ed at the fire. My boys and half the officers stationed
at Chatham skated away without a check to Gravesend--five miles off--and
repeated the performance for three or four weeks. At last the thaw came,
and then everything split, blew up, dripped, poured, perspired, and got
spoilt. Since then we have had a small visitation of the plague of
servants; the cook (in a riding-habit) and the groom (in a dress-coat
and jewels) having mounted Mary's horse and mine, in our absence, and
scoured the neighbouring country at a rattling pace. And when I went
home last Saturday, I innocently wondered how the horses came to be out
of condition, and gravely consulted the said groom on the subject, who
gave it as his opinion "which they wanted reg'lar work." We are now
coming to town until midsummer. Having sold my own house, to be more
free and independent, I have taken a very pretty furnished house, No. 3,
Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park. This, of course, on my daughter's
account. For I have very good and cheerful bachelor rooms here, with an
old servant in charge, who is the cleverest man of his kind in the
world, and can do anything, from excellent carpentery to excellent
cookery, and has been with me three-and-twenty years.

The American business is the greatest English sensation at present. I
venture to predict that the struggle of violence will be a very short
one, and will be soon succeeded by some new compact between the Northern
and Southern States. Meantime the Lancashire mill-owners are getting
very uneasy.

The Italian state of things is not regarded as looking very cheerful.
What from one's natural sympathies with a people so oppressed as the
Italians, and one's natural antagonism to a pope and a Bourbon (both of
which superstitions I do suppose the world to have had more than enough
of), I agree with you concerning Victor Emmanuel, and greatly fear that
the Southern Italians are much degraded. Still, an united Italy would be
of vast importance to the peace of the world, and would be a rock in
Louis Napoleon's way, as he very well knows. Therefore the idea must be
championed, however much against hope.

My eldest boy, just home from China, was descried by Townshend's Henri
the moment he landed at Marseilles, and was by him borne in triumph to
Townshend's rooms. The weather was snowy, slushy, beastly; and
Marseilles was, as it usually is to my thinking, well-nigh intolerable.
My boy could not stay with Townshend, as he was c