulation of letters, I have thought, when such an arrearage took place, the fittest thing to do was to answer first those received first, and so discharge my debts justly in point of time. With regard to replying to questions contained in letters received some time back, my scrupulousness has to do with my own convenience, as well as my correspondents' gratification. Writing as much as I do, I am, as Rosalind calls it, "gravelled for matter" occasionally, and in that emergency a specific question to answer becomes a real godsend; and, my cue once given me, I can generally contrive to fill my paper. I do not think you know how much I dislike letter-writing, and what an effort it sometimes costs me, when my spirits are at the lowest ebb, and my mind so engrossed with disheartening contemplations, that any exertions (but violent physical ones, which are my salvation for the most part) appear intolerable.

But I ought to tell you about our journey from Bowood, which threatened to be more adventurous than agreeable. We did, as you suppose, come down the railroad only a few hours after the occurrence of the accident. When we started from Chippenham, some surprise was expressed by the guards and railroad officials that the early train from London had not yet come up. Farther on, coming to a place where there was but one track, we were detained half an hour, from the apprehension that, as the other train had not yet come up, we might, by going upon the single line, encounter it, and the collision occasion some terrible accident. After waiting about half an hour, and ascertaining (I suppose) that the other train was not coming, we proceeded, and soon learned what had retarded it. On the spot where the accident took place the bank had made a tremendous slide; numbers of workmen were busy in removing the earth from the track; the engine, which had been arrested in its course by this impediment, was standing half on the line, half on the bank; planks and wheels and fragments of wood were strewed all round; and a crowd of people, with terrified eager faces, were gazing about in that vague love of excitement which makes sights and places of catastrophes, to a certain degree, delectable to human beings.

I cannot help thinking, dear Harriet, that this sad accident, sad enough as I admit it to be for the relations and friends of the dead, was not so particularly terrible as far as the individuals themselves were concerned. God only knows how I may feel when I am struck, either in my own life or that of any one I love; but hitherto death has not appeared to me the awful calamity that people generally seem to consider it. The purpose of life alone, time wherein to do God's will, makes it sacred. I do not think it pleasant enough to wish to keep it for a single instant, without the idea of the duty of living, since God has bid us live. The only thought which makes me shrink from the notion of suicide is the apprehension that to this life another might succeed, as full of storm, of strife, of disappointment, difficulty, and unrest as this; and with that uncertainty overshadowing it, death has not much to recommend it. It is poor Hamlet's "perchance" that is the knot of the whole question, never here to be untied.

Involuntarily, we certainly hope for better things, for respite, for rest, for enfranchisement from the thraldom of some of our passions and affections, the goods and bonds that spur us through this life and fasten us to it. We--perhaps I ought to say I--involuntarily connect the idea of death with that of peace and repose; delivery, at any rate, from some subjugation to sin, and from some subjection to "the ills we know" (though it may be none of this), so that my first feeling about it is generally that it is a happy rather than a deplorable event for the principals concerned; but then comes the loss of the living, and I perceive very well how my heart would bleed if those I love were taken from me. I see my own desolation and agony in that case, but still feel as if I could rejoice for them; for, after all, life is a heavy burden on a weary way, and I never saw the human being whose existence was what I should call happy. I have seen some whose lives were so good that they justified their own existence, and one could conceive both why they lived and that they found it good to live.

Of course, this is instinctive feeling; reflection compels one to acknowledge the infinite value of existence, for the purposes of spiritual progress and improvement; the education of the soul; but my nature, impatient of restraint and pain and trial (and therefore most in need of the discipline of life), always rejoices at the first aspect of death, as at that of the Deliverer. Sudden death I certainly pray for, rather than against, and I think my father and sister were horrified and indignant at my saying that I could not conceive a better way of dying than being smashed, as we were all together, on that railway, dashed to pieces in a moment, like those eight men who perished there the other day.... This drew forth a suggestion that, if such were my sentiments, we had better hire a carriage on the Brighton railroad, and keep incessantly running up and down the line, by which means there would be every probability of my dying in the way I thought most desirable.

I wish you would just step over from Ireland and spend the evening with me; Adelaide and my father will be at the theatre....

God bless you, dearest Harriet.

Ever yours, FANNY.

[Some years after writing this letter, having returned to the stage, I was fulfilling an engagement at the Hull theatre, and as I stood at the side scene, waiting to go on, two poor young girls were standing near me, of that miserable class from which the temporarily employed supernumeraries of country theatres are recruited. One of them, who looked as if she was dying of consumption, and coughed incessantly, said to her companion, who remarked upon it, "Yes, I go on so pretty much all the time, and I have a mind sometimes to kill myself." "That's running away from school, my child," said I. "Don't do it, for you can't tell whether you mayn't be put to just as hard or even a harder life to finish your lesson in another world." "O Lord, ma'am!" said the girl, "I never thought of that." "But I have very often," said I to her, as I went on the stage to finish my mumming.

The strange ignorance of all the conditions of life (except their own most wretched ones), even those but a few degrees removed from their own, of these poor creatures, betrayed itself in their awestruck admiration of my stage ornaments, which they took for real jewels. "Oh, but," said I, as they gazed at them with wonder, "if they were real jewels, you know, I should sell them to live, and not come to the theatre to act for my bread every night." "Oh, wouldn't you, ma'am?" exclaimed they, amazed that so blissful an occupation as that of a stage star, radiant with "such diamonds," should not be all that heart of woman could desire. Poor things--all of us!]

HARLEY STREET, January 1st, 1842.

It is New Year's Day, my dearest Harriet. May God bless you. You will, I hope, receive to-day my account of my journey home from Bowood. Any anxiety you might have felt about us was certain to be dispelled by the note I despatched to you after our arrival, and as to the accident which took place on the railroad, I have nothing to tell you about it more than you would see in the newspapers, and it did not occur to me to mention it.

I read with attention the newspaper article you sent me about the corn laws and the currency, and, though I did not quite understand all the details given on the latter subject, yet the main question is one that I have been so familiar with lately as to have comprehended, I believe, the general sense of it. But I read it at Bowood, and though, as I assure you, with the greatest attention, I do not remember a single word of it now (the invariable practice of my memory with any subject that is entirely uncongenial to me).

The mischievous influence of the undue extension of the credit system is matter of daily discussion and daily illustration, I am sorry to say, in the United States, where, in spite of their easy institutions, boundless space, and inexhaustible real sources of credit (the wealth of the soil and its agricultural and universal products), and all the commercial advantages which their comparatively untrammelled conditions afford them, they are all but bankrupt now; distressed at home and disgraced abroad by the excess to which this pernicious system of trading upon fictitious capital has been carried by eager, grasping, hastening-to-be-rich people. Of course, the same causes must tend to produce the same effects everywhere, though different circumstances may partially modify the results; and in proportion as this vicious system has prevailed with us in England, its consequences must, at some time or other, culminate in sudden severe pressure upon the trading and manufacturing interests, and I suppose, of course, upon all classes of the industrial population of the country. The difficult details of finance, and their practical application to the currency question, have not often been understood, and therefore not often relished by me whenever I have attempted to master them; but I have heard them frequently and vehemently discussed by the advocates of both paper money and coin currency; I have read all the manifestoes upon the subject put forth by Mr. Nicholas Biddle, late President of the United States Bank, who is supposed to have understood finance well, though the unfortunate funds committed to his charge do not appear to have been the safer for that circumstance.... The failure of the United States Bank has been sometimes considered as a political catastrophe, the result of party animosity and personal enmity towards Mr. Biddle on the part of General Jackson, who, being then President of the United States, gave a fatal blow to the credit of the bank (which, though calling itself the United States Bank, was not a Government institution) by removing from its custody the Government deposits. My impression upon the subject (simple, as I have no doubt you would expect to find the result of any mental process of mine) is that paper money is a financial expedient, the substitution of an appearance or makeshift for a real thing, and likely, like all other such substitutes of whatever kind, to become a source of shame, trouble, and ruin whenever, after the appointed time of circulation, which every expedient has, there should be a demand for the real article; more especially if the shadow has imposed upon the world by being twice as big as the substance.

The papers and pamphlets you have sent me, dear Harriet, seem to me only to prove that excessive and unjust taxation, partial and unjust corn laws, and unwise financial ones (together with other causes, which seem to me ominous of evil results), have produced the distress, embarrassment, and discontent existing in this, the richest and most enlightened country in the world....

I have been interrupted half a dozen times while writing this letter, once by a long visit from Mrs. Jameson.... Lady M---- called too, with a pretty little widow, a Mrs. M----, a great friend of Adelaide's. Dearest Harriet, here my letter was broken off yesterday morning, Friday; it is now Saturday evening, and this morning arrived two long ones from America. Now, if I should get one to-morrow or the next day, from you, will it be very unjust to put yours under these, and answer them before I write any more to you? I think not, but I must make an end of this....

Good-bye, and God bless you.

I am ever yours, FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, Tuesday, January 4th, 1842. DEAREST HARRIET,

... You say you wonder that those who love and worship Christ should be wanting in patience and the spirit of endurance. Do you not wonder, too, that they should fail in self-denial, charity, mercy, all the virtues of their Divine Model? But this is a terrible chapter, and sad subject of speculation for all of us, and I can't bear to speak upon it.

In talking once with my sister of self-condemnation, and our condemnation of others, I used an expression which she took up as eminently ridiculous; but I think she did not quite understand me. I said that there was a feeling of modesty which prevented one's uttering the extent of one's own self-accusations, at which she laughed very much, and said she thought that modesty ought to interfere in behalf of others as well as one's self; but there are some reasons why it does not. Severely as one may judge and blame others, it is always, of course, with the perception that one cannot know the whole of the case for or against them; nevertheless, even with this conviction, there are certain words and deeds of others which one condemns unhesitatingly. Such sentences as these I pronounce often and without scruple (harshly, perhaps, and therein committing most mischievous, foul sin in chiding sin), but one does not utter that which one feels more rarely (however strongly, in particular instances), one's impression of the evil tendency of a whole character, the weakness or wickedness, the disease which pervades the whole moral constitution, and which seems to denote certain inevitable results; on these one hesitates to pronounce opinion, not so much, I think, because of the uncertainty one feels, as in the case of a special motive, or temptation to any special act, and the liability to mistake, both in the quality of motive and quality of temptation; as because so much deeper a condemnation is involved in such judgments. It is the difference between a physician's opinion on an acute attack of illness or a radical and fatal constitutional tendency. This sort of condemnation requires such intimate knowledge that one can hardly pass it upon any but one's self. One cannot tear off all coverings from the hearts and minds of others, whereas one could strip one's own moral deformities naked, and that species of self-accusation does seem to me a kind of immodesty. One naturally shrinks, too, from speaking of deep and awful things, and then there is the all but insuperable difficulty of putting one's most intimate convictions, the realities of one's soul, into words at all....

Oh, my dear Harriet, I have told you nothing of John and Natalia's mesmeric practices [my brother and his German wife]. If you could have seen them, you would have split your lean sides more than you did at my aspect and demeanor while listening to A---- reading her favorite French novels to me.

By-the-by, do you know that that very book, "Mathilde," which I could not listen to for a quarter of an hour with common patience, is cried up everywhere and by everybody as a most extraordinary production? At Bowood everybody was raving about it; Mrs. Jameson tells me that Carlyle excepted it from a general anathema on French novels. Sometimes I think I will try again to get through it, and then I think, as little F---- says when she is requested to do something that she ought, "Eelly, now, me tan not."

I am finishing George Sand's "Lettres d'un Voyageur," because in an evil hour I began them. Her style is really admirable, and in this book one escapes the moral (or immoral) complications of her stories.

God bless you, dear Harriet. Good-bye. Time and opportunity serving, you surely see that I am not only faithful, but prompt, in the discharge of my debts.

Ever yours, FANNY.

I forgot to tell you that my poor Margery [my children's former nurse] has at length applied to the tribunals of Pennsylvania for a separation from her cruel and worthless husband. Poor thing! I hope she will obtain it.

[The tribunals of Pennsylvania followed, in the law of divorce, the German and not the English precedent and process. Divorce was granted by them, as well as mere separation, on plea of incompatibility of temper, and also for cause of non-cohabitation during a space of two years. In regard to the laws of marriage and divorce, as well as most other matters, each state in the Union had its own peculiar code, agreeing or differing from the rest. The Massachusetts laws of marriage and divorce were, I believe, the same as the English. In Pennsylvania a much greater facility for obtaining divorce--adopted, I suppose, from German modes of thought and feeling, and perhaps German legislature--prevailed, while in some of the western states, more exclusively occupied by a German population, the facility with which the bond of marriage was dissolved was greater than in any civilized Christian community in the world, I think.]

HARLEY STREET, January 16th, 1842.

At the end of a long, kind letter I received from you this morning, dearest Harriet, there is a most sudden and incomprehensible sentence, an incoherent, combined malediction upon yourself and your dog Bevis, which I found it difficult to connect in any way with the matter which preceded it, which was very good advice to me, abruptly terminating in a declaration that you were a fool and your dog Bevis a brute, and leaving me to conclude either that he had overturned your inkstand or that you had gone mad, though indeed your two propositions are sane enough: for the first I would contradict if I could; the second I could not if I would; and so, as the Italians say, "Sono rimasta." ...

With regard to the likeness between my sister and myself, it is as great as our unlikeness.... Our mode of perceiving and being affected by things and people is often identical, and our impressions frequently so similar and so simultaneous that we both often utter precisely the same words upon a subject, so that it might seem as if one of us might save the other the trouble of speaking.... She is a thousand times quicker, keener, finer, shrewder, and sweeter than I am, and all my mental processes, compared with hers, are slow, coarse, and clumsy.

Here my letter broke off yesterday morning, and yesterday evening I went to see the new opera, so that I shall have realities instead of speculations to treat you to. [The opera was an English version of the "Elena da Feltre," by Mercadante, whose dramatic compositions, "La Vestale," "Le Due Illustre Rivale," the "Elena da Feltre," and others, obtained a very considerable temporary popularity in Italy, but were, I think, little known elsewhere. They were not first-rate musical productions, but had a good deal of agreeable, though not very original, melody, and were favorable to a declamatory, passionate style of singing, having a great deal of dramatic power and pathos. My sister was fond of them, and gave them with great effect, and the celebrated prima donna, Madame Ungher, achieved great popularity and excited immense enthusiasm in some of them.]

The opera was entirely successful, owing certainly to Adelaide, for the music is not agreeable, or of an order to become popular; the story is rather involved, which, however, as people have books to help them to it, does not so much matter. She was beautifully and becomingly dressed in mediæval Italian costume, and looked very handsome. Her voice was, as usual, very much affected by her nervousness, and comparatively feeble; this, however, signifies little, as it is only on the first night that it occurs, and every succeeding representation, her anxiety being less, she recovers more power of voice.

She acted extremely well, so as again to excite in me the strongest desire to see her in an acting part; a desire which is only qualified by the consideration that she makes more money at present as a singer than she probably could as an actress. At the end of the piece she died, with one of those expressions of feeling the effect of which may, without exaggeration, be called electrifying: it made me spring on my seat, and the whole audience responded with that voice of human sympathy that any true representation of feeling elicits instantaneously. Having renounced her lover, and married a man she hated, to save her father's life, after seeing her lover go to church and be married to another woman, her father being nevertheless executed (an old story, no doubt, but that's no matter), she loses her senses and stabs herself, and as she falls into the arms of her husband (the man she hated) she sees her lover, who just arrives at this moment, and the dying spring which she made, with her arms stretched towards him, falling, before she reached him, dead on the ground, was one of those terrible and touching things which the stage only can reproduce from nature--I mean, out of reality itself--a thing that of course neither painting nor sculpture could attempt, and that would have been comparatively cold and ineffective even in poetry, but which "in action" was indescribably pathetic. It had been, like many happy dramatic effects, a sudden thought with her, for it had only occurred to her yesterday morning; but the grace of the action, its beauty, truth, and expressiveness, are not to be conveyed by words. You will see it; not that, indeed, it may ever again be so very happy a thing in its effect....

God bless you, dear Harriet. Good-bye.

Ever yours, FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, January 31st, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Why do you ask me if I would not write to you unless you wrote to me? Do you not know perfectly well that I would not--unless, indeed, I thought you were ill or something was the matter with you; and then I would write just enough to find out if such was the case. Why should I write to you, when I hate writing, and yet nevertheless always answer letters? Surely the spontaneous, or promiscuous (which did you call it, you Irishwoman?) epistle should come from the person who does not profess to labor under an inkophobia. And what can you righteously complain of, when I not only never fail scrupulously to answer your letters, but, be they long or short, invariably answer them abundantly, having as great an objection to writing a short letter almost as I have to writing any? Basta! never doubt any more about the matter, my dear Harriet. I never (I think) shall write to you, but I also (I think) shall never fail to answer you. If you are not satisfied with that, I can't help it.... We have a lull in our engagements just now--comparative quiet. We gave a family dinner on Friday.... My father, I am sorry to say, gets no rent from the theatre. The nights on which my sister does not sing the house is literally empty. Alas! it is the old story over again: that whole ruinous concern is propped only by her. That property is like some fate to which our whole family are subject, by which we are every one of us destined to be borne down by turn, after vainly dedicating ourselves to its rescue.

On Saturday I spent the evening at Lady Charlotte Lindsay's, who has a very kind regard for you, and spoke of your brother Barry with great affection. To-morrow, after going to the opera, I shall go to Miss Berry's. My sister and father go to Apsley House, where the Duke of Wellington gives a grand entertainment to the King of Prussia. We were asked too, but, though rather tempted by the fine show, it was finally concluded that we should not go, so we shall only have it at second hand. This is all my news for the present, dear Harriet. God bless you. Good-bye. If you ever wish to hear from me, drop me a line to that effect.

Ever yours (and the same), FANNY.

[Circumstances occurred which induced us to change our plans, and I did go to the fête at Apsley House, which was very beautiful and magnificent. A pleasant incident of the evening was a special introduction to and a few minutes' conversation with our illustrious host; and the pleasantest of all, I am almost ashamed to say, was the memorable appearance of Lady Douro and Mademoiselle d'Este, who, coming into the room together, produced a most striking effect by their great beauty and their exquisite dress. They both wore magnificent dresses of white lace over white satin, ornamented with large cactus flowers, those of the blonde marchioness being of the sea-shell rose color, and the dark Mademoiselle d'Este's of the deep scarlet; and in the bottom of each of these large, vivid blossoms lay, like a great drop of dew, a single splendid diamond. The women were noble samples of fair and dark beauty, and their whole appearance, coming in together, attired with such elegant and becoming magnificent simplicity, produced an effect of surprise and admiration on the whole brilliant assembly.]

HARLEY STREET, February 4th, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

At twelve o'clock to-day I rang for candles, in order that the fog might not prevent my answering your letter. I was obliged to go out, however, and the skies in the interim have cleared; and where do you think I have been? Why, like a fool as I am, to see a sight, and I am well paid by feeling so tired, and having such a headache, and having had such a fright, that--it serves me right.

Our dear friend Harness has, as perhaps you know, an office which Lord Lansdowne gave him, by virtue of which he occupies a very pleasant apartment in the Council Office Building, the windows of which look out on Whitehall. Here he begged me to come and bring the children, that we might see the Queen, and the King of Prussia, and all the great folks, go to the opening of Parliament, and in an evil hour I consented, Harness informing me at what hour to come, and what way to take to avoid the crowd. But the carriage was ordered half an hour later than we ought to have started, and the coachman was ordered to take us down Whitehall (though Harness had warned me that we could not come that way, and that we must leave our carriage at the Carlton Terrace steps, and walk across the park to the little passage which leads straight into Downing Street). Down Whitehall, however, we attempted to go, and were of course turned back by the police. We then retraced our route to the Carlton steps, and here, with the two children, Anne, and the footman, I made my way through the crowd; but oh, what a way! and what a crowd! When we got down into the park, the only clear space was the narrow line left open for the carriages, and some of them were passing at a rapid trot, just as we found our way into their road, and the dense wall of human beings we had squeezed through closed behind us. I assure you, Harriet, the children were not half a foot from one of those huge carriage-horses, nor was there any means of retreat; the living mass behind us was as compact as brick and mortar. We took a favorable moment, and, rushing across the road into the protecting arms of some blessed, benevolent policemen, who were keeping the line, were seized, and dragged, and pushed, and pulled, and finally made way for, through the crowd on the other side, and then ran, without stopping, till we reached our destination; but the peril of the children, and the exertion of extricating them and ourselves from such a situation, had been such that, on reaching Harness's rooms, I shook so that I could hardly stand, and the imperturbable Anne actually burst into tears. So much for the delights of sight-seeing.

As for me, you know I would not go to the end of the street to see the finest thing in the universe; but, in the first place, I had promised, and in the next, I was so miserably out of spirits that, though I could not bear to go out, I could not bear to stay at home; but certainly, my detestation of running after a sight was never more heartily confirmed.

The concourse was immense, but I was much surprised at the entire want of excitement and enthusiasm in the vast multitude who thronged and all but choked up the Queen's way. All hats were lifted, but there was not a hatful of cheers, and the whole thing produced a disagreeable effect of coldness, indifference, or constraint.

Harness said it was nineteenth-century breeding, which was too exquisite to allow even of the mob's shouting. He is a Tory. T---- M----, who is a very warm Whig, thought the silence spoke of Paisley starvation and Windsor banquets. I thought these and other things besides might have to do with the people's not cheering.

E---- (who, bless her soul! has just been here, talking such gigantic nonsense) must have misunderstood me, or you must have misunderstood her, in supposing that I made a distinct promise to answer four crossed sheets of paper to four lines of yours. I said it was my usual practice to do so, and one from which I was not likely to depart, because I hate writing a short letter as much as I hate writing any letter at all....

Have you received one letter from me since you have been in Mountjoy Square? I have written one to you there, but, owing to the habit of my hand, which is to write "Ardgillan Castle," the direction was so scratched and blurred that I had some doubts whether the letter would reach you. Let me know, dear Harriet, if it does....

E---- must have made another blunder about Lady Westmoreland and my sister. It is not the Duke of Wellington's money, in particular, that she objects to receiving; she does not intend to sing in private for money at all, anywhere, or on any occasion; which I am very glad of, as, if she did, I think social embarrassments and professional complications of every sort, and all disagreeable ones, would arise from it.

We were all very cordially invited to Apsley House by Lady Westmoreland, before my sister stated that she did not intend to sing there for money.... Besides this, there came a formal bidding in the Duke of Wellington's own hand [or Algernon Greville's, who used to forge his illustrious chief's signature on all common occasions], with which we were very well pleased to comply....

A---- has been trying to inoculate me with Paul de Kock, who, she assures me, is a moral writer, and with whose books our tables, chairs, sofas, and beds are covered, as with the unclean plagues of Egypt. I read one of the novels and began another. They are very clever, very funny, very dirty, abominably immoral, and I do not think I can read any more of them; for though I confess to having laughed till my sides ached over some parts of what I read, I was, upon reflection and upon the whole, disgusted and displeased....

I have precisely your feeling about Mrs. F---- in every particular; I think her the funniest and the kindest old maniac I am acquainted with, and my intercourse with her is according to that opinion. Good-bye, my dearest Harriet; God bless you. I wish I was where I could see green fields. I am in miserable spirits, and would give "my kingdom for a horse," and the world for an hour's gallop in the country.

Ever yours, FANNY.

[My dear and excellent friend the Rev. William Harness refused from conscientious motives to hold more than one Church benefice, though repeated offers of livings were made to him by various of his influential friends. Lord Lansdowne, who had a very affectionate esteem for him, gave him the civil office I have alluded to in this letter, and this not being open to Mr. Harness's scruples with regard to sacred sinecures, he accepted. His means were always small, his charities great, and his genial hospitality unfailing. He was one of the simplest, most modest, unpretending, honorable, high-minded, warm hearted human beings I have ever known. Goodness appeared easy to him--the best proof how good he was.]

HARLEY STREET, February 5th, 1842. DEAR HARRIET,

I did not care very much about the fête itself at Apsley House, but I was very glad to go to it upon the Duke of Wellington's invitation, and felt as much honored and gratified by that as I could be by any such sort of thing. My sister did sing for them, though, poor thing! not very well. She had just gone through the new opera, and was besides laboring under a terrible cough and cold, through which, I am sorry to say, she has been singing for the last week. There was no particular reason for her not taking money at that concert. She does not intend to be paid for singing in society at all.... Of course, her declining such engagements will greatly diminish her income, popular singers making nearly half their earnings by such means; but I am sure that, situated as we all are, she is right, and will avoid a good many annoyances by this determination, though her pocket will suffer for it....

I know nothing whatever, of course, about the statements in the papers, which I never look at, about the financial disgraces and embarrassments in America. The United States Bank (in which my father had put four thousand pounds, which he could ill spare) is swept from the face of the earth, and everybody's money put into it has been like something thrust down a gaping mouth that had no stomach; it has disappeared in void space, and is irredeemably lost. I have seven thousand pounds in the New Orleans banks, which I have given my father for his life. Those banks, it is said, are sound, and will ere long resume specie payments, and give dividends to their stockholders. Amen, so be it. It is affirmed that Mr. Biddle's prosecution will lead to nothing, but that the state of Pennsylvania will pay its debts, means to do so, and will be able to do so without any difficulty.... God bless you, dear Harriet. Write to me soon again, for, though I do hate answering you, I hate worse not hearing from you.

Ever yours, FANNY.

I am glad you liked "Les Maîtres Mosaistes;" I think it charming. Thank you for your "Enfant du Peuple." I have been trying some Paul de Kock, but cannot get on with it.

[Of Madame George Sand's few unobjectionable books, "Les Maîtres Mosaistes" seems to me the best. As an historical picture of Venice and its glorious period of supremacy in art, it is admirable. As a pathetic human history, it is excellent; with this drawback, however, that in it the author has avoided the subject of the relations between the sexes--her invariable rock ahead, both morally and artistically; and it is by the entire omission of the important element of love that this work of hers is free from the reproach the author never escapes when she treats of it. It is a great pity her fine genius has so deep a flaw.]

HARLEY STREET, February 11th, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

... I want to know if you can come to us on the 20th of this month, instead of the 1st of March, as I expected you. I believe I told you that the Duke of Rutland, when we met him at the Arkwrights', at Sutton, gave us all a very kind invitation to Belvoir, which we accepted, and have been expecting since that some more definite intimation when the time of our visit would be convenient. He called here the other day, but we were none of us at home, and this morning we and my father heard from him, recalling our promise to go to Belvoir, and begging us to fix any time between this and the month of April. Now, the only time when my sister can go, poor child! is during Passion Week; and as I am very anxious that she should have the refreshment of a week in the country, and her being with us will be a great addition to my own enjoyment, I want to appoint that time for our visit to the Duke of Rutland. That, however, happens about the 20th of March, when I expected you to be with us; but if, by coming earlier, you can give me as long a visit as you had promised me, without inconveniencing yourself, I shall be glad, dear Harriet; for though we can go to Belvoir at any time before or after March, I wish my sister not to lose a pleasant visit to a beautiful place.

To tell you the truth, it would be a great pleasure to me that you should come so much sooner than I had reckoned upon having you; and as Emily and I trotted round Portman Square together to-day, we both made out that, if you come into this arrangement, you will be here on Tuesday week, which appears to me in itself delightful. Let me know, dear, what you decide, as I shall not answer the Duke of Rutland until I have heard from you.

I promise myself much pleasure from seeing Belvoir. The place, with which I am familiar through engravings and descriptions, is a fine house in one of the finest situations in England; and the idea of being out of London once more, in the country and on horseback, is superlatively agreeable to me.

And now, my dearest, to answer your letter, which I got this morning. For pity's sake, let Lady Westmoreland rest, for the present; we will take her up again, if expedient, when we meet.... The Duke of Wellington called here the other day, and brought an exceedingly pretty bracelet and amiable note to my sister; both which, as you may suppose, she values highly, as she ought to do.

About the cheering of the Queen on her way to Parliament the other day, I incline to think the silence was universal, for everybody with whom I was observed it, except Charles Greville, who swore she was applauded; but then he is deaf, and therefore hears what no one else can. Moreover, the majority of spectators were by no means well-dressed people; the streets were thronged with pure mobocracy, to a degree unprecedented on any previous occasion of the sort, and, though there was no exhibition of ill-feeling towards the Queen or any of the ministers, there was no demonstration of good will beyond the usual civility of lifting the hats as she passed. Indeed, Horace Wilson told me that, when he was crossing the park at the time of her driving through it, there was some--though not much--decided hissing.

Your lamentation over my want of curiosity reminds me that on this very occasion Charles Greville offered to take me all over the Coldbath Fields Prison, and show me the delights of the treadmill, etc., and expressed great astonishment that I did not enthusiastically accept this opportunity of seeing such a cheerful spectacle, and still more amazement at my general want of enlightened curiosity, which he appeared to consider quite unworthy of so intelligent a person.

I have not read Stephens's book on Central America, but only certain extracts from it in the last Quarterly, with which I was particularly charmed; but I admire your asking me why I did not send for his book from the circulating library instead of Paul de Kock. Do you suppose I sent for Paul de Kock? Don't you know I never send for any book, and never read any book, but such as I am desired, required, lent, or given to read by somebody? being, for the most part, very indifferent what I read, and having the obliging faculty of forgetting immediately what I have read, which is an additional reason for my not caring much what my books are. Still, there is a point at which my indifference will give way to disgust.... ---- recommended Paul de Kock's books strongly to me, therefore I read one of them, but found it so very little to my taste that I was obliged, against my usual rule of compliance with my friend's recommendations in these matters, to decline the rest of the author's works. I have begun your "Enfant du Peuple," and many are the heartaches I have had already, though I have read but little of it, over that poor Jean Baptiste's tender and touching love, which reminds one of Jacob's serving seven years for the sake of Rachel, and hardly counting them a day....

Dearest Harriet, if in the matter of your visit to us you cannot alter your plans, which have already been turned topsy-turvy once to suit ours, we will go at some other time to Belvoir, and my sister must e'en give it up, as in my professional days I had to forego Stoke, Chatsworth, and, hardest by far of all, Abbotsford.

God bless you, dearest Harriet. Give my kind love to M----. I rejoice to hear of her convalescence. Remember me affectionately to Dorothy, and believe me,

Ever yours, FANNY.

GRIMSTHORPE, March 27th, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Thank God and O'Connell for your smooth passage. I really dreaded the effects of sea-sickness for you, combined with that racking cough....

We left Belvoir yesterday, and came on here, having promised Lady Willoughby to visit them on our way back to London.

I do not know whether you ever saw Belvoir. It is a beautiful place; the situation is noble, and the views from the windows of the castle, and the terraces and gardens hanging on the steep hill crowned by it, are charming. The whole vale of Belvoir, and miles of meadow and woodland, lie stretched below it like a map unrolled to the distant horizon, presenting extensive and varied prospects in every direction, while from the glen which surrounds the castle hill like a deep moat filled with a forest, the spring winds swell up as from a sea of woodland, and the snatches of bird-carolling and cawing rook-discourse float up to one from nests in the topmost branches of tall trees, far below one's feet, as one stands on the battlemented terraces.

The interior of the house is handsome, and in good taste; and the whole mode of life stately and splendid, as well as extremely pleasant and comfortable. The people--I mean the Duke and his family--kind and courteous hosts, and the society very easy and free from stiffness or constraint of any sort; and I have enjoyed my visit very much....

We had a large party at Belvoir. The gentlemen of the hunt were all at the castle; and besides the ladies of the family (one unmarried and two married daughters), we had the Duchess of Richmond and her granddaughter, the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Lord and Lady Winchelsea, Mademoiselle d'Este, and a whole tribe of others whose names I forget, but which are all duly down in the butler's book.

Every morning the duke's band marched round the castle, playing all sorts of sprightly music, to summon us to breakfast, and we had the same agreeable warning that dinner was ready. As soon as the dessert was placed on the table, singers came in, and performed four pieces of music; two by a very sweet single voice, and two by three or more voices. This, with intervals for conversation, filled up the allotted time before the ladies left the table. In the evening we had music, of course, and one evening we adjourned to the ball-room, where we danced all night, the duke leading down a country-dance, in which his house-maids and men-cooks were vigorously figuring at the same time.

Whenever my sister sang, the servants used all to assemble on a large staircase at one end of the ball-room, where, for the sake of the sound, the piano was placed, and appeared among her most enthusiastic hearers.... The whole family were extremely cordial and kind to us; and when we drove away, they all assembled at an upper window, waving hats and handkerchiefs as long as we could see them. I have no room to tell you anything of Grimsthorpe. God bless you. Good-bye.

Ever yours, Fanny.

[My first introduction to "afternoon tea" took place during this visit to Belvoir, when I received on several occasions private and rather mysterious invitations to the Duchess of Bedford's room, and found her with a "small and select" circle of female guests of the castle, busily employed in brewing and drinking tea, with her grace's own private tea-kettle. I do not believe that now universally honored and observed institution of "five-o'clock tea" dates farther back in the annals of English civilization than this very private and, I think, rather shamefaced practice of it.

Our visit to Grimsthorpe has left but three distinct images on my memory: that of my bedroom, with its furniture of green velvet and regal bed-hangings of white satin and point lace; that of the collection of thrones in the dining-room, the Lords Willoughby de Eresby being hereditary Lord Grand Chamberlains of England, whose perquisite of office was the throne or chair of state used by each sovereign at his or her coronation; and my intercourse with Mademoiselle d'Este, who, like ourselves, came from Belvoir to Grimsthorpe, and with whom I here began an acquaintance that grew into intimacy, and interested me a good deal from her peculiar character and circumstances.]

HARLEY STREET, London, March 31st, 1842. MY DEAR T----,

... My father is in wonderful health, looks, and spirits, considering that in all these items this time last year he was very little better than dead. My sister is working very hard and very successfully, and proposing to herself, after two more years of assiduous labor, to retire on a moderate income to Italy, where she would rather live than anywhere else. But, oh dear me! how well I remember the day when that was my own vision of the future, and only see what a very different thing it has turned out! I think it not at all improbable that she will visit the United States next year, and that we shall find that moment propitious for returning; that is to say, about a twelvemonth from next month.... So much for private interests. As to the public ones: alas! Sir Robert Peel is losing both his health and his temper, they say; and no wonder at it! His modification of the corn laws and new tariff are abominations to his own party, and his income tax an abomination to the nation at large. I cannot conceive a more detestable position than his, except, perhaps indeed, that of the country itself just now. Poverty and discontent in great masses of the people; a pitiless Opposition, snapping up and worrying to pieces every measure proposed by the Ministry, merely for malignant mischeevousness, as the nursemaids say, for I don't believe they--the Whigs--will be trusted again by the people for at least a century to come; a determined, troublesome, and increasing Radical party, whose private and personal views are fairly and dangerously masked by the public grievances of which they advocate the redress; a minister, hated personally by his own party, with hardly an individual of his own political persuasion in either House who follows him cordially, or, rather, who does not feel himself personally aggrieved by one or other of the measures of reform he has proposed,--yet that minister the only man in England at this moment able to stand up at the head of public affairs, and the defeat of whose measures (distasteful as they are to his own party, and little satisfactory to the people in general) would produce instantaneously, I believe, such confusion, disorder, and dismay as England has not seen for many a year, not indeed since the last great Reform crisis;--all this is not pleasant, and makes me pity everybody connected with the present Government, and Sir Robert Peel more than anybody else. I wonder how long he'll be able to stand it.

What have you done with Lord Morpeth? And what are you doing with "Boz"? The first has a most tenderly attached mother and sisters, and really should not, on their account, be killed with kindness; and the latter has several small children, I believe, who, I suppose, will naturally desire that your national admiration should not annihilate their papa.... I wish we were to come back to America soon, but wishes are nonsensical things.... Give my dear love to Catherine and Kate [Miss Sedgwick and her niece], if they are in New York when this reaches you.

Good-bye, my dear T----. I would not have troubled you with this if I had known Mrs. Robert's address; but "Wall Street" will find you, though "Warren Street" knows her no longer.

We have been spending ten days at Belvoir Castle, with all sorts of dukes and duchesses. Don't you perceive it in the nobility of my style? It is well for a foreigner to see these things; they are pretty, pleasant, gay, grand, and, in some of their aspects, good; but I think that who would see them even as they still subsist now had better lose no time about it.

HARLEY STREET, Tuesday, April 12th, 1842.

Did anyone ever say there was not a "soul of good even in things evil"? From your mode of replying to my first letter, dearest Harriet--the one from Belvoir, in which I told you I had been strongly minded to write to you first--you do not seem to me quite to believe in the existence of such an intention. Nor was it a "weak thought," but a very decided purpose, which was frustrated by circumstances for one day, and the next prevented entirely by the arrival of your letter. However, no matter for all that now; hear other things.

You ask after "Figaro" [Mozart's opera of "Le Nozze di Figaro," then being given at Covent Garden, my sister singing the part of Susanna]. It draws very fine houses, and Adelaide's acting in it is very much liked and praised, as it highly deserves to be, for it is capital, very funny, and fine in its fun, which makes good comedy--a charming thing, and a vastly more difficult one, in my opinion, than any tragic acting whatever....

Your boots have been sent safe and sound, my dear, and are in the custody of a person who, I verily believe, thinks me incapable of taking care of anything in the world, and has the same amount of confidence in my understanding that a friend of mine (a clergyman of the Church of England) expressed in his mother's honesty, "I wouldn't trust her with a bad sixpence round the corner." However, your boots, as I said, are safe, and will reach your hands (or feet, I should rather say) in due course of time, I have no doubt.

I have had two letters from America lately, the last of them containing much news about the movements of the abolitionists, in which its writer takes great interest. Among other things, she mentions that an address had been published to the slaves, by Gerrit Smith, exhorting them to run away, to use all means to do so, to do so at any risk, and also by all means and at any risk to learn to read. By all means, he advises them, in no case to use violence, or carry off property of their masters' (except indeed themselves, whom their masters account very valuable property). I should have told you that Gerrit Smith himself was a large slave-holder, that he has given up all his property, renounced his home in the South (where, indeed, if he was to venture to set foot, he would be murdered in less than an hour). He lives at the North, in comparative poverty and privation, having given up his wealth for conscience' sake. I saw him once at Lucretia Mott's. He was a man of remarkable appearance, with an extremely sweet and noble countenance. He is one of the "confessors" in the martyr-age of America.

I am much concerned at your account of E----, for though sprains and twists and wrenches are not uncommon accidents, I have always much more dread of them than of a bonâ (bony) fide fracture. I always fear some injury may be lodged in the system by such apparently lesser casualties, that may not reveal itself till long after the real cause is forgotten....

I must end this letter, for I have delayed it too shamefully long, and you must think me more abominable than ever, in spite of which I am still

Your most affectionate FANNY.

CRANFORD HOUSE, April 17th, 1842.

I put a letter into the post for you, my dearest Harriet, this afternoon. This is all I was able to write to you yesterday--Wednesday; and now it is Thursday evening, and there is every prospect of my having leisure to finish my letter.

Emily has asked me several times to come and spend the evening with her mother, and I have promised her each time that the first evening....

Thus far last night, my dear--that is to say, Thursday evening. It is now Friday evening, and the long and the short of the story was that Emily dined out, Mrs. FitzHugh teaed with the Miss Hamiltons, my party went to Drury Lane, and I passed the evening alone; and the reason why this letter was not finished during that lonely evening, my dear, was that I was sitting working worsted-work for Emily in the parlor downstairs when my people all went away, and after they were gone I was seized with a perfect nervous panic, a "Good" fever, and could not bring myself to stir from the chair where they had left me. As to going up into the drawing-room, it was out of the question; I fancied every step of the stairs would have morsels of flesh lying on it, and the banisters would be all smeared with blood and hairs. In short, I had a fit of the horrors, and sat the whole blessed evening working heart's ease into Emily's canvas, in a perfect nightmare of horrible fancies. At one moment I had the greatest mind in the world to send for a cab, and go to Covent Garden Theatre, and sit in Adelaide's dressing-room; but I was ashamed to give way to my nerves in that cowardly fashion, and certainly passed a most miserable evening.... However, let me leave last night and its horrors, and make haste to answer your questions....

Another pause, dear Harriet, and here I am at this picturesque old place, Cranford House, paying another visit to ----'s venerable friend, old Lady Berkeley. I have been taking a long walk this morning with Lady ----, whose London fine-ladyism gave way completely in these old walks of her early home, to which all the family appear extremely attached. Her unfeigned delight at the primroses, oxlips, wild cherry bloom, and varying greens of the spring season made me think that her lament was not applicable to herself, just then, at any rate. "What a pity," cried she, "it is that one cannot be regenerated as the earth is every spring!" She seemed to me to be undergoing a very pretty process of regeneration even while she spoke. It is touching to observe natural character and the lingering traces of early impressions surviving under the overlaying of the artificial soil and growth of after years of society and conventional worldly habits. She pointed out to me a picturesque, pretty object in the grounds, over which she moralized with a good deal of enthusiasm and feeling--an old, old fir-tree, one of the cedar tribe, a tree certainly many more than a hundred years old, whose drooping lower branches absolutely lie upon the lawn for yards all round it. One of these boughs has struck into the ground, and grown up into a beautiful young tree, already twelve or fourteen feet high, and the contrast between the vivid coloring and erect foliage of this young thing, and the rusty, dusky green, drooping branches of the enormous tree, which seems to hang over and all round it, with parental tenderness, is quite exquisite. One of them, however, must, nevertheless, destroy or be destroyed by the other; a very pretty vegetable version of the ancient classical, family fate, superstitions....

Pray, if you know how flowers propagate, write me word. In gathering primroses this morning, Lady ---- and I exercised our ignorance in all sorts of conjectures upon the subject, neither of us being botanists, though she knew, which I did not, the male from the female flowers.

I get a good deal of sleep since you have gone away, as I certainly do not sit up talking half the night with anybody else. But as for enough, is there such a thing as enough sleep? and was anybody ever known to have had it? and who was he or she?

I have had two long letters from Elizabeth Sedgwick, containing much matter about the abolitionists, in whose movements, you know, she is deeply interested; also more urgent entreaties that I will "use my influence" to secure our return home in the autumn!...

My father appears to be quite well, and in a state of great pleasurable excitement and activity of mind, having (alas! I regret to say) accepted once more the management of Covent Garden, which is too long a story to begin just at the end of my paper; but he is in the theatre from morning till night, as happy as the gods, and apparently, just now, as free from all mortal infirmity. It is amazing, to be sure, what the revival of the one interest of his life has done for his health.

I went to the Portland Street Chapel last Sunday, and heard a sermon upon my peculiar virtue, humility, not from the same clergyman we heard together; and S----, who is too funny, sang the Psalms so loud that I had to remonstrate with her.

Ever yours, F. A. B.

[A horrible murder had just been committed by a miserable man of the name of Good, who endeavored to conceal his crime by cutting to pieces and scattering in different directions the mangled remains of his victim--a woman. The details of these horrors filled the public papers, and were the incessant subject of discussion in society, and were calculated to produce an impression of terror difficult to shake off even by so little nervous a person as myself.

The Countess of Berkeley, to whom I have alluded in this letter, was a woman whose story was a singular romance, which now may be said to belong to "ancient history." She was the daughter of a butcher of Gloucester, and an extremely beautiful person. Mr. Henry Berkeley, the fifth son of Lady Berkeley, for many years Member of Parliament for Bristol, and as many years the persistent advocate of the system of voting by ballot, travelled and resided for some time in America, and formed a close intimacy with ----, who, when we came to England, accepted Mr. Berkeley's invitation to visit his mother at Cranford, and took me with him, to make the acquaintance of this remarkable old lady. She was near eighty years old, tall and stately, with no apparent infirmities, and great remains of beauty. There was great originality in all she said, and her manner was strikingly energetic for so old a woman. I remember, one day after dinner, she had her glass filled with claret till the liquid appeared to form a rim above the vessel that contained it, and, raising it steadily to her lips, looked round the table, where sat all her children but Lord Fitzhardinge, and saying, "God bless you all," she drank off the contents without spilling a drop, and, replacing the glass on the table, said, "Not one of my sons could do that."

One morning, when I was rather indisposed, and unable to join any of the parties into which the guests had divided themselves on their various quests after amusement, I was left alone with Lady Berkeley, and she undertook to give me a sketch of her whole history; and very strange it was. She gave me, of course, her own version of the marriage story, and I could not but wonder whether she might have persuaded herself into believing it true, when she wound up her curious and interesting account of her life by saying, "And now I am ready to be carried to my place in the vault, and my place in the vault is ready for me" (she pointed to the church which adjoined the old mansion); "and I have the key of it here," and she gave a hearty slap upon her pocket. She told me of her presentation at Court, and the uproar it occasioned among the great ladies there, whose repugnance to admit her of their number she described with much humor, but attributed solely to the fact of her plebeian descent, of which she spoke unhesitatingly.

The impression I gathered from her narrative, rather unconsciously on her part I suspect, was that the Queen, whose strictness upon the subject of reputation was well known, objected to receiving her (Lady Berkeley called her, rather disrespectfully, "Old Charlotte" all the time, but spoke of George III. as "the King"), but was overruled by the King, who had a personal friendship for Lord Berkeley.

The strangest thing in her whole account of herself, however, was the details she gave me of her singular power over her husband. She said that in a very few years after their marriage (by courtesy) she perceived that her husband's affairs were in the most deplorable state of derangement: that he gambled, that he was over head and ears in debt, that he never had a farthing of ready money, that his tenantry were worse off than any other in the country, that his agents and bailiffs and stewards were rogues who ground them and cheated him, that his farmers were careless and incompetent, and that the whole of his noble estate appeared to be going irretrievably to ruin; when the earl complaining one day bitterly of this state of things, for which he knew no remedy, she told him that she would find the remedy, and undertake to recover what was lost and redeem what remained, if he would give her absolute discretionary power to deal with his property as she pleased, and not interfere with her management of it for a whole year. He agreed to this, but, not satisfied with his promise, she made him bind himself by oath and, moreover, execute documents, giving her legal power enabling her to act independently of him in all matters relating to his estate. The earl not unnaturally demurred, but at length yielded, only stipulating that she should always be prepared to furnish him with money whenever he wanted it. She bound herself to do this, and received regular powers from him for the uninterrupted management of his property and administration of his affairs for a whole year. She immediately set about her various plans of reform, and carried them on vigorously and successfully, without the slightest interference on the part of her dissipated and careless husband, who had entirely forgotten the whole compact between them. Some months after the agreement had gone into effect, she perceived that he was harassed and disturbed about something, and questioning him, found he had incurred a heavy gambling debt, which he knew not how to meet. His surprise was extreme when, recalling the terms of their mutual agreement, she put him in possession of the sum he required. "He called me an angel," she said. "You see, my dear, one is always an angel, when one holds the strings of the purse, and that there is money in it."

She persevered in her twelvemonth's stewardship, and at the end of that time had redeemed her word, and relieved her husband's estate from its most pressing embarrassments. The value of the land had increased; the condition of the tenantry had improved; intelligent and active farmers had had the farms rented to them, instead of the previous sleepy set of incumbents; and finally, a competent and honest agent, devoted to carry out her views, was placed over the whole. The property never fell from this highly prosperous condition, for Lord Berkeley never withdrew it from his wife's supervision; and she continued to administer his affairs till his death, and maintained an extraordinary influence over all the members of her family at the time of my acquaintance with her. They were all rather singular persons, and had a vein of originality which made them unlike the people one met in common society. I suppose their mother's unusual character may have had to do with this.

Lord Fitzhardinge was never at Cranford when I was there, though I have, at various times, met all the other brothers.

Frederick Berkeley went into the navy, and rose to the important position of an admiral; Craven Berkeley, Grantley Berkeley, and Henry Berkeley were all in Parliament. The latter was for many years Member for the important constituency of Bristol, and, probably in consequence of opinions acquired during his residence in the United States, was a consistent advocate for the introduction of vote by ballot in our elections. This gentleman was an unusually accomplished person: he had made preparatory studies for two professions, the Church and the Bar; but though he embraced neither career (possibly on account of an accident he met with while hunting, which crippled him for life), the reading he had gone through for both had necessarily endowed him with a more than common degree of mental cultivation. He was an excellent musician, played on the piano and organ with considerable taste and feeling, and had a much more thorough acquaintance with the science of music than is usual in an amateur.

Morton Berkeley sought no career; he lived with his mother and sister, Lady Mary, at Cranford, his principal pleasure and occupation being the preservation of the game on the estate--an object of not very easy accomplishment, owing to the proximity of Cranford to London, the distance being only twelve miles by railroad, and the facilities thus offered of escape and impunity to poachers necessarily considerable. The tract immediately round Cranford was formerly part of the famous, or rather infamous, Hounslow Heath; and I have heard Mr. Henry Berkeley say that in his youth he remembered perfectly, when he went to London with his father, by day or night, loaded pistols were an invariable part of the carriage furniture.

My first acquaintance with Mr. Morton Berkeley's devotion to the duties of a gamekeeper was made in a very singular manner, and accompanied by a revelation of an unexpected piece of sentiment.

---- and myself were visiting at Cranford on one occasion, when the only strangers there beside ourselves were Lady C----, Lord and Lady S----, and Lord F---- and his sister, a lady of some pretensions to beauty, but still more to a certain fashionable elegance of appearance, much enhanced by her very Parisian elaborateness of toilette.

One night, when the usual hour for retiring had come, the ladies, who always preceded the gentlemen by some hours to their sleeping apartments, had left the large room on the ground-floor, where we had been spending the evening. As we ascended the stairs, my attention was attracted by some articles of dress which lay on one of the window-seats: a heavy, broad-brimmed hat, a large rough pea-jacket, and a black leather belt and cutlass--a sort of coastguard costume which, lying in that place, excited my curiosity. I stopped to examine them, and Lady Mary exclaiming, "Oh, those are Morton's night-clothes; he puts them on when everybody is gone to bed, to go and patrol with the gamekeeper round the place. Do put them on for fun;" she seized them up and began accoutring me in them.

When I was duly enveloped in these very peculiar trappings, we all burst into fits of laughter, and it was instantly proposed that we should all return to the drawing-room, I marching at their head in my gamekeeper's costume. Without further consideration, I ran downstairs again, followed by the ladies, and so re-entered the room, where the gentlemen were still assembled in common council, and where our almost immediate return in this fashion was hailed by a universal shout of surprise and laughter. After standing for a minute, with a huge rough overcoat over my rose-colored satin and moiré skirts, which made a most ludicrous termination to the pugnacious habit of my upper woman, I plunged my hand into one of the pockets, and drew forth a pair of hand-cuffs (a prudent provision in case of an encounter with poachers). Encouraged by the peals of merriment with which this discovery was greeted, I thrust my other hand into the other pocket, when Mr. Morton Berkeley, without uttering a word, rushed at me, and, seizing me by the wrist, prevented my accomplishing my purpose. The suddenness of this movement frightened me at first a good deal. Presently, however, my emotion changed, and I felt nothing but amazement at being thus unceremoniously seized hold of, and rage at finding that I could not extricate myself from the grasp that held me. Like a coward and a woman, I appealed to all the other gentlemen, but they were laughing so excessively that they were quite unable to help me, and probably anticipated no great mischief from Mr. Berkeley's proceeding. I was almost crying with mortification, and actually drew the cutlass and threatened to cut the fingers that encircled my wrist like one of the iron handcuffs, but, finding my captor inexorable, I was obliged, with extreme sulky confusion, to beg to be let go, and promise to take the coat off without any further attempts to search the pockets. I divested myself of my borrowed apparel a great deal faster than I had put it on, and its owner walked off with the pea-jacket, the right pocket of which remained unexplored. We ladies withdrew again, rather crestfallen at the termination of our joke, I rubbing my wrist like Mary Stuart after her encounter with Lord Ruthven, and wondering extremely what could be the mysterious contents of that pocket.

The next day Lady Mary told me that her brother had long cherished a romantic sort of idolatry for Miss F----, and that, as a pendant to the handcuffs in one pocket of his dreadnought, the other contained her miniature, which he dreaded the night before that my indiscretion would produce, to the derision of the men, the distress and confusion of the young lady herself, and the possible displeasure of her brother. Mr. Morton Berkeley's manners to me after that were again, as they always had been, respectful and rather reserved; the subject of our "fight" was never again alluded to, and he remained to me a gentle, shy, courteous (and romantic) gentleman.

He was habitually silent, but when he did speak, he was very apt to say something apposite, and generally containing the pith of the matter under discussion. I remember once, when I was reproaching his brother Henry and his sister with what I thought the unbecoming manner in which they criticised the deportment and delivery of a clergyman whose sermon they had just listened to (and who certainly was rather an unfortunate specimen of outward divinity), Mr. Morton Berkeley suddenly turned to me, and said, "Why, Mrs. Butler, he is only the rusty bars the light shines through"--a quotation, in fact, but a very apposite one, and I am not sure but that it was an unconscious one, and an original illustration on his part.

Mr. Thomas Duncombe, the notorious Radical Member for Finsbury, very generally and very disrespectfully designated in the London society of his day as "Tommy Duncombe," and Mr. Maxse (Lady Caroline Berkeley's husband), were also among the persons with whom I became acquainted at Cranford.

Of a curious feat of charioteership performed by the latter gentleman I was told once by the Duke of Beaufort, who said he had derived from it the nickname of "Go-along Maxse." Driving late one night with a friend on a turnpike road after the gates were closed, he said to his companion, "Now, if the turnpike we are just coming to is shut, I'll take the horse and gig over the gate." The gig was light, the horse powerful and swift. As they bowled along and came in sight of the gate, they perceived that it was closed; when Mr. Maxse's companion calling out to him, "Go-along, Maxse," that gentleman fulfilled his threat or promise, whichever it might be, and put his horse full at the gate, which the gallant creature cleared, bringing the carriage and its live freight safe to the ground on the other side; a feat which I very unintentionally imitated, in a humble degree, many years after, with an impunity my carelessness certainly did not deserve.

Driving in a state of considerable mental preoccupation out of my own gate one day at Lenox, in a very light one-horse "wagon" (as such vehicles are there called), instead of turning my horse's head either up or down the road, I let him go straight across it, to the edge of a tolerably wide dry ditch, when, suddenly checking him, the horse, who was a saddle-horse and a good leaper, drew himself together, and took the ditch, with me in the carriage behind him, and brought up against a fence, where there was just room for him to turn round, which he immediately did, as if aware of his mistake, and proceeded to leap back again, quite successfully without any assistance of mine, I being too much amazed at the whole performance to do anything but sit still and admire my horse's dexterity.

I have adverted to the still existing industry of "gentlemen of the road," in speaking of Cranford in the days of the Earl of Berkeley, who used to take pistols in the carriage when he went to London. On one occasion, when he was riding, unattended but fortunately not unarmed, over some part of Hounslow Heath, a highwayman rode up to him, and, saluting him by name, said, "I know, my lord, you have sworn never to give in to one of us; but now I mean to try if you're as good as your word." "So I have, you rascal, but there are two of you here," replied the earl. The robber, thrown off his guard, looked round for the companion thus indicated, and Lord Berkeley instantly shot him through the head; owing it to his ready presence of mind that he escaped a similar fate at the hands of his assailant.

My mother, I think, had the advantage of a slight personal acquaintance with one of the very last of these Tyburn heroes. She lived at one time, before her marriage, with her mother and sisters and only brother, at a small country house beyond Finchley; to which suburban, or indeed then almost entirely rural, retreat my father and other young men of her acquaintance used occasionally to resort for an afternoon's sport, in the present highly distinguished diversion of pigeon-shooting. On one of these occasions some one of her habitual guests brought with him a friend, who was presented to my mother, and joined in the exercise of skill. He was like a gentleman in his appearance and manners, with no special peculiarity but remarkably white and handsome hands and extraordinary dexterity, or luck, in pigeon-shooting. Captain Clayton was this individual's name, and his visit, never repeated to my mother's house, was remembered as rather an agreeable event. Soon after this several outrages were committed on the high-road which passed through Finchley; and Moody, the celebrated comic actor, who lived in that direction, was stopped one evening, as he was driving himself into town, by a mounted gentleman, who, addressing him politely by name, demanded his watch and purse, which Moody surrendered, under the influence of "the better part of valor." Having done so, however, he was obliged to request his "very genteel" thief to give him enough money to pay his turnpike on his way into town, where he was going to act, whereupon the "gentleman of the road" returned him half-a-crown, and bade him a polite "Good-evening." Some time after this, news was brought into Covent Garden, at rehearsal one morning, that a man arrested for highway robbery was at the Bow Street Police Office, immediately opposite the theatre. Several of the corps dramatique ran across the street to that famous vestibule of the Temple of Themis; among others, Mr. Moody and Vincent de Camp. The latter immediately recognized my mother's white-handed, gentleman-like pigeon-shooter, and Moody his obliging MacHeath of the Finchley Common highway. "Halloa! my fine fellow," said the actor to the thief, "is that you? Well, perhaps as you are here, you won't object to return me my watch, for which I have a particular value, and which won't be of any great use to you now, I suppose." "Lord love ye, Mr. Moody," replied Captain Clayton, with a pleasant smile, "I thought you were come to pay me the half crown I lent you."]

HARLEY STREET, Friday, April 22nd, 1842. MY DEAR T----,

I am not in the least indifferent to the advent of £100 sterling....

I am amused with your description of Dickens, because it tallies so completely with the first impression he made upon me the only time I ever met him before he went to America.... I admire and love the man exceedingly, for he has a deep warm heart, a noble sympathy with and respect for human nature, and great intellectual gifts wherewith to make these fine moral ones fruitful for the delight and consolation and improvement of his fellow-beings.

Lord Morpeth is indeed, as we say, another guessman, but quite one of the most amiable in this world or that. He is universally beloved and respected, so tenderly cherished, by his own kindred that his mother and sisters seem absolutely miserable with various anxieties about him, and the weariness of his prolonged absence. He is a most worthy gentleman, and "goes nigh to be thought so" by all classes here, I can tell you....

You ask me if I have any warmer friends in England than your people, who are certainly my warmest friends in America. I have some friends in my own country who have known and loved me longer than your family; but I do not think, with one or two exceptions, that they love me better, nor do I reckon upon the faith and affection of my American friends less than upon that of my English ones. But the number of people whom I entirely love and trust is very small anywhere, and yet large enough to make me thank God every day for the share He has given me of worthy friendships--treasures sufficient for me to account myself very rich in their possession; living springs of goodness and affection, in which my spirit finds never-failing refreshment. But I have in my own country a vast number of very kind and cordial acquaintances, and, to tell you the truth, am better understood (naturally) and better liked in society, I think, here than on your side of the water. I fancy I am more popular, upon the whole, among my own people than among yours; which is not to be wondered at, as difference is almost always an element of dislike, and, of course, I am more different from American than English people. Indeed, I have come to consider the difference of nationality a broader, stronger, and deeper difference than that produced by any mere dissimilarity of individual character. It is tantamount to looking at everything from another point of view; to having, from birth and through education, other standards; to having, in short, another intellectual and moral horizon. No personal unlikeness between two individuals of the same nation, however strong it may be in certain points, is equal to the entire unlikeness, fundamental, superficial, and thorough, of two people of different nations.

I am anxious to close this letter before I go out, and shall only add, in replying to your next question of whether I ever feel any desire to return to the stage, Never.... My very nature seems to me dramatic. I cannot speak without gesticulating and making faces, any more than an Italian can; I am fond, moreover, of the excitement of acting, personating interesting characters in interesting situations, giving vivid expression to vivid emotion, realizing in my own person noble and beautiful imaginary beings, and uttering the poetry of Shakespeare. But the stage is not only this, but much more that is not this; and that much more is not only by no means equally agreeable, but positively odious to me, and always was.

Good-by. God bless you and yours.

Believe me always yours most truly, FANNY BUTLER.

HARLEY STREET, May 1st, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

I have just despatched a letter to Emily, from whom I I have had two already since she reached Bannisters. She writes chiefly of her mother, whose efforts to bear her trial are very painful to poor Emily, whose fewer years and excellent mental habits render such exertions easier to her. To no one can self-control under such sorrow ever be easy.

You ask about my going to the Drawing-room, which happened thus: The Duke of Rutland dined some little time ago at the Palace, and, speaking of the late party at Belvoir, mentioned me, when the Queen asked why I didn't have myself presented. The duke called the next day at our house, but we did not see him, and he being obliged to go out of town, left a message for me with Lady Londonderry, to the effect that her Majesty's interest about me (curiosity would have been the more exact word, I suspect) rendered it imperative that I should go to the Drawing-room; and, indeed, Lady Londonderry's authoritative "Of course you'll go," given in her most gracious manner, left me no doubt whatever as to my duty in that respect, especially as the message duly delivered by her was followed up by a letter from the duke, from Newmarket, who, from the midst of his bets, handicaps, sweepstakes, and cups, wrote me over again all that he had bid the marchioness tell me. Wherefore, having no objection whatever to go to Court (except, indeed, the expense of my dress, the idea of which caused me no slight trepidation, as I had already exceeded my year's allowance), I referred the matter to my supreme authority, and it being settled that I was to go, I ordered my tail, and my top, train, and feathers, and went. And this is the whole story, with this postscript, that, not owning a single diamond, I hired a handsome set for the occasion from Abud and Collingwood, every single stone of which darted a sharp point of nervous anxiety into my brain and bosom the whole time I wore them.

As you know that I would not go to the end of the street to see a drawing-room full of full moons, you will easily believe that there was nothing particularly delightful to me in the occasion. But after all, it was very little more of an exertion than I make five nights of the week, in going to one place or another; and under the circumstances it was certainly fitting and proper that I should go.

I suffered agonies of nervousness, and, I rather think, did all sorts of awkward things; but so, I dare say, do other people in the same predicament, and I did not trouble my head much about my various mis-performances. One thing, however, I can tell you: if her Majesty has seen me, I have not seen her; and should be quite excusable in cutting her wherever I met her. "A cat may look at a king," it is said; but how about looking at the Queen? In great uncertainty of mind on this point, I did not look at my sovereign lady. I kissed a soft white hand, which I believe was hers; I saw a pair of very handsome legs, in very fine silk stockings, which I am convinced were not hers, but am inclined to attribute to Prince Albert; and this is all I perceived of the whole royal family of England, for I made a sweeping courtesy to the "good remainders of the Court," and came away with no impression but that of a crowded mass of full-dressed confusion, and neither know how I got in nor out of it....

You ask about Liszt. He does not take the management of the German Opera, as was expected; indeed, I wonder he ever accepted such an employment. I should think him most unfit to manage such an undertaking, with his excitable temper and temperament. I do not know whether he will come to London at all this season. Adelaide has been bitterly disappointed about it, and said that she had reckoned upon him in great measure for the happiness of her whole summer....

You ask next in your category of questions after Adelaide's dog, and whether it is led in a string successfully yet; and thereby hangs a tale. T'other morning she was awakened by a vehement knocking at her door, and S---- exclaiming, in a loud and solemn voice, "Adelaide, thy maid and thy dog are in a fit together!" which announcement she continued to repeat, with more and more emphasis, till my sister, quite frightened, jumped out of bed, and came upon the stairs, where she beheld the two women and children just come in from their walk; Anne, looking over the banisters with her usual peculiar air of immovable dignity, slowly ejaculating, "What a fool the girl is!" Caroline followed in her wake, wringing her hands, and alternately shrieking and howling, like all the Despairs in the universe. It was long before anything could be distinguished of articulate speech, among the fräulein's howls and shrieks; but at length it appeared that she had taken "die Tine" out in the Regent's Park with Anne and the children, who now go out directly after their breakfast. Tiny, it seems, enjoyed the trip amazingly, and became so excited and so very much transported with what we call animal spirits in human beings that it began to run, as the fräulein thought, away. Whereupon the fräulein began to run after it; whereupon Tiny, when it heard this Dutch nymph heavy in hot pursuit, ran till it knocked its head against a keeper's lodge, and here, because it shook and trembled and stared, probably at its own unwonted performance, a sympathizing crowd collected, who instantly proclaimed it at first in a conwulsion fit, and then decidedly mad. Water was offered it, which it only stared at and shook its head, evidently dreading the cleansing element. A policeman coming by immediately proposed to kill it. This, however, the fräulein objected to; and catching the bewildered quadruped in her arms, she set off home, escorted by a running mob of sympathetic curiosity. But about half-way the struggle between herself and "die Tine" became so terrific that it ended by the luckless little brute escaping from her, and precipitating itself down an area, where it remained, invoking heaven with howls, while Caroline ran howling down the street. The man-servant was then sent (twice with a wrong direction) to fetch the poor little creature up, and bring it home. At length Caroline accompanied the footman to the scene of the dog-astrophe (you wouldn't call it cat-astrophe, would you?), and "die Tine" was safely lodged in the back-yard here, where, being left alone and not bothered with human solicitude, it presently recovered as many small wits as it ever had, drank voluntarily plenty of water, and gave satisfactory signs of being quite as rational as any lady's little dog need be; but the fräulein protests she will never take "die Tine" out walking again.

Good-bye dear. God bless you. I am pretty well, if that comports with low spirits and terrible nervous irritability.

Yours ever, FANNY.

My father desires his love to you.

HARLEY STREET, Friday, May 6th, 1842.

I did ask Emily my botanical questions, but she could tell me no more than you have done, and knew nothing special about the primroses.

You ask me a great deal in your letter about my father again taking the management of Covent Garden, and on what terms he has done so; all which I have told you in the letter I have just despatched to you....

Adelaide has repeatedly said that, as soon as she has realized three hundred a year, she will give up the whole business; and I comfort myself with that purpose of hers; for if at the conclusion of next season she will go to America for a year, she will more than realize the result she proposes to herself.... I cannot, however, help fearing that obstacles may arise to prevent her eventually fulfilling her purpose when the time comes for her retiring, according to her present expectation and wish....

I have not been out a great deal lately, We seem a little less inclined to fly at all quarry than last season; and as I never decide whether we shall accept the invitations that come or not, I am very well pleased that some of them are declined. I believe I told you that Lady Londonderry had asked us to a magnificent ball. This I was rather sorry to refuse, as a ball is quite as great a treat to me as to any "young miss" just coming out. Indeed, I think my capacity of enjoyment and excitement is greater than that of most "young misses" I see, who not only talk of being bored, but actually contrive, poor creatures! to look so in the middle of their first season.

I spent two hours with poor Lady Dacre yesterday evening.... After sitting with her, we went to a large party at Sydney Smith's, where I was very much amused and pleased, and saw numbers of people that I know and like--rather.

You ask about my walks.... They are now chiefly confined to my peregrinations in the Square, measuring the enclosed gravel walks of which I have already, since your departure, finished the "Mémoires de l'Enfant du Peuple," and brought myself, mirabile dictu! to within twenty pages of the end of Mrs. Jameson's book upon Prussian school statistics....

I do not think Mr. W---- any authority upon any subject. I consider him a perfect specimen of a charlatan, and his opinions with regard to slavery and the abolitionists are particularly little worthy of credit in my mind, because he used America precisely as an actor would, to make money wherever he could by his lectures, which he puffed himself, till he was absolutely laughed at all over the country, and which were, by the accounts of those who heard them, perfectly shallow and often quite erroneous as far as regarded the information they pretended to impart. The Southern States were a lucrative field for his lecturing speculation; the Northern abolitionists were far from being sufficiently numerous or influential for it to be worth his while to conciliate them; and for these reasons I attach little value to his statement upon that or indeed any other subject.

You ask me what was my impression altogether of the Drawing-room. I have told you about my own performances there, of which, however, I dare say I exaggerated the awkwardness to myself. The whole thing wearied me, just as any other large, overcrowded assembly where I could not sit down would; and that is the chief impression it has left upon me. I believe I was flattered by the Queen's expressing any curiosity about me, but I went simply because I was told it was right that I should do so. I am always horribly shy, or nervous, or whatever that foolish sensation ought to be called, at even having to walk across a room full of people; and therefore the fuss and to-do and ceremonial of the presentation (particularly not having been very well drilled beforehand by Lady Francis, who presented me) were disagreeable to me; but I have retained no impression of the whole thing other than of a very large and fatiguing rout. We are advised to go again on the birthday, but that I am sure we shall not do; and now that the Queen--God bless her!--has perceived that I do not go upon all-fours, but am indeed, as Bottom says, "a woman like any other woman," I have no doubt her gracious Majesty is abundantly satisfied with what she saw of me.

Good-bye, dearest Harriet.

Ever yours, F. A. B.

[The enthusiastic abolitionist, Mrs. Lydia Child, had written to me, requesting me to give her for publication some portions of the journal I had kept during my residence in Georgia; and I had corresponded with my friend Mrs. Charles Sedgwick upon the subject, deciding to refuse her request. My Georgia journal never saw the light till the War of Secession was raging in America, and almost all the members of the society in which I was then living in England were strongly sympathizing with the Southern cause, when I thought it right to state what, according to my own observation and experience, that cause involved.]

HARLEY STREET, May 6th, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

The carriage is waiting to take ---- to the Levée, and I am waiting till it comes back to go upon my thousand and one daily errands. Adelaide, it being her last day at home, appears anxious to enjoy as much as she can of my society, and has therefore gone fast asleep in the arm-chair by the table at which I am writing, and has expressed her intention of coming out and paying visits with me this morning. She starts at eight o'clock this evening, and will reach Birmingham, I believe, about one. This arrangement, which I should think detestable, pleases her very much....

Mr. Everett, our friend, presents ----, and I thought Anne would have fallen down in a fit when she heard that the ceremony consisted in going down on one knee and kissing the Queen's hand. She did not mind my doing it the least in the world, but her indignation has been unbounded at the idea of a free-born American citizen submitting to such degradation. Poor thing! "Lucifer, son of the morning," was meek and humble to her.

We dined to-day with the Francis Egertons, to meet the young Guardsmen who are to form our corps dramatique for "The Hunchback," which, you know, we are going to act in private. To-morrow evening we go to Sydney Smith's, and on Monday down to Oatlands for a few days. I am always delighted in that place and the lovely wild country round it. Lady Francis will mount me, and I expect my old enjoyment in riding about those beautiful and well-remembered haunts with her....

There has been a grand row at the Italian Opera-House, among the managers, singers, and singeresses. Mario (Mons. Di Candia; I suppose you know who I mean) has, it seems, for some reason or other, been discharged. Madame Grisi, who sympathizes with him, refuses to uplift her voice, that being the case; the new singeress, Frezzolini, does not please at all; and the new singer, Rouconi, isn't allowed by his wife to sing with any woman but herself, and she is a perfect dose to the poor audience. Lumley, the solicitor, manager of these he and she divinities, declares that if they don't behave better he'll shut the theatre at the end of the week. In the mean time, underhand proposals have been made to Adelaide to stop the gap, and sing for a few nights for them--a sort of proposal which does not suit her, which she has scornfully rejected, and departed with her tail over her shoulder, leaving the behind scenes of Her Majesty's Theatre with their tails between their legs....

My dearest Harriet, you ask me if I do not think the spirit of martyrdom is often alloyed with self-esteem and wilfulness. God alone knows the measure in which human infirmity and human virtue unite in inducing the sacrifice of life and all that life loves for a point of opinion. I confess, for my own part, self-esteeming and wilful as I am, that to suffer bodily torture for the sake of an abstract question of what one believes to be right is an effort of courage so much above any that I am capable of that I do not feel as if I had a right to undervalue it by the smallest doubt cast upon the merit of those who have shown themselves capable of it. It may be that, without such admixture of imperfection as human nature's highest virtues are still tinged with, the confessors of every good and noble cause would have left unfulfilled their heroic task of witnessing to the truth by their death; but if indeed base alloy did mingle with their great and conscientious sacrifice, let us hope that the pangs of physical torture, the anguish of injustice and ignominy, and the rending asunder of all the ties of earthly affection, may have been some expiation for the imperfection of their most perfect deed....

Will you, my dear, be so good as to remember what a hang-nail is like? or a grain of dust in your eye? or a blister on your heel? or a corn on your toe? and then reflect what the word "torture" implies, when it meant all that the most devilish cruelty could invent. Savonarola! good gracious me! I would have canted and _re_canted, and called black white, and white black, and confessed, and denied! Please don't think of it! God be praised, those days are over! Not but what I edified Mr. Combe greatly once, when I was a girl, by declaring that if, by behaving well under torture, I could have vexed my tormentors very much, and if I might have had plenty of people to see how well I behaved, I thought I could have managed it; to which he replied, "Oh, weel now, Fanny, ye've just got the very spirit of a martyr in you." See if that theory of the matter answers your notion....

You ask me how I managed about diamonds to go to Court in. I hired a set, which I also wore at the fête at Apsley House; they were only a necklace and earrings, which I wore as a bandeau, stitched on scarlet velvet, and as drops in the middle of scarlet velvet bows in my hair, and my dress being white satin and point lace, trimmed with white Roman pearls, it all looked nice enough. The value of the jewels was only £700, but I am sure they gave me £7000 worth of misery; and if her Majesty had but known the anguish I endured in showing my respect for her by false appearances, the very least she could have done would have been to have bought the jewels and given them to me. Madame Dévy made my Court dress, which was of such material as, you see, I can use when I play "The Hunchback" at Lady Francis's. I am ruining myself, in spite of my best endeavors to be economical; but if it is any comfort for you to know it, my conscience torments me horribly for it....

God bless you. Good-bye, dear.

Ever yours affectionately, F. A. B.

HARLEY STREET, Saturday, May 7th, 1842.

... What an immense long talk I am having with you this morning, my dear Hal! I do not believe you are wearied, however; but you will surely wonder why I did not put all these letters under one cover with the three sovereign heads on the one packet; and I am sure I don't know why I have not. But it doesn't matter much my appearing a little more or a little less absurd to you.

You ask who I shall associate with while ---- and Adelaide are away.... I presume with my own writing-table and the carriage cushions, just as I do now, just as I did before, and just as I am likely to do hereafter....

It was not the presence of the Queen that affected my nerves at the Drawing-room, but my own presence, i.e., as the French say, I was "très embarrassée de ma personne." The uncertainty of what I was to do (for Lady Francis had been exceedingly succinct in her instructions), and the certainty of a crowd of people staring all round me,--this, I think, and not the overpowering sense of a royal human being before me, was what made me nervous. Were I to go again to a Drawing-room, now that I know my lesson, I do not think I should suffer at all from any embarrassment. We are not asked to the fancy ball at the Palace, I am told, because of our omission in not attending at the Birthday Drawing-room, which, it seems, is a usual thing after a first presentation. I should like to have seen it; it will be a fine sight. In the mean time, as many of our acquaintances are going, we come in for a full share of the insanity which has taken possession of men's and women's minds about velvets, satins, brocades, etc. You enter no room that is not literally strewed with queer-looking prints of costumes; and before you can say, "How d'ye do?" you are asked which looks best together, blue and green, or pink and yellow; for, indeed, their selections are often as outrageous as these would be. I never conceived people could be so stupid at combining ideas, even upon this least abstruse of subjects; and you would think, to hear these fine ladies talk the inanity they do about their own clothes, now they are compelled to think about them for themselves, that they have no natural perceptions of even color, form, or proportion. The fact is that even their dressing-brains are turned over to their French milliners and lady's-maids. I understand Lady A---- says she will make her dress alone (exclusive of jewels) cost £1000.

Some people say this sort of mad extravagance does good; I cannot think it. It surely matters comparatively little that the insane luxury of the self-indulgent feeds the bodies of so many hundred people if at the same time the mischievous example of their folly and extravagance is demoralizing their hearts and minds and injuring a great many more.

Touching Lady A----, she gave the address of one of her milliners to Lady W----, who, complaining to her of the exorbitant prices of this superlative faiseuse, and plaintively stating that she had charged her fifty guineas for a simple morning dress, Lady A---- replied, "Ah, very likely, I dare say; I don't know anything about cheap clothes."

I do not know where Adelaide is likely to lodge in Dublin, nor do I believe she knows herself; but before this letter reaches you, you will have found out. I had almost a mind to ask her to write to me, but then I knew both how she hates it and how little time she was likely to have, so I forbore. She has left me with the pleasing expectation that any of these days her eccentric musical friend Dessauer may walk in, to be by me received, lodged, entertained, comforted, and consoled, in her absence (in which case, by-the-by, you know, I should associate with him while she is away). From parts of his letters which she has read to me, I feel very much inclined to like him, ... and I imagine I shall find him very amusing....

You ask about our getting up of "The Hunchback" at the Francis Egertons'. I forget whether you knew that Horace Wilson [my kind friend and connection, the learned Oxford Professor of Sanscrit, who to his many important acquirements and charming qualities added the accomplishments of a capital musician and first-rate amateur actor] has been seriously indisposed, and so out of health and spirits as to have declined the part of Master Walter, which he was to have taken in it. This has been a great disappointment to me, for he would have done it admirably, and as he is a person of whom I am very fond, it would have been agreeable to me to have had him among us, and I should have particularly liked him for so important a coadjutor. He failing us, however, Knowles himself has undertaken to play the part, and I shall be glad enough to do it with him again. I have a great deal of compassionate admiration for poor Knowles, who, with his undeniable dramatic genius, his bright fancy, and poetical imagination, will, I fear, end his days either in a madhouse or a poorhouse. The characters beside Sir Thomas Clifford and Modus (which you know are taken by Henry Greville and ----) are filled by a pack of young Guardsmen, with whom I dined, in order to make acquaintance, at Lady Francis's t'other day. Two of them, Captain Seymour and a son of Sir Francis Coles, are acquaintances of yours and your people.

You ask how I am amusing myself. Why, just as usual, which is well enough. I am of too troubled a nature ever to lack excitement, and have an advantage over most people in the diversion I am able to draw from very small sources.

I went last night to the French play, to see a French actress called Déjazet make her first appearance in London. The house was filled with our highest aristocracy, the stalls with women of rank and character, and the performance was, I think, one of the most impudent that I ever witnessed. Dr. Whewell [the celebrated Master of Trinity] and Mrs. Whewell were sitting near us, and left the theatre in the middle of Déjazet's first piece--I suppose from sheer disgust. She is a marvellous actress, and without exception the most brazen-faced woman I ever beheld, and that is saying a great deal. Good-bye.

Ever your affectionate FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, Saturday, May 14th, 1842. MY DEAREST HAL,

On my return from Oatlands yesterday, I found no fewer than four letters of yours, and this morning I have received a fifth.... I am most thankful for all your details about Adelaide, who, of course, will not have time to write to any of us herself.... Miss Rainsforth, her mother, and their travelling manager, Mr. Callcott, are her whole party.... Miss Rainsforth is a quiet, gentle, well-conducted, well-bred, amiable person; Mr. Callcott is a son of the composer, and a nephew of our friend Sir Augustus, and has the refinement of mind and manners which one would look for in any member of that family.... I am very sorry that Adelaide cannot see more of you, and you of her....

You ask whether it is a blessing or a curse not to provide one's own means of subsistence. I think it is a great blessing to be able and allowed to do so. But I dare say I am not a fair judge of the question, for the feeling of independence and power consequent upon earning large sums of money has very much destroyed my admiration for any other mode of support; and yet certainly my pecuniary position now would seem to most people very far preferable to my former one; but having earned money, and therefore most legitimately owned it, I never can conceive that I have any right to the money of another person.... I cannot help sometimes regretting that I did not reserve out of my former earnings at least such a yearly sum as would have covered my personal expenses; and having these notions, which impair the comfort of being maintained, I am sometimes sorry that I no longer possess my former convenient power of coining. I do not think I should feel so uncomfortable about inheriting money, though I had not worked for it; for, like any other free gift, I think I should consider that legitimately my own, just like any other present that was made me....

"The Hunchback" is to be acted at the Francis Egertons', in London, though I do not very well see how; for Bridgewater House is in process of rebuilding, and their present residence in Belgrave Square, though large enough for all social purposes, is far from being well adapted to theatrical ones; insomuch--or, rather, so little--that it is my opinion we shall be in each other's arms, laps, and pockets throughout the whole performance, which will be inconvenient, and in some of the situations slightly indecorous.

I have received this morning, my dear, your notice of the "Sonnambula," for which we are all very grateful to you. Give my love to my sister. I expected her success as a matter of course, and did not anticipate much annoyance to her from her present mode of life, ... because I have known her derive extreme amusement and diversion from circumstances and associates that would have been utterly distasteful to me. Her love and perception of the ridiculous is not only positive enjoyment, but a protection from annoyance and a mitigation of disgust. My father desires his love to you, and bids me thank you for your kindness in sending him the newspapers. With regard to that last song in the "Amina," of which you speak as of a tour de force, it is hardly so much so, in point of fact, as her execution of the whole part, which is too high for her; and though she sings it admirably in spite of that, she cannot give it the power and expression that she would if it lay more easily in her voice. This, however, is the case with other music that she sings, and the consequence is that, though she has great execution, and power, and sweetness, and finish in the use of her artificial voice, it wants the spontaneous force in high music of a naturally high organ.

Pray, did you ever pity me as much as you do Adelaide in the exercise of her profession? You certainly never expressed the same amount of compassion for my strolling destinies, nor did I ever hear you lament in this kind over the fate of John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, both of whom had impertinences addressed to them by your Dublin gallery humorists. Pray, what is the meaning of this want of feeling on your part for us others, or your excess of it for Adelaide? Is it only singing histrions who appear to you objects of compassion? Good-bye, dearest Harriet. I have to write to Emily, and to answer an American clergyman, a friend of mine, who has written to me from Paris; and moreover, being rather in want of money, I am about to endeavor to make practicable for the English stage a French piece called "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle," which, with certain vicious elements, has some very striking and effective situations, and is, dramatically speaking, one of the most cleverly constructed plays I have seen for a long while. Therefore, farewell. If I could earn £200 now, I should be glad.

HARLEY STREET, Thursday, May 19th, 1842.

Thank you, my dearest Harriet, for your long account of Adelaide. She has written to my father, which I was very glad of.... Of course, I have not expected to hear from her, but have been delighted to get all your details. In her letter to my father, she says she gets on extremely well with her companions, that they are gay and merry, and that her life with them is pleasant and amuses her very much.

You do not ask me a single question about a single thing, and therefore I will just tell you how matters in general go on with me. In the first place, I heard yesterday that we are definitely to return to America in August. Some attempt was made to renew our lease of this house for a few months; but difficulties have arisen about it, and we shall probably return to the United States as soon as possible after our lease expires. I do not yet feel at all sure of the fulfilment of this intention, however; but at any rate it is one point of apparent decision indicated....

My feelings and thoughts about the return are far too numerous and various to be contained in a letter. One thing I think--I feel sure of--that it is right, and therefore I am glad we are to do it. My father, to whom this intention has not yet been mentioned, is looking wonderfully well, and appears to be enjoying his mode of life extremely. He spends his days at Covent Garden, and finds even now, when the German company are carrying on their _opera_tions there, enough to do to keep him interested and incessantly busy within those charmed and charming precincts. I am pretty well, though not in very good spirits; my life is much more quiet and regular than when you were here, and I enjoy a considerable portion of retiracy.

I have taken possession of Adelaide's little sitting-room, and inhabit it all day, and very often till tea-time in the evening. Owing to our day no longer being cut to pieces by our three-o'clock dinner (on account of Adelaide), I do not run into arrears with my visits, and generally, after discharging one or two recent debts of that sort, am able to get an hour's walk in Kensington Gardens, and come home between four and five o'clock.

We have not been out a great deal lately; we have taken, I am happy to say, to discriminating a little among our invitations, and no longer accept everything that offers.

I spent three delightful days at Oatlands, which is charming to me from its own beauty and the association of the pleasure which I enjoyed there in past years. The hawthorn was just coming into blossom, the wild heaths and moors and commons were one sheet of deep golden gorse and pale golden broom, and nothing could be lovelier than the whole aspect of the country.

The day before yesterday I dined tête-à-tête with Mademoiselle d'Este, for whom I have taken rather a fancy, and who appears to have done the same by me. Her position is a peculiar and trying one, combined with her character, which has some striking and interesting elements. She is no longer young, but has still much personal beauty, and that of an order not common in England: very dark eyes, hair, and complexion, with a freedom and liveliness of manner and play of countenance quite unusual in Englishwomen.... She lives a great deal alone, and reads a great deal, and thinks a little, and I feel interested in her. She has sacrificed the whole comfort and, it appears to me, much of the possible happiness of her life to her notion of being a princess, which, poor thing! she is not; and as she will not be satisfied with, or even accept, the position of a private gentlewoman, she is perpetually obliged to devise means of avoiding situations, which are perpetually recurring, in which her real rank, or rather no rank, is painfully brought home to her. This unfortunate pretension to princess-ship has probably interfered vitally with her happiness, in preventing her marrying, as she considers, below her birth [i.e. royally]; and as she is a very attractive woman, and, I should judge, a person of strong feelings and a warm, passionate nature, this must have been a considerable sacrifice; though in marrying, to be sure, she might only have realized another form of disappointment.

Yesterday we went to a fine dinner at Lord F----'s. He and his sisters are good-natured young people of large fortune, whose acquaintance we made at Cranford, and who are very civil and amiable in their demonstrations of good-will towards us. A son of the Duke of Leinster was at this dinner, and invited ---- to go with him this morning and see Prince Albert review the Guards; which he has accordingly done.

To-night we go to Sydney Smith's, which I always enjoy exceedingly; and for next week, I am happy to say, we have at present no engagements but a dinner at the Francis Egertons', and another evening at Sydney Smith's....

I believe I have now told you pretty much all I have to tell. I am working at a translation of a French piece called "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle," by which I hope to make a little money, with which I should be very glad to pay Mademoiselle Dévy's bill for my spring finery.

I went to Covent Garden the other day, to see if I could find anything in the theatre wardrobe that I could make use of for "The Hunchback," and did find something; and, moreover, I think Adelaide will be able to get her dress for Helen from there, though it seemed rather a doleful daylight collection of frippery. My first dress I can make one of my own white muslin ones serve for, my last I shall get beautifully out of my Court costume; so that the three will only cost me the price of altering them for the private theatrical occasion.

We met at Oatlands Mrs. G----, the mother of the Member for Dublin, who has been preparing herself, by a twelve years' residence on the Continent, for a plunge into savagedom, by a return to her home in Connemara; and it was both comical and sad to hear her first launch out upon the merits of the dear "wild Irish," and her desire to be among and serviceable to "her people," and then, all in the same breath, declare that the mere atmosphere of England and English society was enough to kill any one with "the blue devils" who had ever been abroad; and this, mind you, is the impression British existence makes upon her in the full height of the gay London season. Fancy what she will find Connemara! She knows you and your people, and gave me a most ardent invitation to the savage Ireland where she lives. Poor woman! I pity her; her case is not absolutely unknown to me, or quite without parallel in my own experience.

Good-bye. God bless you.

Your affectionate F. A. B.

HARLEY STREET.

This letter has been begun a week; it is now Saturday, May 28th, 1842.

MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Pray give my love to Mrs. Kemble, and tell her that the Queen Dowager sent for me to go and pay her a visit yesterday. For goodness' sake, Harriet, don't misunderstand me, I am only in joke! I live among such very matter-of-fact persons that I really tremble for an hour after every piece of nonsense I utter. You must observe by this that I am in a painfully frequent state of trepidation; but what I meant by this message to Mrs. Kemble is that I have been extremely amused at her taking the trouble to write to Mrs. George Siddons to find out "all about" my going to the Drawing-room, and the rumor which had reached her of the Queen having desired to see me. George Siddons told me this himself, and it struck me as such a funny interest in my concerns on the part of Mrs. Kemble, who takes none whatever in me, that I thought I would send her word of the piece of preferment which has occurred to me since, viz. being sent for by the Queen Dowager, who desired my friend Mademoiselle d'Este to bring me to call upon her. But what wonderful gossip it does seem to be writing gravely round and round from Leamington to London, and from London to Leamington, about!

You ask me how it fares with me. Why, busily and wearily enough. We have had a perfect deluge of invitations lately, two or three thick of a night....

We are going to-night to the Duchess of Sutherland's fancy ball at Stafford House, which is to be a less formal, but not less magnificent, show than the Queen's masque.

I have not begun to rehearse "The Hunchback" yet, for I shall not require many rehearsals; but one of our party attended the first this morning, and said all the young amateurs promised very fairly, and that Henry Greville did his part extremely well, which I am very glad to hear. I have had but one visit from him since his return to town, when, of course, he discussed Adelaide's plans with great zeal. He certainly wishes very much that she should sing at the Opera, but his view of the whole matter is so different from mine ... that we are not likely to agree very well, even upon so general a point of discussion as her best professional interests.

I am much concerned at your observations about her exhaustion and hoarseness. I am so anxious that her present life should not be prolonged, so anxious that she should realize her very moderate wishes and leave it, that I cannot bear to think of any possible failure of her precious gift from over-exertion.... I think, begging your pardon, you talk some nonsense when you compare your existence, as an object of rational pity, with my sister's. All other considerations set apart, there are certain conditions of life, which are the result of peculiar states and stages of society, that are indisputably less favorable for the production of happiness, and the exercise of goodness also, than others. Among these results of over-civilization are the careers of public exhibitors of every description. In judging of their conduct or character, we may make every allowance for the peculiar dangers of their position, and the temptations of their peculiar gifts; but I confess I am amazed at any woman who, sheltered by the sacred privacy of a home, can envy the one or desire the other.

Dearest Harriet, this letter has lain so long unfinished, and I am now so engulfed in all sorts of worry, flurry, hurry, row, fuss, bustle, bother, dissipation and distraction, that it is vain hoping to add anything intelligible to it. Good-bye, dearest.

Ever yours, FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, May 29th, 1842. DEAREST HARRIET,

This is Sunday, and, owing to my custom of neither paying visits nor going to dinner or evening parties on "the first day of the week," I look forward to a little leisure; though the repeated raps at the door already this morning remind me that it will probably be interrupted often enough to render it of little avail for any purpose of consecutive occupation....

You ask me if I think of "taking to translating." My dear Harriet, if you mean when I return to America, I shall take to nothing there but the stagnant life I led there before, which, in the total absence of any impulse from the external circumstances in which I live and the utter absence of any interest in any intellectual pursuit in those with whom I live, becomes absolutely inevitable; and so I think that, once again in my Transatlantic home, I shall neither originate nor translate anything.

I have "taken to translating" "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle" because my bill at Mademoiselle Dévy's is £97, and I am determined my brains shall pay it; therefore, also, I have given my father a ballet on the subject of Pocahontas, and am preparing and altering "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle" for Covent Garden, for both which pieces of work I hope to get something towards my £97. Besides this, I have offered my "Review of Victor Hugo" to John for the British Quarterly Review, of which he is, you know, the editor--of course, telling him that it was written for an American magazine--and he has promised me sixteen guineas for it if it suits him. Besides this, I have offered Bentley the beginning of my Southern journal, merely an account of our journey down to the plantation.... Besides this, I have drawn up and sketched out, act by act, scene by scene, and almost speech by speech, a play in five acts, a sequel to the story of Kotzebue's "Stranger," which I hope to make a good work of. Thus, you see, my brains are not altogether idle; and, with all this, I am rehearsing "The Hunchback" with our amateurs, for three and four hours at a time, attending to my own dresses and Adelaide's (who will attend to nothing), returning, as usual, all the visits, and going out to dinners and parties innumerable. This, you will allow, is rather a double-quick-time sort of existence; but the after-lull of the future will be more than sufficient for rest.

Alexandre Dumas is the author of "Mademoiselle de Belle Isle," and I was led to select that piece to work upon, not so much from the interest of the story, which is, however, considerable, as from the dramatic skill with which it is managed, and the circumstances made to succeed each other. There is, unfortunately, an insuperably objectionable incident in it, which I have done my best to modify; but it is one of the most ingeniously constructed pieces I have seen for a long time, and gives admirable opportunities for good acting to almost every member of the dramatis personæ.

Mademoiselle d'Este has no right to the painful feeling of illegitimacy, for her mother was her father's wife, and therefore she has not, what indeed I can conceive to be, a bitter source of wounded pride and incessant rational mortification. The Duke of Sussex married Lady Augusta Murray, and that, I should think, might satisfy his daughter, in spite of all the Acts of Parliament afterwards devised to restrict and regulate royal marriages. Mademoiselle d'Este's is merely a perpetual protest against an irreversible social decree, and an incessant, unavailing struggle for the observance and respect conventionally due to a rank which is not hers; and though it appears to me as senseless a cause of trouble as ever human being chose to accept, yet as incessant bitterness and mortification and annoyance are its results for her, poor soul! of course to her it is real enough, if not in itself, in the results she gathers from it.

My dinner has intervened, my dear, since this last sentence, and, moreover, a permission from my sister to inform you that she is engaged to be married!...

You ask how Adelaide looks after her Dublin campaign. She looks better now, in spite of all her fatigue, than she has done since her return from Italy; her face looks almost fat, to which appearance, however, it is in some degree helped by her hair being already in rehearsal for "The Hunchback," falling in ringlets on each side of her head, which becomes her very much....

I have heard from Elizabeth Sedgwick, and she concurs in the propriety of my not giving Mrs. Child my Southern journal. I shall say no more upon that subject....

Good-bye, dearest Harriet. I look forward with anticipated refreshment to a ride which I have some chance of getting to-morrow, and for which I am really gasping. I got one ride this week, and the escort that came to the door for me touched and flattered me not a little: old Lord Grey and Lady G----, and his two grandsons, and Lord Dacre, and B---- S----, all came up from their part of the town to fetch me a ride, which was a great kindness on their part, and an honor, pleasure, and profit to me. God bless you, dear. I feel, as Margery says, "in a kind of bewilder," but ever yours,

FANNY.

[My first meeting with Mademoiselle d'Este took place at Belvoir Castle, where we were both on a visit to the Duke of Rutland, and where my attention was drawn to the peculiarity of her conduct by my neighbor at the dinner-table, who said to me, just after we had taken our places, "Do you see Mademoiselle d'Este? She will do that now every day while she remains here." Mademoiselle d'Este at this moment entered the dining-room alone, and passed down the side of the table with an inclination to the duke, and a half-muttered apology about being late. This, it seems, was simply a pretence to cover her determination not to give precedence to any of the women in the house by being taken into dinner after them. The Duchesses of Bedford and Richmond, the Countess of Winchelsea, and other women of rank being then at the castle, Mademoiselle d'Este's pretensions stood not the slightest chance of acknowledgment, and she took this quite ineffectual way of protesting against her social position.

Everybody at Belvoir was sufficiently familiar with her to accept these sort of proceedings on her part. To me they seemed more undignified and wanting in real pride and self-respect than a quiet acquiescence in the inevitable would have been. The conventional distinction she demanded had been legally refused her, and it was not in the power of the society to which she belonged to give it to her, however much they might have felt inclined to pity her position and excuse her resentment of it. But it was inconceivable to me that she should not either withdraw absolutely from all society (which is what I should have done in her place), or submit silently to an injury against which all protest was vain, which renewed itself, in some shape or other, daily, and which really involved no personal affront to her or injustice to the character of her mother. I thought she made a great mistake, which did not prevent my being attracted by her; and while we were at Belvoir, and immediately afterwards at Lord Willoughby's together, and subsequently on our return to London, we had a good deal of familiar and friendly intercourse with each other, in the course of which I had many opportunities of observing the perpetual struggle she maintained against what she considered the intolerable hardship of her position.

She occupied a pretty little house in Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, and never allowed her servants to wear anything but the undress of the royal household; the scarlet livery being, of course, out of the question. On one or two occasions I dined with her tête-à-tête, and took no notice of the fact, which I remembered afterwards, that she invariably sent the servant out of the room, and helped herself and me with her own hands; but once, when the Duchess of B---- dined with us, and Mademoiselle d'Este had a dumb-waiter placed beside her, and, sending the man-servant out of the room, performed all the table service (except, indeed, bringing in the dishes), with our assistance only, the duchess assured me afterwards that this was simply because, in her own house, Mademoiselle d'Este would not submit to the unroyal indignity of being waited upon after her guests at her own table by her own servants.

When the preparations for the fancy ball at the Palace were turning half the great houses in London into milliners' shops, filled with stuffs, and patterns, and pictures, and materials for fancy dresses, and drawings of costumes, and gabbling, shrieking, distracted women, Mademoiselle d'Este consulted me about her dress, and we passed a whole morning looking over a huge collection of plates of historical personages and picturesque portraits of real or imaginary heroines. Among these I repeatedly put aside several that I thought would be especially becoming to her dark beauty and fine figure; and as often was surprised to find that among those I had thus selected she had invariably rejected a certain proportion, among which were two or three particularly beautiful and appropriate, one or other of which I should certainly have chosen for her above the rest. I couldn't imagine upon what theory of selection she was guiding her examination of the prints until, upon closer examination, I perceived that the only portraits from which she had determined to make her choice of a costume were those of princesses of blood royal. Poor woman!

I once saw a curious encounter between her and the Marchioness of L----, in which the most insolent woman of the London society of that day was worsted with her own peculiar weapon, by the princess "claimant," and ignominiously beaten from the field.

The occasion of my being presented to the Queen Dowager was this: I had been dining one day with Mademoiselle d'Este, when the Marchioness of Londonderry came in, and read me a note she had received from the Duke of Rutland, in which the latter said that the Queen had asked him why I had not been presented at Court. After Lady Londonderry was gone, I expressed some surprise at this unexpected honor, and some dismay at finding that it was considered a matter of course that, under these circumstances, I should go to the Drawing-room. I felt shy about the ceremony, and sordidly reluctant to spend the sum of money upon my dress which I knew it must cost me. All this I discussed with Mademoiselle d'Este, and expressing my surprise at the Queen's having condescended to ask why I didn't have myself presented, Mademoiselle d'Este exclaimed, "Oh, my dear, those people are so curious!" meaning the Queen and Prince Albert, towards whom she had a great feeling of sore dislike; but whether she meant by "curious" inquisitive or singular--queer--I didn't ask her, being rather astonished at this "singular" mode of speaking of our liege lady and her illustrious consort.

Poor Mademoiselle d'Este's feeling of bitterness against the Queen arose, I have since been told, from various small slights which her sensitive pride conceived she had received from her. Mademoiselle d'Este's determination to assert her right to be considered a royal personage had, perhaps, met with some other rebuffs from the Queen, besides the one which she herself told me of with great irritation.

On the occasion of Queen Adelaide's Drawing-rooms, she had always permitted Mademoiselle d'Este to make her entrance by the same approach, and at the same time, with other members of the royal family. After the accession of Queen Victoria, Mademoiselle d'Este claimed the same privilege, which, however, was not granted her. She told me this with many passionate, indignant comments, and apparently desirous that I should be impressed by the superior charm and graciousness of Queen Adelaide, whom she called "her Queen," and of whom she spoke with the most affectionate regard and respect, she said, "You must come with me and see my Queen," and accordingly she solicited permission to present me to the Queen Dowager, which was granted, and I went with her one morning to pay my respects to that great and good lady, and was to have done so a second time, but was prevented by our departure from town.

I drove with Mademoiselle d'Este to Marlborough House in the morning, and we were ushered through several apartments into a small-sized sitting-room, where we were left. After a few moments a lady entered, to whom Mademoiselle d'Este presented me. The Queen Dowager was then apparently between fifty and sixty years old; a thin, middle-sized woman, with gray hair and a long face, discolored by the traces of some eruption. She looked in ill health, and was certainly very plain, but her manner and the expression of her face were very gentle and gracious, and her voice, with its German accent, sweet and agreeable. She asked Mademoiselle d'Este if she was going to the Duchess of Sutherland's ball, and on her replying that she was not going, and giving some trifling reason for not doing so, I couldn't help laughing, because on our way to Marlborough House she had told me, with what appeared to me very superfluous wrath and indignation, that she had received an invitation to the duchess's ball, but that as it was coupled with an intimation that it was hoped the persons who had been at the Queen's great fancy ball, given a week before, would wear the same costumes at Stafford House, Mademoiselle d'Este chose to consider this an impertinent dictation, and said first "she would go in a plain white satin gown," then "in a white muslin petticoat," finally, that "she wouldn't go at all;" and working herself up by degrees into more fury as she talked, she abused the Duchess of Sutherland vehemently, mimicking her in a most ludicrous manner, and saying that she always reminded her of "a great fat, white, trussed turkey," which comparison and the ridiculous rage in which she made it made me laugh till I cried, in spite of my admiration for the Duchess of Sutherland, whose beauty and gracious sweetness of manner always seemed to me very charming. When therefore, Mademoiselle d'Este assigned another reason for not going to the Stafford House ball, in answer to the Queen's inquiry, I couldn't help laughing, and told the Queen the truth was that Mademoiselle d'Este's pride was hurt at being requested to come in the fancy dress she had worn at the Palace; and so, for this imaginary absurd offence, she was going to give up a very fine and pleasant fête. The Queen laughed, and, turning to Mademoiselle d'Este, said, "Your friend is right. You are very foolish; you will lose a pleasant evening for nothing."

After this the conversation fell on the French plays and the performances of Mademoiselle Déjazet, who was then acting at the St. James's Theatre. The Queen having asked my opinion of these representations, I said I was unwilling to enter upon the subject, as I did not know how far the forms of etiquette would permit me to express what I thought in her Majesty's presence. Upon her pressing me, however, to state my opinion upon the subject, I reiterated what I had said in a previous conversation with Mademoiselle d'Este upon the matter, objecting to the extreme immorality of the pieces, and expressing my astonishment at seeing decent Englishwomen crowd to them night after night, since they certainly would not tolerate such representations on the English stage.

Mademoiselle d'Este replied that that was because, on the English stage, they would be coarse and vulgar. I denied that the difference of language made any essential difference in the matter, though she was certainly right in saying that the less refined style of English acting might make the offensiveness of such pieces more unpleasantly obtrusive; but that in looking round the assembly of fine ladies at Déjazet's performances, I comforted myself by feeling very sure that half of them did not understand what they were listening to; but I think it must have been "nuts" to the clever, cynical, witty, impudent Frenchwoman to see these dames trois fois respectables swallow her performances sans sourcilliez.

After some more conversation on general subjects, the Queen Dowager rose, saying she hoped Mademoiselle d'Este would bring me to visit her again; and so we received our congé.

Mentioning the appearance of some eruption on the good Queen's face reminds me of a painful circumstance which took place one day when, meeting a beautiful child of about four years old, the daughter of one of the ladies of the Court, who was going into the Palace gardens under the escort of her nurse, the Queen stopped the child, and, attracted by her beauty, stooped to kiss her, when the little thing drew back with evident disgust, exclaiming, "No, no; you have a red face! Mamma says I must never kiss anybody with a red face." The poor Queen probably seldom received such a plain statement of facts in return for her condescension. Her unostentatious goodness and amiable character have now become matter of history. One of the most characteristic traits of her life was her ordering of her own funeral with a privacy and simplicity more touching than any royal pomp, specifying that her coffin should be carried to the grave by four sailors--a last tribute of affection to her husband's memory.

Among the passages in Charles Greville's Memoirs that shocked me most, and that I read with the most pain, were the coarse and cruel terms in which he spoke of Queen Adelaide.

Mademoiselle d'Este, when far advanced in middle life, married Lord Chancellor Truro. She may have found in so doing a certain satisfaction to her pride which no other alliance with a commoner could have afforded her, since the Lord Chancellor of England (no matter of how lowly an origin), on certain occasions, takes precedence of the whole aristocracy of the land.]

HARLEY STREET, Monday, May 30th, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

I have just finished a letter to you, in which I tell you that I have sketched out the skeleton of another tragedy; but I find Emily has been beforehand with me. You ask me what has moved me to this mental effort. My milliner's bill, my dear; which, being £97 sterling, I feel extremely inclined to pay out of my own brains; for, though they received a very severe shock, and one of rather paralyzing effect, upon my being reminded that whatever I write is not my own legal property, but that of another, which, of course, upon consideration, I know; I cannot, nevertheless, persuade myself that that which I invent--create, in fact--can really belong to any one but myself; therefore, if anything I wrote could earn me £97, I am afraid I should consider that I, and no one else, had paid my bill.

In thinking over the position of women with regard to their right to their own earnings, I confess to something very like wrathful indignation; impotent wrath and vain indignation, to be sure--not the less intense for that, however, for the injustice is undoubtedly great. That a man whose wits could not keep him half a week from starving should claim as his the result of a mental process such as that of composing a noble work of imagination--say "Corinne," for example--seems too beneficent a provision of the law for the protection of male superiority. It is true that, by our marriage bargain, they feed, clothe, and house us, and are answerable for our debts (not my milliner's bill, though, if I can prevent it), and so, I suppose, have a right to pay themselves as best they can out of all we are or all we can do. It is a pretty severe puzzle, and a deal of love must be thrown into one or other or both scales to make the balance hang tolerably even.

Madame de Staël, I suppose, might have said to Rocca, "If my brains are indeed yours, why don't you write a book like 'Corinne' with them?" You know, though he was perfectly amiable, and she married him for love, he was an intellectual zero; but perhaps the man who, acknowledging her brilliant intellectual superiority, could say, "Je l'aimerai tant, qu'elle finira par m'aimer," deserved to be master even of his wife's brains.... I wish women could be dealt with, not mercifully, nor compassionately, nor affectionately, but justly; it would be so much better--for men.

How can you ask me if I despise, as great gossip, Emily's telling you that I am writing another tragedy! Why, my dear, I shouldn't consider it despicable gossip if Emily were to tell you what colored gloves I had on the last time she saw me. Do we not all three love each other dearly? and is not everything, no matter how trifling, of interest in that case? But Mrs. John Kemble does not pretend to love me dearly, I flatter myself, and therefore her writing to inquire into my proceedings, and for minute details of my presentation at Court, did seem to me contemptible gossip. At her age, perhaps, it is pardonable enough, though it appears to me rather inconsistent, when one has no liking for a person, to trouble one's head about where they go or what they do.

You ask me about the subject of my play. It is one that my father suggested to me years ago, and which grew out of a question as to whether the Stranger (in Kotzebue's play so called) does or does not forgive his unfaithful wife in the closing scene. With several other dramatic schemes, it has hovered dimly before my imagination for some time past. The other night, however, as I was brushing my hair before going to bed, my brain, I suppose, receiving some stimulus from the scrubbing of my skull, the whole idea suddenly came towards me with increasing distinctness, till it gradually stood up as it were from head to foot before me--a very mournful figure, whose form and features were all vividly defined. I instantly caught up S----'s copy-books--there was no other paper at hand--and on the covers of two of them wrote out my play, act by act and scene by scene.... The short-lived triumph of this spirit of inspiration died away under the effect of a conversation by which it was interrupted, and I collapsed like a fallen omelette soufflée (not to say souffletée).

The story of my piece is a sequel to "The Stranger," the retribution which reaches the faithless wife and mother in her children, after they grow up; which, together with the perpetual struggle on the part of her husband (who has taken her home again) not to wound her conscience, which is so sick and sore that every word, breath, and look does wound it, might form, I think, an interesting dramatic picture, with considerable elements for poetry to work upon.

I went to the Duchess of Sutherland's fancy ball in my favorite costume, a Spanish dress, which suited my finances as well as my fancy, my person, and my purse; for I had nothing to get but a short black satin skirt, having beautiful flounces of black lace, high comb, mantilla, and, in short, all things needful already in my own possession.

I have told you of Adelaide's new prospects, in which I rejoice as much as I can rejoice in anything. She is herself very happy, poor child! and 'tis a pleasure and a positive relief to see her face, with its bright expression of newly dawned hope upon it.

Good-night, dear. My head aches, and I feel weary and worn out; our life just now is one of insane, incessant dissipation. Thank God, I have a bed, and have not lost the secret of sleeping.

Ever yours, FANNY.

[A long discussion with my wise and excellent friend and connection, Mr. Horace Wilson, induced me to think a good deal upon the possibility of a man, in the position of Kotzebue's "Stranger," receiving back his wife to the home she had deserted. Mr. Wilson condemned the idea as absolutely inadmissible and fatally immoral. In our Saviour's teaching it is said that a man shall put away his wife for only one cause; but is it said that he shall in every case put her away for that cause? and is the offence a wife commits against her husband the one exception to the universal law of the forgiveness which Christ taught? Men have so considered it; and in the general interest of the preservation of society, a wife's fidelity to her duties becomes one of the most important elements of security; the protection of the family, the integrity of inheritance, the rightful descent of property, are all involved in it. But these are questions of social expediency, and, though based on deep moral foundations, are not of such overwhelming moral force as to forbid the contemplation of any possible exception to their authority. I have heard--I know not if it is true--that in some parts of Germany, formerly, where the practice of divorce obtained to a degree tolerated nowhere else in Christendom, it occasionally happened that, after a legal separation and intermediate marriages (sanctioned also by the law), the original pair, set free once more by death or second divorce, resumed their first ties--a condition of things which appears monstrous, considered as that which we call marriage, with the English and American branch of the Anglo-Saxon family, the holiest of human ties; with Roman Catholic Christians, an indissoluble bond, sacred as a sacrament of their Church.

Without being able to determine the question satisfactorily in my own mind with reference to the supposed conclusion of the play of "The Stranger," in which Mr. Wilson said that the husband, receiving his repentant wife in his arms, was highly offensive to all morality, which demanded imperatively her absolute rejection and punishment, I began to consider what sort of escape from punishment it might be which would probably follow the forgiveness of her husband, her readmission to her home, and the renewal of her intercourse with her children. In Kotzebue's play the persons are all German, and their nationality has to be borne in mind in contemplating Waldburg's possible forgiveness of his wife. Steinforth, his dearest friend, and a man of the highest honor and morality (as conceived by the author), urges upon Waldburg the pardon of Adelaide; urges it almost as a duty, and zealously assists Madame von Wintersen's plan of bringing the unhappy people together, and effecting a reconciliation between them by means of the unexpected sight of their children. Moreover, when Waldburg rejects his friend's advice and entreaties that he will forgive his wife, it is hardly upon the ground of any deep moral turpitude involved in such a forgiveness, but upon the score of the insupportable humiliation of reappearing in the great world of German society to which they both belong with "his runaway wife on his arm," and the "whispering, pointing, jeering" of which their reconciliation would be the object, winding up with the irrevocable "Never! never! never!"

Nevertheless, in Kotzebue's play he does receive his wife in his arms as the curtain falls, and the German public go home comforted in believing her forgiven. I do not know how the dumb-show at the end of the English play is generally conducted; but in my father's instance, I know he so far carried out my friend Horace Wilson's sentiment (which was also his own on the subject) that, while his miserable wife falls senseless at his feet, he turns again in the act of flying from her as the curtain drops, leaving the English public to go home comforted in the belief that he had not forgiven her.

The result of these discussions, as I said, led me to imagine how far such a woman would escape her righteous punishment, even if restored to her home; and in the sequel to "The Stranger," which I endeavored to construct, I worked out my own ideas upon the subject.

Forgiveness of sin is not remission of punishment; and the highest justice might rest satisfied with the conviction that God, who forgives every sinner, punishes every sin; nor can even His mercy remit the righteous consequence ordained by it. God's punishments are consequences, the results of His all-righteous laws, never to be escaped from, but leaving forever possible the blessed hope of His forgiveness; but no one ever yet outran his sin or escaped from its inevitable result.

The grosser human justice, however, which is obliged to execute itself on the bodies of criminals demands the open degradation and social ostracism of unfaithful wives as a necessary portion of its machinery, and the well-being of the society which it maintains.]

HARLEY STREET, Friday, June 10th, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

I finished one letter to you last night, and, finding that I cannot obtain tackle to go on the river this morning and fish, I sit down to write you another. And first, dear, about getting an admission for E---- to see our play. I am sorry to say it is not in my power. Thinking I had rather a right to one or two invitations for my own friends on each of the nights, I asked Lady Francis to give me three tickets for the first representation, intending to beg the same number for each night. I gave one to Mr. S----, and another to a nephew of Talma's, a very agreeable French naval officer, with whom we have become acquainted, and who besought one of me. But when I had proceeded thus far in my distribution of admissions, I was told I had committed an indiscretion in asking for any, and that I must return the remaining one, which I did, ... and when your request came about a ticket for E----, I was simply assured that it was "impossible." So, dear, you must be, as I must be, satisfied with this decision--which I am not, for I am very sorry, ... Lady Francis would gladly, I have no doubt, have asked any of my friends had we wished her to do so; she did send an invitation to Horace Wilson and his wife, but that was because he was to have acted for her, and was only prevented by being too unwell to undertake the part.

I am very glad that Captain Seymour likes me, as the liking is very reciprocal. Indeed, I think our whole company presents a very favorable specimen of our young English gentlemen: they are all of them very young, full of good spirits, amiable, obliging, good-humored, good-tempered, and well-mannered; in short, I think, very charming.

How shall I feel, you say, acting that part again?... My dearest Harriet, thus much at Richmond on Monday morning; it is now Thursday evening, and I have been crying and in a miserable state of mind and body all day long. On Monday we acted "The Hunchback" for the third time, and on Tuesday we all went down to Cranford, and drew long breaths as we got into the delicious air, all fragrant with hay and honeysuckle and syringa. I left my children at what was in posting days a famous country inn, at about half a mile from Lady Berkeley's house, but which, since the completion of the railroad, has become much less frequented and important, but is quiet and comfortable and pleasant enough to make it a very nice place of deposit for my chicks.

On Wednesday afternoon, when I went over to see them, I found F----, pale and coughing, and heard with dismay that the measles were pervading the whole neighborhood. I went to town that evening to act "The Hunchback" for the last time, and was haunted by horrid visions of my child ill and suffering, and the very first thing I met on entering London was a child's coffin and funeral. You can better judge than I can express how this sort of omen affected my imagination; and in this frame of mind I went through our last representation of "The Hunchback," and did not reach home till the white face of the morning was beginning to look down from the ends of the streets at us.

We did not get to bed till past three, and were up again at a little after seven, in order to take the railroad to Cranford, where we had promised to breakfast. One of our party was too late for the train, and we posted down with four horses in order to save our time, which on the great Ascot day was not, as you may suppose, a very economical proceeding....

Good-bye, dear. I will answer all your questions about "The Hunchback" another time.

Ever yours, FANNIE.

HARLEY STREET, June 12th, 1842. MY DEAREST HAL,

... I am now going to answer your various questions to the best of my ability. You wanted to know how I felt at acting "The Hunchback" again. Why, so horribly nervous the first night that the chair shook under me while my hair was being dressed. I trembled to such a degree from head to foot, and the rustling of the curl-papers as the man twisted them in my hair almost drove me distracted, for it sounded like a forest cracking and rattling in a storm. After the performance, my limbs ached as if I had been beaten across them with an iron bar, and I could scarcely stand or support myself for exhaustion and fatigue. This, however, was only the first night, and I suppose proceeded from the painful uncertainty I felt as to whether I had not utterly forgotten how to act at all. This one representation over, I had neither fright, nervousness, nor the slightest fatigue, and it is singular enough that no recollections or associations whatever of past times were awakened by the performance. I was fully engrossed by the endeavor to do the part as well as I could, and, except in the particular of copying, as well as I could recollect it, my dress of former days, the Julia of nine years ago did not once present herself to my thoughts. The first time I played it, I rather think I was worse than formerly, but after that probably much the same....

How does this dreadfully hot weather agree with you, my dear? For my own part, I am parboiled and stupid beyond all expression. I hate heat always and everywhere, and it seems to me that in our damp climate it is even more oppressive than under the scorching skies of August in Pennsylvania. However, of that I won't be sure, for the present is, with me, always better or worse than the absent.

I think I have nothing more to tell you about "The Hunchback." ... Beyond doing it as well as I could, I cared very little about it; it seemed a sort of routine business, just as it used to be, except for the inevitable unwholesome results of its being amusement instead of business; the late hours--three o'clock in the morning--and champagne and lobster salad suppers, instead of my former professional decent tea and to bed, after my work, before twelve o'clock.

Adelaide acted Helen charmingly, without having bestowed the slightest pains upon it. Had she condescended to give it five minutes' careful study, it would have been a perfect performance of its kind; but as it was, it was delightfully droll, lively, and graceful, and certainly proved her natural powers of comic acting to be very great....

You ask me about my play. I have not touched it since I wrote to you last, and really do not know when I shall have a minute in which to do so, unless, indeed, in this coming week at Oatlands,--and a great deal may be done in a week; but I am altogether quite down about it. Our last representation of "The Hunchback" was, as in duty bound, the best, and everybody was, or pretended to be, in ecstasies with it. Our time and attention have been so engrossed with the dresses, rehearsals, and performances that we absolutely seemed to experience a sudden lull in our daily lives after it was all over.

I shall probably not be in town till the 24th. I am going down to Mrs. Grote's with my sister on the 21st, and as S---- is of the party, it will not, I suppose, be according to "received ideas" that I should leave her there. On the 24th, however, she must be back in town; and as for my departure for America, dear Hal, you do well not to grieve too much beforehand about that.... Therefore, my dear Hal, lament not over my departure, for Heaven only knows when we shall depart, or if indeed we shall depart at all.

Good-bye.

Ever yours, FANNY.

OATLANDS, June 14th, 1842. MY DEAREST HAL,

... I return to town this evening in order to go to a party at Mrs. Grote's, to which we have been engaged for some time past, and remain in town all to-morrow, because we dine at Harness's.... The quiet of this place, and very near twelve hours' sleep, and, above all, a temporary relief from all causes of nervous distress, have done me all the good in the world.... I cannot but think mine, in one respect, a curious fate; and perhaps, with the magnifying propensity of egotism, I exaggerate what seems to me its peculiarity. But to be placed for years together out of the reach of all society; to be left day after day to the solitude of an absolutely lonely life; to be deprived of all stimulus from without; to hear no music; to see no works of art; to hear no intellectually brilliant or even tolerably cultivated or interesting conversation; indeed, often to pass days without exchanging a thought or even a word with any grown person but my servants; to ride for hours every day alone through lonely roads and paths, sit down daily to a solitary dinner, and pass most of my evenings listening to the ticking of the clock, or wandering round and round the dark garden-walks;--to lead, I say, such a life for a length of time, and then be plunged into the existence, the sort of social Maelstrom we are living in here now, is surely a great trial to a person constituted like myself, and would be something of one, I think, to a calmer mind and more equable temperament than mine....

You ask if my father has been told of our intended return to America. I have told him, but neither he nor any one else appears to believe in it; and from what I wrote you in my last letter, I think you will agree that they are justified in their incredulity.

You ask how Adelaide is. Flourishing greatly; the annoyance and vexation of the late difficulties with the theatre being past, she has recovered her spirits, and seems enjoying to the full her present hopes of future happiness....

God bless you, my dear Hal.

Ever yours, FANNY.

OATLANDS, June 16th, 1842. MY DEAR T----,

An hour's railroading from London has brought me into a lovely country, a perfect English landscape of broad lawns, thick tufted oaks, and placid waters, under my windows. But an hour from that glare, confusion, din, riot, and insanity, to the soothing sights and sounds of this rural paradise! And after looking at it till my spirits have subsided into something like kindred composure and placidity, I open my letter-case, and find your last unanswered epistle lying on the top of it. "If Cunard and Harnden have proved true," you must have received by this time our reply to your proposition touching the Coster business. Thus far on Monday last; and having proceeded thus far, I fell fast asleep, with the pen in my hand, the sound of the rustling trees in my ears, and the smell of the new-mown grass in my nose. Since that noonday nap of mine, I have been back to town for a party at Mrs. Grote's and a dinner at Harness's. I mention names because these worthies are known to Catherine and Kate; and here I am, thanks to the railroad, back again among all these lovely sights and sounds and smells, and pick up my pen forthwith to renew my conversation with you. And first, as in duty bound, business. I wrote you word that we did not disdain the compromise offered by Mr. Coster, and we now further beg that you will receive and keep for us the sum proposed by that gentleman as payment of his debt.

Thank you very much for your kindness to H-----. Kate wrote me a most ludicrous account of the poor singer's first experiment on his voice in your presence. I have not the least idea what his merits really are, having never heard or, to the best of my knowledge, seen him; but, as a pupil of the Royal Academy, his acquirements ought certainly to be those of a competent teacher. However, I need not, I am sure, tell you that, in recommending him to you, I did not contemplate laying the slightest stress upon your conscience, and having heard him you must recommend him or not according to that....

My sister thanks you for your zeal on her behalf, and so do I; but you will not be called upon for any further, or rather, I should say, nearer demonstration of it; for the young lady has lately come to the conclusion that marrying and staying at home is better than wandering singing over the face of the earth; and I suppose by next Christmas she will be married. I have no room for more.

Ever yours, F. A. B.

[My correspondence with my friend Miss S---- was interrupted by a visit of several weeks which she paid us, and not resumed on my part until the month of August, when I was on my way back from Scotland, and she was travelling on the Continent with her friend Miss W----.]

LIVERPOOL, Wednesday, August 10th, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

You bid me write to you immediately upon receiving your letter of the 24th of July, dated from Ulm, but I only received that letter last night on my arrival here from Scotland, and I know not how long its rightful delivery to me has been delayed. I fear, in consequence of this circumstance, this answer to it may miscarry; for perhaps you will have left Munich by the time it gets there. However, I can but do as you bid me, and so I do it, and hope this, for me, rare exercise of the virtue of obedience may find its reward in my letter reaching you.

I am glad your meeting with the Combes was so pleasant. I can bear witness to the truth of their melancholy account of dear Dr. Combe, whom I went to see while I was in Edinburgh. He is so emaciated that the point of his knee-bone, through his trousers, perfectly fascinated me; I couldn't keep my eyes off it, it looked so terribly and sharply articulated that it seemed as if it were coming through the cloth. His countenance, however, was the same as ever, or, if possible, even brighter, sweeter, and more kindly benevolent. I have always had the most affectionate regard and admiration for him, and think him in some respects superior to his brother.

I am delighted to think of your fine weather, and the great enjoyment it must be to you two, so happy in each other, to travel through the lovely summer days together, filling your minds and storing your memories with beautiful things of art and nature, which will be an intellectual treasure in common, and a fountain of delightful retrospective sympathy....

You must continue to direct to Harley Street, for although we were, by our original agreement, to have left it on the 1st of August, I conclude, as it is now the 10th, and I have heard no word of our removing, that some arrangement has been made for our remaining there, at least till our departure, which I understand is fixed for October 21st....

I have received a letter from Elizabeth Sedgwick, informing me that Kate's marriage is to take place about October 10th. I shall not be at it, which I regret very much.

In the same letter she tells me that Dr. Channing is spending the summer at Lenox; and that he had shown her a most interesting letter he had received from a house-builder in Cornwall, England. This man wrote to Channing to thank him for the benefit he had derived from his writings, particularly his lectures on the mental elevation of the working classes. Dr. Channing answered this letter, and the poor man was so overjoyed at this favor, as he esteemed it, that he could not refrain from pouring out his thankfulness in another letter, in which he assured his reverend correspondent that the influence of his writings upon his class of the community in that part of England was and had been very great, and instanced a fellow-artisan of his own, who said that Channing's writings had reconciled him to being a working man. Elizabeth said that Dr. Channing, while reading this letter, was divided between smiles and tears. She also told me that he had talked to her a good deal about Mrs. Child (you know, the abolitionist who wanted to publish my Southern journal; she is a correspondent of his, and a person for whom he has the highest esteem, regarding her as "a most highly principled and noble-minded woman.")

I am so tired, dearest Hal, and feel such a general lassitude and discouragement of mind and body, that I will end my letter. Give my most affectionate love to Dorothy, whom I should love dearly if I saw her much. I wish I was with you, seeing the Danube, that river into which poor Undine carried her immortal soul, and her broken woman's heart, when she faded over the boat's side, saying, "Be true, be true, oh, misery!" God bless you, dearest Hal.

Ever yours, FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, September 16th, 1842. MY DEAREST HAL,

You ask me what I am doing. Flying about in every direction, like one distracted, trying to amuse myself; going to evenings at Lady Lansdowne's, and to mornings at the Duchess of Buccleuch's; dining at the Star and Garter at Richmond, in gay and great company, and driving home alone between one and two o'clock in the morning....

I have undertaken to keep and to ride S----'s horse while he is away; and I think, by means of regular exercise, I shall at any rate keep paroxysms aloof. I am going to a ball at Lord Foley's on Monday; to a children's play at the Francis Egertons' on Tuesday; to Richmond again to dine with the Miss Berrys and Lady Charlotte Lindsay on Wednesday; on Thursday to dine at Horace Wilson's, etc.... Perhaps you will wonder, as I do sometimes, that I keep the few senses I have in the life I lead; but so it is, and so it has to be.

Good-bye. God bless you. I keep this letter till I hear from you where to send it, and, with dearest love to Dorothy, am

Ever yours, FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, September 30th, 1842. MY DEAREST GRANNY [LADY DACRE],

Yesterday morning we drove down to Chesterfield Street, not without sundry misgivings on my part that Lord Dacre would feel that we persecute him, that he might be busy and not like being interrupted, etc. When the door was opened, however, and while we were still interrogating the footman, his own dear lordship came to it, and graciously bade me alight, which of course I gladly did, and so we sat with him a matter of half an hour, hearing his discourse, which ran at first on you and the dear girls [his granddaughters], and then broadened gradually from private interests to his public experience, and all the varied observation of his honorable political career. "I could have stayed all night to have heard good counsel," but was obliged to drive to the theatre to fetch my sister from rehearsal, and so, most reluctantly, came away. It seemed to me very good, and amiable, and humane, and condescending of Lord Dacre to spare so much of his time and attention to us young and insignificant folk; the courtesy of his reception was as deeply appreciated by me, I assure you, as the interest of his conversation; and so tell my lord, with my best of courtesies.

I went in the evening to hear my sister sing "Norma" for the last time, and cried most bitterly, and, moreover, thought exceedingly often of your ladyship; and why? I'll tell you; it was the last time she was to do it, and when I saw that grace and beauty and rare union of gifts, which were adapted to no other purpose half so well as to this of dramatic representation; when I heard the voice of popular applause, that utterance of human sympathy, break at once simultaneously from all those human beings whose emotions she was swaying at her absolute will,--my heart sank to think that this beautiful piece of art (for such it now is, and very near perfection), would be seen no more; that this rare power (a talent, as it verily then seemed to me, in the solemn sense of the word, and a precious one of its own kind) was about to be folded in a napkin, to bear interest no more, of profit or pleasure, to herself or others.

My dear Granny, you will well understand how I came to think of you during that performance; for the first time, I thought like you on this subject. I caught myself saying, while the tears streamed down my face, "If she is only happy, after all!" (But oh, that if!) It seemed amazing to abdicate a secure fortune, and such a power--power to do anything so excellently (putting its recognition by the public entirely out of account) for that fearful risk. God help us all! 'Tis a hard matter to judge rightly on any point whatever; and settled and firm as I had believed my opinion on this subject to be, I was surprised to find how terrible it was to me to see my sister, that woman most dear to me, deliberately leave a path where the sure harvest of her labor is independent fortune, and a not unhonorable distinction, and a powerful hold upon the sympathy, admiration, and even kindly regard of her fellow-creatures, while she thus not unworthily ministers to their delight, for a life where, if she does not find happiness, what will atone to her for all this that she will have left? However, I have need to remember, while thinking of her and her future, what I have never forgotten hitherto, that the soul lives neither on fortune, fame, nor happiness; and that which is noblest in her, which is above either her genius, grace, or beauty, and far more precious than all of them united, will thrive, it may be, better in obscurity and the different trials of her different life than in the vocation she is now abandoning. Amen!

Thank you, my dear Granny, for all your advice, and still more for the love which dictates it; I lay both to heart. Thank you, too, for the little book. I wish I knew the woman who wrote it; she must be a paragon.

God bless you, dear Granny. I write you a kiss as the children do, and am

Ever your affectionate FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, October 2nd, 1842. MY DEAR T----,

It is hardly of any use writing to you, because, unless I am "drowned in the ditch," I shall see you very soon after you get this letter. I have, however, as I believe you know, a very decided principle upon the subject of answering letters, and therefore shall duly reply to your epistle, though I hope to follow this in less than a fortnight.

I am sorry to say that if your ever "feeling young again" is to depend upon your seeing a Miss Kemble once more in America, you are doomed to disappointment, and must decidedly go on, not only growing but feeling old, as Miss Kembles there are now no more--at least at my father's house.... So you see a due regard for her fellow-creatures on the other side of the Atlantic has not existed in my sister's heart, or she would, of course, have postponed all personal prospects of happiness, or rather peace and quiet, to a proper consideration for the gratification of the American public.

I think your observations upon my projected journey to Georgia are taken from an entirely mistaken point of view. I am utterly unconscious of entertaining any inimical feeling towards America or the Americans; on the contrary, I am distinctly conscious of the highest admiration for your institutions, and an affectionate regard for the northern part of your country (where those institutions can alone be said to be put in practice) that is second only to the love and reverence I bear to my own country. This being the case, I cannot think that anything I write about America can, with any sort of propriety, be characterized as "the lashings of a foe."

With regard to Dickens, I do not know exactly what proceedings of his you refer to as exhibiting want of taste or want of temper towards your country-people.... But small counterweights may surely be allowed to such admirable qualities of both head and heart as he possesses. He sent me, on his return to England, a printed circular, which was distributed among all his literary acquaintances and friends, and which set forth his views with regard to the question of international copyright; but except this, I know of nothing that he has publicly put forth upon the matter. His "Notes" upon America come out, I believe, immediately; and I shall be extremely curious to see them, and sorry if they are unfavorable, because his popularity as a writer is immense, and whatever he publishes will be sure of a wide circulation. Moreover, as it is very well known that, before going to America, he was strongly prepossessed in favor of its institutions, manners, and people, any disparaging remarks he may make upon them will naturally have proportionate weight, as the deliberate result of experience and observation. M---- told me, after dining with Dickens immediately on his return, that one thing that had disgusted him was the almost universal want of conscience upon money matters in America; and the levity, occasionally approaching to something like self-satisfaction, for their "sharpness," which he had repeated occasions of observing, in your people when speaking of the present disgraceful condition of their finances and deservedly degraded state of their national credit.... But I do hope (because I have a friend's and not a "foe's" heart towards your country) that Dickens will not write unfavorably about it, for his opinion will influence public opinion in England, and deserves to do so.

As for Lord Morpeth, you need not be afraid of his "booking" you; he is the kindliest gentleman alive, and moreover, I think, far too prudent a person for such a proceeding....

Lord Ashburton's termination of the boundary question is vehemently abused by the Opposition, but that is of course. Some old-school Whigs, sound politicians, and great friends of mine, were agreeing quietly among themselves the other day that anyhow they were heartily glad that there was to be no war between the countries.

I perceive, however, that the question of the right of search (question brûlante, as the French say) is still untouched, or rather unsettled; yet in my opinion it contains more elements of danger than the other. But I suppose your great diplomatists think one question settled in twenty years is quite enough for the rapid pace at which our Governments pant and puff after public opinion in these steam-speed-thinking times.

We have been in the country till within the last fortnight, but have come up to town to prepare for our departure. London is almost empty, but the only topics that keep alive the sparse population of the club-houses are the dismissal of Baroness L---- from Court and her departure for Germany, and a terrible esclandre in a very high circle, including royal personages.... I treat you to the London scandal, and my doing so is ridiculous enough; but there is nothing I would not sooner write about than myself and my own thoughts, feelings, and concerns, just now. How thankful I shall be when this month is over!...

Believe me yours most truly, F. A. B.

HARLEY STREET, Saturday, 8th, 1842. MY DEAR GRANNY,

I dined yesterday at Charles Greville's, where dined also Mr. Byng; both of them, I believe, were your fellow-guests lately, at the Duke of Bedford's. Among other Woburn talk, there is no little discourse about B----. Westmacott, too (the sculptor), who is a very old friend of ours, chimed in, and we had a very pretty chorus on the argument of her fine countenance, striking appearance, intelligence, etc., which I listened to and joined in with great pleasure, because I love the child; thinking, at the same time, how many qualities, of which perhaps her gentlemen eulogists took no cognizance, went to make up the charm of the outward appearance which they admired--the candor, truth, humility, and moral dignity, the "inward and spiritual grace," of which what they praised is but "the outward and visible sign." As I know this, the commendation of her superficial good gifts, by superficial observers, was very agreeable to me.

You ask me if I think you are going to keep up a correspondence with me at this rate. I do not know exactly what that means; but be sure of one thing, that as long as I can succeed in drawing an answer out of you, I shall persewere.

My father has a violent lumbago; so, I am sorry to say, has the theatre, which, in spite of my sister's exertions, can hardly keep upon its legs. Her success has to compensate for the deplorable houses on the nights when she does not appear. But great as her success is, it will not make the nights pay on which she does not sing, when the theatre is absolutely empty. What they will do when she goes I cannot in the smallest degree conceive. We are just being sucked into the Maelstrom of bills, parcels, packages, books, pictures, valuables, trumpery, rummaging, heaping together, throwing apart, selecting, discarding, and stowing away that precedes an orderly departure after a two years' disorderly residence; in the midst of all which I have neither leisure nor leave to attend to the heartache which, nevertheless, accompanies the whole process with but little intermission.

Love to your dear lord and the dear girls, and believe me ever, my dear Granny,

Your affectionate FANNY.

HARLEY STREET, Friday, 14th, 1842. DEAR GRANNY,

I find there is every probability of our not leaving England until the 4th of November (several people tell me they have been told so), and such is the extreme uncertainty of our movements always that it would not surprise me very violently if we did not go then. I fear, however, this will not afford me any further glimpses of you; and, indeed, at the bottom of my heart, I do not wish for any more "last dying speeches and confessions." To part is very bad, but to keep continually parting is unendurable.

My sister goes on with the "Semiramide," and her attraction in it increases. She acts and sings admirably in it, and, all sisterly prepossessions apart, looks beautiful.

We went the other night to see "As You Like It" at Drury Lane. It was painfully acted, but the scenery, etc., were charming; and though we had neither the caustic humor nor poetical melancholy of Jacques, nor the brilliant wit and despotical fancifulness of the princess shepherd-boy duly given, we had the warbling of birds, and sheep-bells tinkling in the distance, to comfort us. I hope it is not profanation to say, "These should ye have done, and not have left the others undone." Nevertheless, and in spite of all, the enchantment of Shakespeare's inventions is such to me that they cannot be marred, let what will be done to them. As long as those words of profoundest wisdom and those images of exquisite beauty are but uttered, their own perfection swallows up all other considerations and impressions with me, and I bear indifferent and even bad acting of Shakespeare better than most people.

Why did you not make him, instead of the stage, the subject of our discussions together? For his works my enthusiasm grows every year of my life into a profounder and more wondering love and admiration.

I am grateful for Lord Dacre's offer, though it was not made to me; and, had it been so, should have closed with it eagerly. To correspond with one who has seen and known and thought so much is a rare privilege.

Good-bye, dear Granny. Give my love to the girls, and my "duty" to my lord, and believe me

Your affectionate FANNY BUTLER.

HARLEY STREET, Friday, 23rd, 1842. MY DEAR GRANNY,

That last half-hour before we got off from "The Hoo" the other day was a severe trial to my self-command; but I was anxious not to afflict you, and I was willing, if possible, to begin the bitter series of partings, of which the next month will be one succession, with something like fortitude, however I may end it. Thank you for writing to me, and thank you for all your kindness to me through these many years, now that you have persevered in being fond of me....

Do not be anxious about my happiness, my dear friend, but pray for me, that I maybe enabled to do what is right under all circumstances; and then it cannot fail to be well with me, whether to outward observation I am what the world calls happy or not.

Give my affectionate love to Lord Dacre, and thank him for all his goodness to me and mine. I send my blessing to the girls. I have written to B----. God bless you all, my kind friends, and make life and its vicissitudes minister to your happiness hereafter.

You will hear of me, dear Granny, for the girls will write to me, and I shall answer them, and you will remember, whenever you think of me, how gratefully and affectionately I must

Ever remain yours, FANNY BUTLER.

[Lady Dacre saw much trouble in store for me in my intemperate expression of feeling on the subject of slavery in America, and repeatedly warned me with affectionate solicitude to moderate, if not my opinions, the vehement proclamation of them. She was wise and right, as well as kind in her advice.]

[Extract from a letter of Miss Sedgwick's.]

STOCKBRIDGE, October 26th, 1842.

You have no doubt heard and lamented the death of our dear friend, Dr. Channing. Dead he is not; he lives, and will live in the widespreading life he has communicated. He passed the summer at Lenox, occupying with his family your rooms at the hotel. We passed some hours of every day together. He enjoyed our lovely hill country with the freshness of youth, his health was invigorated, and his mind freer, and his spirits more buoyant than I ever knew them; he endured more fatigue than he had been able to encounter since he travelled in Switzerland fifteen years ago. His affectionateness, purity, simplicity--a simplicity so perfect that it seemed divine--surrounded his greatness with an atmosphere of light and beauty. His life has been a most prosperous one, no storms without, and a heavenly calm within. His last work in his office was a discourse which he delivered in our village church on the 1st of August, on the emancipation of the slaves in the British West Indies. I shall send it to you, and pray mark the prophetic invocation with which it concludes. You should have seen the inspired expression of his intellectual brow, and the earnest, spiritual look that seemed to penetrate the clouds that hang over the eternal world and to reflect its light. On the Sundays of his sojourn with us he had domestic worship in our houses, and his last service was in that apartment where his beloved friend Follen officiated....

Eliza Follen is recovering the elasticity of her mind. Time can, I think, do all things, since it has dissipated that horrible image of the burning steamer in which her husband perished, that was ever before her. She is publishing his Memoirs, and, among other things, she read me some patriotic songs which he wrote in Sand's time in Germany; they were in the boldest tone of insurrection, and were, of course, proscribed and suppressed. She had heard her husband occasionally hum a stanza or two of them, and he had once written out a single one for her which she found in her work-basket. This she transmitted to his mother in Germany, and with this clue alone the mother obtained the rest; and eloquent outbreakings they are of a spirit glowing with freedom and humanity....

I have passed lately a day at our State Lunatic Asylum. On my first going there, in the evening the physician invited me into the dancing-hall, where some sixty of the patients were assembled. The two musicians were patients, one utterly demented, incapable of any reasonable act except playing a tune on his violin, which he did with accuracy. Except the doctor's children (as beautiful as cherubs, and ministering angels they are), there were no sane persons among the dancers. "There," said the physician, "is a homicide; there, a poor girl who went crazy the day after her brother drowned himself, and who fancies herself that brother; there, the King of England," etc. They were all dancing with the utmost decorum and regularity. They attend chapel on a Sunday without disturbance; they were all (among them maniacs who had been for half a score of years chained in dungeons of our common gaols) "clothed," and, if "not in their right mind," comfortable and cheerful; they all had plants in their rooms and books on their tables. Much depends on individual character, and the physician is, as you would expect, a man of the highest moral power, and the very embodiment of the spirit of benevolence, and if poetry and painting had laid their heads together to give him a fitting form, they could have done nothing better than nature has. My heart was ready to burst with gratitude. Who can say the world does not move some forward steps?

CLARENDON HOTEL, November 6th, 1842. DEAR GRANNY,

You know that it is now determined that we do not sail by the next steamer....

Dearest Granny, do not you, any more than I do, reckon which love is best worth having, of young or old love; for all love is inestimable, and should be gratefully rendered thanks for. There is something charming and pathetic in the profusion with which the young love; it is touching, as one of the magnificent superabundances, one of the generous extravagances, of their prodigal time of life. But the love of the old is as precious as the beggared widow's mite; and in bestowing it they know what they give, from a store that day by day diminishes. The affections of the young are as sudden and soft, as bright and bounteous, as copious and capricious as the showers of spring; the love of the old is the one drop in the cruse, which outlasts the journey through the desert.

You may perhaps see in the papers a statement of the disastrous winding up of the season at Covent Garden, or rather its still more disastrous abrupt termination. After our all protesting and remonstrating with all our might against my father's again being involved in that Heaven-forsaken concern, and receiving the most positive and solemn assurances from those who advised him into it for the sake of having his name at the head of it that no responsibility or liability whatever should rest upon or be incurred by him; and that if the thing did not turn out prosperously, it should be put an end to, and the theatre immediately closed;--they have gone on, in spite of night after night of receipts below the expenses, and now are obliged suddenly to shut up shop, my poor father being, as it turns out, personally involved for a considerable sum.

This, as you will well believe, is no medicine for his malady. I spend every evening with him, and generally see him in the morning besides. These last few days he suffers less acute pain, but complains more of debility, and hardly leaves his sofa, where he lies silent, with his eyes closed, apparently absorbed in painful sensations and reflections. Yet, though he neither speaks to nor looks at me, he likes to have me there; and, as Horace Twiss said, "to hear the scissors fall" now and then, by way of companionship; and certainly derives some comfort from the mere consciousness of my presence.

My sister has gone to Brighton for a few days, her health having quite given way, what with hard work and harder worry. She returns on Monday, but it is extremely doubtful whether she will resume her performances at all, so that I fear the expectations of the clan Cavendish will be disappointed.

She did act most charmingly in the "Matrimonio Segreto." In point of fact, her comic acting is more perfect than her tragic, although there are not in it, and naturally cannot be, the same striking exhibitions of dramatic power; but it is smoother, more even, better finished.

You must get Lady Callcott's "Scripture Herbal." Lady Grey lent it me, and I read it with great pleasure. It is an interesting, graceful, and learned work, which she has illustrated very exquisitely. There is something very sweet and soothing in the idea of last thoughts having been thus devoted to what is loveliest in nature and holiest in religion.

God bless you, dear Granny. Give my love to the lasses, and my affectionate "duty" to my lord; and believe me

Your loving grandchild, F. A. B.

[Our departure for America was indefinitely postponed, and the American nurse I had brought to England with my children left me and returned home alone.]

THE CLARENDON, Monday, November 28th, 1842. MY DEAREST GRANNY,

I duly delivered your message, and am desired to tell you that a house is being looked for for us in your neighborhood, and that, as soon as one is found that we think you will approve of, it will be taken. Moreover, I am desired to add that the expensive reputation of the Clarendon is very much exaggerated.... We have been here a fortnight to-day, and I think there is every probability of our being here at least a fortnight longer, even if we get away then.... My father suffers less acutely these last few days, but his debility appears to increase with the decrease of his positive pain....

My sister returned from Brighton to-day, completely set up again; she is to go on with her performances till Christmas, when the whole concern passes into the hands of Mr. Bunn, who perhaps is qualified to manage it.

I think I should like to act with my sister during this month, in order to secure their salaries to the actors, to make up the deficit which now lies at the door of my father's management, to put a good benefit into his poor pocket, to give rather a more cheerful ending to my sister's theatrical career, and, though last, not least, for the pleasure and fun of acting with her. Don't you think we should have good houses? and wouldn't you come and see us?...

God bless you, dear Granny.

Ever your affectionate F. A. B.

THE CLARENDON, December 1st, 1842. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Lord Titchfield, who was here yesterday, begged me to ascertain from you whether it is only my bust that you desire, or whether you would like to have casts from my father's and from the two of Adelaide. Write me word, dear, that the magnificent marquis may fulfil your wishes, which he is only waiting to know in order to send the one or the four heads to you in Ireland....

My sister returned from Brighton on Monday, apparently quite recovered; in good looks, good voice, and good spirits. The horrible mess in which everybody is mixed up who has anything to do with Covent Garden, and in which she is so deeply involved, renewed her annoyances and vexations immediately on her arrival in town; but I passed the evening with her yesterday, and she did not seem the worse for work or worry, for she sang, for her own pleasure and that of her guests, the whole evening....

Give my kind remembrances to all your people, and believe me

Ever yours, FANNY.

[The Marquis of Titchfield was employing the French sculptor Dantan to make busts of my father, my sister, and myself, for him; and most kindly gave me casts of them all, and sent my friend Miss St. Leger a cast of mine.]

THE CLARENDON, January 5th, 1843. DEAREST HAL,

I have sent your wishes to Lord Titchfield, and I am sure they will be quickly complied with. I have no idea that he means otherwise than to give you my bust; any other species of transaction being apparently quite out of his line, and giving his especial gift. I have, nevertheless, taken pains to make clear to him your intentions in the matter; I have desired him to have the bust forwarded to the care of Mr. Green, because I thought you would easily find means of transporting it thence to Ardgillan. Was this right?

The houses at Covent Garden are quite full on my sister's nights, but deplorably empty on the others, I believe. I speak from hearsay, for I have not been into the theatre since the terrible business of the late break-up there, and do not think I shall even see her last performances, for I have no means of doing so; I can no longer ask for private boxes, as during my father's management, of course, nor indeed would it be right for me to do so on her nights, because they all let very well; and as for paying for one, or even for a seat in the public ones, I have not a single farthing in the world to apply to such a purpose.... So you see, my dear, I am in no case to treat myself to seats at the play, either private or public.

Adelaide is still pretty well. The night before last was her benefit; she had a very fine house, and sang "Norma," and the great scene from "Der Freyschütz," and "Auld Robin Gray;" and yesterday evening she seemed very tired, but she had people to dinner and to tea nevertheless....

Certainly one had need believe in something better than one sees, or at any rate than I see just now; for such petty selfishnesses and despicable aims, pursued with all the energy and eagerness which should be bestowed upon the highest alone; such cheating, tricking, swindling, lying, and slandering, are enough to turn any Christian cat's stomach....

I must tell you two things about Miss Hall that have given me such an insight into the delights of the position of an English governess as I certainly never had before. When first she joined us here at the Clarendon, Anne was still with us, and she being always accustomed to take her meals with the children, and yet of course not a proper companion for Miss Hall, we thought that till the nurse went to America we would request the governess to dine with us. On Anne's departure, I signified to the head waiter that from that time Miss Hall would take her dinner with the children; whereupon, with a smirk and sniff of the most insolent disdain, and an air of dignity that had been hurt, but was now comforted, the bloated superior servant replied, "Well, ma'am, to be sure, it always was so in them famullies where I have lived; the governess never didn't eat at the table." The fact is natural, and the reason obvious, but oh! my dear, the manner of the fat, pampered porpoise of a man-menial was too horrid. Then, on going for a candle into Miss Hall's room one evening, I found she had been provided with tallow ones, and, upon remonstrating about it with the chambermaid, she replied (with a courtesy at every other word to me), "Oh, ma'am, we always puts tallow for the governesses."

Good-bye, dear. God bless you. Ever yours, FANNY.

CRANFORD HOUSE, January 8th, 1843. DEAREST HAL,

I am spending two days at Cranford--you know, I believe, where I mean, old Lady Berkeley's place.... I came to get the refreshment of the country; old Lady Berkeley is very kind to me, and I like her daughters, Lady Mary particularly. I came down yesterday (Saturday), and shall return early to-morrow, for on Wednesday the children are to have a party of their little friends, and I am making a Christmas-tree for them (rather out of date), and expect to be exceedingly busy both to-morrow and Tuesday in preparing for their amusement.

My father does not suffer nearly as much pain as he did a short time ago, but his strength appears to me to be gradually diminishing....

[Our return to America being once more indefinitely postponed, we now took a house in Upper Grosvenor Street, close to Hyde Park, to which we removed from the Clarendon, my sister residing very near us, in Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square.]

26, UPPER GROSVENOR STREET, Wednesday, March 1st, 1843.

Thank you, my dear T----, for your attention to our interests and affairs.... It seems to me that to have to accept the conviction of the unworthiness of those we love must be even worse than to lay our dearest in the earth, for we may believe that they have risen into the bosom of God. However, each human being's burden is the one whose weight must seem the heaviest to himself, and He alone who lays them on proportions them to our strength and enables us to walk upright beneath them....

[Extract from a letter from Miss Sedgwick.]

NEW YORK, March 3rd, 1843.

The great topic with us just now is the trial of Mackenzie, of whom, as the chief actor in the tragedy of the "Somers," you must have heard. Some of your journals cry out upon him, but, as we think, only the organs of that hostile inhuman spirit that bad minds try to keep alive on both sides of the water. His life has been marked with courage and humanity; all enlightened and unperverted, I may say all sane opinion with us, is in his favor. After the most honorable opinion from the Court of Inquiry, he is now under trial by court-martial, demanded by his friends to save him from a civil suit. S----, the father of the Ohio mutineer, is a man of distinguished talent, of education, and head of the War Department, but a vindictive and unscrupulous man. He is using every means to ruin Mackenzie, to revenge the death of a son, Heaven-forsaken from the beginning of his days, and whose maturest acts (he died at nineteen) were robbing his mother's jewel-case and stealing money from his father's desk. My nephew is acting as Mackenzie's counsel, and his wife, a Roman wife and mother, is a friend of mine....

I heard a story the other day, "a true one," that I treasured for you as racy, as characteristic of slavery and human nature. A most notoriously atrocious, dissolute, hellish slave-owner died, and one of his slaves--an old woman--said to a lady, "Massa prayed God so to forgive him! Oh, how he prayed! And I am afraid God heard him; they say He's so good."

UPPER GROSVENOR STREET, April 17th, 1843. MY DEAR T----,

I have executed your commission with regard to two of the books you desired me to get, but the modern Italian work, published in 1840, in Florence, and the "Mariana" of 1600, I am very much afraid I shall not be able to procure; the first because it would be necessary to send to Florence for it, which could very easily be done, but then I shouldn't be here to receive it; and the second, the copy of "Mariana," of the edition you specify, because Bohn assures me that it is extremely rare, having been suppressed on account of the king-killing doctrines it inculcates, and the subsequent editions being all garbled and incorrect. As you particularly specified that of 1600, of course I would not take any other, and shall still make further attempts to procure that, though Panizzi, the librarian of the British Museum, and Macaulay, who are both friends of mine, and whom I consulted about it, neither of them gave me much encouragement as to my eventual success. The "Filangieri" and Buchanan will arrive with me. I would send them to G---- A----, but that, as we return on the 4th of May, I think there is every reason to expect that we shall be in America first.

So much for your commission. With regard to your complaint that I give you nothing to do, I think you will have found that fault amended in my last communication, wherein I request you to accept my father's power of attorney, and undertake to watch over his interests in the New Orleans Bank....

As for people's comments on me or my actions, I have not lived on the stage to be cowardly as well as bold; and being decidedly bold, "I thank God," as Audrey might say, that I am not cowardly, which is my only answer to the suggestion of "people saying," etc.

For a year and a half past I have been perfectly wretched at our protracted stay in Europe, and as often as possible have protested against our prolonged sojourn here, and all the consequences involved in it. This being the case, "people" attributing our remaining here to me troubles me but little, particularly as I foresaw from the first that that must inevitably be the result of our doing so.

I seldom read the newspapers, and therefore have not followed any of the details of this Mackenzie trial. The original transaction, and his own report of it, I read with amazement; more particularly the report, the framing and wording of which appeared to me utterly irreconcilable with the fact of his having written, as Lord Ashburton informed me, a very pleasing book, of which certainly the style must have been very different. He, Lord Ashburton, spoke of him as though he knew him, and gave him the same character of gentleness and single-mindedness that you do.

Although our return to America will be made under circumstances of every possible annoyance and anxiety, it gives me heartfelt pleasure to think I shall soon see all my good friends there again, among whom you and yours are first in my regard....

Butler Place is to be let, if possible, and at any rate we are certainly not to go back to it; whereat my poor little S---- cries bitterly, and I feel a tightening at the heart, to think that the only place which I have known as a home in America is not what I am to return to.... The transfer of that New Orleans stock by my father to me--I mean the law papers necessary for the purpose--cost £50 sterling. England is a dear country many ways.

Ellsler is in London now, and, I am assured by those who know, diviner than ever. I think her gone off both in looks and dancing. That rascal W---- has robbed her of the larger portion of her earnings. What a nice lover to have!

Believe me ever

Yours most truly, F. A. B.

April 15th 1843. MY DEAREST HAL,

You must not scold if there are letters missing in my words this week, for I have enough to do and to think of, as you well know, to put half the letters of the alphabet out of my head for the next twelvemonth....

Immediately after breakfast on Saturday I went down on my knees and packed till Emily came to walk with me, and packed after I came in till it was time to go shopping and visiting. I went to bid the L----'s good-bye; we dined with the Procters, and had a pleasant dinner: Mr. and Mrs. Grote, Rogers, Browning, Harness and his sister. In the evening I went to Miss Berry's, where Lady Charlotte Lindsay and I discoursed about you, and she pitied you greatly for having, upon the top of all your troubles, forgotten your keys....

Sunday morning I packed instead of going to church, and, in fact, packed the blessed livelong day, with an interval of rest derived from an interminable visit from Frederick Byng (alias Poodle). Yesterday my father and Victoire (my aunt), and Adelaide and E---- (who, to my infinite joy, came home on Saturday), dined with us. My father was better, I think, than the last evening we were with him, though, of course, a good deal out of spirits. Victoire was pretty well, but quite surprised and mortified at hearing that I would not suffer her to pack my things, for fear of its fatiguing her; and told me how she had been turning in her mind her best way of contriving to be here packing all day, and home in Charlotte Street in time to give my father his dinner. She is Dall's own sister!

Yesterday I completed, with Emily's assistance (which nearly drove me mad), the packing of the great huge chest of books, boxes, etc., and she and I walked together, but it was bitter cold and ungenial, regular beasterly wind. (Mrs. Grote says she invented that name for it, and, for reasons which will be obvious to you, I gave it up to her without a blow.) In the afternoon I went shopping with Adelaide, and then flew about, discharging my own commissions.

In the evening our "first grand party of the season came off;" nearly two hundred people came, and seemed, upon the whole, tolerably well amused. Adelaide and Miss Masson and I sang, and Benedict played, and it all went off very well. There were six policeman at the door, and Irish Jack-o'-lanterns without count; "the refreshment table was exceedingly elegantly set out" by Gunter--at a price which we do not yet know....

I dread our sea-voyage for myself, for all sorts of physical reasons; morally, I dare say I shall benefit from a season of absolute quiet and the absence of all excitement. The chicks are well; they are to go down to Liverpool on Saturday, in order to be out of the way, for we leave this house on Monday, and their departure will facilitate the verifying of inventories and all the intolerable confusion of our last hours. Mrs. Cooper, as well as Miss Hall, will go with them to Liverpool, and I have requested that, instead of staying in the town, they may go down to Crosby Beach, six miles from it, and wait there for our arrival. This is all my history. I am in one perpetual bustle, and I thank Heaven for it; I have no leisure to think or to feel....

I beg leave to inform you that Miss Hall came to my party in a most elegant black satin dress, with her hair curled in profuse ringlets all over her head.

God bless you, my dear Hal. Good-bye.

Ever yours, F. A. B.

Thursday, April 27th, 1843. DEAREST HAL,

You ask how it goes with me. Why, I think pretty much as it did with the poor gentleman who went up in the flying machine t'other day, which, upon some of his tackle giving way, began, as he describes, to "turn round and round in the air with the most frightful velocity." My condition, I think, too, will find the same climax as his, viz. falling in a state of senselessness into a steam-packet. If the account be true, it was a very curious one. As for me, I am absolutely breathless with things to do and things to think of.... Still, I get on (like a deeply freighted ship in a churning sea, to be sure), but I do make some way, and the days do go by, and I am glad to see the end of this season of trial approaching, for all our sakes.

Any one would suppose I was in great spirits, for I fly about, singing at the top of my voice, and only stop every now and then to pump up a sigh as big as the house, and clear my eyes of the tears that are blinding me. Occasionally, too, a feeling of my last moments here, and my leave-taking of my father and sister, shoots suddenly through my mind, and turns me dead sick; but all is well with me upon the whole, nevertheless.

Adelaide was in great health and spirits on Monday night, and sang for us, and seemed to enjoy herself very much, and gave great delight to everybody who heard her. She sang last night again at Chorley's, but I thought her voice sounded a little tired. To be sure, in those tiny boxes of rooms, the carpets and curtains choke one's voice back into one's throat, and it just comes out beyond one's teeth, with a sort of muffled-drum sound. Thus far, dearest Hal, yesterday. To-day, before I left my dressing-room, I got your present. Thank you a thousand times for the pretty chain [a beautiful gold chain, which, together with a very valuable watch, was stolen from me in a boarding-house in Philadelphia, almost immediately on my return there], which is exquisite, and will be very dear. Yet, though I found the "fine gold," the empty page of letter-paper on each side of it disappointed me more than it would have been grateful to express; but when I came down to breakfast I found your letter, and was altogether happy.... I was wearing my watch again, for I found the risk and inconvenience of always carrying it about very tiresome, but I had it on an old silver chain that I have had for some years. Yours is prettier even than my father's, and I love to feel it round my neck.

You say you hope my sister will be brave on the occasion of our parting, and not try my courage with her grief. I will answer for her. I am sure she will be brave. I know of no one with more determination and self-control than she has....

The secret of helping people every way most efficiently is to stand by and be quiet and ready to do anything you may be asked to do. This is the only real way to help people who have any notion of helping themselves.

On Monday evening we had our first party, which went off exceedingly well. On Tuesday morning Emily and I walked together, and I packed till lunch, after which I drove out with Adelaide, shopping for her, and doing my own do's. In the evening I went to my father, whom I found in most wretched spirits, but not worse in health. He has determined, I am thankful to say, not to see the children again before they go, which I think is very wise. After leaving him, I went to a party at our friend Chorley's, where dear Mendelssohn was, and where I heard some wonderful music, and read part of "Much Ado about Nothing" to them. Yesterday Emily came, and we walked together, and I packed and did commissions all day. Our second party took place in the evening, and we had all our grandee friends and fine-folk acquaintances....

God bless you, dear Hal. Emily is waiting for me to go out walking with her.

Ever yours, FANNY.

26, UPPER GROSVENOR STREET. MY DEAR CHARLES GREVILLE,

I send you back Channing's book, with many thanks. The controversial part of his sermons does not satisfy me. No controversy does; no arguments, whether for or against Christianity, ever appear to me conclusive; but as I am a person who would like extremely to have it demonstrated why two and two make four, you can easily conceive that arguments upon any subject seldom seem perfectly satisfactory to me. As for my convictions, which are, I thank God, vivid and strong, I think they spring from a species of intuition, mercifully granted to those who have a natural incapacity for reasoning, i.e. the whole female sect. And, talking of them, I do not like Dryden, though I exclaim with delight at the glorious beauty and philosophical truth of some of his poetry; but oh! he has nasty notions about women. Did you ever see Correggio's picture of the Gismonda? It is a wonderful portrait of grief. Even Guercino's "Hagar" is inferior to it in the mere expression of misery. Knowing no more of the story years ago than I gathered from a fine print of Correggio's picture, I wrote a rhapsody upon it, which I will show you some day.

The "Leaf and the Flower" is very gorgeous, but it does not touch the heart like earnest praise of a virtue, loved, felt, and practised; and Dryden's "Hymns to Chastity" would scarcely, I think, satisfy me, even had I not in memory sundry sublime things of Spenser, Dante, and Milton on the same theme. Thank you for both the books. Each in its kind is very good.

I am yours very truly, F. A. B.

[Mr. Greville had lent me a volume of Dr. Channing's "Sermons," and Dryden's "Fables," which I had never before read.]

26, UPPER GROSVENOR STREET, Saturday, April 29th. DEAREST GRANNY,

I send you back, with thanks, the critique on Adelaide. It is very civil and, I think, not otherwise than just, except perhaps in comparing my sister at present to Pasta.

If genius alone were the same thing as genius and years of study, labor, experience, and practice, genius would be a finer thing even than it is. My sister perpetually reminded me of Pasta, and, had she remained a few years longer in her profession, would, I think, have equalled her. I could not give her higher praise, for nobody, since the setting of that great artist, has even remotely reminded me of her. My sister's voice is not one of the finest I have heard; Miss Paton's is finer, Clara Novello's (the most perfect voice I ever heard) is finer. Adelaide's real voice is a high mezzo-soprano, and in stretching it to a higher pitch--that of the soprano-assoluto--which she has done with infinite pains and practice, in order to sing the music of the parts she plays, I think she has impaired the quality, the perfect intonation, of the notes that form the joint, the hinge, as it were, between the upper and middle voice; and these notes are sometimes not quite true--at any rate, weak and uncertain. In brilliancy of execution, I do not think she equals Sontag, Malibran, or Grisi; but there is in other respects no possible comparison, in my opinion, between them and herself, as a lyrical dramatic artist; and Pasta is the only great singer who, I think, compares with her in the qualities of that noble and commanding order which distinguished them both. In both Madame Pasta and my sister the dramatic power is so great as almost occasionally to throw their musical achievements, in some degree, into the shade. But in their lyrical declamation there is a grandeur and breadth of style, and a tragic depth of passion, far beyond that of any other musical performers I have known. In one respect Adelaide had the promise of greater excellence than Pasta--the versatility of her powers and her great talent for comedy.

How little her beautiful face was ever disfigured by her vocal efforts you have seen; and noted, I know, that power of appealing to Heaven at once with her lustrous eyes and her soaring voice; ending those fine, exquisite, prolonged shakes on the highest notes with that gentle quiver of the lids which hardly disturbed the expression of "the rapt soul sitting in her eyes." She has a musical sensibility which comprehends, in both senses of the word, every species of musical composition, and almost the whole lyrical literature of Europe; in short, she belongs, by organization and education, to the highest order of artists. But why--oh, why am I giving you a dissertation on her and her gifts, for a purpose which will never again challenge her efforts or their exercise? (Quite lately, one who knew and loved her well told me that Rossini had said of her, "To sing as she does three things are needed: this"--touching his forehead,--"this"--touching his throat,--"and this"--laying his hand on his heart;--"she had them all.")

I sometimes think, when I reflect upon the lives of theatrical artists, that they are altogether unnatural existences, and produce--pardon the bull--artificial natures, which are misplaced anywhere but in their own unreal and make-believe sphere. They are the anomalous growth of our diseased civilizations, and, removed from their own factitious soil, flourish, I half believe, in none other. Do not laugh at me, but I really do think that creatures with the temperaments necessary for making good actors and actresses are unfit for anything else in life; and as for marrying and having children, I think crossing wholesome English farm stock with mythological cattle would furnish our fields with a less uncanny breed, of animals.

I wish some laws were made shutting up all the theatres, and only allowing two dramatic entertainments every year: one of Shakespeare's plays, and one of Mozart's operas, at the cost of Government, and as a national festivity. Now, I know you think I am quite mad, wherefore adieu.

I am ever yours most truly, F. A. B.

UPPER GROSVENOR STREET, May, 1843. DEAREST GRANNY,

I am of Lord Dacre's mind, and think it wisest and best to avoid the pain of a second parting with you. Light as new sorrows may appear to you, the heart--your heart--certainly will never want vitality enough to feel pain through your kindly affections. God bless you, therefore, my good friend, and farewell. For myself, I feel bruised all over, and numbed with pain; so many sad partings have fallen one after another, day after day, upon my heart, that acuteness of pain is lost in a mere sense of unspeakable, sore weariness; and yet these bitter last days are to be prolonged.... God help us all! But I am wrong to write thus sadly to you, my kind friend; and indeed, though from this note you might not think my courage what it ought to be, I assure you it does not fail me, and, once through these cruel last days, I shall take up the burden of my life, I trust, with patience, cheerfulness, and firm faith in God, and that conviction which is seldom absent from my mind, and which I find powerful to sustain me, that duty and not happiness is the purpose of life; and that from the discharge of the one and the forgetfulness of the other springs that peace which Christ told His friends He gave, and the world gives not, neither takes away. Let dear B---- come and see me; I shall like to look on her bright, courageous face again. Give my affectionate love to Lord Dacre, and believe me

Ever gratefully and affectionately Your grandchild, FANNY.

UPPER GROSVENOR STREET, May 3rd, 1843.

Thank you, dearest Hal, for Sydney Smith's letter about Francis Horner: it is bolder than anything I had a notion of, but very able and very amiable, and describes charmingly an admirable man. There is one expression he--Sydney Smith--applies to Horner that struck me as strange--he speaks of "important human beings" that he has known; and, I cannot tell why, but with all my self-esteem and high opinion of human nature and its capabilities in general, the epithet "important" applied to human beings made me smile, and keeps recurring to me as comical. It must have appeared much more so to you, I should think, with your degraded opinion of humanity.

You ask how our second party went off. Why, very well. It was much fuller than the other, and in hopes of inducing people to "spread themselves" a little, we had the refreshments put into my drawing-room; but they still persisting in sticking (sticking literally) all in the room with the piano, which rather annoyed me, because I hate the proximity of "important human beings," I came away from them, and had a charming quiet chat in the little boudoir with Lord Ashburton and Lord Dacre, during which they discussed the merits of Channing, and awarded him the most unmitigated praise as a good and great man. It is curious enough that in America the opponents of Dr. Channing's views perpetually retorted upon him that he was a clergyman, a mere man of letters, whose peculiar mode of life could not possibly admit of his having large or just, or, above all, practical political knowledge and ideas, or any opinions about questions of government that could be worth listening to; whereas these two very distinguished Englishmen spoke with unqualified admiration of his sound and luminous treatment of such subjects, and, instancing what they considered his best productions, mentioned his letter to Clay upon the annexation of Texas, even before his moral and theological essays.

Our company stayed very late with us, till near two o'clock; and upon a remark being made about the much smaller consumption of refreshments than on the occasion of our first party, D----, our butler, very oracularly responded, "Quite a different class of people, sir;" which mode of accounting for the more delicate appetite of our more aristocratic guests, made with an ineffable air of cousinship to them all, sent me into fits of laughing.

You ask me what I shall have to do from Monday till Wednesday, to fill up my time and keep my thoughts from drowning themselves in crying. I shall leave this house after breakfast for the Clarendon. I have a great many small last articles to purchase, and shall visit all my kindred once more. Then, too, the final packing for "board ship" will take me some time, and I have some letters to write too. I dine with Lady Dacre on Monday; they are to be alone except us and E---- and my sister. I shall leave them at eight o'clock to go and sit with my father till ten, his bed-time; and then return to Chesterfield Street [Lord Dacre's]. As for Tuesday--Heaven alone knows how I shall get through it.

On Thursday last we dined with Sydney Smith, where we met Lord and Lady Charlemont, Jeffrey, Frederick Byng, Dickens, Lady Stepney, and two men whom I did not know,--a pleasant dinner; and afterwards we went to Mrs. Dawson Damer's,--a large assembly, more than half of them strangers to us....

On Friday morning Adelaide and E---- and we breakfasted with Rogers, to meet Sydney Smith, Hallam, and his daughter and niece, the United States Minister, Edward Everett, Empson, and Sir Robert Inglis. After breakfast I went to see Charles Greville, who is again laid up with the gout, and unable to move from his sofa. We dined with my sister, who had a large party in the evening; and as the hour for breaking up arrived, and I saw those pleasant kindly acquaintances pass one after another through the door, I felt as if I was watching the vanishing of some pleasant vision. The nearest and dearest of these phantasmagoria are yet round me; but in three days the last will have disappeared from my eyes, for who can tell how long? if not forever!

All day yesterday I was extremely unwell, but packed vehemently....

Charles Young, who is a most dear old friend of mine, and dotes upon my children, came to see them off, and went with them to the railroad. S---- begged for some of her grandfather's hair, but that he might not be told it was for her, for fear of grieving him!

This is the last letter you will get from me written in this house. Victoire, quite tired out with packing, is lying asleep on the sofa, and poor dear Emily sits crying beside me.

Ever yours, F. A. B.

LIVERPOOL, Thursday, May 4th, 1843.

I wrote to you last thing last night, dearest Hal; and now farewell! I have received a better account of my father.... Dear love to Dorothy, and my last dear love to you. I shall write and send no more loves to any one. Lord Titchfield--blessings on him!--has sent me a miniature of my father and four different ones of Adelaide. God bless you, dear. Good-bye.

Yours, FANNY.

HALIFAX WHARF, Wednesday, May 17th, 1843. MY DEAR FRIEND,

When I tell you that yesterday, for the first time, I was able to put pen to paper, or even to hold up my head, and that even after the small exertion of writing a few lines to my father I was so exhausted as to faint away, you will judge of the state of weakness to which this dreadful process of crossing the Atlantic reduces your very robustious grandchild.

It is now the 17th of May, and we have been at sea thirteen days, and we are making rapid way along the coast of Nova Scotia, and shall touch at Halifax in less than an hour. There we remain, to land mails and passengers, about six hours; and in thirty-six more, wind and weather favoring us across the Bay of Fundy, we shall be in Boston. In fifteen days! Think of it, my dearest Granny! when thirty used to be considered a rapid and prosperous voyage.

My dear friend, how shall I thank you for those warm words of cheering and affectionate encouragement which I received when I was lying worn out for want of sleep and food, after we had been eight days on this dreadful deep? My kind friend, I do not want courage, I assure you; and God will doubtless give me sufficient strength for my need: but you can hardly imagine how deplorably sad I feel; how poor, who lately was so rich; how lonely, who lately was surrounded by so many friends. I know all that remains to me, and how the treasure of love I have left behind will be kept, I believe, in many kind hearts for me till I return to claim it. But the fact is I am quite exhausted, body and mind, and incapable of writing, or even thinking, with half the energy I hope to gather from the first inch of dry land I step upon. Like Antæus, I look for strength from my mother, the Earth, and doubt not to be brave again when once I am on shore.

The moment I saw the dear little blue enamel heart I exclaimed, "Oh, it is Lady Dacre's hair in it!" But tears, and tears, and nothing but tears, were the only greeting I could give the pretty locket and your and dear B----'s letters.

My poor chicks have borne the passage well, upon the whole--sick and sorry one hour, and flying about the deck like birds the next....

Our passage has been made in the teeth of the wind, and against a heavy sea the whole way. We have had no absolute storm; but the tender mercies of the Atlantic, at best, are terrible. Of our company I can tell nothing, having never left my bed till within the last three days. They seem to be chiefly English officers and their families, bound for New Brunswick and the Canadas. The ship stops, and to the perpetual flailing of the paddles succeeds the hissing sound of the escaping steam. We are at Halifax. I send you this earliest news of us because you will be glad, I am sure, to get it.

Give my love to my dear lord; my blessing and a kiss to dear B----. I will write to her from New York, if possible. God bless you, my dear friend, and reward you for all your kindness to me, and comfort and make peaceful the remainder of your earthly pilgrimage. I can hardly hold my pen in my hand, or my head up; but am ever your grateful and affectionate

FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, Tuesday, May 23rd, 1843. MY DEAREST HAL,

We landed in Boston on Friday morning at six o'clock, and almost before I had drawn my first breath of Yankee air Elizabeth Sedgwick and Kate had thrown their arms round me.

You will want to know of our seafaring; and mine truly was miserable, as it always is, and perhaps even more wretched than ever before. I lay in a fever for ten days, without being able to swallow anything but two glasses of calves'-foot jelly and oceans of iced water. At the end of this time I began to get a little better; though, as I had neither food, nor sleep, nor any relief from positive sea-sickness, I was in a deplorable state of weakness. I just contrived to crawl out of my berth two days before we reached Halifax, where I was cheered, and saddened too, by the sight of well-known English faces. I had just finished letters to my father, E----, and Lady Dacre, for the Hibernia, which was to touch there the next morning on her way home, and was sitting disconsolate with my head in my hands, in a small cabin on deck, to which I had been carried up from below as soon as I was well enough to bear being removed from my own, when Mr. Cunard, the originator of this Atlantic Steam Mail-packet enterprise, whom I had met in London, came in, and with many words of kindness and good cheer, carried me up to his house in Halifax, where I rested for an hour, and where I saw Major S----, an uncle of my dear B----, and where we talked over English friends and acquaintances and places, and whence I returned to the ship for our two days' more misery, with a bunch of exquisite flowers, born English subjects, which are now withering in my letter-box among my most precious farewell words of friends.

The children bore the voyage as well as could be expected; sick one half hour, and stuffing the next; little F---- pervading the ship from stem to stern, like Ariel, and generally presiding at the officers' mess in undismayed she-loneliness.

Your friend Captain G---- was her devoted slave and admirer.... I saw but little of the worthy captain, being only able to come on deck the last four days of our passage; but he was most kind to us all, and after romping with the children and walking Miss Hall off her legs, he used to come and sit down by me, and sing, and hum, and whistle every imaginable tune that ever lodged between lines and spaces, and some so original that I think they never were imprisoned within any musical bars whatever. I gave him at parting the fellow of your squeeze of the hand, and told him that as yours was on my account, mine was on yours. He left us at Boston to go on to Niagara.

Our ship was extremely full, and there being only one stewardess on board, the help she could afford any of us was very little.... While in Boston I made a pilgrimage to dear Dall's grave: a bitter and a sad few minutes I spent, lying upon that ground beneath which she lay, and from which her example seemed to me to rise in all the brightness of its perfect lovingness and self-denial. The oftener I think of her, the more admirable her life appears to me. She was undoubtedly gifted by nature with a temperament of rare healthfulness and vigor, which, combined with the absence of imagination and nervous excitability, contributed much to her uniform cheerfulness, courage, and placidity of temper; but her self-forgetfulness was most uncommon, her inexhaustible kindliness and devotedness to every creature that came within her comfortable and consolatory influence was "twice-blessed," and from her grave her lovely virtues seemed to call to me to get up and be of good cheer, and strive to forget myself, even as perfectly as she had done.... How bitter and dark a thing life is to some of God's poor creatures!

I have told you now all I have to tell of myself, and being weary in spirit and in body, will bid you farewell, and go and try to get some sleep. God bless you, my beloved friend; I am very sad, but far from out of courage. Give dear Dorothy my affectionate love.

I am ever yours, FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, Tuesday, 30th, 1843. MY DEAR F----,

We are all established in a boarding-house here, where my acquaintances assure me that I am very comfortable; and so I endeavor to persuade myself that my acquaintances are better judges of that than I am myself. It is the first time in my life that I have ever lived in any such manner or establishment; so I have no means of trying it by comparison; it is simply detestable to me, but compared with more detestable places of the same sort it is probably less so. "There are differences, look you!" ...

I am sure your family deserve to have a temple erected to them by all foreigners in America; for it seems to me that you and your people are home, country, and friends to all such unfortunates as happen to have left those small items of satisfaction behind them. The stranger's blessing should rest on your dwellings, and one stranger's grateful blessing does rest there....

Believe me, yours most truly, F. A. B.

Please to observe that the charge of 13_s._ 8_d._ is for personal advice, conferences, and tiresome morning visits; and if you make any such charge, I shall expect you to earn it. 6_s._ 4_d._ is all you are entitled to for anything but personal communication.

[This postscript, and the beginning of the letter, were jesting references to a lawyer's bill, amounting to nearly £50, presented to me by a young legal gentleman with whom we had been upon terms of friendly acquaintance, and whom we had employed, as he was just beginning business, to execute the papers for the deed of gift I have mentioned, by which my father left me at his death my earnings, the use of which I had given up to him on my marriage for his lifetime.

Our young legal gentleman used to pay us the most inconceivably tedious visits, during which his principal object appeared to be to obtain from us every sort of information upon the subject of all and sundry American investments and securities. Over and over again I was on the point of saying "Not at home" to these interminably wearisome visitations, but refrained, out of sheer good nature and unwillingness to mortify my visitant. Great, therefore, was our surprise, on receiving a bill of costs, to find every one of these intolerable intrusions upon our time and patience charged, as personal business consultations, at 13_s._ 8_d._ The thing was so ludicrous that I laughed till I cried over the price of our friend's civilities. On paying the amount, though of course I made no comment upon the price of my social and legal privileges, I suppose the young gentleman's own conscience (he was only just starting in his profession, and may have had one) pricked him slightly, for with a faint hysterical giggle, he said, "I dare say you think it rather sharp practice, but, you see, getting married and furnishing the house is rather expensive,"--an explanation of the reiterated thirteens and sixpences of the bill, which was candid, at any rate, and put them in the more affable light of an extorted wedding present, which was rather pleasant.]

PHILADELPHIA, June 4th, 1843. DEAREST GRANNY,

You will long ere this have received my grateful acknowledgments of your pretty present and most kind letter, received, with many tears and heart-yearnings, in the middle of that horrible ocean. I will not renew my thanks, though I never can thank you enough for that affectionate inspiration of following me on that watery waste, with tokens of your remembrance, and cheering that most dismal of all conditions with such an unlooked-for visitation of love.

I wrote to you from Halifax, where, on the deck of our steamer, your name was invoked with heartfelt commendations by myself and Major S----. That was a curious conversation of his and mine, if such it could be called; scarcely more than a breathless enumeration of the names of all of you, coupled indeed with loving and admiring additions, and ejaculations full of regret and affection. Poor man, how I did pity him! and how I did pity myself!

I have just written to our B----, and feel sad at the meagre and unsatisfactory account which my letter contains of me and mine; to you, my excellent friend, I will add this much more.... But I shall forbear saying anything about my conditions until they become better in themselves, or I become better able to bear them. God bless you and those you love, my dear Lady Dacre. Give my affectionate "duty" to my lord, and believe me ever your gratefully attached

F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, June 26th, 1843. MY DEAREST HAL,

Your sad account of Ireland is only more shocking than that of the newspapers because it is yours, and because you are in the midst of all this wild confusion and dismay. How much you must feel for your people! However much one's sympathy may be enlisted in any public cause, the private instances of suffering and injustice, which inevitably attend all political changes wrought by popular commotion, are most afflicting.

I hardly know what it is reasonable to expect from, or hope for, Ireland. A separation from England seems the wildest project conceivable; and yet, Heaven knows, no great benefit appears hitherto to have accrued to the poor "earthen pot" from its fellowship with the "iron" one. As for hoping that quiet may be restored through the intervention of military force, at the bayonet's point,--I cannot hope any such thing. Peace so procured is but an earnest of future war, and the victims of such enforced tranquillity bequeath to those who are only temporarily quelled, not permanently quieted, a legacy of revenge, which only accumulates, and never goes long unclaimed and unpaid. England seems to me invariably to deal unwisely with her dependencies; she performs in the Christian world very much the office that Rome did in the days of her great heathen supremacy--carry to the ends of the earth by process of conquest the seeds of civilization, of legislation, and progress; and then, as though her mission was fulfilled, by gradual mismanagement, abuse of power, and insolent contempt of those she has subjugated, is ejected by the very people to whom she had brought, at the sword's point, the knowledge of freedom and of law. It is a singular office for a great nation, but I am not sure that it is not our Heaven-appointed one, to conquer, to improve, to oppress, to be rebelled against, to coerce, and finally to be kicked out, videlicet, these United States.

But now to matters personal.... The intense heat affects me extremely; and not having a horse, or any riding exercise, the long walks which I compel myself to take over these burning brick pavements, and under this broiling sun, are not, I suppose, altogether beneficial to me....

I went to church yesterday, and Mr. F---- preached an Abolition sermon. This subject seems to press more and more upon his mind, and he speaks more and more boldly upon it, in spite of having seen various members of his congregation get up and leave the church in the middle of one of his sermons in which he adverted to the forbidden theme of slavery. Some of these, who had been members of the church from its earliest establishment, and were very much attached to him, expressed their regret at the course they felt compelled to adopt, and said if he would only give them notice when he intended to preach upon that subject they would content themselves with absenting themselves on those occasions only, to which his reply not unnaturally was, "Why, those who would leave the church on those occasions are precisely the persons who are in need of such exhortations!"--and of course he persevered.

I think it will end by his being expelled by his congregation. It will be well with him wherever he goes; but alas for those he leaves! I expect to be forbidden to take S---- to church, as soon as the report of yesterday's sermon gets noised abroad....

God bless you, dear. Good-bye. I am heavy-hearted, and it is a great effort to me to write. What would I not give to see you! Love to dear Dorothy, when you see or write to her.

I am ever yours, FANNY.

YELLOW SPRINGS, PENNSYLVANIA, July 6th, 1843. MY DEAREST HAL,

Here I am sitting (not indeed "on a rail"), but next thing to it, on the very hardest of wooden benches; my feet on the very hardest bar of the very hardest wooden chair; and my cork inkstand, of the most primitive formation, placed on a rough wooden table about a foot square, which is not large enough to hold my paper (so my knees are my desk), and is covered with a coarse piece of rag carpeting;--the whole, a sort of prison-cell furnishing. Before me stretches as far as it can about a quarter of an acre of degraded uneven ground, enclosed in a dilapidated whitewashed wooden paling, and clothed, except in several mangy bare patches, with rank weedy grass, untended unwholesome shrubs, and untidy neglected trees.... Behind me is a whitewashed room about fifteen feet by twelve, containing a rickety, black horse-hair sofa, all worn and torn into prickly ridges; six rheumatic wooden chairs; a lame table covered with a plaid shawl of my own, being otherwise without cloth to hide its nakedness or the indefinite variety of dirt-spots and stains which defile its dirty skin. In this room Miss Hall and S---- are busily engaged at "lessons." Briefly, I am sitting on the piazza (so-called) of one of a group of tumble-down lodging-houses and hotels, which, embosomed in a beautiful valley in Pennsylvania, and having in the midst of them an exquisite spring of mineral water, rejoice in the title of the "Yellow Springs."

Some years ago this place was a fashionable resort for the Philadelphians, but other watering-places have carried off its fashion, and it has been almost deserted for some time past; and except invalids unable to go far from the city (which is within a three hours' drive from here), and people who wish to get fresh air for their children without being at a distance from their business, very few visitors come here, and those of an entirely different sort from the usual summer haunters of watering-places in the country.

The heat in the city has been perfectly frightful.... On Sunday last a thermometer, rested on the ground, rose to 130°, that being the heat of the earth; and when it was hung up in the shade the mercury fell, but remained at 119°. Imagine what an air to breathe!... Late in the afternoon last Sunday, a storm came on like a West Indian tornado; the sky came down almost to the earth, the dust was suddenly blown up into the air in red-hot clouds that rushed in at the open windows like thick volumes of smoke, and then the rain poured from the clouds, steadily, heavily, and continuously, for several hours.

In the night the whole atmosphere changed, and as I sat in my children's nursery after putting them to bed in the dark, that they might sleep, I felt gradually the spirit of life come over the earth, in cool breezes between the heavy showers of rain. The next morning the thermometer was below 70°, 30° lower than the day before.... This morning the children took me up a hill which rises immediately at the back of the house, on the summit of which is a fine crest of beautiful forest-trees, from which place there is a charming prospect of hill and dale, a rich rolling country in fine cultivation--the yellow crops of grain, running like golden bays into the green woodland that clothes the sides and tops of all the hills, the wheat, the grass, the oats, and the maize, all making different checkers in the pretty variegated patchwork covering of the prosperous summer earth.

The scattered farmhouses glimmered white from among the round-headed verdure of their neighboring orchards. Nowhere in the bright panorama did the eye encounter the village, the manor-house, and the church spire,--that picturesque poetical group of feudal significance; but everywhere, the small lonely farmhouse, with its accompaniments of huge barns and outhouses, ugly the one and ungainly the others, but standing in the midst of their own smiling well-cultivated territory, a type of independent republicanism, perhaps the pleasantest type of its pleasantest features.

In the whole scene there was nothing picturesque or poetical (except, indeed, the blue glorious expanse of the unclouded sky, and the noble trees, from the protection of whose broad shade we looked forth upon the sunny world). But the wide landscape had a peaceful, plenteous, prosperous aspect, that was comfortable to one's spirit and exceedingly pleasant to the eye.

After our walk we came down into the valley, and I went with the children to the cold bath--a beautiful deep spring of water, as clear as crystal and almost as cold as ice, surrounded by whitewashed walls, which, rising above it to a discreet height, screen it only from earthly observers. No roof covers the watery chamber but the green spreading branches of tall trees and the blue summer sky, into which you seem to be stepping as you disturb the surface of the water. Into this lucid liquid gem I gave my chickens and myself, overhead, three breathless dips--it is too cold to do more,--and since that I have done nothing but write to you.

You ask what is said to Sydney Smith's "petition." Why, the honest men of the country say, "'Tis true, 'tis pity; pity 'tis, 'tis true." It is thought that Pennsylvania will ultimately pay, and not repudiate, but it will be some time first. God bless you, my dear Hal. I have not been well and am miserably depressed, but the country always agrees excellently with me.

Ever yours, FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, Sunday, 9th, 1843. MY DEAR T----,

After last Sunday's awful heat, it became positively impossible to keep the children any longer in Philadelphia; and they were accordingly removed to the Yellow Springs, a healthy and pleasant bathing-place at three hours' distance from the city. On Saturday morning their nurse, the only servant we have, thought proper to disapprove of my deportment towards her, and left me to the maternal delights of dressing, washing, and looking after my children during that insufferable heat. Miss H---- was entirely incapacitated, and I feared was going to be ill, and I have reason to thank Heaven that I am provided with the constitution that I have, for it is certain that I need it. On Sunday night a violent storm cooled the atmosphere, and on Monday morning the nurse was good enough to forgive me, and came back: so that the acme of my trial did not last too long. On Tuesday the children were removed to the country, and though the physician and my own observation assured me that F---- required sea-bathing, it is an unspeakable relief to me to see her out of the city, and to find this place healthy and pleasant for them. The country is pretty, the air pure, the baths delightful; and my chicks, thank God, already beginning to improve in health and spirits.

As for the accommodations, the less said about them the better. We inhabit a sort of very large barn, or barrack, divided into sundry apartments, large and small; and having gleaned the whole house to furnish our drawing-room, that chamber now contains one rickety table, one horse-hair sofa that has three feet, and six wooden chairs, of which it may be said that they have several legs among them; but I must add that we have the whole house to ourselves, and our meals are brought to us from the "Great Hotel" across the street,--privileges for which it behoves me to be humbly thankful, and so I am. If the children thrive I shall be satisfied; and as for accommodation, or even common comfort, my habitation and mode of life in our Philadelphia boarding-house have been so far removed from any ideas of comfort or even decency that I ever entertained, that the whitewashed walls, bare rooms, and tumble-down verandas of my present residence are but little more so.... I suppose there was something to like in Mr. Webster's speech, since you are surprised at my not liking it; but what was there to like? The one he delivered on the laying of the foundation-stone of the monument (on Bunker's Hill, near Boston) pleased me very much indeed; I thought some parts of it very fine. But the last one displeased me utterly.... Pray send me word all about that place by the sea-side, with the wonderful name of "Quoge." My own belief is that the final "e" you tack on to it is an affected abbreviation for the sake of refinement, and that it is, by name and nature, really "Quagmire."

Believe me always Yours truly, F. A. B.

YELLOW SPRINGS, July 12th, 1843. DEAR GRANNY,

The intelligence contained in your letter [of the second marriage of the Rev. Frederick Sullivan, whose first wife was Lady Dacre's only child] gave me for an instant a painful shock, but before I had ended it that feeling had given place to the conviction that the contemplated change at the vicarage was probably for the happiness and advantage of all concerned. The tone of B----'s letter satisfied me, and for her and her sister's feeling upon the subject I was chiefly anxious. About you, my dearest Granny, I was not so solicitous; however deep your sentiment about the circumstance may be, you have lived long and suffered much, and have learned to accept sorrow wisely, let it come in what shape it will. The impatience of youth renders suffering very terrible to it; and the eager desire for happiness which belongs to the beginning of life makes sorrow appear like some unnatural accident (almost a personal injury), a sort of horrid surprise, instead of the all but daily business, and part of the daily bread of existence, as one grows by degrees to find that it is.

His daughter's feeling about Mr. Sullivan's marriage being what it is, the marriage itself appears to me wise and well; and I have no doubt that it will bring a blessing to the home at the vicarage and its dear inmates. Pray remember me most kindly to Mr. Sullivan, and beg him to accept my best wishes for his happiness, and that of all who belong to him; the latter part of my wish I know he is mainly instrumental in fulfilling himself. May he find his reward accordingly!

Of myself, my dear friend, what shall I tell you? I am in good health, thank God! and as much good spirits as inevitably belong to good health and a sound constitution in middle life....

The intense heat of the last month had made both my children ill, and a week ago they were removed to this place, called the Yellow Springs, from a fine mineral source, the waters of which people bathe in and drink. Round it is gathered a small congregation of rambling farm-houses, built for the accommodation of visitors. The country is pretty and well cultivated, and the air remarkable for its purity and healthiness; and here we have taken lodgings, and shall probably remain during all the heat of the next six weeks, after which I suppose we shall return to town.

I wish you could see my present locale. The house we are in is the furthest from the "Hotel" (as it is magnificently called), and is a large, rambling, whitewashed edifice, with tumble-down wooden piazzas (verandas, as we should call them) surrounding its ground-floor. This consists of one very large room, intended for a public dining-room, with innumerable little cells round it, all about twelve feet by thirteen, which are the bedrooms. One of these spacious sleeping-apartments, opening on one side to the common piazza and on the other to the common eating-room, is appropriated to me as a "private parlor," as it is called; and being at present, most fortunately, the only inmates of this huge barrack, we have collected into this "extra exclusive" saloon all the furniture that we could glean out of all the other rooms in the house; and what do you think we have got? Two tiny wooden tables, neither of them large enough to write upon; a lame horse-hair sofa, and six lame wooden chairs. As the latter, however, are not all lame of the same leg, it is quite a pretty gymnastic exercise to balance one's self as one sits by turns upon each of them, bringing dexterously into play all the different muscles necessary to maintain one's seat on any of them. It makes sitting quite a different process from what I have ever known it to be, and separates it entirely from the idea usually connected with it, of rest. But this we call luxury, and, compared with the condition of the other rooms (before we had stripped them of their contents), so it undoubtedly is. The walls of this boudoir of mine are roughly whitewashed, the floor roughly boarded, and here I abide with my chicks. The decided improvement in their health and looks and spirits, since we left that horrible city, is a great deal better than sofas and armchairs to me, or anything that would be considered elsewhere the mere decencies of life; and having the means of privacy and cleanliness, my only two absolute indispensables, I take this rather primitive existence pleasantly enough. This house is built at the foot of a low hill, the sides of which are cultivated; while the immediate summit retains its beautiful crest of noble trees, from beneath which to look out over the wide landscape is a very agreeable occupation towards sunset.

Chester County, as this is called, is the richest, agriculturally speaking, in Pennsylvania; and the face of the country is certainly one of the comeliest, well-to-do, smiling, pleasant earth's faces that can be seen on a summer's day; the variety of the different tinted crops (among them the rich green of the maize, or Indian corn, which we have not in England), clothing the hill-sides and running like golden bays into the green forest that once covered them from base to summit, and still crowns every highest point, forms the gayest coat of many colors for the whole rural region.

The human interest in the landscape is supplied not by village, mansion, parsonage, or church, but by numerous small isolated farm-houses, their white walls gleaming in the intense sunlight from amidst the trim verdure of their orchards, and their large barns and granaries surveying complacently far and wide the abundant harvests that are to be gathered into their capacious walls. The comfort, solidity, loneliness, and inelegance, not to say ugliness, of these rural dwellings is highly characteristic, the latter quality being to a certain degree modified by distance; the others represent very pleasingly, in the midst of the prosperous prospect, the best features of the institutions which govern the land--security, freedom, independence.

There is nothing visibly picturesque or poetical in the whole scene; nothing has a hallowed association for memory, or an exciting historical interest, or a charm for the imagination. But under this bright and ever-shining sky the objects and images that the eye encounters are all cheerful, pleasing, peaceful, and satisfactorily suggestive of the blessings of industry and the secure repose of modest, moderate prosperity.

Dearest Granny, I had not intended to cross my letter to you; but the young ones will decipher the scrawl for you, and I flatter myself that you will not object to my filling my paper as full as it will hold. These four small pages, even when they are crossed, make but a poor amount of communication compared with the full and frequent personal intercourse I have enjoyed with you.

What a shocking mess you are all making of it in Ireland just now! I hear too that you are threatened with bad crops. Should this be true, I do not wonder at my lord's croaking, for what will the people do?

The water we bathe in here is strongly impregnated with iron, and so cold that very few people go into the spring itself. I do: and when the thermometer is at 98° in the shade, a plunge into water below 50° is something of a shock. B---- would like it, and so do I. Will you give my affectionate remembrance to my lord, and

Believe me always, dear Granny, Your attached F. A. B.

YELLOW SPRINGS, 19th July, 1843.

And so, my dear T----, you are a "tied-by-the-leg" (as we used, in our laughing days, to call the penniless young Attachés to Legations)? I am heartily sorry, as yours is not diplomatic but physical infirmity; and would very readily, had I been anywhere within possible reach, have occupied the empty arm-chair in your library, and "charmed your annoys" to the best of my ability.... Dear me! through how long a lapse of years your desire that I would undertake a translation of Schiller's "Fiesco" leads me! When I was between sixteen and seventeen years old, I actually began an adaptation of it to the English stage; but partly from thinking the catastrophe unmanageable, and from various other motives, I never finished it: but it was an early literary dream of mine, and you have recalled to me a very happy period of my life in reminding me of that labor of love. You perhaps imagine from this that I understood German, which I then did not; my acquaintance with the German drama existing only through very admirably executed literal French translations, which formed part of an immense collection of plays, the dramatic literature of Europe in innumerable volumes, which was one of my favorite studies in my father's library.

I am not, however, at all of your opinion, that "Fiesco" is the best of Schiller's plays. I think "Don Carlos," and "William Tell," and especially "Wallenstein," finer; the last, indeed, finest of them all. My own especial favorite, however, for many years (though I do not at all think it his best play) was "Joan of Arc." As for his violation of history in "Wallenstein" and "Mary Stuart," I think little of that compared with the singular insensibility he has shown to the glory of the French heroine's death, which is the more remarkable because he generally, above most poets, especially recognizes the sublimity of moral greatness; and how far does the red pile of the religious and patriotic martyr, surrounded by her terrified and cowardly English enemies and her more basely cowardly and ungrateful French friends, transcend in glory, the rose-colored battle-field apotheosis Schiller has awarded her! Joan of Arc seems to me never yet to have been done justice to by either poet or historian, and yet what a subject for both! The treatment of the character of Joan of Arc in "Henry VI." is one reason why I do not believe it to be wholly Shakespeare's. He never, it is true, writes out of the spirit of his time, neither was he ever absolutely and servilely subject to it--for example, giving in Shylock the delineation of the typical Jew as conceived in his day, think of that fine fierce vindication of their common humanity with which he challenges the Christian Venetians, Solanio and Solarino--"Hath not a Jew eyes?" etc.

By-the-by, did you ever hear a whisper of a suggestion that Joan of Arc was not burned? There is such a tradition, that she was rescued, reprieved, and lived to a fine old age, though rather scorched.

And now, at the fag end of my paper, to answer your question about Leonora Lavagna. I think, beyond all doubt, the sentiment Schiller makes her express as occurring to her at the altar perfectly natural. When the character and position of Leonora are considered, her love for Fiesco--however, chiefly composed of admiration for his person and more amiable and brilliant personal qualities--must inevitably have derived some of its strength from her generous patriotism and insulted family pride; and nothing, in my opinion, can be more probable than that she should have see in him the deliverer of Genoa, at the moment when every faculty of her heart and mind was absorbed in the contemplation of all the noble qualities with which she believed him endowed.

The love of different women is, of course, made up of various elements, according to their natural temperament, mental endowments, and educated habits of thought; and it seems to me the sort of sentiment Leonora describes herself as feeling towards Fiesco at the moment of their marriage is eminently characteristic of such a woman. So much for the Countess Lavagna.

I think you are quite mistaken in calling Thekla a "merely ideal" woman; she is a very real German woman--rarely perhaps, but to be found in all the branches of the Anglo-saxon tree, in England certainly, and even in America.

To these subjects of very pleasing interest to me succeeds in your letter the exclamation elicited by poor Mrs. D----'s misfortune, "Blessed are they who die in the Lord!" to which let me answer, "Yea, rather, blessed are they who live in the Lord!" Our impatience of suffering may make death sometimes appear the most desirable thing in all God's universe; yet who can tell what trials or probations may be ordained for us hereafter? The idea that there "may be yet more work to do," probably must be (for how few finish their task here before the night cometh when "no man can work," as far as this world is concerned, at any rate!), is a frequent speculation with me; so that whenever, in sheer weariness of spirit, I have been tempted to wish for death, or in moments of desperation felt almost ready to seize upon it, the thought, not of what I may have to suffer, but what I must have to do, i.e. the work left undone here, checks the rash wish and rasher imagination, and I feel as if I must sit down again to try and work. But weariness of life makes the idea of existence prolonged beyond death sometimes almost oppressive, and it seems to me that there are times when one would be ready to consent to lie down in one's grave and become altogether as the clods of the valley, relinquishing one's immortal birthright simply for rest. To be sure you will answer that, for rest to be pleasurable, consciousness must accompany it; but oh, how I should like to be consciously unconscious for a little while!--which possibly may strike you as nonsense.

I dare say women are, as you say, like cats in a great many respects. I acknowledge myself like one, only in the degree of electricity in my hair and skin; I never knew anybody but a cat who had so much.

Thank you for the paper about Theodore Hook. I knew him and disliked him. He was very witty and humorous, certainly; but excessively coarse in his talk and gross in his manners, and was hardly ever strictly sober after dinner....

PHILADELPHIA, August 4th, 1843. MY DEAREST HAL,

Indeed I am not spending my summer with my friends at Lenox, ... but boarding at a third-rate watering-place about thirty miles from Philadelphia, where there is a fine mineral spring and baths, remarkably pure and bracing air, and a pretty, pleasant country, under which combination of favorable influences we have all improved very much, and dear little F---- looks once more as if she would live through the summer, which she did not when we left Philadelphia. As for our accommodations at this place, they are as comfortless as it is possible to imagine, but that really signifies comparatively little.... I ride, and walk, and fish, and look abroad on the sweet kindly face of Nature, and commune gratefully with my Father in heaven whenever I do so; and the hours pass swiftly by, and life is going on, and the rapid flight of time is a source of rejoicing to me.... I laughed a very sad laugh at your asking me if my watch and chain had been recovered or replaced. How? By whom? With what? No, indeed, nor are they likely to be either recovered or replaced. I offered, as a sort of inducement to semi-honesty on the part of the thief or thieves, to give up the watch and pencil-case to whoever would bring back my dear chain, but in vain. Had I possessed any money, I should have offered the largest possible reward to recover it; but, as it is, I was forced to let it go, without being able to take even the usual methods resorted to for the recovery of lost valuables. I will now bid you good-bye, dearest Hal. I have no more to tell you; and whenever I mention or think of that chain, I feel so sad that I hate to speak or move. I flatter myself that, were you to see me now, you would approve highly of my appearance. I am about half the size I was when last you saw me.

God bless you, dear. I am, therefore, only half yours,

FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, August 15th, 1843. MY DEAR T----,

Yesterday, at three o'clock, I was told that we must all return to town by five, which accordingly was accomplished, not without strenuous exertion and considerable inconvenience in making our preparations in so short a time. I do not know in the least whether we are to remain here now or go elsewhere, or what is to become of us....

I do not know the lines you allude to as mine, called "The Memory of the Past," and think you must have written them yourself in your sleep, and then accused me of them, which is not genteel. I have no recollection of any lines of my own so called. Depend upon it, you dreamt them. I hope you had the conscience to make good verses, since you did it in my name. I have not supposed you either "neglectful or dead." I knew you were at Quoge, which Mr. G---- reported to be a very nice place....

You have misunderstood me entirely upon the subject of truth in works of fiction and art; and I think, if you refer to my letter, if you have it, you will find it so. I hold truth sacred everywhere, but merely lamented over Schiller's departure from it in the instance of "Joan of Arc" more than in that of "Wallenstein."

It has been an annoyance to me to leave the Yellow Springs, independently of the hurried and disagreeable mode of our doing so. I like the country, which is really very pretty, and I have been almost happy once or twice while riding over those hills and through those valleys, with no influences about me but the holy and consolatory ministerings of nature.

My activity of temperament and love of system and order (perhaps you did not know that I possessed those last tendencies) always induce me to organize a settled mode of life for myself wherever I am, no matter for how short a space of time, and in the absence of nervous irritation or excitement, regular physical exercise, and steady intellectual occupation, always produce in me a (considering all things) wonderfully cheerful existence; ... and my spirits, obedient to the laws of my excellent constitution, rise above my mental and sentimental ailments, and rejoice, like those of all healthy animals, in mere physical well-being....

Good-bye, dear T----. Remember me most kindly to S----; and

Believe me always yours very truly, F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, August 22nd, 1843. MY DEAR T----,

I am not sure that cordial sympathy is not the greatest service that one human being can offer another in this woe-world. Certainly, without it, all other service is not worth accepting; and it is so strengthening and encouraging a thing to know one's self kindly cared for by one's kind, that I incline to think few benefits that we confer upon each other in this life are greater, if so great....

The horrible heat, and the admonishing pallor that is again overspreading my poor children's cheeks, has led to a determination of again sending them out of town; and I heard yesterday that on Saturday next they are to go to the neighborhood of West Chester. The fact of going out of town again is very agreeable to me on my own account, letting alone my sincere rejoicing that my children are to be removed from this intolerable atmosphere; but all this packing and unpacking which devolves upon me is very laborious and fatiguing, and the impossibility of obtaining any settled order in my life afflicts me unreasonably....

Peccavi! The verses you mentioned are mine, and you certainly might have written much better ones for me in your sleep, if you had taken the least pains. They were indited as many as twenty years ago, and how Mr. Knickerbocker came possessed of them is a mystery to me....

I want you to do me a favor, which I have been thinking to ask you all this week past, and was now just like to have forgotten. Will you ask John O'Sullivan if he would care to have a review of Tennyson's Poems from me, for the Knickerbocker, and what he will give me for such review? I am compelled to be anxious for "compensation." Send me an answer to this inquiry, please; and believe me

Very truly yours, F. A. B.

P.S.--Lord Morpeth is a lovely man, and I love him.

PHILADELPHIA, August 25th, 1843. DEAR GRANNY,

A thousand thanks for your kind and comfortable letter, from the tone of which it was easy to see that you were "as well as can be expected," both body and soul. Indeed, my dearest Granny, it is true that we do not perceive half our blessings, from the mere fact of their uninterrupted possession. Of our health this seems to me especially true; and it is too often the case that nothing but its suspension or the sight of its deplorable loss in others awakens us to a sense of our great privilege in having four sound limbs and a body free from racking torture or enfeebling, wasting disease. As for me, what I should do without my health I cannot conceive. All my good spirits (and I have a wonderful supply, considering all things) come to me from my robust physical existence, my good digestion, and perfect circulation. Heaven knows, if my cheerfulness had not a good tough root in these, as long as these last, it would fare ill with me; and I fear my spiritual courage and mental energy would prove exceedingly weak in their encounter with adverse circumstances, but for the admirable constitution with which I have been blessed, and which serves me better than I serve myself....

On the tenth of next month I am going up to the dear and pleasant hill-country of Massachusetts, to pay my friends a visit, which, though I must make it very short, will prove a most acceptable season of refreshment to my heart and spirit, from which I expect to derive courage and cheerfulness for the rest of the year, as I shall certainly not see any of them again till next spring, for they are about two hundred and fifty miles away from me, which, even in this country of quite unlimited space, is not considered exactly next-door neighborhood.

You ask after "the farm," which is much honored by your remembrance. It is let, and we are at present living in a boarding-house in town, and I rather think shall continue doing so; but I really do not know in the least what is to become of me from day to day....

I am grieved to hear of the affliction of the Greys. Pray remember me very affectionately to Lady G. Her father's illness must be indeed a sore sorrow to her, devoted as she is to him.

My dear Granny, do not you be induced to croak about England. She may have to go through a sharp operation or two; but, depend upon it, that noble and excellent constitution is by no means vitally impaired, and she will yet head the nations of the earth, in all great and good and glorious things, for a long time to come, in spite of Irish rows and Welsh consonants (is there anything else in Wales? How funny a revolution must be without a vowel in it!) ... I believe that great and momentous changes are impending in England; and when I suggest among them as possible future events the doing away with the law of primogeniture, hereditary legislation, and the Church establishment, of course you will naturally say that I think England is going to the dogs faster even than you do. But I think England will survive all her political changes, be they what they may, and, as long as the national character remains unchanged, will maintain her present position among the foremost peoples of the world; with which important and impressive prophecy comfort yourself, dear Granny.

We are going out of town, to which we returned a fortnight ago, to-morrow at half-past six in the morning, and it is now past midnight, and I have every mortal and immortal thing to pack with my own single pair of hands, which is Irish, Lord bless us! So good-night, dear Granny.

Believe me ever your affectionate FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, August 25th, 1843.

You will pay no more, dear Hal, for this huge sheet of paper, being single, I believe, than for its half; and I do not see why I should cheat myself or you so abominably as by writing on such a miserable allowance as the half sheet I have just finished to you.

Mr. Furness's abolition sermons have thinned his congregation a little--not much.... There is no other Unitarian church in Philadelphia, where the sect is looked upon with holy horror, pious commiseration, and Christian reprobation, but where, nevertheless, Mr. Furness's own character is held in the highest esteem and veneration.

Your question about society here puzzles me a good deal, from the difficulty of making you understand the absolute absence of anything to which you would give that name. I do not think there is anything, either, which foreigners call société intime in Philadelphia. During a certain part of the year certain wealthy individuals give a certain number of entertainments, evening parties, balls, etc. The summer months are passed by most of the well-to-do inhabitants somewhere out of the city, generally at large public-houses, at what are called fashionable watering-places. Everybody has a street acquaintance with everybody; but I know of no such thing as the easy, intimate society which you seem to think inevitably the result of the institutions, habits, and fortunes in this country.

It does not strike me that social intercourse is easy at all here; the dread of opinion and the desire of conformity seem to me to give a tone of distrust and caution to every individual man and woman, utterly destructive of all freedom of conversation, producing a flatness and absence of all interest that is quite indescribable. I have hitherto always lived in the country, and mixing very little with the Philadelphians have supposed that the mere civil formality at which my intercourse with most of them stops short would lead necessarily to some more intimate intercourse if I ever lived in the city. I now perceive, however, that their communion with each other is limited to this exchange of morning visits, of course almost exclusively among the women; and that society, such as you and I understand it, does not exist here.

Yet, of course, there must be the materials for it, clever and pleasant men and women, and I had sometimes thought, when I foresaw the probability of our leaving our country house and establishing ourselves in the city, that I should find some compensation in the society which I hoped I might be able to gather about me; ... but I am now quite deprived of any such resource as any attempt of the kind might have produced, by my present position in a boarding-house, where I inhabit my bedroom, contriving, for sightliness' sake, to sleep on a wretched sofa-bed that my room by day may look as decent and little encumbered as possible; but where the presence of wash-hand-stand and toilette apparatus necessarily enforces the absence of visitors, except in public rooms open to everybody.... I have received a great many morning visits, and one or two invitations to evening parties, but I do not, of course, like to accept civilities which I have no means of reciprocating, and so I have as little to expect in the way of social recreation as I think anybody living in a large town can have. So much for your inquiries about my social resources in this country. Had I a house of my own in Philadelphia, I should not at all despair of gradually collecting about me a society that would satisfy me perfectly well; but as it is, or rather as I am, the thing is entirely out of the question.

Of the discomfort and disorder of our mode of life I cannot easily give you a notion, for you know nothing of the sort, and, until now, neither did I. The absence of decent regularity in our habits, and the slovenliness of our whole existence, is peculiarly trying to me, who have a morbid love of order, system, and regularity, and a positive delight in the decencies and elegancies of civilized life.

God bless you, dear.

Your affectionate FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, September 1st, 1843. MY DEAR T----,

I know not how long your letter had been in Philadelphia, because I have been out of town, and in a place so difficult of access that letters are seldom forwarded thither without being lost or delayed long enough to be only fit for losing.

I told you of our sudden removal from the Yellow Springs. In the succeeding fortnight, which we spent in town, the children began again to droop and languish and grow pale, and it was determined to send them into the country again: rooms have been accordingly hired for us three miles beyond West Chester, which is seven miles from the nearest railroad station on the Columbia railroad, altogether about forty miles from town, but for want of regular traffic and proper means of conveyance an exceedingly tedious and unpleasant drive thence to the said farm. Here there is indeed pure air for the children, and a blessed reprieve from the confinement of the city; but so uncivilized a life for any one who has ever been accustomed to the usual decencies of civilization, that it keeps me in a constant state of amazement.

We eat at the hours and table of these worthy people, and I am a little starved, as I find it difficult to get up a dinner appetite before one o'clock in the day; and after that nothing is known in the shape of food but tea at six o'clock. We eat with two-pronged iron forks; i.e. we who are "sopisticate" do. The more sensible Arcadians, of course, eat exclusively with their knives. The farming men and boys come in to the table from their work, without their coats and with their shirt-sleeves rolled up above their elbows; and my own nursemaid, and the servant-of-all-work of the house, and any visitors who may look in upon our hostess, sit down with us promiscuously to feed; all which, I confess, makes me a little melancholy. It is nonsense talking about positive equality; these people are sorry associates for me, and so, I am sure, am I for them.

To-day I came to town to endeavor to procure some of the common necessaries that we require: table implements that we can eat with, and lights by which we may be able to pursue our occupations after dark.

I read your speech with great pleasure; it was good in every way. I am glad you do not withdraw yourself from the field of action where your like are so much wanted. I cannot give up my hope and confidence in the institutions of your country; they are the expectation of the world; and if the Americans themselves, by word or deed, proclaim their scheme of free government a failure, it seems to me that the future condition of the human race is ominously darkened, and that all endeavor after progress or improvement is a fruitless struggle towards an unattainable end. But this is not so. Your people will yet prove it, and it will and must be through the influence and agency of worthy men like yourself, to whom fitly belongs the task of rallying this faithless people, flying from their standards in the great world-conflict. Call them back, such of you as have voices that can be heard; for your nation is the vanguard of the race, and if they desert their trust its degradation will be protracted for long years to come.

The despondency of some of your best men is deplorable, and the selfish discouragement in which they withdraw from the fight, giving place to public evil for the sake of their personal quiet, a fatal omen to the country. It is curiously unlike the spirit of Englishmen. Never, certainly, were good men and true so needed anywhere as here at this moment, when the noblest principles that men are capable of recognizing in the form of a government seem about to be cast down from the rightful supremacy your fathers gave them, and the light of freedom which they kindled to lighten the world extinguished in distrust and dismay.

God bless you and prosper you in every good work. Remember me most kindly to S----, and believe me always

Yours very truly, F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, September 9th, 1843.

Your English is undoubtedly better than Cicero's Latin to me, my dear T----, inasmuch as I understand the one and not the other. I shall not stop on my way through New York, on Monday, nor my way back, except to spend a Sunday in your city, when I shall be very glad to see S---- and you.

I am disappointed at the uncertainty you express about being in Lenox while I am there.

Can you ascertain for me whether the Harpers, the New York publishers, would be willing to publish a volume of Fugitive Poems for me, and would give me anything for them? If it is not too much trouble to ascertain this, it would be doing me a great service....

I write in haste, but remain ever yours,

F. A. B.

DEAR T----,

I shall not dine with you to-day for various, all good, reasons, and send you word to that effect, simply because it would not be so civil, either to S---- or you, to leave my excuse till the time when I should present myself.

I had hoped to have returned to Philadelphia with Mr. F---- this morning, but I am to remain till after Thursday, when we were to have given a dinner to Macready. He called this morning, however, and said he had another engagement for Thursday, so what will be done in the matter of our proposed entertainment to him I know not.

I hope your eyes are not the worse for that hateful theatre last night. You cannot imagine how that sort of thing, to which I was once so used, now excites and irritates my nerves. The music, the lights, the noise, the applause, the acting, the grand play itself, "Macbeth,"--it was all violent doses of stimulant; and I begin to think my mental constitution is like gunpowder, only unignitable when in the water: I suppose that accounts for my affection for water, apart from fishing.

I have got the greatest quantity of letters to write, and must begin upon Tennyson, so I shall not want for occupation while I am kept here.

Yours ever truly, F. A. B.

NEW YORK, September 26th, 1843. DEAREST HAL,

I was up till past two o'clock last night, and up at 5.30 this morning: I have travelled half the day, from Philadelphia to New York, and shopped the rest of the day, and am now steaming up the Hudson to Albany, on my way to Lenox, where I am going to spend a few days with my friends the Sedgwicks. Although I am very weary, and my eyes ache for want of sleep, I must write to you before I go to bed; for once up in Berkshire, I shall have but little time to myself, and I would not for a great deal that the steamer should go to England without some word from me to you.... So here I am wandering up forlornly enough, with poor Margery for my attendant, who appears to me to be in the last stage of a consumption, and to whom this little excursion may perhaps be slightly beneficial, and will certainly be very pleasurable.... I shall in all probability see none of the Sedgwicks again for a year....

I suppose, dear Hal, we are crossing the Tappan Zee (the broadest part of the Hudson River, where its rapid current spreads from shore to shore into the dimensions of a wide lake), and the boat rocks so much that I feel sick, and must leave off writing and go to bed, after all. God bless you, dear. Good-night.

Dearest Hal, this letter, which I had hoped to finish on board the Hudson night-boat, was cut short by my fatigue and the rocking of the vessel; and, as I expected, during my stay at Lenox no interval of leisure was left me to do so....

I sprained my ankle slightly, jumping from off a fence; and though I have carefully abstained from using my foot since I did so, it is still so weak that I am afraid of standing upon it much, and must consequently abide the results (invariable with me) of want of exercise, headache, sideache, and nervous depression and irritability. When I get to Philadelphia, if I am no better, I will hire a horse for a little while, and shake myself to rights.

God bless you, dear Hal. Good-bye.

I am ever yours, FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, October 10th, 1843. MY DEAREST HAL,

How much I thank you for your generosity to me! for the watch you are sending me, which I have not yet received. I cannot value it more than I did that precious chain, the loss of which, happening at a time when I was every way most unhappy, really afflicted me deeply.

I hope nothing will happen to this new remembrance of yours and token of your love. I shall feel most anxious till it arrives, and then I think I shall sleep with it round my neck, so great will be my horror of having it stolen from me in this wretched and disorderly lodging-house, where, as it is, I am in perpetual misery lest I should have left any closet or drawer in my bed-room unfastened, and where we are obliged to lock our sitting-room if we leave it for a quarter of an hour, lest our property should be stolen out of it,--a state of anxious and suspicious caution which is as odious as it is troublesome....

When I arrived in New York last Sunday morning on my return from Berkshire, and was preparing to start for Philadelphia the next day, I found I was to stay in New York to meet and greet Mr. Macready, who had just landed in America, and to whom we are to give an entertainment at the Astor House, as we have no house in Philadelphia to which we can invite him....

My next errand, while I was out to-day, was to go and see a person who has thought proper to go out of her mind about me. She is poor and obscure, the sister of a tailor in this town; she had a little independence of her own, but lent it to the State of Pennsylvania, after the fashion of Sydney Smith, and has lost it, or at any rate the income of it, which, after all, is all that signifies to her, as she is no longer young and will probably not live to see the State grow honest, which its friends and well-wishers confidently predict that it will.

This poor woman is really and positively mad about me, as I think you will allow when I tell you that she is never happy when she sees me unless she has hold of my hand or my gown; that she has bought a portrait of me by Sully, over which she has put a ducal coronet, as she says I am the Duchess of Ormond! It is really a serious effort of good nature in me to go and see her, for her crazy adoration of me is at once ludicrous and painful. But my visits are a most lively pleasure to her--she thanks me for coming with the tears in her eyes, poor thing; and it would be brutal in me to withhold from her a gratification apparently so intense, because to afford it her is irksome and disagreeable to me. Her name is N----, and she told me to-day (but that may have been only another demonstration of her craziness) that there was a large disputed inheritance in Ireland left to heirs unknown of that name; that the true heirs could not be found, and that she really believed she might be entitled to it if she only knew how to set about establishing her right. She is the daughter of an English or Irish man, and her family were well connected in England (I couldn't help thinking, while she was talking, of your and my uncle John's dear Guilford). What a curious thing it would be if this poor, obscure, old, ugly, half-insane woman were really entitled to such a property! She is tolerably well educated too, a good French and Italian scholar, and a reader of obsolete books. She is a very strange creature.

I forget whether I told you that I had taken Margery up to Lenox with me, in the hope that the change of air and scene might be of benefit to her; but ever since her return she has been ill in her bed, poor thing! and though the only servant-girl she had has left her, and she is in the most forlorn and wretched condition possible, neither her mother nor her sisters have been near her to help or comfort her--such is the Roman Catholic horror of a divorced woman (for she has at length sued for and obtained her divorce from her worthless husband). And so, I suppose, they will let her die, such being, it seems, their notion of what is right.... Poor woman! her life has been one entire and perfect misery....

God bless you, dear. Good-bye.

Ever yours, F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, October 3rd, 1843. MY DEAR T----,

I have just received, by Harnden's Express, my Tennyson, which I had left at Lenox, and with it your old note, written to me while I was yet there, which the conscientious folk sent me down. It seems odd to read all your directions about my departure from the dear hill-country and my arrival in New York. How far swept down the current of time already seem the pleasant hours spent up there! You do not know how earnestly I desire to live up there. I do believe mountains and hills are kindred of mine--larger and smaller relations, taller and shorter cousins; for my heart expands and rejoices and beats more freely among them, and doubtless, in the days which "I can hardly remember" (as Rosalind says of her Irish Rat-ship), I was a bear or a wolf, or what your people call a "panter" (i.e. a panther), or at the very least a wild-cat, with unlimited range of forest and mountain. [The forests and hill-tops of that part of Massachusetts had, when this letter was written, harbored, within memory of man, bears, panthers, and wild-cats.] That cottage by the lake-side haunts me; and to be able to realize that day-dream is now certainly as near an approach to happiness as I can ever contemplate.

I am working at the Tennyson, and shall soon have it ready. Tell me, if you can, where and how I am to send it to John O'Sullivan.

Thank you, my dear T----, for your and S----'s civility to C---- H----. His people are excellent friends of mine, and you cannot conceive anything more disagreeable--painful to me, I might say--than the mortification I felt in receiving him in my present uncomfortable abode, and being literally unable to offer him a decent cup of tea.

It is an age since I saw Mr. G----, so can give you no intelligence of him. J---- C---- and the O----s form my société intime. They come and sit with me sometimes of an evening, otherwise mon chez moi is undisturbed and lonely enough. I walk a great deal every day, for the weather is lovely, and the blessed blue sky an inexhaustible source of delight and enjoyment to me.

To-morrow I am obliged to go out to the farm upon business. I shall go on horseback (upon the legs of my Tennyson article), and expect not only pleasure but profit from my old habitual exercise; but I would a little rather not be going there at all.

I went all over our town house yesterday. It is a fine house, and has an excellent garden, with quite large trees in it. It is let unfurnished for about half the price which such a house in London would command. I confess it was rather a trial to return from looking at this large house of--mine? to the "Maison Vauquier" (see Balzac's "Père Goriot") which we inhabit.

Thank you for your offer of helping me with my review. I could not possibly think of using your eyes, precious and perilled as they are, instead of my own. I dare say I shall manage with my own translated acquaintance with Æschylus and Homer. However, and at any rate, if I find it necessary to cram, I will not do so by proxy.

Good-bye. Give my kindest love to S----.... How is Master C----? How is his voice? Has he worked out that problem yet about that vexed question on which he threw so much light at your house, and about which you were so tiresome? Seriously, that lad is a clever fellow; and I assure you we perpetrated some pretty profound metaphysics between your house and the Astor Hotel that wet Sunday evening.

Believe me yours truly, F. A. B.

[The young gentleman alluded to in the above letter, who was visiting the United States, and had brought letters of introduction to my friends in New York, was the son of an old Yorkshire family, among whom had existed for several generations a passionate desire to fly, and a firm conviction that they could invent a machine which would enable them to do so. The last I heard of that young Icarus above mentioned was from two of his friends and companions, the sons of Mrs. Norton, who, standing with me above the tremendous precipice called the Salto di Tiberio, which plunges from the edge of the rocks of Capri straight down into the Mediterranean, told me they had had all the difficulty in the world in preventing C---- from launching forth upon his flying machine from that stupendous pier into mid air, and quite as infallibly mid ocean. With infinite entreaties they finally persuaded him to send forth his machine, unfreighted with human life, on its experimental trip. He did so, and his bird, turning ignominious somersaults on its way, at length found a perch, and folded its wings on a hoary rock-anchored tree that stretched out an arm of succor to it above the abyss, and there, perhaps, it still roosts; and elsewhere, perhaps, its author is pursuing other flights.]

PHILADELPHIA, Wednesday, May 15th, 1844. DEAR MRS. JAMESON,

My last letter to you was pretty nearly filled with dismal private affairs, and now, Heaven knows, all residents in Philadelphia have a gloomy story to tell of public ones. We have had fearful riots here last week between the low American population and the imported population from Ireland, who have also taken the opportunity of the present anarchy and confusion to indulge in violent exhibitions of their own special home-brewed feud of Protestant against Catholic. A few nights ago there was a general mob-crusade against the Roman Catholic churches, several of which, as well as various private dwellings, were burnt to the ground. The city was lighted from river to river with the glare of these conflagrations--this city of "brotherly love;" whole streets looking like pandemonium avenues of brass and copper in the lurid reflected light. Your people have lost little of their agreeable combined facetiousness and ferocity, as I think you will allow when I tell you that, while a large Catholic church was burning, the Orange party caused a band of music to play "Boyne Water;" and when the cross fell from above the porch of the building, these same Christian folk gave three cheers. "Where," I suppose you exclaim, "were the civil authorities and military force?" All on the ground of action, compelled to be idle spectators of these outrages, because they had no warrant to act, and could not shoot down the Sovereign People, even while committing them, without the Sovereign People's leave.

The popular jealousy of power, which always exists more or less under republican institutions, interferes not a little with the efficiency of an organized police or other abiding check upon public effervescence. Rioters, therefore, in times of excitement have generally a fair start of the law, and are able to accomplish plenty of mischief before they can be prevented, because a powerful force of preventive police and municipal officers, invested with permanent authority, are abominations in the eyes of a free and independent American citizen.

As, however, by a very wholesome law, the city pays for all damages committed by public violence upon property, the whole population of the town will be taxed for the spree of these lively gentry; and under the pressure of this salutary arrangement the whole militia turned out, all the decent citizens organized themselves into patrols and policemen, and by the time the riot had raged three days, and the city had incurred a heavy debt for burnt and pillaged property, a stop was put to the disorder. Cannon were planted round all the remaining Catholic churches to protect them; the streets were lined with soldiers; every householder was out on guard in his particular district during the night, and by dint of effectual but, unfortunately, rather tardy measures order has been restored.

My own affairs are far from flourishing, and I am heartily glad to have anything else to speak of, little cheerful as the anything else may be....

I hope all is well with you. Geraldine is almost a woman now, I suppose. I think of you much oftener than I write to you, and am

Ever yours, FANNY.

May 20th, 1844.

No, my dearest Hal, the day is never long, but always short, even when I rise before six.... I have a vivid consciousness of an increased perception of the minor goods of existence, in the midst of its greatest evils, and things that till now have been mere enjoyments to me now appear to me in the light of positive blessings.

My delight in everything beautiful increases daily, and I now count and appreciate the innumerable alleviations that life has in every twenty-four hours, even in its seasons of severest trial.

A spirit of greater thankfulness is often engendered by suffering itself; it is one of the "sweet uses of adversity," and mitigates it immensely.

A beautiful flower was brought to me to-day; and while I remained absorbed in contemplating it, it seemed to me a very angel of consolatory admonition.

God bless you, dearest friend. How full of sources of comfort He has made this lovely woe-world!

Ever yours, FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, Sunday, June 9th, 1844. MY DEAR LADY DACRE,

I am sure you will be sorry to hear of the accident which has befallen my poor little F----. She fell last week over the bannisters of the stairs, and broke her arm. The fracture was fortunately a simple one of the smaller bone of the arm, which, I suppose, in a little body of that sort, can hardly be much more than gristle. She is doing well, and, as she appears to have escaped all injury to the head, which was my first horrible apprehension, I have every reason to be thankful that the visitation has not been more severe. The accident occasioned me a violent nervous shock. I am now far from well myself, and I am pursued with debilitating feverish tendencies, which I vainly endeavor to get rid of....

I am much puzzled, my dear Lady Dacre, what to say to you beyond this bulletin. My circumstances do not afford any great variety of cheerful topics for correspondence, and the past and the future are either painful or utterly uncertain.

I am studying German, in the midst of the small facilities for mental culture which my present not very easy or happy position affords, and have serious thoughts of beginning to work at Euclid, and trying to make myself something of a mathematician. Possibly some knowledge of the positive sciences might be of use to me in my further dealings with the world; for the proper comprehension and appreciation of and judicious commerce with which some element, either natural or acquired, is undoubtedly wanting in me.

I have always wished very much that I had been made to study mathematics as a young person, and considering that Alfieri betook himself to Greek at forty-eight, I see no very good reason why I should not get at least as far as the pons asinorum at thirty-four.

I believe this latent hankering after mathematics has been a little fanned in me by reading De Quincey's letters to a young man upon the subject of a late education, which have fallen into my hands just now, and which so earnestly recommend the zealous cultivation of this species of knowledge.

I hope Lord Dacre is well. Pray remember me to him very affectionately, and tell him that I am afraid, in answer to his question, I must reply that the Americans in this part of the United States do not at present appear over-scrupulous about paying their debts. Their demonstrations towards England just now seem to me rather absurd. The "sensible" of the community (alas! nowhere the majority, but here at this moment a most pitiful minority) are of course ashamed of, and sorry for, what is going on; and, moreover, of course do not believe in a war. But I am afraid, if the good sense of England does not keep this country out of a scrape, its own good sense will hardly do it that good turn.

An American wrote to me the other day: "As for our calling ourselves a great people, I think we are a people who, with the greatest possible advantages, have made the least possible use of them; and if anything can teach these people what greatness is, it must be adversity."

Farewell, and God bless you, my dear Lady Dacre.

Believe me ever yours, FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, July 14th, 1844. MY DEAREST HAL,

I am told that the newspapers in England have been filled with the severest comments upon the late outbreaks of popular disorder in this city of "brotherly love."

About a month ago the town was lighted from one end to the other with the burning of Catholic churches; and now, within the last week, the outrages have recommenced with more fury than ever, because, for a wonder, the militia actually did fire upon the mob, who, unused to any such demonstration of being in earnest on their part, had possessed themselves of cannon and fire-arms, and would have exterminated the small body of militia which could be gathered together at the first outbreak of the riot, but which is now backed by a very considerable force of regular troops.

The disturbance is not in the city proper, but in a sort of suburb not subject to the municipal jurisdiction of Philadelphia, but having a mayor and civil officers of its own.

The cause assigned for all these outrages is fear and hatred of the Roman Catholic Irish; and there is no doubt an intensely bitter feeling between them and the low native population of the cities; added to which, the Irish themselves do not fail to bring over their home feud, and the old Orange spirit of bloody persecution joins itself to the dread of Popery, which is becoming quite a strong feeling among the American lower classes.

It is absurd, and yet sad enough, that not six months ago "Repeal Unions"--Irish Repeal Unions--were being formed all over this country in favor of, and sympathy with, the poor, oppressed Roman Catholics in Ireland; "professional" politicians made their cause and England's oppression of them regular popularity capital; writing and speechifying in the most violent manner, and with the most crass ignorance, upon the subject of their wrongs and the tyranny they endured from our government; and now Philadelphia flares from river to river with the burning of Roman Catholic churches, and the Catholics are shot down in the streets and their houses pillaged in broad daylight.

The arrest of several of the ringleaders of the mob, and the arrival of large numbers of regular troops, have produced a temporary lull in the city; but the spirit of lawless violence has been permitted to grow and strengthen itself in these people for some time past now; and of course, as they were allowed, unchecked and unpunished, to set fire to the property of the negroes, and to murder them without anybody caring what befell the persons or property of "damned niggers," the same turbulent spirit is now breaking out in other directions, where it is rather less agreeable to the respectable portion of the community, but where they will now find considerable difficulty in checking it; and, of course, if it is to choose its own objects of outrage and abuse, the respectable portion of the community may some day be disagreeably surprised by having to take their turn with the poor Roman Catholic Irish and the poor American negroes. The whole is a lamentable chapter of human weakness and wickedness, that would cast shame and scorn upon republican institutions, if it were not that Christianity itself is liable to the same condemnation, judged by some of its apparent results.

You ask me if I apportion my time among my various occupations with the same systematic regularity as formerly. I endeavor to do so, but find it almost impossible.... I read but very little. My leisure is principally given to my German, in which I am making some progress. I walk with the children morning and evening; I still play and sing a little at some time or other of the day, and write interminable letters to people afar off, who I wish were nearer. I walk before breakfast with the children, i.e. from seven till eight. Three times a week I take them to the market to buy fruit and flowers, an errand that I like as well as they do. The other three mornings we walk in the square opposite this house. After breakfast they leave me for the morning, which they now pass with their governess or nurse. For the last two months I have ridden every day, but have unhappily disabled my horse for the present, poor fellow! by galloping him during a sudden heavy rain-shower over a slippery road, in which process he injured one of his hip-joints, not incurably, I trust, but so as to deprive me of him for at least three months. [My dear and noble horse never recovered from this injury, but was obliged to be shot. He had been sold, and I had ransomed him back by the publication of a small volume of poems, which gave me the price demanded for him by the livery-stable keeper who had bought him; but the accident I mention in this letter deprived me of him. He was beautiful and powerful, high-spirited and good-tempered, almost a perfect creature, and I loved him very much.]

I shall now walk after breakfast, as, my rides being suppressed, my walks with the chicks are not exercise enough for me. After that, I prepare for my German lesson (which I take three times a week) and write letters. I take the children out again at half-past six, and at half-past seven come in to my dinner; after dinner I go to my piano, and generally sit at it or read until I go to bed, which I do early,--et voilà!

Almost all the people I know are out of town now, and I do not see a human creature; the heat is intense and the air foul and stifling, and we are gasping for breath and withering away in this city atmosphere....

God bless you, dear Hal.

I am ever yours, FANNY.

[In the autumn of 1845 I returned to England, and resided with my father in Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square, until I went to Italy and joined my sister at Rome; a plan for my returning with my father to America having been entertained and abandoned in the mean time.]

MORTIMER STREET, October 3d, 1845.

Heaven be praised, my American letters are finished!--eleven long ones, eleven shillings' worth. I am sure somebody (but at this moment I don't rightly know who) ought to pay me eleven shillings for such a batch of work. So now I have nothing to do but answer your daily calls, my dearest Hal, which "nothing," as I write it, looks like a bad joke. If you expect me, however, to write you a long letter on the heels of that heavy American budget, you deceive yourself, my dear friend, and the truth is not in you.

In the first place, I have nothing to say except that I am well and intensely interested by everything about me. I am very sorry to have neglected sending you "Arnold" [his Life, just published at that time], but it shall be done this day.

London, with its distracting quantity of things to do, is already laying hold of me; and the species of vertigo which I experience after my lonely American existence, at finding myself once more overwhelmed with visits, messages, engagements, and endless notes to read and answer, is pitiable. I feel as if I had been growing idiotic out there, my life here is such an amazing contrast.

I had a visit yesterday from dear old Lady Charlotte Lindsay, who was exceedingly kind and cordial indeed to me. We said many good words about you. After she was gone, the old Berry sisters (who still hang on the bush) tottered in, and I felt touched to the heart by the affectionate sympathy and kind goodwill exhibited towards me by these three very old and charming ladies.

I had a delightful dinner yesterday at Milman's, where I met Lady Charlotte again, Harness, Lockhart, Empson, and several other clever pleasant people.

To-day I carried my last six American despatches myself to the post, and then trotted all the way up to Horace Wilson's, to see him and my cousin Fanny, by way of exercise....

I am going to dine to-day with Sir Edward Codrington--the admiral, you know. He and his family are old friends of mine; he has been here twice this week, sitting two hours at a time with me, spinning long yarns about the battle of Navarino and all the to-do there was about it. He actually brought me a heap of manuscript papers on the subject to look over, which, quite contrary to my expectation, have interested me very much.

To-morrow, at three o'clock, my maid and I depart for the Hoo; as we go per coach, and the distance is only twenty-five miles, I hope that journey won't ruin me.

My father has just come home from Brighton, instead of remaining there till Monday, as he had intended; he said he felt himself getting fatigued, and therefore thought it expedient to come away. He has caught a slight rheumatic pain in one of his shoulders, but otherwise seems well. To-morrow I will send you another bulletin.

Your affectionate, FANNY.

MORTIMER STREET, October, 1845.

Since beginning this letter, my beloved Hal, I have been reading Channing's sermon upon Dr. Follen's death. It is, in fact, a sermon upon human suffering, in a paroxysm of which I was when I began to write to you; and for a remedy took up this sermon, which has comforted me much.

Chorley was expressing to me, two days ago, his unbounded veneration for the character of Dr. Follen, as it is faintly and imperfectly represented in the memoir which his wife published of him. I knew that I had with me Channing's sketch of him in that sermon on human suffering, and told Chorley that I would look for it for him. I found it yesterday, and merely read that part of it towards the end which referred to Dr. Follen's character; and it is to that circumstance that I attribute a dream I had last night, in which I sat devoutly at Arnold's feet, expressing to him how earnestly I had desired the privilege of knowing him: he was surrounded by Channing, Follen, and others whom I could not remember. In reading to-day the whole of that fine discourse of Channing's, I was led to compare the great similarity of the expressions he uses, in speaking of sceptics and scepticism, to those Arnold makes use of on the same subjects in his letters to Lady Francis Egerton. For instance, "Scepticism is a moral disease, the growth of some open or latent depravity; deliberate, habitual questionings of God's benevolence argue great moral deficiency." Another thing that struck me was the resemblance between Dr. Arnold and Dr. Follen in the matter of independent self-reliance. Channing says of the latter, "He was singularly independent in his judgments. He was not only uninfluenced by authority, and numbers, and interest, and popularity; but by friendship, and the opinions of those he most loved and honored. He seemed almost too tenacious of his convictions."

Do you remember what Sydney Smith says of Francis Horner? This great firmness of opinion in Arnold and Follen reminds me of it by contrast: "Francis Horner was a very modest person, which men of great understanding seldom are. It was his habit to confirm his opinion by the opinions of others, and often to form them from the same source."

MORTIMER STREET, November, 1845. DEAR EMILY,

During that hour that we spent at Netley, the last few moments of which were made full of hopeful thoughts by the passing away of the visible clouds from the visible sky, I could not but reflect upon the glorious stability of things spiritual, contrasted with the mutability and evanescence of things temporal. Our hearts, which are united by real bonds--the love of truth, the fear of God, and the desire of duty--have remained so united through all these years of absence and distance from each other; and when I thought of our former visit to Netley, I remembered that nothing had failed me but that which could not be abiding and steadfast, for it was not good.

To tell you how thence my soul wandered to the eventual reclaiming of all who have strayed from righteousness, and the possible reunion, in the immeasurable future, of souls which have been sundered here because of sin, and the final redemption of all God's poor erring children, would be to attempt to utter one of those rapid, deep, and ineffable actions of our spirits which are too full of hope, of faith, and the holiest peace, for words to be meant to express them.

MORTIMER STREET, Thursday, 6th, 1845. DEAREST HAL,

My father came home yesterday afternoon from Brighton. He said he was getting a little tired of his work, and complained of a touch of rheumatism in his shoulder.... He is making arrangements to read at Highgate next week. Harry Chester, some cousin or connection of Emily's, and a quondam kind friend of mine, is at the head of some institution at Highgate, and has been in negotiations with him for three readings at some public hall or lecture-room there. My father is to read there three times, and is to dine each time at some friend's house. Mr. Chester very kindly begged me to accompany him, and dine with them....

I dined at Sir Edward Codrington's yesterday, and was there introduced to a charmingly pretty Mrs. Bruce, formerly Miss Pitt, one of the queen's maids-of-honor; and I assure you my edification was considerable at some of her courtly experiences....

I believe Solomon says that "in the multitude of counsellors is safety;" it does not seem so with me just now, for in my multitude of counsels and counsellors I find only utter bewilderment.

Until Monday I shall be at the Hoo, where you can address me, "To the care of Lord Dacre, the Hoo, Welwyn, Herts."

God bless you, dearest Hal. Give my kind love to Dorothy.

Yours ever, FANNY.

[The days were not yet, either in England or America, when a married woman could claim or hold, independently, money which she either earned or inherited. How infinite a relief from bitter injustice and hardship has been the legislation that has enabled women to hold and own independently property left to them by kindred or friends, or earned by their own industry and exertions. I think, however, the excellent law-makers of the United States must have been intent upon atoning for all the injustice of the previous centuries of English legislation with regard to women's property, when they framed the laws which, I am told, obtain in some of the States, by which women may not only hold bequests left to them, and earnings gained by them, entirely independent of their husbands; but being thus generously secured in their own rights, are still allowed to demand their maintenance, and the payment of their debts, by the men they are married to. This seems to me beyond all right and reason--the compensation of one gross injustice by another, a process almost womanly in its enthusiastic unfairness. It must be retrospective amends for incalculable former wrongs, I suppose.]

MORTIMER STREET, November 17th, 1845.

When I consider that this is the third letter I write to you this blessed day, dear Hal, I cannot help thinking myself a funny woman; and that if you are as fond of me as you pretend to be, you ought to be much obliged to the "streak of madness" which compels me to such preposterous epistolary exertions.

And so because the sea rages and roars against the coast at St. Leonard's, and appals your eyes and ears there, my dearest Hal, you think we had better not cross the Atlantic now. But the storms on that tremendous ocean are so local, so to speak, that vessels steering the same course and within comparatively small distance of each other have often different weather and do not experience the same tempests. Moreover, Mrs. Macready has just been here, who tells me that her husband crossed last year rather earlier than I did, in October, and had a horrible passage; and the last time I came to England we sailed on the 1st of December, and had a long but by no means bad voyage. There is no certainty about it, though, to be sure, strong probability of unfavorable weather at this season of the year....

I told you that I had got off dining at the L----s' to-day by pleading indisposition, which is quite true, for I am very unwell. I shall remain dinnerless at home, which is no great hardship, and one for which I dare say I shall be none the worse. My father talks of going to Brighton this week, and then I shall scatter myself abroad in every direction....

My father leaves town on Wednesday, and as he is to be absent two or three weeks, I suppose he will only return in time to sail.

I have written to Mrs. Grote to say I will come to Burnham on Thursday, and my present plan is to remain there until Monday next, and probably then go to the Hoo. The Grevilles, Charles and Henry, have been here repeatedly; they are both of them now gone out of town. I called to-day on Mrs. O'Sullivan, and there I found Dr. Holland, with whom I had one more laugh upon the subject of his never reaching Lenox after all dear Charles Sumner's efforts to get him there. [Dr. Holland, while in America, had made various unsuccessful attempts to visit the Sedgwick family in Berkshire, winding up with a failure more ludicrous than all the others, under the guidance of his, their, and my friend, Charles Sumner....]

I have had a most affectionate note of welcome from Mrs. Jameson, and am rather in terror of her advent, as I feel considerable awkwardness about her various late passages-at-arms with my sister. Mrs. Macready came to see me this afternoon, and told me that she heard I was about to return forthwith to America....

Now, dear, I think I have really done my duty by you to-day. God bless you. Give my affectionate love to the "good angel" [Miss Wilson]. As for your "roaring sea," I only wish I was in it just where you are (nowhere else, though). I am not well, and very much out of spirits; disgusted, and, I have no doubt, disgusting; but, nevertheless,

Ever yours, FANNY.

Arnold's Christianity puzzles me a little. He justifies litigation between men and war between nations. Whenever I set about carrying out my own Christianity I shall do neither; for I do not believe either are according to Christ's law.

I called on the Miss Hamiltons to-day, and we talked "some" of you. I have had another most affectionate note from Lizzie Mair, entreating me to go to Edinburgh. But oh! my dear Hal, the money? Che vita!

MORTIMER STREET, Thursday, 20th, 1845. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

There is another thing that makes me pause about coming to Hastings--the time for my departure for America will be drawing very near when I return to town on Monday from Mrs. Grote's, which is the only visit that I shall have it in my power to pay....

Tuesday is the 25th. I must see my brother John again before I go. This will take two days and one night, and my father talks of going down to Liverpool on the 2nd or 3rd, so that I could only run down to Hastings for a few miserable hours, again to renew all the pain of bidding you another farewell....

I left off here to get my breakfast. We have lowered the price and the quality of our tea, in consequence of which, you see, my virtue and courage are also deteriorated [Miss S---- used to say that a cup of good tea was virtue and courage to her], and this is why I feel I had perhaps better not come to Hastings.

Thus far, my dearest Harriet, when your letter of the 19th--yesterday (you see I did look at the date)--was brought to me. It is certainly most miserable to consider what horrible things men contrive to make of the mutual relations which might be so blest. I do not know if I am misled by the position from which I take my observations, but it seems to me that one of the sins most rife in the world is the _mis_use, or _dis_use, of the potent and tender ties of relationship and kindred.

With regard to coming to you, my dear Hal, I am much perplexed. I have made Mrs. Grote enter into arrangements to suit me, which I do not think I ought now to ask her to alter. Old Rogers is going down to Burnham, to be with me there, going and coming with me; and with what I feel I ought and must do to see my brother, I know not what I can and may do to see you, my dear friends. I am full of care and trouble and anxiety, and feel so weary with all the processes of thinking and feeling, deliberating and deciding, that I am going through, that I must beg you to determine for me. If you, upon due consideration, say "Come," I will come. And forgive me that I put it thus to you, but I have a sense of mental incapacity, amounting almost to imbecility; and I feel, every now and then, as if my brain machinery was running down, and would presently stop altogether. Seriously, what with the greater and the less, the unrest of body and the disquiet of mind, I feel occasionally all but distracted....

I will write you more when I answer your letter of this morning.

God bless you, my dearest friend....

I have so much to say to you about Arnold, but shall perhaps forget it. Is it not curious that reading his thoughts and words should have tended to strengthen in me a conviction of duty upon a point where he appears to take an absolutely different view from mine?--that of seeking and obtaining redress from wrong by an appeal to processes of litigation and legal tribunals; but the earnestness of his exhortations to the conscientious pursuit of one's individual convictions of duty was powerful in making me cleave to my own perception and sense of right, though it brought me to a conclusion diametrically opposite to his own.

This, however, is often the case. The whole character of a good man has vital power over one even where his special opinions are different from one's own, and may even appear to one mistaken.

The abiding spirit of a man's life, more than his special actions and peculiar theories, is that by which other men are moved and admonished. I have extreme faith in the potency of this species of influence, and comparatively less in the effect of example, in special cases and particular details of conduct. Christ's teaching was always aimed at the spirit which should govern us, not at its mere application to isolated instances; and to those who sought advice from Him for application to some special circumstance He invariably answered with a deep and broad rule of conduct, leaving the conscience of the individual to apply it to the individual case; and it seems to me the only way in which we can exhort each other is by the love of truth, the desire of right, the endeavor after holiness, which may still be ours, and to which we may still effectually point our fellow-pilgrims, even when we ourselves have fallen by the wayside under the weight of our own infirmities, failures, and sins.

See! I intended to have broken off when I wrote "God bless you." How I have preached on! But I have much more to say yet. Dear love to Dorothy.

Ever your affectionate FANNY.

Friday, November 21st, 1845.

The Hibernia is in, the Great Britain is in, and I have had my letters, ... not a few of them from various indifferent people, who want me to do business and attend to their affairs for them here. Truly I am in a plight to do so every way. One man wants me to exert the influence which he is sure my intimacy with Mr. Bunn (!) must give me to have an opera of his brought out at Drury Lane; another writes to me that "my family's well-known interest in the theatres" (a large view of the subject) "must certainly enable me to have a play of his produced at one of them;" and so forth, and so on.

All these people will think me a wretch, of course, because I cannot do any of the things they want me to do; moreover, no power of human explanation will suffice hereafter to make them aware that I am not upon terms of affectionate intimacy with Mr. Bunn, that no member of my family has now any interest whatever in any theatre whatever, and that I have been so overwhelmed with anxieties and troubles of my own as to make my attention to the production of operas and plays and such like things quite impossible just now.

The strangest part of all this is that these men write to me, desiring me to commend that which I think bad, and that which, moreover, they know that I think bad; but they seem to imagine that some effort of sincere friendship and kindness on my part is all that is necessary to induce me, in spite of this, to recommend and heartily to praise what I hold to be worthless.

Friendship with eyes and ears and a conscience is, I believe indeed, for the most part, and for the purposes of most people, tantamount to no friendship at all, or perhaps rather to a mild form of enmity.

Do you not think it is rather farcical on your part to request me to answer your letters, when you know 'tis as much as my place (in creation) is worth not to do so, and that, moreover, every day's post brings me that which impresses the sufficiency of each day's allotments devoutly to my mind? Did I ever not answer your letters, you horrid Harriet? My dear Hal, in spite of the last which I received from you, after I had just concluded a very long one to you, bearing date November 20th (there now! you see I remember the date even of my yesterday's letter!), I still wish for another deliberate expression of your opinion about my coming down to Hastings. That you desire it, in spite of all considerations, I know. What your judgment is, now that I have laid all considerations before you, I should like to know....

To-day was appointed for my visit to Mrs. Grote, and Rogers was to have come for me at one o'clock, to go to the Paddington railroad, near the Ten-Mile Station, on which she lives; but lo and behold, just as I was completing my preparations comes an express to say that Mrs. Grote had been seized with one of her neuralgic headaches, and could not possibly receive us till to-morrow! so there ended the proposed business of the day.

I had a visit from John O'Sullivan, a call from Rogers to readjust our plans for to-morrow, and a very kind long visit from Milman.... I receive infinite advice on all hands about my perplexed affairs, all of it most kindly meant, but little of it, alas! available to me. Some of it, indeed, appears to me so worldly, so false, and so full of compromise between right and wrong for the mere sake of expediency; sometimes for cowardice, sometimes for peace, sometimes for pleasure, sometimes for profit, sometimes for mere social consideration,--the whole system (for such it is) accepted and acknowledged as a rule of life--that, as I sit listening to these friendly suggestions, I am half the time shocked at those who utter them, and the other half shocked at myself for being shocked at people so much my betters.... My abiding feeling is that I had better go back to my beloved Lenox, to the side of the "Bowl" (the Indian name of a beautiful small lake between Lenox and Stockbridge), among the Berkshire hills, where selfishness and moral cowardice and worldly expediency exist in each man's practice no doubt quite sufficiently; but where they are not yet universally recognized as a social system, by the laws of which civilized existence should be governed. You know, "a bad action is a thousand times preferable to a bad principle."

Among the other things which the American mail brought me was a charming sketch by my friend W---- of the very site upon which we settled that I should build my house. The drawing is quite rough and unfinished, but full of suggestion to one who knows the place.

I went by appointment this afternoon to see Lady Dacre. Poor thing! she was much overcome at the sight of me. Her deep mourning for her young grandchild, and her pathetic exclamations of almost self-reproach at her own iron strength and protracted old age, touched me most deeply. She seemed somewhat comforted at finding that I had not grown quite old and haggard, and talked to me for an hour of her own griefs and my trials.

She and Lord Dacre pressed me with infinite kindness to go down to them at the Hoo; and though I felt that if we sail on the 4th I ought to be satisfied with having had this glimpse of them, if my stay were prolonged I should like very much to go there for a short time.

Lord Dacre told me that the Great Western had arrived yesterday, and brought most threatening news of the hostile spirit of America about the Oregon question; he fears there will certainly be a war. Good God, how horrible! The two foremost nations of Christendom to disgrace themselves and humanity by giving such a spectacle to the world!

After my visit to the Dacres, I came back to my solitary dinner in Mortimer Street; and, reflecting upon many things during this lonely evening, have wished myself between you and dear Dorothy, who neither of you tell falsehoods or pretend to like things and people that you dislike. Wouldn't it be a nice world if one could live all one's time with none but the best good people? I have spent the whole evening in reading my friend Charles Sumner's Peace Oration, which I only began in America; and to listening to the lady playing on the piano next door, and envying her. Our landlord has a piano in his room downstairs, I find, and he is not at home: now, that is a real temptation of the very devil. How I should like to pay half an hour's visit to it!

My dear Hal, Mrs. Jameson is coming to see me to-morrow morning! What shall I do--what shall I say about her tiff with Adelaide? Wasn't it a pity that Mrs. Grote was taken ill this morning?

God bless you. I want to say one or two words to dear Dorothy, according to right, for she has written to me in your two last letters.

Ever yours, FANNY.

Oh, I do wish I was with you! for you are not in the least base, mean, cowardly, or worldly.

DEAREST GOOD ANGEL,

Do not fancy, from the vehemence of my style to Harriet, that I am in a worse mental or material condition than I am. I only do hope that before I have lived much longer it will please God to give me grace to love and admire the great bulk of my fellow-creatures more than I do at present. Certainly, dear Dorothy, if I should remain in England, I will come down to Hastings for a fortnight; and owe my subsistence for that time to you and Hal. Perhaps these rumors of wars may make some difference in my father's plans. I should be very happy with you both. I have a notion that you would spoil me as well as Hal, and, used to that as I used to be "long time ago," it would be quite an agreeable novelty now.

Ever yours affectionately, FANNY.

Friday, November 21st, 1845.

This letter was begun yesterday evening, my beloved Hal. My nerves are rather in a quieter state than when I wrote last, thanks to a warm bath and cold head-douche, which, taken together, I recommend to you as beneficial for the brain and general nervous system....

I am going to dine tête-à-tête with Rogers; I have persuaded him to come down with me to Burnham. Poor old man! he is very much broken and altered, very deaf, very sad. This last year has taken from him Sydney and Bobus Smith; and now, the day before yesterday, his old friend Lady Holland died, and he literally stands as though his "turn" were next--it may be mine.

Do you know, that in reading that striking account or Arnold's death, I got such a pain in my heart that I felt as if I was going to die so. So! So, indeed, God grant I might die! but none can die so who has not so lived.

Two things surprise me in Arnold's opinions--three,--his detailed account of wars between nations without any expression of condemnation of war, but rather a soldierly satisfaction in strife and strategy. This, by-the-by, my friend Charles Sumner notices with regret in his "Peace Oration." Then Arnold's apparent approbation of men, even clergymen, going to law for their rights, while at the same time speaking with detestation of the legal profession, which surely involves some inconsistency. Clergymen, according to the vulgar theory, are imagined to be, if not less resentful in spirit, at any rate more pacific in action than the laity, and ought, to my thinking, no more to go to law than to war. The third thing that puzzles me is his constant reference to what he calls a Church, or "the Church," which, with his views about Christianity, is a term that I do not comprehend.

It is curious to me to see Emily's marks along the margin. They are the straight ones, and are applied zealously everywhere to passages of dogmatical discussion about doctrines. Mine you will find the crooked ones, and my pencil, of course, invariably flew to the side of what expressed moral excellence and a perception of material beauty. Those passages that Emily has marked I do not understand--does she? I ask this in all simplicity, and not at all in arrogance; for I cannot make head or tail of them. Perhaps she can make both, for I think she has a taste and talent for theological controversy. I was surprised to find she had not marked his diary and journals at all; I hardly knew how to leave them _un_marked at all. Those Italian journals of his made me almost sick with longing. It is odd that this southern mania should return upon me so strongly after so many years of freedom from it, merely because there seemed to arise just now a possibility of this long-relinquished hope being fulfilled. I know that I could not live in Italy, and I suppose that I should be dreadfully offended and grieved by the actual state of the people, in the midst of all the past and present glory and beauty, which remains a radiant halo round their social and political degradation. But I did once so long to live in Italy, and I have lately so longed to see it, that these journals of Arnold's have made me cry like a child with yearning and disappointment.

My brother John told me that, in his opinion, Arnold was not entirely successful as a trainer of young men: that the power and peculiarity of his own character was such that, in spite of his desire that his pupils should be free, independent, and individual, they involuntarily became more or less mental and moral imitations of him: that he turned out nothing but young Arnolds--copies, on a reduced scale, of himself; few of them, if any, as good as the original. This involuntary conformity to any powerful nature is all but inevitable, where veneration would consciously and deliberately lead to imitation, and thus those minds which would most willingly leave freedom to others, both as a blessing and a duty, become unintentionally compelling influences to beget and perpetuate, in those around them, a tendency to subservience and dependency.

Charles Greville seems very much amused at my enthusiasm for Arnold, and still more when I told him that, for Arnold's sake, I wished to know Bunsen. He said he was sure I should not like him. Rogers told me the same thing; ... that Arnold was a man easily to be taken in by any one who would devote themselves to him, which he--Rogers--said Bunsen did when they met abroad.... How much of this is true, God only knows: Rogers is often very cynical and ill-natured (alas, he has lived so long, and known so much and so many!) It may not be true; though, again, Arnold "was but a man as other men are," and went but upon two legs, like the best of them; nevertheless, if I were to remain in England, I would make some effort to know his chosen friend. Rogers, with whom I dined yesterday, told me that if he had known this wish of mine, he would have asked Bunsen to meet me. I then questioned him about Whately, and he said I should be delighted with him--perhaps, dear H., because he is a little mad, you know, and I appear to some of my friends here to have that mental accomplishment in common with other more illustrious folk.

And now I have finished that book, Arnold's Life, by his spiritual son. It has been to me, in the midst of all that at present harasses and disgusts me, a source of peace and strength, and I have taken it up hour after hour, like the antidote to the petty poisons of daily life.

I have had two notes from Lady Dacre about arranging hours to meet; but, unfortunately, the little time I have is so taken up that it will be impossible for me to see her, as she begs me, this morning. They leave town again on Saturday, and I do not suppose that it will be in my power to get down again to the Hoo, which she urges me very much to do, ... so that I fear I shall not see her before I go, which is a grief to me.

John O'Sullivan does not sail till the 4th, and if we go then, I shall feel that my father will have somebody who will humanely look after him on board ship when I am disabled.... I think he has now some intention of making the expedition for the sake of giving readings, and perhaps of acting again, in the principal cities of the United States, and, apart from my interest and affairs, this may be a sufficient motive for his undertaking the voyage.

I am going to write a word to the dear good angel, and therefore, my beloved Hal, farewell....

[I have not endorsed my brother's opinion about Arnold's influence on his pupils. Long after this letter was written, I had the honor and advantage of making the acquaintance of Baron Bunsen, and was able to judge for myself of the value of the opinions I had heard of him.]

MY DEAREST DOROTHY,

... I shall hold my mind and body in readiness to come down on Wednesday, if up till Monday you still wish for me. I have told Hal all I have to tell of myself, and she may tell you as much of it as she pleases....

Just after my father's departure, I received a very kind invitation from my friend Lady M----, who is staying in Brighton, to come and remain with her while my father was there....

God bless you, dear Dorothy. I love you more than I seem to know you, but I know that you are good, and most good to my dear Harriet, and that I am

Yours very affectionately, FANNY.

MORTIMER STREET, Tuesday, November 25th, 1845. DEAREST HAL,

I had a letter yesterday from my father, from Brighton.... He has renounced the project of crossing the Atlantic at present....

Of course, dear Hal, we are none of us half patient enough. Suffering and injustice are so intolerable to us that we will not endure them, and forget all the time that God allows and endures them.

You ask me if I recollect my discussion with you going down to Southampton. Very well, my dear Hal, and your appearance especially, which, in that witch's travelling-cap of yours, is so extremely agreeable to me that you recur to me in it constantly, and as often I execrate your bonnet. How much I do love beauty! How I delight in the beauty of any one that I love! How thankful I am that I am not beautiful! my self-love would have known no bounds.

I am writing with a very bad pen. I told you of that pen Rogers mended for me, and sitting down to try it, wrote the two following lines, which he gave me, of Cowper's:

"The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown."

You will understand that this touched me much. You hope that my nerves will have leisure to become tranquillized in the country; but the intellectual life by which I am surrounded in England is such a contrast to my American existence that it acts like a species of perpetual intoxication. The subjects of critical, literary, and social interest that I constantly hear so ably and brilliantly discussed excite my mind to a degree of activity that seems almost feverish, after the stagnant inertia to which it has been latterly condemned; and this long-withheld mental enjoyment produces very high nervous excitement in me too. The antagonism I often feel at the low moral level upon which these fine intellectual feats are performed afterwards causes a reaction from my sense of satisfaction, and sometimes makes that appear comparatively worthless, the power, skill, and dexterity of which concealed the sophistry and seduced me while the debate was going on.

My dearest H----, I wrote all this at Burnham. You will see by this that we do not leave England by the next steamer, and I think there is every probability of my remaining here for some time to come, and, therefore, spending a full fortnight with you at Hastings....

I have a quantity to say to you about everything, but neither time nor room. We had much talk about Arnold at the Beeches, and the justice dealt him by a cynical poet, a hard-headed political economist, a steeled man of the world, and two most dissimilar unbelievers was various and curious.

Yours ever, FANNY.

MORTIMER STREET, November 26th, 1845. MY DEAREST HAL,

I expect my father home to-day; but, as I have written to you, his note from Brighton expressed no annoyance at my determination....

I must see if I cannot possibly write something for a few pence, so as not to stretch out a beggar's hand even to him.... I enjoyed my visit to Burnham extremely: the admirable clever talk, the capital charming music, the delight of being in the country, and the ecstasy of a fifteen miles' ride through beautiful parks and lanes, filled my time most pleasurably. I know no one who has such a capacity (that looks as if I had written _ra_pacity--either will do) for enjoyment, or has so much of it in mere life--when I am not being tortured--as I have. I ought to be infinitely thankful for my elastic temperament; there never was anything like it but the lady heroine of Andersen's story "The Ball," who had "cork in her body."

We had much talk about Arnold and Bunsen, much about Sydney Smith, several of whose letters Mrs. Grote gave us to read. Rogers read them aloud, and his comments were very entertaining, especially with the additional fun of Mrs. Grote holding one of the letters up to me in a corner alone, when I read, "I never think of death in London but when I meet Rogers," etc.

I have written a very long letter to my sister to-day, and one to E----. I am going to dine with Mrs. Procter, to meet Milnes, whose poetry you know I read to you here one evening, and you liked it, as I do, some of it, very much.... As for L----, I think one should be a great deal cleverer than he is to be so amazingly conceited, and of course, if one was, one wouldn't be; and if that sentence is not lovely, neither is "Beaver hats." ("Beaver hats is the best that is, for a shower don't hurt 'em, the least that are," quoth an old countrywoman to Mrs. FitzHugh, comparing the respective merits of beaver and straw.)

Only think, Hal, what an enchanting man this landlord of ours must be! He has had his pianoforte tuned, and actually proposes sending it up into one of these rooms for my use. I incline to think the difficulty with him is not so much having a woman in the house, as a natural desire to receive a larger compensation if he takes this woman--me--in.

God bless you, dear. I feel happy in the almost certain prospect of being with you before very long, and you cannot imagine how much my heart is lightened by the more hopeful circumstances in which I think I am placed....

Good-bye, dear Hal. Give my love to Dorothy, and believe me

Ever yours, FANNY.

November 29th, 1845.

I have just returned home from a dinner at Mrs. Procter's. It is a quarter to twelve o'clock, and until twelve I will write to you, my dear Hal. I found your ink-bottle on my table. Thank you. This is my birthday. Did you give it me on that account?--a compliment to the anniversary. I have not written so much as usual to you these last few days; my time is very much taken up; for, even at this dead season of the year, as it is called in London, I have many morning visitors, who come and sit with me a long while, during which time no letters get written. I wrote to you last on Wednesday, the day on which my father was to come to town. At one o'clock, accordingly, he marched in, looking extremely well, kissed me, opened his letters, wrote me a check for £10, and at five o'clock went off to Brighton again, telling me he should remain there until next Monday week, and, in the mean time, bidding me "amuse myself, and make myself as comfortable as I could." ...

It is past twelve now, and I am getting tired; the late hours and good dinners and wine and coffee are a wonderful change in my American habits of life, and seem to me more pleasant than wholesome, after the much simpler mode of existence to which I have become accustomed latterly. I took a good long walk on Friday, across the Green Park and St. James's Park to Spring Gardens, and up the Strand to Coutts', and home again....

I had a pleasant dinner yesterday at Lady Essex's. Rogers took me there, and brought me home in his carriage; he is exceedingly kind to me. Henry Greville dined with us, sat by me, and talked to me the whole time about my sister, which was very pleasant and did me good. Sir Edward Codrington and his daughter, who are old friends of mine, were there, and met me with great cordiality; and though the evening was not very brilliant, I enjoyed myself very much.

Kinglake, the author of "Eothen," paid me a long visit to-day, and was very agreeable....

Mrs. Procter asked me to-day to take their family dinner with them, because she knew I should else dine all alone. Mr. Procter was not at home, so that we had a tête-à-tête gossip about everybody....

I know very well that nobody likes to be bored, but I think it would be better to be bored to extinction than to mortify and pain people by rejecting their society because they are not intensely amusing or distinguished, or even because they are intensely tiresome and commonplace....

Good-night, dear. My eyes smart and ache; I must go to bed. I have seen to-day some verses written by an American friend of mine on my departure. I think they are good, but cannot be quite sure, as they are about myself. I will send them to you, if you care to see them.

Ever yours, FANNY.

MORTIMER STREET, November 30th, 1845.

I wrote to you until 12.30 last night, and it is now 12.30 this morning, and it must be very obvious to you that, not being Dorothy, I can have nothing under the heavens to say to you. Let me see for the events of these hours. After I went to bed I read, according to a practice which I have steadily followed for the past year, in the hope of substituting some other last thoughts and visions for those which have haunted me, waking or sleeping, during that time. So last night, having, alas! long ago finished Arnold, and despatched two historical plays, long enough, but nothing else, to have been written by Schiller, which my brother gave me, I betook myself to certain agricultural reports, written by a Mr. Coleman, an American, who came over here to collect information upon these subjects for an agricultural society. These reports he gave me the other day, and you know I read implicitly whatever is put into my hands, holding every species of book worth reading for something. So I read about fencing, enclosing, draining, ditching, and ploughing, till I fell asleep, fancying myself Ceres.

This morning, after some debate with myself about staying away from church, I deliberately came to the conclusion that I would do so, because I had a bad headache. (Doesn't that sound like a child who doesn't want to go to church, and says it has got a stomach-ache? It's true, nevertheless.) But--and because I have such a number of letters to write to America, that I thought I would say my prayers at home, and then do that.

And now, before beginning my American budget, I have written one to Lady Dacre, one to Emily, one to my brother, and this one to you; and shall now start off to the other side of the Atlantic, by an epistle to J---- C----, the son of the afore-mentioned agriculturist, a friend of mine, who when I last left America held me by the arm till the bell rang for the friends of those departing by the steamer to abandon them and regain the shore, and whose verses about me, which I mentioned to you in my last night's letter, please me more than his father's account of top-dressing, subsoiling, and all the details of agriculture, which, however, I believe is the main fundamental interest of civilization.

Before this, however, I must go and take a walk, because the sun shines beautifully, and

"I must breathe some vital air, If any's to be found in Cavendish Square."

I'm sorry to say we are going to leave this comfortable lodging and our courteous landlord, whose civilities to me are most touching. I do not know what my father intends doing, but he talked of taking a house at Brompton. What a distance from everything, for him and for me!

I have just had a kind note from the M----s, again earnestly bidding me down to Hampshire; another affectionate invitation from Lord and Lady Dacre to the Hoo, and a warm and sympathizing letter from Amelia Twiss, for whom, as you know, I entertain even a greater regard and esteem than for her sisters....

My dear Hal, when my father told me that he was going to Brighton for three weeks, it seemed quite impossible that we should sail for America on December 4th. Now that that question is settled, at any rate temporarily, I feel restored to something like calm, and think I shall probably go and see the M----s, and perhaps run down to Hastings to visit--Dorothy Wilson, of course.

God bless you, dear. Does Dorothy write better about nothing than I do?

Ever yours, FANNY.

THE HOO, WELWYN, HERTS, December, 1845. MY DEAREST HAL,

... God knows I am admonished to patience, both by my own helplessness and the inefficiency of those who, it seems to me, ought to be able to help me....

Doubtless, my father reasonably regrets the independence which I might by this time have earned for myself in my profession, and feels anxious about my unprovided future. I have written to Chorley, the only person I know to whom I can apply on the subject, to get me some means of publishing the few manuscript verses I have left in some magazine or other.... If I cannot succeed in this, I shall try if I can publish my "English Tragedy," and make a few pounds by it. It is a wretchedly uncomfortable position, but compared with all that has gone before it is only uncomfortable.

I came down here yesterday, and found, though the night was rainy and extremely cold, dear Lord Dacre and B---- standing out on the door-step to receive me. She has grown tall, and stout, and very handsome.... Is it not wonderful that the spirit of life should be potent enough ever to make us forget the death perpetually hovering over and ready to pounce upon us? and yet how little dread, habitually, disturbs us, either for ourselves or others, lying all the time, as we do, within the very grasp of doom! Lord Dacre is looking well; my friend Lady Dacre is grown more deaf and much broken. Poor thing! she has had a severe trial, in the premature loss of those dearest to her....

God bless you, dear Hal. Good-by. Love to dear Dorothy.

Ever yours, FANNY.

THE HOO, WELWYN, December 6th, 1845. MY DEAREST HAL,

I have been spending the greater part of the morning in sitting for my likeness to a young girl here, a Miss E----, daughter of some old friends of the Dacres, whose talent for drawing, and especially for taking likenesses, is uncommon.

That which Lawrence pronounced the most difficult task he ever undertook could hardly prove an easy one to a young lady artist, who has, however, succeeded in giving a very sufficient likeness of one of my faces; and I think it so pretty that I am charmed with it, as indeed I always have been with every likeness almost that has ever been taken of me, but the only true ones--the daguerreotypes. However, even daguerreotypes are not absolutely accurate; the process is imperfect, except for plane (not plain, you know) surfaces. Besides, after all, it takes a human hand to copy a human face, because of the human soul in both; and the great sun in heaven wants fire, light, and power, to reproduce that spark of divinity in us, before which his material glory grows pale.

As long as he was Phoebus Apollo, and went about, man-fashion, among the girls, making love to such of them as he fancied, he may have been something of an artist, his conduct might be called artistic, I should say; but now that he sits in the sky, staring with his one eye at womankind in general, Sir Joshua, and even Sir Thomas, are worth a score of him.

While I was sitting, Mrs. E----, my young artist's mother, read aloud to us the new volume of Lord Chesterfield's writings.

My impression of Lord Chesterfield is a very ignorant one, principally derived from the very little I remember of that profound science of superficiality contained in his "Letters to his Son." The matter I heard to-day exalted him infinitely in my esteem, and charmed me extremely, both by the point and finish of the style (what fine workmanship good prose is!) and the much higher moral tone than anything I remembered, and consequently expected from him.

Mrs. E---- read us a series of his "Sketches of his Political Contemporaries," quite admirable for the precision, distinctness, and apparent impartiality with which they were drawn, and for their happiness of expression-and purity of diction. Among them is a character of Lord Scarborough, which, if it be a faithful portrait, is perhaps the highest testimony in itself to the merit of one who called such a man his intimate friend; and going upon the faith of the old proverbs, "Show me your company and I'll tell you what you are," "Like will to like," "Birds of a feather flock together," and all the others that, unlike Sancho Panza, I do not give you, has amazingly advanced Lord Chesterfield in my esteem.

We have this morning parted with some of the company that was here. Mr. and Mrs. Hibbard, clever and agreeable people, have gone away, and, to my great regret, carried with them my dear B----, for whom my affection and esteem are as great as ever. Mrs. Hibbard is the daughter of Sydney Smith, and so like him that I kept wondering when she would begin to abuse the bishops....

Dearest Hal, I took no exercise yesterday but a drive in an open carriage with Lady Dacre. The Americans call the torture of being thumped over their roads in their vehicles exercise, and so, no doubt, was Sancho's tossing in the blanket; but voluntary motion being the only effectual motion for any good purpose of health (or holiness, I take it), I must be off, and tramp while the daylight lasts.

What a delightful thing good writing is! What a delightful thing good talking is! How much delight there is in the exercise and perfection of our faculties! How full a thing, and admirable, and wonderful is this nature of ours! So Hamlet indeed observes--but he was mad. Good-bye. Give my love to dear Dorothy, and

Believe me ever yours, FANNY.

THE HOO, WELWYN, December 7th, 1845. MY DEAREST HAL,

Just before I came down here, Rogers paid me a long visit, and talked a great deal about Lady Holland; and I felt interested in what he said about the woman who had been the centre of so remarkable a society and his intimate friend for so many years. Having all her life appeared to suffer the most unusual terror, not of death only, but of any accident that could possibly, or impossibly, befall her, he said that she had died with perfect composure, and, though consciously within the very shadow of death for three whole days before she crossed the dark threshold, she expressed neither fear nor anxiety, and exhibited a tranquillity of mind by no means general at that time, and which surprised many of the persons of her acquaintance. If, however, it be true, as some persons intimate with her have told me, that her terrors were not genuine, but a mere expression of her morbid love of power, insisting at all costs and by all means upon occupying everybody about her with herself, then it is not so strange that she should at last have ceased to demand the homage and attention of others as she so closely approached the time when even their most careless recollection would cease to be at her command.

Rogers said that she spoke of her life with considerable satisfaction, asserting that she had done as much good and as little harm as she could during her existence. The only person about whom she expressed any tenderness was her daughter, Lady ----, with whom, however, she had not been always upon the best terms; and who, being ultra-serious (as it is comically called), had not unnaturally an occasional want of sympathy with her very unserious mother. Lady Holland, however, desired much to see her, and she crossed the Channel, having travelled in great haste, and arrived just in time to fulfil her mother's wish and receive her blessing.

Her will creates great astonishment--created, I should say; for she is twice buried already, under the Corn Law question. She left her son only £2000, and to Lord John Russell £1500 a year, which at his death reverts to Lady L----'s children. To Rogers, strange to say, nothing; but he professed to think it an honor to be left out. To my brother, strange to say, something (Lord Holland's copy of the "British Essayists," in thirty odd volumes); and to Lady Palmerston her collection of fans, which, though it was a very valuable and curious one, seems to me a little like making fun of that superfine fine lady.

I have just come back from church, dear Hal, where the Psalms for the day made me sick. Is it not horrible that we should make Christian prayers of Jewish imprecations? How can one utter, without shuddering, such sentences as "Let them be confounded, and put to shame, that seek after my soul. Let them be as the dust before the wind: and the angel of the Lord scattering them. Let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of the Lord persecute them"? Is it not dreadful to think that one must say, as I did, "God forbid!" while my eyes rested on the terrible words contained in the appointed worship of the day; or utter, in God's holy house, that to which one attaches no signification; or, worst of all, connect in any way such sentiments with one's own feelings, and repeat, with lips that confess Christ, curses for which His blessed command has substituted blessings?

We were speaking on this very subject at Milman's the other evening, and when I asked Mrs. Milman if she joined in the repetition of such passages, she answered with much simplicity, like a good woman and a faithful clergywoman, "Oh yes! but then, you know, one never means what one says,"--which, in spite of our company consisting chiefly of "witty Churchmen," elicited from it a universal burst of laughter. I have not space or time to enlarge more upon this, and you may be thankful for it....

I will just give you two short extracts from conversations I have had here, and leave you to judge how I was affected by them....

I am sometimes thankful that I do not live in my own country, for I am afraid I should very hardly escape the Pharisee's condemnation for thinking myself better than my neighbors; and yet, God knows, not only that I am, but that I do, not. But how come people's nations so inside out and so upside down?

Good-bye, my dear. I am enjoying the country every hour of the day. Give my love to dear Dorothy.

Ever yours, FANNY.

MORTIMER STREET, Monday, December 8th, 1845. MY DEAREST HAL,

Your delightful little inkstand is the very pest of my life; it keeps tumbling over backwards every minute, and pouring the ink all over, and making me swear (which is really a pity), and is, in short, invaluable; and I am so much more obliged to you than I was even at first for it, now that I know, I hope, all its inestimable qualities, that I think it right to mention the increased gratitude I feel for the hateful little bottle. There it goes again! Oh, thank you, my love! Just let me pick it up, and wipe the mess it has made.

I left the Hoo this morning, and have just been a couple of hours in Mortimer Street. I find my father going to dine at Judge Talfourd's, and, I am happy to say, free from the pain in his side which had alarmed me, and which I now suppose, as he did at the time, to have proceeded only from cold. He looks well, and is in good spirits.

I find a note here from Miss Berry, inviting me to dinner to-day, which has been waiting for me ever since Friday. Of course I could not go, and felt distressed that the old lady's kind bidding should have remained so long unanswered. Just as I was despatching my excuse, however, in rushed Agnes (Gooseberry, you know, as Sydney Smith used to call her), all screams and interjections, to know why I hadn't answered her note, which was very annoying. However, in nursery language, I peacified the good old lady to the best of my ability. I am sorry to lose their pleasant party, but have an excessive dislike to hurrying immediately from one thing to another in this way, and therefore must really spend this evening of my arrival in peace and quiet.

Mrs. ---- called to-day. I am sorry to say that she provokes me now, instead of only annoying me, as she used to do. It's really quite dreadful! She talks such odd bits of sentimental morality, that somehow or other don't match with each other, or with anything else in creation, that it disgusts me, and I am so disagreeable and so conscious of it, and she is so conscious that I am conscious of it, that, poor things! it is quite piteous for both of us.

You ask me the name of the political economist I met at Burnham. William Nassau Senior, a very clever man, a great talker, good upon all subjects, but best upon all those on which I am even below my average depth of ignorance, public affairs, questions of government, the science of political economy, and all its kindred knowledges. The rest of our party were only Rogers and myself, our host and hostess (Mr. and Mrs. Grote), and a brother of the latter, who has been living many years in Sweden, has a charming countenance, a delightful voice, sings Swedish ballads exquisitely, worships Jenny Lind, and knows Frederica Bremer intimately. He added an element of gentleness and softness to the material furnished by our cast-iron "man of facts" and our acrid poet, that was very agreeable. In speaking of Arnold, I was ineffably amused at hearing Mrs. Grote characterize him as a "very weak man," which struck me as very funny. The Esprit Forte, however, I take it, merely referred to his belief in the immortality of the soul, the existence of a God, and a few other similar "superstitions." They seemed all to agree that he was likely to "turn out" only such men as Lord Sandon and Lord Ashley. [The training of Arnold, acting upon a noble mind inherited from a noble-minded mother, produced the illustrious man whom all Protestant Christendom has lately joined to mourn, Dean Stanley, of whom, however, no mention was made in the above discussion.] You, who know the political bias of these men, will be better able to judge than I am, how far this was a compliment to Arnold's intellect; to his moral influence, I suppose, the character of "only such" pupils would bear high testimony.

My father reads to-morrow at Highgate, and, I believe, twice again there in the course of next week. Beyond that, I think he has no immediate plans for reading, and indeed his plans seem altogether to me in the most undecided state.

I found letters here from my sister and E----, both of them urging me to join them in Rome; these I read to my father, and I am thankful to say that he seemed to entertain the idea of my doing so, and even hinted at the possibility of his accompanying me thither, inasmuch as he felt rather fatigued with his reading, would be glad to recruit a little, would wish to protect me on my journey to Italy, and, finally, never having been in Rome, would like to see it, etc. He said, after we got there he could either leave me with my sister or stay himself till the spring, when we might all come back together.

You may imagine how enchanted I was at the bare suggestion of such a plan. I told him nothing he could do would give me so much happiness, and that as I had come back upon his hands in the state of dependence in which I formerly belonged to him, it was for him to determine in what manner the burden would be least grievous to him, least costly, and least inconvenient; that if he thought it best I should go to my sister, I should be thankful to do so; but that if he would come with me, I should be enchanted.

I think, dearest Hal, that this unhoped-for prospect will yet be realized for me. I am very fortunate in the midst of my misfortune, and have infinite cause to be grateful for the hope of such an opportunity of distracting my thoughts from it. Even to go alone would be far preferable for me to remaining here, but I should have to leave my father alone behind, and do most earnestly wish he may determine to come with me.

Our landlord and he cannot agree about terms, and I suspect that he would not remain in the lodgings under any circumstances on that account. Oh! I hope we shall go together to Italy. "Dahin! Dahin!" ...

How I do wish you were sitting on this little striped sofa by me! No offence in the world to you, my dear Dorothy (or the Virgin Martyr), because I wish you were here too--in the first place that Hal might not be too dissatisfied with my society; in the next place that I might enjoy yours; and in the third place that you might benefit by both of ours.

I remain, dearly beloved females both of yours affectionately,

FANNY.

There goes your ink-pot head over heels backward again! Oh, it has recovered itself! Hateful little creature, what a turn it has given me--as the housemaids say--without even succeeding in overturning itself, which it tried to do! It is idiotic as well as malicious!

MORTIMER STREET, Tuesday. DEAREST HAL,

I did not hear a great deal more than I told you about Bunsen at Burnham. They all seemed to think him so over-cordial in his manner as not to be sincere--or at any rate to produce the effect of insincerity. Senior said that one of his sons was for a time private tutor in a family, while Bunsen himself was one of the King of Prussia's ministers. I could not very well perceive myself the moral turpitude of this, but the answer was that it was infra dig., and of course that is quite turpitude enough. At the Hoo I asked Lord Dacre if he knew Bunsen, but he did not. I should have attached some value to his opinion of him, because he has no vulgar notions of the above sort, and also because, having lived at one time in Germany among Germans, he has more means of estimating justly a mind and nature essentially German like Bunsen's than most Englishmen, who--the very cleverest among them--understand nothing that is not themselves, i.e. English, in intellect or character.

Mrs. E---- told me that she had heard from some of the great Oxford dons that the impression produced among them by the first pupil of Arnold's who came among them was quite extraordinary--not at all from superior intelligence or acquirement, but from his being absolutely a new creature (think of the Scripture use of that term, Hal, and think how this circumstance illustrates it)--a new kind of man; and that so they found all his pupils to differ from any young men that had come up to their colleges before. When I deplored the cessation of this noble and powerful influence by Arnold's death, she said--what indeed I knew--that his spirit survived him and would work mightily still. And so of course it will continue to work, for to the increase of the seed sown by such a one there is no limit. She told me that one of his pupils--by no means an uncommon but rather dull and commonplace young man--had said in speaking of him, "I was dreadfully afraid of Arnold, but there was not the thing he could have told me to do that I should not instantly and confidently have set about." What a man! I do wonder if I shall see him in heaven--as it is called--if ever I get there.

Mrs. E---- told me that Lady Francis [Egerton] knew him, and did not like him altogether; but then he, it seems, was habitually reserved, and she neither soft nor warm certainly in her outward demeanor, so perhaps they really never met at all.... Mrs. E---- said Lady Francis had not considered her correspondence with Arnold satisfactory. I suspect it was upon theological questions of doctrine (or doctrinal questions of theology); and that Lady Francis had complained that his letters did not come sufficiently to the point. What can her point have been?...

As for what you say about deathbed utterances--it seems to me the height of folly to attach the importance to them that is often given to them. The physical conditions are at that time such as often amply to account for what are received as spiritual ecstasies or agonies. I imagine whatever the laity may do, few physicians are inclined to consider their patients' utterances in articulo mortis as satisfactorily significant of anything but their bodily state. Certainly by what you tell me of ---- his moral perceptions do not appear to have received any accession of light whatever from the near dawning of that second life which seems sometimes to throw such awful brightness as the dying are about to enter it far over the past that they are leaving behind.

My dinner at Mrs. Procter's was very pleasant. In the first place I love her husband very much; then there were Kenyon, Chorley, Henry Reeve, Monckton Milnes, and Browning!--a goodly company, you'll allow. Oh, how I wish wits were catching! but if they were, I don't suppose after that dinner I should be able to put up with poor pitiful prose people like you for a long time to come.

With regard to the London standard of morality, dear Hal, I do not think it lower, but probably a little higher upon the whole than that of the society of other great capitals: the reasons why this highly civilized atmosphere must be also so highly mephitic are obvious enough, and therefore as no alteration is probable, or perhaps possible in that respect, I am not altogether sorry to think that I shall live in a denser intellectual but clearer moral atmosphere in my "other world." I do not believe that the brains shrink much when the soul is well nourished, or that the intellect starves and dwindles upon what feeds and expands the spirit.

My little sketch of Lenox Lake lies always open before me, and I look at it very often with yearning eyes ... for the splendid rosy sunsets over the dark blue mountain-tops, and for the clear and lovely expanse of pure waters reflecting both, above all for the wild white-footed streams that come leaping down the steep stairways of the hills. I believe I do like places better than people: these only look like angels sometimes, but the earth in such spots looks like heaven always--especially the mountain-tops so near the sky, so near the stars, so near the sun, with the clouds below them, and the humanity of the world and its mud far below them again--all but the spirit of adoration which one has carried up thither one's self. I do not wonder the heathen of whom the Hebrew Scriptures complain offered sacrifices on every high hill: they seem--they are--altars built by God for His especial worship. Good-bye, my dearest Hal.

Yours ever, FANNY.

[After I had the pleasure and honor of making Baron Bunsen's acquaintance, I was one day talking with him about Arnold, and the immense loss I considered his death to England, when he answered, almost in Mrs. E----'s words, but still more emphatically, that he would work better even dead than alive, that there was in him a powerful element of antagonism which roused antagonism in others: his individuality, he said, stood sometimes in the way of his purpose, he darkened his own light; "he will be more powerful now that he is gone than even while he was here."

In Charles Greville's "Memoirs," he speaks of going down to Oatlands to consult his sister and her husband (Lord and Lady Francis Egerton) upon the expediency of Arnold's being made a bishop by the prime minister of the day--I think his friend, Lord Melbourne--and says that they gave their decided opinion against it. I wonder if the correspondence which Lady Francis characterized as "unsatisfactory" was her ground of objection against Arnold. It is a curious thing to me to imagine his calling to the highest ecclesiastical office to have depended in any measure upon her opinion.

I forget what Arnold's politics were; of course, some shade of Whig or Liberal, if he was to be a bishop of Lord Melbourne's. The Ellesmeres were Tories: she a natural Conservative, and somewhat narrow-minded, though excellently conscientious; but if she prevented Arnold being named to the Queen, she certainly exercised an influence for which I do not think she was quite qualified. I think it not improbable that Arnold's orthodoxy may not have satisfied her, and beyond that question she would not go.]

Wednesday, December 10th, 1845.

Here, dearest Hal, are J---- C----'s verses; I think they have merit, though being myself the subject of them may militate against my being altogether a fair judge. He stood by me when last I sailed from America, until warned, with the rest of my friends, to forsake me and return to the shore....

All poets have a feminine element (good or bad) in them, but a feminine man is a species of being less fit, I think, than even an average woman to do battle with adverse circumstance and unfavorable situation....

You ask me about my interviews with Mrs. Jameson. She has called twice here, but did not on either occasion speak of her difference with my sister. To-day, however, I went to Ealing to see her, and she then spoke about it; not, however, with any feeling or much detail: indeed, she did not refer at all to the cause of rupture between them, but merely stated, with general expressions of regret, that they were no longer upon cordial terms with each other....

Mrs. Jameson told me a story to-day which has put the climax to a horrid state of nervous depression brought on by a conversation with my father this morning, during which every limb of my body twitched as if I had St. Vitus's dance. The scene of the story was Tetschen, the Castle of the Counts Thun, of which strange and romantic residence George Sand has given a detailed description in her novel of "Consuelo." ...

As for the Moloch-worships of this world, of course those who practise them have their reward; they pass their children through the fire, and I suppose that thousands have agonized in so sacrificing their children. Is it not wonderful that Christ came eighteen hundred years ago into the world, and that these pitiless, mad devil-worships are not yet swept out of it?...

I cannot tell you anything about myself, and, indeed, I can hardly think of myself....

My father has determined not to accompany me to Italy, so I shall go alone....

God bless you.

Ever yours, FANNY.

Friday, 12th, 1845.

Your ink-bottle, my dear, has undergone an improvement, if indeed anything so excellent could admit of bettering. The little round glutinous stopper--india-rubber, I believe--from the peculiar inconvenience of which I presume the odious little thing derives its title as patent, has come unfastened from the top, and now, every time I open and shut it, I am compelled to ink my fingers all over, in order to extract this admirable stopper from the mouth of the bottle, or crane it back into its patent position in the lid, where it won't stay. 'Tis quite an invaluable invention for the practice of patience.

I have nothing whatever to tell you. Two days ago my father informed me he had determined to send me alone to Italy. Since then I have not heard a word more from him upon the subject. He read at Highgate yesterday evening for the second time this week, but, as he had dinner engagements each time at the houses of people I did not know, I did not accompany him. I think he reads to-morrow at Islington, and if so I shall ask him to let me go with him. He reads again on Thursday next, at Highgate....

I believe my eyes are growing larger as I grow older, and I don't wonder at it, I stare so very wide so very often, Mrs. ---- talks sentimental morality about everything; her notions are pretty near right, which is the same thing as pretty near wrong (for "a miss," you know, "is as good as a mile"). She is near right enough to amaze me how she contrives to be so much nearer wrong; she is like a person trying to remember a tune, and singing it not quite correctly, while you know it better, and can't sing it at all, and are ready to go mad with mistakes which you perceive, without being able to rectify them: that is a musical experience of which you, not being musical, don't know the torture....

Did I tell you that Mrs. Jameson showed me the other day a charming likeness of my sister which she had made--like that pretty thing she did of me--with all the dresses of her parts? If I could have done a great littleness, I could have gone down on my knees and begged for it; I wished for it so much.

She spoke to me in great tribulation about a memoir of Mrs. Harry Siddons which it seems she was to have undertaken, but which Harry Siddons (her son) and William Grant (her son-in-law) do not wish written. Mrs. Jameson seems to feel some special annoyance upon this subject, and says that Mrs. Harry was herself anxious to have such a record made of her; and this surprises me so much, knowing Mrs. Harry as I thought I did, that I find it difficult to believe it....

Do you remember, after our reading together Balzac's "Récherche de l'Absolu," your objecting to the character of Madame de Cläes, and very justly, a certain meretricious taint which Balzac seldom escapes in his heroines, and which in some degree impaired the impression that character, in many respects beautifully conceived and drawn, would have produced? Well, there is a vein of something similar in Mrs. ----'s mind, and to me it taints more or less everything it touches. She showed me the other day an etching of Eve, from one of Raphael's compositions. The figure, of course, was naked, and being of the full, round, voluptuous, Italian order, I did not admire it,--the antique Diana, drawing an arrow from her quiver, her short drapery blown back from her straight limbs by her rapid motion, being my ideal of beauty in a womanly shape. "Ah, but," said Mrs. ----, "look at the inimitable coquetry of her whole air and posture: how completely she seems to know, as she looks at the man, that he can't resist her!" (It strikes me that that whole sentence ought to be in French.) Now, this is not at all my notion of Eve; even when she damned Adam and all the generations of men, I think she was more innocent than this. I imagine her like an eager, inquisitive, greedy child, with the fruit, whatever it was, part in her hand and part between her teeth, holding up her hand, or perhaps her mouth, to Adam. You see my idea of Eve is a sensual, self-willed, ignorant savage, who saw something beautiful, that smelt good, and looked as if it tasted good, and so tasted it, without any aspiration after any other knowledge. This real innate fleshly devil of greediness and indiscretion would, however, not bear the heavy theological superstruction that has been raised upon it, and therefore a desire for forbidden knowledge is made to account for the woman's sin and the sorrows of all her female progeny. To me this merely sensual sin, the sin of a child, seems much more picturesque, a good deal fitter for the purposes of art, without the mystic and mythical addition of an intellectual desire for knowledge and the agency of the Satanic serpent. Alas! the mere flesh is devil enough, and serves for all the consequences.

Blackwood will publish my verses, and, I believe, pay me well for them; indeed, I shall consider any payment at all good enough for such trumpery.

Good-bye, dear.

I am ever yours, FANNY.

My dearest Dorothea, or the Virgin Martyr, I make a courtesy to you. [By this title of a play of Massinger's I used frequently to address Miss Wilson, whose name was Dorothy.]

Saturday, December 13th, 1845.

Thank you, dear Hal, again, for those elastic circles. Now that I know how to use them, I am extremely charmed with them. In my sister's letter to me she gave me no further detail of her health than merely to state that she had injured herself seriously by sitting for hours on the cold stones of St. Peter's....

You know, dear Harriet, that few women have ever had such an education as to enable them fully to appreciate the classical associations of Italy (by-the-by, do you remember that one brief and rather desponding notice of female education in "Arnold's Letters"?); and as for me, I am as ignorant as dirt, so that all that full and delightful spring of pleasure which a fine classical knowledge opens to the traveller in the heroic lands is utterly sealed to me. I have not even put my lips to the brink of it. I have always thought that no form of human enjoyment could exceed that of a thorough scholar, such a one as Arnold, for instance, visiting Rome for the first time.

It is not, however, from recollection, association, or reflection that I look to deriving pleasure in Italy, but from my vivid perceptive faculties, from my senses (my nose, perhaps, excepted), and in the mere beauty that remains from the past, and abides in the present, in those Southern lands. You know what a vividly perceptive nature mine is; and, indeed, so great is my enjoyment from things merely material that the idea of ever being parted from this dear body of mine, through which I perceive them and see, hear, smell, touch, and taste so much exquisite pleasure, makes me feel rather uncomfortable. My spirit seems to me the decidedly inferior part of me, and, compared with my body, which is, at any rate, a good machine of its sort, almost a little contemptible, decidedly not good of its sort. I sometimes feel inclined to doubt which is the immortal; for I have hitherto suffered infinitely more from a defective spirit than from what St. Paul calls "this body of corruption."

My dear Harriet, if I get a chance to get into the waterfall at Tivoli, you may depend upon it I will; because just at such times I have a perfectly immortal faith in my mortality. Good-bye.

Ever yours, FANNY.

Monday, December 15th, 1845. DEAREST HAL,

Thank you for your nice inkstand, but I do not like your sending it to me, nevertheless; because I am sure it is a very great privation to you, being, as you are, particular and fidgety in such matters; and it is not a great gain to me, who do not care what I write out of, and surely I shall always be able, go where I will, among frogs or macaronis, to procure sucre noir or inchiostro nero to indite to you with. I shall send you back the poor dear little beloved pest you sent me first, because I am sure the stopper can be readjusted, and then it will be as good as ever, and you will have a peculiar inkstand to potter with, without which I do not believe you would be yourself.

Thank you for the extract from Arnold. I have no idea that Adam was "a mystical allegory," and you know that I believe every man to be his own devil, and a very sufficient one for all purposes of (so-called) damnation....

I suppose the history of Genesis to be the form assumed by the earliest traditions in which men's minds attempted to account for the creation and the first conditions of the human species. The laborious and perilous existence of man; the still more grievous liabilities of woman, who among all barbarous people is indeed the more miserable half of mankind: and it seems obvious that in those Eastern lands, where these traditions took their birth, the growth of venomous reptiles, the deadliest and most insidious of man's natural enemies, should suggest the idea of the type of all evil.

Moses (to whom the Genesis is, I believe, in spite of some later disputants, generally attributed), I presume, accepted the account as literally true, as probably did the authorities, Chaldean or other, from which he derived it....

Moses' "inspiration" did not prevent his enacting some illiberal and cruel laws, among many of admirable wisdom and goodness; and I see no reason why it should have exempted him from a belief in the traditions of his age....

I have heard that there has lately been found in America part of the fossil vertebræ of a serpent which must have measured, it is said, a hundred and forty feet! I cannot say I believe it, but if any human creatures inhabited the earth at the time when such "small gear" are supposed to have disported themselves on its surface, if the merest legend containing reference to such a "worm" survived to scare the early risers on this planet of ours, in its first morning hours of consolidation, who can wonder that such a creature should become the hideous representative of all evil, the origin of all sin and suffering, and the special being between which and the human race irreconcilable enmity was to exist forever? for surely not even the most regenerate mind in Christendom could live on decent terms with the best-disposed snake of such a length as that.

I do not think Mrs. Jameson had positively done anything in the matter of Mrs. Harry Siddons's memoirs beyond looking over a good many papers and preparing her mind with a view to it; and what you tell me a little shakes my confidence in my own opinion upon the subject, which, indeed, was by no means positively made up about it, because I know--at least I think--there were elements in Mrs. Harry's mind not altogether incompatible perhaps with the desire of leaving some record of herself, or having such made for her by others.... There are few people whom I pity more than Mrs. Jameson. I always thought she had a great deal of good in her, but the finer elements in her character have become more apparent and valuable to me the longer I have known her; her abilities are very considerable, and her information very various and extensive; she is a devoted, dutiful daughter, and a most affectionate and generous sister, working laboriously for her mother and the other members of her family.... I compassionate and admire her very much.

I dined on Friday last with dear Miss Cottin, who is a second edition of my dear Aunt Dall. Think of having known two such angels in one's life! On Saturday I dined tête-à-tête with Mrs. Procter, who is extremely kind to me.... Yesterday I dined with my father at the Horace Wilsons'; to-day I dine with Chorley, and to-morrow at the George Siddonses'.

You cannot think how much my late experiences have shattered me and broken my nervous equanimity.... To-day my father came suddenly into the room while I was playing on the piano, and startled me so by merely speaking to me that I burst into tears, and could not stand for several minutes, I trembled so. I have been suffering for some time past from an almost constant pain in my heart. I have wretched nights, and sometimes pass the whole morning of these days when I dine out, sitting on the floor, crying....

God bless you, dear.

Ever your affectionate FANNY.

MORTIMER STREET, December, 1845.

No, my dearest Hal, it would be impossible for me to tell you how sad I am; and instead of attempting to do so, my far better course is to try and write of something else.

My father still sits with maps and guide-books about him, debating of my route; and though I told him the other day that I would be ready to start at any moment he appointed, and that we both agreed that, on account of the cold, I had better not delay my departure, he has neither determined my line of march nor said a single word to me about my means of subsistence while I am abroad.

This morning he said that he had not yet entirely resolved not to accompany me; that if he could conscientiously do it, he should like it of all things; but that he did not feel warranted in neglecting any opportunity of making money. I think, perhaps, he is postponing his determination till some answer is received from America about V----'s tiny legacy to me.... But the very quickest answer to that letter cannot reach England before the middle of next month, and it seems a great pity to delay starting till the weather becomes so cold that we must inevitably suffer from it in travelling.

I feel no anxiety about the whole matter, or indeed any other. I am just as well here, and just as well there, and just as well everywhere as anywhere else. And though I should be glad to see all those much desired things, and most glad to embrace my sister again, and though I am occasionally annoyed and vexed here, I have many friends, and am very well off in London; and elsewhere, of course, I shall find what will annoy and vex me. I am quite "content," a little after Shylock's fashion at the end of the judgment scene. At the core of some "content" what heart-despair may abound!...

I told you of my dining at Mrs. Procter's yesterday. She was quite alone.... She showed me a beautiful song written by my sister, words and music, a sort of lullaby, but the most woful words! I think I must have inspired her with them, they threw me into such a state of nervous agitation....

What a machine I am shut up in! Surely a desire to beget a temperance in all things had need be the law of my existence; and, but that I believe work left unfinished and imperfect in this life is finished in another, I should think the task almost too difficult of achievement to begin it here.

God bless you, dear.

Ever yours affectionately, FANNY.

Wednesday, December 17th, 1845.

I found at last the little cross you have made over your house in the engraving of the St. Leonard's Esplanade, and when I had found it wondered how I came to miss it; but the truth is it was a blot, and the truth is I took it for nothing more....

You know I think, in spite of the French proverb, "Toute vérité n'est pas bonne à dire," that I think all truth is to be told; that is the teller's part: how it is received, or what effect it has, is the receiver's.... I think to suspect a person of wrongdoing more painful than to know that they have done wrong. In the first place, uncertainty upon the character of those we love--the most vital thing in life to us, except our own character--is the worst of all uncertainties. Your trust is shaken, your faith destroyed; belief, that soul of love, is disturbed, and, in addition to all this, as long as any element of uncertainty remains you have the alternate misery of suspecting yourself of unworthy, wicked, and base thoughts, of unjust surmises and uncharitable conclusions. When you know that those you love have sinned against you, your way is open and comparatively easy, for you have only to forgive them. I believe I am less sorry to find that A---- has wronged me by her actions than I should have been to find that I had wronged her by my thoughts.... I would a great deal rather have to forgive her for her misconduct, and pity her for her misery, poor woman! than blame myself for the wickedness of unworthily suspecting her. I am really relieved to know that, at any rate, I have not done her injustice.

I have been about all day, getting my money and passport, and paying bills and last visits. I go on Saturday to Southampton, and cross to Havre. I do not know why Emily fancied I was to be at Bannisters to-night, but that last week, when my father suddenly asked me how soon I could start, I replied, "In twenty-four hours," and then wrote to Emily that possibly I might be at Southampton to-day. I go by diligence from Havre to Rouen, by railroad from Rouen to Paris, in the same coupé of the diligence which is put bodily--the diligence, I mean--upon the rails; thence to Orleans by post-road, ditto; thence to Châlons-sur-Sâone, ditto, down the Sâone to Lyons, down the Rhone to Marseilles; steam thence to Civita Vecchia, and then vetturino to Rome. This is the route my father has made out for me; and, all things considered, I think it is the best, and presents few difficulties or inconveniences but those inevitable ones which must be encountered in travelling anywhere at this season of the year.

I shall not see you before I go, my dearest Hal, but I shall be with you before the Atlantic separates us once again; I know not how or where, but look forward to some season of personal intercourse with you before I return once more to America. The future, to be sure, lies misty enough before me, but I have always a feeling of nearness to you which even the Alps rising between us will not destroy, and I do not doubt to see you again before many months are passed. I am going this evening to the Miss Berrys'; they have asked me repeatedly to dine with them, and I have not had a single disengaged day, and as they have taken the trouble of coming to see after me bodily several times, I must pay my respects to them before I go, as in duty bound....

I had a letter from T----; he had not yet received either of mine, and knew nothing of Philadelphia or any of its inhabitants. He seems to think the Oregon question very black, and that the aspect of affairs on both sides of the water threatens war....

My father now talks of reading in every direction as soon as I am gone--Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh; the latter place he told me he thought he should go to in March; and then again, every now and then, he says, as soon as he can settle his affairs he shall come after me, as he should like to be in Rome at Easter to get the Pope's blessing. God bless you with a better blessing, my dearest Hal!

Ever yours, FANNY.

... Charles Greville has given me a book of his to read: it is very well written and interests me a good deal; it is upon the policy of England towards Ireland. He so habitually in conversation deals in the merest gossip, and what appears to me to be the most worldly, and therefore superficial, view of things, that I am agreeably surprised by the ability displayed in his book; for though it is not in any way extraordinary, it is in every way beyond what I expected from him.

[The direct railroad routes through France are now followed by all travellers to Italy, and the picturesque coach-road which I took from Orleans to Autun at this time, when they did not exist, is little likely to draw wayfarers aside from them; nor was the season of the year when I made that journey at all a favorable one in which to visit the forest and mountain region of the Nivernais. I was snowed up at a miserable little village among the hills called Château Chinon; the diligences were unable for several days to come up thither, the roads being impassable, and I had to make my way through the picturesque wild region in a miserable species of dilapidated cabriolet, furnished me at an exorbitant price from Château Chinon to Autun, where I was again picked up by the diligence.]

Thursday, December 18th, 1845. MY DEAREST HAL,

I leave London the day after to-morrow for Southampton. I am full of calls, bills, visits, sorrow, perplexity, and nervous agitation, which all this hurry and bustle increase tenfold; letters to write, too, for the American post is in, and has brought me four from the other side of the water to deal with. In the middle of all this, Mrs. Jameson sends me long letters of Sarah Grant's and Mary Patterson's to read, which prove most distinctly to my mind that she, Mrs. Jameson, wishes to write a memoir of Mrs. Harry Siddons; but do not at all prove so distinctly to my mind that Mrs. Harry Siddons wished a memoir of herself to be written by Mrs. Jameson. So all this I have had to wade through, and shall have to answer, wondering all the while what under the sun it matters what I think about the whole concern, or why people care one straw what people's opinions are about them, or what they do.

My opinion about memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, lives, letters, and books in general indeed, Mrs. Jameson is perfectly familiar with; and therefore her making me go through this voluminous correspondence just now, when she knows how pressed I am for time, seems to me a little unmerciful; but, however, I've done it, that's one comfort.

Then comes dear George Combe, with a long letter, the second this week, upon the subject of Miss C----'s private character, family connections, birth, parentage, reputation, etc., desiring me to answer all manner of questions about her; and I know no more of her than I do of the man in the moon: and all this must likewise be attended to....

About my consulting Wilson (our attached friend and family physician), I did so when I was here before, and I am following the advice he then gave me; but for these physical effects of mental causes, what can be done as long as the causes continue?...

Hayes (my maid) and I are to take the coupé of the diligence wherever we can get it on our route, and so proceed together and alone. I shall pay for the third place, but it is worth while to pay something to be protected from the proximity of some travelling Frenchmen; and paying for this extra place is not a very great extravagance, as the cost of travelling by public conveyance on the Continent is very moderate.

I do not know when Blackwood intends publishing my things. I gave them into Chorley's hands, and Chorley's discretion, and know nothing further about them, but that I believe I shall be paid for them what he calls "tolerably well," and therefore what I shall consider magnificently well, inasmuch as they seem to me worth nothing at all.

I hear of nothing but the change of Ministry, but have been so much engrossed with my own affairs that I have not given much attention to what I have heard upon the subject. I believe Sir Robert Peel will come into some coalition with the Whigs, Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, etc., and this is perhaps the best thing that can happen, because, by all accounts, the Whigs have literally not got a man to head them. But I do not think anything is yet decided upon.

And now, my dear, I must break off, and write to M---- M----, and George Combe about Miss C----'s virtue (why the deuce doesn't he look for it in her skull?), and Mrs. Jameson, and all America.

I breakfasted this morning with Rogers, and dine this evening at the Procters'. What an enviable woman I might appear!--only you know better.

Yours truly, FANNY.

MORTIMER STREET, Friday Night (i.e. Saturday Morning, at 2 o'clock), December 19th, 1845.

No! my dearest Hal, I do not think that to one who believes that life is spiritual education it needs any very painful or difficult investigation of circumstances to perceive, not why such and such special trials are sent to certain individuals, but that all trial is the positive result of or has been incurred by error or sin; and beholding the beautiful face of bitterest adversity, for such is one of its aspects, that all trial is sent to teach us better things than we knew, or than we did, before. There is nothing for which God's mercy appears to me more praiseworthy than the essential essence of improvement, of progress, of growth, which can be expressed from the gall-apple of our sorrows. To each soul of man the needful task is set, the needful discipline administered, and therefore it doesn't seem to me to require much investigation into mere circumstances to accept my own trials. They are appointed to me because they are best for me, and whatever my apparent impatience under them, this is, in deed and truth, my abiding faith....

But it is past two o'clock in the morning. I am almost exhausted with packing and writing. Seven letters lie on my table ready to be sealed, seven more went to the post-office this afternoon; but though I will not sleep till I bid you good-night, I will not write any more than just that now. My fire is out, my room cold, and, being tired with packing, I am getting quite chilled. You must direct to me to the care of Edward Sartoris, Esq., Trinità dei Monti, Rome, and I will answer you, as you know. I will write to you to-morrow, that is to-day, when I get to Bannisters; or perhaps before I start, if I can get up early enough to get half an hour before breakfast.

Good-night. God bless you. I am unutterably sad, and feel as though I were going away from everybody, I know not whither--it is all vague, uncertain, indefinite, all but the sorrow which is inseparable from me, go where I will, a companion I can reckon upon for the rest of my life everywhere. As for the rest, if we did but recollect it, our next minute is always the unknown.

Ever yours, FANNY.

BANNISTERS, Saturday, December 20th, 1845. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

My last words and thoughts were yours last night; but this morning, when I hoped to have written to you again, I found it impossible to do so; so here I am in the room at Bannisters where you and I and Emily were sitting together a few weeks ago,--she on her knees, writing for a fly to take me to the steamer to-night, and I writing to you from this place, where it seems as if you were still sitting beside us. Emily won't let me send you your little square ink-bottle for Queen's heads, but says she will keep it for you, so there I leave it in her hands.

Charles Greville's book (for it is not a pamphlet) is called "The Policy of England to Ireland," or something as nearly like that as possible. My praise of it may occasion you some disappointment, for I am pleased with it more because it is so much better than anything I expected from him than because it is particularly powerful or striking in itself. The subject interests me a good deal, and the book is very agreeably and well written, and in a far better tone than I should have looked for in anything of his.

I have besought Mr. Lowndes to forward my letters to me without any delay, and I have no doubt he will do so....

As for death, well is it with those who quietly reach the fifth act of their lives, with only the usual and inevitable decay and dropping off of all beloved things which time must bring; the sudden catastrophe of adverse circumstance, wrecking a whole existence in the very middle of its course, is a more terrible thing than death.

My dearest Hal, I have no more to say but that "I love you." Emily is talking to me, and I feel as if I ought to talk to her. Give my dear love to dear Dorothy, and believe me

Ever yours, FANNY.

ROME, TRINITÀ DEI MONTI, Monday, April 20th, 1846.

You ask me what I shall do in the spring, my dear Hal. My present plan is to return to England next December, and remain with my father, if he can have me with him without inconvenience, till the weather is fine enough to admit of my returning without too much wretchedness to America....

When E---- and my father wrote to me to return to England, I had no idea but that I was to have a home with the latter, that he expected and wished me to live with him.... I think now that if his deafness obliges him to give up his public readings, and cuts him off from his club and the society that he likes, he will not be sorry that I should remain with him....

By-the-by, I take your question about my plans for the spring to refer not to this but to next spring, as I suppose you know that I mean to remain with my sister during the coming summer, and that we are going to spend the greater part of it at Frascati, where E---- has taken a charming apartment in a lovely villa belonging to the Borghese.

You will be in England next winter, dear Hal, and I shall come then and stay with you and Dorothy. You have interfered so little with my journal-keeping by your letters that I have been wondering and lamenting that I did not hear from you for the last some time, and was all but wrought up to the desperate pitch of writing to you out of turn, to know what was the matter, when I received your last letter. I do not, however, keep my journal with any sort of regularity; my time is extremely and very irregularly occupied, and I should certainly preserve no record whatever of my impressions but for the very disagreeable conviction that it is my duty to do so, if there is, as I believe there is, the slightest probability of my being able by this means to earn a little money and to avoid drawing upon my father's resources. I have a great contempt for this process, and a greater contempt for the barren balderdash I write: but exchange is no robbery, a thing is worth what it will fetch, and if a bookseller will buy my trash, I will sell it to him; for beggars must, in no case, be choosers....

You say that I have yet told you nothing of my satisfaction in Rome. I wish you had not made your challenge so large. How shall I tell you of my satisfaction in Rome? and at which end of Rome, or my satisfaction, shall I begin? You must remember, in the first place, that its strangeness is not absolutely to me what it is to many English people; the brilliant and enchanting sky is not unlike that with which I have been familiar for some years past in America; the beautiful and (to us Anglo-Saxon islanders) unusual vegetation bears some resemblance to that of the Southern States in winter. Boston, you know, is in the same latitude as Rome, and though the American northern winter is incomparably more severe than that of Italy, the summer heat and the southern semi-tropical vegetation are kindred features in that other world and this. The difference of this winter climate and that of the United States has hitherto been an unfavorable one to me; for I have been extremely unwell ever since I have been here--the sirocco destroys me body and soul while it lasts, and there is a sultry heaviness in the atmosphere that gave me at first perpetual headaches, and still continues to disagree extremely with me. Now, of these abatements of my satisfaction I have told you, but of my satisfaction itself I should find it impossible to tell, but I should think you might form some idea of it, knowing both me and the place where I am.

I have hitherto been more anxious to remain with my sister than to go and see even the sights of Rome. Now, however, that our departure for Frascati must take place in about a month, I get up at seven every morning, and go out before breakfast alone, and in this way I am contriving to do some of my traveller's duty.

I walked this morning to the Pantheon, and heard Mass there. On my return home, I went into the Church of the Trinità dei Monti, to hear the French nuns sing their prayers. This afternoon we have been to the Villa Albani, which is ridiculously full of rose-bushes, which are so ridiculously full of roses that, except in a scene in a pantomime, I never saw anything like it. We remained in the garden, and the day was like a warm English April day, in consequence of which we had the loveliest pageant of thick sullen rain and sudden brilliant flashes of sunlight chasing each other all over those exquisite Alban Hills, with our very un-English foreground of terraces, fountains, statues, vases, evergreen garden walls of laurel, myrtle, box, laurestinus, and ridiculous rose-bushes in ridiculous bloom. There never was a more enchanting combination of various beauty than the landscape we looked at and the place from which we looked at it. I brought away some roses and lemon-blossoms: the latter I enclose in this letter, that some of the sweetness I have been enjoying may salute your senses also, and recall these divine scenes to your memory still more vividly. We came home from the Villa Albani in the most tremendous pour of rain, and had hardly taken off our bonnets when the whole sky, from the pines on Monte Maris to the Dome of Santa Maria Maggiore, was bathed all over in beauty and splendor indescribable. If we had only been Claude Lorraine, what a sunset we should have painted!

We have a charming little terrace garden to our house here, in which my "retired leisure" takes perpetual delight....

God bless you, dear.

Ever yours, FANNY.

FRASCATI, Wednesday, May 20th, 1846. MY DEAR HAL,

One would suppose that writing was to the full as disagreeable to you as it is to me, yet you do not profess that it is so, but merely write that you have little to say, as you think, that will interest me. Now, this is, I think, a general fallacy, but I am sure it is an individual one: the sight of your handwriting, representing as it does to me your face, your voice, and, above all, your generous and constant affection, makes the mere superscription of your letters worth a joyful welcome from me; and for any dearth of matter on your part, it lies, I rather think, chiefly in the direction which least affects me, i.e. society gossip, or "news," as it is called (O Lord! such old news as it is), being for ever the same stuff with a mere imperceptible difference in the pattern on it, let it come from what quarter of the civilized globe it will; and which, as far as I have had occasion to observe latterly, forms the chief resource of "polite letter-writers."

Of matters that do interest me, you might surely have plenty to say--your own health and frame of mind; the books you read, and what you think of them; and whatever of special interest to yourself occurs, either at home or abroad. At Ardgillan, you know, I know every inch of your ground, and between the little turret room and the Dell it seems to me many letters might be filled; then the state of politics in England interests me intensely; and the condition of Ireland is surely a most fruitful theme for comment just now....

We are now at Frascati, and in spite of the inexhaustible, immortal interest of Rome, I am rejoicing with my whole nature, moral, mental, and physical, in our removal to the country. The beautiful aspect of this enchanting region, occasionally, by rare accident, recalls the hill country in America that I am so fond of; but this is of a far higher and nobler order of beauty.

The Campagna itself is an ever-present feature of picturesque grandeur in the landscape here, and gives it a character unlike anything anywhere else.

The district of country round Lenox rejoices in a number of small lakes (from one hill-side one sees five), of a few miles in circumference, which, lying in the laps of the hills, with fine wooded slopes sweeping down to their bright basins, give a peculiar charm to the scenery; while here, as you know, the volcanic waters of Albano and Nemi lie so deep in their rocky beds as to be invisible, unless from their very margins.

Of the human picturesqueness of this place and people no American scenery or population have an atom; and isolated, ugly, mean, matter-of-fact farm-houses, or whitewashed, clap-boarded, stiff, staring villages, alike without antiquity to make them venerable or picturesqueness to make them tolerable, are all that there represent the exquisitely grouped and colored masses of building, or solitary specimens of noble time-tinted masonry and architecture, that every half-fortress farmhouse in the plain, or hamlet or convent on the hill-side, present in this paradise of painters.

I must confess to you, however, that the populousness of this landscape is not agreeable to me. Absolute loneliness and the absence of every trace of human existence was such a striking feature of the American scenery that I am fond of, where it was possible in some directions to ride several miles without meeting man or woman or seeing their dwellings, that the impossibility of getting out of sight of human presence or human habitation is sometimes irksome to me here.

It is true that this scenery is often wildly sublime in its character; nevertheless, it is overlooked in almost every direction by villas, monasteries, or villages, and if one escapes from these (as, indeed, I only suppose I may, for I have not yet been able to do so), one stumbles among the ruins and gigantic remains of the great race that has departed, and recollections of men, their works and ways, pursue one everywhere, and surround one with the vestiges of the humanity of bygone centuries.

In the woods of Massachusetts wild-cats panthers, and bears are yet occasionally to be met with, and the absence of the human element, whether present or past, gives a character of unsympathizing savageness to the scenery; while here it has so saturated the very soil with its former existence that where there is nobody there are millions of ghosts, and that, if the sense of solitude is almost precluded, there is an abiding and depressing one of desolate desertion.

The personal danger which I am told attends walking alone about the woods and hills here rather impairs my enjoyment of the lovely country....

How lamentably foolish human beings are in their intercourse with each other, to be sure, whether they love or hate, or whatever they do!...

The epistle of yours that I am now answering I received only this morning, and, owing no one else a previous debt, sat down instantly to discharge my debt to you. Am I honest? am I just? If I am not, show me how I am not; if I am, why, hold your tongue.

The climate of Rome disagreed with me more than any climate of which I have yet had experience. I had a perpetual consciousness of my bilious tendencies, and when the sirocco blew I found it difficult to bear up against that and the permanent causes of depression I always have to struggle against. The air here is undoubtedly freer and purer, but even here we do not escape from that deadly hot wind, that blast, that I should think came straight from hell, it is so laden with despair.

I liked those pretty lasses, the Ladies T----, very much. All young people interest me, and must be wonderfully displeasing if they do not please me. I met them frequently, but they were naturally full of gayety and life and spirits, which I naturally was not. The little society I went into in Rome oppressed me dreadfully with its ponderous vapidity, and beyond exchanging a few words with these bonnie girls, and admiring their sweet pleasant faces, I had nothing to do with them. There was much talk about the chances of a marriage between Lord W---- and Lady M----, but though her father left no stone unturned to accomplish this great blessing for his pretty daughter, the matter seemed extremely doubtful when the season ended and they all went off to Naples.

As for Mrs. H----, if she had chronicled me, I am afraid it would scarcely have been with good words. I met her at a party at Mrs. Bunsen's (whose husband is the son of Arnold's friend).... The young lady impressed me as one of that numerous class of persons who like to look at a man or woman whose name, for any reason, has been in the public mouth, and probably her curiosity was abundantly satisfied by my being brought up and shown to her. She made no particular impression upon me, but I have no doubt that in sorrow, or joy, or any real genuine condition, instead of what is called society, she might perhaps have interested me. It takes uncommon powers of fascination, or what is even rarer, perfect simplicity, to attract attention or arouse sympathy in the dead atmosphere of modern civilized social intercourse. All is so drearily dry, smooth, narrow, and commonplace that the great deeps of life below this stupid stagnant surface are never seen, heard, or thought of.

If your nieces' constancy in following the round of monotonously recurring amusements of a Dublin season amazes me, they would certainly think it much more amazing to pass one's time as I do, wandering about the country alone, dipping one's head and hands into every wayside fountain one comes to, and sitting down by it only to get up again and wander on to the next spring of living water. The symbol is comforting, as well as the element itself, though it is a mere suggestion of the spiritual wells by which one may find rest and refreshment, and pause and ponder on this dusty life's way of ours.

I rejoice the distress in Ireland is less than was anticipated, and am sorry that I cannot sympathize with your nephew's political views [Colonel Taylor was all his life a consistent and fervent Tory].... Politics appear to me, in a free government, to be the especial and proper occupation of a wealthy landowner; and, in such a country as Ireland, I am sure they might furnish a noble field for the exercise of the finest intelligence and the most devoted patriotism, as well as fill the time with occupation of infinite interest, both of business and benevolence. I should like to be a man with such a work....

My sister's little girl is lovely; she runs about, but does not speak yet. God bless you, my dear friend. Give my love to dear Dorothy. If I can, I will come and see you both at Torquay this next winter. I hope to be in England in November.

Ever yours, FANNY.

FRASCATI, Wednesday, July 1st, 1846.

... You know of old that the slightest word of blame from you is worse than hot sealing-wax on my skin to me, and that to my self-justifications there is no end. My dear friend, are mental perplexity and despondency, moral difficulty, spiritual apathy, and a general bitter internal struggle with existence, less real trials, less positive troubles, than the most afflicting circumstances generally so classed? I almost doubt it. It may be more difficult to formulate that species of anguish in words, and it may seem a less positive and substantial grief than some others, but the plagues of the soul are real tortures, and I set few sufferings above them, few difficulties and few pains beyond those that have their source not in the outward dispensation of events, but in the inward conditions of our physical and moral constitutions.

Comparing one lot with another, does not rather the equality of the general doom of trouble and sorrow, of difficulty and struggle, witness the impartiality with which we are governed and our several fates distributed to us? The self-assured and self-relying strength of my constitution (I mean by that my character as well as the temperament from which it results) knows nothing of the trials that beset yours--doubt, distrust, despondency. I have health, mental and physical activity, and a "mounting spirit" of indomitable enjoyment that buoyantly protects me from sufferings under which others wince and writhe; nevertheless, I have the sufferings proper to my individuality, and I needs must suffer, if it were only that I may be said to live, in the fit and proper sense of the term. Our lots are just; by God they are appointed....

But in spite of abiding sorrow, I have often hours of vivid enjoyment, enjoyment which has nothing to do with happiness, or peace, or hope; momentary flashes, bright gleams of exquisite pleasure, of which the capacity seems indestructible in my nature; and whatever bitterness may lie at my heart's core, it still leaves about it a mobile surface of sensibility, which reflects with a sort of ecstasy every ray of light and every form of beauty.

You certainly do not enjoy as I do, and perhaps therefore you do not suffer as acutely; but we err in nothing more than in our estimate of each other's natures, and might more profitably spend the same amount of consideration upon our own lot, and its capabilities of sorrow or of joy for our own improvement.

Why is it that people do perpetually live below their own pitch? as you very truly described their living. My return to civilized society makes me ponder much upon the causes of the desperate frivolity and dismal inanity which calls itself by that name, and in the midst of which we live and move and have our being. If people did really enjoy and amuse themselves, nothing could be better; because enjoyment and amusement are great goods, and deserve to be labored for sufficiently; but the absence of amusement, of enjoyment, of life, of spirits, of vivacity, of vitality, in the society of the present day, and its so-called diversions, strikes me with astonishment and compassion. For my own part, I hold a good laugh to be inestimable in pleasure and in profit; good nonsense well talked only less admirable than good sense well delivered; and a spirit of fun the next best thing to a serious spirit; and moreover, thank God, they are quite compatible! I think the stupid shallowness of society has some deep causes; one among which is, of course, that by devoting all their energies and all their faculties and all their time to mere amusement, as they have no right to do, people fail of their aim, and are neither well amused nor well occupied, nor well anything else. For if "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," what does the reverse do for him? This passion for cakes and sugar-candy in adult, not to say advanced, life is rather lugubrious; and of course it strikes me forcibly on my return from America, where the absence of a wholesome spirit of recreation is one of the dreariest features of the national existence....

Here the absolute necessity for mere amusement strikes me as a sort of dry-rot in certain portions of the fabric of civilized society, and tends to make it a sapless crumbling mass of appearances--the most ostentatious appearance of all, that of pleasure, being perhaps the hollowest and most unreal.

It takes, I believe, no meaner qualities than intelligence and goodness to enable a person to be thoroughly, heartily, and satisfactorily amused.

Unless you, my dear friend, deprecate our meeting to part again, I have no intention whatever of leaving England without seeing you once more. I cannot imagine doing such a thing, unless in compliance with your wish, or submission to inevitable necessity. I hope to come down to Torquay, to you and Dorothy, for a few days in the winter.

I am amused at your saying that you don't think any one would feel very comfortable living with me, who had not a great love of truth. Catherine Sedgwick once said it was impossible to tell a lie before me with any comfort; and yet I have told my own lies, and certainly sinned, as did not the worthy lady who, being charged with a falsehood, replied unhesitatingly, "Of course, I know it was a lie; I made it! I thought it would do good." Another lady of my acquaintance, speaking of a person we both knew, who was indifferent, to say the least of it, upon the question of veracity, exclaimed, "Oh, but Mrs. C---- is really too bad, for she will tell stories when there isn't the least necessity for it."

A---- was a curious instance of the distortion of a very upright nature; for she is undoubtedly a person of great natural truth and integrity, and yet, under the influence of an unfortunate passion, her pre-eminent virtue suffered total eclipse; and she must have condescended, proud and sincere as she was, to much duplicity and much absolute falsehood. Poor girl!

I think one great argument against wrong-doing of every sort is that it almost invariably, sooner or later, leads to a sacrifice of truth in some way or other; and for that reason a hearty love of truth is a great preservative from sin in general.

Your letters, directed either to Rome or here, to the care of Edward Sartoris, have reached me hitherto safely and punctually....

My sister particularly begs me to tell you that she rides ("a-horseback, you cuckoo!") between twelve and sixteen miles almost every day. I cannot clearly tell whether she has grown thinner or I have grown used to her figure.

The heat is beginning to be very oppressive, and I wish I was in England, for I hate hot weather. The whole range of the Sabine Hills, as I see them from my window here, look baked and parched and misty, in the glare beyond the tawny-colored Campagna. Every flower in the garden has bloomed itself away; the trees loll their heads to the hot gusts of the sirocco, mocking one with the enchanting beckoning gesture of a breeze, while the air is in truth like a blast from an oven or the draught at the mouth of a furnace.

I walk before breakfast, and steep myself in perspiration; and get into the fountain in the garden afterwards, and steep myself in cold water; and by dint of the double process, live in tolerable comfort the rest of the day. And I have no right to complain, for this is temperate to the summer climate of Philadelphia.

Mary and Martha Somerville are paying us a visit of a few days, and I have spent the last two mornings in a vast, princely, empty marble gallery here, teaching them to dance the cachuca; and I wish you could have seen Mrs. Somerville watching our exercises. With her eyeglasses to her eyes, the gentle gentlewoman sat silently contemplating our evolutions, and as we brought them to a conclusion, and stood (not like the Graces) puffing and panting round her, unwilling not to say some kindly word of commendation of our effort, she meekly observed, "It's very pretty, very graceful, very"--a pause--"ladylike." She spoke without any malicious intention whatever, dear lady, but she surely left out the un. Do you not think it is time I should begin to think of growing old? or do your nieces do anything more juvenile than this, with all their ball-going?

God bless you, my dear Harriet. Good-bye.

I am ever, as ever yours, FANNY.

FRASCATI, Wednesday, September 2nd, 1846. MY DEAREST HARRIET,

... I think that the women who have contemplated any equality between the sexes have almost all been unmarried, for while the father disposes of the children whom he maintains, and which thus endows him with the power of supreme torture, what mother's heart is proof against the tightening of that screw? At any rate, what number of women is ever likely to be found so organized or so principled as to resist the pressure of this tremendous power? My sister, in speaking to me the other day of what she would or would not give up to her husband of conscientious conviction of right, wound up by saying, "But sooner than lose my children, there is nothing that I would not do;" and in so speaking she undoubtedly uttered the feeling of the great majority of women....

We suppose my father has gone to Germany, with some intention of giving readings there. He has been on the Continent now upwards of three months, but we never hear anything definite or precise about his engagements from himself; and in his letters he never mentions place, person, or purpose, where he is going, or where likely to be; so that I can form no idea how long I may be deprived of my letters, which are directed to London, to his care.

My dearest Hal, I have kept no journal since I have been abroad but such as could be published verbatim. I have kept no record of my own life; I have long felt that to chronicle it would not assist me in enduring it.... Indeed, since I came to Italy, I should have kept no diary at all, but that my doing so was suggested to me as a possible means of earning something towards my present support, and with that view I have noted what I have seen, much to my own disgust and dissatisfaction; for I feel very strongly my own inability to give any fresh interest to a mere superficial description of things and places seen and known by everybody, and written about by all the world and his wife, for the last hundred years. Nevertheless, I have done it; because I could not possibly neglect any means whatever that were pointed out to me of helping myself, and relieving others from helping me.... I have given up my walk and my dip in the fountain before breakfast. We ride for three or four hours every afternoon, and a walk of two hours in the morning besides seemed to me, upon reflection, a disproportionate allowance of mere physical exercise for a creature endowed with brains as well as arms and legs.... Upon the whole, we have reason to be grateful for the health we have all of us enjoyed. There has been a great deal of violent and dangerous illness among the English residents passing the summer at Frascati and Albano; quite enough indeed, I think, to justify the ill repute of unhealthiness with which the whole of this beautiful region is branded. Our whole family has escaped all serious inconvenience, either from the malaria usual to the place or the unusual heat of the summer; the children especially have been in admirable health and lovely looks, the whole time we have been here....

God bless you, my dearest Hal! I am afraid that it is true that I often appear wanting in charity towards the vices and follies of my fellow-creatures; and yet I really have a great deal more than my outbreaks of vehement denunciation would seem to indicate; and of one thing I am sure, that with regard to any wrong or injury committed against myself, a very short time enables me not only to forgive it, but to perceive all the rational excuses and attenuations that it admits of. I certainly am not conscious of any bitterness of heart towards any one.... I believe it is only in the first perception of evil or sense of injury that I am unmeasured or unreasonable in my expression of condemnation--but you know, my dear, suddenness is the curse of my nature.... But my self-love always springs up against the shadow of blame, and so you need pay no heed to what I say in self-justification. If I am censured justly, I shall accept the reproof inwardly, whatever outward show I may make of defending myself against it; for the grace of humility is even more deficient in me than that of charity, and to submit graciously to what seems to me unjust blame is hitherto a virtue I do not possess at all.

[After my return to England, I resumed the exercise of my theatrical profession; the less distasteful occupation of giving public readings, which I adopted subsequently, was not then open to me. My father was giving readings from Shakespeare, and it was impossible for me to thrust my sickle into a field he was reaping so successfully. I therefore returned to the stage; under what disadvantageously altered circumstances it is needless to say.

A stout, middle-aged, not particularly good-looking woman, such as I then was, is not a very attractive representative of Juliet or Julia; nor had I, in the retirement of nine years of private life, improved by study or experience my talent for acting, such as it was. I had hardly entered the theatre during all those years, and my thoughts had as seldom reverted to anything connected with my former occupation. While losing, therefore, the few personal qualifications (of which the principal one was youth) I ever possessed for the younger heroines of the drama, I had gained none but age as a representative of its weightier female personages--Lady Macbeth, Queen Katherine, etc.

Thus, even less well fitted than when first I came out for the work I was again undertaking, I had the additional disadvantage of being an extremely incompetent woman of business; and having now to make my own bargains in the market of public exhibition, I did so with total want of knowledge and experience to guide me in my dealings with the persons from whom I had to seek employment.

I found it difficult to obtain an engagement in London; but Mr. Knowles, of the Manchester Theatre, very liberally offered me such terms as I was thankful to accept; and I there made my first appearance on my return to the stage.

Among the various changes which I had to encounter in doing so, one that might appear trivial enough occasioned me no little annoyance. The inevitable rouge, rendered really indispensable by the ghastly effect of the gaslight illumination of the stage, had always been one of its minor disagreeables to me; but I now found that, in addition to rouged cheeks, my fair theatrical contemporaries--fair though they might be--literally whitewashed their necks, shoulders, arms, and hands; a practice which I found it impossible to adopt; and in spite of my zealous friend Henry Greville's rather indignant expostulation, to the effect that what so beautiful a woman as Madame Grisi condescended to do, for the improvement of her natural charms, was not to be disdained by a person so comparatively ugly, I steadily refused to make a whited sepulchre of that description of myself, and continued to confront the public with my own skin, looking, probably, like a gypsy, or, when in proximity with any feminine coadjutor, like a bronze figure arm-in-arm with a plaster-of-Paris cast.

Before, however, beginning my new existence of professional toil, I stayed a few days at Bannisters, with Mrs. FitzHugh and my dear friend, her daughter Emily.]

BANNISTERS, Tuesday, 13th, 1846.

You say, my dear Hal, that you see Emily and me perpetually, in various positions, holding various conversations. Had you a vision of us this morning, by the comfortable fire in my room, I reading, and she listening to, your letter?...

Thank you, my dear friend, for your flagellatory recipe, which I beg to decline. The sponging with vinegar and water I do practise every morning, and as I persevere in it until my fingers can hardly hold the sponge for cold, and my throat is as crimson as if it were flayed, I hope it will answer the same purpose as lashing myself, which I object to, partly, I suppose, for Sancho Panza's reasons, and partly because of its great resemblance to, not to say identity with, the superstitious practices of the idolatrous and benighted Roman Catholic Church.

The amount of medical advice and assistance which I have received since I have been restored to the affectionate society of my dear Emily and her kind mother is hardly to be told....

I shall not answer your letter seriously: I am convinced it is bad for you. I believe Dorothy never laughs (you know the Devil in "Faust" says the Almighty never does), and I am satisfied that what you are languishing for is a little absurdity, which she cannot by any possibility afford you.

How I wish I was with you! because, though I am no more absurd than that sublime woman Dorothy, I at least know how to take the best advantage, both for you and myself, of the great gifts you possess in that line; and the mutual sweetness and utility of our intercourse is, I am persuaded, principally owing to the judicious use I make of the extraordinary amount of absurdity it has pleased Heaven to vouchsafe you, my most precious friend.

And so you think I shall have plenty of "admiring friends" for my "gay hours" (!!!!), but shall be glad to fall back, in my less delightful ones, upon the devoted affection of--you? (Oh, Harriet, oughtn't you to be ashamed of yourself?)

I have more friends, I humbly and devoutly thank God for them, than almost any one I know; those I depend upon I can count upon the fingers of one hand, and you are the thumb.

In the useless struggle you persist in making to be reasonable (why don't you give it up? I've known you hopelessly at it now forty years or thereabouts), you really make use of very singular and, permit me to say, inappropriate language. After detailing, in a manner that nearly made me cry and laugh with distress for you and disapprobation of you, all your unnecessary agonies of anxiety about me, you suddenly rein yourself up with an extra-reasonable jerk, and say that "the foolish importance you attach to trifles is as great as ever."

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