Mr. ——.  There certainly has something come across him,—­not about you, but about me; one thing is, I think, his extreme politics.  I always find these violent Radicals very unwilling to allow in others the unlimited freedom of thought that they claim for themselves.  He can’t forgive my love for the President.  Now I must tell you a story I know to be true.  A lady of rank was placed next the Prince a year or two ago.  He was very gentle and courteous, but very silent, and she wanted to make him talk.  At last she remembered that, having been in Switzerland twenty years before, she had received some kindness from the Queen Hortense, and had spent a day at Arenenburg.  She told him so, speaking with warm admiration of the Queen.  “Ah, madame, vous avez connu ma mere!” exclaimed Louis Napoleon, turning to her eagerly and talking of the place and the people as a school-boy talks of home.  She spent some months in Paris, receiving from the Prince every attention which his position enabled him to show; and when she thanked him for such kindness, his answer was always:  “Ah, madame, vous avez connu ma mere!” Is it in woman’s heart not to love such a man?  And then look at the purchase of the Murillo the other day, and the thousand really great things that he is doing.  Mr. ——­ is a goose.

I send this letter to the post to-morrow, when I send other letters,—­a vile, puritanical post-office arrangement not permitting us to send letters in the afternoon, unless we send straight to Reading (six miles) on purpose,—­so perhaps this may cross an answer from Mr. ——­ or from you about Bramshill; perhaps, on the other hand, I may have to write again.  At all events, you will understand that this is written on Saturday night.  God bless you, my very dear and kind friend.

    Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.

    May 24, 1852.

Ah, dearest Mr. Fields, how much too good and kind you are to me always! ...  I wish I were better, that I might go to town and see more of you; but I am more lame than ever, and having, in my weight and my shortness and my extreme helplessness, caught at tables and chairs and dragged myself along that fashion, I have now so strained the upper part of the body that I cannot turn in bed, and am full of muscular pains which are worse than the rheumatism and more disabling, so that I seem to cumber the earth.  They say that summer, when it comes, will do me good.  How much more sure that the sight of you will do me good, and I trust that, when your business will let you, you will give me that happiness.  In the mean while will you take the trouble to send the enclosed and my answer, if it be fit and proper and properly addressed?  I give you this office, because really the kindness seems so large and unlimited, that, if the letter had not come enclosed in one from Mr. Kenyon, one could hardly have believed it to be serious, and yet I am well used to kindness, too.  I thank over and over again your glorious poets for