our-roomed cottages, having abundance
of cheap and good food, and various rights of common, and privileges
which help to make them comfortable. It is an astonishingly sleepy and
quiet sort of community and neighborhood, and this is a pretty place, on
the edge of a wild common, with fine clumps of fir-wood about it, and a
picturesquely _colored_ district of heath, gorse, broom, and pine
growth, extending just far enough round the grounds to make one believe
one was in a pretty country.

As I hear no more of the present French Revolution down here, I am
reading Lamartine's ("Les Girondins") account of their first one. It's
just like reading to-day's Paris newspaper.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

You will be glad to hear that, after encountering every possible let and
hindrance from their amiable manager, and being made by him to pay _ten
pounds_ for the use of the theatre, company, gas, etc, my poor young
fellow-actors, for whose sake I came down here, will have cleared a sum
that will be an immense help to poor folk living upon L2 a week. I was
delighted with having been able to serve them much better than I had
feared I might. People's comparative earnings make me reflect. I have
been grumbling not a little at my weekly earnings. Thackeray, for that
wonderful book, "Vanity Fair," gets L60 a month; the curate who preached
to us on Sunday and does duty in two parishes has L60 a year. Perpend!
Good-bye, my dear.

Believe me ever yours,
FANNY.

PORTSMOUTH, Wednesday.
DEAR T----,

What a marvellous era in the world's history is this we are living in!
Kings, princes, and potentates flying dismayed to the right and left,
and nation after nation rising up, demanding a freedom which God knows
how few of them seem capable of using.

The last month in Europe has been like the breathless reading of the
most exciting novel, and every day and hour almost teems with events
that surpass in suddenness and importance all that has gone before.

The Austrians will not give up Italy without a struggle, and I suppose
through that channel the floodgates will be thrown open that will deluge
all Europe with blood.

Is not the position of the Emperor of Russia awful in its
singularity--the solitary despo