ed out! I think it not at all improbable that she will
visit the United States next year, and that we shall find that moment
propitious for returning; that is to say, about a twelvemonth from next
month.... So much for private interests. As to the public ones: alas!
Sir Robert Peel is losing both his health and his temper, they say; and
no wonder at it! His modification of the corn laws and new tariff are
abominations to his own party, and his income tax an abomination to the
nation at large. I cannot conceive a more detestable position than his,
except, perhaps indeed, that of the country itself just now. Poverty and
discontent in great masses of the people; a pitiless Opposition,
snapping up and worrying to pieces every measure proposed by the
Ministry, merely for malignant _mischeevousness_, as the nursemaids say,
for I don't believe they--the Whigs--will be trusted again by the people
for at least a century to come; a determined, troublesome, and
increasing Radical party, whose private and personal views are fairly
and dangerously masked by the public grievances of which they advocate
the redress; a minister, hated personally by his own party, with hardly
an individual of his own political persuasion in either House who
follows him cordially, or, rather, who does not feel himself personally
aggrieved by one or other of the measures of reform he has
proposed,--yet that minister the only man in England at this moment able
to stand up at the head of public affairs, and the defeat of whose
measures (distasteful as they are to his own party, and little
satisfactory to the people in general) would produce instantaneously, I
believe, such confusion, disorder, and dismay as England has not seen
for many a year, not indeed since the last great Reform crisis;--all
this is not pleasant, and makes me pity everybody connected with the
present Government, and Sir Robert Peel more than anybody else. I wonder
how long he'll be able to stand it.

What have you done with Lord Morpeth? And what are you doing with "Boz"?
The first has a most tenderly attached mother and sisters, and really
should not, on their account, be killed with kindness; and the latter
has several small children, I believe, who, I suppose, will naturally
desire that your national admiration should not annihilate their
papa.... I wish we were to come back to America soon, but wishes are
nonsensical things.... Give my dear love to Catherine and Kate [Miss
Sedgwick