s free: and
surely there is nothing for her now but a Republic. It is well to stand
by old kings who have done well by us: but it is too late in the day to
_begin_ Royalty.

If anything could tempt me so far as Italy, it would certainly be your
presence in Florence. But I boggle about going twenty miles, and _cui
bono_? deadens me more and more.

July 2. All that precedes was written six weeks ago, when I was obliged
to go up to London on business. . . . I saw Alfred, and the rest of the
scavans. Thackeray is a great man: goes to Devonshire House, etc.: and
_his_ book (which is capital) is read by the Great: and will, I hope, do
them good. I heard but little music: the glorious Acis and Galatea; and
the redoubtable Jenny Lind, for the first time. I was disappointed in
her: but am told this is all my fault. As to naming her in the same
Olympiad with great old Pasta, I am sure that is ridiculous. The
Exhibition is like most others you have seen; worse perhaps. There is an
'Aaron' and a 'John the Baptist' by Etty far worse than the Saracen's
Head on Ludgate Hill. Moore is turned Picture dealer: and that high
Roman virtue in which he indulged is likely to suffer a Picture-dealer's
change, I think. Carlyle writes in the Examiner about Ireland: raves and
foams, but has nothing to propose. Spedding prospers with Bacon. Alfred
seemed to me in fair plight: much dining out: and his last Poem is well
liked I believe. Morton is still at Lisbon, I believe also: but I have
not written to him, nor heard from him. And now, my dear Frederic, I
must shut up. Do not neglect to write to me sometimes. Alfred said you
ought to be in England about your Grimsby Land.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

[? 1848.]

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I do not know that I praised Xenophon's imagination in recording
such things as Alcibiades at Lampsacus; {240} all I meant to say was that
the history was not dull which does record such facts, if it be for the
imagination of others to quicken them. . . . As to Sophocles, I will not
give up my old Titan. Is there not an infusion of Xenophon in Sophocles,
as compared to AEschylus,--a dilution? Sophocles is doubtless the better
artist, the more complete; but are we to expect anything but glimpses and
ruins of the divinest? Sophocles is a pure Greek temple; but AEschylus
is a rugged mountain, lashed by seas, and riven by thunderbolts: and
which is the most wonderful, and appalling? Or if one will hav