frequently than at
present.

At all events, if it be any satisfaction to you, you may be assured that
the rulers in all these cases are not much better off than those they
rule over. They lead lives of incessant terror, distrust, and anxiety.
Their existence is poisoned by ceaseless fears of treachery,--they know
not where. They change ministers as travellers change the direction of
their journey, to disconcert the supposed plans of their enemies; and
they vacillate between cruelty and mercy, really not knowing in which
lies their safety. Don't fancy that they have any innate pleasure in
harsh measures. The likelihood is, they hate them as much as you do
yourself; but they know no other system; and, to come back to my cavalry
illustration, the only time they tried a snaffle, they were run away
with.

I trust these prosings will be a warning to you how you touch upon
politics again in a letter to me; but I really did not wish to-be a
bore, and now here I am, ready to answer, as far as in me lies, all your
interrogatories; first premising that I am not at liberty to enter upon
the question of Glencore himself, and for the simple reason that he has
made me his confidant. And now, as to the boy, I could make nothing
of him, Harcourt; and for this reason,--he had not what sailors call
"steerage way" on him. He went wherever you bade, but without an
impulse. I tried to make him care for his career; for the gay
world; for the butterfly life of young diplomacy; for certain
dissipations,--excellent things occasionally to develop nascent
faculties. I endeavored to interest him by literary society and savans,
but unsuccessfully. For art indeed he showed some disposition,
and modelled prettily; but it never rose above "amateurship." Now,
enthusiasm, although a very excellent ingredient, will no more make an
artist than a brisk kitchen fire will provide a dinner where all the
materials are wanting.

I began to despair of him, Harcourt, when I saw that there were no
features about him. He could do everything reasonably well, because
there was no hope of his doing anything with real excellence. He
wandered away from me to Carrara, with his quaint companion the Doctor;
and after some months wrote me rather a sturdy letter, rejecting all
moneyed advances, past and future, and saying something very haughty,
and of course very stupid, about the "glorious sense of independence."
I replied, but he never answered me; and here might have