Front matter (continued 11)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ever yours,

F. A. B.

Liverpool, Thursday, May 4th, 1843.

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

Yours,

Fanny.

Halifax Wharf, Wednesday, May 17th, 1843.

My dear Friend,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fanny.

Philadelphia, Tuesday, May 23rd, 1843.

My dearest Hal,

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am ever yours,

Fanny.

Philadelphia, Tuesday, 30th, 1843.

My dear F——,

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

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

Believe me, yours most truly,

F. A. B.

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

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

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

Philadelphia, June 4th, 1843.

Dearest Granny,

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

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

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

F. A. B.

Philadelphia, June 26th, 1843.

My dearest Hal,

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am ever yours,

Fanny.

Yellow Springs, Pennsylvania, July 6th, 1843.

My dearest Hal,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ever yours,

Fanny.

Philadelphia, Sunday, 9th, 1843.

My dear T——,

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

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

Believe me always Yours truly,

F. A. B.

Yellow Springs, July 12th, 1843.

Dear Granny,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Believe me always, dear Granny, Your attached

F. A. B.

Yellow Springs, 19th July, 1843.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philadelphia, August 4th, 1843.

My dearest Hal,

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

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

Fanny.

Philadelphia, August 15th, 1843.

My dear T——,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Believe me always yours very truly,

F. A. B.

Philadelphia, August 22nd, 1843.

My dear T——,

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

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

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

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

Very truly yours,

F. A. B.

LORD MORPETH. P.S.—Lord Morpeth is a lovely man, and I love him.

Philadelphia, August 25th, 1843.

Dear Granny,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Believe me ever your affectionate

Fanny.

Philadelphia, August 25th, 1843.

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

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

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

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

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

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

God bless you, dear.

Your affectionate

Fanny

Philadelphia, September 1st, 1843.

My dear T——,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours very truly,

F. A. B.

Philadelphia, September 9th, 1843.

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

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

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

I write in haste, but remain ever yours,

F. A. B.

Dear T——,

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

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

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

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

Yours ever truly,

F. A. B.

New York, September 26th, 1843.

Dearest Hal,

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

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

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

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

God bless you, dear Hal. Good-bye.

I am ever yours,

Fanny.

Philadelphia, October 10th, 1843.

My dearest Hal,

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

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

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

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

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

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

God bless you, dear. Good-bye.

Ever yours,

F. A. B.

Philadelphia, October 3rd, 1843.

My dear T——,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Believe me yours truly,

F. A. B.

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

Philadelphia, Wednesday, May 15th, 1844.

Dear Mrs. Jameson,

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

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

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

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

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

Ever yours,

Fanny.

May 20th, 1844.

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

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

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

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

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

Ever yours,

Fanny.

Philadelphia, Sunday, June 9th, 1844.

My dear Lady Dacre,

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

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

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

STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 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.

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

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

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

God bless you, dear Hal.

I am ever yours,

Fanny.

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

Mortimer Street, October 3d, 1845.

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

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

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

LADY CHARLOTTE LINDSAY. 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.