and in England and Paris,
where she was not even that, better still; so that one is prepared
for the deep interest of the last half-volume. Of course her
example must have done much injury to the girls of her train. Of
course, also, she is the Zenobia of dear Mr Hawthorne. One wonders
what her book would have been like.

Mr. Bennett has sent me the "Nile Notes." We must talk about that,
which I have not read yet, not delighting much in Eastern travels,
or, rather, being tired of them. Ah, how sad it will be when I
cannot say "We will talk"! Surely Mr. Webster does not mean to get
up a dispute with England! That would be an affliction; for what
nations should be friends if ours should not? What our ministers
mean, nobody can tell,--hardly, I suppose, themselves. My hope was
in Mr. Webster. Well, this is for talking. God bless you, dear
friend.

Ever most affectionately yours, M.R.M.

August 7, 1852.

Hurrah! dear and kind friend, I have found the line without any
other person's aid or suggestion. Last night it occurred to me that
it was in some prologue or epilogue, and my little book-room being
very rich in the drama, I have looked through many hundreds of those
bits of rhyme, and at last made a discovery which, if it have no
other good effect, will at least have "emptied my head of Corsica,"
as Johnson said to Boswell; for never was the great biographer more
haunted by the thought of Paoli than I by that line. It occurs in an
epilogue by Garrick on quitting the stage, June, 1776, when the
performance was for the benefit of sick and aged actors.

A veteran see! whose last act on the stage
Entreats your smiles for sickness and for age;
Their cause I plead, plead it in heart and mind,
_A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind_.

Not finding it quoted in Johnson convinced me that it would probably
have been written after the publication of the Dictionary, and
ultimately guided me to the right place. It is singular that
epilogues were just dismissed at the first representation of one of
my plays, "Foscari," and prologues at another, "Rienzi."

I have but a moment to answer your most kind letter, because I have
been engaged with company, or rather interrupted by company, ever
since I got up, but you will pardon me. Nothing ever did me so much
good as your visit.