I always look upon his head as one of the planets.
Our house has been robbed by two notorious thieves. They had much
better have risked their lives in stealing the Hungarian Baron
Alderson, whose full dress is incrusted with forty thousand pounds'
worth of diamonds and emeralds. We have met with a greater loss than
these robbers caused us. Mrs. Blodget has all our luggage at her house
in Liverpool; and one of her servant-men opened two of my trunks,
which were in the cellar, and stole almost every piece of plate we
possess--all the forks and spoons, and so on. He has confessed, while
ill in a hospital. But Mr. Hawthorne will not prosecute him.
Have you read Froude's history, just published, from the period of the
fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth? His style is wholly unlike
that of the stately, but rather tiresome unchangeable canter of
Macaulay's. Macaulay takes care of his style, but Froude is only
interested in his theme. I do not suppose any one historian has yet
climbed up to the pinnacle of perfect impartiality,--unless my darling
Herodotus, who has the simplicity of a child, and no theories at all.
But Macaulay's style tires me. He is so ferociously lucid that he
confuses me, as with too much light. It is the regular refrain of his
brilliant sentences that finally has the effect of a grand jangle of
musical instruments.
The Manchester Exhibition framed a particularly rare spectacle:--
MANCHESTER.
MY DEAR ELIZABETH,--We are now at Old Trafford, close by the Palace of
Art Treasures, which we have come here expressly to see.
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