unerschiitterlich treu vast, weil die festbestimmten grundsatze der Regierung,’ etc., etc., etc.  You can imagine the rest.  Dear me!  I wish I could get back to the sixteenth and seventeenth century. . . .  But alas! the events of the nineteenth are too engrossing.

If Lowell cares to read this letter, will you allow me to “make it over to him jointly,” as Captain Cuttle says.  I wished to write to him, but I am afraid only you would tolerate my writing so much when I have nothing to say.  If he would ever send me a line I should be infinitely obliged, and would quickly respond.  We read the “Washers of the Shroud” with fervid admiration.

Always remember me most sincerely to the Club, one and all.  It touches me nearly when you assure me that I am not forgotten by them.  To-morrow is Saturday and the last of the month.—­[See Appendix A.]—­We are going to dine with our Spanish colleague.  But the first bumper of the Don’s champagne I shall drain to the health of my Parker House friends.

From another long letter dated August 31, 1862, I extract the following passages:—­

“I quite agree in all that you said in your last letter.  ’The imp of secession can’t reenter its mother’s womb.’  It is merely childish to talk of the Union ‘as it was.’  You might as well bring back the Saxon Heptarchy.  But the great Republic is destined to live and flourish, I can’t doubt. . . .  Do you remember that wonderful scene in Faust in which Mephistopheles draws wine for the rabble with a gimlet out of the wooden table; and how it changes to fire as they drink it, and how they all go mad, draw their knives, grasp each other by the nose, and think they are cutting off bunches of grapes at every blow, and how foolish they all look when they awake from the spell and see how the Devil has been mocking them?  It always seems to me a parable of the great Secession.

“I repeat, I can’t doubt as to the ultimate result.  But I dare say we have all been much mistaken in our calculations as to time.  Days, months, years, are nothing in history.  Men die, man is immortal, practically, even on this earth.  We are so impatient,—­ and we are always watching for the last scene of the tragedy.  Now I humbly opine that the drop is only about falling on the first act, or perhaps only the prologue.  This act or prologue will be called, in after days, War for the status quo.  “Such enthusiasm, heroism, and manslaughter as status quo could inspire, has, I trust, been not entirely in vain, but it has been proved insufficient.

“I firmly believe that when the slaveholders declared war on the United States government they began a series of events that, in the logical chain of history, cannot come to a conclusion until the last vestige of slavery is gone.  Looking at the whole field for a moment dispassionately,