characteristic. I am very much afraid that he is only a poet, and
although I fear the last person in the world to deny that that is
much, I think that to be a really great man needs something more. I
am sure that you would not have sympathized with Wordsworth. I do
hope that you will see Beranger when in Paris. He is the one man in
France (always excepting Louis Napoleon, to whom I confess the
interest that all women feel in strength and courage) whom I should
earnestly desire to know well. In the first place, I think him by
far the greatest of living poets, the one who unites most completely
those two rare things, impulse and finish. In the next, I admire
his admirable independence and consistency, and his generous feeling
for fallen greatness. Ah, what a truth he told, when he said that
Napoleon was the greatest poet of modern days! I should like to have
the description of Beranger from your lips. Mrs. Browning ... has
made acquaintance with Madame Sand, of whom her account is most
striking and interesting. But George Sand is George Sand, and
Beranger is Beranger.

Thank you, dear friend, for your kind interest in my book. It has
found far more favor than I expected, and I think, ever since the
week after its publication, I have received a dozen of letters daily
about it, from friends and strangers,--mostly strangers,--some of
very high accomplishments, who will certainly be friends. This is
encouragement to write again, and we will have a talk about it when
you come. I should like your advice. One thing is certain, that this
work has succeeded, and that the people who like it best are
precisely those whom one wishes to like it best, the lovers of
literature. Amongst other things, I have received countless volumes
of poetry and prose,--one little volume of poetry written under the
name of Mary Maynard, of the greatest beauty, with the vividness and
picturesqueness of the new school, combined with infinite
correctness and clearness, that rarest of all merits nowadays. Her
real name I don't know, she has only thought it right to tell me
that Mary Maynard was not the true appellation (this is between
ourselves). Her own family know nothing of the publication, which
seems to have been suggested by her and my friend, John Ruskin. Of
course, she must have her probation, but I know of