Mr. Hawthorne has relations and personal
friends who look to him, I think, with great desires. I can demand
nothing for mine.
Though the great Reform Bill of Lord John Russell was deferred by him
the other night to another period on account of war, yet reforms on
every point in social life are going on here, or moving to go on.
Nothing seems to escape some eye that has suddenly opened. The Earl of
Shaftesbury is one of God's Angels of Benefits. The hideous condition
of the very poor and even of tradesmen is being demonstrated to the
nation; a condition in which, a writer in the London "Athenaeum" says,
"Virtue is impossible"! From this most crying and worst evil, up
through all things, sounds the trumpet of reform.
Such abuse of the good President as there is, is sickening. I hope
those who vilify him for doing what he considers his duty have a
quarter of his conscience and uprightness. He is a brave man. . . . He
wrote Mr. Hawthorne that he had no hope of being popular during the
first part of his administration at least. He can be neither bribed,
bought, nor tempted in his political course; he will do what he thinks
constitutional and right, and find content in it. . . . I wish our
Senators had as good manners as the noble lords of Parliament. But we
are perfect savages in manners as yet, and have no self-control, nor
reverence. The dignity and serenity of maturer age will, I trust, come
at last to us. . . .
I never dreamed of putting myself into a picture, because I am not
handsome enough.
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