is giving his Lectures.  I know that Charles Lamb and Talfourd thought Hazlitt not only the most brilliant, but the soundest of all critics.  Then his Life of Napoleon is capital, that is, capital for an English life; the only way really to know the great man is to read him in the memoires of his own ministers, lieutenants, and servants; for he was a hero to his valet de chambre, the greatness was so real that it would bear close looking into.  And our Emperor, I have just had a letter from Osborne, from Marianne Skerrett, describing the arrival of Count Walewski under a royal salute to receive the Queen’s recognition of Napoleon III.  She, Marianne, says, “How great a man that, is, and how like a fairy tale the whole story!” She adds, that, seeing much of Louis Philippe, she never could abide him, he was so cunning and so false, not cunning enough to hide the falseness!  Were not you charmed with the bits of sentiment and feeling that come out all through our hero’s Southern progress?  Always one finds in him traits of a gracious and graceful nature, far too frequent and too spontaneous to be the effect of calculation.  It is a comfort to find, in spite of our delectable press, ministers are wise enough to understand that our policy is peace, and not only peace but cordiality.  To quarrel with France would be almost as great a sin as to quarrel with America.  What a set of fools our great ladies are!  I had hoped better things of Lord Carlisle, but to find that long list at Stafford House in female parliament assembled, echoing the absurdities of Exeter Hall, leaving their own duties and the reserve which is the happy privilege of our sex to dictate to a great nation on a point which all the world knows to be its chief difficulty, is enough to make one ashamed of the title of Englishwoman.  I know a great many of these committee ladies, and in most of them I trace that desire to follow the fashion, and concert with duchesses, which is one of the besetting sins of the literary circles in London.  One name did surprise me, ——­, considering that one of her husband’s happiest bits, in the book of his that will live, was the subscription for sending flannel waistcoats to the negroes in the West Indies; and that in this present book a certain Mrs. Jellyby is doing just what his wife is doing at Stafford House!

Even if I had not had my earnest thanks to send you, I should have written this week to beg you to convey a message to Mr. Hawthorne.  Mr. Chorley writes to me, “You will be interested to hear that a Russian literary man of eminence was so much attracted to the ’House of the Seven Gables’ by the review in the Athenaeum, as to have translated it into Russian and published it feuilletonwise in a newspaper.”  I know you will have the goodness to tell Mr. Hawthorne this, with my love.  Mr. Chorley saw the entrance of the Empereur into the Tuileries.  He looked radiant.  The more I read that elegy on the death of Daniel Webster, the more I find to admire.  It is as grand as a dirge upon an organ.  Love to the dear W——­s and to Dr. Holmes.

    Ever, dearest Mr. Fields, most gratefully yours, M.R.M.