DEAR MRS. HAWTHORNE,--I cannot but affectionately thank you for your remembrance of me, and your patience with my note.--If I do not return on my own critical fancies about the "Romance" (and pray, recollect, I am the last who would assume that critics wear a mail celestial, and as such can do no wrong)--it may be from some knowledge, that those who have lived with a work while it is growing--and those who greet it, when it is born, complete into life,--cannot see with the same eyes. I don't think, if we three sate together, and could talk the whole dream out, a matter, by the way, hardly possible, we should have so much difference as you fancy--so much did I enjoy, and so deeply was I stirred by the book, that (let alone past associations and predilections) I neither read, nor wrote (meant to write, that is) in a caviling spirit: but that which simply and clearly seemed to present itself in regard to a book which had possessed me (for better for worse) in no common degree--by one on whom (I think is known) I set no common store.--If I have seemed to yourselves hasty or superficial or flippant--all I can say is, such was not my meaning.--Surely the best things can bear the closest looking at,--whether as regards beauty or blemish.-- I repeat that, while I thank you affectionately for the trouble you have taken to expostulate with my frowardness (if so it be)--I am just as much concerned if what was printed gave any pain. But, when I look again (I have been interrupted twenty times since I began this)--did I not say that Hilda was "cousin"--that is, family likeness, not identity--though it means, what I meant, the same sort of light of purity and grace, and redemption let into a maze, through somewhat the same sort of chink.--I totally resist any idea of mannerism, dear friend Hawthorne,--on your part,--and as to the story growing on you, as you grow into it: well, I dare' say that has happened ere this:--the best creations have come by chance: and if Hawthorne did not mean to excite an interest when he wanted merely to make a Roman idyl, why did we go into those Catacombs?-- Might I say (like Moliere's old woman) how earnestly I desire, that for a second edition, a few more openings of the door should be added to the story--towards its close? You have been so kind in bearing with me,--in coming to me when in London,--and in remembering the nothing I could do here to make you welcome, as I fancied you might like best to be welcomed,--that I venture to send you this letter out of my heart,--and if there be nonsense in it, or what may seem spectacled critical pedantry, I must trust to your good nature to allow for them. Won't you come to town again? and wont you eat another cosy dinner at my table?--And pray, dear friend Hawthorne, don't be so long again:--and pray, once for all, recollect that you have no more faithful nor real literary friend (perhaps, too, in other ways might I show it) Than yours as always, HENRY N. CHORLEY.