r knees and wrists, and all your rheumatical fastenings
and hinges, and Dorothy's _interieur_? I hope she is not tyrannizing
over you with unnecessary questions and inquiries, which merely serve to
trammel your free-will, by asking you where you have been walking, or
if it rained while you were out.

I send you a kiss, which I beg you will give each other for me, or
otherwise divide without quarrelling, and believe me

Very affectionately yours,
FANNY.

29, KING STREET.

... Oh yes, my dear Hal, I hear abundance of discussion of the present
distracted aspect of public affairs, abroad and at home; but for the
most part the opinions that I hear, and the counsels that are suggested
to meet the evils of the times, seem to me as much indications of the
faithlessness and folly of men, as the great movements of nations are of
the faithfulness and wisdom of God.

Still, when I hear clever, practical politicians talk, I always listen
with keen interest; for the details in which they seem to me too much
absorbed, are a corrective to my generalizing tendency on all such
subjects.

Moral principles are the _true_ political laws (mere abstract truisms,
as they are held, and accordingly overlooked, by _working_ statesmen) by
which the social world is kept in cohesion, just as the physical world
is kept in equilibrium by the attracting and repelling forces that
control its elements.

You ask me how many letters I am in your debt. When I shall have
finished this, only one. I have worked very hard this past week to keep
your claims down, but have only just now got my head above water with
you.

There was nothing to like at Lynn. The weather was gloomy and cold, and
I was only there two days. There seemed to be a good many curious
remains of antiquity in and about the town--old churches, houses,
gateways, and porches--but I had no leisure to look at these, and indeed
the weather was almost too severe to admit of standing about
sight-seeing, even under the warmest zeal for instruction.

I did not find the sea air make me sleep at Lynn, and incline to think
that it is you, more than the climate that affects me so soporifically
at St. Leonard's.

God bless you, dear.

Your affectionate,