You have often heard me speak of Mrs. Morris, and of the kindness with which she treated me during a visit at her house. She was at that time in what many would have called very narrow circumstances, but which by consummate care and good management sufficed to maintain a condition in every way suitable to a gentlewoman. She has since--or rather her son has--succeeded to a very large fortune and a title. They were at Genoa when we arrived there,--at the same hotel,--and yet never either called on or noticed us! It is perfectly needless for me to say that I know, and know thoroughly, that no change in _their_ position could have produced any alteration in their manner towards us. If ever there were people totally removed from such vulgarity,--utterly incapable of even conceiving it,--it is the Morrises. They were proud in their humble fortune,--that is, they possessed a dignified self-esteem, that would have rejected the patronage of wealthy pretension, but willingly accepted the friendship of very lowly worth; and I can well believe that prosperity will only serve to widen the sphere of their sympathies, and make them as generous in action as they were once so in thought. That their behavior to _us_ depends on anything in themselves, I therefore completely reject,--this I know and feel to be an impossibility. What a sad alternative is then left me, when I own that they have more than sufficient cause to shun our acquaintance and avoid our intimacy! The loss of such a friend as Captain Morris might have been to James is almost irreparable; and from the interest he once took in him, it is clear he felt well disposed for such a part; and I am thoroughly convinced that even papa himself, with all his anti-English prejudices, has only to come into close contact with the really noble traits of the English character, to acknowledge their excellence and their worth. I am very far from undervaluing the great charm of manner which comes under the category of what is called "aimable." I recognize all its fascination, and I even own to an exaggerated enjoyment of its display; but shall I confess that I believe that it is this very habit of simulation that detracts from the truthful character of a people, and that English bluntness is--so to say--the complement of English honesty. That they push the characteristic too far, and that they frequently throw a chill over social intercourse, which under more genial influences had been everything that was agreeable, I am free to admit; but, with all these deficiencies, the national character is incomparably above that of any other country I have any knowledge of. It will be scarcely complimentary if I add, after all this, that we Irish are certainly more popular abroad than our Saxon relatives. We are more compliant with foreign usages, less rigid in maintaining our own habits, more conciliating in a thousand ways; and both our tongues and our