Has Mrs. Craig written to you to tell you of her marriage?  I will run the risk of repetition and tell you that it is the charming Margaret De Quincey, who has married the son of a Scotch neighbor.  He has purchased land in Ireland, and they are about to live in Tipperary,—­a district which Irish people tell me is losing its reputation for being the most disturbed in Ireland, but keeping that for superior fertility.  They are trying to regain a reputation for literature in Edinburgh.  John Ruskin has been giving a series of lectures on art there, and Mr. Kingsley four lectures on the schools of Alexandria.

Nothing out of Parliament has for very long made so strong a sensation as our dear Mr. Bennoch’s evidence on the London Corporation.  Three leading articles in The Times paid him the highest compliments, and you know what that implies.  I have myself had several letters congratulating me on having such a friend.  Ah! the public qualities make but a part of that fine and genial character, although I firmly believe that the strength is essential to the tenderness.  I always put you and him together, and it is one of the compensations of my old age to have acquired such friends.

    Have you seen Matthew Arnold’s poems?  They have fine bits.  The
    author is a son of Dr. Arnold.

    God bless you!  Say everything for me to my dear American friends,
    Drs. Holmes and Parsons, Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Whittier, Mrs. Sparks,
    Mr. Taylor, Mr. Whipple, Mr. and Mrs. Willard, and Mr. Ticknor. 
    Many, very many happy years to them and to you.

    Always most affectionately yours, M.R.M.

P.S.  I enclose some slips to be pasted into books for my different American friends.  If I have sent too many, you will know which to omit.  I must add to the American preface a line expressive of my pleasure in joining my name to yours.  I will send one line here for fear of its not going.  Mr. May says that those ducks were amongst the few things thoroughly deserving their reputation, holding the same place, as compared with our wild ducks, that the finest venison does to common mutton.  I cannot tell you how much I thank you for enabling me to send such a treat to such a friend.  You will send a copy of the prose book or the dramas, according to your own pleasure, only I should like the two dear doctors to have the plays.

    Swallowfield, January 23, 1854.

I have always to thank you for some kindness, dearest Mr. Fields, generally for many.  How clever those magazines are, especially Mr. Lowell’s article, and Mr. Bayard Taylor’s graceful stanzas!  Just now I have to ask you to forward the enclosed to Mr. Whittier.  He sent me a charming poem on Burns, full of tenderness and humanity, and the indulgence which the wise and good can so well afford, and which only the wisest and best can show to