You do not
say in your last letter whether you intend visiting the United States
before your return, or shall merely pass through so much of them as will
bring you to the port from which you sail. As I am not there to see you,
I should hardly regret your not traveling through them; for, in spite of
your popularity, which is very great in all parts of the country that I
have visited, I do not think American tastes, manners, and modes of
being would be, upon the whole, congenial to you.

I believe I told you how I had met your friend, Lady Hatherton, at a
party at old Lady Cork's, and how kindly she inquired after you....

We are here in the midst of the elections, with which the whole country
is in an uproar just now. My friends are immovable Tories, and I had the
satisfaction of being personally hissed (which I never was before), in
honor of their principles, as I drove through the town of Southampton
to-day in their carriage.

The death of poor old King William, and the accession of the little
lady, his niece, must be stale news, even with you, now. She was the
last excitement of the public before the "dissolution of London," and
her position is certainly a most interesting one. Poor young creature!
at eighteen to bear such a burden of responsibility! I should think the
mere state and grandeur, and slow-paced solemnity of her degree, enough
to strike a girl of that age into a melancholy, without all the other
graver considerations and causes for care and anxiety which belong to
it. I dare say, whatever she may think now, before many years are over
she would be heartily glad to have a small pension of L30,000 a year,
and leave to "go and play," like common folk of fortune. But, to be
sure, if "_noblesse oblige_," royalty must do so still more, or, at any
rate, on a wider scale; and so I take up my burden again--poor young
Queen of England!...

Emily sends you her best remembrances.... We shall certainly remain in
England till October, so that I feel sure that I shall have the pleasure
of seeing you here before I return to my _other_ country--for I reckon
that I have two; though, as the old woman said, and you know, "between
two stools," etc.

I should have thought you and Sir Francis Head would have become
infinite cronies. I hear he is so very clever; and as you tell me he
says so many fine things of me, I believe it.

Ever yours most truly,