20O A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, xrv 



for la gloire, and it makes one ashamed of Louis Philippe 

 for giving in to such baseness as bringing the body from 

 St Helena and making a sort of saint of him. I should like 

 to know what impression the book makes in France. Some 

 people (F. Galton) are of opinion that truth or falsehood in 

 a nation is merely a question of geography, and that the 

 nations who have not got the article do pretty well without 

 it. I think France shows the contrary. There is no national 

 value for truth, and Napoleon I employed the most elaborate 

 system of lies by means of Fouche to gain his ends the 

 letters are now extant. 



Fanny Allen to her great-niece Henrietta Darwin. 



HEYWOOD, TENET, Dec. Sth [1870]. 



I must send you a barren letter, my dear Henrietta, 

 except of love, to thank you for your most pleasant letter of 

 last week. A visit from you would give me pure joy when- 

 ever the time comes that you have leisure; and that you 

 have an inclination to come fills me with gratitude and even 

 some surprise, as age is not attractive, as the old song goes, 

 ' crabbed age and youth " and yet I am checked by the 

 recollection of the reception and pleasant time (too short) 

 that I passed at Down this autumn. [What harm] la gloire 

 has done to poor France. I can scarcely bear to read her 

 disasters, and it makes me hate the Germans, who are 

 wallowing in her slaughter. Oh, that a chasse-pot could hit 

 Bismarck. . . . 



I am surprised also, as you, at Snow's " low view " of the 

 Eastern Q., now happily settled; she has been led astray, as 

 Lord Palmerston says so many are, by analogies. I believe 

 I should be with her as to private engagements, that is 

 between man and woman, which stands on a different 

 footing to that of all other, because the fulfilment might 

 cause the misery of the two. Francis Horner, who was 

 called ' Cato ' by his intimates, maintained that that en- 

 gagement should also be considered inviolate but between 



