and subsequent prostration had reduced him; he looked, indeed, like
one returned from the dead, and, in his joy at seeing me again,
declared that I had restored him to life, and that my arrival,
though he had not known of it, had called him back to existence--a
sympathetic theory of convalescence, to which I do not think his
doctors gave in their adhesion.

We now took up our abode in London; first at the Clarendon Hotel,
and afterwards in Clarges Street, Piccadilly, where my father, as
soon as he could be moved, came to reside with us, and where my
sister joined us on her return from Italy. My friend Miss S----,
coming from Ireland to stay with me soon after my arrival in
England, added to my happiness in finding myself once more with my
own family, and in my own country.]

CLARGES STREET, March 21st.

You will, ere this, dearest H----, have received my answer to your first
letter. You ask me, in your second, what we think about the chances of a
war with America. Our wishes prompt us to the belief that a war between
the two countries is _impossible_, though the tone of the newspapers,
within the last few days, has been horribly pugnacious. A letter was
received the day before yesterday, from our Liverpool factor, asking us
what is to be done about some cotton which had just come to them from
the plantation, in the event of war breaking out: a supposition which he
had treated as an utter impossibility when he was last in London, but
which he confessed in this letter did not seem to him quite so
impossible now. I do not, for my own part, see very well how either
party is to get out of its present attitude towards the other peaceably
and, at the same time, without some compromise of dignity. But I pray
God that the hearts of the two nations may be inclined to peace, and
then, doubtless, some cunning device will be found to save their
_honor_. The virtuous "_if_" of Touchstone is, I am afraid, not as valid
in national as individual quarrels.

Tell Mr. H---- W----, with my love, that it is all a hoax about Niagara
Falls having _fallen_ down; and that they are still _falling_ down,
according to their custom; but if you should find this intelligence
affect him with too painful a disappointment, you may comfort him by
assuring him that they inevitably must and will fall down one of these
days, and, what is more, stay fallen, and pre