were real jewels, you know, I should sell them to live, and not
come to the theatre to act for my bread every night." "Oh, wouldn't
you, ma'am?" exclaimed they, amazed that so blissful an occupation
as that of a stage star, radiant with "such diamonds," should not be
all that heart of woman could desire. Poor things--all of us!]

HARLEY STREET, January 1st, 1842.

It is New Year's Day, my dearest Harriet. May God bless you. You will, I
hope, receive to-day my account of my journey home from Bowood. Any
anxiety you might have felt about us was certain to be dispelled by the
note I despatched to you after our arrival, and as to the accident which
took place on the railroad, I have nothing to tell you about it more
than you would see in the newspapers, and it did not occur to me to
mention it.

I read with attention the newspaper article you sent me about the corn
laws and the currency, and, though I did not quite understand all the
details given on the latter subject, yet the main question is one that I
have been so familiar with lately as to have comprehended, I believe,
the general sense of it. But I read it at Bowood, and though, as I
assure you, with the greatest attention, I do not remember a single word
of it now (the invariable practice of my memory with any subject that is
entirely uncongenial to me).

The mischievous influence of the undue extension of the credit system is
matter of daily discussion and daily illustration, I am sorry to say, in
the United States, where, in spite of their easy institutions, boundless
space, and inexhaustible real sources of credit (the wealth of the soil
and its agricultural and universal products), and all the commercial
advantages which their comparatively untrammelled conditions afford
them, they are all but bankrupt now; distressed at home and disgraced
abroad by the excess to which this pernicious system of trading upon
fictitious capital has been carried by eager, grasping,
hastening-to-be-rich people. Of course, the same causes must tend to
produce the same effects everywhere, though different circumstances may
partially modify the results; and in proportion as this vicious system
has prevailed with us in England, its consequences must, at some time or
other, culminate in sudden severe pressure upon the trading and
manufacturing interests, and I suppose, of course, upon all classes of
the industrial population of th