you may fancy him a very likeable person; but he is much more,—­generous, unselfish, loyal, and as true as steel, worth all his writings a thousand times over.  If my house be in such condition as to allow of my getting to London to see “Old Love and New Fortune,” I shall consult with Mr. Lucas about the time of sitting to him for a portrait, as I have promised to do; for, although there be several extant, not one is passably like.  John Lucas is a man of so much taste that he will make a real old woman’s picture of it, just with my every-day look and dress.

Will you make my most grateful thanks to Mr. Whipple, and also to the author of “Greenwood Leaves,” which I read with great pleasure, and say all that is kindest and most respectful for me to Mr. and Mrs. George Ticknor.  I shall indeed expect great delight from his book.

    Ever, dear Mr. Fields, most gratefully yours,

    M.R.M.

We have had a Mr. Richmond here, lecturing and so forth.  Do you know him?  I can fancy what Mr. Webster would be on the Hungarian question.  To hear Mr. Cobden talk of it was like the sound of a trumpet.

    Three-mile Cross, November 25, 1850.

I have been waiting day after day, dear Mr. Fields, to send you two books,—­one new, the other old,—­one by my friend, Mr. Bennett; the other a volume [her Dramatic Poems] long out of print in England, and never, I think, known in America.  I had great difficulty in procuring the shabby copy which I send you, but I think you will like it because it is mine, and comes to you from friend to friend, and because there is more of myself, that is, of my own inner feelings and fancies, than one ever ventures to put into prose.  Mr. Bennett’s volume, which is from himself as well as from me, I am sure you will like; most thoroughly would like each other if ever you met.  He has the poet’s heart and the poet’s mind, large, truthful, generous, and full of true refinement, delightful as a companion, and invaluable as a man.

After eight years’ absolute cessation of composition, Henry Chorley, of the Athenaeum, coaxed me last summer into writing for a Lady’s Journal, which he was editing for Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, certain Readings of Poetry, old and new, which will, I suppose, form two or three separate volumes when collected, buried as they now are amongst all the trash and crochet-work and millinery.  They will be quite as good as MS., and, indeed, every paper will be enlarged and above as many again added.  One pleasure will be the doing what justice I can to certain American poets,—­Mr. Whittier, for instance, whose “Massachusetts to Virginia” is amongst the finest things ever written.  I gave one copy to a most intelligent Quaker lady, and have another in the house at this moment for Mrs. Walter, widow and mother of the two John Walters, father and son, so well known as proprietors of the Times.