P.S.  First will come the Preface, then the story of the book (without Henry Chorley’s name; it is to be dedicated to him), noticing the coincidence of “Our Village” having first appeared in the Lady’s Magazine, and saying something like what I wrote to you last night.  I think this will take off the danger of provoking apprehension on one side and disappointment on the other; because after all, although anecdote be not the style of the book, it does contain some.

May I put in the story of Washington’s ghost? without your name, of course; it would be very interesting, and I am ten times more desirous of making the book as good as I can, since I have reason to believe you will be interested in it.  Pray, forgive me for having worried you last night and now again.  I am a terribly nervous person, and hate and dread literary scrapes, or indeed disputes of any sort.  But I ought not to have worried you.  Just tell me if you think this sort of preface will take the sting from the title, for I dare say Mr. Bentley won’t change it.

    Adieu, dear friend.  All peace and comfort to you in your journey;
    amusement you are sure of.  I write also to dear Mr. Bennett, whom I
    fear I have also worried.

    Ever most faithfully yours,

    M.R.M.

1852.

    January 5.

Mr. Bennoch has just had the very great kindness, dear Mr. Fields, to let me know of your safe arrival at Genoa, and of your enjoyment of your journey.  Thank God for it!  We heard so much about commotions in the South of France that I had become fidgety about you, the rather that it is the best who go, and that I for one cannot afford to lose you.

Now let me thank you for all your munificence,—­that beautiful Longfellow with the hundred illustrations, and that other book of Professor Longfellow’s, beautiful in another way, the “Golden Legend.”  I hope I shall be only one among the multitude who think this the greatest and best thing he has done yet, so racy, so full of character, of what the French call local color, so, in its best and highest sense, original.  Moreover, I like the happy ending.  Then those charming volumes of De Quincey and Sprague and Grace Greenwood. (Is that her real name?) And dear Mr. Hawthorne, and the two new poets, who, if also young poets, will be fresh glories for America.  How can I thank you enough for all these enjoyments?  And you must come back to England, and add to my obligations by giving me as much as you can of your company in the merry month of May.  I have fallen in with Mr. Kingsley, and a most charming person he is, certainly the least like an Englishman of letters, and the most like an accomplished, high-toned English gentleman, that I have ever met with.  You must know Mr. Kingsley.  He is very young too, really young, for it is characteristic of our “young poets” that they generally turn out middle-aged and very often elderly.  My