amused at this practical compliment, as well he might
be. I have been reading the autobiographies of Lamartine and
Chateaubriand, as well as Raphael, which, although not avowed, is of
course and most certainly a continuation of "Les Confiances." What
strange beings these Frenchmen are! Here is M. de Lamartine at
sixty, poet, orator, historian, and statesman, writing the stories
of two ladies--one of them married--who died for love of him! Think
if Mr. Macaulay should announce himself as a lady-killer, and put
the details not merely into a book, but into a feuilleton!

The Brownings are living quite quietly at Florence, seeing, I
suspect, more Americans than English. Mrs. Trollope has lost her
only remaining daughter; arrived in England only time enough to see
her die.

Adieu, dear Mr. Fields; say everything for me to Mr. and Mrs.
Ticknor, and Mr. and Mrs. Norton. How much I should like to see you!

Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.

(February, 1850.)

You will have thought me either dead or dying, my dear Mr. Fields,
for ungrateful I hope you could not think me to such a friend as
yourself, but in truth I have been in too much trouble and anxiety
to write. This is the story: I live alone, and my servants become,
as they are in France, and ought, I think, always to be, really and
truly part of my family. A most sensible young woman, my own maid,
who waits upon me and walks out with me, (we have another to do the
drudgery of our cottage,) has a little fatherless boy who is the pet
of the house. I wonder whether you saw him during the glimpse we had
of you! He is a fair-haired child of six years old, singularly quick
in intellect, and as bright in mind and heart and temper as a
fountain in the sun. He is at school in Reading, and, the small-pox
raging there like a pestilence, they sent him home to us to be out
of the way. The very next week my man-servant was seized with it,
after vaccination of course. Our medical friend advised me to send
him away, but that was, in my view of things, out of the question;
so we did the best we could,--my own maid, who is a perfect Sister
of Charity in all cases of illness, sitting up with him for seven
nights following, for one or two were requisite during the delirium,
and we could not get a nurse for love or money, and when he became
bette