“. . . I have yet two months to remain here. I am too much of a slave to have as much of your company as I would wish, but I will treat you with perfect candour, and promise you that I will act as your host as I would as your guest. I have an house in town and a cottage in the country within three miles of it; a spare bed in each, books in each, and a bottle of wine in each, and in each you will find the most absolute power of doing what you please as to idling, working, walking, eating, sleeping, &c. There are many here that know you in print, and are much pleased with the hope I have given them of knowing you in person. One of them, Lady Mountcashel, who is now settled in Dublin for the summer, speaks of you with peculiar regard, mixed with a tender and regretful retrospect to past times and to past events with which you have yourself been connected.
“Let me add, this is the pleasantest time of the year.
The journey is but little: a sit down in a mail-coach and a ferry brings a
philosopher, six shirts, his genius and his hat upon it, from London to Dublin,
et vice versa, in fifty-four hours. I think, too,
you would feel a curiosity to see a nation in its last moments. You would think
that slavery is no such fearful thing as you have supposed in theory. I assure
you our trees and our fields are as green as ever. Thus have I stated the pro
and con with as much fairness as can be expected from a person so much
interested in
| 364 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
“Will you give my very kind respects to Mrs Inchbald, if you should see her?—Yours truly,
