see it, and went home and died in the night [of a spasm of the heart. The
news reached Reeve by a note from Mr. Elliot, dated seven o'clock in the
morning].

_From Mr. E. Twisleton_

Bonchurch, January 24th.

My dear Reeve,--I am much obliged to you for your letter of the 18th
instant, which has been forwarded to me here. I am sorry to say that I
have so much on my hands at present that I could not undertake to write an
article on American affairs; though I am equally obliged to you for the
proposal.

I lament what has taken place in the United States. Although, in a narrow
political sense, a disruption may be useful to England, in another point of
view it is a misfortune, inasmuch as the maintenance of one confederation
during seventy-two years, over such a vast extent of territory, with no
civil war, and only two foreign wars, is the greatest thing which the
English race has done out of England, and its dissolution is sure to be
viewed with pleasure by all who in their hearts hate free institutions and
the English race.

Since Brown's attempt to excite an insurrection of the slaves in Virginia,
I have thought it impossible to avoid a civil war, if the anti-slavery
feeling in the North went on increasing in intensity, as I have known it
to increase during the last ten years; but I had not the most distant idea
that Lincoln's election would lead to immediate secession on the part of
even a single state. In the north of the Union they have been absolutely
taken by surprise, and have hardly yet made up their minds as to the course