To turn from things domestic to things at large, what a state of
things is this at Berlin! a state of siege declared, and the King at
open issue with his representatives!--from the country districts,
people flocking to give him aid, while the great towns are almost in
revolt. "Always too late" might, I suppose, have been his motto; and
when things have been given with one hand, he has seemed too ready
to withdraw them with the other. But, after all, I must and do
believe that he has noble qualities, so to have won Bunsen's love
and respect.


_November 25._--Mary is preparing a long letter, and it will
therefore matter the less if mine is not so long as I intended. I
have not yet quite made up the way I have lost in my late
indisposition, and we have such volumes of letters from dear Willy
to answer, that I believe this folio will be all I can send to you,
my own darling; but you do not dwell in my heart or my thoughts
less fondly. I long inexpressibly to have some definite ideas of
what you are now--after some eight months of residence--doing,
thinking, feeling; what are your occupations in the present, what
your aims and designs for the future. The assurance that it is
your first and heartful desire to please God, my dear son; that
you have struggled to do this and not allowed yourself to shrink
from whatever you felt to be involved in it, this is, and will be
my deepest and dearest comfort, and I pray to Him to guide you
into all truth. But though supported by this assurance, I do not
pretend to say that often and often I do not yearn over you in
my thoughts, and long to bestow upon you in act and word, as
well as in thought, some of that overflowing love which is