52, Rue de Grenelle, December 22, 1846. I have received yesterday your letter, and profit by the departure of your cousin to thank you for it. I was very much surprised in seeing that this errant dame, my brother's sister-in-law, has lighted on you. I am glad to hear she has fallen into kind hands. I ought to be proud of your appreciation of my countrywoman, but I, for my part, am by far more partial to English women; they have more energy and more mind, it seems to me. It is true I have been singularly fortunate in my English friends, and I have, in fact, not lived much in Germany since I became of an age to have ladyfriends. But I am very much struck in Germany with the pretension of the ladies to singular profundity, which produces a sort of affectation very distasteful to me. It is true one is always much struck with the particular defects of one's own people, because one has naturally suffered from them, and a sore point is easily irritated. From living constantly among literary people, I have got a sort of infinite horror of their natural defects as a class. Sometimes they make me laugh, and, in fact, it is a continual comedy, when one knows the secret strings and springs of the creatures; but sometimes I am so vexed that I could wish reading and writing were abolished, and would rather emigrate to the Caffres or other savages, where literary glory is a thing unheard of. This very morning I have been pestered to death in legislating between two fools, of whom one wanted to fight the other (who is an abbé, doctor, and professor of theology), because the abbé had not quoted him. If one should see it in a comedy, one would think the man overdid his character; but the comedy of life is droller than anything the poets invent. The abbé revenged himself in printing the story, and reminding his enemy that he himself had worn the ecclesiastical cloth until he married—which is a fact; but you may imagine what a fury this specimen of theological venom produced. Isn't it a strange employment to be a juge de paix between these infuriated monsters, kicking up such a dust for such a reason, and pulling caps in so unseemly a manner for Madame Glory?

Master Punch is forbidden here, but we do get commonly a sight of him, because Sir Graves Haughton smuggles him in. The way of doing this is very simple. One has only to fold up the paper so that the title is not seen outside. The post rejects the paper when it sees the title, throwing it in the fire, but they never take the trouble to

open the band, because they have no time for unrolling every day thousands of English papers that come in.

I have not heard of Miss Julia, and am afraid she is frozen on Mount Ararat, and cut off from communication with the lower world. But there is somebody coming, so I must put an end to this scrawl. Yours very sincerely,

J. MOHL.

Among the Mohl-Fauriel papers at the Institut is the following letter, contained in two others, from Miss Clarke to M. Mohl :— *

Si vous n'êtes pas nommé je vous épouserai si vous le désirez, pour montrer à ces vieux pédans que je vous connais mieux en mérite qu'eux et leur singe de ministre, et la suite le leur prouvera. C'est une chose réfléchie que je vous dis, faites vos réflexions et ne vous pressez pas.

This was enclosed in one which said—

Si jamais vous doutez de moi, ou m'en voulez, ouvrez ce billet, écrit un jour où vos affaires allaient mal.

The outside letter of all throws a new light on the relations between Miss Clarke and her two friends. It shows that she had long ago found out that she was only one among the many tender attachments of M. Fauriel, while she was the single absorbing, and, as it proved, the lifelong passion of M.

So much hung upon these letters, that the originals must be given. The following are translations :

·-

I. If you are not appointed, I will marry you, should you wish it, to show those old pedants that I know your merits better than they or their ape of a minister, and the future will prove this. I speak after serious consideration. Reflect seriously on what I say, and do not reply hastily.

2. If ever you doubt me, or are angry with me, open this letter, written one day when fortune was against you.

3. I am not going out, and beg you to come. I wrote the enclosed letter several days ago. I ask you not to open it for a month. Feelings which words cannot express have made me keep it in my bag without giving it to you—and yet I wish you to know what I am; and had you understood me six, or seven, or eight years ago, you would have spared me incalculable pain. But may God forgive you, for you also have been punished enough-too much.

Mohl, who, if he had dared, might have spared much suffering to them both. Here is the letter:

Vendredi, le 4me.

Je ne sors point, et vous prie de venir, il y a plusieurs jours que j'ai écrit la lettre ci-incluse, je vous prie de ne pas l'ouvrir d'ici à un mois. Des sentimens que la parole n'atteint pas me l'ont fait garder dans un sac sans vous la donner, pourtant je veux que vous sachiez quelle je suis-et il y a six ans, ou sept, ou huit, que si vous m'aviez comprise vous m'auriez évité des peines incommensurables-mais que Dieu vous pardonne car vous avez été assez puni, et trop.

M. Mohl did not probably require much time for reflection before accepting the prize which had attracted him for so many years. There is a hint of his change of life in the passage in the following letter about his " Faustus-like cavern." That cavern has often been described to me with much laughter by Madame Mohl-how the books were heaped up, and four carpets laid one on the top of the other, because the dear books might never be disturbed.

MY DEAR MISS HILLY,

May 1, 1847.

I have just been made Professor of Persian Literature at the Collège of France, which is a drawback on my freedom of movements. However, I do not despair of seeing you and yours in the summer. I was to have got this same professorship eight years. ago, but the king chose to give it to M. Taubert, a peer of France, for political reasons. Then it would have been a pleasure to me, but now I care little for it. I put my name on the list because I looked on it as my property. It is a strange thing, this life of ours, where you always get your business done when you are become indifferent to it, or nearly so. The Collège de France is a curious institution, founded by Francis I. against the Sorbonne, and destined to introduce the new branches of learning which the Reform had fostered, as Hebrew, classical Greek, and Latin, etc. From this time it has kept its privileges-is not subject to or connected with the university, and teaches all the sciences which find no room in the teaching which the university gives. Every new science, like

geology, political economy, Chinese hieroglyphics, etc., finds there a home to try to make its way to men's understandings. It is a very beautiful institution, and ought to be the first in the world if it came up to the idea which led to its foundation. It is open to everybody. The most ragged boy may go in, and nobody has a right to ask who he is; and numbers of ladies come to hear the lectures which may interest them. I recollect that even while I was following the lectures of Chinese there attended a lady most regularly, she had a thick green veil, which she kept down (I suppose not to distract us), and nobody has ever seen her face.

I have been interrupted, and this letter has suffered for it; indeed, I can hardly ever write a letter from the beginning to the end. I can compare myself to nobody under heaven but one of those Capuchin friars whom you have seen in Italy, sitting all day long in their confessional, hearing the strange stories of sinners of all sorts, consoling the one and rebuking the other; only my customers are literary people, calling on me to tell me their enmities, the conspirations of their rivals, their plans, and their helpless misery, their inconceivable infatuation, and all the ills which this species is heir to. Unfortunately, I seldom know a remedy for them, and can very seldom convince them that their enemies are not so black and malicious as they suppose. I don't know how I have come to be confessor to so many people; but so it is. And I could tell many a tale of the innermost recesses of literary life, some very laughable, some quite heart-rending. I do not know how it may be in England, where literature is not the business of so large a class as here, and where the interests and the ambition of literary people is not so easily excited as here where your books may make a prime minister, or a prophet, or anything of you. Then we have here a democratical. organization of literary concerns which exists nowhere else. honour and every place is given by the votes of Academies and other bodies, so we are living in eternally the same bustle as Cambridge was in, according to your last letter, for the election of Prince Albert.

Every

We are quiet enough, but all the soldiers, which made the Nicholsons wonder, are required in the provinces for the keeping open the roads for the corn which is brought to market. However, we have fortunately no Ireland.* What can be done with such a country? People speak of bad legislation as the root of all evil This was the year of the potato famine.

there; but I can see nothing in the legislation to explain in any way this intense misery. It is all in the nature of the people. What can you do with a nation in which not one in a hundred is capable of managing his own affairs, and of keeping himself from spending all he has in ostentation or in whiskey? I have known many Irishmen, but only one who did not live in perpetual trouble from want of precaution and the most common foresight, and he was from Belfast, and consequently most likely of Scottish blood.

I have been interrupted, but this time by very unexpected visitors two fine ladies, one a singer, and the other an operadancer from Munich. They brought me a letter, but what I am to do for them is a mystery to me. They looked with astonishment at my Faustus-like cavern, which I must soon leave, being driven out by my books, but which is now in its perfection, and might do for any necromancer. I suppose they gave up instantly any idea of my being able to serve them, and in this they are right. They seem to be very decent people, though, and have very good manners; but what is Hecuba to me? You will find in the last Quarterly an article on arrow-headed inscriptions. You will see from it how these old things rise up and become living again; and we are only in the beginning of these discoveries. Every year will bring something new. I know of two other of these ancient palaces, which I will get the French Government to get dug out, and hope at least one of them will be the palace of a King of India, of which we have until now no specimen.

Layard's discoveries in Nimrood are magnificent, and you will see these next year in the British Museum. They are of Assyrian origin, and he has had the good luck of finding one of them which has been only moderately plundered before it was abandoned, so that he has got quantities of arms and ornaments in bronze and ivory, the last most beautifully carved.

May 7.

This letter will, I think, never come to an end. It has laid on my table I do not know how long; but I had troubles and most miserable anxieties enough since this time. If I had room I should describe to you the last election in the Academy, and how Madame Récamier and her court beat Louis Philippe and his favourite Vatoul, who wished to be elected; and how all the fair ladies in Paris fought this complicated battle, and how my friend Ampère won it. It is