a year past. She published some time since a volume of 'Scottish
Minstrelsy,' graceful and flowing, and aspires strenuously towards
poetry; a pretty woman with three pretty children, of quick
perceptions and active intelligence and sensibility. They are upright,
excellent people in various ways, and it is a loss to us that they
should have gone to Naples now. Dearest friend, how your letter
delighted me with its happy account of your improved strength. Take
care of yourself, do, to lose no ground. The power of walking must
refresh your spirits as well as widen your daily pleasures. I am so
glad. Thank God. We have heard from Mr. Chorley, who seems to have
received very partial gratification in respect to his play and yet
prepares for more plays, more wrestlings in the same dust. Well, I
can't make it out. A man of his sensitiveness to choose to appeal to
the coarsest side of the public--which, whatever you dramatists may
say, you all certainly do--is incomprehensible to me. Then I cannot
help thinking that he might achieve other sorts of successes more
easily and surely. Your criticism is very just. But _I_ like his
'Music and Manners in Germany' better than anything he has done. I
believe I always _did_ like it best, and since coming to Florence I
have heard cultivated Americans speak of it with enthusiasm, yes, with
enthusiasm. 'Pomfret' they would scarcely believe to be by the same
author. I agree with you, but it is a pity indeed for him to tie
himself to the wheels of the 'Athenaeum,' to _approfondir_ the ruts;
what other end? And, by the way, the 'Athenaeum,' since Mr. Dilke
left it, has grown duller and duller, colder and colder, flatter
and flatter. Mr. Dilke was not brilliant, but he was a Brutus in
criticism; and though it was his speciality to condemn his most
particular friends to the hangman, the survivors thought there was
something grand about it on the whole, and nobody could hold him in
contempt. Now it is all different. We have not even 'public virtue' to
fasten our admiration to. You will be sure to think I am vexed at the
article on my husband's new poem.[201] Why, certainly I am vexed! Who
would _not_ be vexed with such misunderstanding and mistaking. Dear
Mr. Chorley writes a letter to appreciate most generously: so you see
how little power he has in the paper to insert an opinion, or stop an
injustice. On the same day came out a burning panegyric of six columns
in the 'Examiner,' a curious cross-fi