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only on contemporary documents, so rare at the period of Spanish history which he has chiefly examined thus far. . . . . I shall be very curious to see the continuation of his work, for this first volume —1849—comes down only through the Chronicle and old poems on the Cid, concerning which his discussions are very acute, if not always satisfactory.
You keep the run of our politics from the ‘Advertiser,’ . . . . and in that case you have not missed reading Webster's letter to Hulsemann, the Austrian Charge, on the subject of the agent we sent towards Hungary, during their troubles.
I refer to it, therefore, only to say that it is satisfactory to the whole of this country, without distinction of party. . . . .
I had a letter from Stirling last steamer.
He has been in Russia, and talks of coming here at some indefinite time.
Lord Carlisle's lecture about America is very flattering to some of us, and for one I feel grateful to him for his notice of me, but I think its tone is not statesmanlike. . . . . However, it seems to have given general satisfaction in England, and I suppose the rest is no concern of ours.
Let me hear from you at your leisure, of which you must have some in the long evenings.
Yours faithfully,
To Sir Charles Lyell, Bart.
Boston, June 24, 1851.
my dear Lyell,—There is no use in trying to stir up our people to make a decent show of themselves at the Crystal Palace; they won't do it. As soon as I received your letter of May 20, I wrote an article for the ‘Courier,’ which was copied into other papers, and our friend Hillard went to the Secretary of our Commission about it. But the answer was prompt all round: ‘The French, the Russians, and the Germans send their goods to England as a means of advertising them all over the world; we look for no sale out of our own country.
Why should we take the trouble and expense to advertise abroad?’
One very ingenious person, who has invented a most extraordinary machine for weaving Brussels and other carpets, said he was very desirous to send a working model to the Exhibition, but found it would cost him $5,000 to put it up there and run it for four months; too much, he thought, for the price of such a whistle.
