We have been giving Friday evening receptions since June 15th, and next Friday, the 20th, will be the last; we have had six. I hear the exhibition in Paris is improving, and that will bring even more Americans. As Miss Steiner and I are going out, I must stop writing and get ready. How constantly I wish for you, and trust, dear sister, whether I return to America or remain in England, that it will not be many months before I see you once more. Love to Mr. B. and yourself, from Your ever affectionate HATTIE. Footnote 21: This mention of the Commemoration Day at Oxford, where Mr. Buchanan, along with the poet Tennyson, received the degree of D. C. L., does not do justice to the scene. The students, after their fashion, greeted Miss Lane’s appearance with loud cheers, and on her uncle they bestowed their applause vociferously. [TO MRS. BAKER.] LONDON, October 6, 1854. MY DEAR MARY:— I received your letter in due time, of the 14th July, and should have answered it long ere this, but that I knew Harriet wrote to you regularly. I wrote to you soon after my arrival in London, but you have never acknowledged that letter, and as you have said nothing about it in yours of the 14th July, I fear it has miscarried. If I do not write often it is not because you are not freshly and most kindly remembered. Indeed I feel great anxiety about your health and prosperity, and am rejoiced that you appear to be happy in San Francisco. You are often, very often, a subject of conversation between Harriet and myself. We set out for Belgium to-morrow, where I have important public business to transact. I take Harriet along to enable her to see a little of the continent, and I may perhaps have time to accompany her along the Rhine. I cannot be long absent, because the business of this legation is incessant, important, and laborious. Thank God! I have been enjoying my usual health here, and am treated as kindly as I could have expected. And yet I long to return home, but must remain nearly another year to fulfill my engagement with the President when I most reluctantly consented to accept the mission. Should a kind Providence prolong my days, I hope to pass the remnant of them in tranquillity and retirement at Wheatland. I have been kindly treated by the world, but am heartily sick of public life. Besides a wise man ought to desire to pass some time in privacy before his inevitable doom......