I expect T. S. Perry here in a fortnight on his way from Venice. You may imagine with what joy. I have just been interrupted by the supper, which takes place at nine P.M. and consists of beer, eggs, herrings, ham, and bread and butter, and is not displeasing to the carnal man. I have been writing a most infernally long letter, for which I apologize. It will be the last time. The fact is I have so few resources here that I am driven to write. Tell Alice that there are two Miss Twomblys from Boylston Street living here, one exceedingly pretty. She doubtless, by her feminine system of espionage, knows who they are, though I know none of their friends and they none of mine. I got mother's letter and the "Nation" with great joy soon after my arrival. I read Father's article, but with much the old result. I am desirous of reading his article in the N. A. R. and hope he will not delay to send it when it appears. Heaps of love all round. _To his Mother._ DRESDEN, _June 12, 1867_. DEAREST MOTHER,--I have been reading a considerable deal of German, and in a very desultory way, as I want to get accustomed to a variety of styles, so as to be able to read any book at sight, skipping the useless; and I may say that I now begin to have that power whenever the book is writ in a style at all adapted to the requirements of the human, as distinguished from the German, mind. The profounder and more philosophical German requires, however, that you should bring all the resources of your nature, of every kind, to a focus, and hurl them again and again on the sentence, till at last you feel something give way, as it were, and the Idea begins to unravel itself. As for speaking, that is a very different matter and advances much more slowly.... Life is so monotonous in this place that unless I make some philosophical discoveries, or unless _something_ happens, my letters will have to be both few and short. I get up and have breakfast, which means a big cup of cocoa and some bread and butter with an egg, if I want it, at eight. I read till half-past one, when dinner, which is generally quite a decent meal; after dinner a nap, more _Germanorum_ and more read till the sun gets low enough to go out, when out I go--generally to the Grosser Garten, a lovely park outside the town where the sun slants over the greenest meadows and sends his shafts between the great trees in a most wholesome manner. There are some spots where the trees are close together, and in their classic gloom you find mossy statues, so that you feel as if you belonged to the last century. Often I go and sit on a terrace which overlooks the Elbe and, with my eyes bent upon the lordly cliffs far down the river on the other side, with strains of the sweetest music in my ear, and with pint after pint of beer successively finding their way into the fastnesses of my interior, I enjoy most delightful reveries, _au nombre desquels_ those concerning my home and my sister are not the least frequent.