"I am continuing to read the noble romances of my friend James. I find in them thoughts as profound as any in Charron, or Montaigne, or Bacon,--I had almost added, or Shakespeare himself,--the wisest of men, as the greatest of poets. On the morning after your departure I finished the 'Philip Augustus.' In the thirty-eighth chapter is this sentence: 'O Isidore! 't is not the present, I believe, that ever makes our misery; 't is its contrast with the past; 't is the loss of some hope, or the crushing of some joy; the disappointment of expectation, or the regrets of memory. The present is nothing, nothing, nothing, but in its relation to the future or the past.' James is inferior to Scott in wit and humor, but more than his equal in many other respects; but then Scott wrote excellent poetry, in which James, when he attempted it, failed. "Let me hear how affairs are going on in America. I believe we have truer accounts from England than your papers are disposed to publish. Louis Napoleon is increasing his naval force to a degree it never reached before. We must have war with him before a twelvemonth is over. He will also make disturbances in Louisiana, claiming it on the dolorous cry of France for her lost children. They will _invite_ him, as the poor Savoyards were _invited_ by him to do. So long as this perfidious scoundrel exists there will be no peace of quiet in any quarter of the globe. The Pope is heartily sick of intervention; but nothing can goad his fat sides into a move. "Are you not tired? My wrist is. So adieu. "Ever affectionately, "W. S. L." With this letter came a slip of paper, on which were these lines:-- "TO GIALLO, "Faithfullest of a faithful race, Plainly I read it in thy face, Thou wishest me to mount the stairs, And leave behind me all my cares. No: I shall never see again, Her who now sails across the main, Nor wilt thou ever as before Rear two white feet against her door." "Written opposite Palazzo Pitti, September, 1861." "February 15, 1862. ".... The affairs of your country interest me painfully. The Northern States had acknowledged the right of the Southern to hold slaves, and had even been so iniquitous as to surrender a fugitive from his thraldom. I would propose an accommodation:-- "1. That every slave should be free after ten years' labor. "2. That none should be imported, or sold, or separated from wife and children. "3. That an adequate portion of land should be granted in perpetuity to the liberated.