“All this appears to me little better than idle, restless vanity.  O my friend, what a fuss and a pother we are all making, we little flies who are going round on the great wheel of time!  To-day we are flickering and buzzing about, our little bits of wings glittering in the sunshine, and to-morrow we are safe enough in the little crevice at the back of the fireplace, or hid in the folds of the old curtain, shut up, stiff and torpid, for the long winter.  What do you say to that profound reflection?

    “I struggle against the lassitude which besets me, and strive in
    vain to be either sensible or jocose.  I had better say farewell.”

On Christmas day, 1854, he writes in rather flagging spirits, induced by ill health:—­

    “I have owed you a letter for these many months, my good friend.  I
    am afraid to think how long, lest the interest on the debt should
    have exceeded the capital, and be beyond my power to pay.

“You must be good-natured and excuse me, for I have been ill—­very frequently—­and dispirited.  A bodily complaint torments me, that has tormented me for the last two years.  I no longer look at the world through a rose-colored glass.  The prospect, I am sorry to say, is gray, grim, dull, barren, full of withered leaves, without flowers, or if there be any, all of them trampled down, soiled, discolored, and without fragrance.  You see what a bit of half-smoked glass I am looking through.  At all events, you must see how entirely I am disabled from returning, except in sober sentences, the lively and good-natured letters and other things which you have sent me from America.  They were welcome, and I thank you for them now, in a few words, as you observe, but sincerely.  I am somewhat brief, even in my gratitude.  Had I been in braver spirits, I might have spurred my poor Pegasus, and sent you some lines on the Alma, or the Inkerman,—­bloody battles, but exhibiting marks not to be mistaken of the old English heroism, which, after all is said about the enervating effects of luxury, is as grand and manifest as in the ancient fights which English history talks of so much.  Even you, sternest of republicans, will, I think, be proud of the indomitable courage of Englishmen, and gladly refer to your old paternity.  I, at least, should be proud of Americans fighting after the same fashion (and without doubt they would fight thus), just as old people exult in the brave conduct of their runaway sons.  I cannot read of these later battles without the tears coming into my eyes.  It is said by ‘our correspondent’ at New York that the folks there rejoice in the losses and disasters of the allies.  This can never be the case, surely?  No one whose opinion is worth a rap can rejoice at any success of the Czar, whose double-dealing and unscrupulous greediness must have rendered him an object of