“Now I have a favor to ask of you--_Se io meritai di voi assai o poco_--and that is to have the sheets of the life of Landor sent me. I guess I could make something out of them, which perhaps you _boys_ hardly could. By the way, I was very much pleased with your notice of that fellow’s (Sebright,[37] I think) Congressional reminiscences. It made me laugh, and was so fine (so subtile) that the man himself, despite his name, will never feel the edge of it. I always had great expectations of you,--but I am beginning to believe in you for good. You are the only one that hasn’t cheated me by your blossom. I like your flavor now, as once I did your perfume. You young fellows are dreadfully irreverent--but don’t you laugh--I take a kind of credit to myself in being the first to find you out. I am proud of you. But see how Fate takes me down! As I wrote the words, it began to rain on my hay. _Absit omen._ And may it be long before you are mown! “As for your gigantic _boongalong_ there in Boston,--I fancy it is like Niagara, a thing that one can reckon mathematically. It is but one voice raised to the nth power or so. And I remember that the Colosseum was where the early Christians used to be martyred. Now I got up this morning at half past six, and therefore count myself among the early Christians. “I forgot to tell you that George Curtis liked your Venetian poem very much. So did I.” His position naturally made him the recipient of many commissions for securing the publication of poems and other manuscripts, and his friendliness drew him into many letters of counsel, and it might be encouragement. To one whose acquaintance he had made through a contribution which he had accepted when editor of the _Atlantic_, he wrote in answer to a letter in which she had confessed to discouragement over hostile attack on a more recent work:-- That my note gave you any pleasure gives me a sensible satisfaction. I am glad to find it _was_ my Miss ---- after all.