blessings of these latter years of my life, not only in your own friendship and your thousand kindnesses, but in the kindness and friendship of dear Mr. Bennoch, which, in the first instance, I mainly owe to you.  I am in somewhat better trim, although the getting out of doors and into the pony-carriage, from which Mr. May hoped such great things, has hardly answered his expectations.  I am not stronger, and I am so nervous that I can only bear to be driven, or more ignominiously still to be led, at a foot’s pace through the lanes.  I am still unable to stand or walk, unless supported by Sam’s strong hands lifting me up on each side, still obliged to be lifted into bed, and unable to turn or move when there, the worst grievance of all.  However, I am in as good spirits as ever, and just at this moment most comfortably seated under the acacia-tree at the corner of my house,—­the beautiful acacia literally loaded with its snowy chains (the flowering trees this summer, lilacs, laburnums, rhododendrons, azalias, have been one mass of blossoms, and none are so graceful as this waving acacia); on one side a syringa, smelling and looking like an orange-tree; a jar of roses on the table before me,—­fresh-gathered roses, the pride of Sam’s heart; and little Fanchon at my feet, too idle to eat the biscuits with which I am trying to tempt her,—­biscuits from Boston, sent to me by Mrs. Sparks, whose kindness is really indefatigable, and which Fanchon ought to like upon that principle if upon no other, but you know her laziness of old, and she improves in it every day.  Well that is a picture of the Swallowfield cottage at this moment, and I wish that you and the Bennochs and the W——­s and Mr. Whipple were here to add to its life and comfort.  You must come next year and come in May, that you and dear Mr. Bennoch may hear the nightingales together.  He has never heard them, and this year they have been faint and feeble (as indeed they were last) compared with their usual song.  Now they are over, and although I expect him next week, it will be too late.

Precious fooling that has been at Stafford House!  And our ——­ who delights in strong, not to say worse, emotions, whose chief pleasure it was to see the lions fed in Van Amburgh’s time, who went seven times to see the Ghost in the “Corsican Brothers,” and has every sort of natural curiosity (not to say wonder) brought to her at Buckingham Palace, was in a state of exceeding misery because she could not, consistently with her amicable relations with the United States, receive Mrs. ——­ there. (Ah! our dear Emperor has better taste.  Heaven bless him!) From Lord Shaftesbury one looks for unmitigated cant, but I did expect better things of Lord Carlisle.  How many names that both you and I know went there merely because the owner of the house was a fashionable Duchess,—­the Wilmers ("though they are my friends"), the P——­s and ——!  For my part, I have never read beyond the first one hundred pages, and have a certain malicious