If I fail to enter wholly into your feelings as to Bismarck and Prussia, here is Mrs. Gray, who has been anti-Prussian from the very first, and who shares all your misgivings, and more. Now, I think it a pity, and a loss to the world, that the German people should be broken up into jealous rival kingdoms and little principalities, always liable to be played off against each other by outlying nations. I think Germany as such ought to take its place as a great Central European power. And yet a simple centralized government is dangerous; at best could ill replace local governments. So I hope for, and expect, a close confederation of German states, in a restored and efficient German empire, the states of which will be as closely united as those of our Federal Union, but yet sovereignties in all that relates to internal concerns. I don’t despair of the Germans working out a fairly successful constitutional parliamentary system, along with state parliaments, etc., after their own fashion. And I fancy that a united Germany will tend to peace in Europe, when one section can no more be played off against another. But what sort of a policy is this which Great Britain seems to have been pursuing in weakening, and as if inclined to sever, her connections with her principal colonies? Why not contrive some mode of uniting home and colonial interests, giving the colonies imperial representation, or something of the sort, or somehow be making sure that the men you will be wanting one of these years shall be sturdily growing up on these virgin soils, where crowding is out of the question, and who may feel as they grow up that they are part and parcel of a strong empire. For myself, I can’t abide the idea of the English nation ever coming to play any secondary part. As for ourselves, I feel more and more what a good thing it is, and what an economy in the long run, to have no neighbors, but the whole breadth of country to ourselves, and to be so far away from Europe that we may look with unconcern upon the rise or fall of states there, so far as they affect any interests of ours. That does not prevent our being all alive to events in Europe, however. The telegraph feeds our lively curiosity, day by day; but what I write about to-day will have ceased to interest by the time it reaches you: perhaps the strife all over there; devoutly do I wish it may be. I see you have taken up “Anselm” again; and that, I presume, is the book you are going to send me, and which I shall be pleased to see. Yes, you must come over here; but when you do, please arrange for time enough. When you cross the ocean, be sure to stay long enough to get your money’s worth. If it be the summer after next, perhaps we may cross the continent together, and see the parent of your Wellingtonia tree on the lawn, and the rest of the grove, and visit the wondrous Yosemite Valley, as yet an arduous journey from San Francisco, but it will soon be within easy reach.