1861 December 17

The news first brought by the Europa
and City of Washington makes a good
preface to the sketch of some British
Statesmen which you will find in
the accompanying magazine. Lord
Palmerston is described, in the main,
correctly. full justice is done to
Mr Gladstone and somewhat less that
that same to Mr Whiteside. Mr
Disraeli, being one of the children of
Israel, is peered at through green specta=
=cles by a Boston contributor. This
gentleman makes a mistake which
I have marked. Lord Palmerston may
have been Foreign Secretary five times
or ofetner; but his present station after
half a century of labor and management
was first attained in 1855.

[page 2]
The Thanksgiving story showed
a remarkable power of description
and of appreciation as well,
if that can be counted among the
positive mental forces. Yankees
have a perennial source of fun in the
contemplation of their own peculiarities,
and they always remind me of the ne=
=groes who flock to Christy's & Opera
House.
My last red cross is affixed
to a paper by James Russell Lowell,
who is more intelligible in prose than
in verse You will like, as I do,
his fearless candor, and his love of
equal and exact justice, while you
will perhaps admire, as I do not,
the radicalism and consequent vener=
=ation for the redhanded rebel of
1648, with which he sees fit
to garnish the peroration.
I will send you, in a day or
two, a printed copy of athe papers
Relating to Foreign Affairs just
submitted to Congress. The racier
morceaux will be marked in the index
and margin.

Discontinue for your
own sake, if for no one else's those
cheerless interviews with the moon.
Diana loves to see her cold light
in a maiden's eyes, but the pale
reflection, though soft as its mother
fair, brings only pain to warm
breasts that throb under the burden
and heat of the day, but hale, with
unflinching faith and courage, that
which is on earth the best type of
eternity--which cannot be conquered--
--cannot wear out.
You were not born to play in
real life the role of Norma even
in the first Act. All the world's
a stage, (not an omnibus, thank heaven!)

[page 4]
but I cannot fancy you a Druid
Priestess, or trace, in Cliftons
moon-lit piazza, the faintest
resemblance to Stonehenge.
Yours ever faithfully,
Walter S Hunter

Miss Mary Ellet
Clifton

Mary Virginia Ellet, 1839-1930, was the daughter of Charles Ellet, Jr., 1810-1872, designer of the first suspension bridge in the U.S. who helped developed the U.S. ram fleet on the Mississippi River during the Civil War. She later married William Daniel Cabell, 1834-1904, and was a founding officer the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution


The identity of her correspondent, Walter S. Hunter, is unknown.
MSS 276