I trust these prosings will be a warning to you how you touch upon politics again in a letter to me; but I really did not wish to-be a bore, and now here I am, ready to answer, as far as in me lies, all your interrogatories; first premising that I am not at liberty to enter upon the question of Glencore himself, and for the simple reason that he has made me his confidant. And now, as to the boy, I could make nothing of him, Harcourt; and for this reason,--he had not what sailors call “steerage way” on him. He went wherever you bade, but without an impulse. I tried to make him care for his career; for the gay world; for the butterfly life of young diplomacy; for certain dissipations,--excellent things occasionally to develop nascent faculties. I endeavored to interest him by literary society and savans, but unsuccessfully. For art indeed he showed some disposition, and modelled prettily; but it never rose above “amateurship.” Now, enthusiasm, although a very excellent ingredient, will no more make an artist than a brisk kitchen fire will provide a dinner where all the materials are wanting. I began to despair of him, Harcourt, when I saw that there were no features about him. He could do everything reasonably well, because there was no hope of his doing anything with real excellence. He wandered away from me to Carrara, with his quaint companion the Doctor; and after some months wrote me rather a sturdy letter, rejecting all moneyed advances, past and future, and saying something very haughty, and of course very stupid, about the “glorious sense of independence.” I replied, but he never answered me; and here might have ended all my knowledge of his history, had not a letter, of which I send you an extract, resumed the narrative. The writer is the Princess Sabloukoff, a lady of whose attractions and fascinations you have often heard me speak. When you have read, and thought over the enclosed, let me have your opinion. I do not, I cannot, believe in the rumor you allude to. Glencore is not the man to marry at his time of life, and in his circumstances. Send me, however, all the particulars you are in possession of. I hope they don't mean to send you to India, because you seem to dislike it. For my own part, I suspect I should enjoy that country immensely. Heat is the first element of daily comfort, and all the appliances to moderate it are _ex-officio_ luxuries; besides that in India there is a splendid and enlarged selfishness in the mode of life very different from the petty egotisms of our rude Northland. If you do go, pray take Naples in the way. The route by Alexandria and Suez, they all tell me, is the best and most expeditious. Mellish desires me to add his remembrances, hoping you have not forgotten him. He served in the “Fifth” with you in Canada,--that is, if you be the same George Harcourt who played Tony Lumpkin so execrably at Montreal. I have told him it is probable, and am yours ever, H. U.