o winter in Georgia again....

My youngest child does not utter so much as a syllable, which
circumstance has occasioned me once or twice seriously to consider
whether by any possibility a child of mine could be _dumb_. "I cannot
tell, but I think not," as Benedict says. It would have been clever of
me to have had a dumb child.

Have you read Charles Murray's book about America? and how do you like
it? Do you ever see Lady Francis Egerton nowadays? How is she? What is
she doing? Is she accomplishing a great deal with her life? She always
seemed to me born to do so. My dear Lady Dacre, do not talk of not
seeing me again. We hope to be in England next autumn, and one of the
greatest pleasures I look forward to in that expectation is once more
seeing you and Lord Dacre. You say my sister will marry a foreigner. She
has my leave to marry a German, but the more southern blood does not
mingle well with our Teutonic race....

I am sorry the only book of Catharine Sedgwick's which you have read is,
"Live and Let Live," because it is essentially an American book, and
some Americans think it a little exaggerated in its views, even for this
country. A little story, called "Home," and another called "The Poor
Rich Man and the Rich Poor Man," are, I think, better specimens of what
she can do....

F. A. B.

LENOX, September 30th, 1839.

And so, dearest Harriet, Cecilia writes you that my head is enlarged, my
_benevolence_ and _causality_ increased, and that Mr. Combe thinks me
much improved. Truly, it were a pity if I were the reverse, for it was
more than two years since he had seen me; but though I heartily wish
this might be the case, I honestly confess to you that I do not feel as
if my mental and moral progress, during the last two years, has been
sufficient to push out any visible augmentation of the "bumps" of my
skull in any direction.

Your saucy suggestion as to my having conciliated his good opinion by
exhibiting a greater degree of faith in phrenology is, unluckily, not
borne out by the facts; for, instead of more, I have a little less faith
in it; and that, perversely enough, from the very circumstance of the
more favorable opinion thus expressed with regard to my own
"development."

In the first instance, both Mr. Combe and Cecilia expressed a good deal
of surprise to some of my friends here, at their hig