well, you see, ma'am, they've been going on there for the last I don't know how many hundred years, just about in the same social position; they haven't a notion of the rapidity of our progress here." I hate to advise you to have your pictures back, for there really does seem to me to be a _greedy desire for pictures_ (I cannot qualify in any other way the taste which covets and buys such things) here; but I suppose pictures, at any rate, must be what these people want, and will not buy dear and good ones, when cheap and nasty do as well. I think, while I am here in New York, I shall take the liberty of making some further inquiry as to whether the great print and picture seller here does not think they could be seen to selling advantage in his shop; in short, it throws me into a melancholy rage to think what pictures are bought while yours are not. The state of this country is curious--strange and deplorable beyond precedent in history, it seems to me; and it is absolutely _impossible_ to foresee to what issue things are tending. The opinions one hears are all coloured by the particular bias of the speaker, and the confusion is so great in the general excitement of sectional partisanship that even one of the members--and a very influential one--of the peace convention sent to Washington for the purpose of proposing terms of conciliation--which should not, however, compromise the Northern principles--said that nothing had been done, that all was "sound and fury, and signifying nothing"--or if anything at present, the confirmed secession of the Southern, the disruption from the North of the Northern slave States, and, not impossibly, civil war. Of course, the more time elapses in palavering before the first fatal blow is struck, the less probability there is of its being struck at all; but, on the other hand, the longer the present state of things continues, the more accustomed people become to the idea of the dismemberment of the Union, and therefore, though the clangour of an appeal to arms diminishes, so I think does the prospect of anything like "making up" the family quarrel--indeed, if it were patched, and soldered to the very best, I do not believe that it will ever "hold water again"; but it is impossible to foresee from day to day what may be the turn of events. If I live till a year from this summer I will be in England in July, and if I live till the November after that I will be in Rome, and you and Edward and Adelaide have my full permission to come too. Good-bye, dear Mr. Leighton. Your letters are a great comfort as well as pleasure to me; I am extremely obliged to you for them.