and if God vouchsafe me my faculties, and I can bid farewell to this life of distasteful toil, I have visions of studies and pursuits which I think might make existence very happy in a farm in Normandy, though such might not have been my own choice....  What special inquiries did you wish me to make about General Washington?  I was, when at Washington, within fifteen miles of Mount Vernon, his home and burying-place, but could not make time to go thither.  I have one of his autograph letters, and if there be any indication of character in handwriting—­which I hope to goodness there is not—­it certainly exists in his, for a firmer, clearer, and fairer hand I never saw—­an excellent, honest handwriting.  His likeness confronts one at every corner here; not only at every street corner, where he lends his countenance to the frequenters of drinking-houses, but over every chimney-piece in every sitting-room.  He is like the frogs of the old Egyptian plague, except that they were in the king’s chamber, where he was too good a Republican ever to have been.

I am amused at your summing up your account of the restless and perturbed state of poor Ireland by saying, “After all, I believe America is the land of peace and quiet.”  It seems to me, who am here, that everything at this moment threatens change and disintegration in this country.  It is impossible to imagine more menacing elements of discord and disunion than those which exist in the opposite and antagonistic interests of its southern and northern provinces, and the anomalous mixture of aristocratic feeling and democratic institutions....  God bless you, my dear H——.  I will write to you soon again; if possible, before the breathing-time this snow-storm is giving us is over.

Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. K.

NEW YORK, April 3, 1833. 
MY DEAREST H——­,

...  I am working very hard, what with rehearsing, acting, studying new parts, devising new dresses, and attending—­which, of course, I am obliged also to do—­to the claims of the society in which we are living, and my time is so full that I barely contrive to fulfill all my duties and answer all the claims made upon me....  The spring is in the sky, and in the air her soft smile and sweet breath are gladdening the world; but the process of vegetation is much later in beginning, and much more rapid in its operations when they do begin here, than with us.  Though the last three days have been as hot as our midsummer weather, the trees are yet leafless and budless—­as dry and unpromising-looking as they were in mid-winter; and, indeed, the transition from winter to summer is almost instantaneous here.  The spring does not stand coaxing and beckoning the shy summer to the woods and fields as in our country, but while winter yet seems lord of the ascendant, and his white robes are still covering land and water, suddenly the summer looks down upon the earth from the cloudless sky, and, as by magic, the