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say is quite private. A report has reached me that Mr. Webster may visit the British Provinces in his vacation.
I have also heard that he is fond of fishing.
Now, if you have an opportunity, pray say that I shall be delighted to see him, either officially or incognito, whichever he may prefer.
If the latter, I will go into the woods with him myself, and show him what sport can be got. Salmon fishing is uncertain in August, but good trout fishing, with the chance of salmon, I could insure.
Observe, I may be mistaken altogether, but nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see him, if he have any notion of seeking relaxation among the “Blue Noses.”
’
I suppose Sir Edmund is wrong, for I think you will hardly have vacation enough to go so far, though it is barely possible you may feel yourself to be driven over the line to get any vacation at all. At any rate, nobody but yourself can give me the means of answering the question . . . .
I cannot tell you what strange thoughts my present position gives me; mingled up, as they are, with recollections of journeyings through the woods, and the ‘Indian Charity School,’ and President Wheelock's cocked hat at the end of them.
Just half a century ago this month, stage-coaches being yet unknown hereabouts, it took a pair of horses six mortal days to carry my father and mother from Boston to Hanover, saddle-horses being put in requisition to help us along part of the time.
Now, I am living with my family in a grand hotel, capable of containing comfortably a hundred persons, with a nice private parlor, a luxurious table, silver forks, champagne, and good carriages and horses, as in Boston, for drives . . . . . It is, on a small scale, one of the thousand exemplifications of what you so magnificently set forth about the whole country, on the 4th, at Washington.
But it is to me, as it would be to you, if you were here, a very striking one. . . . .
Yours faithfully,
To Sir Charles Lyell.
Boston, November 25, 1851.
my dear Lyell,—I have been attending a good many lectures of a course now going on at the Lowell Institute, by Dr. Dewey, and they have made me think often of you and of your projects for next year.
Dewey's lectures—which might make another Bridgewater Treatise—are very brilliant and able, and keep together an intelligent audience that fills the hall.
But he has one advantage, which 