spots looks like heaven always--especially the
mountain-tops so near the sky, so near the stars, so near the sun, with
the clouds below them, and the humanity of the world and its mud far
below them again--all but the spirit of adoration which one has carried
up thither one's self. I do not wonder the heathen of whom the Hebrew
Scriptures complain offered sacrifices on every high hill: they
seem--they are--altars built by God for His especial worship. Good-bye,
my dearest Hal.

Yours ever,
FANNY.

[After I had the pleasure and honor of making Baron Bunsen's
acquaintance, I was one day talking with him about Arnold, and the
immense loss I considered his death to England, when he answered,
almost in Mrs. E----'s words, but still more emphatically, that he
would work better even dead than alive, that there was in him a
powerful element of antagonism which roused antagonism in others:
his individuality, he said, stood sometimes in the way of his
purpose, he darkened his own light; "he will be more powerful now
that he is gone than even while he was here."

In Charles Greville's "Memoirs," he speaks of going down to Oatlands
to consult his sister and her husband (Lord and Lady Francis
Egerton) upon the expediency of Arnold's being made a bishop by the
prime minister of the day--I think his friend, Lord Melbourne--and
says that they gave their decided opinion against it. I wonder if
the correspondence which Lady Francis characterized as
"unsatisfactory" was her ground of objection against Arnold. It is a
curious thing to me to imagine his calling to the highest
ecclesiastical office to have depended in any measure upon her
opinion.

I forget what Arnold's politics were; of course, some shade of Whig
or Liberal, if he was to be a bishop of Lord Melbourne's. The
Ellesmeres were Tories: she a natural Conservative, and somewhat
narrow-minded, though excellently conscientious; but if she
prevented Arnold being named to the Queen, she certainly exercised
an influence for which I do not think she was quite qualified. I
think it not improbable that Arnold's orthodoxy may not have
satisfied her, and beyond that question she would not go.]

Wednesday, December 10th, 1845.

Here, dearest H