Swallowfield, February 1, 1853.

Ah, my dear friend! ask Dr. Holmes what these severe bruises and lacerations of the nerves of the principal joints are, and he will tell you that they are much more slow and difficult of cure, as well as more painful, than half a dozen broken bones. It is now above six weeks since that accident, and although the shoulder is going on favorably, there is still a total loss of muscular power in the lower limbs. I am just lifted out of bed and wheeled to the fireside, and then at night wheeled back and lifted into bed,—without the power of standing for a moment, or of putting one foot before the other, or of turning in bed. Mr. May says that warm weather will probably do much for me, but that till then I must be a prisoner to my room, for that if rheumatism supervenes upon my present inability, there will be no chance of getting rid of it. So "patience and shuffle the cards," as a good man, much in my state, the contented Marquess, says in Don Quixote.... I assure you I am not out of spirits; indeed, people are so kind to me that it would be the basest of all ingratitude if I were not cheerful as well as thankful. I think that in a letter which you must have received by this time, I told you how it came about, and thanked you for the comely book which shows how cosily America lodges my brethren of the quill. Dr. Holmes ought to have been there, and Dr. Parsons, but their time will come and must. Nothing gratifies me more than to find how many strangers, writing to me of my Recollections, mention Dr. Holmes, classing him sometimes with Thomas Davis, sometimes with Praed. If I write another series of Recollections, as, when Mr. May will let me, I suppose I must, I shall certainly include Dr. Parsons....

Has anybody told you the terrible story of that boy, Lord Ockham, Lord Byron's grandson? I had it from Mr. Noel, Lady Byron's cousin-german and intimate friend. While his poor mother was dying her death of martyrdom from an inward cancer,—Mrs. Sartoris (Adelaide Kemble), who went to sing to her, saw her through the door, which was left open, crouching on a floor covered with mattresses, on her hands and knees, the only posture she could bear,—whilst she with the patience of an angel was enduring her long agony, her husband, engrossed by her, left this lad of seventeen to his sister and the governess. It was a dull life, and he ran away. Mr. Noel (my friend's brother, from whom he had the story) knew most of the youth, who had been for a long time staying at his house, and they begged him to undertake the search. Lord Ockham had sent a carpet-bag containing his gentleman's clothes to his father, Lord Lovelace, in London; he was therefore disguised, and from certain things he had said Mr. Noel suspected that he intended to go to America. Accordingly he went first to Bristol, then to Liverpool, leaving his description, a sort of written portrait of him, with the police at both places. At Liverpool he was found before long, and when Mr. Noel, summoned by the electric telegraph, reached that town, he found him dressed as a sailor-boy at a low public-house, surrounded by seamen of both nations, and enjoying, as much as possible, their sailor yarns. He had given his money, £36, to the landlord to keep; had desired him to inquire for a ship where he might be received as cabin-boy; and had entered into a shrewd bargain for his board, stipulating that he should have over and above his ordinary rations a pint of beer with his Sunday dinner. The landlord did not cheat him, but he postponed all engagements under the expectation—seeing that he was clearly a gentleman's son—that money would be offered for his recovery. The worst is that he (Lord Ockham) showed no regret for the sorrow and disgrace that he had brought upon his family at such a time. He has two tastes not often seen combined,—the love of money and of low company. One wonders how he will turn out. He is now in Paris, after which he is to re-enter in Green's ship (he had served in one before) for a twelvemonth, and to leave the service or remain in it as he may decide then. This is perfectly true; Mr. Noel had it from his brother the very day before he wrote it to me. He says that Lady Lovelace's funeral was too ostentatious. Escutcheons and silver coronals everywhere. Lord Lovelace's taste that, and not Lady Byron's, which is perfectly simple. You know that she was buried in the same vault with her father, whose coffin and the box containing his heart were in perfect preservation. Scott's only grandson, too, is just dead of sheer debauchery. Strange! As if one generation paid in vice and folly for the genius of the past. By the way, are you not charmed at the Emperor's marriage? To restore to princes honest love and healthy preference, instead of the conventional intermarriages which have brought epilepsy and idiotism and madness into half the royal families of Christendom! And then the beauty of that speech, with its fine appeals to the best sympathies of our common nature! I am proud of him. What a sad, sad catastrophe was that of young Pierce! I won't call his father general, and I hope he will leave it off. With us it is a real offence to give any man a higher rank than belongs to him,—to say captain, for instance, to a lieutenant,—and that is one of our usages which it would be well to copy. But we have follies enough, God knows; that duchess address, with all its tuft-hunting signatures, is a thing to make Englishwomen ashamed. Well, they caught it deservedly in an address from American women, written probably by some very clever American man. No, I have not seen Longfellow's lines on the Duke. One gets sick of the very name. Henry is exceedingly fond of his little sister. I remember that when he first saw the snow fall in large flakes, he would have it that it was a shower of white feathers. Love to all my dear friends, the W——s, Mrs. Sparks, Dr. Holmes, Mr. Hawthorne. Ever, dearest friend, most affectionately yours,

M.R.M.

(1st March, 1853.)

The numbers for the election of President of France in favor of Louis Napoleon were for against 7119791 1119

Look through the back of this against the candle, or the fire, or any light.

My Very Dear Friend: Having a note to send to Mrs. Sparks, who has sent me, or rather whose husband has sent me, two answers to Lord Mahon, which, coming through a country bookseller, have, I suspect, been some months on the way, I cannot help sending it enclosed to you, that I may have a chat with you en passant,—the last, I hope, before your arrival. If you have not seen the above curious instance of figures forming into a word, and that word into a prophecy, I think it will amuse you, and I want besides to tell you some of the on-dits about the Empress. A Mr. Huddlestone, the head of one of our great Catholic houses, is in despair at the marriage. He had been desperately in love with her for two years in Spain,—had followed her to Paris,—was called back to England by his father's illness, and was on the point of crossing the Channel, after that father's death, to lay himself and £30,000 or £40,000 a year at her feet, when the Emperor stepped in and carried off the prize. To comfort himself he has got a portrait of her on horseback, which a friend of mine saw the other day at his house. Mrs. Browning writes me from Florence: "I wonder if the Empress pleases you as well as the Emperor. For my part, I approve altogether, and none the less that he has offended Austria by the mode of announcement. Every cut of the whip on the face of Austria is an especial compliment to me, or so I feel it. Let him heed the democracy, and do his duty to the world, and use to the utmost his great opportunities. Mr. Cobden and the peace societies are pleasing me infinitely just now in making head against the immorality—that's the word—of the English press. The tone taken up towards France is immoral in the highest degree, and the invasion cry would be idiotic if it were not something worse. The Empress, I heard the other day from high authority, is charming and good at heart. She was brought up at a respectable school at Clifton, and is very English, which does not prevent her from shooting with pistols, leaping gates, driving four in hand, and upsetting the carriage if the frolic requires it,—as brave as a lion and as true as a dog. Her complexion is like marble, white, pale, and pure,—the hair light, rather sandy, they say, and she powders it with gold dust for effect; but there is less physical and more intellectual beauty than is generally attributed to her. She is a woman of very decided opinions. I like all that, don't you? and I like her letter to the press, as everybody must." Besides this, I have to-day a letter from a friend in Paris, who says that "everybody feels her charm," and that "the Emperor, when presenting her at the balcony on the wedding-day, looked radiant with happiness." My Parisian friend says that young Alexandre Dumas is amongst the people arrested for libel,—a thorough mauvais sujet. Lamartine is quite ruined, and forced to sell his estates. He was always, I believe, expensive, like all those French littérateurs. You don't happen to have in Boston—have you?—a copy of "Les Mémoires de Lally Tollendal"? I think they are different publications in defence of his father, published, some in London during the Emigration, some in Paris after the Restoration. What I want is an account of the retreat from Pondicherie. I'll tell you why some day here. Mrs. Browning is most curious about your rappings,—of which I suppose you believe as much as I do of the Cock Lane Ghost, whose doings, by the way, they much resemble.

I liked Mrs. Tyler's letter; at least I liked it much better than the one to which it was an answer, although I hold it one of our best female privileges to have no act or part in such matters.

Now you will be sorry to have a very bad account of me. Three weeks ago frost and snow set in here, and ever since I have been unable to rise or stand, or put one foot before another, and the pain is much worse than at first. I suppose rheumatism has supervened upon the injured nerve. God bless you. Love to all.