“Well, and so you have received all my packets safe, viands and all. As you like the latter so well, I think they ought to be repeated.
“But now to the more refined, viz., the critical parts
of your letter. Be assured, in goading you as I did, I did not expect or
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“And now I will wait upon my oars till to-day’s post arrives, glad if I do not receive a scold from you in return for mine. It may, however, diversify a lonely day; for my wife, whose society, when she leaves me, I more and more miss, is gone with her father, Sir George, to leave all our duties with the Queen Dowager—a piece of etiquette which we find all our neighbouring families have pursued.
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“Thank heaven, I myself have done with etiquette, and have reached that happy time when I have a legitimate right (which you have only usurped), to sit all the morning, and even pace my garden, en robe de chambre. In short (except that I am far happier in a wife, with whom I am absolutely every hour more and more in love, in even the admiring sense of the word), there is a certain Mr. Manners in the MS. between whom and myself I request and desire you will discover, a considerable affinity. This I tell you for your comfort, against the time when you will be near seventy-six. It is really certain, that much as I expended myself in my youth, I am, I believe I may say, happier than ever I was in my life; and as this place, though it may not be the cause, is certainly the scene of my happiness, you must not be surprised if your anticipations as to Mr. De Clifford are not realised, and that the winter will probably not see me among you.
“Though not so splendid, I love this abode,
particularly the exterior, and I also love my society better than in
Hertfordshire. I have not so fine a park, but I have Dove-
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“On the other hand, I am here not one of a band of cockneys, whose hearts are all day in the city, though their bodies affect groves and fields—sprung up, too, like mushrooms; but for a time at least, feel the representative (though ‘jure uxoris et vitrici’) of a family of nine hundred years, flourishing and fructifying all that time on the same spot.
“Prejudice and illusion, you will say, and say truly; to which I reply, how much happier in a thousand instances than reality! In short, ever since I could read, I felt that I would rather be Sir Roger de Coverley than Cæsar; and here, at least, I am more like him than at Gilston.
“Adieu. The post is come in, and no letter from you. So thanking you again for yours of yesterday, I am,
