I shall cause my book to be immediately forwarded to you, but I don’t think it will be ready for a twelvemonth.  There is a good deal in it of my own prose, and it takes a wider range than usual of poetry, including much that has never appeared in any of the specimen books.  Of course, dear friend, this is strictly between you and me, because it would greatly damage the work to have the few fragments that have appeared as yet brought forward without revision and completion in their present detached and crude form.

This England of ours is all alight and aflame with Protestant indignation against popery; the Church of England being likely to rekindle the fires of 1780, by way of vindicating the right of private judgment.  I, who hold perfect freedom of thought and of conscience the most precious of all possessions, have of course my own hatred to these things.  Cardinal Wiseman has taken advantage of the attack to put forth one of the most brilliant appeals that has appeared in my time; of course you will see it in America.

Professor Longfellow has won a station in England such as no American poet ever held before, and assuredly he deserves it.  Except Beranger and Tennyson, I do not know any living man who has written things so beautiful.  I think I like his Nuremburg best of all.  Mr. Ticknor’s great work, too, has won golden opinions, especially from those whose applause is fame; and I foresee that day by day our literature will become more mingled with rich, bright novelties from America, not reflections of European brightness, but gems all colored with your own skies and woods and waters.  Lord Carlisle, the most accomplished of our ministers and the most amiable of our nobles, is giving this very week to the Leeds Mechanics’ Institute a lecture on his travels in the United States, and another on the poetry of Pope.

May I ask you to transmit the accompanying letter to Mrs. H——?  She has sent to me for titles and dates, and fifty things in which I can give her little help; but what I do know about my works I have sent her.  Only, as, except that I believe her to live in Philadelphia, I really am as ignorant of her address as I am of the year which brought forth the first volume of “Our Village,” I am compelled to go to you for help in forwarding my reply.

    Ever, my dear Mr. Fields, most gratefully and faithfully yours,

    M.R.  MITFORD.

    Is not Louis Napoleon the most graceful of our European chiefs?  I
    have always had a weakness for the Emperor, and am delighted to find
    the heir of his name turning out so well.

1851.

    February 10, 1851