e rich one day, and he threw his
subtle imagination and vital poetry into pounds, shillings, and pence
with such force that he worked the base element into spiritual
splendours. Oh! to think of our having missed seeing that man. It is
painful. A little book is published of his 'thoughts and maxims,' the
sweepings of his desk I suppose; broken notes, probably, which would
have been wrought up into some noble works, if he had lived. Some of
these are very striking.

Lamartine has not yet paid us the promised visit. Just as we were
beginning to feel vexed we heard that the intermediate friend who was to
have brought him had been caught up by the Government and sent off to
Saint-Germain to 'faire le mort,' on pain of being sent farther. I mean
Eugene Belleton. If he talked in many places as he talked in this room,
I can't be very much surprised, but I am really very sorry. He is one of
those amiable domestic men who delight in talking 'battle, murder, and
sudden death.'

[_The end of this letter is wanting_]

* * * * *

_To Miss Mulock_

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysees:
June 2, [1852].

My husband went directly to Rue Vivienne and came back without the book.
We waited and waited, but at last it reached us, and we have read it,
and since then I have let some days go by through having been unwell.
You seemed to let me sit still in my chair and do nothing; you did not
call too loud. So was it with most other things in the universe. Now,
having awakened from my somnolency, recovered from 'La Grippe' (or what
mortal Londoners call the influenza), the first person and first book I
think of must naturally be you and yours.

So I thank you much, much, for the book. It has interested me, dear Miss
Mulock, as a book should, and I am delighted to recognise everywhere
undeniable talent and faculty, combined with high and pure aspiration. A
clever book, a graceful book, and with the moral grace besides--thank
you. Many must have thanked you as well as myself.

At the same time, precisely because I feel particularly obliged to you,
I mean to tell you the truth. Your hero is heroic from his own point of
view--accepting his own view of the situation, which I, for one, cannot
accept, do you know, for I am of opinion that both you and he are rather
conventional on the subject of his marriage. I don't in the least
understand, at this moment, why he should not have married in the first
volume;