was proclaimed on the Upper Mississippi it would be known to the negroes of Louisiana in advance of the telegraph.  And if once the blacks had leave to run, how many whites would have to stay at home to guard their dissolving property?

You have had enough of my maunderings.  But before I conclude them, may I ask you to give all our kindest regards to Lowell, and to express our admiration for the Yankee Idyl.  I am afraid of using too extravagant language if I say all I think about it.  Was there ever anything more stinging, more concentrated, more vigorous, more just?  He has condensed into those few pages the essence of a hundred diplomatic papers and historical disquisitions and Fourth of July orations.  I was dining a day or two since with his friend Lytton (Bulwer’s son, attache here) and Julian Fane (secretary of the embassy), both great admirers of him,—­and especially of the “Biglow Papers;” they begged me to send them the Mason and Slidell Idyl, but I wouldn’t,—­I don’t think it is in English nature (although theirs is very cosmopolitan and liberal) to take such punishment and come up smiling.  I would rather they got it in some other way, and then told me what they thought voluntarily.

I have very pleasant relations with all the J. B.’s here.  They are all friendly and well disposed to the North,—­I speak of the embassy, which, with the ambassador and—–­dress, numbers eight or ten souls, some of them very intellectual ones.  There are no other J. B.’s here.  I have no fear at present of foreign interference.  We have got three or four months to do our work in,—­a fair field and no favor.  There is no question whatever that the Southern commissioners have been thoroughly snubbed in London and Paris.  There is to be a blockade debate in Parliament next week, but no bad consequences are to be apprehended.  The Duke de Gramont (French ambassador, and an intimate friend of the Emperor) told my wife last night that it was entirely false that the Emperor had ever urged the English government to break the blockade.  “Don’t believe it,—­don’t believe a word of it,” he said.  He has always held that language to me.  He added that Prince Napoleon had just come out with a strong speech about us,—­you will see it, doubtless, before you get this letter,—­but it has not yet reached us.

Shall I say anything of Austria,—­what can I say that would interest you?  That’s the reason why I hate to write.  All my thoughts are in America.  Do you care to know about the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, that shall be King hereafter of Mexico (if L. N. has his way)?  He is next brother to the Emperor, but although I have had the honor of private audiences of many archdukes here, this one is a resident of Trieste.

He is about thirty,—­has an adventurous disposition,—­some imagination,—­a turn for poetry,—­has voyaged a good deal about the world in the Austrian ship-of-war,—­for