612 TRAVEL IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. [1871, 
up here, and take up a vast deal of my time. But it 
is enjoyable work, as they are the pick of a dozen out 
of fifty or sixty of the preceding year. 
March 28, 1871. 
. L hope, with you, that the Domingo annexation 
will oak down. But Grant is working for Cuba 
too, and that is worse than the other; ignorant blacks 
are better than Creole Spaniards to deal with. 
TO R. W. CHURCH. 
February 27, 1871. 
. There are so many things I wanted to write 
ahont your chureh (for which it was shabby of me 
not to remember and send you a contribution, in a 
small way) and the reopening services of which you 
sent us a newspaper account; your “ Anselm,” which 
we read aloud in our deliberate way, on successive 
Sunday evenings, when not interrupted, and very 
much enjoyed; I think the later chapters most; per- 
haps because we got more interested as we went on, 
perhaps, too, the narrative flows on with a more free 
movement in the later than in the earlier chapters. 
Then there is this wonderful German-French war, 
which is only now closing, if it be the close, in such 
bitter humiliation of the French as no Frenchman 
could ever imagine possible, nor any but a German 
contemplate without deep sorrow and pity: all their 
hard measures of former generations meted out to 
them again, to this one hapless generation, in a way 
that till now it could never have dreamed of. For 
long years France must play a secondary political 
part, which of itself will be a bitter thing, we may 
hope a wholesome thing; and when with long care 
