e blessed enough for those whom I
love best.

And very dearly do I love my American friends,--you best of
all,--but all very dearly, as I have cause. Say this, please, to Dr.
Parsons and Dr. Holmes (admiring their poems is a sort of touchstone
of taste with me, and very, very many stand the test well) and dear
Bayard Taylor, a man soundest and sweetest the nearer one gets to
the kernel, and good, kind John Whittier, who has the fervor of the
poet ingrafted into the tough old Quaker stock, and Mr. Stoddard,
and Mrs. Lippincott, and Mrs. Sparks, and the Philadelphia Poetess,
and dear Mr. and Mrs. W----, and your capital critics and orators.
Remember me to all who think of me; but keep the choicest tenderness
for yourself and your wife.

Do you know those books which pretend to have been written from one
hundred to two hundred years ago,--"Mary Powell" (Milton's
Courtship), "Cherry and Violet," and the rest? Their fault is that
they are too much alike. The authoress (a Miss Manning) sent me some
of them last winter, with some most interesting letters. Then for
many months I ceased to hear from her, but a few weeks ago she sent
me her new Christmas book,--"The Old Chelsea Bun House,"--and told
me she was dying of a frightful internal complaint. She suffers
martyrdom, but bears it like a saint, and her letters are better
than all the sermons in the world. May God grant me the same
cheerful submission! I try for it and pray that it be granted, but I
have none of the enthusiastic glow of devotion, so real and so
beautiful in Miss Manning. My faith is humble and lowly,--not that I
have the slightest doubt,--but I cannot get her rapturous assurance
of acceptance. My friend, William Harness, got me to employ our kind
little friend, Mr. ----, to procure for him Judge Edmonds's
"Spiritualism." What an odious book it is! there is neither respect
for the dead nor the living. Mrs. Browning believes it all; so does
Bulwer, who is surrounded by mediums who summon his dead daughter.
It is too frightful to talk about. Mr. May and Mr. Pearson both
asked me to send it away, for fear of its seizing upon my nerves. I
get weaker and weaker, and am become a mere skeleton. Ah, dear
friend, come when you may, you will find only a grave at
Swallowfield. Once again, God bless you and yours!

Ever you