whose sympathies were as
much excited by your personal acquaintance as her admiration had been by
your books. I heard of you, too, from Theodore Fay, whom I saw a short
time since, and who gave me a letter of yours to read, which you wrote
him from New York. [Mr. Theodore Fay was a graceful writer of prose and
poetry, and achieved some literary reputation in his own country; he was
for some time United States Minister at Berlin.]

Lady Hatherton, whom I met the other evening at old Lady Cork's, was
speaking of you with much affection; and all your friends regret your
absence from England; and none more sincerely than I, who shall, I fear,
have the ill fortune to miss you on both sides of the Atlantic.

I find London more beautiful, more rich and royal, than ever; the latter
epithet, by-the-bye, applies to external things alone, for I do not
think the spirit of the people as royal, _i.e._, loyal, as I used to
fancy it was.

Liberalism appears to me to have gained a much stronger and wider
influence than it had before I went away; liberal opinions have
certainly spread, and I suppose will spread indefinitely. Toryism, on
the other hand, seems as steadfast in its old strongholds as ever; the
Tories, I see, are quite as wedded as formerly to their political faith,
but at the same time more afraid of all that is not themselves, more on
the defensive, more socially exclusive; I think they mix less with "the
other side" than formerly, and are less tolerant of difference of
opinion.

I find a whole race of _prima donnas_ swept away; Pasta gone and
Malibran dead, and their successor, Grisi, does not charm and enchant me
as they did, especially when I hear her compared to the former noble
singer and actress. When I look at her, beautiful as she is, and think
of Pasta, and hear her extolled far above that great queen of song, by
the public who cannot yet have forgotten the latter, I am more than ever
impressed with the worthlessness of popularity and public applause, and
the mistake of those who would so much as stretch out their little
finger to obtain it. I came to England just in time to see my father
leave the stage, and close his laborious professional career. After a
long life of public exhibition, and the glare of excitement which
inevitably attends upon it, to withdraw into the sober twilight of
private life is a great trial, and I fear he finds it so. His health is
not as good as it was while he still exercised his p