Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/14

afford them any shelter, it seemed to me but a paltry affectation of delicacy. I might plead the authority of English travellers in the United States; but if wrong, no authority justifies it; and if right, it needs none. I have confined my notices strictly to public characters—to gallery portraits; for so such persons as Mr. Rogers, and even that most refined and delicate of gentlewomen. Joanna Baillie, may be strictly called, after the full exhibitions in Moore's Life of Byron and Lockhart's Life of Scott. I have violated no confidence, for none was reposed in me. My opportunities of social intercourse were few and brief; and I should have omitted these slight records of them, but for the wish to transmit to my friends at home my delightful impressions of those to whom we all owe many happy hours. Perhaps my anxiety is superfluous; the King of Ashantee was anxious to know what the English people said of him, but I never heard that the English people cared to know what the King of Ashantee said of them!