Not read Mrs. Stowe’s book!  But you must.  Her book is quite a sign of the times and has otherwise and intrinsically considerable power.  For myself, I rejoice in the success, both as a woman and a human being.  Oh, and is it possible that you think a woman has no business with questions like the question of slavery?  Then she had better use a pen no more.  She had better subside into slavery and concubinage herself, I think, as in the times of old, shut herself up with the Penelopes in the ’women’s apartment,’ and take no rank among thinkers and speakers.  Certainly you are not in earnest in these things.  A difficult question—­yes!  All virtue is difficult.  England found it difficult.  France found it difficult.  But we did not make ourselves an arm-chair of our sins.  As for America, I honor America in much; but I would not be an American for the world while she wears that shameful scar upon her brow.  The address of the new President[20] exasperates me.  Observe, I am an abolitionist, not to the fanatical degree, because I hold that compensation should be given by the North to the South, as in England.  The States should unite in buying off this national disgrace.

The Americans are very kind and earnest, and I like them all the better for their warm feeling towards you.  Is Longfellow agreeable in his personal relations?  We knew his brother, I think I told you, in Paris.  I suppose Mr. Field has been liberal to Thackeray, and yet Thackeray does not except him in certain observations on American publishers.  We shall have an arrangement made of some sort, it appears.  Mr. Forster wants me to add some new poems to my new edition, in order to secure the copyright under the new law.  But as the law does not act backwards, I don’t see how new poems would save me.  They would just sweep out the new poems—­that’s all.  One or two lyrics could not be made an object, and in those two thick volumes, nearly bursting with their present contents, there would not be room for many additions.  No, I shall add nothing.  I have revised the edition very carefully, and made everything better.  It vexed me to see how much there was to do.  Positively, even rhymes left unrhymed in ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.’  You don’t write so carelessly, not you, and the reward is that you haven’t so much trouble in your new editions.  I see your book advertised in a stray number of the ‘Athenaeum’ lent to me by Mr. Tennyson—­Frederick.  He lent it to me because I wanted to see the article on the new poet, Alexander Smith, who appears so applauded everywhere.  He has the poet’s stuff in him, one may see from the extracts.  Do you know him?  And Coventry Patmore—­have you heard anything of his book,[21] of which appears an advertisement?

Ah, yes; how unfortunate that you should have parted with your copyrights!  It’s a bad plan always, except in the case of novels which have their day, and no day after.

The poem I am about will fill a volume when done.  It is the novel or romance I have been hankering after so long, written in blank verse, in the autobiographical form; the heroine, an artist woman—­not a painter, mind.  It is intensely modern, crammed from the times (not the ‘Times’ newspaper) as far as my strength will allow.  Perhaps you won’t like it, perhaps you will.  Who knows? who dares hope?