She writes to Mr. Fields, who on leaving England had proceeded to Italy, to thank him for sending her an illustrated edition of _Longfellow’s Poems_ together with a copy of the _Golden Legend_: “I hope I shall be only one among the multitude who think this the greatest and best thing he has done yet, so racy, so full of character, of what the French call local colour, so in its best and highest sense, original.... Then those charming volumes of De Quincey and Sprague and Grace Greenwood, and dear Mr. Hawthorne and the two new poets, who if also young poets will be fresh glories for America. How can I thank you enough for all these enjoyments? I have fallen in with Mr. Kingsley, and a most charming person he is ... you must know Mr. Kingsley. He is very young too, really young, for it is characteristic of our ‘young poets’ that they generally turn out middle-aged and very often elderly.” And again writing to Mr. Fields she says: “I was delighted with Dr. Holmes’s poems for their individuality. How charming a person he must be! And how truly the portrait represents the mind, the lofty brow full of thought, and the wrinkle of humour in the eye! (Between ourselves I always have a little doubt of genius when there is no humour; certainly in the very highest poetry the two go together—Scott, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Burns.) Another charming thing in Dr. Holmes is that every succeeding poem is better than the last.... And I like him all the better for being a physician—the one truly noble profession. There are noble men in all professions, but in medicine only are the great mass, almost the whole, generous, liberal, self-denying, living to advance science and to help mankind. “I rejoice to hear of another romance by the author of _The Scarlet Letter_. That is a real work of genius.” On receiving _The House of Seven Gables_ a little later on, she apologizes to Mr. Fields for a delay in thanking him for his kind gift saying that she delayed doing so until she had read the book twice. “At sixty-five,” she remarks, “life gets too short to allow us to read every book once and again; but it is not so with Mr. Hawthorne, the first time one sketches them (to borrow Dr. Holmes’s excellent word) and cannot put them down for the vivid interest; the next one lingers over the beauty with a calmer enjoyment. Very beautiful this book is!” Later on she writes to Mr. Fields of Whittier: “He sent me a charming poem on Burns, full of tenderness and humanity and the indulgence which the wise and good can so well afford, and which only the wisest and best can show to their erring brethren.”