travellers to follow with one's heart and one's
earnest good wishes.

Also I have had two packets,--one from Mrs. Sparks, with a nice
letter, and some fresh and glorious autumnal flowers, and a
collection of autumn leaves from your glorious forests. I have
written to thank her. She seems full of heart, and she says that she
drove into Boston on purpose to see you, but missed you. When you do
meet, tell me about her. Also, I have through you, dear friend, a
most interesting book from Mr. Ware. To him, also, I have written,
but tell him how much I feel and prize his kindness, all the more
welcome for coming from a kinsman of dear Mrs. W----. Tell her and
her excellent husband that they cannot think of us oftener or more
warmly than we think of them. O, how I should like to visit you at
Boston! But I should have your malady by the way, and not your
strength to stand it....

God bless you, my dear and excellent friend! I seem to have a
thousand things to say to you, but the post is going, and a whole
sheet of paper would not hold my thanks.

Ever yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, November 25, 1852.

My Dear Friend: Your most kind and welcome letter arrived to-day,
two days after the papers, for which I thank you much. Still more do
I thank you for that kind and charming letter, and for its
enclosures. The anonymous poem [it was by Dr. T.W. Parsons] is far
finer than anything that has been written on the death of the Duke
of Wellington, as indeed it was a far finer subject. May I inquire
the name of the writer? Mr. Everett's speech also is superb, and how
very much I prefer the Marshfield funeral in its sublime simplicity
to the tawdry pageantry here! I have had fifty letters from persons
who saw the funeral in St. Paul's, and seen as many who saw that or
the procession, and it is strange that the papers have omitted alike
the great successes and the great failures. My young neighbor, a
captain in the Grenadier Guards (the Duke's regiment), saw the
uncovering the car which had been hidden by the drapery, and was to
have been a great effect, and he says it was exactly what is
sometimes seen in a theatre when one scene is drawn up too soon and
the other is not ready. Carpenters and undertaker's men were on all
parts of the car, and the draperies and ornaments were everywhere
b