was a glorious old lady of seventy-six, who has lived in Paris for the last thirty years, and I do believe came to England very much for the purpose of seeing me.  She had known my father before his marriage.  He had taken her in his hand (he was always fond of children) one day to see my mother; she had been present at their wedding, and remembered the old housekeeper and the pretty nursery-maid and the great dog too, and had won with great difficulty (she being then eleven years old) the privilege of having the baby to hold.  Her descriptions of all these things and places were most graphic, and you may imagine how much she must have been struck with my book when it met her eye in Paris, and how much I (knowing all about her family) was struck on my part by all these details, given with the spirit and fire of an enthusiastic woman of twenty.  We had certainly never met.  I left Alresford at three years old.  She made an appointment to spend a day here next year, having with her a daughter, apparently by a first husband.  Also she had the same host of recollections of Louis Napoleon, remembered the Emperor, as Premier Consul, and La Reine Hortense as Mlle. de Beauharnais.  Her account of the Prince is favorable.  She says that it is a most real popularity, and that, if anything like durability can ever be predicated of the French, it will prove a lasting one.  I had a letter from Mrs. Browning to-day, talking of the “Facts of the Times,” of which she said some gentlemen were speaking with the same supreme contempt and disbelief that I profess for every paragraph in that collection of falsehoods.  For my own part, I hold a wise despotism, like the Prince President’s, the only rule to live under.  Only look at the figure our soi-disant statesmen cut,—­Whig and Tory,—­and then glance your eye across the Atlantic to your “own dear people,” as Dr. Holmes says, and their doings in the Presidential line.  Apropos to Dr. Holmes you’ll see him read and quoted when—­and his doings are as dead as Henry the Eighth.—­has no feeling for finish or polish or delicacy, and doubtless dismisses Pope and Goldsmith with supreme contempt.  She never mentions that horrid trial, to my great comfort.  Did I tell you that I had been reading Louis Napoleon’s most charming three volumes full?

Among my visitors yesterday was Miss Percy, the heiress of Guy’s Cliff, one of the richest in England, and, what is odd, the translator of “Emilie Carlen’s Birthright,” the only Swedish novel I have ever got fairly through, because Miss Percy really does her work well, and I can’t read ——­’s English.  Miss Percy, who, besides being very clever and agreeable, is also pretty, has refused some scores of offers, and declares she’ll never marry; she has a dread of being sought for her money.....

    God bless you, dearest, kindest friend.  Say everything for me to
    your companions.

    Ever most faithfully yours, M.R.M.