be time, I think, in Christian countries, for
manufactures of mere luxury to be done away with, when proficiency in
the merest mechanical drudgery involved in them demands a lifetime, and
the sight and health of women, who begin this twilight work at five and
six years old, are often sacrificed long before their natural term to
this costly and unhealthy industry.

I hope to see all such manufactures done away with, for they are bad
things, and a whole moral and intelligent being, turned into ten
fingers' ends for such purposes, is a sad spectacle. I (a
lace-worshipper, if ever woman was) say this advisedly; I am sorry there
is still Mechlin and Brussels lace made, and glad there is no more
India muslin, and rejoice in the disuse of every minute manual labor
which tends to make a mere machine of God's likeness. But oh, for all
that, how incomparably inferior is the finest, faultless, machine-made
lace and muslin to the exquisite irregularity of the human fabric!...
Good-bye, my dearest Harriet. We start for Aix-la-Chapelle at eight
to-morrow. I am not in very good strength; the fact is, I am now never
in thoroughly good plight without exercise on horseback, and it is a
long time since I have had any, and, of course, it is now quite out of
the question. I beg, desire, entreat, and command that you will
immediately get and read Balzac's "Eugenie Grandet," and tell me
instantly what you think of it.

Your affectionate
FANNY.

WIESBADEN, Friday, September, 1841.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

Walking along the little brook-side on the garden path under the trees
towards the Sonnenberg, you may well imagine how vividly your image and
that of Catherine Sedgwick were present to me. You took this walk
together, and it was from her lively description of it that I knew, the
moment I set my feet in the path, both where I was and where I was
going. That walk is very pretty. I did not follow it to the end, because
my children were with me, and it was too far for them; but yesterday I
went to the ruin on horseback, and came home along the rough cart-road,
on the hill on the other side of the valley, whence the views reminded
me somewhat of the country round Lenox, in Massachusetts, though not
perhaps of the prettiest part of the latter.

I have not yet in my travels seen anything much more picturesque than