Chapter XIX: Part 19

If genius alone were the same thing as genius and years of study, labor, experience, and practice, genius would be a finer thing even than it is. My sister perpetually reminded me of Pasta, and, had she remained a few years longer in her profession, would, I think, have equalled her. I could not give her higher praise, for nobody, since the setting of that great artist, has even remotely reminded me of her. My sister's voice is not one of the finest I have heard; Miss Paton's is finer, Clara Novello's (the most perfect voice I ever heard) is finer. Adelaide's real voice is a high mezzo-soprano, and in _stretching_ it to a higher pitch--that of the soprano-assoluto--which she has done with infinite pains and practice, in order to sing the music of the parts she plays, I think she has impaired the quality, the perfect intonation, of the notes that form the joint, the hinge, as it were, between the upper and middle voice; and these notes are sometimes not quite true--at any rate, weak and uncertain. In brilliancy of execution, I do not think she equals Sontag, Malibran, or Grisi; _but_ there is in other respects no possible comparison, in my opinion, between them and herself, as a lyrical dramatic artist; and Pasta is the only great singer who, I think, compares with her in the qualities of that noble and commanding order which distinguished them both. In both Madame Pasta and my sister the dramatic power is so great as almost occasionally to throw their musical achievements, in some degree, into the shade. But in their lyrical declamation there is a grandeur and breadth of style, and a tragic depth of passion, far beyond that of any other musical performers I have known. In one respect Adelaide had the promise of greater excellence than Pasta--the versatility of her powers and her great talent for comedy.

How little her beautiful face was ever disfigured by her vocal efforts you have seen; and noted, I know, that power of appealing to Heaven at once with her lustrous eyes and her soaring voice; ending those fine, exquisite, prolonged shakes on the highest notes with that gentle quiver of the lids which hardly disturbed the expression of "the rapt soul sitting in her eyes." She has a musical sensibility which comprehends, in both senses of the word, every species of musical composition, and almost the whole lyrical literature of Europe; in short, she belongs, by organization and education, to the highest order of artists. But why--oh, why am I giving you a dissertation on her and her gifts, for a purpose which will never again challenge her efforts or their exercise? (Quite lately, one who knew and loved her well told me that Rossini had said of her, "To sing as she does three things are needed: this"--touching his forehead,--"this"--touching his throat,--"and this"--laying his hand on his heart;--"she had them all.")

I sometimes think, when I reflect upon the lives of theatrical artists, that they are altogether unnatural existences, and produce--pardon the bull--_artificial natures_, which are misplaced anywhere but in their own unreal and make-believe sphere. They are the anomalous growth of our diseased civilizations, and, removed from their own factitious soil, flourish, I half believe, in none other. Do not laugh at me, but I really do think that creatures with the temperaments necessary for making good actors and actresses are unfit for anything else in life; and as for marrying and having children, I think crossing wholesome English farm stock with mythological cattle would furnish our fields with a less uncanny breed, of animals.

I wish some laws were made shutting up all the theatres, and only allowing two dramatic entertainments every year: one of Shakespeare's plays, and one of Mozart's operas, at the cost of Government, and as a national festivity. Now, I know you think I am quite mad, wherefore adieu.

I am ever yours most truly,
F. A. B.

UPPER GROSVENOR STREET, May, 1843.
DEAREST GRANNY,

I am of Lord Dacre's mind, and think it wisest and best to avoid the pain of a second parting with you. Light as _new_ sorrows may appear to you, the heart--your heart--certainly will never want vitality enough to feel pain through your kindly affections. God bless you, therefore, my good friend, and farewell. For myself, I feel bruised all over, and numbed with pain; so many sad partings have fallen one after another, day after day, upon my heart, that acuteness of pain is lost in a mere sense of unspeakable, sore weariness; and yet these bitter last days are to be prolonged.... God help us all! But I am wrong to write thus sadly to you, my kind friend; and indeed, though from this note you might not think my courage what it ought to be, I assure you it does not fail me, and, once through these cruel last days, I shall take up the burden of my life, I trust, with patience, cheerfulness, and firm faith in God, and that conviction which is seldom absent from my mind, and which I find powerful to sustain me, that duty and not happiness is the purpose of life; and that from the discharge of the one and the forgetfulness of the other springs that peace which Christ told His friends He gave, and the world gives not, neither takes away. Let dear B---- come and see me; I shall like to look on her bright, courageous face again. Give my affectionate love to Lord Dacre, and believe me

Ever gratefully and affectionately
Your grandchild,
FANNY.

UPPER GROSVENOR STREET, May 3rd, 1843.

Thank you, dearest Hal, for Sydney Smith's letter about Francis Horner: it is bolder than anything I had a notion of, but very able and very amiable, and describes charmingly an admirable man. There is one expression he--Sydney Smith--applies to Horner that struck me as strange--he speaks of "important human beings" that he has known; and, I cannot tell why, but with all my self-esteem and high opinion of human nature and its capabilities in general, the epithet "important" applied to human beings made me smile, and keeps recurring to me as comical. It must have appeared much more so to you, I should think, with your degraded opinion of humanity.

You ask how our second party went off. Why, very well. It was much fuller than the other, and in hopes of inducing people to "spread themselves" a little, we had the refreshments put into my drawing-room; but they still persisting in sticking (sticking literally) all in the room with the piano, which rather annoyed me, because I hate the proximity of "important human beings," I came away from them, and had a charming quiet chat in the little boudoir with Lord Ashburton and Lord Dacre, during which they discussed the merits of Channing, and awarded him the most _unmitigated_ praise as a good and great man. It is curious enough that in America the opponents of Dr. Channing's views perpetually retorted upon him that he was a clergyman, a mere man of letters, whose peculiar mode of life could not possibly admit of his having large or just, or, above all, practical political knowledge and ideas, or any opinions about questions of government that could be worth listening to; whereas these two very distinguished Englishmen spoke with unqualified admiration of his sound and luminous treatment of such subjects, and, instancing what they considered his best productions, mentioned his letter to Clay upon the annexation of Texas, even before his moral and theological essays.

Our company stayed very late with us, till near two o'clock; and upon a remark being made about the much smaller consumption of refreshments than on the occasion of our first party, D----, our butler, very oracularly responded, "Quite a different class of people, sir;" which mode of accounting for the more delicate appetite of our more aristocratic guests, made with an ineffable air of cousinship to them all, sent me into fits of laughing.

You ask me what I shall have to do from Monday till Wednesday, to fill up my time and keep my thoughts from drowning themselves in crying. I shall leave this house after breakfast for the _Clarendon_. I have a great many small last articles to purchase, and shall visit all my kindred once more. Then, too, the final packing for "board ship" will take me some time, and I have some letters to write too. I dine with Lady Dacre on Monday; they are to be alone except us and E---- and my sister. I shall leave them at eight o'clock to go and sit with my father till ten, his bed-time; and then return to Chesterfield Street [Lord Dacre's]. As for Tuesday--Heaven alone knows how I shall get through it.

On Thursday last we dined with Sydney Smith, where we met Lord and Lady Charlemont, Jeffrey, Frederick Byng, Dickens, Lady Stepney, and two men whom I did not know,--a pleasant dinner; and afterwards we went to Mrs. Dawson Damer's,--a large assembly, more than half of them strangers to us....

On Friday morning Adelaide and E---- and we breakfasted with Rogers, to meet Sydney Smith, Hallam, and his daughter and niece, the United States Minister, Edward Everett, Empson, and Sir Robert Inglis. After breakfast I went to see Charles Greville, who is again laid up with the gout, and unable to move from his sofa. We dined with my sister, who had a large party in the evening; and as the hour for breaking up arrived, and I saw those pleasant kindly acquaintances pass one after another through the door, I felt as if I was watching the vanishing of some pleasant vision. The nearest and dearest of these phantasmagoria are yet round me; but in three days the last will have disappeared from my eyes, for who can tell how long? if not forever!

All day yesterday I was extremely unwell, but packed vehemently....

Charles Young, who is a most dear old friend of mine, and dotes upon my children, came to see them off, and went with them to the railroad. S---- begged for some of her grandfather's hair, but that he might not be told it was for her, for fear of grieving him!

This is the last letter you will get from me written in this house. Victoire, quite tired out with packing, is lying asleep on the sofa, and poor dear Emily sits crying beside me.

Ever yours,
F. A. B.

LIVERPOOL, Thursday, May 4th, 1843.

I wrote to you last thing last night, dearest Hal; and now farewell! I have received a better account of my father.... Dear love to Dorothy, and my last dear love to you. I shall write and send no more loves to any one. Lord Titchfield--blessings on him!--has sent me a miniature of my father and four different ones of Adelaide. God bless you, dear. Good-bye.

Yours,
FANNY.

HALIFAX WHARF, Wednesday, May 17th, 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,

When I tell you that yesterday, for the first time, I was able to put pen to paper, or even to hold up my head, and that even after the small exertion of writing a few lines to my father I was so exhausted as to faint away, you will judge of the state of weakness to which this dreadful process of crossing the Atlantic reduces your very _robustious_ grandchild.

It is now the 17th of May, and we have been at sea thirteen days, and we are making rapid way along the coast of Nova Scotia, and shall touch at Halifax in less than an hour. There we remain, to land mails and passengers, about six hours; and in thirty-six more, wind and weather favoring us across the Bay of Fundy, we shall be in Boston. In fifteen days! Think of it, my dearest Granny! when thirty used to be considered a rapid and prosperous voyage.

My dear friend, how shall I thank you for those warm words of cheering and affectionate encouragement which I received when I was lying worn out for want of sleep and food, after we had been eight days on this dreadful deep? My kind friend, I do not want courage, I assure you; and God will doubtless give me sufficient strength for my need: but you can hardly imagine how deplorably sad I feel; how poor, who lately was so rich; how lonely, who lately was surrounded by so many friends. I know all that remains to me, and how the treasure of love I have left behind will be kept, I believe, in many kind hearts for me till I return to claim it. But the fact is I am quite exhausted, body and mind, and incapable of writing, or even thinking, with half the energy I hope to gather from the first inch of dry land I step upon. Like Antaeus, I look for strength from my mother, the Earth, and doubt not to be brave again when once I am on shore.

The moment I saw the dear little blue enamel heart I exclaimed, "Oh, it is Lady Dacre's hair in it!" But tears, and tears, and nothing but tears, were the only greeting I could give the pretty locket and your and dear B----'s letters.

My poor chicks have borne the passage well, upon the whole--sick and sorry one hour, and flying about the deck like birds the next....

Our passage has been made in the teeth of the wind, and against a heavy sea the whole way. We have had no absolute storm; but the tender mercies of the Atlantic, at best, are terrible. Of our company I can tell nothing, having never left my bed till within the last three days. They seem to be chiefly English officers and their families, bound for New Brunswick and the Canadas. The ship stops, and to the perpetual flailing of the paddles succeeds the hissing sound of the escaping steam. We are at Halifax. I send you this earliest news of us because you will be glad, I am sure, to get it.

Give my love to my dear lord; my blessing and a kiss to dear B----. I will write to her from New York, if possible. God bless you, my dear friend, and reward you for all your kindness to me, and comfort and make peaceful the remainder of your earthly pilgrimage. I can hardly hold my pen in my hand, or my head up; but am ever your grateful and affectionate

FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, Tuesday, May 23rd, 1843.
MY DEAREST HAL,

We landed in Boston on Friday morning at six o'clock, and almost before I had drawn my first breath of Yankee air Elizabeth Sedgwick and Kate had thrown their arms round me.

You will want to know of our seafaring; and mine truly was miserable, as it always is, and perhaps even more wretched than ever before. I lay in a fever for ten days, without being able to swallow anything but two glasses of calves'-foot jelly and oceans of iced water. At the end of this time I began to get a little better; though, as I had neither food, nor sleep, nor any relief from positive sea-sickness, I was in a deplorable state of weakness. I just contrived to crawl out of my berth two days before we reached Halifax, where I was cheered, and saddened too, by the sight of well-known English faces. I had just finished letters to my father, E----, and Lady Dacre, for the _Hibernia_, which was to touch there the next morning on her way _home_, and was sitting disconsolate with my head in my hands, in a small cabin on deck, to which I had been carried up from below as soon as I was well enough to bear being removed from my own, when Mr. Cunard, the originator of this Atlantic Steam Mail-packet enterprise, whom I had met in London, came in, and with many words of kindness and good cheer, carried me up to his house in Halifax, where I rested for an hour, and where I saw Major S----, an uncle of my dear B----, and where we talked over English friends and acquaintances and places, and whence I returned to the ship for our two days' more misery, with a bunch of exquisite flowers, born English subjects, which are now withering in my letter-box among my most precious farewell words of friends.

The children bore the voyage as well as could be expected; sick one half hour, and stuffing the next; little F---- _pervading_ the ship from stem to stern, like Ariel, and generally presiding at the officers' mess in undismayed she-loneliness.

Your friend Captain G---- was her devoted slave and admirer.... I saw but little of the worthy captain, being only able to come on deck the last four days of our passage; but he was most kind to us all, and after romping with the children and walking Miss Hall off her legs, he used to come and sit down by me, and sing, and hum, and whistle every imaginable tune that ever lodged between lines and spaces, and some so original that I think they never were imprisoned within any musical bars whatever. I gave him at parting the fellow of your squeeze of the hand, and told him that as yours was on my account, mine was on yours. He left us at Boston to go on to Niagara.

Our ship was extremely full, and there being only one stewardess on board, the help she could afford any of us was very little.... While in Boston I made a pilgrimage to dear Dall's grave: a bitter and a sad few minutes I spent, lying upon that ground beneath which she lay, and from which her example seemed to me to rise in all the brightness of its perfect lovingness and self-denial. The oftener I think of her, the more admirable her life appears to me. She was undoubtedly gifted by nature with a temperament of rare healthfulness and vigor, which, combined with the absence of imagination and nervous excitability, contributed much to her uniform cheerfulness, courage, and placidity of temper; but her self-forgetfulness was most uncommon, her inexhaustible kindliness and devotedness to every creature that came within her comfortable and consolatory influence was "twice-blessed," and from her grave her lovely virtues seemed to call to me to get up and be of good cheer, and strive to forget myself, even as perfectly as she had done.... How bitter and dark a thing life is to some of God's poor creatures!

I have told you now all I have to tell of myself, and being weary in spirit and in body, will bid you farewell, and go and try to get some sleep. God bless you, my beloved friend; I am very sad, but far from out of courage. Give dear Dorothy my affectionate love.

I am ever yours,
FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, Tuesday, 30th, 1843.
MY DEAR F----,

We are all established in a boarding-house here, where my acquaintances assure me that I am very comfortable; and so I endeavor to persuade myself that my acquaintances are better judges of that than I am myself. It is the first time in my life that I have ever lived in any such manner or establishment; so I have no means of trying it by comparison; it is simply detestable to me, but compared with _more_ detestable places of the same sort it is probably _less_ so. "There are differences, look you!" ...

I am sure your family deserve to have a temple erected to them by all foreigners in America; for it seems to me that you and your people are home, country, and friends to all such unfortunates as happen to have left those small items of satisfaction behind them. The stranger's blessing should rest on your dwellings, and one stranger's grateful blessing does rest there....

Believe me, yours most truly,
F. A. B.

_Please to observe_ that the charge of 13_s._ 8_d._ is for personal advice, conferences, and tiresome morning visits; and if you make any such charge, I shall expect you to earn it. 6_s._ 4_d._ is all you are entitled to for anything but personal communication.

[This postscript, and the beginning of the letter, were jesting
references to a lawyer's bill, amounting to nearly L50, presented to
me by a young legal gentleman with whom we had been upon terms of
friendly acquaintance, and whom we had employed, as he was just
beginning business, to execute the papers for the deed of gift I
have mentioned, by which my father left me at his death my earnings,
the use of which I had given up to him on my marriage for his
lifetime.

Our young legal gentleman used to pay us the most inconceivably
tedious visits, during which his principal object appeared to be to
obtain from us every sort of information upon the subject of all and
sundry American investments and securities. Over and over again I
was on the point of saying "Not at home" to these interminably
wearisome visitations, but refrained, out of sheer good nature and
unwillingness to mortify my _visitant_. Great, therefore, was our
surprise, on receiving a _bill of costs_, to find every one of these
intolerable intrusions upon our time and patience charged, as
personal business consultations, at 13_s._ 8_d._ The thing was so
ludicrous that I laughed till I cried over the price of our friend's
civilities. On paying the amount, though of course I made no comment
upon the price of my social and legal privileges, I suppose the
young gentleman's own conscience (he was only just starting in his
profession, and may have had one) pricked him slightly, for with a
faint hysterical giggle, he said, "I dare say you think it rather
sharp practice, but, you see, getting married and furnishing the
house is rather expensive,"--an explanation of the reiterated
thirteens and sixpences of the bill, which was candid, at any rate,
and put them in the more affable light of an extorted wedding
present, which was rather pleasant.]

PHILADELPHIA, June 4th, 1843.
DEAREST GRANNY,

You will long ere this have received my grateful acknowledgments of your pretty present and most kind letter, received, with many tears and heart-yearnings, in the middle of that horrible ocean. I will not renew my thanks, though I never can thank you enough for that affectionate inspiration of following me on that watery waste, with tokens of your remembrance, and cheering that most dismal of all conditions with such an unlooked-for visitation of love.

I wrote to you from Halifax, where, on the deck of our steamer, your name was invoked with heartfelt commendations by myself and Major S----. That was a curious conversation of his and mine, if such it could be called; scarcely more than a breathless enumeration of the names of all of you, coupled indeed with loving and admiring additions, and ejaculations full of regret and affection. Poor man, how I did pity him! and how I did pity myself!

I have just written to our B----, and feel sad at the meagre and unsatisfactory account which my letter contains of me and mine; to you, my excellent friend, I will add this much more.... But I shall forbear saying anything about my conditions until they become better in themselves, or I become better able to bear them. God bless you and those you love, my dear Lady Dacre. Give my affectionate "duty" to my lord, and believe me ever your gratefully attached

F. A. B.

PHILADELPHIA, June 26th, 1843.
MY DEAREST HAL,

Your sad account of Ireland is only more shocking than that of the newspapers because it is yours, and because you are in the midst of all this wild confusion and dismay. How much you must feel for your people! However much one's sympathy may be enlisted in any public cause, the private instances of suffering and injustice, which inevitably attend all political changes wrought by popular commotion, are most afflicting.

I hardly know what it is reasonable to expect from, or hope for, Ireland. A separation from England seems the wildest project conceivable; and yet, Heaven knows, no great benefit appears hitherto to have accrued to the poor "earthen pot" from its fellowship with the "iron" one. As for hoping that quiet may be restored through the intervention of military force, at the bayonet's point,--I cannot hope any such thing. Peace so procured is but an earnest of future war, and the victims of such enforced tranquillity bequeath to those who are only temporarily _quelled_, not permanently _quieted_, a legacy of revenge, which only accumulates, and never goes long unclaimed and unpaid. England seems to me invariably to deal unwisely with her dependencies; she performs in the Christian world very much the office that Rome did in the days of her great heathen supremacy--carry to the ends of the earth by process of conquest the seeds of civilization, of legislation, and progress; and then, as though her mission was fulfilled, by gradual mismanagement, abuse of power, and insolent contempt of those she has subjugated, is ejected by the very people to whom she had brought, at the sword's point, the knowledge of freedom and of law. It is a singular office for a great nation, but I am not sure that it is not our Heaven-appointed one, to conquer, to improve, to oppress, to be rebelled against, to coerce, and finally to be kicked out, _videlicet_, these United States.

But now to matters personal.... The intense heat affects me extremely; and not having a horse, or any riding exercise, the long walks which I compel myself to take over these burning brick pavements, and under this broiling sun, are not, I suppose, altogether beneficial to me....

I went to church yesterday, and Mr. F---- preached an Abolition sermon. This subject seems to press more and more upon his mind, and he speaks more and more boldly upon it, in spite of having seen various members of his congregation get up and leave the church in the middle of one of his sermons in which he adverted to the forbidden theme of slavery. Some of these, who had been members of the church from its earliest establishment, and were very much attached to him, expressed their regret at the course they felt compelled to adopt, and said if he would only _give them notice_ when he intended to preach upon that subject they would content themselves with absenting themselves on those occasions only, to which his reply not unnaturally was, "Why, those who would leave the church on those occasions are precisely the persons who are in need of such exhortations!"--and of course he persevered.

I think it will end by his being expelled by his congregation. It will be well with him wherever he goes; but alas for those he leaves! I expect to be forbidden to take S---- to church, as soon as the report of yesterday's sermon gets noised abroad....

God bless you, dear. Good-bye. I am heavy-hearted, and it is a great effort to me to write. What would I not give to see you! Love to dear Dorothy, when you see or write to her.

I am ever yours,
FANNY.

YELLOW SPRINGS, PENNSYLVANIA, July 6th, 1843.
MY DEAREST HAL,

Here I am sitting (not indeed "on a rail"), but next thing to it, on the very hardest of wooden benches; my feet on the very hardest bar of the very hardest wooden chair; and my _cork_ inkstand, of the most primitive formation, placed on a rough wooden table about a foot square, which is not large enough to hold my paper (so my knees are my desk), and is covered with a coarse piece of rag carpeting;--the whole, a sort of prison-cell furnishing. Before me stretches as far as it can about a quarter of an acre of degraded uneven ground, enclosed in a dilapidated whitewashed wooden paling, and clothed, except in several mangy bare patches, with rank weedy grass, untended unwholesome shrubs, and untidy neglected trees.... Behind me is a whitewashed room about fifteen feet by twelve, containing a rickety, black horse-hair sofa, all worn and torn into prickly ridges; six rheumatic wooden chairs; a lame table covered with a plaid shawl of my own, being otherwise without cloth to hide its nakedness or the indefinite variety of dirt-spots and stains which defile its dirty skin. In this room Miss Hall and S---- are busily engaged at "lessons." Briefly, I am sitting on the piazza (so-called) of one of a group of tumble-down lodging-houses and hotels, which, embosomed in a beautiful valley in Pennsylvania, and having in the midst of them an exquisite spring of mineral water, rejoice in the title of the "Yellow Springs."

Some years ago this place was a fashionable resort for the Philadelphians, but other watering-places have carried off its fashion, and it has been almost deserted for some time past; and except invalids unable to go far from the city (which is within a three hours' drive from here), and people who wish to get fresh air for their children without being at a distance from their business, very few visitors come here, and those of an entirely different sort from the usual summer haunters of watering-places in the country.

The heat in the city has been perfectly frightful.... On Sunday last a thermometer, rested on the ground, rose to 130 deg., that being the heat of the earth; and when it was hung up in the shade the mercury fell, but remained at 119 deg.. Imagine what an air to breathe!... Late in the afternoon last Sunday, a storm came on like a West Indian tornado; the sky came down almost to the earth, the dust was suddenly blown up into the air in red-hot clouds that rushed in at the open windows like thick volumes of smoke, and then the rain poured from the clouds, steadily, heavily, and continuously, for several hours.

In the night the whole atmosphere changed, and as I sat in my children's nursery after putting them to bed in the dark, that they might sleep, I felt gradually the spirit of life come over the earth, in cool breezes between the heavy showers of rain. The next morning the thermometer was below 70 deg., 30 deg. lower than the day before.... This morning the children took me up a hill which rises immediately at the back of the house, on the summit of which is a fine crest of beautiful forest-trees, from which place there is a charming prospect of hill and dale, a rich rolling country in fine cultivation--the yellow crops of grain, running like golden bays into the green woodland that clothes the sides and tops of all the hills, the wheat, the grass, the oats, and the maize, all making different checkers in the pretty variegated patchwork covering of the prosperous summer earth.

The scattered farmhouses glimmered white from among the round-headed verdure of their neighboring orchards. Nowhere in the bright panorama did the eye encounter the village, the manor-house, and the church spire,--that picturesque poetical group of feudal significance; but everywhere, the small lonely farmhouse, with its accompaniments of huge barns and outhouses, ugly the one and ungainly the others, but standing in the midst of their own smiling well-cultivated territory, a type of independent republicanism, perhaps the pleasantest type of its pleasantest features.

In the whole scene there was nothing picturesque or poetical (except, indeed, the blue glorious expanse of the unclouded sky, and the noble trees, from the protection of whose broad shade we looked forth upon the sunny world). But the wide landscape had a peaceful, plenteous, prosperous aspect, that was comfortable to one's spirit and exceedingly pleasant to the eye.

After our walk we came down into the valley, and I went with the children to the cold bath--a beautiful deep spring of water, as clear as crystal and almost as cold as ice, surrounded by whitewashed walls, which, rising above it to a discreet height, screen it only from earthly observers. No roof covers the watery chamber but the green spreading branches of tall trees and the blue summer sky, into which you seem to be stepping as you disturb the surface of the water. Into this lucid liquid gem I gave my chickens and myself, overhead, three breathless dips--it is too cold to do more,--and since that I have done nothing but write to you.

You ask what is said to Sydney Smith's "petition." Why, the honest men of the country say, "'Tis true, 'tis pity; pity 'tis, 'tis true." It is thought that Pennsylvania will _ultimately_ pay, and not repudiate, but it will be _some time_ first. God bless you, my dear Hal. I have not been well and am miserably depressed, but the country always agrees excellently with me.

Ever yours,
FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, Sunday, 9th, 1843.
MY DEAR T----,

After last Sunday's awful heat, it became positively impossible to keep the children any longer in Philadelphia; and they were accordingly removed to the Yellow Springs, a healthy and pleasant bathing-place at three hours' distance from the city. On Saturday morning their nurse, the only servant we have, thought proper to disapprove of my deportment towards her, and left me to the maternal delights of dressing, washing, and looking after my children during that insufferable heat. Miss H---- was entirely incapacitated, and I feared was going to be ill, and I have reason to thank Heaven that I am provided with the constitution that I have, for it is certain that I need it. On Sunday night a violent storm cooled the atmosphere, and on Monday morning the nurse was good enough to forgive me, and came back: so that the acme of my trial did not last too long. On Tuesday the children were removed to the country, and though the physician and my own observation assured me that F---- required sea-bathing, it is an unspeakable relief to me to see her out of the city, and to find this place healthy and pleasant for them. The country is pretty, the air pure, the baths delightful; and my chicks, thank God, already beginning to improve in health and spirits.

As for the accommodations, the less said about them the better. We inhabit a sort of very large barn, or barrack, divided into sundry apartments, large and small; and having gleaned the whole house to furnish our _drawing-room_, that chamber now contains one rickety table, one horse-hair sofa that has three feet, and six wooden chairs, of which it may be said that they have several legs among them; but I must add that we have the whole house to ourselves, and our meals are brought to us from the "Great Hotel" across the street,--privileges for which it behoves me to be humbly thankful, and so I am. If the children thrive I shall be satisfied; and as for accommodation, or even common comfort, my habitation and mode of life in our Philadelphia boarding-house have been so far removed from any ideas of comfort or even decency that I ever entertained, that the whitewashed walls, bare rooms, and tumble-down verandas of my present residence are but little more so.... I suppose there was something to like in Mr. Webster's speech, since you are surprised at my not liking it; but what was there to like? The one he delivered on the laying of the foundation-stone of the monument (on Bunker's Hill, near Boston) pleased me very much indeed; I thought some parts of it very fine. But the last one displeased me utterly.... Pray send me word all about that place by the sea-side, with the wonderful name of "Quoge." My own belief is that the final "e" you tack on to it is an affected abbreviation for the sake of refinement, and that it is, by name and nature, really "Quagmire."

Believe me always
Yours truly,
F. A. B.

YELLOW SPRINGS, July 12th, 1843.
DEAR GRANNY,

The intelligence contained in your letter [of the second marriage of the Rev. Frederick Sullivan, whose first wife was Lady Dacre's only child] gave me for an instant a painful shock, but before I had ended it that feeling had given place to the conviction that the contemplated change at the vicarage was probably for the happiness and advantage of all concerned. The tone of B----'s letter satisfied me, and for her and her sister's feeling upon the subject I was chiefly anxious. About you, my dearest Granny, I was not so solicitous; however deep your sentiment about the circumstance may be, you have lived long and suffered much, and have learned to accept sorrow wisely, let it come in what shape it will. The impatience of youth renders suffering very terrible to it; and the eager desire for happiness which belongs to the beginning of life makes sorrow appear like some unnatural accident (almost a personal injury), a sort of horrid surprise, instead of the all but daily business, and part of the daily bread of existence, as one grows by degrees to find that it is.

His daughter's feeling about Mr. Sullivan's marriage being what it is, the marriage itself appears to me wise and well; and I have no doubt that it will bring a blessing to the home at the vicarage and its dear inmates. Pray remember me most kindly to Mr. Sullivan, and beg him to accept my best wishes for his happiness, and that of all who belong to him; the latter part of my wish I know he is mainly instrumental in fulfilling himself. May he find his reward accordingly!

Of myself, my dear friend, what shall I tell you? I am in good health, thank God! and as much good spirits as inevitably belong to good health and a sound constitution in middle life....

The intense heat of the last month had made both my children ill, and a week ago they were removed to this place, called the Yellow Springs, from a fine mineral source, the waters of which people bathe in and drink. Round it is gathered a small congregation of rambling farm-houses, built for the accommodation of visitors. The country is pretty and well cultivated, and the air remarkable for its purity and healthiness; and here we have taken lodgings, and shall probably remain during all the heat of the next six weeks, after which I suppose we shall return to town.

I wish you could see my present _locale_. The house we are in is the furthest from the "Hotel" (as it is magnificently called), and is a large, rambling, whitewashed edifice, with tumble-down wooden piazzas (verandas, as we should call them) surrounding its ground-floor. This consists of one very large room, intended for a public dining-room, with innumerable little cells round it, all about twelve feet by thirteen, which are the bedrooms. One of these spacious sleeping-apartments, opening on one side to the common piazza and on the other to the common eating-room, is appropriated to me as a "private parlor," as it is called; and being at present, most fortunately, the only inmates of this huge barrack, we have collected into this "extra exclusive" saloon all the furniture that we could glean out of all the other rooms in the house; and what do you think we have got? Two tiny wooden tables, neither of them large enough to write upon; a lame horse-hair sofa, and six lame wooden chairs. As the latter, however, are not all lame of the same leg, it is quite a pretty gymnastic exercise to balance one's self as one sits by turns upon each of them, bringing dexterously into play all the different muscles necessary to maintain one's seat on any of them. It makes sitting quite a different process from what I have ever known it to be, and separates it entirely from the idea usually connected with it, of rest. But this we call luxury, and, compared with the condition of the other rooms (before we had stripped them of their contents), so it undoubtedly is. The walls of this boudoir of mine are roughly whitewashed, the floor roughly boarded, and here I abide with my chicks. The decided improvement in their health and looks and spirits, since we left that horrible city, is a great deal better than sofas and armchairs to me, or anything that would be considered elsewhere the mere decencies of life; and having the means of privacy and cleanliness, my only two absolute indispensables, I take this rather primitive existence pleasantly enough. This house is built at the foot of a low hill, the sides of which are cultivated; while the immediate summit retains its beautiful crest of noble trees, from beneath which to look out over the wide landscape is a very agreeable occupation towards sunset.

Chester County, as this is called, is the richest, agriculturally speaking, in Pennsylvania; and the face of the country is certainly one of the comeliest, well-to-do, smiling, pleasant earth's faces that can be seen on a summer's day; the variety of the different tinted crops (among them the rich green of the maize, or Indian corn, which we have not in England), clothing the hill-sides and running like golden bays into the green forest that once covered them from base to summit, and still crowns every highest point, forms the gayest coat of many colors for the whole rural region.

The human interest in the landscape is supplied not by village, mansion, parsonage, or church, but by numerous small isolated farm-houses, their white walls gleaming in the intense sunlight from amidst the trim verdure of their orchards, and their large barns and granaries surveying complacently far and wide the abundant harvests that are to be gathered into their capacious walls. The comfort, solidity, loneliness, and inelegance, not to say ugliness, of these rural dwellings is highly characteristic, the latter quality being to a certain degree modified by distance; the others represent very pleasingly, in the midst of the prosperous prospect, the best features of the institutions which govern the land--security, freedom, independence.

There is nothing visibly picturesque or poetical in the whole scene; nothing has a hallowed association for memory, or an exciting historical interest, or a charm for the imagination. But under this bright and ever-shining sky the objects and images that the eye encounters are all cheerful, pleasing, peaceful, and satisfactorily suggestive of the blessings of industry and the secure repose of modest, moderate prosperity.

Dearest Granny, I had not intended to cross my letter to you; but the young ones will decipher the scrawl for you, and I flatter myself that you will not object to my filling my paper as full as it will hold. These four small pages, even when they are crossed, make but a poor amount of communication compared with the full and frequent personal intercourse I have enjoyed with you.

What a shocking mess you are all making of it in Ireland just now! I hear too that you are threatened with bad crops. Should this be true, I do not wonder at my lord's croaking, for what will the people do?

The water we bathe in here is strongly impregnated with iron, and so cold that very few people go into the spring itself. I do: and when the thermometer is at 98 deg. in the shade, a plunge into water below 50 deg. is something of a shock. B---- would like it, and so do I. Will you give my affectionate remembrance to my lord, and

Believe me always, dear Granny,
Your attached
F. A. B.

YELLOW SPRINGS, 19th July, 1843.

And so, my dear T----, you are a "tied-by-the-leg" (as we used, in our laughing days, to call the penniless young Attaches to Legations)? I am heartily sorry, as yours is not diplomatic but physical infirmity; and would very readily, had I been anywhere within possible reach, have occupied the empty arm-chair in your library, and "charmed your annoys" to the best of my ability.... Dear me! through how long a lapse of years your desire that I would undertake a translation of Schiller's "Fiesco" leads me! When I was between sixteen and seventeen years old, I actually began an adaptation of it to the English stage; but partly from thinking the catastrophe unmanageable, and from various other motives, I never finished it: but it was an early literary dream of mine, and you have recalled to me a very happy period of my life in reminding me of that labor of love. You perhaps imagine from this that I understood German, which I then did not; my acquaintance with the German drama existing only through very admirably executed literal French translations, which formed part of an immense collection of plays, the dramatic literature of Europe in innumerable volumes, which was one of my favorite studies in my father's library.

I am not, however, at all of your opinion, that "Fiesco" is the best of Schiller's plays. I think "Don Carlos," and "William Tell," and especially "Wallenstein," finer; the last, indeed, finest of them all. My own especial favorite, however, for many years (though I do not at all think it his best play) was "Joan of Arc." As for his violation of history in "Wallenstein" and "Mary Stuart," I think little of that compared with the singular insensibility he has shown to the glory of the French heroine's death, which is the more remarkable because he generally, above most poets, especially recognizes the sublimity of moral greatness; and how far does the red pile of the religious and patriotic martyr, surrounded by her terrified and cowardly English enemies and her more basely cowardly and ungrateful French friends, transcend in glory, the rose-colored battle-field apotheosis Schiller has awarded her! Joan of Arc seems to me never yet to have been done justice to by either poet or historian, and yet what a subject for both! The treatment of the character of Joan of Arc in "Henry VI." is one reason why I do not believe it to be wholly Shakespeare's. He never, it is true, writes out of the spirit of his time, neither was he ever absolutely and servilely subject to it--for example, giving in Shylock the delineation of the typical Jew as conceived in his day, think of that fine fierce vindication of their common humanity with which he challenges the Christian Venetians, Solanio and Solarino--"Hath not a Jew eyes?" etc.

By-the-by, did you ever hear a whisper of a suggestion that Joan of Arc was _not_ burned? There is such a tradition, that she was rescued, reprieved, and lived to a fine old age, though rather scorched.

And now, at the fag end of my paper, to answer your question about Leonora Lavagna. I think, beyond all doubt, the sentiment Schiller makes her express as occurring to her at the altar perfectly natural. When the character and position of Leonora are considered, her love for Fiesco--however, chiefly composed of admiration for his person and more amiable and brilliant personal qualities--must inevitably have derived some of its strength from her generous patriotism and insulted family pride; and nothing, in my opinion, can be more probable than that she should have see in him the deliverer of Genoa, at the moment when every faculty of her heart and mind was absorbed in the contemplation of all the noble qualities with which she believed him endowed.

The love of different women is, of course, made up of various elements, according to their natural temperament, mental endowments, and educated habits of thought; and it seems to me the sort of sentiment Leonora describes herself as feeling towards Fiesco at the moment of their marriage is eminently characteristic of such a woman. So much for the Countess Lavagna.

I think you are quite mistaken in calling Thekla a "merely ideal" woman; she is a very _real_ German woman--rarely perhaps, but to be found in all the branches of the Anglo-saxon tree, in England certainly, and even in America.

To these subjects of very pleasing interest to me succeeds in your letter the exclamation elicited by poor Mrs. D----'s misfortune, "Blessed are they who die in the Lord!" to which let me answer, "Yea, rather, blessed are they who live in the Lord!" Our impatience of suffering may make death sometimes appear the most desirable thing in all God's universe; yet who can tell what trials or probations may be ordained for us hereafter? The idea that there "may be yet more work to do," probably _must_ be (for how few finish their task here before the night cometh when "no man can work," as far as this world is concerned, at any rate!), is a frequent speculation with me; so that whenever, in sheer weariness of spirit, I have been tempted to wish for death, or in moments of desperation felt almost ready to seize upon it, the thought, not of what I may have to suffer, but what I must have to do, _i.e._ the work left undone here, checks the rash wish and rasher imagination, and I feel as if I must sit down again to try and work. But weariness of life makes the idea of existence prolonged beyond death sometimes almost oppressive, and it seems to me that there are times when one would be ready to consent to lie down in one's grave and become altogether as the clods of the valley, relinquishing one's immortal birthright simply for rest. To be sure you will answer that, for rest to be pleasurable, consciousness must accompany it; but oh, how I should like to be _consciously unconscious_ for a little while!--which possibly may strike you as nonsense.

I dare say women are, as you say, like cats in a great many respects. I acknowledge myself like one, only in the degree of electricity in my hair and skin; I never knew anybody but a cat who had so much.

Thank you for the paper about Theodore Hook. I knew him and disliked him. He was very witty and humorous, certainly; but excessively coarse in his talk and gross in his manners, and was hardly ever strictly sober after dinner....

PHILADELPHIA, August 4th, 1843.
MY DEAREST HAL,

Indeed I am not spending my summer with my friends at Lenox, ... but boarding at a third-rate watering-place about thirty miles from Philadelphia, where there is a fine mineral spring and baths, remarkably pure and bracing air, and a pretty, pleasant country, under which combination of favorable influences we have all improved very much, and dear little F---- looks once more as if she would live through the summer, which she did not when we left Philadelphia. As for our accommodations at this place, they are as comfortless as it is possible to imagine, but that really signifies comparatively little.... I ride, and walk, and fish, and look abroad on the sweet kindly face of Nature, and commune gratefully with my Father in heaven whenever I do so; and the hours pass swiftly by, and life is going on, and the rapid flight of time is a source of rejoicing to me.... I laughed a very sad laugh at your asking me if my watch and chain had been recovered or replaced. How? By whom? With what? No, indeed, nor are they likely to be either recovered or replaced. I offered, as a sort of inducement to semi-honesty on the part of the thief or thieves, to give up the watch and pencil-case to whoever would bring back my dear chain, but in vain. Had I possessed any money, I should have offered the largest possible reward to recover it; but, as it is, I was forced to let it go, without being able to take even the usual methods resorted to for the recovery of lost valuables. I will now bid you good-bye, dearest Hal. I have no more to tell you; and whenever I mention or think of that chain, I feel so sad that I hate to speak or move. I flatter myself that, were you to see me now, you would approve highly of my appearance. I am about half the size I was when last you saw me.

God bless you, dear. I am, therefore, only half yours,

FANNY.

PHILADELPHIA, August 15th, 1843.
MY DEAR T----,

Yesterday, at three o'clock, I was told that we must all return to town by five, which accordingly was accomplished, not without strenuous exertion and considerable inconvenience in making our preparations in so short a time. I do not know in the least whether we are to remain here now or go elsewhere, or what is to become of us....

I do not know the lines you allude to as mine, called "The Memory of the Past," and think you must have written them yourself in your sleep, and then accused me of them, which is not genteel. I have no recollection of any lines of my own so called. Depend upon it, you dreamt them. I hope you had the conscience to make good verses, since you did it in my name. I have not supposed you either "neglectful or dead." I knew you were at Quoge, which Mr. G---- reported to be a very nice place....