company in the merry month of May. I
have fallen in with Mr. Kingsley, and a most charming person he is,
certainly the least like an Englishman of letters, and the most like
an accomplished, high-toned English gentleman, that I have ever met
with. You must know Mr. Kingsley. He is very young too, really
young, for it is characteristic of our "young poets" that they
generally turn out middle-aged and very often elderly. My book is
out at last, hurried through the press in a fortnight,--a process
which half killed me, and has left the volumes, no doubt, full of
errata,--and you, I mean your house, have not got it. I am keeping a
copy for you personally. People say that they like it. I think you
will, because it will remind you of this pretty country, and of an
old Englishwoman who loves you well. Mrs. Browning was delighted
with your visit. She is a Bonapartiste; so am I. I always adored the
Emperor, and I think his nephew is a great man, full of ability,
energy, and courage, who put an end to an untenable situation and
got quit of a set of unrepresenting representatives. The Times
newspaper, right as it seems to me about Kossuth, is dangerously
wrong about Louis Napoleon, since it is trying to stimulate the
nation to a war for which France is more than prepared, is ready,
and England is not. London might be taken with far less trouble and
fewer men than it took to accomplish the _coup d'etat_. Ah! I
suspect very different politics will enclose this wee bit notie, if
dear Mr. Bennoch contrives to fold it up in a letter of his own; but
to agree to differ is part of the privileges of friendship; besides,
I think you and I generally agree.

Ever yours,

M.R.M.

P.S. All this time I have not said a word of "The Wonder Book."
Thanks again and again. Who was the Mr. Blackstone mentioned in "The
Scarlet Letter" as riding like a myth in New England History, and
what his arms? A grandson of Judge Blackstone, a friend of mine,
wishes to know.

(March, 1852.)

I can never enough thank you, dearest Mr. Fields, for your kind
recollection of me in such a place as the Eternal City. But you
never forget any whom you make happy in your friendship, for that is
the word; and therefore here in Europe or across the Atlantic, you
will always remain.... Your anecdote of the ---- is most