ss it upon any but one's self. One cannot tear off all
coverings from the hearts and minds of others, whereas one could strip
one's own moral deformities naked, and that species of self-accusation
does seem to me a kind of immodesty. One naturally shrinks, too, from
speaking of deep and awful things, and then there is the all but
insuperable difficulty of putting one's most intimate convictions, _the
realities of one's soul_, into words at all....

Oh, my dear Harriet, I have told you nothing of John and Natalia's
mesmeric practices [my brother and his German wife]. If you could have
seen them, you would have split your lean sides more than you did at my
aspect and demeanor while listening to A---- reading her favorite French
novels to me.

By-the-by, do you know that that very book, "Mathilde," which I could
not listen to for a quarter of an hour with common patience, is cried up
everywhere and by everybody as a most extraordinary production? At
Bowood everybody was raving about it; Mrs. Jameson tells me that Carlyle
excepted it from a general anathema on French novels. Sometimes I think
I will try again to get through it, and then I think, as little F----
says when she is requested to do something that she ought, "_Eelly_,
now, me _tan not_."

I am finishing George Sand's "Lettres d'un Voyageur," because in an evil
hour I began them. Her style is really admirable, and in this book one
escapes the moral (or immoral) complications of her stories.

God bless you, dear Harriet. Good-bye. Time and opportunity serving, you
surely see that I am not only faithful, but prompt, in the discharge of
my debts.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

I forgot to tell you that my poor Margery [my children's former nurse]
has at length applied to the tribunals of Pennsylvania for a separation
from her cruel and worthless husband. Poor thing! I hope she will obtain
it.

[The tribunals of Pennsylvania followed, in the law of divorce, the
German and not the English precedent and process. Divorce was
granted by them, as well as mere separation, on plea of
incompatibility of temper, and also for cause of non-cohabitation
during a space of two years. In regard to the laws of marriage and
divorce, as well as most other matters, each state in the Union had
its own peculiar code, agreeing or differing from the rest. The
Massac