seen combined,--the love of money and of low
company. One wonders how he will turn out. He is now in Paris, after
which he is to re-enter in Green's ship (he had served in one
before) for a twelvemonth, and to leave the service or remain in it
as he may decide then. This is perfectly true; Mr. Noel had it from
his brother the very day before he wrote it to me. He says that Lady
Lovelace's funeral was too ostentatious. Escutcheons and silver
coronals everywhere. Lord Lovelace's taste that, and not Lady
Byron's, which is perfectly simple. You know that she was buried in
the same vault with her father, whose coffin and the box containing
his heart were in perfect preservation. Scott's only grandson, too,
is just dead of sheer debauchery. Strange! As if one generation paid
in vice and folly for the genius of the past. By the way, are you
not charmed at the Emperor's marriage? To restore to princes honest
love and healthy preference, instead of the conventional
intermarriages which have brought epilepsy and idiotism and madness
into half the royal families of Christendom! And then the beauty of
that speech, with its fine appeals to the best sympathies of our
common nature! I am proud of him. What a sad, sad catastrophe was
that of young Pierce! I won't call his father general, and I hope he
will leave it off. With us it is a real offence to give any man a
higher rank than belongs to him,--to say captain, for instance, to a
lieutenant,--and that is one of our usages which it would be well to
copy. But we have follies enough, God knows; that duchess address,
with all its tuft-hunting signatures, is a thing to make
Englishwomen ashamed. Well, they caught it deservedly in an address
from American women, written probably by some very clever American
man. No, I have not seen Longfellow's lines on the Duke. One gets
sick of the very name. Henry is exceedingly fond of his little
sister. I remember that when he first saw the snow fall in large
flakes, he would have it that it was a shower of white feathers.
Love to all my dear friends, the W----s, Mrs. Sparks, Dr. Holmes,
Mr. Hawthorne. Ever, dearest friend, most affectionately yours,

M.R.M.

(1st March, 1853.)

The numbers for the election of President of France in favor of
Louis Napoleon were for against 7119791 1119

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