. . . As I suppose you are tormented with the question, "What's your father doing in Sheffield?" you may tell them that I have taken to lecturing the people, and that I give a second lecture to-morrow evening, and mean to give a third. Forbye reading Hegel every morning, and what do you think he said this morning? Why, that he had read of a government of women, "ein Weiberstaat," in Africa, where they killed all the men in the first place, and then all the male children, and finally destined all that should be born to the same fate. And what do you think your mother said when I told her of these atrocities? Even this: "That shows what bad creatures the men must have been." And that's all I get when trying to enlighten her upon the wickedness of her sex. And I'm just getting through with Guizot's four volumes, too. Oh, a very magnificent, calm, and beautiful course of lectures. You must read them. It's the best French history, so far as it goes. [218] To Rev. Henry W. Bellows. SHEFFIELD, March 6, 1850. . . . To my poor apprehension this is an awful crisis, especially if pushed in the way the Northern doctrinaires desire. I feel it so from what I saw of Southern feeling in Washington the winter I passed there. I fear disunion, and no mortal line can sound the depth of that calamity. I sometimes think that it would be well if we could wear around this last, terrible, black headland by sounding, and trimming sails, rather than attempt to sail by compass and quadrant. Do not mistake my figure. I am no moral trimmer, and that you know. Conscience must be obeyed. But conscience does not forbid that we should treat the Southern people with great consideration. What we must do, we may do in the spirit of love, and not of wrath or scorn. Oh, what a mystery of Providence, that this terrible burden--I had almost said millstone--should ever have been hung around the neck of this Confederation! To William Cullen Bryant, Esq. SHEFFIELD, June 7, 1850. MY DEAR SIR,--You should n't have lived in New York, and you should n't have been master of the French language, and you should n't have been Mr. Bryant, and, in fact, you should n't have been at all, if you expected to escape all sorts of trouble in this world! Since all these conditions pertain to you, see the inference, which, stated in the most skilfully inoffensive way I am able, stands or runs thus: [Here followed a request that Mr. Bryant would make [219] some inquiries concerning a French teacher who had applied, and the letter continued:] Now, in fine, if you don't see that all this letter is strictly logical,--an inference from the premises at the beginning,--I am sorry for you; and if you do see it, I am sorry for you. So you are pitied at any rate.