Combe Hurst, Surrey: July 15.
Now I am here I find the case is altered a good deal. Still I like America best; and, but for the greater security which one has in a fixed salary, would give up all thought of staying here at once. At least I might take the place for a time. It is a temptation, if I am to live the rest of my life chez vous, to secure another year’s schooling on this side first; πολλὰ δὲ διδασκόμενος, in short.
I like America all the better for the comparison with England on my return. Certainly I think you are more right than I was willing to admit about the position of the lower classes here. I hope you will be able to get along without anything like it, and in any case you have a great blessing in the mere chance of that. Such is my first reimpression. However, it will wear off soon enough, I dare say; so you must make the most of my admission. Thackeray, they tell me, is full of the kind-heartedness and generousness of the Americans, and is faithful to his purpose of writing no book.
July 20, 1853.
The thing is done; and I am to try my hand in this place. I go to the Education Office on Monday next. With the prospect of being able to marry within the year, I could hardly do otherwise. Yet I could not venture with any comfort without the prospect of America beyond.
To the same.
Council Office: August 29, 1853.
Really, I may say I am only just beginning to recover my spirits after returning from the young, and hopeful, and humane republic, to this cruel, unbelieving, inveterate old monarchy. There are deeper waters of ancient knowledge and experience about one here, and one is saved from the temptation of flying off into space, but I think you have beyond all question the happiest and best country going. Still the political talk of America, such as one hears it here, is not always true to the best intentions of the country is it?
Everybody is away from town, except a few stray lawyers and newspaper contributors. I took a long walk yesterday, calling at Highgate, on the Horners, with a young Morning Chronicler, son of the Vicar of Conway, a first-class man at Oxford, and Fellow of University. We went on beyond Highgate to a place called Muswell Hill, and thence near Colney Hatch, near the Great Northern Railway, and across the course of the New River to Southwell, where we got some luncheon, and then came back to Hornsey, where we got an omnibus, after walking from 12.30 to 5.
I met the other day, at the Horners’, Murray, the ci-devant American, just come from Egypt, and starting for Berne, where he is to have office: he is really very American. The Pulskys came in in the evening. I have met Mr. Pulsky three times in the last twelve months perhaps—once in England before I came away; then at Mrs. Howe’s, Boston, with you; and again yesterday, chez Mrs. Horner. We meet with the utmost unconcern under the oddest changes of circumstances; it is really very cosmopolitan.