The little New Yorker’s sometimes very amusing; she asks me if every one in Boston talks like me—if every one’s as “intellectual” as your poor correspondent. She’s for ever throwing Boston up at me; I can’t get rid of poor dear little Boston. The other one rubs it into me too, but in a different way; she seems to feel about it as a good Mahommedan feels toward Mecca, and regards it as a focus of light for the whole human race. Yes, poor little Boston, what nonsense is talked in thy name! But this New England maiden is in her way a rare white flower; she’s travelling all over Europe alone—“to see it,” she says, “for herself.” For herself! What can that strangely serene self of hers do with such sights, such depths! She looks at everything, goes everywhere, passes her way with her clear quiet eyes wide open; skirting the edge of obscene abysses without suspecting them; pushing through brambles without tearing her robe; exciting, without knowing it, the most injurious suspicions; and always holding her course—without a stain, without a sense, without a fear, without a charm! Then by way of contrast there’s a lovely English girl with eyes as shy as violets and a voice as sweet!—the difference between the printed, the distributed, the gratuitous hand-bill and the shy scrap of a _billet-doux_ dropped where you may pick it up. She has a sweet Gainsborough head and a great Gainsborough hat with a mighty plume in front of it that makes a shadow over her quiet English eyes. Then she has a sage-green robe, “mystic wonderful,” all embroidered with subtle devices and flowers, with birds and beasts of tender tint; very straight and tight in front and adorned behind, along the spine, with large strange iridescent buttons. The revival of taste, of the sense of beauty, in England, interests me deeply; what is there in a simple row of spinal buttons to make one dream—to _donner à rêver_, as they say here? I believe a grand esthetic renascence to be at hand and that a great light will be kindled in England for all the world to see. There are spirits there I should like to commune with; I think they’d understand me. This gracious English maiden, with her clinging robes, her amulets and girdles, with something quaint and angular in her step, her carriage, something medieval and Gothic in the details of her person and dress, this lovely Evelyn Vane (isn’t it a beautiful name?) exhales association and implication. She’s so much a woman—_elle est bien femme_, as they say here; simpler softer rounder richer than the easy products I spoke of just now. Not much talk—a great sweet silence. Then the violet eye—the very eye itself seems to blush; the great shadowy hat making the brow so quiet; the strange clinging clutched pictured raiment! As I say, it’s a very gracious tender type. She has her brother with her, who’s a beautiful fair-haired grey-eyed young Englishman. He’s purely objective, but he too is very plastic.