the seat of Government of the State of
Pennsylvania, is beautifully situated in a valley locked round by purple
highlands, through which runs the Susquehanna; in some parts broad,
bright, rapid, shallow, brawling, and broken by picturesque reefs of
rock; in others, deep and placid, bearing on its bosom beautiful
wood-crowned islands, whose autumnal foliage, through which the mellow
sunshine is now pouring, gives them the appearance of fairyland planted
with golden woods.

The beautiful river is bountifully provided, too, with a most admirable
species of trout, weighing from two to four pounds, silvery white
without, and pale pink within (just the complexion of a fresh mushroom),
and very excellent to eat, as well as lovely to behold.

Many of the members of the Convention have been kind enough to come and
see me, and I have attended one of their debates. They are for the most
part uncultivated men, unlettered and ungrammared; and those among them
who are the best educated, or rather the least ignorant, carry their
small _lore_ much as a school-boy carries his, stiffly, awkwardly, and
ostentatiously: an Eton sixth-form lad would beat any one of them in
classical scholarship. But though in point of intellectual acquirement,
I do not find much here to excite my sympathy, there is abundant matter
of interest, as well as much that is curious and amusing to me in their
intercourse. The shrewdness, the sound sense, the original observations,
and the experience of life of some of these men are striking and
remarkable. Though not one of them can speak grammatically, they all
speak fluently, boldly, readily, easily, without effort or hesitation.
There is, of course, among them, the usual proportion of well, and less
well, witted individuals; and perhaps the contrast is the more apparent
because the education has here covered no natural deficiencies and
developed no natural gifts; so that there is not the usual superficial,
civilized level produced by a common intellectual training. The
questions they discuss are often in themselves interesting, though I
cannot say that they often treat them in the most interesting manner....

Ever your affectionate,
F. A. B.

[The play which I have called an "English Tragedy," was suggested by
an incident in the life of Lord de Ros, which my father heard at
dinner at Lady Blessington's, a