Welcome back to England! A piece of our roast beef, with a bottle of good strong wine at one’s elbow, is after all as good as German veal, six days old, and sour Rhein-wine.—Isn’t it? I hear you were glad to leave Langenschwalbach. It is tiresome to be drinking water all day long for six weeks; but, my dear friend, it strengthens the stomach, and makes it hold more, which is a great blessing!
They tell me you have actually managed to bring home in triumph the Schwein-General’s pig-whip!* You shall hear me smack it some day in Albemarle Street, and if I live to attend your funeral, I will ask your son (instead of a sermon) to crack it twenty or thirty times over your grave. It would frighten the worms away from you for months. You ought immediately to invite to dinner all the literary men in London, on purpose to let ’em hear me crack that whip. None of your Quarterly Review writers can hit like it—their subjects want its handle—their arguments its weight—their satire its iron lash—their wit its point. Give me but that whip, I say, and let them choose any subject they like, and I will lick ’em and drive ’em before me like a herd of swine. It could conquer every man in London, and most seriously do I congratulate you on the possession of this Herculean tool.
P.S.—I shall have finished with this county in about a month.
