e
of him, pray pack him up bag and baggage and send him off by first
steamer, steam-haste. By the by, are you or your children
acquainted with the elephant who in his haste forgot to pack up his
trunk?

If you are not acquainted with him, I shall have the pleasure of
introducing him to you and yours.

Meantime, if you wish to be amused, and with what is new and what
is true, read Mrs. Wilmot's _Memoirs of the Princess Dashkoff_, and
her own residence in Russia. We know enough of the author to
warrant the whole to be true. I do not say that she tells the whole
truth, but that all she does tell is true, and what she does not
tell she was bound in honor and friendship, and by the tacit,
inviolable compact between confidence shown and accepted, never to
reveal, much less to publish. Both in the Princess Dashkoff's own
memoirs (very able and curious) and in Mrs. Wilmot's continuation
(very amusing and new) there are from time to time great gaps, on
coming to which the reader cries _Ha! Ha!_ and feels that he must
skip over. These gaps are never covered over; and when we come even
to dangerous ground we see that we must not turn that way, or hope
to get on in utter darkness and our guide deserting--or, if not
_deserting_, standing stock still, obstinately dumb. These memoirs
are not a book on which history could absolutely be founded, but a
book to which the judicious historian might safely _refer
illustrations_, and even for materials, all which it affords being
sound and solid. Much more, in short, may these memoirs be depended
upon than any or many of the French varnished and vamped-up
_Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire_.

After reading the book I wrote to Mrs. Wilmot, and after homage due
to her talents and her truth, I ventured to express, what I am sure
you will feel if you read the volume, some horror, towards the
close, at the Princess Dashkoff's accepting for herself or her
sister, or for whoever it was, a ball from Orloff, the
murderer--that Orloff who with his own hand strangled his Emperor.

Mrs. Wilmot made me but a lame apology for her dear princess, I
think, and an odd answer for herself. In the first place, she said,
it was so long ago. As if such a murder could be a by-gone tale! or
as if thirty or forty or any number of ye