aps this may cross an answer
from Mr. ---- or from you about Bramshill; perhaps, on the other
hand, I may have to write again. At all events, you will understand
that this is written on Saturday night. God bless you, my very dear
and kind friend.

Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.

May 24, 1852.

Ah, dearest Mr. Fields, how much too good and kind you are to me
always! ... I wish I were better, that I might go to town and see
more of you; but I am more lame than ever, and having, in my weight
and my shortness and my extreme helplessness, caught at tables and
chairs and dragged myself along that fashion, I have now so strained
the upper part of the body that I cannot turn in bed, and am full of
muscular pains which are worse than the rheumatism and more
disabling, so that I seem to cumber the earth. They say that summer,
when it comes, will do me good. How much more sure that the sight of
you will do me good, and I trust that, when your business will let
you, you will give me that happiness. In the mean while will you
take the trouble to send the enclosed and my answer, if it be fit
and proper and properly addressed? I give you this office, because
really the kindness seems so large and unlimited, that, if the
letter had not come enclosed in one from Mr. Kenyon, one could
hardly have believed it to be serious, and yet I am well used to
kindness, too. I thank over and over again your glorious poets for
their kindness, and tell Mr. Hawthorne I shall prize a letter from
him beyond all the worlds one has to give. I rejoice to hear of the
new work, and can answer for its excellence.

I trust that the English edition of Dr. Holmes will contain the
"Astraea," and the "Morning Visit," and the "Cambridge Address." I
am not sure, in my secret soul, that I do not prefer him to any
American poet. Besides his inimitable word-painting, the charity is
so large and the scale so fine. How kind in you to like my
book,--some people do like it. I am afraid to tell you what John
Ruskin says of it from Venice, and I get letters, from ten to twenty
a day. You know how little I dreamt of this! Mrs. Trollope has sent
me a most affectionate letter, bemoaning her ill-fortune in missing
you. I thank you for the Galignani edition, and the presidential
kindness, and all your goodness of every sort. I have