rtment, but a vindictive and unscrupulous man. He is using
every means to ruin Mackenzie, to revenge the death of a son,
Heaven-forsaken from the beginning of his days, and whose maturest acts
(he died at nineteen) were robbing his mother's jewel-case and stealing
money from his father's desk. My nephew is acting as Mackenzie's
counsel, and his wife, a Roman wife and mother, is a friend of mine....

I heard a story the other day, "a true one," that I treasured for you as
racy, as characteristic of slavery and human nature. A most notoriously
atrocious, dissolute, _hellish_ slave-owner died, and one of his
slaves--an old woman--said to a lady, "Massa prayed God so to forgive
him! Oh, how he prayed! And I am afraid God heard him; they say He's so
good."

UPPER GROSVENOR STREET, April 17th, 1843.
MY DEAR T----,

I have executed your commission with regard to two of the books you
desired me to get, but the modern Italian work, published in 1840, in
Florence, and the "Mariana" of 1600, I am very much afraid I shall not
be able to procure; the first because it would be necessary to send to
Florence for it, which could very easily be done, but then I shouldn't
be here to receive it; and the second, the copy of "Mariana," of the
edition you specify, because Bohn assures me that it is extremely rare,
having been suppressed on account of the king-killing doctrines it
inculcates, and the subsequent editions being all garbled and incorrect.
As you particularly specified that of 1600, of course I would not take
any other, and shall still make further attempts to procure that, though
Panizzi, the librarian of the British Museum, and Macaulay, who are both
friends of mine, and whom I consulted about it, neither of them gave me
much encouragement as to my eventual success. The "Filangieri" and
Buchanan will arrive with me. I would send them to G---- A----, but
that, as we return on the 4th of May, I think there is every reason to
expect that we shall be in America first.

So much for your commission. With regard to your complaint that I give
you nothing to do, I think you will have found that fault amended in my
last communication, wherein I request you to accept my father's power of
attorney, and undertake to watch over his interests in the New Orleans
Bank....

As for people's comments on me or my actions, I have not lived on the
stage to be cowardly as well as bold; and being decidedly bold, "I