here are only four members to represent the ecclesiastical
bodies."

There, Hal, what do you think of that? I sit and think of that most
lovely land, emerging gloriously into a noble political existence once
more, till I almost feel like a poet.

Love to Dorothy.... I only make Hayes _sensible_ that she is a _fool_
twice a week on an average, not twice a day.

Yours ever,
FANNY.

HOWICK GRANGE, November 14th.

Surely, my dearest Hal, the next time you say you almost despair of
mankind, you should add, "in spite of God," instead of "in spite of the
Pope."

I arrived here about three hours ago, and have received a most severe
and painful blow in a letter from Henry Greville which I found awaiting
me, containing the news of Mendelssohn's death. I cannot tell you how
shocked I am at this sudden departure of so great and good a creature
from amongst his impoverished fellow-beings. And when I think of that
bright genius (he was the _only_ man of genius I have known who seemed
to me to fulfil the rightful moral conditions and obligations of one),
by whose loss the whole civilized world is put into mourning; of his
poor wife, so ardently attached to him, so tenderly and devotedly loved
by him; of his children--his boy, who, I am told, inherits his sweet and
amiable disposition; of my own dear sister, and poor E----, so deeply
attached to him,--I cannot bear to think, I feel half stupid with pain.
And yet your letter is full of other sorrow. O God! how much there is in
this sorrowful life! and what suffering we are capable of! and yet--and
yet--these can be but the accidents, while the sun still shines, and the
beauty and consolation and _virtue_ of nature and human life still
hourly abound.

You ask me if I have written anything in Edinburgh but letters. I have
hardly had leisure to write even letters. I do not know when I have
worked so hard as during my last engagement there. I have hardly had an
occupation or thought that was not perforce connected with my theatrical
avocations. I am heartily glad it is over.

Mr. Combe has given me the "Vestiges of Creation" to read, and I have
been reading it.... The book is striking and interesting, but it appears
to me far from strictly logical in its great principal deduction, as far
as we "human mortals" are concerned. Indeed, Mr. Combe, wh