Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

To Francis G. Shaw.

I have read “The Countess of Rudolstaat.” It seems to me an excellent translation ; but I think, as I thought of it in French, that it is less attractive than “Consuelo.” I doubt whether even its being a continuation of that story will make it sell so well. It is replete with beautiful thought and high aspirations; but even to me, who sympathize with the aspirations, it is tedious. I am sorry that I am so wicked, but Albert, with his Hussites and Invisibles, is a bore to me, from beginning to end. I don't know what is the matter with me, but all that German part of the story has something about it cold and blue and cloudy. It chills me like walking in caverns. I long for the sunny sky of Italy again. However, I am glad the story leaves them tramping through the free forests to the sound of guitar and violin. There is something pleasant in that. I would not mind having it for my heaven, with rosy children and the man I loved, provided he was not a Hussite; which, by the way, he would not be likely to be, if I loved him. I suppose the trouble is that I am now wholly in the dispensation of art, and therefore theologians and reformers jar upon me. Even in music I love better the production of Catholic composers. In Protestant music thought predominates over feeling too much.