So also, among the beautiful group of England’s distinguished authoresses—women whose power is acknowledged by the whole cultivated world. Mary Howitt, Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. S. C. Hall, with many others still living, among the latest and most remarkable of whom stand Mrs. Gaskill, the Author of Mary Barton, and Miss Bronte, the author of the fascinating novel of Jane Eyre; all these are united in working for the moral elevation of life, although frequently regarding it from different points of view. Nevertheless are they sisters in the higher harmonies and the same fundamentally pure accords, the same holy anthems sound from their harps. They also have obtained free entrance into every noble home in the world, and great power over the life of the heart. Novels such as Eugene Sue’s and George Sand’s cannot possibly become popular in England, although people are not blind to the gleams of light discoverable in the mysteries of the former; and the many beautiful things which there are in the glorious Consuelo of the latter. But they could not have been written there, nor could their authors live there with any success. The genius of England distinguishes itself from that of France, not so much by its genius, but by its sound reason. The dissimilar fate of England and France, at this time, may be estimated by the dissimilarity in the works of their romance writers. The romance of a people and of their authors have more in common than people believe. Now that I am about to leave England, I feel with regret how much, from want of time, I must give up seeing, give up knowing—amongst which is the knowledge of persons whose acquaintance would be to me of great value, and of whom I saw sufficient for me to regret it all the more. This is often the sorrowful lot of the traveler, and I have no right to complain. If I should never again see England, yet I shall be eternally thankful that I have seen it, and for that which I have there seen. I thank England for the glorious Asylum which she afforded to a people who raised themselves in the consciousness of their own power, and with no lower object in view than the highest which humanity is capable of. I thank England for affording a new hope for the future of Europe, a new and a fresher courage. And seeing as I do that England is preëminently beyond all other nations designed to extend its dominions, I shall henceforth only rejoice in this, because it extends at the same time the Law and the Gospel, God’s dominion upon earth. Add to this, that the English race are also the handsomest now existing on the earth; no one can do other than wish that, in this point of view also, they should increase and multiply.