rous national manner; if they would appear in
political reunion, array themselves peacefully but in vast numbers
against a system that they know to be rotten altogether, make themselves
heard like the sea all round this island, I for one should be in such a
movement heart and soul, and should think it a duty of the plainest kind
to go along with it, and try to guide it by all possible means. But you
can no more help a people who do not help themselves than you can help
a man who does not help himself. And until the people can be got up from
the lethargy, which is an awful symptom of the advanced state of their
disease, I know of nothing that can be done beyond keeping their wrongs
continually before them.

I shall hope to see you soon after you come back. Your speeches at
Aberdeen are most admirable, manful, and earnest. I would have such
speeches at every market-cross, and in every town-hall, and among all
sorts and conditions of men; up in the very balloons, and down in the
very diving-bells.

Ever, cordially yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. John Forster.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Saturday, April 14th, 1855._

MY DEAR FORSTER,

I cannot express to you how very much delighted I am with the "Steele."
I think it incomparably the best of the series. The pleasanter humanity
of the subject may commend it more to one's liking, but that again
requires a delicate handling, which you have given to it in a most
charming manner. It is surely not possible to approach a man with a
finer sympathy, and the assertion of the claims of literature throughout
is of the noblest and most gallant kind.

I don't agree with you about the serious papers in _The Spectator_,
which I think (whether they be Steele's or Addison's) are generally as
indifferent as the humour of _The Spectator_ is delightful. And I have
always had a notion that Prue understood her husband very well, and held
him in consequence, when a fonder woman with less show of caprice must
have let him go. But these are points of opinion. The paper is masterly,
and all I have got to say is, that if ---- had a grain of the honest
sentiment with which it overflows, he never would or could have made so
great a mistake.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Mr. Mark Lemon.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Thursday, April 26th, 1855._