Among other things, it appears that he has seen something of your slaves, whom he represents as leading a very easy life, and as being fat, cheerful, and happy.  Nevertheless, I (for one) would rather be a free man,—­such is the singularity of my opinions.  If my prosings should ever in the course of the next twenty years require to be reprinted, pray take note of the above opinion.

“And now I have no more paper; I have scarcely room left to say that I hope you are well, and to remind you that for your ten lines of writing I have sent you back a hundred.  Give my best compliments to all whom I know, personally or otherwise.  God be with you!

    “Yours, very sincerely,

    “B.W.  PROCTER.”

Procter always seemed to be astounded at the travelling spirit of Americans, and in his letters he makes frequent reference to our “national propensity,” as he calls it.

“Half an hour ago,” he writes in.  July, 1853, “we had three of your countrymen here to lunch,—­countrymen I mean, Hibernically, for two of them wore petticoats.  They are all going to Switzerland, France, Italy, Egypt, and Syria.  What an adventurous race you are, you Americans!  Here the women go merely ’from the blue bed to the brown,’ and think that they have travelled and seen the world.  I myself should not care much to be confined to a circle reaching six or seven miles round London.  There are the fresh winds and wild thyme on Hampstead Heath, and from Richmond you may survey the Naiades.  Highgate, where Coleridge lived, Enfield, where Charles Lamb dwelt, are not far off.  Turning eastward, there is the river Lea, in which Izaak Walton fished; and farther on—­ha! what do I see?  What are those little fish frisking in the batter (the great Naval Hospital close by), which fixed the affections of the enamored American while he resided in London, and have been floating in his dreams ever since?  They are said by the naturalists to be of the species Blandamentum album, and are by vulgar aldermen spoken carelessly of as white-bait.

“London is full of carriages, full of strangers, full of parties feasting on strawberries and ices and other things intended to allay the heat of summer; but the Summer herself (fickle virgin) keeps back, or has been stopped somewhere or other,—­perhaps at the Liverpool custom-house, where the very brains of men (their books) are held in durance, as I know to my cost.

“Thackeray is about to publish a new work in numbers,—­a serial, as the newspapers call it.  Thomas Carlyle is publishing (a sixpenny matter) in favor of the slave-trade.  Novelists of all shades are plying their trades.  Husbands are killing their wives in every day’s newspaper.  Burglars are peaching against each other; there is no longer honor among thieves.  I am starting for Leicester on a week’s expedition amidst the mad people; and the Emperor of Russia has