"DEAR MR. HAMERTON,—Thank you very much in the name of the English Navy for so kindly assisting us to repel the gross insinuations of 'Truth,' also for the extracts, and the trouble you have taken for us. I only regret that you should have drawn 'Truth' on you.
"I have shown your letter to the Admiral and all the officers here, who are much pleased with all that has been done.
"Again thanking you, believe me,
"Yours truly,
"H. RAWSON."
Mr. Hamerton considered himself well rewarded for his exertions by the tokens of warm approval he received both from England and from France.
"French and English" did not meet with the success it deserved, though it was published in England, America, and France, and in the Tauchnitz edition. The author had entertained few illusions about the fate of the work, for some reasons which he has himself explained in private letters, and in his prefaces to the book. He once wrote in answer to a letter from M. Raillard:—
"Vous lisez mes livres, un peu sans doute pour faire plaisir au vieux Papa, mais je crois réellement qu'ils vous seront utiles à cause de la simplicité du style et de la clarté que j'ai toujours cherchées. Ces qualités m'ont gagné de nombreux lecteurs, mais en même temps m'ont privé de toute réputation de profondeur. En Angleterre on classe tous les écrivains clairs, comme écrivains superficiels."
But he said in the preface to the Tauchnitz edition:—
"The kind of success most gratifying to me after writing a book of this kind would be to convert some readers to my own method, or rule, in the formation of opinion, whether it concerns one side or the other.