Browning has just married Miss Barrett, and gone to Italy.  I may meet them there.  Bailey is helping his father with a newspaper!  His wife and child (Philip Festus by name) came to see me.  I am to make them a visit on my return.  Marston I saw several times, and found him full of talent.  That is all I want to say at present;—­he is a delicate nature, that can only be known in its own way and time.  I went to see his “Patrician’s Daughter.”  It is an admirable play for the stage.  At the house of W.J.  Fox, I saw first himself, an eloquent man, of great practical ability, then Cooper, (of the “Purgatory of Suicides,”) and others.

My poor selection of miscellanies has been courteously greeted in the London journals.  Openings were made for me to write, had I but leisure; it is for that I look to a second stay in London, since several topics came before me on which I wished to write and publish there.

* * * * *

I became acquainted with a gentleman who is intimate with all the English artists, especially Stanfield and Turner, but was only able to go to his house once, at this time.  Pictures I found but little time for, yet enough to feel what they are now to be to me.  I was only at the Dulwich and National Galleries and Hampton Court.  Also, have seen the Vandykes, at Warwick; but all the precious private collections I was obliged to leave untouched, except one of Turner’s, to which I gave a day.  For the British Museum, I had only one day, which I spent in the Greek and Egyptian Rooms, unable even to look at the vast collections of drawings, &c.  But if I live there a few months, I shall go often.  O, were life but longer, and my strength greater!  Ever I am bewildered by the riches of existence, had I but more time to open the oysters, and get out the pearls.  Yet some are mine, if only for a necklace or rosary.

PARIS.

TO HER MOTHER.

Paris, Dec. 26, 1846.—­In Paris I have been obliged to give a great deal of time to French, in order to gain the power of speaking, without which I might as usefully be in a well as here.  That has prevented my doing nearly as much as I would.  Could I remain six months in this great focus of civilized life, the time would be all too short for my desires and needs.

My Essay on American Literature has been translated into French, and published in “La Revue Independante,” one of the leading journals of Paris; only, with that delight at manufacturing names for which the French are proverbial, they put, instead of Margaret, Elizabeth.  Write to ——­, that aunt Elizabeth has appeared unexpectedly before the French public!  She will not enjoy her honors long, as a future number, which is to contain a notice of “Woman in the Nineteenth Century,” will rectify the mistake.

I have been asked, also, to remain in correspondence with La Revue Independante, after my return to the United States, which will be very pleasant and advantageous to me.