LETTERS.FROM 1853 TO 1861.LONDON.

To Charles Eliot Norton, Esq., Cambridge, Massachusetts.

On board the ‘Asia’: July 7, 1853.

Here we are, pretty well on our way across, about 2,200 miles from New York.

Mr. Slidell, of Louisiana, and a young man apparently his companion, are perhaps the most unexceptionable human beings that one sees. Some Spaniards from Mexico and Cuba are also pleasant to look at, specially two little boys. A maiden aunt and nephew from Burlington, New Jersey, sit near me, and are not so bad. A horrid woman from New York whines, or rather wheines, or whaines, or even whoines just beyond, whom it is misery even to think of. I feel convinced there is a purgatory for vulgar people.

Combe Hurst, Surrey: July 15.

Now I am here I find the case is altered a good deal. Still I like America best; and, but for the greater security which one has in a fixed salary, would give up all thought of staying here at once. At least I might take the place for a time. It is a temptation, if I am to live the rest of my life chez vous, to secure another year’s schooling on this side first; πολλὰ δὲ διδασκόμενος, in short.

I like America all the better for the comparison withEngland on my return. Certainly I think you are more right than I was willing to admit about the position of the lower classes here. I hope you will be able to get along without anything like it, and in any case you have a great blessing in the mere chance of that. Such is my first reimpression. However, it will wear off soon enough, I dare say; so you must make the most of my admission. Thackeray, they tell me, is full of the kind-heartedness and generousness of the Americans, and is faithful to his purpose of writing no book.

July 20, 1853.

The thing is done; and I am to try my hand in this place. I go to the Education Office on Monday next. With the prospect of being able to marry within the year, I could hardly do otherwise. Yet I could not venture with any comfort without the prospect of America beyond.

To the same.

Council Office: August 29, 1853.

Really, I may say I am only just beginning to recover my spirits after returning from the young, and hopeful, and humane republic, to this cruel, unbelieving, inveterate old monarchy. There are deeper waters of ancient knowledge and experience about one here, and one is saved from the temptation of flying off into space, but I think you have beyond all question the happiest and best country going. Still the political talk of America, such as one hears it here, is not always true to the best intentions of the country is it?

Everybody is away from town, except a few stray lawyers and newspaper contributors. I took a long walk yesterday, calling at Highgate, on the Horners, with a young Morning Chronicler, son of the Vicar of Conway, a first-class man at Oxford, and Fellow of University.We went on beyond Highgate to a place called Muswell Hill, and thence near Colney Hatch, near the Great Northern Railway, and across the course of the New River to Southwell, where we got some luncheon, and then came back to Hornsey, where we got an omnibus, after walking from 12.30 to 5.

I met the other day, at the Horners’, Murray, the ci-devant American, just come from Egypt, and starting for Berne, where he is to have office: he is really very American. The Pulskys came in in the evening. I have met Mr. Pulsky three times in the last twelve months perhaps—once in England before I came away; then at Mrs. Howe’s, Boston, with you; and again yesterday, chez Mrs. Horner. We meet with the utmost unconcern under the oddest changes of circumstances; it is really very cosmopolitan.

Well, I go on in the office—operose nihil agendo—veryoperose, and verynihiltoo. London is dead empty, or nearly so. The Lords are scampering through the last bills, heaven knows how many per night. The Commons are off grouse-wards, and scarcely any one remains to ask one to dinner or anything else.

I am very glad to be enrolled among the φ. β. κ’s. What can I do to express my sense of the honour done me? I assure you I am very glad of any tie with my sometime fellow-citizens, if I may so call them. England, we who know America agree, is more endurable because of one’s knowledge of America as a refuge. However, my employment in England is in one respect, namely, in its entire freedom from all spiritual despotism or surveillance, more agreeable than what I used to have.

To the same.

Council Office: September 21, 1853.

I sometimes get overpowered by the burden and weight of European metropolitan life, and am driven in spirit tothe solution of Transatlantic new life, but as to the letter of such palingenesy I can’t say. I like the quill-driving very well. I did not know how tired I had become of pedagogy orboy-driving till I learnt something of it by the change. Beyond that mere fact, however, I do not know that there is much interest in composing sheets of agenda.

I am very glad to hear something reasonable about American politics. As for naturalisation, it seems to me a little cloud that must cover a good space of the political heavens before long. I think the old countries must abandon their present doctrine of inalienable right. It seems fair, however, to allow some interval of time; and in case of ‘rebels,’ I should say no fully naturalised citizen, far less a man going to be a citizen, can claim with any justice to return to his old country and be protected by his new country. After full five years Kossuth could not without insult go to Vienna. It would be quite enough that he should go to Turkey or the Canton Tessin, which Iwouldclaim for him.

The old classical system by which closer ties of relationship between this country and that, than between this and some third, seems no bad one. Between America and England, between the British American Colonies in particular and the United States, one would be glad if there could exist some isopolity: that a man might be a citizen in which he pleased, and change about as he chose. Treaties with different countries might establish different degrees of privilege very naturally. Had I remained with you, I would gladly have become an American citizen; but I should not like to pledge myself to fight against England, except indefenceof my new country. It seems to me it would be well if that degree of transfer were open to one.

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

London: Sunday, October 9, 1853.

People are beginning to return now to their beloved metropolis. Here is a specimen of the sort of thing I used to try and represent to you. I went out this morning to do civilities, this being the only day of the week free for that object. I went first to Mr. Frank Newman, with whom was a certain Dr. Stamm, abroad on a mission to or from a new Religious Union or League—he delivering himself of a sort of Anima Mundi Religion; Humanism, I think they call it; F. N. fraternising from a Theistic distance. Thence I got to old Mr. Crabbe Robinson with Liberalism and Abolitionism, &c. Then I went across country and made a call in Belgravia, where presently in came two ladies, one of whom (called by Mrs. B.’s little girl Miss Lord ——, being sister to Lord ——) is a very fair specimen of aristocratic tradition. Then I fell in in my walk with Carlyle; and then two or three other casualties, which I omit. However, these changes of atmosphere do not affect me as they used to do. On the whole, I do not think there is much here you have to envy; and there is a hopefulness and a belief-fulness, so to say, on your side, which is a great compensation.

Your woods are in full beauty, I suppose, about this time. There is something visible of autumnal richness even here in the Regent’s Park.

Thackeray is off to Paris. He seems restless and uneasy after his Transatlantic travel. Europe feels small to him.

To Charles E. Norton, Esq.

[On hearing of his father’s death.]

London: October 13, 1853.

The news your letter brought was no surprise. The change in your father between the day when you firstbrought me to Shady Hill, and that when he bade me good-bye before going to Newport, was too great not to give some warning. And, quite recently, the accounts which I had had made me expect that your next letter would be to this purpose.

My own feeling is really, rather than anything else, that of your happiness in having so long and so much enjoyed the blessing of your father’s society. This is all the more striking to me, as I was parted from my father at nine years old, and hardly had begun to know him properly again before his death, soon after I had taken my degree at Oxford. I am truly glad that my visit to America was early enough to let me know your father.

To the same.

London: November 29, 1853.

It grieved me to the heart to think of my hostages being returned; and my books, &c. (much as I want them), being already embarked. But thank you very much for discharging that painful duty. I send you M. Arnold’s poems. I myself think that the Gipsy Scholar is the best. It issotrue to the Oxford country.

December 9, 1853.

All news from your side is very acceptable; political, personal, and first-personal. I do a little Plutarch continually; only a very little, I fear; but it always brings up some vision of the Common, or Shady Hill, or the Appian Way, or the road across from your gate towards Allen and Farnham’s. Things go on slowly and rather dismally here in the December fog.

Tell Child not to betoolearned about his Chaucer, for my sake; and, above all, to make the verses scan. I hesitate about recommending any indications of the metre inthe typography. But a set of simple directions, emphatically and prominently given at the outset (e.g.for the sounding or silencing of the final e), will, I think, be essential. People won’t read Chaucer against their ears.

There is a curious notion afloat among the German extreme Radicals, that Russia is more hopeful than feudal Western Europe; that the life of the Russian commune is pure democracy; and except that every member is bound to the soil, and cannot quit it except by placing himself under the quasi-ownership of a seigneur, I believe there is some truth in the statement. However, I don’t think we can afford to try.

Carlyle has, like Emerson, just lost his mother; like her, I should think, rather a remarkable woman. He left the Ashburtons’ house in Hampshire just after I got there, to go and see her at Ecclefechan, in Annandale.

Will you tell me, please, what is the amount of rate for schools in Boston and Cambridge? I am right, am I not, in telling people that children of colour attend the schools at Cambridge, but not at Boston?

For a scrap of news—

Over-worked, over-hurried,Over-Crokered, over-Murrayed.

Over-worked, over-hurried,

Over-Crokered, over-Murrayed.

Such was the monody uttered over himself by the invalided ex-editor of the ‘Quarterly,’ on retiring for an Italian seclusion.

To the same.

London: February 1854.

Here we are enjoying cool weather, with about as much light per diem as you get in mid-winter, looking, therefore, very cheerful and sunny. Meantime the Parliament is going to begin its parliamenteering of the new year; and the Queen, who it was said was afraid her loyal subjectsmight pelt her husband, is, it appears, not afraid, and is going to open session in person. Many people, do you know, really believed Prince Albert was actually sent to the Tower; and some repairs being in operation in one of the turrets, a large number of people collected to look on, in the belief that apartments were to be fitted up for H.R.H.

I read your article on Indian Canals with much pleasure and interest. I think it is very well done, and I hope it is all true. I fancy the Company have rather gained in public estimation by their late ordeal of trial.

Bright, you see, has for the first time come out for the secular system. It is a great accession to that cause, which, however, I think myself cannot prevail for our country in general. For the clergy in the country parishes are almost always the only persons who really exert themselves, the population in general being at present too apathetic to think of managing these matters. But in the municipal towns something perhaps could be done. And certainly all through the land the secular schools should receive government subsidies, from which at present they are excluded.

Convocation, you will perhaps observe, is allowed to sit, and there really is to be an effort to set the old church a-going again; much to its own and other people’s alarm. The census, by which it appears that the church people, so far as attending on Census Sunday went, are quite a minority, has taken the world by surprise.

To the same.

February 20, 1854.

Many thanks for the ‘Boston Daily Express.’ I do truly hope that you will get the North ere long thoroughly united against any further encroachments. I don’t by any means feel that the slave system is an intolerable crime, nor do I think that our system here is so much better; butit is clear to me that the only safe ground to go upon is that of your Northern States. I suppose the rich and poor difficulties will be creeping in at New York, but one would fain hope that European analogies will not be accepted even there.

Well, here we are going to war; and really people after their long and dreary commercial period seem quite glad: the feeling of the war being just is of course a great thing. The enlightened or official opinion of the Turkish troops meantime is extremely low.

As for the poems, I really do think seriously of accepting your benevolent offer, but I don’t think I can set to work to unravel my weaved-up follies at the present moment. There are very few, indeed, that I can at all find pleasure in seeing again.

Is it true, as is said, that Longfellow has resigned? If so, he will come over here and run the gauntlet of idolising young ladies, will he not? However, I think he is adroit enough to steer through the Belgravian multitude without much damage.

People talk a good deal about Whewell’s book on the ‘Plurality of Worlds.’ I recommend Fields to pirate it. It is to show that Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, &c., are all pretty certainly uninhabitable, being strange, washy limbos of places, where at the best only mollusks (or in the case of Venus, salamanders) could exist. Hence we conclude that we are the only rational creatures, which is highly satisfactory, and what is more, quite scriptural. Other scientific people, on the other hand, declare it a most presumptuous essay, conclusions audacious, and reasoning fallacious, though the facts are allowed; and in that opinion I, on the ground that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the inductive philosophy, incline to concur. Meantime, it is thought possible that Whewell may rise to the Episcopate on the wings of the orthodox inductive philosophy.

To the same.

Downing Street: May 9, 1854.

You will think I am perfide Albion itself. The fact is I have been overwhelmed with work and imaginary responsibility. Plutarch goes on, though with huge interruptions. And I was very glad to see Felton. And I obeyed your vermilion edict, and sent some verse by him; if you do think it worth while to be at the trouble, I will not be ashamed. I have some few Elegiacs and Hexameters, written at Rome during my visit there in the time of the siege.

Politics here are rather colourless. Scotch education is thrown overboard by a coalition between the landowners, establishmentarians, and voluntaries, who have defeated Government by eight votes. The Oxford Bill will pass with a few scratches in committee rather damaging to it, but not very momentous. Gladstone, I think, has done himself great honour by refusing to borrow for the war, but the bankers and great capitalists have been abusing him furiously. By this time you are all scattering to the seas and the hills, and Boston will be getting hot and empty, and the shadow of the pines an object of exceeding desire, but for the mosquitoes.

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

Downing Street: June 10, 1854.

It is now nearly a twelvemonth since I fled in that precipitate, half-voluntary manner from Massachusetts. Another fortnight will complete the year: and another two days from this will, in all probability, see me married.

You in the meantime, are in all the turmoil of a renewed slavery contest. From this distance it almost looksas if the aggression would be of more use in breaking down the idea of compromise than of harm in its actual results.

I am going on here, working in the office in the ordinary routine, which, however, after years of Greek tuition, is really a very great relief. All education is in England, and I think in America, so mixed up with religious matters, that it is a great difficulty.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

Lea Hurst, Matlock: June 28, 1854.

Your letter of congratulation arrived, curiously enough, on the very morning of our marriage, and was a very pleasant incident of the day. Felton’s letter, announcing a variety of kind remembrances, came three or four days after, and was, I assure you, a very pleasant surprise indeed. This place strangely reminds me of Shady Hill last summer; though it is not really very like it, being a house on a broad open bank, a considerable height above the river Derwent, the valley of which it looks down as it flows from Matlock to Derby. Nor have we any of those scorching heats which had begun before I left you, now twelve months ago exactly. I am doing Plutarch, and living in an in-and-out-of-doors sort of way.

To the same.

Combe Hurst: August 19, 1854.

I have almost chosen a house, and in six weeks expect to be a householder, with goods and chattels, and theposthouseholdersedens atra cura.

Cholera is amongst us, as you see, and laying low lords even; Lord Beaumont (but not by cholera) in the last three weeks, besides Lord Jocelyn.

Did you see the ‘Examiner’ on Mrs. Stowe’s ‘Sunny Memories’?quitea severe article, andquiteunnecessarilyso, I should say. The use of quite is a peculiarity which I quite remarked myself, but I think you have quite a right to use it as a substitute, if you please, for our less exact ‘very,’ and in colloquial writing no one ought to object. I don’t see that the old-country English are to have the exclusive right of introducing new expressions.

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

Council Office, Whitehall: August 22, 1854.

My dear Emerson,—Your letter about a week ago was very welcome, and the silver candlestick which came in Felton’s box of treasures was very much appreciated, and I am to send the kindest possible thanks for it. I only hope fortune may indeed some day waft us over, at least for a visit, to your Northern Vinland.

Carlyle is, I believe, ruralising at Addiscombe, a few miles out of London, which always does him a great deal of good. I dare say we shall not meet till London begins to consider itself alive again in October.

This country has, as you say, its concentrated civilization to hold one to it—it seems waste of opportunity to leave such a mass of old knowledge. But I think you are better and more happily off in America, where the vastness of the machinery does not destroy the sense of individual purpose. The ship here is really so big that one cannot see that it moves, or that any one of the little petty services which people are for the dear bread’s sake set to do, can have any effect one way or another on its motion. If one has a place or business here, one is only standing in some other person’s shoes, who really could very likely do the thing as well.

You are so infinitely more plastic, again, as to opinions than, except in talk, the English are. As for your politics, certainly they do not look well at present, and one is afraidthat New York may after all acquiesce in thefait accompli, and go back to its farm and its country-house without concerning itself further. I am afraid the English theory is, when one has done a wrong thing, to forget it as soon as possible. Farewell!

To F. J. Child, Esq., of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Downing Street: September 2, 1854.

I hope the Chaucer is going on prosperously. I think you should adopt means to make the metre quite obvious, at any sacrifice of typographical prettiness. Yet I don’t like the grave accent, ‘When Zephyrus eke with his sotè breth,’ and should almost prefer the ˘, sotĕ, but that it seems unmeaning to use a mark of quantity. Yet it is not a case of accent, either. I think I should in one way or another mark every syllable that would not now be pronounced, grevĕs and levès and Emperourè’s daughter—the most correct mark would be ë: Emperourë’s; sotë. And I should prefix to the whole a very plain and short statement of the usage in these points.

I suppose there is not much doubt about a few general rules, though Chaucer did not regularly observe them, as, for example, the use of the ĕ in adjectives after definite articles, which it seems to me he omits occasionally, with French adjectives, as if it was a matter of ear rather than rule. So also with such Saxon dissyllables as tymĕ, which is not invariably a dissyllable, I think. And yet it would be worth while giving a list of such words as are liable to be dissyllables. However, ere this, I dare say you have settled all these preliminaries. I don’t quite see what you should do about the Miller’s and the Reve’s tales. I think explanation might be a little retrenched there, so as to leave them in the ‘decent obscurity of a learned language.’They are thoroughly English stories, but I don’t know whether they are New English. They are just what would be relished to this day in public-houses in farming districts, but I can’t say that I could wish them urged upon any palate that does not already fancy them, and I don’t much admire the element in the English character that does relish them. It is a great thing, no doubt, to do dirtywork, and the English are pretty good at it; but when it ceases to be work, it is a different thing, and I don’t see much good in it.

I think the Americans have the advantage of being less ‘farceurs’ than the British subject is apt to be. There is a sort of servants’-hall facetiousness which predominates in the cockney world, and finds its way into literature, which I think deserves no sort of imitation or admiration.

I have just been taking a house in the extreme skirts of the Regent’s Park, not far from the Zoological Gardens, with a canal underneath it, and some very un-Venetian gondolas, called here coal-barges, passing to and fro upon it in the foreground, while in the distance rise the suburban Alps of ’Ampstead and ’Ighgate—‘Oh breathe on them softly’—and a little to one side swells the pastural eminence of Primrose Hill.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

London: September 1854.

I have never acknowledged yet, except per Professor Child, Ph.D., your letter from Newport. Your description was somewhat amusing, as, in point of fact, I have been in Newport, and have not been in the Isle of Wight. I was at Newport at the age of six or seven, and passed by it, moreover—scarcely, however, realising the scenes of my infancy—in that swift transit commenced under your auspices, from Boston viâ Fall River to New York and the ‘Asia’ steamer.

London is empty, of course, and only excited by the terror of cholera, which is however, I believe, subsiding. Positively, for two or three days last week, in the district between Leicester Square and Oxford Street, north and south, and Soho Square and Regent Street, east and west, there were scenes not unlike those of the old Plague. It has often been asserted that this was one of the great burying-places of the old 1665 Plague, and this outbreak is by some ascribed to this. However, virulent as it was, it was as brief; and fortunately, perhaps, it came just at the beginning of a new Health Report week, so that it did not get into the papers till it was pretty well over.

Tell me a little about politics, as the weather gets cooler. I am at the mercy of the ‘Times,’ and don’t believe that it knows much about anything. Are there really any ‘Know-nothings,’ and is it really a matter of importance? That the Whigs will not, as a body, join as yet in political alliance with the Free Soil party, I suppose, is true.

I send a little volume, ‘Scaliger’s Poetics,’ with Johnson’s autograph (pretty certain, I believe), for your own antiquarian appropriation, if you will have it.

To the same.

Downing Street: October 24, 1854.

I went over to Calais last Saturday night, to see Florence Nightingale so far on her way to Scutari. She has ten Sisters of Mercy proper, eight of Miss Sellon’s, six of a sort of Via Media institution, and ten other nurses under her charge.

According to Lord Burghersh, the aide-de-camp, who is just come home with despatches, Lord Raglan is everything out there; neither St. Arnaud nor Canrobert at all compare with him. His advice carried it for landing where they did, both the Frenchmen being for other places, whichexperience afterwards showed would have been impossible. His character has risen greatly in reputation. In the middle of the fighting, when he rode up into very dangerous places, looking after things, his aides-de-camp remonstrated, and were answered by ‘Be quiet, I’m busy.’ Fortunately he is so wise as to wear nothing but a plain foraging cap, and so is scarcely observed.

You, meantime, must be thinking more of the Arctic than of the Crimea. When I came over from New York last summer, I remember the probability of some such calamity happening being discussed on board the ‘Asia,’ when we met the ‘Andes’ right upon our track, fortunately on a clear day.

To the same.

Downing Street: November 1854.

About this time two years we were very likely walking about the streets of Boston together; at present, I may call myself just re-established in London. We took possession of our abode in the Regent’s Park two nights ago.

There is an immense interest, or rather anxiety, about our little army in the Crimea. I passed some recruits the other day, and a man looking on said, ‘They’ll all be killed; every man Jack of them; I’m sorry for it.’ Generally the feeling is of apprehension, or even worse, on the arrival of untoward news.

To ——

Downing Street: January 18, 1855.

Of wars and rumours of wars we have of course enough. The ‘Times’ is blamed and believed; the Ministry is blamed and continued. I saw a Queen’s messenger who had just come from Constantinople with one set of despatches and was just returning with another. The journey as performed by Queen’s messenger is, it appears, at the quickest,from Constantinople to Marseilles, six and a half days; from Marseilles to London, forty-seven hours.

This new Indian Civil Service scheme may, I dare say, interest you. I rather regret that so little is made of Eastern languages. I think Persian might be allowed as a study almost co-ordinate with Latin and Greek, and quite with French, German, and Italian, as at present valued in the scheme.

To Professor F. J. Child.

London: January 31, 1855.

Here we are with, I am just told, the Tories in once again. When they last came in, they drove me from England into New England. I don’t know how it will be now.

Our literature, at present, is the war column in the newspaper. The best military reports are those of the ‘Morning Herald,’ I am told; but Macdonald, the hospital correspondent at Constantinople, has been more successful practically than ever newspaper correspondent yet had the glory of being.

February 2.

This steamer, it appears, will not quite certainly tell you ‘under which’ Prime Minister we are to ‘do our duty,’ but Palmerston must manage somehow we suppose. Yesterday we believed that Lord Derby would be our king, and Disraeli our foreign minister, Palmerston holding the war department; but that seems over altogether.

To the same.

London: May 3, 1855.

Last week we had Emperor and Empress passing by here under our windows, with Queen and Prince, in themidst of applauding multitudes, and certainly there is no denying Louis Napoleon’s courage.

Unless Sebastopol gets taken before long, it will, I think, upset the present ministry, and perhaps the present aristocracy along with them; and Laing, Layard, and Lowe, if they can provide themselves with a sufficient Co., may come in as the new parliamentary firm. The war, which the great people, lords and statesmen, thought would be unpopular in a few months, is more likely, I think, to become a popular questionversuslords and statesmen. There is no murmuring at the new taxes, but a great deal at the old politicians.

Here is an authentic anecdote from Vienna. The French and English Plenipotentaries urged how natural the arrangement would be that the Euxine should, like the American lakes, be common to both nations; to which Prince Gortschakoff answered that he should not object to that, were there only a Niagara at the Dardanelles.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

London: September 14, 1855.

So we have at last taken the besieged city. We here took it very unconcernedly, when the great news gradually oozed out and then spread abroad, on Monday evening last. It is, however, an immense relief, privately as well as publicly, and I do not doubt is felt as such. I confess to my own feeling that Russia should be let off easily. What other power can bring North Asia into discipline? I could be thankful to see her hold some port or have some means of exit to the Atlantic, now that she has learnt that the maritime powers are strong enough to check her encroachments when they please.

To Professor F. J. Child.

London: October 29, 1855.

I have been astonished and delighted at once to see Shady Hill reposing itself in St. James’s Street. I had hardly faith, I confess, to expect the removal of that mountain to this side of our common sea.

I congratulate you on having achieved Spenser. I hope I shall see the work. Let me confess to having never yet read one quarter of the ‘Faery Queen.’ But you are a much more literary nation that we. Few people, I fear, will return in England to the study of Plutarch’s Lives, and in working to the end of that attempt I can only look forward to the readers of America. I hope it will be pretty tolerably readable and correct when it does at last present itself. Certainly, if I had tried to translate it myself, it would have had a more Greek tone; but I don’t think we any of us write so idiomatically now as my friends of Charles II.’s time.

You see that we, that is our newspapers, after considerable bluster, mean decidedly to back out of any quarrelling with you. The ‘Times,’ I think, decidedly feels that it took a wrong step, and is walking out of its front position with all possible celerity.

I hear you have undertaken the kind labour of putting my ‘Reliquiæ’ through the press. If you like to add epigraphs on fly-leaves, you might put before ‘The Bothie’:

Pauperis et tuguri congestum cespite culmen;

or,

Ite, meæ, felix quondam pecus, ite camenæ:

and before the Roman verses—

Navibus atqueQuadrigis petimus bene vivere.

Navibus atque

Quadrigis petimus bene vivere.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

London: July 11, 1856.

There is a severe review of Macaulay in to-day’s ‘Times.’ I myself like this better than the first pair of volumes, chiefly, perhaps, because it has a more European subject to deal with. I have only detected one error myself, but it is a very Macaulayesque one. He speaks of ‘the oaks of Magdalen’: they areelms. There was no occasion to say anything but trees, but the temptation to say something particular was too strong. It makes one distrust all his descriptions, and that of Glencoe certainly is thoroughly exaggerated without being at all characteristic.

To Professor F. J. Child.

London: January 16, 1856.

I hope I shall get your Spenser ballads. I am not enthusiastic, but the Chaucer I really think you may bring to better shape than anyone has hitherto done. I like ‘Hiawatha’; and I think it is liked here generally, and none the worse for being Indian. Are you really, any of you, going to fight with your ancestors, about Costa Rica, and the Clayton-Bulwer treaty? I hope not; not even the ambitious Franklin Pierce himself. But Palmerston is a sad haggler, and may, I dare say, go on insisting about his Mosquito Protectorate, till he gets a warning.

I am examining among others for appointments in the Engineers and Artillery, which are open to general competition, and the candidates examinedinter aliain English composition, literature, and history. Hence, I can more than pay my income tax, and, like the farmers, rejoice in the war. But at present we all more than half expect peace. Louis Napoleon is said to be pacific. For manygood reasons I also am pacific; for if the war went on even two years longer, we should kill Turkey with our kindness, and have to encounter all the difficulties and disgrace of a partition of her. The sick man is really very sick after all, and doesn’t get at all better, but rather worse.

To R. W. Emerson, Esq.

Council Office, Downing Street: September 12, 1856.

My dear Emerson,—Yourcopy of the ‘English Traits’ has just reached me. I am very glad to have it, for it is a far prettier book than Mr. Routledge’s, not to mention any other circumstances. I think you praise us too highly. I was anxious for more rebuke and profitable reprimand.

I don’t think your friend who said that no ill-dressed person ever came to church spoke within proper bounds. The labouring country population do to a certain extent come to church, and you may see old beggar-looking people in the cathedrals on week-days. The rural population in agricultural parts belongs to the Church and attends ‘at times.’ It is the town church that is so entirely abandoned to the upper and middle people.

Charles Norton showed me ‘Leaves of Grass,’ which certainly seems remarkable, but is it not rather a waste of power and observation? The tree is tapped, and not left to bear flower and fruit in perfect form as it should. This standing aside and looking on does not seem to me to be the thing that really produces.

To Professor F. J. Child.

London: November 13, 1856.

I must send a few lines to thank you for the Spenser, which I am very much pleased to have. I am only sorry that the notes are so very unobtrusive.

How is Cambridge? which Lowell reports so changed that he should not have known it. I still retain a dollar note, with the portraiture of the college buildings, flanked by the faces of Judge Story and some other eminence; but all this I suppose, eminences included, will have become obsolete by this time.

Here there is nothing very new, nor anything particularly true, to tell. Until the next French revolution all things will continue. Meantime,omnes omnia mala dicere, we anticipate no good. Charles Norton dines with us this evening, valedictorily.

I have been reading pretty nearly through Crabbe lately. Have you republished Crabbe? If not, you ought to do so. There is no one more purely English (in the Dutch manner), no one who better represents the general result through the country of the last century. His descriptions remind even me of things I used to see and hear of in my boyhood. And sometimes, though rarely, he has really the highest merit,e.g.Ruth, in the ‘Tales of the Hall.’

To Charles Norton, Esq.

London: January 22, 1857.

We are here going on much as usual, occupied with nothing else but commerce and the money market. I do not think anyone is thinking audibly of anything else. Some disaster, perhaps, in the realm of Dost Mahomed may startle us out of our mercantile composure, but at present the only danger we care to think about is that of being garotted, and the main business of the new Parliament will be to see about transportation of possible garotters.

I have read with more pleasure than anything I have seen lately Kane’s ‘Arctic Explorations,’ which is certainly a wonderful story, and the book, moreover, very well got up at Philadelphia. I think I did see Kane at Boston inthe spring before he started; I have a distinct image of his figure. The whole narrative is, I think, very characteristic of the difference between the English and the American-English habits of command and obedience.

The first volume of Plutarch is to appear next month. I think the later volumes are much better, or at least less open to criticism. The life of Pericles was wretchedly done in the Dryden, and ought to have been rewritten. Plutarch’s best life is Antony, I think.

To the same.

London: August 1857.

I hope you really did arrive in Boston safe and sound. Our parliament is at last going away. Indian news appears to create no sort of alarm, scarcely so much as anxiety; for one reason, peoplemusttake their holiday even from their anxieties. The atrocities are of course felt pretty strongly.

This town is hot, dusty, and of ill-odour, and very different from Westmoreland, where we were together last.

September 3.

News from India, I think, is getting to be felt more seriously.

October 31.

Well, Delhi is taken, which is a happy thing, though one dreads to hear of the details. Captures of cities are horrible at the best, and this cannot have been at the best, with wild Sikhs, and no quarter, and a wealthy and luxurious metropolis.

If you have read the letters in the ‘Times,’ you will have noticed Indophilus,i.e.Sir Charles Trevelyan (who ought, in proper Greek, to call himself Philindus; Indophilus would be more properly ‘beloved of the Hindoos’).Leadenhall Street is full of the humane feeling, and would back up Lord Canning’s proclamation, and Mr. Grant’s Allahabad releases, with all its influence. It may be right, but it is not discreet; it is not possible yet to enforce clemency. They should have waited till Delhi had fallen, and Lucknow been relieved. So, at least, we think here. The Company, however, is sadly at a discount, and will have hard work to maintain any of its power. The War Department, I believe, is very hard upon it. Sir Robert Vivian, who commanded the Turkish Contingent, and who is one of the directors appointed by the Crown, spoke the other day of the outbreak at Meerut and Delhi as a thing that ought to have been put down at once. He believes there was no sort of general conspiracy on foot, and urges the irregular and utterly indiscreet way in which the regiments have mutinied, here and there, and at the worst chosen times and places. Neill commanded a brigade under him in the Crimea. He quite disapproved of Neill’s outrages on the caste feeling at Cawnpore. I confess I don’t. I think we may break down caste one way or other, and ally ourselves with the Sikhs and the Buddhists of Nepaul, &c., whose religions are reasonable and comparatively unceremonial.

I don’t believe Christianity can spread far in Asia unless it will allow men more than one wife, which isn’t likely yet, out of Utah. But I believe the old Brahmin touch-not-and-taste-not, and I-am-holier-than-thou-because-I-don’t-touch-and-taste, may be got rid of. As for Mahometanism, it is a crystallised theism, out of which no vegetation can come. I doubt its being good even for the central negro.

To J. R. Lowell, Esq., Cambridge.

Downing Street: January 5, 1858.

You have just got half the ‘Amours de Voyage’ (for the ‘Atlantic Monthly’); there will be two more reports, andthen all will end in smoke. The poem has been suppressed to the orthodox maturity of the ninth year, but, like poor wine, it is, I fear, only the worse for not having been drunk and forgotten long ago.

The ‘Atlantic Monthly,’ I hope, makes its way. I am glad to see it so national, so little characterised by any mercantile importations from our side. I have a great distaste to the prevalent professional literature of the metropolis, a fungoid vegetation springing up on the rotting remains of the giants of the old literary forest, whose honours are no more.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

London: March 26, 1858.

Many thanks for your kind inquiries after my wife and family: they are very well, especially the ‘family.’

Things have been tolerably eventful over here of late, have they not? I confess myself a sort of admirer of Orsini, though I do not consider assassination good policy, and therefore consider it wrong.

A Tory government, meantime, is a strange dispensation to live under; happily it is only on sufferance. Lord Palmerston, we consider, fell chiefly through his appointment of Lord Clanricarde.

The days of the Company you will, of course, have felt to be numbered, on seeing Lord Ellenborough gazetted as President of the Board of Control.

To Professor F. J. Child.

April 10, 1858.

I am very glad there is a prospect of your coming over here; but doubtless you will transform yourself into a worm, and be during your whole visit lost to sight in the MSS. ofthe British Museum. Nevertheless, even so, pray do not fail to come over. Charles Norton, I hope, is well through the winter. By this time the snows are beginning, I suppose, to disappear in your parts: in a month or so the Common will begin to exchange its brown for its green suit; there will be buds in the Washington elm; frogs will again be vocal, and double-robins visible.

Do you see that the Frenchman who translated the ‘Canterbury Tales’ has found at Paris the original of the ‘Squire’s Tale,’ 30,000 lines? I wonder if it is like Spenser’s, in any respect.

The great literary success of the last twelve months has been Buckle’s ‘History of Civilisation.’ Really, it is wonderful what numbers of people have read this thick volume, and what a reputation its author has gained by it. High and low—and high quite as much as low—write in its praise. Are you Buckle-bewitched in Boston, or do you retain a sane mind?

I do not suppose that anybody finds much natural pleasure in my five-act epistolary tragi-comedy, or comi-tragedy. I like Part III. rather better than its predecessors myself; but other people, I dare say, will not. I think it will have some merit in its conclusion; but to that also, I dare say, there will be no affirmation but my own. However, so it was, and no otherwise could be. So much for keeping poems nine years, instead of burning them at once.

Tennyson’s two unpublished Arthur poems gave me pleasure, and I am sorry they do not appear. Otherwise England seems as unpoetical as between Chaucer and Spenser.

To C. E. Norton, Esq.

London: April 17, 1858.

Perhaps the beginning of May will find you once more at Shady Hill, for the brief North American interval between the two penal fierce extremes of heat and cold.

Between the two Indian Bills, the Directors, it is thought, will escape for the present, and survive a little longer. I myself was not so absolutely unfavourable to the Ellenborough Bill as the English world in general. I desire much to see a franchise given to those who have served. That offered to the five towns is perhaps impracticable. My notion is to make a great Council of all who have served in certain offices, and give them the appointment of half the Executive Council. But our people hate all refinements of this sort.

Politics are almost at a dead lock with us. Palmerston cannot come back with his own party alone to back him. Lord John Russell has joined Milner Gibson, and has formed a sufficient body of opponents in the Liberal part of the House to make it impossible for Palmerston to get sufficient support there. So that for the present the Derby people stay, and are almost ashamed and indignant to stay, by the help of Lord John and his Manchester allies.

To the same.

London: May 17, 1858.

Things here are in sad confusion. Lord Ellenborough, who is really competent, has thrown himself overboard, and cannot be by his best friends acquitted of a great indiscretion. In India the enemy all abroad again, and a hot weather campaign before us. Not, however, it seems by Sir Colin’s fault; for he was bid to clear all the other districts first, and not till then to attack Lucknow, but was overruled by Lord Canning. John Mill, it is said, does not consider Lord Canning’s proclamation wrong; but is very sorry, on general grounds, to lose Lord Ellenborough.

Pray read Hogg’s ‘Life of Shelley.’ It is a great pleasure to see Shelley really alive, and treading the vulgar earth—Hogg’s transparent absurdity being the only intervening impediment.

I am reading, too, Gladstone’s ‘Homer’: it is very direct and plain-sailing, and in that respect is an agreeable contrast to German annotation. The working out of his theory about Danaans, Achæans, Argives, and Hellenes was to me satisfactory; but at the end he goes off all at once out of his depth into general ethnology. Gladstone’s uncompromising belief in Homer and the heroes, as real people, gives the book a solidity and substance which is acceptable. Carlyle said he read carefully Homer and the controversy some years ago, and was quite convinced that ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ were written at different ages—the ‘Odyssey’ by one man, the ‘Iliad’ not; and he likes the ‘Odyssey’ best. He thinks anyone mad who holds the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ to be written by one man.

While I wrote came a rumour, not from a private secretary, that news had come from India that the proclamation had been stopped at the last moment, at theentreatyof Sir C. Campbell, Sir John Lawrence, Outram, and Mansfield, who went on their knees to Lord Canning, and besought him, in the name of England’s honour, no less than for the sake of present security. So that, if this be true, Lord Ellenborough is right after all.

To the same.

Cowley House, Oxford: May 21, 1858.

Hither we came on the 19th on a visit. Yesterday we went about walking, and seeing things and people—new things and old people; heard a lecture from Max Müller on the origin of the French language; thence to the new Museum in the Venetian style, by Woodward. I think Venetian windows, whose beauty is their deep setting, might do for you who have some sun to keep out; for us, not. We want light, and must place the glass too near the outer plane of the walls to allow the proper effect to the tracery.

The M.P.s meet to-night for their great decision. Already,perhaps, the new evidence of the government despatches is in their hands. A proclamation, it is clear, has been issued, and analteredproclamation. A private letter tells us that the Ministry may possibly have a majority of five or six—a different story from that which prevailed when I began this letter. Wednesday, the day of our coming here, intervened, with the absorbing interests of the Derby. To be winner of the Derby while in office as Prime Minister was, it is said, Lord Derby’s ambition, but would be, it was thought, too high a felicity for any simply human Earl. Toxophilite’s defeat may, it is presumed, be the inevitable sacrifice that may avert the parliamentary catastrophe.

To the same.

Downing Street: June 23, 1858.

I have had,mirabile dictu, a letter from Emerson, who reprimanded me strongly for the termination of the ‘Amours de Voyage,’ in which he may be right, and I may be wrong; and all my defence can only be, that I always meant it to be so, and began it with the full intention of its ending so; but very likely I was wrong all the same.

I cannot help wishing to preserve some Corporate Body or Privy Council for India, to elect half the Ministers’ Council, though I have no liking for the constituency of 7,000 or 8,000 to whom Lord Stanley did propose to give this power.

Last night I heard Tennyson read a third Arthur poem: the detection of Guenevere and the last interview with Arthur. These poems all appear to me to be maturer and better than any he has written hitherto.

As for wars and rumours of wars, I trust we need not alarm ourselves at present. I hope the French are at heart pacific; they cannot well afford the money for a war, and though I believe they might inflict, if the chances favoured them, immense damage upon us, in the end they would find themselves the weaker vessels. Their population,it is said by the statistical authorities, is decreasing, and they ought to nurse their vitality carefully. It has not yet recovered the losses of the wars of 1812-15.

To the same.

Downing Street: July 30, 1858.

We are cooler and less odorous than we were, and I begin to hope that we may get to the end of August without any terrible outbreak of cholera. Time has often been compared to a river; if the Thames at London represent the stream of traditional wisdom, the comparison will indeed be of an ill savour. The accumulated wisdom of the past will be proved upon analogy to be, as it were, the collected sewage of the centuries, and the great problem, how to get rid of it.

In a commercial point of view, the publication of the ‘Amours’ has been a great event to me. This is the first money I ever received for verse-making, and it is really a very handsome sum.

October 1.

I have just read the ‘Courtship of Miles Standish’ with much pleasure. I think in one or two points the story should have been differently managed; but it is a very pleasant poem.

A perversion, as the Anglican people call it, seems to me a very sad thing; it is, according to all experience, so irrevocable a change. I have known one or two instances of a return out of the Babylonish Captivity, but they seem rarely to happen.

The only remarkable phenomenon of the time is a continuous one, viz. the comet, which is a really wonderful, portentous-looking, historical sort of comet, with a tail sweeping a considerable space in the northern skies. It sets at 9P.M., but leaves its streamer behind it for some time.

Another continuous study with me is Barth’s ‘Africa,’ which is really worth reading, laborious though it be, and needlessly filled up with daily records. Barth is, I believe, gone back to Hamburg, his native place; a little disappointed, perhaps, with finding so little come of his long toil. Livingstone published just after him, and took the wind out of his sails. Yet there is more permanently valuable and curious information in Barth, though Livingstone will do more himself in a practical way, we will hope.

There is as yet but a very slight ripple on the face of our political waters. The interest taken in these matters by the nation seems to grow less and less. People will not mind if the other party come in, but they don’t want Lord Palmerston again; and if these men don’t play the fool in some way, they may stay in. Your matters are more serious.

India, I suppose, will keep us at the military boiling point for some time to come (more’s the pity, perhaps, if only France were safely pacific!), and improvements in organisation will slowly creep in: they are certainly much wanted. In the medical department a good deal has been effected this year.

I am greatly ashamed of our English proceedings in this France-bullying-Portugal case. So far as I can see, it has been sheer timidity; terror of being taken undefended while India is still unsettled, and ought to disgrace us in the eyes of all European nations. But there may be diplomatic explanations proving France in the technical right.

Bright and his speech at Birmingham deserve notice. But I doubt whether he can rouse the towns; and people in general,i.e.the people who are more or less represented, care little about it. I believe that a Reform would give us a better and more rational House of Commons; but many things press. Reform takes up so much time, and gives so much trouble; how is the Government to be carried on meantime, the government of India included?

To the same.

London: January 26, 1859.

Child brought me your present of Emerson’s picture, which is really, I think, without any question, the best portrait of any living and known-to-me man that I have ever seen. It is a great pleasure to possess it.

Bright’s agitation will bear fruits. The Ministerial Bill would have been very different without this. Bright is scoffed at in the metropolitan papers, and at all clubs. But his hold on the country is such as no M.P. whatever, except himself, possesses; and in the main, the course he has taken is right, I think. Lord Stanley seems to be a present guarantee for the tolerable government of India; but he, of course, may go any day. I wish the Council were on a surer basis: the self-electing plan can hardly be permanent.

February 9.

They say it is to be peace. France is utterly indisposed to fight; so much so as to praise ‘la sagesse Anglaise’ for discrediting the sentimental Imperial oratory, and holding fast to treaties as they are, and peace, with or without good-will, upon earth. Moreover, the sinews of war are wanting. Rothschild will not lend money to Austria, and only acts as commission agent for the loan.

People are a little agog about the Bible-in-India question. Old Indians seem to be pretty tolerably unanimous against having it read in the schools.

To the same.

London: April 1, 1859.

I am getting on with ‘The Bothie,’ acting on a criticism which appeared to me correct, that the letters and sermonising parts were too long and least to the point. I believe Imay have cut out something which for old acquaintance you may regret, but the general effect to a new reader will, I think, be improved; and a reduction in the amount of disquisition was certainly required.

Excuse this letter all about my own concerns. I am pretty busy, and have time for little else; such is our fate after forty. My figure forty stands nearly three months behind me on the roadway, unwept, unhonoured, and unsung; anoctavum lustrumbound up and laid on the shelf. ‘So-and-so is dead,’ said a friend to Lord Melbourne, of some author. ‘Dear me, how glad I am! Now I can bind him up.’

Here is a jest of Lord Derby’s to a friend who told him he was in a great mess. ‘Yes,’ replied he, ‘but Benjamin’s mess is five times greater than those of his brethren.’

We have been having deaths lately for our news, as for example that of William Arnold, who, after lying ill for some time at Cairo, started and sailed from Alexandria just as one of his brothers was coming in to see him; just set his foot on Europe, and died, at St. Roque, a few miles from Gibraltar; a great loss, I think, public and private.

To the same.

May 27, 1859.

As for the war, alas! to whom can we desire success? Garibaldi is the only person I sympathise with. I hope he will do something. But how can it end otherwise than ill?

Here is the dictum of the Duc de Malakhoff: ‘Nous les battrons, nous leur offrirons des conditions bien douces. Ils les refuseront.Puis, nous les battrons encore, et nous leur offrirons des conditions bien dures. Ils les accepteront.’ Meantime, the French feeling has become, it appears, universally warlike; and the wise people think that the dynasty, which must have fallen otherwise, will, unless the Austrians drive all before them, be secured.

I have never thanked you for your article on Sleeman’s ‘Oude,’ which came safely to hand, and which I fear is only too favourable to British rule. Let us, however, hope for the best, though the climate is so sadly against any fair development of English qualities, and the war has left behind it a fierce and insulting spirit.

Disraeli, in answer to some friendly regrets at his fall, said it could only be a check for a time. But I think Palmerston may regain the general confidence of the country, as he has in a great measure of the Liberal members, or at any rate the Liberal statesmen, and may perhaps maintain himself, even if Lord John secede. The new Ministry will be strongly Italian in composition; Lord John and Gladstone in addition to Palmerston. It is almost to be feared that they will outrun the national feeling, and go too much in the track of Louis Napoleon. We who live nearer to Louis Napoleon, with only the Channel, and not the whole Atlantic to divide and protect us from him, do not feel quite the same liberty to indulge the natural feelings of enthusiasm in witnessing his aggrandisement in Europe, though it be merely as a liberator that he affects it at present. One thing I devoutly hope; that, with French influence predominating in Italy, the Pope will go to the dogs, with all his canaille accompanying. Evidently the conclave fear this, and there is no doubt at all that instructions came from Rome to the Roman Catholic leaders that they should support Lord Derby, who would support Austria. It has not been uniformly obeyed, but that the order was issued is, I believe, certain.

To the same.

London: July 22, 1859.

I shall be very glad indeed of your notice of Plutarch in the ‘North American.’ I hope the Lives will be readable to the young public of your most reading country. MeantimePlutarch has arrived here, and certainly looks very well; but they have not put in all the errata I sent. I hope the young America will read it. Young England, I fear, is too critical, and thinks Plutarch an old fool.

Here we are reading the last bulletin of that wonderful melodramatic genius Napoleon III., of which what can be said? ‘L’Empire, c’est la paix?’ Certainly one did not desire the enfranchisement of Italy to be effected by his means; and one may hope, also, that the general result will be to damage him and his dynasty.

Mill’s ‘Dissertations’ and Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’ are also before an admiring public. I certainly think these Idylls are the best thing that Tennyson has done.

We are having a burning July, and the length of our day makes it in some respects worse than it would be in a more southern latitude. But, after all, 90° in the shade was not, I think, what we endured when I lived with you at Shady Hill, six years ago. You should come here again soon, and we will try and sweeten the Thames for you ‘during the current year.’

I think Louis Napoleon less formidable since the Italian war, unless the army prove to have tasted blood and to be greedy for more, in which case of course he must let them have it. But I don’t much believe in the love of the French soldier for war; he wants to go to hispaysagain.

Dana has sent his book on Cuba, which is very pleasant reading. And is he really gone off again to circumnavigate theorbis veteribus notus? I have always felt an instinctive desire to go round, and have coveted the sensation of having ascertained the fact by one’s own bodily locomotion.

To the same.

September 9.

I begin a sheet just to say that we are leaving the house in which you saw us, near the Regent’s Park, and have takenone on Campden Hill, Kensington, far to the west. It is just under Macaulay’s.

October 13.

Plutarch is too dear for the English; however, a favourable article, and really I think a good article, in the ‘Athenæum,’ has put a little wind in its sails. Plutarch is not sought for here as a library book; indeed, he is quite put out of fashion by Thirlwall, Grote, and Co., and some effort is needed to recall attention to him.

The French Emperor’s ‘allocution’ to the Cardinal at Bordeaux is a slight improvement on his doings lately; perhaps a feeler to the country, for if he were not afraid of the popular adherence to the Pope and clergy in France, I suppose he would certainly take the holy father by the temporal beard in Bologna.

Council Office: December 5.

We are here in a state of rifle fever, which I do not think will be allayed by the imperial smooth words. Palmerston is not to go to the Congress, and France, I fear, will do as she pleases.

I was glad to have your account of Brown. His behaviour before his death struck me quite in the way in which you regard it: nothing could be plainer, and more composed and upright.

To the same.

Hastings: December 29, 1859.

I have been sent here for ventilation, after an attack of scarlatina, which made me an inconvenient neighbour to a little boy just born to us, who arrived on the 16th of this month. This is dull enough, the old town with the old churches in the hollow between the East Hill and the West Hill, the latter crowned by remnants of the castle, the newtown stretching along the shore for nearly a couple of miles, one row deep, with a handsome sea terrace all along.

Here my chief discovery has been a cottage improvement society, so successful as to pay yearly dividends of 6 per cent. The working man is my doctor—Dr. Greenhill—who is secretary. Most of these societies have been quite failures as regards finance. The principles here are (1) Repairing, not building; (2) Rigorous collection of rents. There is a benevolent society attached to the cottage society, but it acts quite separately. Rent is rent, and charity, charity.

To the same.

January 26, 1860.

Your artist friend, Stillman, has presented his credentials; he called at Campden Hill, and of course I was out; but we hope to see him on Sunday, to dinner, in the ‘native American’ manner, at 2P.M.

March 3.

Stillman has commenced operations on my face, and returns to the charge on Monday. He is making many friends. We dined with him at Robert Mackintosh’s a week ago, which much reminded me of Longfellow’s dinner-table. I have read your critique on Plutarch in the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ carefully since I wrote, and find it very satisfactory. The early lives are certainly faulty. I did not feel as if it was done rightly till I was doing Otho and Galba. The life which is most mine is that of Demetrius, which is really almost mine. Dion, however, is just about an average specimen.

When is Rowse coming over? Will you give him a letter to me? I continue to think his picture of Emerson the best portrait I know of anyone I know.

How unsatisfactory the world in general is just now! The French having made a ‘belle guerre’ for an idea, arenow bent onrealisingtheir ideas. The Pope, after all, won’t be sent a begging. Austria will yet bully Hungary with the help of her big brother further east, and the big brother, with the help of the smaller one, will have his own bad way in Turkey, probably.

To the same.

21 Campden Hill Road: July 13, 1860.

I had your letter, heaping coals of fire on my head, last Monday. I enclose a fragment of the past, in token of my having contributed somewhat to the pavement below in respect of you.

To break one’s toe is no fair reason against using one’s fingers, but it prevents one’s walking, and impairs one’s energies in general. Rowse has done me very nearly. You will, I hope, have a photograph, and I hope he won’t spoil it before he finishes. He has done Owen, and seems well pleased with his work, but is sadly afflicted with Heimweh.

To the same.

July 20, 1860.

To-day I was at a breakfast party of statisticians, attending the International Statistical Congress, and met Dr. Jervis from your parts. Quetelet, the divine statistician, I have also seen. He is getting rather feeble with age, and complains of forgetting names. A certain Swede, un nommé Berg, is said to be theaureus alterwho will succeed to the primacy.

Back to Index Next