remembered, who writes some fresh and charmingly simple idyllic poems,
one called, I think, 'Primel et Nola.' By that clue you may hunt him out
perhaps in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' There's no strong imagination,
understand--nothing of that sort! but you have a sweet, fresh, cool
sylvan feeling with him, rare among Frenchmen of his class. Edgar Quinet
has more positive genius. He is a man of grand, extravagant conceptions.
Do you know the 'Ahasuerus'?

I wonder if the Empress pleases you as well as the Emperor. For my part,
I approve altogether, and none the less that he has offended Austria by
the mode of announcement. Every cut of the whip in the face of Austria
is an especial compliment to me--or, _so I feel it_. Let him head the
democracy and do his duty to the world, and use to the utmost his great
opportunities. Mr. Cobden and the Peace Society are pleasing me
infinitely just now in making head against the immorality (that's the
word) of the English press. The tone taken up towards France is immoral
in the highest degree, and the invasion cry would be idiotic if it were
not something worse. The Empress, I heard the other day from good
authority, is 'charming and good at heart.' She was educated 'at a
respectable school at Bristol' (Miss Rogers's, Royal Crescent, Clifton),
and is very 'English,' which doesn't prevent her from shooting with
pistols, leaping gates, driving 'four-in-hand,' and upsetting the
carriage when the frolic requires it, as brave as a lion and as true as
a dog. Her complexion is like marble, white, pale and pure; her hair
light, rather 'sandy,' they say, and she powders it with gold dust for
effect; but there is less physical and more intellectual beauty than is
generally attributed to her. She is a woman of 'very decided opinions.'
I like all that, don't you? and I liked her letter to the Préfet, as
everybody must. Ah, if the English press were in earnest in the cause of
liberty, there would be something to say for our poor trampled-down