mb and Talfourd
thought Hazlitt not only the most brilliant, but the soundest of all
critics. Then his Life of Napoleon is capital, that is, capital for
an English life; the only way really to know the great man is to
read him in the _memoires_ of his own ministers, lieutenants, and
servants; for _he was_ a hero to his _valet de chambre_, the
greatness was so real that it would bear close looking into. And our
Emperor, I have just had a letter from Osborne, from Marianne
Skerrett, describing the arrival of Count Walewski under a royal
salute to receive the Queen's recognition of Napoleon III. She,
Marianne, says, "How great a man that, is, and how like a fairy tale
the whole story!" She adds, that, seeing much of Louis Philippe, she
never could abide him, he was so cunning and so false, not cunning
enough to hide the falseness! Were not you charmed with the bits of
sentiment and feeling that come out all through our hero's Southern
progress? Always one finds in him traits of a gracious and graceful
nature, far too frequent and too spontaneous to be the effect of
calculation. It is a comfort to find, in spite of our delectable
press, ministers are wise enough to understand that our policy is
peace, and not only peace but cordiality. To quarrel with France
would be almost as great a sin as to quarrel with America. What a
set of fools our great ladies are! I had hoped better things of Lord
Carlisle, but to find that long list at Stafford House in female
parliament assembled, echoing the absurdities of Exeter Hall,
leaving their own duties and the reserve which is the happy
privilege of our sex to dictate to a great nation on a point which
all the world knows to be its chief difficulty, is enough to make
one ashamed of the title of Englishwoman. I know a great many of
these committee ladies, and in most of them I trace that desire to
follow the fashion, and concert with duchesses, which is one of the
besetting sins of the literary circles in London. One name did
surprise me, ----, considering that one of her husband's happiest
bits, in the book of his that will live, was the subscription for
sending flannel waistcoats to the negroes in the West Indies; and
that in this present book a certain Mrs. Jellyby is doing just what
his wife is doing at Stafford House!

Even if I had not had