Believe me, with true regard,
Faithfully your Friend.

[Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.]

BALTIMORE, _March 22nd, 1842._

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I beg your pardon, but you were speaking of rash leaps at hasty
conclusions. Are you quite sure you designed that remark for me? Have
you not, in the hurry of correspondence, slipped a paragraph into my
letter which belongs of right to somebody else? When did you ever find
me leap at wrong conclusions? I pause for a reply.

Pray, sir, did you ever find me admiring Mr. ----? On the contrary, did
you never hear of my protesting through good, better, and best report
that he was not an open or a candid man, and would one day, beyond all
doubt, displease you by not being so? I pause again for a reply.

Are you quite sure, Mr. Macready--and I address myself to you with the
sternness of a man in the pit--are you quite sure, sir, that you do not
view America through the pleasant mirage which often surrounds a thing
that has been, but not a thing that is? Are you quite sure that when you
were here you relished it as well as you do now when you look back upon
it. The early spring birds, Mr. Macready, _do_ sing in the groves that
you were, very often, not over well pleased with many of the new
country's social aspects. Are the birds to be trusted? Again I pause for
a reply.

My dear Macready, I desire to be so honest and just to those who have so
enthusiastically and earnestly welcomed me, that I burned the last
letter I wrote to you--even to you to whom I would speak as to
myself--rather than let it come with anything that might seem like an
ill-considered word of disappointment. I preferred that you should think
me neglectful (if you could imagine anything so wild) rather than I
should do wrong in this respect. Still it is of no use. I _am_
disappointed. This is not the republic I came to see; this is not the
republic of my imagination. I infinitely prefer a liberal monarchy--even
with its sickening accompaniments of court circulars--to such a
government as this. The more I think of its youth and strength, the
poorer and more trifling in a thousand aspects it appears in my eyes. In
everything of which it has made a boast--excepting its education of the
people and its care for poor children--it sinks immeasurably below the
level I had placed it upon; and England, even England, bad an