husetts laws of marriage and divorce were, I believe, the same
as the English. In Pennsylvania a much greater facility for
obtaining divorce--adopted, I suppose, from German modes of thought
and feeling, and perhaps German legislature--prevailed, while in
some of the western states, more exclusively occupied by a German
population, the facility with which the bond of marriage was
dissolved was greater than in any civilized Christian community in
the world, I think.]

HARLEY STREET, January 16th, 1842.

At the end of a long, kind letter I received from you this morning,
dearest Harriet, there is a most sudden and incomprehensible sentence,
an incoherent, combined malediction upon yourself and your dog Bevis,
which I found it difficult to connect in any way with the matter which
preceded it, which was very good advice to me, abruptly terminating in a
declaration that you were a fool and your dog Bevis a brute, and leaving
me to conclude either that he had overturned your inkstand or that you
had gone mad, though indeed your two propositions are sane enough: for
the first I would contradict if I could; the second I could not if I
would; and so, as the Italians say, "Sono rimasta." ...

With regard to the likeness between my sister and myself, it is as great
as our unlikeness.... Our mode of perceiving and being affected by
things and people is often identical, and our impressions frequently so
similar and so simultaneous that we both often utter precisely the same
words upon a subject, so that it might seem as if one of us might save
the other the trouble of speaking.... She is a thousand times quicker,
keener, finer, shrewder, and sweeter than I am, and all my mental
processes, compared with hers, are slow, coarse, and clumsy.

Here my letter broke off yesterday morning, and yesterday evening I went
to see the new opera, so that I shall have realities instead of
speculations to treat you to. [The opera was an English version of the
"Elena da Feltre," by Mercadante, whose dramatic compositions, "La
Vestale," "Le Due Illustre Rivale," the "Elena da Feltre," and others,
obtained a very considerable temporary popularity in Italy, but were, I
think, little known elsewhere. They were not first-rate musical
productions, but had a good deal of agreeable, though not very original,
melody, and were favorable to a declamatory, passionate style of
singing, having a