Surely, whether we are, or are not, the result of an immense chain of material progression, we have attained to that idea which preserves alive to all eternity the souls upon which it has once dawned. We have caught hold of the feet of the omnipotent Creator; and to the spirit that once has received the conception, however feeble or remote, of His greatness and goodness, there can be no cessation of the bond thus formed between itself and its great Cause. I cannot write about this; I could not utter in words what I think and feel about it: but it seems to me that if organization, mere development, has reached a pitch at which it becomes capable of divine thoughts, it thenceforth can never be anything less than a creature capable of such conceptions; and if so, then how much more?
Farewell. Love to Dorothy.
Yours ever,
F. A. K.
Orchard Street, Monday, 18th.
I arrived yesterday in town, my dearest Hal, and found your letter waiting for me. The aspect of these, my hired Penates, is comfortable and homelike to me, after living at inns for a fortnight; and the spasmodic and funereal greetings of the nervous Mulliner, and the lugubrious Jeffreys, gladden my spirits with a sense of returning to something that expects me.
About Lady Emily —— and her ethereal confinement: did I not tell you that Mrs. C—— wrote me word from America that Fanny Longfellow had been brought to bed most prosperously under the beneficent influence of ether? at which my dear S—— C—— expresses some anxiety touching the authority of the Book of Genesis, which she thinks may be impaired if women continue, by means of ether, to escape from the special curse pronounced against them for their share in the original sin.
For my part I am not afraid that the worst part of the curse will not abide upon us, in spite of ether; the woman's desire will still be to her husband, who, consequently, will still rule over her. For these (curses or not, as people may consider them), I fear no palliating ether will be found; and till men are more righteous than they are, all creatures subject to them will be liable to suffer misery of one sort or another....
LADY MORLEY. I wonder if I have ever spoken to you of Lady Morley—a kind-hearted, clever woman (who, by the bye, always calls men "the softer sex"), a great friend of Sydney Smith's, whom I have known a good deal in society, and who came to see me just before I left town. In speaking of poor Lady Dacre, and the difficulty she found in accepting her late bereavement, Lady Morley said, "I think people should be very grateful whose misfortunes fall upon them in old age rather than in youth: they're all the nearer having done with them." There was some whimsical paradox in this, but some truth too. An habitual saying of hers (not serious, of course, but which she applies to everything she hears) is: "There's nothing new, nothing true, and nothing signifies." The last time I dined at Lady Grey's a discussion arose between Lady Morley, myself, and some of the other guests, as to how much or how little truth it was right to speak in our usual intercourse with people. I maintained that one was bound to speak the whole truth; so did my friend, Lady G——; Lady F—— said, "Toute verité n'est pas bonne à dire;" and Lady Morley told the following story: "I sat by Rogers at dinner the other day (the poet of memory was losing his, and getting to repeat the same story twice over without being aware that he did so), and he told me a very good story, which, however, before long, he began to repeat all over again; something, however, suggesting to him the idea that he was doing so, he stopped suddenly, and said, 'I've told you this before, haven't I?' And he had, not a quarter of an hour before. Now, ladies, what would you have said? and what do you think I said? 'Oh yes,' said I, 'to be sure: you were beginning to tell it to me when the fish came round, and I'm dying to hear the end of it.'" This was on all hands allowed to have been a most ingenious reply; and I said I thought she deserved to be highly complimented for such graceful dexterity in falsehood: to which she answered, "Oh, well, my dear, it's all very fine; but if ever you get the truth, depend upon it you won't like it"—a retort which turned the laugh completely against me, and sent her ladyship off with flying colors; and certainly there was no want of tolerably severe sincerity in that speech of hers.
Lady Morley's great vivacity of manner and very peculiar voice added not a little to the drollery of her sallies.