the ceremonies of which it is difficult to imagine anything more quaint,
not to say ludicrous, and apparently meaningless.

We heard Lord Brougham and the Duke of Wellington speak, and had an
excellent view of both of them.

The House appeared to me too minutely ornamented; it is rich, elaborate,
but all in small detail, too subdivided and intricate and overwrought to
be as imposing and good in effect as if it were more simple.

I took my American friend to the Zoological Gardens, and to the
Botanical Gardens, in the Regent's Park, which are very charming, and
for which I have a private ticket of admission.

This morning I have been with him to Stafford House, to show him the
pictures, which are fine, and the house itself, which I think the
handsomest in London. To-morrow I take him to the opera, and I have
given him a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner, and feel as if I had
discharged the duty put upon me, especially as it involved what I have
no taste for, _i.e._ sight-seeing.

The Elgin Marbles I was glad enough to see again--one has never seen
them too often,--and was sitting down to reflect upon them at my
leisure, when my American friend, to whom, doubtless, they seemed but a
parcel of discolored, dirty, decapitated bodies, proposed that we should
pass on, which we accordingly did.

I am struck with the spirit of conformity by which this gentleman seems
troubled, and which Adelaide tells me the young American people they saw
in Rome constantly expressed,--the dread of appearing that which they
are, foreigners; the annoyance at hearing that their accent and dress
denote them to be Americans. They certainly are not comfortable people
in this respect, and I always wish, for their own sakes as well as mine,
that they had more or less self-love.

I was impelled to say to my young clergyman, whose fear of trespassing
against English usages seemed to leave him hardly any other idea, "Sir,
are you not a foreigner, an American? May I ask why it is to be
considered incumbent upon you, either by yourself or others, to dress
and speak like an Englishman?" ...

Good-bye, dear.

I am ever yours,
FANNY.

18, ORCHARD STREET, November 18th.

I do not know that I ever slept so near the sea as to hear it
discoursing as loudly as you describe, though I have been where its long
swelling edge