refer to your old paternity. I, at
least, should be proud of Americans fighting after the same fashion
(and without doubt they _would_ fight thus), just as old people
exult in the brave conduct of their runaway sons. I cannot read of
these later battles without the tears coming into my eyes. It is
said by 'our correspondent' at _New York_ that the folks there
rejoice in the losses and disasters of the allies. This can never be
the case, surely? No one whose opinion is worth a rap can rejoice at
any success of the Czar, whose double-dealing and unscrupulous
greediness must have rendered him an object of loathing to every
well-thinking man. But what have I to do with politics, or you? Our
'pleasant object and serene employ' are books, books. Let us return
to pacific thoughts.

"What a number of things have happened since I saw you! I looked for
you in the last spring, little dreaming that so fat and flourishing
a 'Statesman' could be overthrown by a little fever. I had even
begun some doggerel, announcing to you the advent of the
white-bait, which I imagined were likely to be all eaten up in your
absence. My memory is so bad that I cannot recollect half a dozen
lines, probably not one, as it originally stood.

"I was at Liverpool last June. After two or three attempts I
contrived to seize on the famous Nathaniel Hawthorne. Need I say
that I like him _very_ much? He is very sensible, very genial,--a
little shy, I think (for an American!)--and altogether extremely
agreeable. I wish that I could see more of him, but our orbits are
wide apart. Now and then--once in two years--I diverge into and
cross his circle, but at other times we are separated by a space
amounting to 210 miles. He has three children, and a nice little
wife, who has good-humor engraved on her countenance.

"As to verse--yes, I have begun a dozen trifling things, which are
in my drawer unfinished; poor rags with ink upon them, none of them,
I am afraid, properly labelled for posterity. I was for six weeks at
Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, this year, but so unwell that I could
not write a line, scarcely read one; sitting out in the sun, eating,
drinking, sleeping, and sometimes (poor soul!) imagining I was
thinking. One Sunday I saw a magnificent steamer go by, and on
placing my eye to the telescope I saw some Stars a