ter. I had received a great number of flowers to-day, and I was thus enabled to give a little bouquet of flowers to one and another lady in company. This flower-distribution pleased me greatly, because it furnished me with an opportunity of saying, or, at all events, of looking a little kindness to many a one. And this is nearly the only thing I can return for all the kindness which I receive here.

Among the guests of the evening I remember, in particular, an agreeable Mrs. Osgood, one of the best poetesses of the United States, not only for her beautiful, speaking eyes, her manner and style of expression, both so full of soul, but also because she placed in my hands her fan, saying that it must remind me of "Fanny." All the ladies in this country use fans, and flutter and maneuver a great deal with them; but I as yet had not furnished myself with one. I remember also, in particular, a gentleman with splendid eyes, and frank, cordial manner, whom I wished I could have had more conversation with, for there was evidently both genius and heart in him. He is one of the most celebrated preachers of the Episcopal Church of New York, and is named Hawks. This was as yet the most entertaining evening party I had been to in this country.

Later. I have now been to church with Mrs. Kirkland, and have heard one of the best sermons I ever heard: no narrow-minded sectarian view of religion and life, but one in which the church-a regular cathedral church-arched itself over life, as the dome of heaven arches itself over earth and all its creatures; a large-minded sermon, such as properly befits the New World, that great new home for all the people, and all the races of the world. Bergfalk was also among the audience, and was as much struck as I was with the sermon and the preacher, Mr. Bellows.

I am now going to dine with my friends, the Downings, at the Astor House; and the evening I spend with a family of the name of S. To-morrow I go to a grand dinner, and in the evening to the opera.

Thursday. Is there in this world any thing more wearisome, more dismal, more intolerable, more indigestible, more stupefying, more unbearable, any thing more calcu lated to kill both soul and body, than a great dinner at New York? For my part, I do not believe there is. People sit down to table at half-past five or six o'clock; they are sitting at table at nine o'clock, sitting and being served with the one course after another, with the one indigestible dish after another, eating and being silent. I have never heard such a silence as at these great dinners. In order not to go to sleep, I am obliged to eat, to eat without being hungry, and dishes, too, which do not agree with me. And all the while I feel such an emotion of impatience and wrath at this mode of wasting time and God's good gifts, and that in so stupidly wearisome a manner, that I am just ready to fling dish and plate on the floor, and repay hospitality by a sermon of rebuke, if I only had courage enough. But I am silent, and suffer, and grumble, and scold in silence. Not quite beautiful this; but I can not help it! I was yesterday at one of these great dinners-a horrible feast! Two elderly gentlemen, lawyers, sat opposite me, sat and dozed while they opened their mouths to put in the delicacies which were offered to them. At our peasant-weddings, where people also sit three hours at table, there are, nevertheless, talk and toasts, and gifts for the bride and bridegroom, and fiddlers to play in every dish; but here one has nothing but the meat. And the dinners in Denmark! I can not but think of them, with their few but excellent dishes, and animated, cheerful guests, who merely were sometimes too loud in their zeal for talking, and making themselves heard; the wit, the joke, the stories, the toasts, the conversations, that merry, free, lively laisser aller, which distinguishes Danish social life; in truth, it was Champagne-Champagne for soul and body at the entertainments there!-the last at which I was present in Eu

rope before I came hither. But these entertainments here! they are destined to hell, as Heiberg says, in "A Soul after Death," and they are called "the tiresome." And they ought to be introduced into the Litany. On this occasion, however, Fortune was kind to me, and placed by my side the interesting clergyman, Dr. Hawks, who during dinner explained to me, with his beautiful voice, and in his lucid and excellent manner, his ideas regarding the remains in Central America, and his hypothesis of the union of the two continents of America and Asia in a very remote age. It was interesting to hear him, and interesting would it be to me to see and hear more of this man, whose character and manner attract me. He also is among those who have invited me to his house and home, but whose invitation I am obliged to decline, and in this case I feel that it is a renunciation and loss.

As he led me from the dinner-table, I proposed to him to preach against such dinners. But he shook his head, and said, with a smile, "Not against dinners, Miss Bremer!"

Gentlemen, even the best of them, are decidedly too fond of eating.

When at night I went home with Anne Lynch, the air was delicious, and the walk through this night air and in the quiet streets-the causeways here are broad, and as smooth as a house floor-very agreeable. The starry heavens-God's town-stood with streets and groups of glittering dwellings in quiet grandeur and silence above us. And here, in that quiet, starlight night, Anne Lynch unfolded all her soul to me, and I saw an earnest and profound depth, bright with stars, such as I scarcely expected in this gay being, who, butterfly-like, flutters through the life of society as in its proper element. I had always thought her uncommonly agreeable, had admired the ability with which she, without affluence, and who, alone by her talents and personal endowments, had made for herself and

for her estimable mother, an independence, and by which she had become the gathering point for the literary and the most cultivated society of New York, who assembled once a week in her drawing-room. I had admired also her inoffensive wit, her child-like gayety and good humor, and especially liked a certain expression in her eye, as if it were seeking for something, "something a long, long way off," even in her apparently dissipated, worldly life; in a word, I had liked her, had a deep interest in her-now I loved her. She is one of the birds of Paradise which skims over the world without soiling its wings with its dust. Anne Lynch, with her individuality, and her position in society, is one of the peculiar figures of the New World.

The evening and night parties which I see here, are, for the rest, not to compare with the most beautiful of the kind which I have seen in Sweden and Denmark. Here there is not space, nor yet flowers enough, nor air enough. Above every thing, I lack costume, character in dress. The ladies are handsome, are well and tastefully dressed, but they are too much like one another. The gentlemen are all dressed alike. This can not here be otherwise, and it is good and right at the bottom. But it is not good for picturesque effect. Nor does it seem to me that the mental individuality is sufficiently marked to produce an outward impression. But to this subject I must return.

At the opera this evening, I saw a large and handsome building; splendid toilets in the boxes, and on the stage a prima donna, as Desdemona, against whom I have nothing to object, excepting that she could love such a disagreeable Othello. The music, the singing, and the scenery all tolerably good (with the exception of Othello), but nothing very good. One might say, Ce n'est pas ça ! but there was nothing which would make one think C'est ça ! like a tone, a glance, a gesture of Jenny Lind.

A lecture was delivered last Sunday evening, in the same hall where I had heard Channing, on Christian So

cialism, by Mr. Henry James, a wealthy, and, as it is said, a good man. His doctrine was that which recognizes no right but that of involuntary attraction, no law of duty but that of the artist's worship of beauty, no God but that of the pantheist, every where and yet nowhere-a doctrine of which there is no lack of preachers either in Sweden. After the conclusion of the discourse, which was given extempore, with accordant life and flashing vivacity, Channing arose and said, that "if the doctrine which we had just heard enunciated were Christian Socialism, then he did not agree with it; that the subject ought to be searched to the bottom; that he considered the views of the speaker to be erroneous, and that on the following Sunday he would take up the question in that place, and show them in what the errors of these views consisted."

The thing has excited attention, because both speakers are fellow-laborers in a newspaper called "The Spirit of the Age," and both are men of distinguished talent. I am glad, as I shall thus have an opportunity of hearing Channing before I leave New York, and that on one of the most interesting subjects of the day and period.

The next letter which you will receive from me will be from the homes of New England. Next Monday I set off with the S.'s. One of the first homes in which I shall rest after the festival of Thanksgiving-day, will be that of the excellent and noble poet Lowell. The invitation came to me from himself and his wife, while I was with the Downings. As yet I have scarcely done any thing but go from one house to another, interesting, but troublesome, for one must always be charged, if not exactly with genius, at least with good-humor and strength to see company, and to be agreeable, when one often feels one's self so weary as not to be good for any thing else than to sit in a corner and be silent-or spin. But, thank God for all that is good and joy-giving! And how much more joyfully

should I spin this life of festivals and living impressions