name was invoked with heartfelt commendations by myself and Major S----.
That was a curious conversation of his and mine, if such it could be
called; scarcely more than a breathless enumeration of the names of all
of you, coupled indeed with loving and admiring additions, and
ejaculations full of regret and affection. Poor man, how I did pity him!
and how I did pity myself!

I have just written to our B----, and feel sad at the meagre and
unsatisfactory account which my letter contains of me and mine; to you,
my excellent friend, I will add this much more.... But I shall forbear
saying anything about my conditions until they become better in
themselves, or I become better able to bear them. God bless you and
those you love, my dear Lady Dacre. Give my affectionate "duty" to my
lord, and believe me ever your gratefully attached

F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, June 26th, 1843.
MY DEAREST HAL,

Your sad account of Ireland is only more shocking than that of the
newspapers because it is yours, and because you are in the midst of all
this wild confusion and dismay. How much you must feel for your people!
However much one's sympathy may be enlisted in any public cause, the
private instances of suffering and injustice, which inevitably attend
all political changes wrought by popular commotion, are most afflicting.

I hardly know what it is reasonable to expect from, or hope for,
Ireland. A separation from England seems the wildest project
conceivable; and yet, Heaven knows, no great benefit appears hitherto to
have accrued to the poor "earthen pot" from its fellowship with the
"iron" one. As for hoping that quiet may be restored through the
intervention of military force, at the bayonet's point,--I cannot hope
any such thing. Peace so procured is but an earnest of future war, and
the victims of such enforced tranquillity bequeath to those who are only
temporarily _quelled_, not permanently _quieted_, a legacy of revenge,
which only accumulates, and never goes long unclaimed and unpaid.
England seems to me invariably to deal unwisely with her dependencies;
she performs in the Christian world very much the office that Rome did
in the days of her great heathen supremacy--carry to the ends of the
earth by process of conquest the seeds of civilization, of legislation,
and progress; and then, as though her mission was fulfilled, b