My dear Reeve,--I send you what I have done _in re_ Hawthorne. I offer a character rather than a review, proved by extracts; since had I gone on _in extenso_ I don't know where I should have stopped. Nothing but my strong wish to get my subject before the public could have made me carry out my article, poor as it is, seeing that I have written it half a leaf at a time, and with a weak, weary hand, the end of which will not impossibly be palsy. But I think as a character, when duly corrected, my work may not come out amiss. Ever yours faithfully, HENRY F. CHORLEY. _Endorsed_--Chorley's last note. He died about a week afterwards [suddenly on February 16th. The article had apparently not been finished, and was not published]. From the Journal:-- _January 24th_.--Went to see the Sandhursts at Brighton, but gout came on worse, and I was ill for some weeks. I presided at The Club, however, on the 27th, the Thanksgiving Day for the recovery of the Prince of Wales, and proposed his health. _March 14th_.--I published a collection of my articles on French history and affairs under the title of 'Royal and Republican France.' _From Lord Derby_ 23 _St. James's Square, March 15th_.--Many thanks for your book on France. Most of the articles were familiar to me, but all will bear reading again. You here show up the weakness of French public life and the faults of French parties as no one else has done; and I do not recollect to have seen anywhere else pointed out the intimate connexion between the social state of modern France--with every old tradition destroyed, and the continuance of a family, as we understand the word here, rendered impossible--and the political condition, in which every public man is either fighting for his own personal interest and nothing else, or for the triumph of his particular theory of politics, which, if successful, is to be enforced despotically by all the power of a centralised administration. I have never thought so badly of the French future as now--no energy except among the Reds, no power of united action; general apathy even as to the present, and utter indifference to the future. The Journal continues:-- _March 31st_.--Came down to Bournemouth for the first time with Hopie and the horses. _April 8th_.--Rode to Hengistbury Head and saw for the first time the Southbourne estate. Dined with Lord Cairns. Back to town on the 9th.