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 voila!

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 misuse, or disuse, 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 tete-a-tete 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 unmarked 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 rapacity—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 L10, 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 tete-a-tete 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 L2000, and to Lord John Russell L1500 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 "Recherche de l'Absolu," your objecting to the character of Madame de Claees, 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 vertebrae 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 tete-a-tete 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 verite n'est pas bonne a 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 coupe of the diligence which is put bodily—the diligence, I mean—upon the rails; thence to Orleans by post-road, ditto; thence to Chalons-sur-Saone, ditto, down the Saone 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 Chateau 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 Chateau Chinon to Autun, where I was again picked up by the diligence.]