I cannot tell you, my dear Mr. Fields, how much I thank you for your most kind letter and parcel, which, after sending three or four emissaries all over London to seek, (Mr. ——­ having ignored the matter to my first messenger,) was at last sent to me by the Great Western Railway,—­I suspect by the aforesaid Mr. ——­, because, although the name of the London bookseller was dashed out, a long-tailed letter was left just where the “p” would come in ——­, and as neither Bonn’s nor Whittaker’s name boasts such a grace, I suspect that, in spite of his assurance, the packet was in the Strand, and neither in Ave Maria Lane nor in Henrietta Street, to both houses I sent.  Thank you a thousand times for all your kindness.  The orations are very striking.  But I was delighted with Dr. Holmes’s poems for their individuality.  How charming a person he must be!  And how truly the portrait represents the mind, the lofty brow full of thought, and the wrinkle of humor in the eye! (Between ourselves, I always have a little doubt of genius where there is no humor; certainly in the very highest poetry the two go together,—­Scott, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Burns.) Another charming thing in Dr. Holmes is, that every succeeding poem is better than the last.  Is he a widower, or a bachelor, or a married man?  At all events, he is a true poet, and I like him all the better for being a physician,—­the one truly noble profession.  There are noble men in all professions, but in medicine only are the great mass, almost the whole, generous, liberal, self-denying, living to advance science and to help mankind.  If I had been a man I should certainly have followed that profession.  I rejoice to hear of another Romance by the author of “The Scarlet Letter.”  That is a real work of genius.  Have you seen “Alton Locke”?  No novel has made so much noise for a long time; but it is, like “The Saint’s Tragedy,” inconclusive.  Between ourselves, I suspect that the latter part was written with the fear of the Bishop before his eyes (the author, Mr. Kingsley, is a clergyman of the Church of England), which makes the one volume almost a contradiction of the others.  Mrs. Browning is still at Florence, where she sees scarcely any English, a few Italians, and many Americans.

    Ever most gratefully yours.

    M.R.M.

    (No date.)

Dear Mr. Fields:  I sent you a packet last week, but I have just received your two charming books, and I cannot suffer a post to pass without thanking you for them.  Mr. Whittier’s volume is quite what might have been expected from the greatest of Quaker writers, the worthy compeer of Longfellow, and will give me other extracts to go with “From Massachusetts to Virginia” and “Cassandra Southwick” in my own book, where one of my pleasures will be trying to do justice to American poetry, and Dr. Holmes’s fine “Astraea.”  We have nothing like that nowadays in England.  Nobody writes now in the glorious resonant metre of Dryden, and