s, et je pleurais comme un enfant.
Combien de fois, m'arretant pour pleurer plus a mon aise, assis sur une
grosse pierre, je me suis amuse a voir tomber mes larmes dans l'eau.'
Rousseau was lunatic, but he was _not_ lunatic when he wrote this, or
_I_ am growing so too. For fear of that possible romance, I say,
farewell.

"P.S.--Remember Madame Spiegler. _Toujours a vous_--MARIAMNE."

My third letter was Mordecai to the life--a bold, hurried, yet clear
view of the political bearings of the time. It more than ever struck me,
in the course of his daring paragraphs, what a capital leader he would
have made for a Jewish revolution; if one could imagine the man of a
thousand years of slavery grasping the sword and unfurling the banner.
Yet bold minds _may_ start up among a fallen people; and when the great
change, which will assuredly come, is approaching, it is not improbable
that it will be begun by some new and daring spirit throwing off the
robes of humiliation, and teaching Israel to strike for freedom by some
gallant example--a new Moses smiting the Egyptian, and marching from the
house of bondage, the fallen host of the oppressor left weltering in the
surge of blood behind.

After some personal details, and expressions of joy at the recovering
health of his idolized but wayward daughter, he plunged into politics.
"I have just returned," said he, "from a visit to some of our German
kindred. You may rely upon it, that a great game is on foot. _Your_
invasion is a jest. Your troops will fight, I allow, but your cabinets
will betray. I have seen enough to satisfy me, that, if you do not take
Paris within the next three months, you will not take it within ten
times the number of years. Of course, I make no attempt at prediction. I
leave infallibility to the grave fools of conclaves and councils; but
the French mob will beat them all. What army can stand before a
pestilence? When I was last in Sicily, I went to the summit of Etna
during the time of an eruption. On my way, I slept at one of the
convents on the slope of the mountain. I was roused from my sleep by a
midnight clamour in the court of the convent--the monks were fluttering
in all corners, like frightened chickens. I came down from my chamber,
and was told the cause of the alarm in the sudden turn of a stream of
the eruption towards the convent. I laughed at the idea of hazard from
such a source, when the building was one mass of stone, and, of course,
as I conc