turn of writing; and I am absolutely certain
that you never did half so well yourself.

So go on and prosper, and let me see some more, when you have enough
(for your own satisfaction) to show me. I think of coming in to back you
up if I can get an idea for my series of gossiping papers. One of those
days, please God, we may do a story together; I have very odd
half-formed notions, in a mist, of something that might be done that
way.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Mr. John Forster.]

11, WELLINGTON STREET, NORTH STRAND, LONDON, W.C.,
_Wednesday, May 2nd, 1860._

MY DEAR FORSTER,

It did not occur to me in reading your most excellent, interesting, and
remarkable book, that it could with any reason be called one-sided. If
Clarendon had never written his "History of the Rebellion," then I can
understand that it might be. But just as it would be impossible to
answer an advocate who had misstated the merits of a case for his own
purpose, without, in the interests of truth, and not of the other side
merely, re-stating the merits and showing them in their real form, so I
cannot see the practicability of telling what you had to tell without
in some sort championing the misrepresented side, and I think that you
don't do that as an advocate, but as a judge.

The evidence has been suppressed and coloured, and the judge goes
through it and puts it straight. It is not _his_ fault if it all goes
one way and tends to one plain conclusion. Nor is it his fault that it
goes the further when it is laid out straight, or seems to do so,
because it was so knotted and twisted up before.

I can understand any man's, and particularly Carlyle's, having a
lingering respect that does not like to be disturbed for those (in the
best sense of the word) loyal gentlemen of the country who went with the
king and were so true to him. But I don't think Carlyle sufficiently
considers that the great mass of those gentlemen _didn't know the
truth_, that it was a part of their loyalty to believe what they were
told on the king's behalf, and that it is reasonable to suppose that the
king was too artful to make known to _them_ (especially after failure)
what were very acceptable designs to the desperate soldiers of fortune
about Whitehall. And it was to me a curious point of adventitious
interest arising out of your book, to reflect on the p