LONDON.

TO C.S.

As soon as I reached England, I found how right we were in supposing there was elsewhere a greater range of interesting character among the men, than with us.  I do not find, indeed, any so valuable as three or four among the most marked we have known; but many that are strongly individual, and have a fund of hidden life.

In Westmoreland, I knew, and have since been seeing in London, a man, such as would interest you a good deal; Mr. Atkinson.  He is sometimes called the “prince of the English mesmerisers;” and he has the fine instinctive nature you may suppose from that.  He is a man of about thirty; in the fulness of his powers; tall, and finely formed, with a head for Leonardo to paint; mild and composed, but powerful and sagacious; he does not think, but perceives and acts.  He is intimate with artists, having studied architecture himself as a profession; but has some fortune on which he lives.  Sometimes stationary and acting in the affairs of other men; sometimes wandering about the world and learning; he seems bound by no tie, yet looks as if he had relatives in every place.

I saw, also, a man,—­an artist,—­severe and antique in his spirit; he seemed burdened by the sorrows of aspiration; yet very calm, as secure in the justice of fate.  What he does is bad, but full of a great desire.  His name is David Scott.  I saw another,—­a pupil of De la Roche,—­very handsome, and full of a voluptuous enjoyment of nature:  him I liked a little in a different way.

By far the most beauteous person I have seen is Joseph Mazzini.  If you ever see Saunders’ “People’s Journal,” you can read articles by him that will give you some notion of his mind, especially one on his friends, headed “Italian Martyrs.”  He is one in whom holiness has purified, but somewhat dwarfed the man.

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Our visit to Mr. Wordsworth was fortunate.  He is seventy-six; but his is a florid, fair old age.  He walked with us to all his haunts about the house.  Its situation is beautiful, and the “Rydalian Laurels” are magnificent.  Still, I saw abodes among the hills that I should have preferred for Wordsworth; more wild and still more romantic.  The fresh and lovely Rydal Mount seems merely the retirement of a gentleman, rather than the haunt of a poet.  He showed his benignity of disposition in several little things, especially in his attentions to a young boy we had with us.  This boy had left the circus, exhibiting its feats of horsemanship, in Ambleside, “for that day only,” at his own desire to see Wordsworth; and I feared he would be dissatisfied, as I know I should have been at his age, if, when called to see a poet, I had found no Apollo flaming with youthful glory, laurel-crowned, and lyre in hand; but, instead, a reverend old man clothed in black, and walking with cautious step along the level garden-path.  However, he was not disappointed; and Wordsworth, in his turn, seemed to feel and prize a congenial nature in this child.