[London,] 7 January 1858 

Dear Frederic, 

I received your article” at 5 o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. It is 
HIGHLY AMUSING and will delight the Yankees. The news from India, 
by the by, is no longer quite so favourable to the worthy English. 
Poor Havelock! 

I have definitely not had your letter about Lassalle.‘ So it has 
either got held up somewhere in Manchester or has been 
intercepted down here.” 

Lupus’ letter to the family, who send you their regards, Has 
PRODUCED A GREAT SENSATION, 

Pieper was here during the Christmas holidays. He arrived in a 
state of alcoholic remorse and was more vapid and boring Than 
ever. The older the fellow grows the worse he becomes. He seems 
to have acquired the pleasant habit of drinking first thing in the 
morning, not tea or coffee, but a pint (or) stour, which gives him a 
sheep’s EYE for the rest of the day. Indeed, the combination of 
dilettantism and sententiousness, fadaise’ and pedantry makes him 
ever harder to stomach. And, as often in the case of such laddies, 

a C, von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, Vol. 1, Book 2, Chapter 3. - > F. Engels, ‘The Siege 
and Storm of Lucknow’. - ¢ See this volume, p. 240. - 4 vapidity 

there lurks, beneath an apparently sunny temperament, much 
irritability, moodiness and crapulous despondency. He has pre- 
sented the children with two daguerreotypes of his charming 
person which are truly sublime and might be entitled ‘Pieper with 
countenance exposed’. Both confected on the very morning of his 
arrival by rail in London. The first, still drunk with sleep, 4 Most 
ABJECT PICTURE OF MENTAL AND MORAL DEJECTION: great, big mouth, flaccid 
jowl, blurred, sprawling features, in his eyes a stupendous EXPRESSION 
or Nothingness. In the 2nd our friend had already pulled himself 
together and remembered that he was the handsome and aimable 
Pieper. It is the awakening of complacency and its victory over 
LITER DEGRADATION. The first portrait——- Pieper as HE 1s, the 2nd as HE 
APPEARS TO HIMSELF and the world in general. As little Jenny aptly 
remarked, all that was wanting to put the fellow in a nutshell was 
his drama, Wauar 1s tHE Matter? 

I enclose an interesting document which the Urquhartites, with 
that IMPERTURBABLE importunity of theirs, have extracted from the 
Board of Trade.” In addition to the sap state of England’s balance 
of trade during the past 3 years, it will show you inter alia how 
much money was being made by Prussia at the time of the Russian 
war; further, that our Hansa towns are aT THE HEAD Of those regions 
whose balance of trade favours England. 

The momentary vv in the crisis is, or so it seems to me, most 
advantageous to our interests—Pparty interests, I] mean. Even in 
1848, after the first lull, England suffered some very severe blows 
at 2 or 3 intervals, and at that time the crater had already shifted 
from where it had been in April 1847, etc. 

The ‘Neapolitan Question’,’” which has caused earnest politi- 
cians such a lot of head-scratching, has now been resolved by the 
EARTHQUAKE IN A MOST DELIGHTFUL MANNER. At least that’s what the 
POT-HOUSE POLITICIANS OF THE Morninc ADVERTISER Say. 

You won’t forget to send the Guardian, will your 

Above all I beg you to take care of your health. Times will get 
better and will make considerable claims on your sopy. So temper it 
and see that it comes to no harm. 

Salut. 

Your 
K. M. 

Apropos. In his last number of the Pionier Heinzen remarks 
that, while it was quite comprehensible that the stultified. workers 
in Germany should have been deluded by two sophists into 
believing they formed a distinct class because they plied a plane, it 

was altogether too much of a good thing when, as now, the cry of 
class was raised among the workers at every meeting in America! 
He shouts about the obfuscation of the masses, who are not 
susceptible of wisdom. Proclaims ‘spiritual revolution’ and, in 
opposition to the class prophets, a new triumvirate— Goethe, 
G. St.-Hilaire and Karl Heinzen!!! 

In recent weeks the Crédit mobilier has pushed up the price 
of its shares to an exceptional height by the Announcement OF A DIVIDEND 
OF 25 P.C., THIS TIME undoubtedly paid out of capital.