My dear Clarke,—I have but a blind excuse to offer tor my long silence to your last: but the miserable truth is, I have been in darkness with acute inflammation of the eye; something like toothache in the eye—and very fit to test a man’s philosophy; when he can neither read nor write, and has no other consolation save first to discover his own virtues, and when caught to contemplate them. I assure you it’s devilish difficult to put one’s hand upon one’s virtue in a dark room. As well try to catch fleas in “the blanket o’ the dark.” By this, however, you will perceive that I have returned to paper and ink. The doctor tells me that the inflammation fell upon me from an atmospheric blight, rife in these parts three weeks ago. I think I caught it at Hyde Park Corner, where for three minutes I paused to see the Queen pass after being fired at. She looked very well, and—as is not always the case with women—none the worse for powder. To be sure, considering they give princesses a salvo of artillery with their first pap—they ought to stand saltpetre better than folks who come into the world without any charge to the State—without even blank charge.
Your friend of the beard is, I think, quite right. When God made Adam he did not present him with a razor, but a wife. ’Tis the d—d old clothesmen who have brought discredit upon a noble appendage of man. Thank God we’ve revenge for this. They’ll make some of ’em members of Parliament.
I purpose to break in upon you some early Sunday, to kiss the hands of your wife, and to tell you delightful stories of the deaths of kings. How nobly Mazzini is behaving! And what a cold, calico cur is John Bull, as—I fear—too truly rendered by the Times. The French are in a nice mess. Heaven in its infinite mercy confound them!—Truly yours,
