The Hibberts are here, and the house full, light, and warm. Time goes on well. I do all I can to love the country, and endeavour to believe those poeti-

* Mrs. Sydney had been seriously ill, and he had been anxious she should try change of air.

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cal lies which I read in Rogers and others, on the subject; which said deviations from truth were, by Rogers, all written in St. James’s-place.

Pray say all that is kind on my part to Miss Poulter, and express how much flattered I am by her present. I have no imagination myself, but am deeply in admiration of those who have; pray beg that we may meet as old friends, and embrace wherever we meet. I shall be in town the 17th of February. The Hibberts have suddenly left us, and we are in a state of collapse. We are all pretty well, my asthma excepted. Ever, dear G., affectionately yours,

I quite agree with you as to the horrors of correspondence. Correspondences are like small-clothes

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before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.

That episode of Julia is much too long. Your incidents are remarkable for their improbability. A boy goes on board a frigate in the middle of the night, and penetrates to the captain’s cabin without being seen or challenged. Susan climbs into a two-pair-of-stairs window to rescue two grenadiers. A gentleman about to be murdered, is saved by rescuing a woman about to be drowned, and so on. The language is easy, the dialogue natural. There is a great deal of humour; the plot is too complicated. The best part of the book is Mr. and Mrs. Ayton; but the highest and most important praise of the novel is that you are carried on eagerly, and that it excites and sustains a great interest in the event, and therefore I think it a very good novel, and will recommend it.

It is in vain that I study the subject of the Scotch Church. I have heard it ten times over from Murray, and twenty times from Jeffrey, and I have not the smallest conception what it is about. I know it has something to do with oatmeal, but beyond that I am in utter darkness. Everybody here is turning Puseyite. Having worn out my black gown, I preach in my surplice; this is all the change I have made, or mean to make.

There seems to be in your letter a deep-rooted love of the amusements of the world. Instead of the ever gay Murray and the never silent Jeffrey, why do you not cultivate the Scotch clergy and the elders and professors? I should then have some hopes of you.

Many thanks, my dear Lady Grey, for your inquiries. Mrs. Sydney is better than she has been for a long time; I have no gout, but am suffering from inflamed eyes, proceeding from much reading and writing. Reading and writing, God knows, to very little use, but resorted to in the country from not knowing what else to do.

I read Guizot’s ‘Washington’ in the summer. Nothing can be better, more succinct, more judicious, more true, more just; but I have done with reviewing. I will write when I have collected some news for you in London. I have read ‘Susan Hopley.’ The incidents are improbable, but the book took me on, and I kept reading it.

Answer this letter, dear Milnes, by retum of post, or you shall have a poor time of it when I arrive.

I am very much obliged by your kindness in procuring for me the papier chimique. Pray let me know what I am in your debt: it is best to be scrupulous and punctilious in trifles. I should be very unhappy about Macleod and America, if I had not impressed upon myself, in the course of a long life, that there is always some misery of this kind hanging over us, and that being unhappy does no good. I console myself with Doddridge’s Exposition and ‘The Scholar Armed,’ to say nothing of a very popular book, ‘The Dissenter Tripped up.’

I will not receive you on these terms, but postpone you for safer times. I cannot blame you; but, seriously, dinners are destroyed by the inconveniences of a free Government. I have filled up your place, and bought your book.

At the sight of ——, away fly gaiety, ease, care-

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lessness, happiness. Effusions are checked, faces are puckered up; coldness, formality, and reserve are diffused over the room, and the social temperature falls down to zero. I could not stand it. I know you will forgive me, but my constitution is shattered, and I have not nerves for such an occurrence.

Did you never hear of persons who have an aversion to cheese? to cats? to roast hare? Can you reason them out of it? Can you write them out of it? Would it be of any use to mention the names of mongers who have lived in the midst of cheese? Would it advance your cause to insist upon the story of Whittington and his Cat?

As for you, dear Mrs. ——, I have a sincere regard for you, and that you well know. I am truly sorry you are going. Mrs. Sydney and I dine out together, and will both come to you after, if possible, or if impossible. Excuse all this nonsense.

I am very much obliged by your reserving a place for me, but I have a party of persons who are coming

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to breakfast with me; all very common persons, I am ashamed to say, who see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and trust to the olfactory nerves to discriminate filth from fragrance. Pray come to us on Thursday, and (oh, Milnes!) save the country!

I had a slight attack of fever, which kept me in bed for two nights, and was followed by a slight attack of gout. I am now tolerably well for a person who is never quite well. We spent two or three days at the Archbishop of York’s, at Nuneham. There were Lord and Lady Burghersh, Rogers, and Granville Vernon: his daughter is a mass of perfections. I am glad your girl likes me. Give my love to her. I do not despair one day of convincing her of the superiority of the pavement over grass; but she is charming, and as fresh-minded as a sunbeam just touching the earth for the first time.

The devil has left me, dear Mrs. Grote, and I can walk. I am as proud of the new privilege of walking as Mr. Grote would be of a peerage; but I will not abuse it, as I have done before. * * * I have an unpleasant feeling today, and upon thinking what it is, I find that you are out of London; therefore the quantity of intelligent matter caring about, and understanding, and loving me, is sensibly diminished. * * * Tell me if you will come to my breakfast on Saturday.

I have been today to see the cartoons, and I am quite delighted with them. I think Hammick is a tyrant, if he will not let you go. You will be able to see them perfectly well. I had no conception there was so much genius, so much cartoonery, such a power of grouping, and such accuracy of drawing, in the country. I never was more pleased; and I will never look again at an oil painting, except it should be of you, and that will excite in me all the sentiments of regard, respect, and gratitude I feel for the original.

May I drink tea with you the 15th? (it is not Milnes writing, but Sydney Smith), but may I? It will be a great pleasure to me, if not inconvenient to you.

I thank you sincerely for the Poems, which I will not only read, but sing. You have lent me also Cobbet’s Advice to Young Men, a book therefore well suited to my time of life.

I enjoyed my visit at Nuneham very much. It gave me great pleasure to see the best of Archbishops in the best of health and spirits. Your niece Marianne pleased me very much. She has a volume of good qualities; in short, I was pleased with everybody and displeased with nobody, and yet I had the gout all the time, and often painfully; but principally, dear Georgiana, I was pleased with you, because you are always kind and obliging to your old and sincere friend,

I hope that Lord Grey and you are continuing in robust health. We are tolerably well here; the gout is never far off, though not actually present: it is the only enemy that I do not wish to have at my feet.

I hear Morpeth is going to America, a resolution I think very wise, and which I should decidedly carry into execution myself, if I were not going to Heaven.

We have had divers people at Combe Florey, but

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none whom you would particularly care about. How many worlds there are in this one world! We are just nine hours from door to door by the railroad. The Gally Knights left Combe Florey after nine o’clock, and were in Grosvenor-street before six. I call this a very serious increase of comfort. I used to sleep two nights on the road; and to travel with a pair of horses is miserable work. I dare say the railroad has added ten per cent. to the value of property in this neighbourhood.

We are in great alarm here for the harvest. It is all down, and growing as it stands. It is Whig weather, and favourable to John Russell’s speeches on the Corn Laws. Remember me very kindly to Lord Grey and Georgiana, and believe me your steady and affectionate friend,

I thank you for your very kind letter, which gave to Mrs. Sydney and to myself much pleasure, and carried us back agreeably into past times. We are both tolerably well, bulging out like old houses, but with no immediate intention of tumbling down. The country is in a state of political transition, and the shabby are preparing their consciences and opinions for a tack.

I think all our common friends are doing well. Some are fatter, some more spare, none handsomer;

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but, such as they are, I think you will see them all again. But pray do you ever mean to see any of us again? or do you mean to end your days at Rome? a town, I hear, you have entirely enslaved, and where, in spite of your Protestantism, you are omnipotent. Your Protestantism (but I confess that reflection makes me melancholy)—your attachment to the clergy generally—the activity of your mind—the Roman Catholic spirit of proselytism—all alarm me. I am assured they will get hold of you, and we shall lose you from the Church of England. Only promise me that you will not give up, till you have subjected their arguments to my examination, and given me a chance of reply: tell them that there is un Canonico dottissimo to whom you have pledged your theological faith. Excuse my zeal; it is an additional proof of my affection.

There is an end of all earthly Whiggism, and that unfortunate class of men are getting into holes and corners as fast as possible. Some are taking orders,

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some are going to the Continent, some to America, some going over to Peel, some to Jerusalem. I think —— very likely to marry a Circassian, a large convex lady, filling up great space morally and physically. He is an ambitious man, though he looks as if his brethren had just sold him to the Ishmaelite merchants.

Mr. —— seems to be the most important man north of the Humber. How can it be otherwise, dear Georgiana, with such felicities in the pulpit as “the brilliant reptile’s polished fang”? Massillon has nothing equal to this.

We have had a great deal of company. Of all the saints, I hate La Trappe the most: I believe he has been canonized. I wrote to W——, at Plymouth, conceiving him to be among the philosophers, of course, and not believing that an acid and an alkali would combine without him. Having received no answer from him, I imagined he had either quitted the world or the Established Church; or that he was composing a pamphlet against Dr. Simon Magus the ——. My kind regards to him.

We are come here for a few days; it is very lovely,

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and very stupid. Your excursion to Brittany will be very pleasant, but not for the reasons you give. I have no idolatry for Madame de Sévigné; she had merely a fine epistolary style. There is not a page of Madame de Staël where there is not more thought, and very often, thoughts as just as they are new.

I do not believe that Peel had anything to do, as some of the Whigs believe, with the shooting at Lord

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Howick; however, I am very glad he survives, and is returned to Parliament, where, from his abilities and station, he has such an undoubted right to be. I am glad to find you are all so well. I am not ill, but should be much better if I lived in a colder climate. Lady Georgiana is one of the best persons in the world, and is always sure to do what is right.

I see Mr. —— has been fighting the Puseyites. I am sorry for it, because, as his sincere friend, I wish he would neither speak nor write. He is a thoroughly amiable, foolish, learned man, and had better bring himself as little into notice as possible.

Pray read the first volume of Elphinstone’s ‘India.’ The news from China gives me the greatest pleasure. I am for bombarding all the exclusive Asiatics, who shut up the earth, and will not let me walk civilly and quietly through it, doing no harm, and paying for all I want. We are in for a dozen years of Tory power at least, and the country will fast lapse into monarchical and ecclesiastical habits. In all revolutions of politics, I shall always remain, dear Lady Grey, sincerely and affectionately yours,

It grieves me to think you will not be in England this winter. The privations of winter are numerous enough without this. The absence of leaves and flowers I could endure, and am accustomed to; but the absence of amiable and enlightened women I have

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not hitherto connected with the approach of winter, and I do not at all approve of it.

Great forgeries of Exchequer Bills in England, and all the world up in arms; the evil to the amount of £200,000 or £300,000. Sanguine people imagine Lord Monteagle will be hanged. I am a holder of Exchequer Bills to some little amount, and am quaking for fear. Poor Jeffrey is at Empson’s, very ill, and writing in a melancholy mood of himself. He seems very reluctant to resign his seat on the Bench, and no wonder, where he gains every day great reputation, and is of great use;—still he may gain a few years of life if he will be quiet, and fall into a private station.

Mrs. Grote is, I presume, abroad, collecting at Rome, for Roebuck and others, anecdotes of Catiline and the Gracchi. She came to Combe Florey again this year, which was very kind and flattering. I have a high opinion of, and a real affection for her; she has an excellent head, and an honest and kind heart.

I am extremely obliged by your kind attention in writing to me respecting the illness of our friend Jeffrey; I had seen it in the papers of today for the

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first time, just as your letter arrived, and was about to write. Whoever, at his period of life, means to go on, and to be well, must institute the most rigid and Spartan-like discipline as to food. These are the conditions of nature, as plain as if they had been drawn up on parchment by a Writer to the Signet upon the proper stamp.

The most sanguine of the Whigs think the next Parliament will be much the same as this; that parties will be as equally balanced. This is the opinion of Charles Wood and Lord Duncannon. The most sanguine of the Tories think they shall gain fifty votes. I have no opinion on the subject.

It will give me great pleasure, my dear Murray, to see you in London next spring; you have such an extensive acquaintance there, that you should keep it up.

I am staying here with the Hibberts. Nothing can exceed the comfort of the place. Happy the father who sees his daughters so well placed! I am very glad the Archbishop of Dublin has given something to Shannon, whom I know, from your statements and from my own observation, to be a very excellent person. I will certainly read his book.

It shall be done, dearest G., as soon as I can get some silver paper adapted for foreign postages. I be-

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lieve Lady Davy to be the most kind and useful person whose acquaintance can be made at Rome.

You may laugh, dear G., but, after all, the country is most dreadful! The real use of it is to find food for cities; but as for a residence of any man who is neither butcher nor baker, nor food-grower in any of its branches, it is a dreadful waste of existence and abuse of life. God bless you!

These verses were found in Lord Holland’s room in his handwriting:—

“Nephew of Fox, and friend of Grey,— Enough my meed of fame, If those who deign’d to observe me say I tarnish’d neither name.”

* The death of Lord Holland.

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You have very naturally, my dear Lady Ashburton, referred to me for some information respecting St. Anthony. The principal anecdotes related of him are, that he was rather careless of his diet; and that, instead of confining himself to boiled mutton and a little wine and water, he ate of side-dishes, and drank two glasses of sherry, and refused to lead a life of great care and circumspection, such as his constitution required. The consequence was, that his friends were often alarmed at his health; and the medical men of Jerusalem and Jericho were in constant requisition, taking exorbitant fees, and doing him little good.

You ought to be very thankful to me (Lord Ashburton and yourself) for resisting as firmly and honourably as I do, my desire to offer myself at the Grange; but my health is so indifferent, and my spirits so low, and I am so old and half-dead, that I am mere lumber; so that I can only inflict myself upon the Mildmays, who are accustomed to Mr. ——; and I dare not appear before one who crosses the seas to arrange the destinies of nations, and to chain up in bonds of peace the angry passions of the people of the earth.

Still I can preach a little; and I wish you had wit-

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nessed, the other day, at St. Paul’s, my incredible boldness in attacking the Puseyites. I told them that they made the Christian religion a religion of postures and ceremonies, of circumflexions and genuflexions, of garments and vestures, of ostentation and parade; that they took up tithe of mint and cummin, and neglected the weightier matters of the law,—justice, mercy, and the duties of life; and so forth.

Pray give my kind regards to the ambassador of ambassadors; and believe me, my dear Lady Ashburton, with benedictions to the whole house, ever sincerely yours,