ing thither next month to assist at the production of Meyerbeer's
Prophete at the French Opera, and another friend will accompany me
and my little maid to take care of us; so that I have just hopes
that the excursion, erenow much facilitated by railways, may do me
good. I have always been a great admirer of the great Emperor, and
to see the heir of Napoleon at the Elysee seems to me a real piece
of poetical justice. I know many of his friends in England, who all
speak of him most highly; one of them says, "He is the very
impersonation of calm and simple honesty." I hope the nation will be
true to him, but, as Mirabeau says, "there are no such words as
'jamais' or 'toujours' with the French public."

10th of June, 1849.

I have been waiting to answer your most kind and interesting letter,
dear Mr. Fields, until I could announce to you a publication that
Mr. Colburn has been meditating and pressing me for, but which,
chiefly I believe from my own fault in not going to town, and not
liking to give him or Mr. Shoberl the trouble of coming here, is now
probably adjourned to the autumn. The fact is that I have been and
still am very poorly. We are stricken in our vanities, and the only
things that I recollect having ever been immoderately proud of--my
garden and my personal activity--have both now turned into causes of
shame and pity; the garden, declining from one bad gardener to
worse, has become a ploughed field,--and I myself, from a severe
attack of rheumatism, and since then a terrible fright in a
pony-chaise, am now little better than a cripple. However, if there
be punishment here below, there are likewise
consolations,--everybody is kind to me; I retain the vivid love of
reading, which is one of the highest pleasures of life; and very
interesting persons come to see me sometimes, from both sides of the
water,--witness, dear Mr. Fields, our present correspondence. One
such person arrived yesterday in the shape of Doctor ----, who has
been working musical miracles in Scotland, (think of making singing
teachers of children of four or five years of age!) and is now on
his way to Paris, where, having been during seven years one of the
editors of the National, he will find most of his colleagues of the
newspaper filling the highest posts in the government. What is the
American opi