her a sinking of the heart. (This little exchange of ideas is
carried on through me; they have never spoken to each other.) Mr.
Cockerel, as I say, is extremely good-natured, and he carries out
what I have heard said about the men in America being very
considerate of the women. They evidently listen to them a great
deal; they don't contradict them, but it seems to me that this is
rather negative. There is very little gallantry in not
contradicting one; and it strikes me that there are some things the
men don't express. There are others on the ship whom I've noticed.
It's as if they were all one's brothers or one's cousins. But I
promised you not to generalise, and perhaps there will be more
expression when we arrive. Mr. Cockerel returns to America, after a
general tour, with a renewed conviction that this is the only
country. I left him on deck an hour ago looking at the coast-line
with an opera-glass, and saying it was the prettiest thing he had
seen in all his tour. When I remarked that the coast seemed rather
low, he said it would be all the easier to get ashore; Mr. Leverett
doesn't seem in a hurry to get ashore; he is sitting within sight of
me in a corner of the saloon--writing letters, I suppose, but
looking, from the way he bites his pen and rolls his eyes about, as
if he were composing a sonnet and waiting for a rhyme. Perhaps the
sonnet is addressed to me; but I forget that he suppresses the
affections! The only person in whom mamma takes much interest is
the great French critic, M. Lejaune, whom we have the honour to
carry with us. We have read a few of his works, though mamma
disapproves of his tendencies and thinks him a dreadful materialist.
We have read them for the style; you know he is one of the new
Academicians. He is a Frenchman like any other, except that he is
rather more quiet; and he has a gray mustache and the ribbon of the
Legion of Honour. He is the first French writer of distinction who