FANNY.

DEAR DOROTHY,

I send you a kiss, which Hal will give you for me.

MORRISON'S HOTEL, DUBLIN, March 14th, 1847.
MY DEAR HAL,

I think you must have begun to think that I never meant to write to you
again; for it is seldom that three unanswered letters of yours are
allowed to accumulate in my writing-book; but since I left Liverpool, I
have really not had leisure to write....

The houses at Liverpool were crammed, but here last night there was a
very indifferent one, partly, they say, owing to the fact that the Lord
Lieutenant bespeaks the play for to-morrow night; but I should think it
much more rational to account for it by the deplorable condition to
which the famine has reduced the country, which ought to affect the
minds of those whose bodies do not suffer with something like a
sympathetic seriousness, inimical to public diversions....

I do not care to pursue the argument with you about the change produced
by death in the existence of a child. That which you say about it
appears to me to involve some absolute contradictions; but I would
rather postpone the discussion till we meet.

Charles Greville began writing to me upon these subjects, with reference
to the rapidly declining health and strength of his and my friend, Mary
Berry; over whose approaching death he lamented greatly, although she is
upwards of eighty years old, and, according to my notions, must be ready
and willing to depart.

Charles Greville's ideas, as far as I can make them out, appear to me
those of a materialist. His chief regret seems to be for the loss of a
person he cared for, and the departure of a remarkable member of his
society. Beyond these two views of the subject he does not appear to me
to go.

He has sent me, in the last letter I received from him, an extract from
one of Sir James Mackintosh's, on the death of his wife, which he calls
a "touching expression of grief," but which strikes me as rather a
deplorable expression of grief without other alleviation than the dim
and doubtful surmise of a mind the philosophy of which had never
accepted the consolations of revelation, and yet, under the pressure of
sorrow, rejected the narrower and shallower ones of stoical materialism.

You wish to hear of my arrangement with my cousin, Charles Mason, and I
will tell you when it is decided on....

I have had a note from your sister, asking me to dine with them