hat European analogies will not be
quite accepted even there."

His letters were reflections of himself,--full of thought, fancy, and
pleasant humor, as well as of affectionateness and true feeling. Their
character is hardly to be given in extracts, but a few passages may
serve to illustrate some of these qualities.

"Ambrose Philips, the Roman Catholic, who set up the new St. Bernard
Monastery at Charnwood Forest, has taken to spirit-rappings. He avers,
_inter alia_, that a Buddhist spirit in misery held communication with
him through the table, and entreated his confessor, Father Lorraine, to
say three masses for him. Pray, convey this to T---- for his warning.
For, moreover, it remains uncertain whether Father Lorraine did say the
masses; so that perhaps T----'s deceased co-religionist is still in the
wrong place."

Some time after his return, he wrote,--"Really, I may say I am only
just beginning to recover my spirits after returning from the young and
hopeful and humane republic, to this cruel, unbelieving, inveterate old
monarchy. There are deeper waters of ancient knowledge and experience
about one here, and one is saved from the temptation of flying off into
space; but I think you have, beyond all question, the happiest country
going. Still, the political talk of America, as one hears it here, is
not always true to the best intentions of the country, is it?"

Writing on a July day from his office in Whitehall, he says, after
speaking of the heat of the weather,--"Time has often been compared to
a river: if the Thames at London represent the stream of traditional
wisdom, the comparison will indeed be of an ill odor; the accumulated
wisdom of the past will be proved upon analogy to be as it were the
collected sewage of the centuries; and the great problem, how to get rid
of it."

In March, 1854, he wrote,--"People talk a good deal about that book of
Whewell's on the Plurality of Worlds. I recommend Fields to pirate it.
Have you seen it? It is to show that Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, etc., are
all pretty certainly uninhabitable,--being (Jupiter, Saturn, etc., to
wit) strange washy limbos of places, where at the best only mollusks
(or, in the case of Venus, salamanders) could exist. Hence we conclude
we are the only rational creatures, which is highly satisfactory, and,
what is more, quite Scriptural. Owen, on the other hand, I believe,
and other scientific people, declare it a most presumptuous essay,--
conclusio